​From World War I to World War II, the span of not that many years, the world went from planes that delivered grenades (by pilots tossing them over the side) to planes that delivered tons of bombs. It was a massive shift in destructive power. 

In his book The End is Always Near, Dan Carlin talks about how the Nazis initially used their airforce in the London Blitz to knock the city and the country into submission. Interestingly though, the bombings had the opposite effect. Rather than demoralize the populace and drive them to call for an end to the war, it unified Londoners.

Interestingly, when the tide shifted, and the allies had the upper-hand, they took the same approach to Germany. They thought they could bomb the country into submission. But the effect was similar in Germany. While the destruction was immense, it didn't break the spirit of the people, but gave them something to unify around.

Community of Sufferers
Charles Fritz was a sociologist who studied the impact of disasters on mental health. He looked at numerous disasters and how they impacted the mental health of those involved. He wrote about his experience in World War II: 

"By 1943, the British had already endured five years of war. They had not only experienced the direct effects of the bombing and the damaging effects on people and the physical environment; they had also been subjected to severe shortages of housing, food, clothing, and essential public services. Those problems were compounded by the arrival of six to eight million American and Allied servicemen and the ensuing overcrowding and added strains on public services and the British economy. Under those conditions, one might expect to find a nation of panicky, war weary people, embittered by the death and injuries to their family members and friends, resentful over their prolonged life style deprivations, anxious and disillusioned about the future, and, more generally, exhibiting personal and social behaviors indicating a state of low morale and esprit de corps. But those expectations proved to be totally false. Instead, what one found was a nation of gloriously happy people, enjoying life to the fullest, exhibiting a sense of gaiety and love of life that was truly remarkable. The traditional British class distinctions had largely disappeared. People who had never spoken to each other before the war, now engaged in warm, caring personal relations; they spoke openly with one another about their cares, fears, and hopes; and they gladly shared their scarce supplies with others who had greater needs. Despite the fact that American and other Allied servicemen might have been resented for adding more competition for scarce resources, they were warmly welcomed into British homes, where they found a home-away-from home atmosphere that assuaged their loneliness for their own home and family."

He also found something similar in Germany. Morale was higher in heavily bombed cities compared with lightly bombed cities. The bombings had brought people together.

Fritz described this as disasters forming a "community of sufferers." And as they researched other disasters, they found that this community was consistent wherever there was a disaster. As in London, social structures broke down and new communities were formed around the new suffering.

Unifying Cause
In his book Tribe, Sebastian Junger touches on a similar theme. We all need to belong, and our modern world has made that more difficult, except in more extreme situations. 

"Humans don't mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary.”

We're in the middle of a worldwide unifying cause with Covid-19, with the health and economic implications it has for all of us. It is hardship on a global scale and a compressed timeline like we haven't seen in generations. 

Creating Community
So how can we continue to pull together as a society and as communities? How can we use this unifying cause to build our communities and strengthen our tribes, whether that is our families, friends, companies, or other groups? What can each of us be doing? This is increasingly important not only as the virus peaks, but also as we continue to see the economic tolls rise. 

Right now there is a lot of isolation, a lot of suffering, and a lot of difficulty. So making that better and coming together like we've done in the past will be key to winning this new war and emerging stronger.

Additional Links of Interest:​

• Two Things Are Killing Your Ability to Focus - Too many distractions and too many meetings. I've written about it before and it's more important now than ever with so many of us at home. I've personally found myself defaulting to more meetings, and it's a habit we have to fight against always.
• What Everyone's Getting Wrong about the Toilet Paper Shortage - People aren't stupid. Not generally, anyway. So it always irks me when "experts" act like there is massive irrationality. Buying up extra toilet paper was never irrational. It made a ton of sense given we'd all be staying home 100% of the time for the next few months. Most of us knew that intuitively, even if experts failed to grasp it.
• A Quick Start Guide to Remote Work - As we've all shifted to remote work, I wrote this article to help my team (and anyone else) who was moving remote for the first time. It's got useful information on staying productive for both individual contributors and managers. 

