Learning to walk through walls An Article by David R. MacIver drmaciver.substack.com I have a running joke that one of the most useful things I do when coaching or consulting is to say to people “Yes, that does sound like a problem. Have you tried solving it?” Part of why this is a joke is that actually most of the useful work happens prior to the point - the hard part is actually articulating what is going wrong well enough that it seems like a soluble problem - but there is genuinely something useful about this, because often it feels people are looking for permission. Without the external prompt, solving their problem is not something they noticed that they were allowed to do. A Burglar's Guide to the City problemsgames
Delight in the imperfect An Article by David R. MacIver drmaciver.substack.com I think part of the difficulty in allowing ourselves to properly delight in the imperfect, comes from conflating delighting in something with wanting it to happen. This isn’t the case. You can appreciate something as it exists while acknowledging its problems. You can see that a fire is beautiful without becoming a pyromaniac, and you can appreciate the absurdity of your political situation without thinking it’s good. Even if a delight in the imperfect causes you to want more imperfection in your life (and it should), there is no shortage of imperfection to seek out. The imperfect is not scarce, it’s abundant. If you find imperfection delightful, you will never be short of things that delight you, even if you fix any given problem. Solving problems and smoothing out imperfections doesn’t remove the source of delight, it merely opens up new vistas for it. You could give yourself over totally to delight in the imperfect and never run out of things to explore, even without creating your own. flawshumorproblems
We are surrounded by ghosts An Article by David R. MacIver notebook.drmaciver.com I'd like to call the more general phenomenon that this is a specific instance of "ghost knowledge": It is knowledge that is present somewhere in the epistemic community, and is perhaps readily accessible to some central member of that community, but it is not really written down anywhere and it's not clear how to access it. Roughly what makes something ghost knowledge is two things: It is readily discoverable if you have trusted access to expert members of the community. It is almost completely inaccessible if you are not. In this sense, most knowledge is ghost, particularly if you take an expansive view of what counts as an epistemic community. knowledge
Trust beyond reason An Article by David R. MacIver notebook.drmaciver.com In this sense, trust is a polarizing strategy, and it's one that is important to apply early on in the relationship before someone becomes important to you. If you trust someone excessively and it goes badly, but they don't matter to you, you can just kick them to the curb. In general, trusting someone at a level that seems slightly excessive for their level of importance to you will help you sort people in your life who you want to be more important to you than they are from those who you want to be less important than they are. And it does need to be excessive. It needs to be trust beyond reason. Not beyond all reason, but somewhat beyond what currently seems reasonable. If it is not, then unless they are prepared to take the first move, you will never find the signs you need to move to a higher level of mutual trust. Sometimes this will go badly, but you need to be able to try bad things. trustlovefriendship
The fastest way to learn something is to do something An Article by David R. MacIver notebook.drmaciver.com Suppose you have a problem to solve. What do you do? Well, you sit down and think real hard, and after extensive and careful planning you try the well thought out and rigorous solution that you have thought up. Right? No, wrong! Bad. The correct thing to do when you have a problem is: Think for a short amount of time. Make sure it is safe to try things. Try something you think will work. Observe the result. If you succeeded, yay you solved the problem! If it didn't work, think about what that means for the nature of the problem and try again. The Feynman Algorithm problemsprototypesfeedback
Coevolution and the bad take machine An Article by David R. MacIver notebook.drmaciver.com So when you have a bad take machine, you get the following processes: They make a bad take. People are outraged and talk about it. The bad take machine likes it and does more of that behaviour in future. If, on the other hand, they make a take and nobody cares, they do not get reward and the behaviour is selected against. The behaviours drove the spread of the outrage replicator, and the outrage replicator provides the selection mechanism for the behaviours. Thus, via the spread of our outrage on Twitter, we have operant conditioned the bad take machine into producing worse takes. Which is to say, it's bad on purpose to make you replicate it. How to write a high-engagement tweetA bad tweet is like a deepfake of an idea mediaanger
Notes on the Legibility War An Article by David R. MacIver notebook.drmaciver.com The basic idea of legibility is that the act of making something comprehensible enough to control is itself an act that shapes the thing to be controlled, often with far greater consequences than the control itself. This is because it removes complexity that is deemed as irrelevant that makes it harder to control, and that complexity may be in some way essential to the health of the system. controlsystemscomplexitylegibility
