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Maintenance mode
This is a term used in the tech biz for when a company or team is no longer investing in a feature, tool, or app. They put it into “maintenance mode” and don’t work on it until something breaks. Of course, something always breaks.
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Build an intro and outro into your day, week, or month routine
One of my colleagues recently raised the idea that often we’ll do retrospectives and futurespectives (i.e. roadmapping, visiontyping) but that many or most of us don’t do introspectives. While I’m not great at these kinds of things, I can say with certainty that writing out what I want to do and then what I did…
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Build a reputation around the type of work you want to do
When you aren’t doing the work you want to be doing, things are going to go one of two ways: Either way, it’s untenable and there is a better choice.
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Being nice vs being kind
When we give feedback to another person, be it at work or home, with friends or family, why do we so often default to being nice instead of being kind?
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Don’t break the chain, except when you need to
I’m a big fan of consistency. I’m a believer that small daily habits add up to monumental achievements. It’s well known that the comedian Jerry Seinfeld said his advice to anyone getting started was to write every day and “don’t break the chain”. Write a joke every day. Draw something every day. Run every day.…
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Take your “self” out of it
When you are thinking about what other people are doing, did, or are about to do, take yourself out of it. For example, you might think “My friends went to the park and didn’t invite me.” Remove that last bit. “My friends went to the park.” That’s all you really know anyway, isn’t it? Likewise,…
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I’m going part-time starting next month
After many years now of my wife bouncing between not working, being self-employed, and working part-time, she’s now about to start working full-time. We have two young kids and made the decision early on that we don’t want to be a family where both parents work full-time. We’re not judging those that do; it’s just…
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All feedback is not equal
Consider the three different types of feedback you can give and receive: Appreciation: this is when you are noticing and recognizing when someone does something well, does it in a unique way, or even demonstrates something they hadn’t before Evaluation: this is when you are ranking someone’s actions or results compared to others or compared…
Writing and drawings by Nick.
