Give it five minutes
37signals.com
Give it five minutes
1–10 of 74 posts
Re: Give it five minutes
#2This is really difficult sometimes. I wholeheartedly agree with Jason about giving new ideas some time (and thought). Most people are resistant to change and their immediate reaction is to reject new and/or novel ideas. Some ideas take days of rumination before you fully grasp the implications so you just have to take the time to let them sink-in.
Re: Give it five minutes
#3I frequently fall victim to this and I've gone through considerable effort not to.
One example: at my previous job, our ecommerce site had individual templates for each product. We only had around 20 products, but I came from a job where you might have thousands of products, so a single template was used. I just couldn't wrap my head around why you would have individual templates for each product.
The pages were mostly static (aside from a header and footer, and the pricing), and they took quite a while to make.
Then I realized that because we had so few products, we could really customize and market each page to highlight the features of each product. I went on to build a personal site with only a handful of products the same way as well.
Like Jason said, spending that extra time (even if it isn't literally 5 minutes) can really change your perception of something.
Re: Give it five minutes
#4I have found this approach to be quite useful with my co-workers, friends and even my spouse.
Sometimes I hear an idea and my initial reaction is "No," when what is really going on inside me is "Let me mull it over." The trick for me is to not open my mouth too soon before I've truly given the idea a chance to breathe a little.
Re: Give it five minutes
#5At the same time, the world is full of ideas, and a pretty tiny fraction of them are any good. The world feels especially full of ideas these days, since a lot of folks now fancy themselves "creatives" (that is, people who come up with ideas without having to get into the yucky business of actually executing on them).
Here's the real challenge: What deserves your five minutes in the first place? Many intellectually bankrupt ideas benefit from the notion that both sides of an argument should be considered. This is partially why we have dumb ideas like "intelligent design" floating around -- they get their oxygen from the mistaken notion that both sides should be considered, when in truth the issue is much more one-sided, or should be. Because ideas have power, there is an incentive to pitch such ideas and to persuade others with them, however hollow they may be on examination. There is value in talking about "clean coal", even though no such thing actually exists in the world.
You can't waste five minutes of your life every time someone says their ideas at you. So, what do you do? I suppose my approach is to try to develop a filter, to try to focus on things that are actually worth thinking about. But honing that filter is a challenge in itself, trying to keep oneself intellectually honest, trying not to indulge in parochialism. This is a tough subject, there are no easy answers.
Re: Give it five minutes
#6[deleted]
Re: Give it five minutes
#7>I came into the discussion looking to prove something, not learn something.
I'm just future-fantasizing here but ... Wouldn't it be a ripe topic of neurochemical study to find out what happens in a brain that decides that ego stroking is more important than learning through constructive conversation? I suspect that "deciding to learn" requires a significantly higher activation energy than simply choosing to prove "I'm right".
Re: Give it five minutes
#8Great stuff. I dont blog, but I want to. I recently came to the conclusion that I don't think about things enough, I dont form an opinion.
I read a lot of stuff and wonder how the author came up with what they wrote or how they managed to piece two points together that otherwise would have seemed unrelated. The answer is as simple as they gave it five minutes.
Re: Give it five minutes
#9> Asking questions means you want to know. Ask more questions.
Just make sure they're real, good-faith questions, not booby traps.
Re: Give it five minutes
#10Six days ago, during the last HN cycle of 37signals blog/marketing, I said that I thought they were desperate to prove that their path was so awesome because there was tension about not getting acquired and not really working on anything world-changing (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3629729). I think this post of introspection from 37S supports my point. It confirms that all the other 37 Signals stuff was part of their program of constantly churning out contrarian pablum because it's good marketing, because people (young men usually) like to do that and because they have this uncertainty about them which needs to be masked with an aggressive stance.
Whatever the past reasons for posting I welcome this blog, if it's genuine, because it might be the first signal of a change from the usual blogspam from 37 signals that magically makes it's way to the HN front-page on a regular basis.