“A person who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it is committing another mistake.”—Confucius
I re-stumbled upon this quote today. It reminded me of how our habits make us, and how we do anything is how we do everything.
I got me thinking: when I spot the mistake, how much faster can I diagnose the root cause, and resolve to avoid it the next time round?
Feedback loops are everywhere. Our actions produce results that help inform our next actions.
It’s important to distinguish between different types of feedback loops though.
There are reinforcing feedback loops, and there are balancing feedback loops. The former helps us strive for better, the latter for moderation.
Say you’re learning a new language and you use a new phrase in conversation. It gives you a confidence boost and inspires you to continue learning. That’s a reinforcement loop.
Say you’ve set the temperature in your home to stay constant. Anytime the sensors detect the temperature is too hot or cold, it turns on the heating or cooling systems to bring the home back to its target equilibrium state. That’s a balancing loop.
It’s important to identify the type of feedback loop we’re dealing with; optimising for growth when what we need is balance (or vice versa), can send us down the wrong path.
It’s amazing how a street, a park, or a city can transform when we put away our headphones, turn off our phone, and soak in all that’s around us.
We learn new things about what’s in plain sight.
There’s richness to be found in ordinary.
Some shortcuts save us time.
Other “shortcuts” end up adding more risk, creating more problems, and causing more frustration.
It’s easy to measure the success of a shortcut when we travelling somewhere with a map and a watch.
It’s hard to measure the success of a shortcut when we’re talking about plans, and people, and trade-offs, and decisions made over months and years.
Not all shortcuts are the same.
Cut with care.
Dark patterns are deliberate designs within websites and apps that make you do things you didn’t mean to do.
After a couple years backing up my files to both Google and Dropbox, I realised I didn’t need both services. And since Dropbox feels like it’s fallen behind as a product—for example, it’s impossible to tell the size of a folder if it has sub-folders or files in it—I decided to cancel my subscription.
I spent 2-3 minutes searching for for a way to downgrade my plan. After having no luck, I eventually went to Google for the answer. That’s the first problem: Dropbox makes it hard and confusing to even find the downgrade page.
Once I arrived at the downgrade screen, I was greeted with this dark pattern.
Solid buttons, the ones of the left that are filled in with colour, are typically used for the default action the user wants to make. For example, the ‘Buy Now’ button on ecommerce websites. This is in contrast to the ghost button on the right, which is typically reserved for a secondary or alternate action, such as ‘Cancel’.
In this instance, Dropbox reverses the expected interaction. ‘Downgrade’, the action I want to perform, is in the ghost button. Whereas ‘Change my plan’ is in the solid button.
And you know what? I actually clicked on the wrong button because I wasn’t paying close attention, and I’m so used to clicking on solid buttons to confirm my intended action.
I don’t get why Dropbox does this. It’s short sighted and feels desperate. In the long run, consumers will build negative sentiment towards companies that deliberately make decisions like this. It makes it even less likely for consumers to want to return in the future.
Twitter user, @Orinithophilel, posted a great photo yesterday.
His challenge: “Did you know that Hog Deer follow tigers? They let off continuous alarm calls and keep following them from a safe distance. Tell me why.”
The answer: “The Tiger is an ambush predator. It hides and strikes. When a deer can see him, it can outrun him. Once sighted deer prefer to keep the tiger in sight so as to avoid being hunted.”
There’s a great metaphor in here.
What’s the tiger that could throw your project, plan, or team off track?
How are you keeping your eye on the tiger to avoid the headache?
A new cafe just opened up 2 minutes down the road.
The counter staff were disinterested and unwelcoming. Their food was placed in the window and was baking in the sun. And their drinks were hot to the point of being burnt and undrinkable.
Any one of the above would be forgivable. But together, it gave the impression the cafe didn’t think deeply enough about the experience they’d give to customers.
After one visit, I made up my mind to continue walking 7 minutes down the road to my usual cafe. The additional 5 minutes walk for a significantly better experience is well worth it.
Consumers can be fickle. If we’re trying to serve them, we may only get a few chances.
Maru and I are away for the long weekend with good friends in the English countryside.
This is the fourth time we’re staying in an AirBnb that’s a standalone unit next to the owner’s home. Rather than the highly commercialised feel of AirBnbs within cities, it really does feel like the experience AirBnb set out to build: people opening up their homes to travellers.
One thing that I’ve found about these properties in particular is that everything’s just works. The care and thought put into the space and the amenities make the stay easy and enjoyable. It’s a distinctly different feel to the more commercial AirBnbs where it’s clear they’ve tried to cut a few too many corners.
It reminds me of the quote: how you do anything is how you do everything.
We had to put Ruby down today. She was a beagle with a huge personality, and my family’s dog for the past 12 years.
It all started when I was 9 years old. My sister and I made signs and picketed out the front of our house—petitioning our parents to get us a dog.
