This is a complicated promise. It’s about commitment and connection and most of all, time.
If we’re saying that we’ll do what’s in our short-term interest and convenient, then there’s really no reason to say anything at all, since that’s what we usually do anyway.
Instead, we’re promising to shift our time horizon. To show up when we don’t feel like it, especially then. To invest focus and time and resources when there may be other more compelling short-term options.
Commitment is a reward in itself. It gives us boundaries and structure, and also creates meaning. Commitment only counts when it costs us something, and that cost usually involves shifting time.
Because we said we would.
February 14, 2025
This is not a real word, but it’s useful nonetheless.
When we default to doing what we did without examining our options, we’re ‘usualing.’
It’s a helpful way to save time, because we can’t re-examine every possible option or we’d never get out the door in the morning. We wear our usual clothes, leave at the usual time, take the usual form of transport, drink the usual coffee and that’s all before we even get to work.
This efficient habit might not always be the most effective, though.
When a new opportunity arises, it might make sense to say “I’m usualling” to remind yourself that you’ve decided it’s not worth your time to consider.
And this is how we fall behind. A little at a time.
February 13, 2025
If you’re the client or the boss, it’s possible that someone is going to create creative work for you.
Sooner or later, you’ll get something that doesn’t work. You might want to explain why it’s not good enough. Perhaps you can demonstrate how it doesn’t fit the genre or meet spec. Explain the historical context, the market demands and the structure of the problem and the work to be done.
That’s useful if you’re correct and clear.
Or, you might simply say, “I don’t like it.”
That’s okay too.
Frustration sets in when you should say “I don’t like it,” but try to justify it with a complicated and probably incorrect series of assertions as to why no one will.
Taste is elusive and often hard to describe. That’s okay.
But asserting that our personal, ineffable taste is also universal is probably not helpful.
February 12, 2025
There’s a delay between the time something goes wrong and when we notice it.
Sometimes, it can take years.
Part of the art of project management is noticing things more quickly.
And it helps to acknowledge that by the time we notice something, it’s probably too late to easily undo it, and our work involves ameliorating the damage instead.
February 11, 2025
What’s the best speed to drive?
I was caught in a snowstorm the other day. Visibility was low, so I was going about 25 mph.
Someone passed me on the highway, doing 30. Not 55 or 75, but fast enough to take a risk and pass the rest of traffic. Do that often enough and you’ll end up in a snowbank.
Our velocity through life is always relative. The pace of our career advancement, the expectations we have for change, the number of followers we have online–none of them are absolute.
You win a track meet by running faster than the other runners, not by breaking the world record.
The question, then, is, “compared to what?” Does this race deserve what you’re putting into it?
Choosing well can shift our expectations, our effort and whether or not we’ll even get to where we hope to go.
February 10, 2025
Once life gets busy, it’s sort of inevitable that we begin to sort the work to be done.
And the most natural sort is to focus on the urgent. After all, if that plate is about to break, it’s hard to watch it fall when you’ve decided to work on something less urgent instead.
Which leads to days spent dealing with only the last-minute emergencies.
The problem is that by the time the two-minute warning arrives, it’s too late to win the game.
You’re so far behind (because the other team focused early and persistently) that it’s a lost cause.
The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago.
The second-best time is today.
February 9, 2025
Of course you’re going to get wet, that’s part of the sport.
And yet, only the hard core surfers show up in the rain.
If your project is about making things better, organizing the disorganized, connecting the disconnected and building community, you shouldn’t wait until the conditions are ideal.
Broken systems need your help precisely because they’re broken.
We need you the most when it’s raining.
February 8, 2025
It’s just a week until Valentine’s Day, a multi-billion dollar spending jamboree.
As often happens, the people we depend on for much of it get the short end of the deal, but a little mindful planning can make a difference.
The heart shape we associate with love came from leaves. The ivy and fig leaves in ancient paintings, and perhaps the silphium leaf of the giant fennel plant, associated with aphrodisiacs.
180 years ago, Richard Cadbury combined two innovations–he added sugar to bitter drinking chocolate, and he put the chocolates in a red, heart-shaped box.
About a hundred years ago, Joyce Hall brought valentine’s cards to the USA.
The race was on. Best not to show up empty-handed.
If you care, avoid cheap chocolate. Cheap chocolate comes from cacao grown by some of the poorest people on Earth, many of them children, under conditions that are the direct result of oligopoly commodity power.
Acumen has invested in several chocolate companies that are committed to systemic change in the chocolate business that also happen to make extraordinary chocolate.
And my friends at Askinosie have sold almost all of our limited edition collectible chocolate bar.
When we give a gift, we like to think that it’s the thought that counts. But our actions are votes, signals to the market, and a message to manufacturers.
Cheap chocolate might be convenient, but we can care enough to change the system.
Don’t buy cheap chocolate for someone you care about.
February 7, 2025
This takes guts, and hustlers are afraid to do so.
Thirty years ago, when the avalanche of email spam was on the horizon, I proposed that any commercial email should have a $ in the subject line. A simple way for email programs to filter it out if you’re not looking for it. Obviously, that didn’t catch on, but not because the recipients were opposed.
I regularly get texts from people pretending to know me, or selling me something. They’ve decided that knowing someone’s contact info is the same as having the right to steal their attention. If they were honest, we could make our own choices. When our first interaction reveals that you’re a liar, it’s hard to imagine that it goes well from there.
Bruce Schneier has an insightful proposal: AI generated voices should sound like robots (I’m not sure his method is the one to choose, but the idea is really smart). The uncanny valley is real–and when a computer sounds like a friendly person, we create frustration and confusion when it turns out that it’s not. A pleasant robot is still a robot, and we can respond accordingly.
[Trivia: all the AI computers in Star Trek were played by one person–Majel Barrett–over the course of many decades. The quality got better, but we could always tell it was the computer…]
If you need to pretend that your product is handmade, or that you’re a friend, or that it’s a person on the other end of the line, you’re skulking around.
Magicians should conceal. Marketers and technologists should serve. Turn on the lights and make it clear.
(And community action is the only way that this is going to happen–the short-term game theory rewards people who cheat, so we need to make it too expensive to do so.)
I won’t walk away.
I won’t ease any of the constraints.
I won’t forgive.
I won’t get a coach.
It’s personal.
I don’t want to talk about it.
I will think about this often.
I can add another problem just like this one.
I can do this.
Persistent perfect problems are a great way to hide from what’s possible.
February 6, 2025
