2026-03-25 17:03:00
That’s a great reason to dumb things down. It’s also a trap that leads us to stasis and mediocrity.
Let’s break it down:
People: Which people? All people? The majority of voters? Day traders or institutional long term investors? Every VC or just this one?
Pick your people, pick your future.
Complicated: If it can be made simpler and just as effective, then by all means, please do so. If you can tell a more compelling and actionable story, do that as well. But ‘complicated’ just might mean, “we don’t understand it yet.”
Understand: Few people understand how the iphone works, or even the refrigerator. But that doesn’t mean we can’t effectively use it. The people who were moved by The Rite of Spring or Miles Davis or Esperanza Spalding might not have understood the music but it still succeeded.
People walk away when it’s not worth the effort to pay attention. People ignore innovation when the network effect is insufficient to overcome their fear. People rarely understand something the same way the creator does, but that’s okay.
Our first job is to do work that matters for people who care. It helps to follow that up with the scaffolding needed to cause cultural change, so the idea spreads.
But don’t dumb it down to reach people who don’t want to be reached in the first place.
2026-03-24 17:03:00
If you tell me your ID number, your phone number or the wiring instructions for your bank account, not only will I forget them, I’ll need you to repeat it a few times so I write it down without making a transcription error.
When we first started using serial numbers (the Roman Legion did this thousands of years ago, and the British Board of Ordnance required it by law in the 1700s), it made perfect sense. Issue the next number on the list and move on.
But numbers alone are difficult for humans to error check and handle. So we use computers to help. The problem lies in the pesky humans who are still part of the chain.
So, here’s a simple hack. It’s unlikely to catch on worldwide, but I think it’s fascinating enough to consider…
If you had a list of 150 three letter words, all selected to be easy to say, spell and discern, you could use them to replace numbers in a productive and useful way.
So, big bob zap car cat is five words next to each other. There are 75 billion combinations of five words, which means that it replaces a number like 4839450381 with room to spare.
For ATMs that are four or five digits, you only need three words.
Think about that the next time you need to tell a customer service person your order number or serial number, or share a wifi password.
Let the computer do the work.
2026-03-23 17:03:00
How does the ball know?
In tennis, golf or just about all ball sports, the follow-through determines the flight of the ball. Great players always have a complete and confident follow-through.
But the ball is long gone before that happens.
So, what’s the point?
It turns out that the ball can tell that you intend to have a serious follow-through. A weak or non-existent follow-through requires that you start slowing down before your racquet ever gets to the ball.
The metaphor should be pretty clear.
If you show up for the audition, your first TEDx talk, your early blog posts, the job interview or your start up hoping to see what happens (“I’ll commit if I get picked”) we can tell.
On the other hand, when it’s clear that you’re going to keep on showing up, it’s an invitation to get aboard now.
Follow-through doesn’t always work. But it always works better than the alternative.
2026-03-22 17:25:00
This is the slogan of so many industrial behemoths and existing bureaucracies.
It’s in quotation marks for a reason: it’s not true. Not in the long run, not even in the medium run.
One way to highlight the hollowness of this edict is to say it out loud.
For a while, it might make the stock price go up. But it doesn’t last. It never does.
2026-03-21 17:03:00
You wear a hat, you’re not a hat.
State nouns are verbs that we talk about like they are nouns. Hurry, panic, frenzy, rage, funk, stupor, daze, fog, rut, bind, pickle, fix, slump, tailspin, tizzy. Notice that they’re almost all negative…
You’re in a hurry.
Really? I get that you’re hurrying. There might be good reasons for this. But the hurry hat isn’t what you are, it’s what you’re doing.
We can own our agency and our choices, not announce (to ourselves or the world) that we’re trapped in a container, unable to escape.
Until we start saying, “I’m in a joy” perhaps we should find the grace to choose what sort of verb we’d prefer.
The essential thing about a hat is that it’s easy to take off.
2026-03-20 17:03:00
Is there something you can do right now that would impede progress, degrade quality or simply mess up the current situation?
Is there a way you could shift perceptions to make people more distraught, less hopeful or even panicked?
If it’s so easy to accomplish worse, why do we persist in believing we don’t have the power to make things better?
