Email feels so old and slow, especially when compared to the teal-time multiplayer world of Teams and Slack.
It makes sense for transactional emails but conversations and project managing it sucks. But you can’t just add a client or external contact to your chat app.
Idea:
What if an initial email is sent and it operates as expected. You send something along the lines:
Hi Becky, It’s great to meet you. I would love to work with you to get ______ completed by such and such a date. Please find attached a file that is required for this project. Let me know if you have any question. -Anthony
Made up by me
This is where it gets fun
Once the recipient replies or accepts the messages, the thread then morphs into more of a live style conversation. No more signatures repeated over and over or from: to: cc: fields creating noise to pour through or weird formatting problems. It’s becomes a chat with multiple players.
Participants From: and To:
Observers CC:
Attachments, links, and relative information could be pulled and listed to a special tab/space and possibly even anchored at the part of the conversation that was relevant
May you could see if someone was on Live for a short period of time.
It could be wild but it would maybe help or maybe things a lot shittier. But at least we’re trying.
If you live a long full life and we consider 1 second the base time interval of that life. You’ll double your life 32 times. The amazing part is 26 of those happen by the time you’re 1yr old.
Why do I care – is it significant?
No idea. However, my theory is that perceived time speeds up because of the lack of learning new things + the way that time doubles. For instance, the first time you drive somewhere can feel like forever but the 2nd time feels much faster. There are new sites, sounds, and traffic patterns. Can you extend your perceived life by learning new things? If you’re a radio listener then you need to seek new stations.
To be continued…after I continue to pontificate and wonder if this matters at all.
Music that I can re-listen to over and over again: DeVotchka – All the Sand in All the Sea
But what does AI think about this concept?
Prompt: Act as a writer for https://www.ant.cat. Write a blog post about how one perception of time is impacted by the rate at which their time alive is doubles.
Response from ChatGPT: Time is a fascinating concept that has perplexed scientists, philosophers, and individuals alike for centuries. It is a fleeting and elusive concept that is ever-changing, with different perceptions and interpretations across cultures and individuals. One such perception of time is the impact of the rate at which our time alive is doubled, and how it affects our perception of time.
The concept of time dilation is one that has been extensively studied in physics and cosmology. According to this theory, time passes differently for objects moving at different speeds or in different gravitational fields. However, time dilation also has a significant impact on our perception of time, particularly in relation to the rate at which our time alive is doubled.
The idea of time doubling can be understood as the period it takes for an individual’s age to double. For instance, a person who is 20 years old would experience a doubling of time when they reach the age of 40, and so on. Studies have shown that our perception of time is heavily influenced by the rate at which our time alive is doubled.
When we are younger, time seems to pass much more slowly. This is because the rate at which our time alive is doubled is much slower in our younger years. As we grow older, this rate increases, and time appears to pass much more quickly. This is why many people often comment on how time seems to fly by as they grow older.
Furthermore, the rate at which time doubles also affects our perception of the future. For instance, if the rate at which our time alive is doubled is slow, we tend to think more about the future and plan for it accordingly. On the other hand, if the rate at which our time alive is doubled is fast, we tend to focus more on the present moment and live in the here and now.
In conclusion, our perception of time is a complex and multi-faceted concept that is heavily influenced by various factors, including the rate at which our time alive is doubled. Understanding this concept can help us make better sense of our perception of time and how it affects our lives. Whether time flies by or crawls along, we can use this knowledge to live in the moment and plan for the future accordingly.
It may not seem like a big deal. But, this morning we got an email that you moved from the waitlist to the “if you want it’s yours list” for early pre-school. My heart reached out and wanted to give you a hug to pull you in close. You’ve been home every day since you were born…just being our fun, smart, wild child.
Today it just got real for me that you are and will grow up. Made me sad and excited all at once.
This also kicked me in the ass to remember that today is the most important. I can’t wait to get out of work to go on a walk and dance in the living room.
