20 July, 2009
Posted by James
Things that I have learnt in my life so far…
Inspired by Stefan Sagmeister’s fantastic book of the same name, I recently spent a reflective train journey putting down some of the little understandings I have made about this strange world in which we live…
- When a problem seems impossible to solve, your thinking is probably too complex
- Your sub-conscious is often far better at problem solving than you are
- If you can’t explain it in the language of a 12 year old, you probably don’t understand it yourself
- If you don’t understand it yourself, explaining it to others isn’t going to help you figure it out
- Behind every form of communication is a real person, and you seem as distant to them as they seem to you
- Honesty, openness and transparency will free up emotional space and allow you to be happy
- Regular sessions of low-stress work over a long period of time cannot be replaced by a short spurt of high-stress work just before a deadline
- Some things are just tough, they hurt and there is no escaping that, deal with it
- Hinging your emotional state on the thoughts, feelings and actions of others is dangerous and ineffective
- Books aren’t any good if you don’t read them
- Decisions don’t really matter as long as you make them
- Mistakes don’t really matter as long as you accept them and learn
- Things don’t make anyone happy, experiences make people happy, which means that things don’t really matter unless they create meaningful experiences
- Nobody is ever going to care as much about your ideas as you are, but that doesn’t mean they can’t contribute
- People are most important
1 Comments
20 July, 2009
Points 3 & 4 sound very much like the Rubber Duckie test.
“place a generic rubber duckie on your desk. Every time you make a big coding decision or implementation, you explain how it all works to the rubber duckie. If you find yourself straining for an explanation, or if you find yourself unable to even come up with something logical, stop. The duckie has served its purpose — it’s helped you expose a bug or design flaw or implementation flaw that otherwise might have gone unnoticed”
– http://lvtechspeak.blogspot.com/2009/03/rubber-duckie-test.html
Sometimes the act of articulating our ideas out-loud, rather than just in our own heads can be enough to highlight some flaw we may otherwise have missed or highlight some area in-which our understanding is lacking.
And it gives the rest of the people in the Studio a giggle to see you talking to a Rubber Duck (Rubber Chicken might work as well, I am Fowl agnostic)
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