Favorite Books from The Month:

• Atomic Habits - I've had this book on my list for a while now, and it didn't disappoint. If you're looking for the right way to think about building good habits and breaking bad ones, this is the handbook for just that.
• The Martian - I haven't seen the movie yet, but the book is superb. 
• Tribe - I already talked a bit about this book above, but a good read about belonging and why it is so important to us as humans.

There is an old saying that "an ounce of preparation is worth a pound of cure." Preparing beforehand is easier than trying to fix things or get better once everything has fallen apart. 

If you've been following the news (and let's be realistic, even if you try to avoid the news as much as possible like I do, you can't avoid what's been going on with the Covid-19 coronavirus around the world), then you know we're in the early stages (depending on where you are) of an outbreak that is likely to spread rapidly around the world. In all likelihood, there is no stopping it. There is only minimizing the damage and containing it.

Given the countries where it has been most severe, namely China, the information we have is incomplete at best. So the severity could be much worse. Or not. It's hard to say whether the cases of infections have been underreported (likely) along with the mortality rates. Many epidemiologists believe it may be 10 times as many people who have been infected in China as are being reported. And with additional countries now following suit, such as Japan, Korea, Italy and Iran, it's not surprising that this is quickly becoming a global pandemic. A good article here with more information.

But we're not necessarily here to talk about doom and gloom. This is more about preparation. Because we can't necessarily stop the spread of this virus. But we can prepare for it. And we can slow it down. And ensure that we don't overwhelm our local healthcare systems by doing our part. And ultimately we can save lives.

Prepare Your Home
Start by getting yourself ready. That means stocking up on supplies such as food, water and medication. If you or your area gets hit by this virus, you may need to stay put for several weeks, so you may need several weeks of food so you don't have to head to the grocery store. Stocking up on things you eat regularly is a good practice, so you'll be going through them anyway. And ensuring you have an adequate supply of medications you take will also be critical, if only to keep you away from the pharmacy while others are there.

Prepare Your Office
If you feel sick, stay home! If you manage people, it's time to get a plan in place for remote work. I wrote about remote work a few weeks ago, and how we should all prepare now for the future of remote work. Well, that future is now. It's time to embrace remote work and get people ready to stay home. The fewer people we have getting sick and passing around this new virus, the faster we can get rid of it for good. 

While it would have been good to prep your culture for remote work months ago, there is no time like the present. And there is no better excuse to get everyone mobilized.

Prepare Your Family/Community
If you know of anyone in your family or community that is especially vulnerable, like the elderly or those with respiratory issues, now is the time to prepare a plan of action. Whether it is how you can help or how they can get help if they need, it is good to have those conversations and plan ahead. Much better than scrambling when shit hits the fan.

Like I said at the beginning, an ounce of planning is worth a pound of cure. If you are a manager, it's time to put in place plans for remote work. If you are an employee, it's time to ask your managers about your company's plans for remote work. It's much better to have the conversations now and get plans made before things go sideways. 

Additional Links of Interest:​

• Product Strategy - Marty Cagan has been doing some excellent writing lately, and this is one of his posts about strategy. An overarching theme has been that teams must be empowered and autonomous. Leaders have to set a vision and allow teams to experiment. We need better leaders and managers. We need fewer feature teams and more product teams.
• When a Man Took a Joke in a Pepsi Ad Seriously, Chaos Ensued - We're just not good at dealing with numbers. Especially large numbers. And sometimes that has serious consequences. 

Favorite Books from The Month:

• The Man Who Knew The Way to The Moon - A story about grit and determination in the face of significant odds. John Houbolt fought against bureaucracy, timelines, and serious technological limitations to get the Apollo missions to the moon. I see a lot of parallels to what many of us do in our own roles every day.
• Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World - It sounds like hyperbole at first, but the influence of caffeine on our world and modern civilization is something we take for granted. That's why this book was fascinating and fun. And I, like most of you, am addicted to caffeine.
• Redshirts - Kirk, Spock, McCoy and an ensign beam down to a planet to investigate a distress signal. You can guess who's not coming back. This book is about those ensigns and everyone behind the scenes of a different starship, but it's a fun read if you enjoy Star Trek like I do.