Love, Your dad
Music I hope we dance to later: Khruangbin – So We Won’t Forget
There are people in life that fall in line, follow paths, and operate in the medium that stays between the lines.
Then there are people who know how to move through the world where it conforms to them. My good friend is the latter. When we rode bikes down 1st St to smoke cigars in Atlantic Beach, and he brought his speaker on the porch of the place we were hanging at… I said, “Whoa, you brought your own speaker?”
He shared some advice from his mentor that I’m going to screw up here but it was essentially: if you can bring your own vibe to something, not be too rude, and have fun…why wouldn’t you do it?
This guy has given me so much more energy and food for thought in the last year. From our maddening camping trip with our other buddy, to him sharing that the good stuff with your kids is in the bike rides and the time singing/reading to them for bedtime. To him sharing that you should squeeze the joy out of life. During Lucile’s 2nd bday at a trampoline park, he brought his own socks to jump in…and a huge smile. It’s inspiring.
When he started trying to find his new career he went about it by being a “Go-Giver” and I forgot what that was like. There are times that I feel like Robin Williams in ‘Hook’ – and feel like my friend has glimmers of Pockets.
Today you played. You’ve been playing since we met you. Your legs would kick, always looking for a ball to toss, test boundaries, climb, swing, jump, run, peekaboo, and interact with the world around you by mimicking what you saw. But today, you played.
It started with these two felt finger puppets you had since your 1yr birthday (nearly a year ago). A blue elephant and a brown monkey with a long tail. Today, you asked for them, we put them on your fingers, and you made them start talking. It was amazing. You started creating your own world.
Then it happened again an hour later. During bath time you stopped doing your typical: fill a cup with water and dump it on your face to see how much you could drink. Instead, you started arranging your Moana characters in specific patterns. You would put them in a row and stand back to see how they looked. Then, you would rearrange and often would pick two of the dolls up and get them to interact with each other. Full conversations between the characters were started
It was a big day for us as your parents to see you take another step on this journey. We hope you are always Lucile (Lu, Lucy, Lulu, Lu-squeal), and we hope you always keep the space to play in your life.
Love, Mom and Dad
Sia – Elastic Heart feat. Shia LaBeouf & Maddie Ziegler
The goal is to help make sense of a situation to help guide a response.
First: Which domain are you in (see diagram below), then the action based on the characteristics
Clear – typically process-oriented situations and problems. Domain of “known knowns”. Approach: sense–categorize–respond. Understand the situation (sense), categorize it, then respond by applying a best-practice solution.
Complicated – typically has multiple right answers. Domain of “known unknowns”. Approach: sense-analyze-respond. Because analysis is needed they require expert knowledge. Experts should assess the situation, investigate possible options and choose a course of action.
Complex – domain of “unknown unknowns”. Approach: probe-sense-respond. we don’t yet know enough about it. It’s not clear what needs to be answered in the first place. Experiment first, learn about the problem. Then sense what you’re dealing with and respond appropriately. The goal should be to understand enough so that the problem or situation moves to the complicated domain where it’s easier to deal with.
Chaotic – just out of control. Approach: act-sense-respond. “First act to establish some stability, to contain the situation. Only then assess the situation and work on bringing enough order to it to move it into the complex domain.” One benefit is that you can try weird and wild stuff because the pain of the chaos creates the chance to solve it in any way possible.
Don’t know which one? You’re in “Disorder” – The best place to start is to break-up into small parts and try to then put them into each bucket above.
Questions to help determine the domain you’re in:
Do you know what causes the situation?
Is the situation under control?
How much do you know about it?
Does solving it require expert knowledge?
All credit for the above belongs to https://untools.co/
Reading a business book in public like High Output Management feels like the dorkiest thing in the world. All I think is, “what a try-hard this guy is.” But the cool thing is I’m not in high school anymore and caring about things is cool. So f* those people (who probably don’t exist) judging me.
