This is one of the hardest questions to ask at the end of a meeting: “Did we accomplish our goal?” This is why it is so rarely asked: no one wants to hear the answer. If, meeting after meeting, you were to hear the answer to this question being “No”, how demoralizing would that be? Massively. But the hard questions don’t come with easy answers, because the answers that come require work, hard work, tough…
Right now we are boiling everything down to fast something can get down and how little effort we need to put in to get it done. We have reached the future that Wall-E predicted. When I used to hire Junior Developers, we knew what we were getting – blank slates with some level of computer knowledge – so how were they evaluated? Their effort. How much time did they put in, how much were they…
There is only one way to get weeds out of the ground – pull them. You might use chemicals or some other miracle compound, but at some point, you’ll need to pull what is left so it doesn’t take root and grow again. Same with Rocks – the only way to move them is to pick them up and put them somewhere else. You can roll them, use a machine, push them up a hill,…
There are jobs that cannot be made to go faster. They can be optimized, they can be tweaked, they can be upgraded. They can have all of these wonderful things done to them, but at some point, they can only go so far, and then what is left for them to do is the job itself. The grinding work. The back and forth. The inputs and outputs. Many years ago, a colleague of mine took…
You watch the Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn (and more) ads on the steps and the small bits you need to do each and every day that will eventually get you there. And you can do all that, but then eventually ask yourself, “When will it start working? When will I see the change that I need to be looking for?” There is no guaranteed answer, and the only one you can truly ask yourself is…