Almost a decade later, my mum finally relented. To be honest, I don’t know why we chose a beagle, but it was probably the ears. Beagles have the best ears.
Ruby was mischievous, sassy, and strong willed from day one. She’d always find a way on to the couch, and when you told her to get off, she’d conveniently look the other way—pretending like she couldn’t hear.
Once I left New Zealand in 2013, my annual reunion with Ruby became a thing. Upon arriving at Mum and Dad’s house, I’d get down on all fours, and Ruby would run over, nuzzle into my face, and whimper for a full minute as I greeted her.
Every morning and evening, you could find Ruby on my dad’s lap. She’d sit expectantly until he put her special blanket on his lap and she could jump up, settle in, and take a nap.
Dogs allow us to see and experience a pure form of love. They turn up every day with a wagging tail and are overjoyed to just be together. That was Ruby for our family.
Run free, Ruby.
Back in 2019, Maru and I made the decision to move to more sustainable products in the home. Some changes we kept, and some didn’t work out (read: making our own cleaning solution using white vinegar).
One change that has persisted has been me switching from using disposable razors to using a safety razor. It’s been a hugely positive change, and I realised that I’ve never written about it.
I bought a Merkur 34C stainless steel razor for £34, and it looks exactly the same as when I bought it. I also bought a pack of 100 blades that came in 100% cardboard packaging for £10, and I haven’t even finished the pack yet.
I broke even versus disposable razors within a year, and I feel much better about all the plastic waste that I’m avoiding.
The safety razor did take a little bit of getting used to though. The single blade means you need to get the angle right to get a close shave, versus disposable razor cartridges that typically have 4-5 blades.
My only bug bear is the safety razor is hard to travel with; I can’t take blades in a carry-on for obvious reasons, so I end up switching to disposables when travelling.
After 3 years, the net benefit of the change has been positive, and I see no reason to go back to disposables.
Each year on his birthday, Kevin Kelly shares a list of pithy life advice.
I’m a big fan of Kelly. He’s a futurist, optimist, technologist, and creative powerhouse all wrapped into one.
Kelly turned 70 earlier this week and I’ve already read his latest list of life advice multiple times, as well as re-reading his previous lists.
Here are some of my favourite:
Productivity is often a distraction. Don’t aim for better ways to get through your tasks as quickly as possible, rather aim for better tasks that you never want to stop doing.
Speak confidently as if you are right, but listen carefully as if you are wrong.
The consistency of your endeavors (exercise, companionship, work) is more important than the quantity. Nothing beats small things done every day, which is way more important than what you do occasionally.
What you do on your bad days matters more than what you do on your good days.
You can be whatever you want, so be the person who ends meetings early.
Cognitive biases can be dangerous. If left undetected, these errors in our thinking can lead us down many a wrong road.
Given their abstract nature, it can be difficult to find 1) an exhaustive list of cognitive biases, and 2) clear descriptions and explanations for each. Which is why I’m writing today about Wikipedia’s List of Cognitive Biases.
It doesn’t take long to read, but by the end of it, I’m confident you’ll have learnt something new, or will have been reminded about a bias that you want to avoid.
Here was my favourite new one: Effort Justification. We tend to attribute greater value to an outcome the more effort we put into achieving it. This can result in more value being applied to an outcome than it actually has. A great example of this is the IKEA Effect: people place higher value on items they assemble themselves, regardless of the quality of the end product.
Happy reading!
I’m not against acronyms. Groups that have a shared understanding of their content and culture can use them effectively.
But acronyms can be hard for new members of the group to grasp. In addition to meeting new people, learning new content, and figuring out how the team works, they have to deal with a bunch of letters lumped together that make no sense at first glance.
So here’s a simple rule: when someone asks what an acronym means, why not introduce an acronym moratorium for the next 10 times the acronym is used? This would involve writing out, or speaking, the acronym in full words. You can follow-up with the acronym (in brackets) to help people learn it.
I’ve learn that if one person has a question on what an acronym means, or on a particular piece of content, there is usually someone else in the group who has the same question.
Why not invest in making it easier for everyone to follow along?
“If you can’t be happy with a cup of coffee, you won’t be happy with a yacht.”
You can replace yacht with anything you like.
And you can replace coffee with your drink of choice, but don’t go any further.
This simple thought can serve as a powerful, daily reminder to be grateful for today, the present, and what we already have.
Note: I had trouble finding the source of this idea—I thought it was from Naval, but I believe it may be misattributed. Regardless, the idea is strong enough to stand on its own, even without a named author.
The crowd gathers, gets excited, and eventually dissipates.
What’s new never stays new for long. We make progress, and move on to the next thing.
The photo below is from the opening of the first ATM in the world. It’s taken outside a Barclays Bank in London in 1967.
