Towards a crap decision You have a thing. You would like to improve said thing. So, you ask a bunch of people what they think, giving more weight to those with relevant expertise. It’s a time-tested strategy. The pitfall here is that if the participants are aware of each other’s contributions, they will almost always automatically switch to consensus-building instead of providing their honest feedback. Worst case scenario: the bandwagon effect gathers steam and drives you toward a crap decision. Baldur Bjarnason, On online collaboration and our obligations as makers of software collaborationdecisions
Adding up to hair-brained I have for myself come to the point where I say that people or groups or governments make the decisions that make sense to them, even if they look totally hair-brained to me. My task then is to figure out the constellation of forces, the pushes and pulls, that in fact do add up to that hair-brained decision-making. Then we can go into the next iteration and say, "What can we do about the balance of the push and the pull that seems to result in totally non-constructive decisions?" Ursula M. Franklin, Every Tool Shapes the Task decisionsrationality
It was all change until the very last second Every work of literature is the result of thousands and thousands of decisions. Intricate, minute decisions—this word or that, here or where, now or later, again and again. It's the living tissue of a writer's choices, Not the fossil record of an ancient, inspired race. Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several Short Sentences About Writing A concept of style decisionscraft
Tracing the answer back I submit that the materials that form the precursors to a product’s implementation have considerable value on their own. My vision is that I will be able to ask a question as mundane as one about the wording of a single button, and trace the answer all the way back to the overarching business strategy to see that it makes sense. Dorian Taylor, Skeleton, Organs, Circulation, Sinew, Skin decisions
Art and science "What the artist does is essentially the same as the scientist. In other words, what you do when you start to do a painting is that you begin with a basic idea, a hypothesis of what you're setting out to do. Then it's just a million yes-no decisions. You try something in the painting, you look at it, and you say, 'N-n-no.' You sort of erase it out, and you move it around a little bit, put in a new line; you go through a million weighings. It's the same thing in science, the only difference in the character of the product." Lawrence Wechler & Robert Irwin, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees sciencedecisionschoice
The complexity and the gray One thing I assume of age is weariness. Damned if I don’t get more tired every day. Tired of what I do, following arcs like lobbed rocks — the inevitability of truth. But the complexity and the gray lie not in the truth, but in what you do with the truth once you have it. Rian Johnson, Knives Out truthlifeagedecisions
The management strategy that saved Apollo 11 An Article by Matthew Ström matthewstrom.com In 1969, the people in charge of Apollo 11 trusted a 23-year-old engineer in a back room of mission control to make one of the most consequential decisions of this decade-defining mission. And they did so in seconds, without deliberating or debating. Next time you’re faced with a decision, ask yourself: how can this decision be made on the lowest level? Have you given your team the authority to decide? If you haven’t, why not? If they’re not able to make good decisions, you’ve missed an opportunity to be a leader. Empower, enable, and entrust them. Take it from NASA: the ability to delegate quickly and decisively was the key to landing men on the moon. Central planning gives poor resultsBeware SAFe, an Unholy Incarnation of Darkness managementdecisionstrust
Goodbye, Google An Article by Douglas Bowman stopdesign.com Without a person at (or near) the helm who thoroughly understands the principles and elements of Design, a company eventually runs out of reasons for design decisions. With every new design decision, critics cry foul. Without conviction, doubt creeps in. Instincts fail. “Is this the right move?” When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Ok, launch it. Data shows negative effects? Back to the drawing board. And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions. Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle. designdecisionsdata
Collaborative Information Architecture at Scale An Article by Brandon Dorn www.viget.com Here I describe an approach for defining new information architectures for large organizational websites managed by many stakeholder groups. Broadly speaking, there are four general phases to the approach: Auditing. Begin by immersing yourself in existing content and encourage stakeholders to adopt a critical, audience-minded perspective of their content. Diagramming. Work with stakeholders to develop new conceptual categories that better serve audiences and organizational direction. Elaborating. Think through content in detail and test new categories against specific instances and edge cases. Producing. Prepare content teams for production using a shared database of new sitemap pages and editorial considerations that you’ve developed incrementally. Half of design is facilitation The Ladder of AbstractionA Pattern Language decisionsorganizationpatternsanalytics
Design System as Style Manual With Web Characteristics An Article by Dorian Taylor doriantaylor.com In my opinion, what makes a designer competent is precisely their ability to credibly justify their conclusions. If you can’t do this as a designer—no matter how successful your results are—then neither I nor anybody else can tell if you aren’t just picking things at random. What I am proposing, then, is no less than to make a designer’s entire line of reasoning a matter of permanent record. On the surface is the familiar set of prescriptions, components, examples and tutorials, like you would expect out of any such artifact. Attached to every element, though, is a little button that says Why? You click it, and it tells you. The proximate explanation will probably not be very satisfying, so you click on the next Why? until you get to the end, at which point you are either satisfied with the explanation, or you aren’t. The Design of Design decisionsdesignsystemsstyle
The Alchemist A Novel by Paulo Coelho en.wikipedia.org My own beauty reflectedThicker booksTo find God in the seminaryWhat others want them to beThe soul of the universe+25 More The alchemists in their mixings destinyloveadventureexploration
My own beauty reflected The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said: "I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected." Narcissus and Goldmund beautyego
Thicker books He told himself that he would have to start reading thicker books: they lasted longer, and made more comfortable pillows. booksreading
To find God in the seminary If he were to tire of the Andalusian fields, he could sell his sheep and go to sea. By the time he had had enough of the sea, he would already have known other cities, other women, and other chances to be happy. I couldn't have found God in the seminary, he thought, as he looked at the sunrise. religion
What others want them to be When someone sees the same people every day, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person's life. And then they want the person to change. If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own. changelife
The soul of the universe "When you really want something, it's because that desire originated in the soul of the universe...And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it."
