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By Mark Truman, on May 25th, 2011%
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or fill out the subscription form to the left. Thanks for visiting! If you tell government employees not to read Wikileaks at work, they will read
Wikileaks at home.
If you tell your kids not to watch Harry Potter at your house, they will watch it at a friend’s.
If you tell anyone that something is off limits, you create an enormous pressure for them to find it and experience it right now.
And when they realize that it didn’t hurt them, your credibility is shot.
Information doesn’t work like it used to work. There are literally thousands of places for someone to find “censored” material. And they don’t need your permission to access anything they find.
By Mark Truman, on April 18th, 2011%
You’ve got questions. You boss probably has the answers.
But before you go bother your boss, wait until you get three questions. Write down the first question (you don’t want to forget it!), and keep plugging away at your list of tasks.
A good deal of the time, you’ll find an answer to question #1 long before you have a question #3.
And you’ll never need to bother your boss at all.
By Mark Truman, on April 11th, 2011%
Why do we top off a project with a feature it doesn’t need?
Why do we spend twice as long developing as we planned?
Why do we ask our friends, families, students, and teammates to sit through another boring meeting?
Because, we tell ourselves, it can’t hurt.
It can’t hurt to add one more thing, take one more look, hold one more session. If we care, we say, it can’t hurt to do it over and over until it’s right.
Wrong!
Overpreparation wastes time, money, and (worst of all) the limited amount of care you can pour into the things you care about in this world. Rather than spend your time obsessing, move on to the next part of the project.
In short, it can hurt.
In fact, it’s probably hurting them right now.
Go fix it.
By Mark Truman, on April 6th, 2011%
Your brain is broken up into two parts: a bucket and a bear.
The bear is ignorant. It doesn’t remember much about yesterday and it doesn’t know much about tomorrow. Your bear is slow to get moving because it’s a massive beast who is just a tad lazy.
Cut him some slack: He’s a bear.
But your bear has claws. And when confronted with a locked box, a problem you can’t solve, you only have two options: hope your bucket has a single, specific key or unleash the bear.
Your bear, properly trained, can rip through anything. Don’t forget that when you spend time filling your bucket instead of training your bear.
(More on filling your bucket and training your bear later this week…)
By Mark Truman, on April 4th, 2011%
Your brain is broken up into two parts: a bucket and a bear.
The bucket is a storehouse of everything you’ve filed away for future reference. It’s the place you go to to retrieve a math equation without opening a textbook or the name of a movie actor without using your smartphone.
There’s only one problem: your bucket has a hole.
No matter how much you try to hold on to everything in your bucket, stuff slips away. Eventually you’ll forget your former employer’s alma mater or your youngest child’s favorite movie.
You just can’t hold on to everything. The hole at the bottom of the bucket makes sure of that.
Fill your bucket and have instant access to all the facts you can cram in to it. Just don’t forget the hole.
(More on the bear later this week…)
By Mark Truman, on April 1st, 2011%
Smart people love doing something new the first time. We delight in the challenge, enjoying how quickly we pick up a new skill or talent.
We might not be experts, we say, but we did pretty well for our first time.
A second time? No, thanks. We will pass. Already proved we can do it, you see.
We go back to our familiar paths, laughing about how silly it would be to devote more time to that thing that won’t really matter in 10 years.
Challenges strengthen our resolve. They teach us humility and patience in the face. We too rarely face real ones.
Do it again, and show what you’re really made of.
By Mark Truman, on March 30th, 2011%
Are your goals “realistic” enough? Do they strike you as something you could actually do?
I hope not. I hope your goals are just a bit crazy…
If the goals you set are small, getting them halfway done won’t change your life. In fact, 50% success on a “realistic” goal probably won’t change anything at all.
But if you set a goal that would remake the world and alter the course of your life, then 50% success would still be a significant achievement. You can get halfway to an “unrealistic” goal and find that you’ve made a dent in the real problems you faced.
So set a big goal today. Promise to do something large and memorable. Even failure will be a more exciting kind of success than what you’re doing now.
And who knows? Maybe you’ll surprise yourself and get all the way there.
By Mark Truman, on March 28th, 2011%
How do you respond when the chips are down and the stakes are high?
The best have a single reaction: they do it better than if there was no pressure at all.
They often can’t explain it. But when everyone else is melting down, they are having their finest hour. Not in spite of the stress but because of it.
By Mark Truman, on March 25th, 2011%
Want to avoid pain? Just stop. Stop trying, stop working, stop wanting, stop doing. Stop all of it.
But you want to get something done? Then you’ll have to learn, grow, desire, and do.
Those things are tough to do when your primary concern is comfort.
By Mark Truman, on March 23rd, 2011%
To paraphrase Dr. Manhattan:
Your entire existence is a miracle. You exist, despite all odds, because every one of your ancestors loved, lived, and died to give you life.
Is it so unrealistic to believe that you, the miracle, might have a special purpose here on Earth?
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