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Read Other People’s Stuff

Read Other People’s Stuff: 1

🎹 Music for this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5CeQ3twVaI.

If you’ve been wondering about my lack of new writing, it’s not because I have run out of things to write! Quite the opposite. I have a number of posts lined up, many which are partially-written.

For the moment, I have been honored to be asked to help in the editing of two books. Between that, my day job, my students at RIT, and my volunteer work, my cup runneth over!

In the meanwhile, here are some worthy works from other authors to keep your brains chugging away. Are you interested in:

I hope at least one of these things inspires you to think differently in some way or another. I will be back soon!

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Read Other People’s Stuff

Read Other People’s Stuff: 2

🎹 Music for this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLlfK_GQwko.

This is the most compelling software-related post I have read in a while:

Web 3.0 harkens back to the days when engineers thought Object Linking and Embedding and Open Doc were the future. The reason those things failed is because it’s more difficult for average people to think (or care) about information that is distributed than information that is centralized. Think about this: What percentage of Word documents sitting on computers around the world today have a live reference to a chunk of cells in someone else’s Excel spreadsheet?

Something that I tend to think of as a rule for ascertaining the long-term success of a technology is: does the technology make sense for people, or does it make sense for engineers?

If you are interested, here are some things I have already written that complement this topic:

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Read Other People’s Stuff

Read Other People’s Stuff: 3

🎹 Music for this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lamyY_8iwE.

From Stephen Wolfram, this is simply the most lucid (but lengthy) analysis of how Large Language Models like ChatGPT work:

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Current Events: 2023 Read Other People’s Stuff

Read Other People’s Stuff: 4

🎹 Music for this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOax8WSeEGM.

After naming the Ethereum Merge as The Progressive CIO 2022 Technology of the Year, I thought that some people might think I was out of my mind for looking past ChatGPT, which I didn’t think was all that remarkable of a technical achievement in comparison.

Here we are a few months later, and Noam Chomsky & friends put words to the feelings I could not readily express in December.

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Humility Read Other People’s Stuff

Read Other People’s Stuff: 5

🎹 Music for this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgtNp-hRojw.

In regard to https://theprogressivecio.com/slate-star-codex-and-the-state-of-things/, here’s an interesting read:

https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/rational-magic

I happen to be writing something that is related to this topic…coming soon. Stay tuned!

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Advice Priorities Read Other People’s Stuff

Three Things About Priorities

(And, Read Other People’s Stuff: 6)

🎹 Music for this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fbZTnZDvPA.

It seems that I’ve spent a large part of my life coaching people through prioritization exercises. While there are all sorts of formal methods to help people objectively prioritize things (like my favorite, the Kano analysis), more often than not, prioritization can be — and is — done intuitively. Frankly, intuitive prioritization is wonderful; I tend to save formal methods for times when my (or our) intuition starts to struggle.

I’d like to share three things about intuitive prioritization that are, however, not all that intuitive.

1. Your highest priorities probably aren’t as high as you suspect.

Say you have a list — or backlog — of 100 items.

And say you prioritize each one, 1 (highest) to 4 (lowest).

How many of them are 1s?

Of those, how many are you actively working on?

Subtract that number from the total number of 1s.

If the number is zero, you’re a superstar, and you should pour a glass of your favorite beverage, kick back, and…move on to item #2.

If not, read on.


Of the 1s that you are not actively working on, how long have they been hanging around with that priority?

How many of them really deserve to be 1s?

I remember a few decades ago when I was introduced to the Franklin Planner’s lucid prioritization system. My teacher colored outside the lines and explained to me that “A” priorities are best thought of as do or die. That is, if an “A” priority were to be neglected, someone’s life or job would be at stake. In that sense, in most situations, very few priorities are truly worthy of Franklin “A.” That’s good!

Let’s get back to your list of 100 items. Of those, how many had to be done by yesterday? This may be difficult to swallow, but the answer is always zero. The soonest you can get any of those done is today.

“Have to” is a funny, overused phrase, and we’re all better off remembering that.

The vast majority of our high priorities are likely a Franklin “B.” That is, things that we would like to get done today, but if we can’t, nobody will die or be fired.

