General

Reading Time: 2 minThe “calorie” is an interesting unit of measure. We often think of it in terms of nutrition (“this cookie is 200 calories”), which isn’t wrong, but it’s really a unit of energy. It’s officially described as: The large calorie, food calorie, dietary calorie, or kilogram calorie is defined as the amount of heat needed to […]

Reading Time: 2 minThe idea of “the prophet’s dilemma” is interesting to think about. In short, it’s a type of self-defeating prophecy, where the act of predicting something causes it not to happen. The opposite would be a self-fulfilling prophecy, which we see quite often. An example would be thinking that you have stage fright, leading to actual […]

Reading Time: 2 minWhen something goes wrong, it’s easy to look back and think “it was so obvious that was going to happen, the clues were all there.“ The helpful clues might have been there, but so were thousands of unhelpful clues that only separated themselves after the fact. In Don Norman’s book “The Design of Everyday Things” […]

Reading Time: 2 minI can be a bit pedantic at times, but I do my best not to because I know that I make frequent mistakes as well. In many cases, I just have to accept that some of the “wrong” words that I hear are perfectly acceptable. Phrases like “I could care less” aren’t technically meaningful, but […]

Reading Time: < 1 minWhen creating a calendar invite or sending a document, I try to name them with the other person in mind. For example, next week I have an item that someone added to my calendar called “Lunch with Mickey”, which is not particularly helpful at a glance. I’ve seen the same with resumes that come in […]

Reading Time: 2 minEvery January first (for the past few years – 2020, 2021, 2022) I like to look at some numbers and stats from the previous year. Content This was once again a solid year with exactly 365 posts. It’s getting a little harder in some ways; the flow is great, but continually finding new things to […]

Reading Time: < 1 minIf you celebrate Christmas, I wish you a wonderful day full of presents and friends. If you don’t celebrate Christmas, I wish you an excellent day of quiet and rest. Our body and mind tend to recharge when unplugged (the opposite of our devices), so may all of your batteries be full today.

Reading Time: < 1 minKevin Kelly’s “Excellent Advice for Living” has a lot of great thoughts in it, and I really liked this one: If you think that something “goes without saying,” it is usually best for everyone if you just go ahead and say it. This made me think of two things. First, it should always be done […]

Reading Time: 2 minHumans are bad at understanding risk. We’re all a bit scared of mass shootings, but they only account for 0.1% of firearm fatalities in a year. Or as I shared a few years ago, the full list of what we’re scared of (and is shared by the news) is vastly different from what’s actually likely […]

Reading Time: < 1 minI was talking to someone a few weeks ago and they mentioned that they “never take a stance on social issues”. While it can make sense for a business to stay neutral at times, it was interesting that they personally didn’t take a stance on anything. Further, it wasn’t just a lack of a public […]