When each day is the same When each day is the same as the next, it's because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises. goodnessmonotony
The drops of oil on the spoon "'Well, there is only one piece of advice I can give you,' said the wisest of wise men. 'The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon.'" happiness
Like everyone else "I'm like everyone else—I see the world in terms of what I would like to see happen, not what actually does." desire
This language without words There must be a language that doesn't depend on words, the boy thought. I've already had that experience with my sheep, and now it's happening with people. He was learning a lot of new things. Some of them were things that he had already experienced, and weren't really new, but that he had never perceived before. And he hadn't perceived them because he had become accustomed to them. He realized: If I can learn to understand the language without words, I can learn to understand the world. The quality without a name language
If my dream is realized "I'm afraid that if my dream is realized, I'll have no reason to go on living. "You dream about your sheep and the Pyramids, but you're different from me, because you want to realize your dreams. I just want to dream about Mecca. I've already imagined a thousand times crossing the desert...I've already imagined the people who would be at my side, and those in front of me, and the conversations and prayers we would share. But I'm afraid that it would all be a disappointment, so I prefer just to dream about it." dreams
For something believed in There was a language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy had used throughout the time he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired. Your life adds up craft
Two hours closer Yet the boy felt that there was another way to regard his situation: he was actually two hours closer to his treasure...the fact that the two hours had stretched into an entire year didn't matter. time
They're not my sheep anymore It reminded him of the wool from his sheep...his sheep who were now seeking food and water in the fields of Andalusia, as they always had. "They're not my sheep anymore," he said to himself, without nostalgia. "They must be used to their new shepherd, and have probably already forgotten me. That's good. Creatures like the sheep, that are used to traveling, know about moving on." melancholy
It is written Maybe he was also learning the universal language that deals with the past and present of all people. "Hunches," his mother used to call them. The boy was beginning to understand that intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it's all written there. "Maktub," the boy said, remembering the crystal merchant. intuition
So that we can understand those few lines In one of the books he learned that the most important text in the literature of alchemy contained only a few lines, and had been inscribed on the surface of an emerald. "It's the Emerald Tablet," said the Englishman, proud that he might teach something to the boy. "Well, then, why do we need all these books?" the boy asked. "So that we can understand those few lines." understanding
Because we have to sleep Two nights later, as he was getting ready to bed down, the boy looked for the star they followed every night. He thought that the horizon was a bit lower than it had been, because he seemed to see stars on the desert itself. "It's the oasis," said the camel driver. "Well, why don't we go there right now?" the boy asked. "Because we have to sleep." sleep
Pictures and words He had only one explanation for this fact: things have to be transmitted this way because they were made up from the pure life, and this kind of life cannot be captured in pictures or words. Because people become fascinated with pictures and words, and wind up forgetting the Language of the World. Words and Images
Someone in the world awaits you When he looked into her dark eyes, and saw that her lips were poised between a laugh and silence, he learned the most important part of the language that all the world spoke—the language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It was love. ...He had been told by his parents and grandparents that he must fall in love and really know a person before becoming committed. But maybe people who felt that way had never learned the universal language. Because, when you know that language, it's easy to understand that someone in the world awaits you. love
Go and try "He asked me if I had ever transformed lead into gold. I told him that was what I had come here to learn. "He told me I should try to do so. That's all he said: 'Go and try.'" ..."So, then try," he said to the Englishman. "That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to start now." learning
Love without ownership He tried to deal with the concept of love as distinct from possession, and couldn't separate them...if anything could help him to understand, it was the desert. ...He followed the movement of the birds, trying to read something into it. Maybe these desert birds could explain to him the meaning of love without ownership. loveownership
The history of all things He knew that any given thing on the face of the earth could reveal the history of all things...Actually, it wasn't that those things, in themselves, revealed anything at all; it was just that people, looking at what was occurring around them, could find a means of penetration to the Soul of the World. A simple grain of sand history
Only a moment of light "If what one finds is made of pure matter, it will never spoil. And one can always come back. If what you had found was only a moment of light, like the explosion of a star, you would find nothing on your return." light
Looking only for gold "And what went wrong when other alchemists tried to make gold and were unable to do so?" "They were looking only for gold," his companion answered. "They were seeking the treasure of their Personal Legend, without wanting to actually live out the Personal Legend." desire
A world that is perfect "The wise men understood that this natural world is only an image and a copy of paradise. The existence of this world is simply a guarantee that there exists a world that is perfect." simulation
A simple grain of sand "The desert will give you an understanding of the world; in fact, anything on the face of the earth will do that. You don't even have to understand the desert: all you have to do is contemplate a simple grain of sand, and you will see in it all the marvels of creation." The history of all things
We, their hearts "People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don't deserve them, or that they'll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren't, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands. Because, when these things happen, we suffer terribly." dreamsfear
A threatening place "Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place." fearwisdom
Just a whinny again "There was a time when, for me, a camel's whinnying was nothing more than whinnying. Then it became a signal of danger. And, finally, it became just a whinny again." Mountains are mountains zen
To become better than we are "That's what alchemists do. They show that, when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too."
Everything that happens twice Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.