Things you didn't know you can be bad at An Article by David R. MacIver notebook.drmaciver.com I wonder how many things we're all going around doing badly because the idea of not knowing how to do them well seems too ridiculous to admit to. ...You've probably never been taught to have a conversation. I've had exactly one class on it and it was in the last six months. I know damn well that many people have not self-taught this well... In general there's this entire class of implicit skills that we mostly don't think of as skills, that we're entirely self-taught on, and that we practice sufficiently non-demonstratively that we can't easily watch what other people do. The result is a very personal skill idiolect. Idiolect skilllearningpractice
Managing Oneself A Book by Peter F. Drucker Only from strengthFeedback analysisTaking pride in ignoranceBut bulldozers move mountainsWaste as little effort as possible on low competence+8 More Never change the technologyWhat to learn managementdisciplinewisdomwork
Only from strength Most people think they know what they are good at. They are usually wrong. More often, people know what they are not good at—and even then more people are wrong than right. And yet, a person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weaknesses, let alone on something one cannot do at all. strengthweakness
Feedback analysis The only way to discover your strengths is through feedback analysis. Whenever you make a key decision or take a key action, write down what you expect will happen. Nine or 12 months later, compare the actual results with your expectations. growthfeedback
Taking pride in ignorance First and foremost, concentrate on your strengths. Put yourself where your strengths can produce results. Second, work on improving your strengths. Third, discover where your intellectual arrogance is causing disabling ignorance and overcome it...First-rate engineers, for instance, tend to take pride in not knowing anything about people. Human resources professionals, by contrast, often pride themselves on their ignorance of elementary accounting or of quantitative methods altogether. But taking pride in such ignorance is self-defeating. Go to work on acquiring the skills and knowledge you need to fully realize your strengths. ignorancearrogance
But bulldozers move mountains A planner may find that his beautiful plans fail because he does not follow through on them. Like so many brilliant people, he believes that ideas move mountains. But bulldozers move mountains; ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work. planningideas
Waste as little effort as possible on low competence One should waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence. It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence. 95%-ile isn't that goodOn Talent talent
How do I perform? For knowledge workers, How do I perform? may be an even more important question than What are my strengths?. A few common personality traits usually determine how a person performs: Am I a reader or a listener? How do I learn? Writing? Taking notes? Doing? Talking? Do I work well with people, or am I a loner? And if I do work well with people, in what relationship? Do I produce results as a decision maker or as an adviser? Do I perform well under stress, or do I need a highly structured and predictable environment? Do I work best in a big organization or a small one? personality
To improve the way you perform Do not try to change yourself—you are unlikely to succeed. But work hard to improve the way you perform. And try not to take on work you cannot perform or will only perform poorly. work
The mirror test In the early years of this century, the most highly respected diplomat of all the great powers was the german ambassador in London. He was clearly destined for great things...yet in 1906 he abruptly resigned rather than preside over a dinner given by the diplomatic corps for Edward VII. The king was a notorious womanizer and made it clear what kind of dinner he wanted. The ambassador is reported to have said, "I refuse to see a pimp in the mirror in the morning when I shave." This is the mirror test. Ethics requires that you ask yourself, What kind of person do I want to see in the mirror in the morning? ethicsvalues
Your organization's values Organizations, like people, have values. To be effective in an organization, a person's values must be compatible with the organization's values. They do not need to be the same, but they must be close enough to coexist. Otherwise, the person will not only be frustrated but also will not produce results. business
Values vs. strengths There is sometimes a conflict between a person's values and his or her strengths. What one does well – even very well and successfully – may not fit with one's value system. In that case, the work may not appear to be worth devoting one's lift to (or even a substantial portion thereof). Values are and should be the ultimate test. valueswork
Successful careers are not planned Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values. Knowing where one belongs can transform an ordinary person – hardworking and competent but otherwise mediocre – into an outstanding performer. The most important thing you doIn defense of disorder: on career, creativity, and professionalism
The best-laid plans It is rarely possible – or even particularly fruitful – to look too far ahead. A plan can usually cover no more than 18 months and still be reasonably clear and specific. So the question is most cases should be, Where and how can I achieve results that will make a difference within the next year and a half? planning
The second half of your life Today, most work is knowledge work, and knowledge workers are not "finished" after 40 years on the job, they are merely bored. There are three ways to develop a second career. The first is to actually start one. The second is to develop a parallel career. Finally, there are the social entrepreneurs. There is one prerequisite for managing the second half of your life: You must begin long before you enter it. If one does not begin to volunteer before one is 40 or so, one will not volunteer once past 60. life