I saw an interesting debate happening a few weeks ago here locally. One of the school districts was considering moving the start time for high school students to later in the morning. I've thought for a long time they should do that, knowing anecdotally that kids would do better with more sleep, and having that backed up with mounting evidence. 

It surprised me to read the intense opposition to the proposed changes. Everything from concern about bus schedules, to preparing kids for college and the "real world", to impacting parents' schedules. Certainly some valid considerations to make. Changing high school start times would have cascading effects that would need to be assessed and mediated. But there are some significant benefits for students, especially when we consider the physical development that is happening at their age and the importance of sleep. 

What surprised me most in the whole thing was the rigidity of everyone. In opposing even adjusting the start time of school, the basic underlying assumption is that what we have now is as good a system as we can possibly get. And we shouldn't mess with it. Because we can't possibly figure out how to accommodate the other issues we might introduce. Which I find baffling.

My opinion about our education system is that it needs to be largely dismantled and rebuilt for our new age. Start times are one of hundreds of issues. And if we're already too rigid to even make small changes, how are we going to make the big changes?

This is the topic I've been thinking about a lot lately as I've been seeing rigidity in so many systems and processes. We often let ourselves fall into certain ways of doing things only to let that be the default without considering alternatives.

In an article I wrote this month, Erasing to Foster Creativity, I address this topic at length. 

"We should, as a habit, periodically reimagine all of our processes and assumptions from the ground up."

There are often many reasons we may give to not change something. It may work just fine. It may have knock-on effects. It may be "the way it's always been done". But those are often excuses. We should thoughtfully examine our processes. In our lives and in our businesses. Nothing should be immune or sacred. 

I recently went through something very similar. We had been doing something on my team in a certain way since I started. And someone presented a case why we should change. My initial reaction was "no" for a variety of reasons. But I stopped myself, thinking through both sides, and realized I was wrong. Changing what we had been doing was a huge lift and meant upsetting many people and a balance that had been in place for a long time, but it was the right thing to do for the business and for our people. So we did it.

So what are the things that you should reexamine? What processes have been in place that no one has questioned for too long? Or that you haven't even considered questioning? It's time to reimagine everything.

Additional Links of Interest:​

• Hares, Tortoises, and the Trouble with Genius - We don’t seek to cultivate genius, especially in a mature organization, because we’re more afraid of the risks than appreciative of the benefits. A great read.
• My Top Books of 2019 - I did a fair amount of reading last year and wanted to write about my favorite books, so this is the list I made. 

Favorite Books from The Month:

• The Startup Way - A follow-on to The Lean Startup, this was an interesting look at applying the principles of The Lean Startup to existing enterprises and businesses. Taking entrepreneurship to every organization, which is desperately needed.

I had a terrible experience with my last dental cleaning. 

The appointment itself was a small part of the problem. It got off to a rocky start as I had to wait 15 minutes past my scheduled start time. That could be forgiven since appointments often run over. But it seemed like the hygienist was in a real rush to get out of there. It was early afternoon, and maybe I was her last appointment, I don't know. But what should have been a 60 minute appointment lasted under 20 minutes. She went quickly through the normal cleaning routine, really rushing things and not doing what I thought should be a thorough job.

And I was a little irked that they didn't do some of the normal nice touches either. Normally, I get an eye compress and get to pick my flavor of the tooth polish at the end. I didn't get either. (I know, real first world problems). 

Honestly, I could have overlooked all of that, but the real issues came when I got the bill. My insurance covers standard dental cleanings, but they had billed me as a periodontal patient because a few years ago I was at risk for periodontal issues. This is a more expensive cleaning procedure.

I called up the dentist office confused why I had to pay anything, and they explained the situation. Now I've been a patient there for years and had no issue. So I was pretty aghast at this. I told them that the cleaning I got wasn't anywhere near a periodontal "deep cleaning", let alone a standard cleaning. So they waived the cost. I was pretty satisfied at that, though disgruntled that they had someone who was doing bad work and billing for extra.

