More Things I've Learned Along the Way: IV

When I learn something, or when I witness someone else learning 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.

• Professional relationships are like bank savings accounts. You can't make withdrawals until you've made enough deposits.
• We are all imperfect. All of us. Even the people we admire and respect most. And that imperfection makes them no less worthy of admiration or respect.
• Give slackers the room they need to fail. Helping them out of a jam just ensures that they'll be around long enough to depend on you to help them out of their next jam.
• Not everyone who breaks the rules is evil or dangerous. But steer clear of people who break the rules solely for personal gain.
• When it comes to disputes and confusion, one person is enough.
• Using past achievements as a predictor of future performance is a great way to build a team of has-beens.
• The birds at the bird feeder take turns, but the bigger birds get more turns than the smaller birds do. Seemed a little unfair, until I realized that bigger birds need more food.
• Some birds are just too big for some bird feeders. What seems like an advantage in some ways can come at a very high price.
• Even if you don't plan for Reality, Reality will happen anyway.
• I like podcasts, but they're pretty much the slowest way to learn anything.
• Withholding bad news leaves space for people to make up what they don't know much about. What they make up is often worse than any bad news you can withhold.
• Clutter isn't a reflection of the state of a person's mind. Some very confused people have really neat offices.
• The quality of decisions that affect lots of people is correlated with the regard the decision makers have for those same people.
• You You can't get a bully to stop
  bullying by explaining
  why bullying is badcan't get a bully to stop bullying by explaining why bullying is bad.
• When bullies understand that disciplinary action will result if they continue to bully others, they don't stop bullying. They just get cleverer about it.
• Loss may be painful, but sometimes it makes space in life for something new and wonderful.
• When someone you know is in the grip of an addictive substance, beware. You might not be able to determine who's speaking — the person or the substance.
• The worst thing about procrastination isn't that you eventually have to tackle whatever you deferred. It's that you lose the freedom to choose a good time to tackle it.
• Getting too much email can create an overpowering urge to unsubscribe from good stuff just because it takes too long to read. Resist that urge. Instead, use email filtering more effectively, or unsubscribe from the chaff.
• When I find myself doing something on a computer repeatedly, and very inconveniently, chances are good that I'm doing something either unnecessary or dumb. If it is necessary, and it's not dumb, there's almost surely a better way.
• Sometimes a difficult problem has a very elegant solution. When that happens, what made solving the problem difficult wasn't the problem — it was my biases, prejudices, fears, or blindness to assumptions I was making.
• Naming something is a long way from mastering it. But mastering something does require naming it. (See "The Nominal Fallacy at Work," Point Lookout for January 1, 2014.)
• Brilliant explanations of subtle concepts are often the result of many refinements of less-than-brilliant explanations. Brilliant explanations are rarely born brilliant.

You probably have a collection like this, but maybe it isn't written down. Something magical happens for me when I write them down. I tend to remember them when I need them. If you haven't written down your collection, try it. First in this series  Next in this series  Top    Next Issue

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More Things I've Learned Along the Way: V

When I gain an important insight, or when I learn a lesson, I make a note. Example: If you're interested in changing how a social construct operates, knowing how it came to be the way it is can be much less useful than knowing what keeps it the way it is.

Online Ethics

The array of media for exchanging our thoughts in text has created new opportunities for acting unethically. Cyberbullying is one well-known example. But sending text is just one way to cross the line ethically. Here are some examples of alternatives.

See also Ethics at Work and Effective Communication at Work for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming June 14: Pseudo-Collaborations

Most workplace collaborations produce results of value. But some collaborations — pseudo-collaborations — are inherently incapable of producing value, due to performance management systems, or lack of authority, or lack of access to information. Available here and by RSS on June 14.

And on June 21: Asking Burning Questions

When we suddenly realize that an important question needs answering, directly asking that question in a meeting might not be an effective way to focus the attention of the group. There are risks. Fortunately, there are also ways to manage those risks. Available here and by RSS on June 21.

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