I started this book on April 20, 2022 (again…originally started multiple times before but just could not make it past the first few pages) –
Here are the takeaways: (this guys took way better notes: https://medium.com/ceoeducation/notes-on-high-output-management-19b8017495d4 )
Chapter 1:
Remember the breakfast factory: our job is to understand the “limiting step” in the process
Don’t let the wrong step be the limiting step
The black box of creating things: how might you create holes in the process to check on things being made and make sure they’re being created
QA – In-process test vs functional tests
Try and detect problems as soon as possible in the process, it’s the lowest value stage
Chapter 2
More on Blackbox Indicators – How do you keep an eye on things? Here are the big chunky phases to create indicators:
Sales forecasts – and how do you measure confidence and adjust the forecast process
Material management
Condition of equipment
Workforce
Quality
Don’t overfit your indicators – “You get what you measure” to avoid this you can pair indicators to create a balance (should add an example here
Linearity Indicators vs Trend Indicators (example: measuring output against linearly should show continuous progress as opposed to huge pushes as a deadline comes up
What if need to make compromises in QA – you need to do it with a well balanced management team but never ever mess with reliability
Leverage
Pg. 35 started to hit on how you can change how you work to get more leverage
Output vs Activity
Embassy example – when 98% are approved when everything single is reviewed…they should move to sample tests
Ok, the rest of the Chapters.
At some point you have to just finish something and that’s where I got with this book. So many great things in there but also I’ll need to revisit. Here are the things that really stood out to me:
Remember the breakfast factory:
What are your limiting steps?
How can you cut holes in the factory box?
Where can you find leverage?
Strive for output that aligns with outcomes
Don’t let the process become the thing – that aligns with Wiggly
Be a coach: No credit, Be tough, Good coachs were good players
Excercise at the end of Book
Great things to do after reading this book:
Production:
Identify the operations in your work most like process, assembly, and test production.
For a project you are working on, identify the limiting step and map out the flow of work around it.
Define the proper places for the equivalents of receiving inspection, in-process inspection, and final inspection in your work. Decide whether these inspections should be monitoring steps or gate-like. Identify the conditions under which you can relax things and move to a variable inspection scheme.
Identify half a dozen new indicators for your group’s output. They should measure both the quantity and quality of the output.
Install these new indicators as a routine in your work area, and establish their regular review in your staff meetings.
What is the most important strategy (plan of action) you are pursuing now? Describe the environmental demand that prompted it and your current status or momentum. Is your strategy likely to result in a satisfactory state of affairs for you or your organization if successfully implemented?
Leverage
Conduct work simplification on your most tedious, time-consuming task. Eliminate at least 30 percent of the total number of steps involved.
Define your output: What are the output elements of the organizations you can influence? List them in order of importance.
Analyze your information and knowledge gathering system. Is it properly balanced among “headlines” and “weekly news magazines”? Is redundancy built in?
Take a “tour”. Afterward, list the transactions you got involved during the course. Create a once-a-month “excuse” for a tour.
Describe how you will monitor the next project you delegate to a subordinate. What will you look for? How? How frequently?
Generate an inventory of projects on which you can work at discretionary times.
Hold a scheduled one-on-one with each of your subordinates. (Explain to them in advance what a one-on-one is about. Have them prepare for it.)
Look at your calendar for the last week. Classify your activities as low/medium/high leverage. Generate a plan of action to do more of the high-leverage category. (What activities will you reduce?)
Forecast the demand on your time for the next week. What portion on your time is likely to be spent on meetings? Which of these are process-oriented meetings? Mission-oriented meetings? If the latter are over 25 percent of your total time, what should you do to reduce them?
Define the three most important objectives for your organization for the next three months. Support them with key results.
Have your subordinates do the same for themselves, after a thorough discussion of the set generated above.
Generate an inventory of pending decisions you are responsible for. Take three and structure the decision-making process for them, using the six-question approach.
Evaluate your own motivational state in terms of the Maslow hierarchy. Do the same for each of your subordinates.