Then a second bill came. For $19.20. While they had waived the initial cost, it got billed through insurance and then my part had to be paid. I called the dentist office back because standard cleanings should be free. But again, because of the way they had billed it, I was on the hook for some money. I expected them to waive this part but they wouldn't. I was pretty frustrated at this point. We went the rounds, but they wouldn't budge.

So I left them with an option: I'll pay the $19.20, and they could cancel my next appointment and lose me and my family as patients going forward. They opted to take the $19.20. And I canceled my next appointment and have found a new dentist to try.

Long-Term Value
I'm not sure what the lifetime value of my family is as patients, but I expect it is pretty high. Maybe patient acquisition is easy, or maybe there is higher value elsewhere, and that's why they made such a decision. I don't really know. But exchanging very short-term gains for the long-term value is never a good trade.

Yet we see it happen all the time. My dentist office decided $19.20 was worth losing all of us as patients. Companies decide all the time that short-term gain is better than long-term investment. Individually we do it as well.

As I sit here writing this, there is a candy dish with peanut butter M&Ms close by. It is way too easy for me to eat a handful of M&Ms at any time (and I munch on them more often than I should). They make me pretty happy in the short-term. But M&Ms don't really align with my long-term goals of being fit. And yet I make the tradeoff.

Play The Long Game
So how can we do better about playing the long game? The long game is really about knowing what we want in life and focusing our efforts on that. With the M&Ms, I really want fitness, so limiting how much candy I eat is critical to that. With a successful business, I want long-term customers/patients, so collecting $19.20 is a pittance. 

Here's what we need to keep in mind:

• Don't trade short-term pleasure for long-term happiness
• Build meaningful relationships rather than transactional ones
• Maximize strategic value rather than short-term profit
• Do the difficult things with long payouts over the easy things with short payouts
• Invest in yourself
• Build things to last
• Invest in doing things right the first time
• Admitting mistakes and making them right always goes further than trying to cover them up
• Happy customers/users beget other happy customers/users

It's rarely easy, but ultimately comes down to understanding what we value most highly. What is our priority? Is it to make a few bucks right now, or is it to create something of value that will last for a long time? Is it to win an argument or to create a long-term relationship? Is it to be happy for a moment, or create deep satisfaction for a lifetime?

Hopefully, the road will be long, so ensuring that we play the long game will benefit not only us but our families, businesses, customers, and everyone we come in contact with.

Additional Links

• The Lesson to Unlearn - Our education system has taught us numerous bad lessons, one of which is to hack bad tests. And that is something that sticks with us through our lives. Unlearning that lesson and finding ways to get out of places that have bad/hackable tests is one of the keys to success. A great read.
• Why One-on-One Meetings Suck and What We Can Do About It - I wrote about one-on-one meetings and what we can do to make them better. They are such a critical part of leaderships and deserve to be a top priority for us as managers. 

Favorite Books of the Month

• What You Do Is Who You Are - My favorite read of the month was the new book from Ben Horowitz on building culture. He takes a look at different cultures and analyzes the lessons on how we can build lasting elements of culture in our organizations. It's fascinating stuff for leaders, especially anyone who thinks about impacting culture.
• Radical Candor - While it took me longer to read than I would have hoped, Radical Candor has a lot of great bits of wisdom that I've been applying in my day-to-day. From continuous feedback to striving for candid honesty, we'd all be better off with much more candor in the office and in our relationships.

Distraction isn't anything new. It is just taking on new forms. And is becoming easier and easier because those of us who are designing products and media and everything else are getting better and better at grabbing attention. 

When the radio first came out, many parents were worried it would be too much of a distraction for kids. I remember my mom worrying about our TV being too much of a distraction in our home. So much so that she threatened, on multiple occasions, to throw it away. And we only owned a single TV. And didn't even have cable. Now we have phones and tablets and smartwatches and all sorts of other devices to distract us.

So it's not so much about the device, but more about the fact that we can be distracted if we're not careful with our attention and deliberate with our focus.

So what can we do?

​In the book Deep Work, Cal Newport gives the example of Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman: 

"To do real good physics work, you do need absolute solid lengths of time...it needs a lot of concentration, if you have a job administrating anything, you don’t have the time. So I have invented another myth for myself: that I’m irresponsible. I’m actively irresponsible. I tell everyone I don’t do anything. If anyone asks me to be on a committee for admissions, 'no' I tell them: I’m irresponsible.

