
An example of a "Weaver's Pathway" in a Navajo rug. A "Weaver's Pathway," or "Spirit Line", is a small line of contrasting color that passes from the inner field of the piece, penetrating the borders, until it reaches one edge. When non-Navajos notice it, they often see it as an imperfection, because it violates all the symmetries of the pattern. But to Navajos, it's a path that enables the weaver's spirit to free itself from the piece.
We can view imperfections in anything we create as pathways to places worth exploring. For more on the Weaver's Pathway, see "The Weaver's Pathway," Point Lookout for May 7, 2003.
When I learn something, I sometimes wish I had learned it long ago. If it could have saved me trouble, or led me somewhere I find appealing, I write it down. Here's another installment from my growing collection.
- If your workload is totally unreasonable, better time management won't help much.
- If you work for a jerk, striving for superior performance is worse than a waste of time. It keeps you from finding another job.
- Multitasking is a hoax. What we really do is task switching, which drains energy and wastes time. [Weinschenk 2012]
- If my success depends on yours, but yours doesn't depend on mine, I might be in big trouble.
- Creating great ideas from scratch is really hard and really rare. Many great ideas are clever combinations of other great and less-than-great ideas.
- Organizations and their people either succeed together or fail together.
- Risk-averse organizations risk stifling creativity and innovation.
- Threats work in the short run, but they drive people away in the long run.
- If you decide to give up, you'll never know whether you could have done it.
- You can't trust everything you find on the Internet, but some Internet communities and Web sites are very reliable. Find some you trust.
- Perfection isn't achievable, but with practice, you can make the imperfections insignificant.
- Cherish imperfections. They can sometimes lead to wonderful, exciting places.
- If a difficult decision gets easier when you pretend you're deciding it for somebody else, the difficulty is probably about you, not the decision.
- When all your choices are bad, choosing usually isn't the hard part. The hard part is accepting that you must choose the least bad choice.
- To get more choices, try letting go of dogma and ideology.
- When people suddenly renege on commitments, they could be just untrustworthy, or maybe somebody powerful ordered them to do it. Some people would let you believe the former before they would ever acknowledge the latter.
- You can't When I learn something that
I wish I had learned long
ago, I write it downsolve problems you don't realize you have. - You can't use assets you don't realize you have.
- The Development orientation focuses on figuring out how to break the mold. The Operational orientation focuses on using the mold more perfectly.
- Creativity and Freedom are partners. You can't have much of one without help from the other.
- I've forgotten so many great ideas that I'm sure some must have been better than any idea I've pursued. So now when I get an idea I write it down (or type it in). Now if only I can figure out how not to lose what I've written down (or typed in)…
- Outsourcing risk management is risky. Something about having to live with the consequences of risks makes people better risk managers.
- The easiest way to offend somebody is to disparage something personal they can't change.
- If all you know is where you don't want to go, you'll get there faster.
If you have a personal collection, maybe some of these might suggest an addition or two. If you don't yet have a collection, maybe you can start one. First in this series Top
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More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:
Enjoy Your Commute
- You probably commute to work. On a good day, you spend anywhere from ten minutes to an hour or two —
each way — commuting. What kind of experience are you having? Taking control of this part of your
life can make a real difference.
Learn from the Mastodon
- Not long ago, Mastodons roamed North America in large numbers. Cousins to the elephant, they thrived
in the cool, sub-glacial climate. But the climate warmed, and human hunters arrived. The Mastodon couldn't
adapt, and now it's extinct. Change is now coming to your profession. Can you adapt?
When We Need a Little Help
- Sometimes we get in over our heads — too much work, work we don't understand, or even complex
politics. We can ask for help, but we often forget that we can. Even when we remember, we sometimes
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A Review of Performance Reviews: The Checkoff
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Constancy Assumptions
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And usually, our assumptions are valid. But not always.
See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness and Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming May 14: Working with the Overconfident
- A cognitive bias known as the Overconfidence Effect causes us to overestimate the reliability of our judgments. Decisions we make based on those judgments are therefore suspect. But there are steps we can take to make our confidence levels more realistic, and thus make our decisions more reliable. Available here and by RSS on May 14.
And on May 21: Mismanaging Project Managers
- Most organizations hold project managers accountable for project performance. But they don't grant those project managers control of needed resources. Nor do they hold project sponsors or other senior managers accountable for the consequences of their actions when they interfere with project work. Here's a catalog of behaviors worth looking at. Available here and by RSS on May 21.
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