Productivity and the need to finish things
Done is better than perfect- Sheryl Sandberg
“If you want to be productive, stop starting things and start finishing things.”
Hmmm, I’m not so sure. I’m not sure that productivity really comes from finishing things. Ok, perhaps by the technical definition of producing things something is only valuable if its finished. And who wants a half finished cup or a pen they didn’t bother to fill with ink? So, whatever you’re creating, it needs to do the job its designed for, but it rarely needs to be perfectly finished. Finished can mean good enough.
The other problem I find with the idea that things have to be finished and the ‘sit still and be a good little school boy, don’t fidget, don’t get distracted’ mentality on productivity is that it isn’t natural for me. It actually creates procrastination because if you’re thoughts about the thing you’re working on get blocked you are supposed to continue to focus on that piece of work until you become unblocked.
When I’m writing or doing any kind of linear flow work, if my thoghts stop mid sentence I stop writing. I don’t try to force the thoughts and finish the sentence, I just just move onto the next thought. I acn come back later and edit but right now I want to get as many thoughts out as quickly as possible.
And when I go back to edit, am I aiming for perfection? No, of course not. I’m aiming for what I wrote to communicate an idea in some vaguely sensicle way. I’m not aiming for a perfect piece of writing. If I can convey the idea well enough in a short amount of time then that’s good enough for me. Time to move on.
The majority of the work I do is probably like this. I aim for the 80% of value from 20% of the effort, and when it’s good enough to its job I move on. I don’t have time to go back and polish it to get that last 20% of value out of the work. I could. I could validate my thinking more, double the words are familiar with the target audience, make sure the diagrams all line up, et., etc. I could spend ages making it perfect, but really, who has the time.
Done is good enough.
Comprehensive Anatomy of All Design Thinking Workshops
An attempt to figure out the workshop nature once and for all
https://uxdesign.cc/comprehensive-anatomy-of-all-ux-design-thinking-workshops-c416706cd3e2
The value chain is the product
A tool or system that makes up the value chain isn’t the product, the entire value chain is the product
https://twitter.com/johncutlefish/status/1427171226976350211?s=19
Mobile signal strength tool for remote workers and digital nomads
Mastdata is a UK mobile telecoms base station resource tool for use by contractors and operators across the mobile telecommunications sector.
Join a memeplex to spread ideas
The idea of the ‘meme’, introduced by Dawkins and derided by others as not scientific, attempts to offer some explanation about how ideas spread through a culture. Although the rules for transmission haven’t been fully understood yet, Deutsch says, “new ideas have to provide ‘good explanations’ for phenomena”, which means that for memes to spread the idea embodied by the meme has to make sense. It needs to be relevant, appropriate, acceptable, at least to some people, in order to spread. Random and nonsensical ideas don’t spread. Ideas that seem random and nonsensical to some people spread with others because they become part of a ‘memeplex’.
A memeplex occurs where a number of compatible memes join together in mutually supportive ways. New ideas piggy-back on well established ideas, memes come together to change each other, some memes replace others. Memes have a hard time on their own. Where we’ve seen new memes become well-established it is because they have had a strong association with a set of already well-established memes. Having an understanding of how ideas spread is a fundamental skill for the digital age. It helps us make choices about adopting ideas for ourselves based on the value of the idea rather than its association with other ideas we accept.