Give your subordinates a racetrack: define a set of performance indicators for each.
List the various forms of task-relevant feedback your subordinates receive. How well can they gauge their progress through them?
Classify the task-relevant maturity of each of your subordinates as low, medium, or high.
Evaluate the management style that would be most appropriate for each. Compare what your own style is with what it should be.
Evaluate the last performance review you received and also the last set of reviews you gave to your subordinates as a means of delivering task-relevant feedback. How well did the reviews do to improve performance? What was the nature of the communication process during the delivery of each?
Redo one of these reviews as it should have been done.
I’ve tried so hard to move away from using a physical notebook for work and personal writing, but there’s something so magical about just putting pen to paper. I hit 1 year at my job which was the start of a notebook. The way I’ve been writing these is that work starts on the front and my personal writing starts from the back. Eventually, they meet in the middle. But how do I make sure they’re not just locked in a drawer never to be found…maybe I retype everything :0
Instead of transferring everything into a digital format. This is a summary of what I covered:
Bass guitar with Ben and writing music
Why writing is important to me – and how I see more of my dad in my life
Reading and notes: Pyramid of Success – John Wooden
Reading and notes: Ready Player Two (https://ant.cat/ready-player-two-fun-read-a-bit-cheese/)
Illustration of the Six Thinking Hats: Yellow for positivity, Green for creativity, Red for emotions, White for data, Black for negativity and Blue for control.
Notes
Trying to picture how this will actually work. I’m not great at compartmentalizing. Or maybe I could… starting with the Green Hat, then having people looking at the ideas in phases?
Or is the focus on One big idea, then putting on the Black Hat, then using the Green Hat to work around the Black Hat’s issues, and then trying to find the viable solution using Yellow, Red, White, Blue?
That could be interesting. My brain wonders quite a bit so I could see myself constantly trying to put all the hats on at once, but that’s not helpful to anyone. Much like mindfulness, being able to focus with a specific goal in mind is a muscle that I just need to flex more. But that’s where the Blue hat comes in: “🔵 Blue hat is for controlling the process. Especially in meetings, it’s good to be able to step in when there’s no progress and enable the group to move forward (e.g. by shifting the thinking or discussion to a different hat/perspective).”
Key Takeaway: We all need facilitators and Blue Hat
My daughter’s favorite video/music is a great fit for this one.
Trying to learn as an adult is so hard. You already have so much of your neural network built and weighted that you get pulled back into old patterns. I mean the saying goes you can’t teach an ol’ dog new tricks. But, I think a better version is you can’t teach an ol’ dog new ways of performing old tricks that treated them well so far and got them to where they needed to go. That’s too long I guess.
I stumbled across this site: https://untools.co/ that is all about trying out different mental frameworks. My goal is to read through one of these each week and truly digest it, get into the noggin, and hopefully, it will push this ol’ dog to be some __% better.
What’s funny is that I’ve spent the better part of 10yrs facilitating innovation sessions for groups of 20+ people specifically around breaking your thinking. It’s just really hard to do this for yourself. Turns out people need people.
They reference this was pulled from the “Theory of Constraints” by Eliyahu Goldratt
The goal of this tool (aka “Evaporating Cloud”) is to be used when a conflict seems impossible.
There are three parts worked in the following order:
Demands/proposals of the opposing sides: these are usually mutually exclusive which is what creates the conflict.
Ask: What does the other side want to do? What do I want to do?
Underlying needs or requirements of both sides
Ask: What needs are satisfied by the proposal of each side?
Shared goal or objective that’s behind the needs
Ask: What will be achieved by meeting the needs of both sides?
This is important to come to a shared understanding as you become part of the same team, but you happen to be approaching it differently.
Now that the above is taken care of, you’ll need to discuss the assumptions that are behind the original approaches. This will most likely uncover why the approaches are at odds.
Ending – now you build the solution together with a focus on the shared vision/goal.