2. Your highest priority may be to feel good. Either own that, or do hard things.

Here’s another test of your prioritization prowess:

  • You have a prioritized list of five items
  • The first four have been determined to involve a lot of complex work to address
  • The fifth is easy to address
  • During planning, you decide you want to do the fifth item on the list first, because it will make you feel good to get something done

You’ve just committed a common violation of the laws of prioritization: you’ve lied to yourself about your priorities. Here’s the thing: it’s perfectly OK to want to do item five and feel a “quick win.” It means, however, that feeling a “quick win” is your true priority. Is that OK? It sure is! But you have to own it; you have a grand opportunity to reconsider whether or not items one through four are indeed your highest priorities. Do that openly, in the moment, while the thinking is fresh.

Many times, our highest priorities are the hardest things to address. With finite resources, it takes discipline to stay focused on getting those done if they are indeed high priorities, no matter how hard they may be.

3. Your highest priorities aren’t even in your to-do list.

Why do we all forego so much of the above, so frequently?

The answer is: priorities are about choices, and choices are not naturally easy to make.

Here’s a maxim: There’s no such thing as a perfect decision or choice. If a decision or choice were that easy, there would be no decision or choice to make! You would, as we sometimes say, proceed without having to think too much.

Many things have an intrinsic priority: our families, our friends, our personal lives, our moments of joy, and our moments of sorrow come to mind. Beyond those, there are smaller things, like self-care and emotional fulfillment. We may be able to sustain short bursts de-prioritizing these, but trouble is nigh if this goes on for too long.

In the healthiest moments of our lives, these intrinsic priorities don’t even feel like choices.

You may argue that some of your business processes are similar; fulfilling customer orders, for example. Given a choice of an innovation or following through on a customer need, the latter should probably win.

What puts us out of prioritization whack more than anything else is feeling conflict in the process of tending to things with intrinsic priority over things without.

When you find yourself at this moment…

“I’ve got 10 innovations to work on. I can’t work on them, though, because I have customers to serve.”

…you have two things you can do: 1) Serve your customers and let your innovations wait; or 2) Serve your customers and de-prioritize a few other things to start working on your innovations. Both options involve some pain, but the latter requires deeper thinking. For that, my friends, in the spirit of Read Other People’s Stuff, I can’t recommend this highly enough: Deep Change, by Robert Quinn.

Postscript, October 14, 2023: If you liked this, there’s one more thing…

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Current Events: 2024 Read Other People’s Stuff

Read Other People’s Stuff: 7

🎹 Music for this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoXsyMP8v3s.

Ian Betteridge does a fabulous job illustrating what I feel is the single biggest risk to Generative AI: self-reinforcing junk.

Part of me enjoys watching the Internet as we know it burn itself down, because, even prior to ChatGPT, it was full of recycled and derivative content. The software-driven world often has a way of moving way faster than it has a right to, and checks and balances — in whatever form they take — are a blessing.

What should the next generation of the World Wide Web look like, though? If it were to look a little more like the original Yahoo!, would that be a bad thing?

We’ve all-too-proudly gone from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 (and even Web3, sigh), but what would be wrong with Web 1.9 or even Web 2.1?

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Current Events: 2024 Read Other People’s Stuff

Read Other People’s Stuff: 8

🎹 Music for this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-e3waxCNNs.

Between DMA in the EU and this week’s DOJ lawsuits in the U.S., who can help wondering that the focus of both of these Apple-targeted initiatives is solely to address what bothers governments the most: Apple’s position as the only company who offers compelling security to average human beings?

A feature ≠ a monopoly.

The most cogent retort to all of this government nonsense is Steve Sinofsky’s recent (and long) piece, which is an essential read for anybody who wants to become informed of the issues the world is facing with these recent episodes of global government overreach:

Building Under Regulation

March 23 followup:

United States v. Apple (Complaint)

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Current Events: 2024 Read Other People’s Stuff

Read Other People’s Stuff: 9

🎹 Music for this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWG9KAgD6UA.

I apologize that it’s been a while since my last post. I’ve had a lot going on; all good. In the meantime, here’s a fabulous piece on UX redesign from Steven Sinofsky.

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