"Feynman was adamant in avoiding administrative duties because he knew they would only decrease his ability to do the one thing that mattered most in his professional life: to do real good physics work."

We have to prioritize what is most important and really block out the things that aren't. That means actually saying no.

In another book about the subject called Indistractible, Nir Eyal relates the story of Tantalus from Greek mythology: 

"The ancient Greeks immortalized the story of a man who was perpetually distracted. We call something that is desirable but just out of reach “tantalizing” after his name. The story goes that Tantalus was banished to the underworld by his father, Zeus, as a punishment. There he found himself wading in a pool of water while a tree dangled ripe fruit above his head. The curse seems benign, but when Tantalus tried to pluck the fruit, the branch moved away from him, always just out of reach. When he bent down to drink the cool water, it receded so that he could never quench his thirst. Tantalus’s punishment was to yearn for things he desired but could never grasp.
"The curse is not that Tantalus spends all eternity reaching for things just out of reach but rather his obliviousness to the greater folly of his actions. Tantalus’s curse was his blindness to the fact he didn’t need those things in the first place. 

"That’s the real moral of the story. Tantalus’s curse is also our curse. We are compelled to reach for things we supposedly need but really don’t. We don’t need to check our email right this second or need to see the latest trending news, no matter how much we feel we must."

Ultimately, we have to make up our minds as to what is most important. We only have so much time each day. We can either use that time on what is most important or we can waste it on things of lesser importance. It is easier and easier to become distracted. And I fear that it is a trend that will only increase. So we have to decide now, and take the necessary steps to safeguard our time and attention.

Additional Links

• The Dangers of Distracted Parenting - We think a lot about screen time for kids, but what about our own screen time as adults? We are constantly being distracted, and it is probably worse for us and our children.
• To Pay Attention, the Brain Uses Filters, Not a Spotlight - Another fascinating read on how our attention works. 

Favorite Books of the Month

• Dune - I've been wanting to read this series for a while, and it hasn't disappointed. I'm nearly done with book 3 now, which is where I'll probably pause, but it is well worth a read if you enjoy science fiction and fantasy.
• Creativity, Inc. - This is likely going to make it onto my must-reads for product managers given its lessons in creativity and teamwork. While making movies and making software aren't the exact same, the parallels are there and the lessons are great.

It's easy to talk about empathy. We often talk about how we need to empathize with other people. We need to see things from their perspective or need to understand their side. But that's often as far as it goes. I feel like I see this frequently as a product person. We talk frequently about empathy in our profession. It is a staple in articles and at product management conferences. We need to empathize with our users and customers. But too often it is easy only to pay lip service to empathy. Not to truly empathize and understand.

Empathy vs Sympathy
It's easy to mistake empathy and sympathy. We may feel for someone. That's sympathy. When we see someone in a bad situation and feel sorry for them or sad for them, that's sympathy. There is an important difference between sympathy and empathy. Empathy is feeling with someone. It is about feeling, or trying to feel, the same emotions that that they are feeling.

Brene Brown has a great video about empathy and sympathy. When someone is in a pit, sympathy is looking down on them and telling them you're sorry that they are in that pit. Empathy is about getting into the pit with them.

Going Deeper
It can often be difficult in product development to fully embrace empathy, despite all our talk about it. No matter how many conference talks we hear or articles we read, it is so easy to think that our users just don't understand the beauty of our products. Or our users are just dumb. You all know you've thought it at some point. 

But your users aren't any more dumb than you are. The truth is that we all don't really care about products any more than we care about ourselves and our own lives. Why should we? I don't really care about the apps I use, but only how they improve my life. And if they don't do that in a way that makes sense to me, then why should I use them? Or why should I care?

So as we look around, we need to take a moment to go deeper into the "why" behind what people are doing. Understanding their true motivations, and then finding within ourselves the similar emotions that drive our motivations, will allow us to much better understand and empathize.

