The reads from the previous few months turn out to be a study of human-system interaction. The relationship can go both ways, in humans having to inject energy to keep a system running, against the development of tiny humans being subject to one.
1 | The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency-Crown
Winning the Presidency and running the country are 2 different things.
This book is about the unsung heroes who run the White House, and how they enable (or inhibit) the President of the United States in performing his duties.
When government fails, it can often be traced to the shortcomings of the chief.
This book also talks about execution, and the unseen nature of getting things running in the country: deals have to be made, people have to be convinced.
Above all, the Man has to be given the time to do the right job.
…decisions were dead on arrival unless they were translated to every relevant department.
2 | Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up
What’s wrong with seeking help as early as possible?
Even if Mom has dressed it in happy talk, he gets the gist. He’s been pronounced learning disabled by an occupational therapist and neurodivergent by a neuropsychologist. He no longer has the option to stop being lazy. His sense of efficacy, diminished.
When a generation of kids learn the avenue to stop trying is to express their challenges as an insurmountable, we have a generation of disempowered citizens.
A lot of people are lazy, but no one likes to think that they are. In the universe of trauma-loving psychologists, diagnoses proliferate and blame-shifting grinds on.
If you want to strengthen a person’s muscles, you force her to exercise. You don’t strengthen a kid by running to the doctor for a diagnosis and pressing your kid’s school for an accommodation. And here’s the most important point of all: you don’t need to do anything in order to accomplish this. You obviously don’t need to hurt your kid’s feelings in order to strengthen her. You just need to stop running interference.
3 | Feel-Good Productivity
Approaching getting our work done with a fresh perspective: Making sure we feel good while doing it.
Success doesn’t lead to feeling good. Feeling good leads to success.
There are 3 critical elements in seeing whether everyday work can feel good:
- Play
- Power - How and what are we able to control while doing that work?
- People - How do we get people to play together with us?
In a late-night burst of inspiration, I grabbed a Sharpie and a Post-it note and wrote nine simple words: What would this look like if it were fun? I stuck the note to my computer monitor and went to sleep. By the time I spotted the note on my monitor the following day, I’d forgotten that I’d put it there. I’d just got back from work and was making a start on re-learning some biochemistry pathways for my medical exam. I sat down with my usual grin-and-bear-it expression. But when I saw the Post-it it got me thinking. What would this look like if it were fun?
Even though we go about having fun with our work, there is still the critical question to ask: is this the right thing to do?
Because the more fun I built into my day, the more I was taking on. And the more I took on, the closer I got to the final great obstacle to true productivity: burnout.
4 | The Design of Everyday Things
I was reading this in preparation for some teaching of cloud productivity tools for students. This work is something meant to be consumed slowly, and come back to repeatedly, because you would be reminded of the lessons all the time.
Two of the most important characteristics of good design are discoverability and understanding.
Discoverability: Is it possible to even figure out what actions are possible and where and how to perform them?
Understanding: What does it all mean? How is the product supposed to be used? What do all the different controls and settings mean?
…we must design our machines on the assumption that people will make errors.
Written in the age of the world changing from generative AI’s intrusion into our work, this is a reminder that our core as humanity remains the same, but what changes is how we interact with technology.
When technology is capable of more, naturally we are too.
Reliance on technology is a benefit to humanity. With technology, the brain gets neither better nor worse. Instead, it is the task that changes. Human plus machine is more powerful than either human or machine alone.