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Give it five minutes

37signals.com

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Re: Give it five minutes

#51

Post by tagawa »

drats wrote: post #15
aspir wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're looking at the world through rose-colored glasses. Sure this blog is marketing. All blogs serve at least a partial marketing purpose, whether they be from individual software developers, small businesses, big companies, or nonprofits. The difference is that "good blogs" are ones where I can extract value from the post. Signal vs Noise is one of these blogs. I don't understand your complaint at it's cor…

But they don't share anything of worth to my mind. I like most HN links that make the front page but I've yet to find a 37 Signals post that's really anything but smoke and mirrors designed to indirectly praise themselves. Someone made that same smoke and mirrors criticism of PG's essays a while back and I think that's false, he puts work into his "blog" and it's interesting. More than that he gets other people to re…

It's good to hear a differing viewpoint - thank you.

Re: Give it five minutes

#52

Post by charlieok »

analyst74 wrote: post #11

I come from the opposite direction, where I was thinking too much. In the sense that I am quiet in most conversations, because I need to think about what to say back, and most conversations flow quite quickly, and I end up with a response well past the point it's applicable. This is bad for two reasons: 1, if you don't say anything, the default assumption is you don't know anything, unless you have well known achieve…

In my circle of friends I'm known alternately as smart and slow, for basically this reason. I get embarrassed by wanting to add something to a conversation and hearing "we moved on from that over a minute ago; keep up!" (to which I feel like replying, "we just barely got into it").

Re: Give it five minutes

#53

Post by einhverfr »

specialist wrote: post #47
blario wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my previous job I had this problem. It was intensified by, what I perceived to be, conversation that was more flawed than accurate. I heard so many statements I couldn't agree with, I didn't know where to start commenting on anything. In other worlds, the whole idea or conversation that was being discussed was wrong. Very often I had nothing to say, because how do you tell a team of co-workers that everything they…

> Very often I had nothing to say, because how do you tell a team of co-workers that everything they're saying is wrong? Yup. I (think I) have four buckets: 1) Awesome! I'm stealing it! 2) Worse than wrong (h/t Murray Gell-Mann) aka not good enough to criticize. 3) Hmmm, worth chewing over. 4) I have absolutely no idea (please talk more). I'm more like Jason F, where I felt I had a moral obligation to fix things, and…

Sometimes failure is a great teacher too.

Re: Give it five minutes

#54

Post by astrofinch »

funkah wrote: post #5

At 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 b…

Another idea is to deliberately practice the skill of discarding opinions you've previously expressed, and cultivate a social circle where this doesn't cause you to lose status:

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/overcoming-disa.html

Re: Give it five minutes

#55

Post by einhverfr »

youlost_thegame wrote: post #31
rumblestrut wrote: post #4

I 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.

I feel you, I also have this little voice that shouts "NO!" inside my head during meetings. But I've learned to say "I don't see it that way, but it's a good idea, let me think on that, please", which has won me a lot of respect. Even if my final answer is negative, the fact that I took some time to consider it is perceived as very positive by coworkers and managers.

There's another tactic too... one I use frequently for better or worse.

So I see someone who says something I don't entirely agree with but I want to see where they are coming from. I start arguing with them, asking the harder questions, pointing out things I see as problems, not to push back or prove that I am right, but to prove the merit of their ideas. Sometimes I will say something to indicate why I am doing it, but for people who know me, I usually skip that part.

The goal is then to argue, hash things out, force people to defend their ideas, and then what's left after that session can be assumed to be better than any of us could have come up with otherwise and we go forward on it.

However, there are two secrets to making this work:

1) You have to be known for actually using the ideas that are effectively defended. People need to know it's not personal and that it is both professional and empowering to them. If I argue with your idea, it is because I see potential value in it but I want to make sure it doesn't easily collapse. In some cases I will offer to stand aside remaining objections or in some cases, I will endorse the idea.

2) You have to be open to (and appreciate) everyone else doing the same to you. The point here is that it is a vetting process, and my ideas can be challenged just like everyone else's. In fact if you challenge my ideas, that's again a sign of respect. If you didn't value the ideas, you'd probably ignore them or (if they go against your stakes in the project) argue instead that they are dangerous or problematic.

Being argumentative, like being defiant, is a powerful tool, used right. It just takes some time and effort to make sure that it is used right instead of being used in a way that is destructive.

Re: Give it five minutes

#56

Post by kstenerud »

einhverfr wrote: post #53
specialist wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Very often I had nothing to say, because how do you tell a team of co-workers that everything they're saying is wrong? Yup. I (think I) have four buckets: 1) Awesome! I'm stealing it! 2) Worse than wrong (h/t Murray Gell-Mann) aka not good enough to criticize. 3) Hmmm, worth chewing over. 4) I have absolutely no idea (please talk more). I'm more like Jason F, where I felt I had a moral obligation to fix things, and…

Sometimes failure is a great teacher too.

Failure is ALWAYS a great teacher. As long as you're listening, you'll learn far more than you would from success.

Re: Give it five minutes

#57

Post by silvestrov »

analyst74 wrote: post #11

I come from the opposite direction, where I was thinking too much. In the sense that I am quiet in most conversations, because I need to think about what to say back, and most conversations flow quite quickly, and I end up with a response well past the point it's applicable. This is bad for two reasons: 1, if you don't say anything, the default assumption is you don't know anything, unless you have well known achieve…

if you don't say anything, the default assumption is you don't know anything

This is an US-ism. In northern Europe it is often the opposite: constant talking heads are regarded as empty and being concise is a valued skill. We're just nice to the talking heads and let them fill the air with words, but we don't regard them as better than the quiet ones.

I've often experienced that the longer the quiet persons don't say anything, the more nervous the talking heads get, until they can't restrain themselves and demands that the silent ones say what they think.

Re: Give it five minutes

#58

Post by stdbrouw »

specialist wrote: post #47
blario wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my previous job I had this problem. It was intensified by, what I perceived to be, conversation that was more flawed than accurate. I heard so many statements I couldn't agree with, I didn't know where to start commenting on anything. In other worlds, the whole idea or conversation that was being discussed was wrong. Very often I had nothing to say, because how do you tell a team of co-workers that everything they…

> Very often I had nothing to say, because how do you tell a team of co-workers that everything they're saying is wrong? Yup. I (think I) have four buckets: 1) Awesome! I'm stealing it! 2) Worse than wrong (h/t Murray Gell-Mann) aka not good enough to criticize. 3) Hmmm, worth chewing over. 4) I have absolutely no idea (please talk more). I'm more like Jason F, where I felt I had a moral obligation to fix things, and…

> "Sometimes you just have to let people fail. It's quicker than opposing them."

This can be incredibly annoying if you're on the other side, though. One of the most effective ways of killing a project can be to support it publicly but then do nothing at all to move it forward. Anything at all to avoid having a difficult conversation.

It all depends on the situation, I s'pose.

Re: Give it five minutes

#60

Post by einhverfr »

kstenerud wrote: post #56
einhverfr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes failure is a great teacher too.

Failure is ALWAYS a great teacher. As long as you're listening, you'll learn far more than you would from success.

I think the assumption there is that if we do everything right we will always succeed. I am not sure that is the case. I would say that failure (and success) both give one an opportunity to analyse what was done well and what was done poorly.

Sometimes when you take risks, you will lose.

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