We were with our son at a restaurant recently when he spilled some water on his shirt. He was horribly embarrassed since we were out in public and he was wearing a nice shirt. It wasn't a big deal. It was only water. But it was a big deal to him. Rather than try to convince him it wasn't a big deal or that it would dry, I tried to practice exactly what I'm preaching here. I told him how frustrating it is to spill water on yourself in public. I then showed him the place on my sport coat where I had spilled water earlier that day and told him how frustrated I was too. We talked about the frustration together and he really enjoyed having someone to commiserate with whom knew what it was like. To not be alone.

Embracing Empathy
Ultimately, embracing empathy is about finding the emotions within ourselves to find understanding. We may not fully understand everything that someone else is going through, and that's okay. Sometimes it's just about understanding that we can share the same pit together for a time. 

As we embrace empathy, as product professionals and as people we can build the products that will not only move the world forward, but we can build the communities and the organizations that will make the world better. We can build the understanding person to person to make each other better.

Being in software product development, I've long been of the opinion that we should be equipped to deal with randomness. Software development is complex. The world is complex. Life is complex. Random things happen and we have to deal with them. We can't predict everything and we shouldn't think we can. Things tend to spiral out of control (especially in product development, but in many other aspects of life) when we think can plan out every detail and run things as if no variable will ever surprise us.

Good luck with that.

​This idea applies to everything though. Randomness is everywhere. Complexity is everywhere. It is easy to take for granted or forget. But I've been finding it more and more important to not only accept randomness, but to actively seek it for myself and my teams/products/endeavors to make them better.

Personal Randomness
This should come as no surprise, but we are individually complex systems. Everything about us is complex, from our bodies to our hormones to our biology to how it all interacts. Modern medicine barely scrapes the surface of how it all interacts. If you've ever had anything seriously wrong with you or a loved one, you've likely realized how quickly we reach the edge of understanding. It is scary.

So with that, we should be very judicious about adding unproved complexity to our complex systems (medicines with little benefit but potential hidden risks are good examples). But we should also be readily using time-tested randomness. Many religions and diets have randomness in the form of fasting, either intermittently or sporadically. The benefits have been time-tested. And the randomness is meant to help push our bodies, to make us stronger.

We're built to adapt and become stronger in this way. If we don't vary our workouts, we won't build muscle. So
adding randomness or variability is a key to pushing our physical ability. The same idea is true for mental abilities. Learning takes place over time by varying the tasks and context. You can pass a test by cramming, but that's not how long-term learning happens. 

Planning for Randomness
While it may seem like an oxymoron to plan for randomness, this is a key to preparation. Many of us do it in some areas of our lives. It is why we buy insurance. We can't predict certain situations, so we buy insurance to prevent big losses from random events. Hopefully we also are saving money as another way of preparing for random events. 

On a little less dire note, planning for randomness also allows for some of the happiest times. Think about the best vacations you've had. Were they planned out to the last detail? Or was there some room in there for some random events or chance happenings? While planning out what you will do is important, leaving room for fun to happen will be where memories are made. The random stop on the side of the road. Or the detour to see the historical site that wasn't on the itinerary. Picking the restaurant that feels like the right option in the moment.

Professionally you could look at this as contingency planning. How might your meeting go wrong? What might take things in the wrong direction? How could the upcoming budgeting season get derailed? On the flip side, what unexpected opportunities might arise? As a product manager, I'm always looking for these types of opportunities, especially with the software we're producing. How are customers using our software in ways we weren't expecting? How can we capitalize on that?

Injecting Randomness
Going beyond planning for randomness, injecting randomness into our lives is the next step to building our strength. It's not just about preparing and planning for randomness, it's about finding areas where we can add some randomness to help ourselves.

We already talked about it with working out. Lifting weights is an ideal example. If I lift the same weight every day, I can get great at it. It will get easy. But I won't build any muscle that way. I need to inject some randomness. In the way I lift (not using a machine). In the actual weight (increasing it). 

We can say the same for diet. I've found some good foods that I've grown accustomed to. But as I've been thinking and reading, I've realized that I need to inject more randomness into my diet. Eggs every morning have been great, but I need to inject some randomness into my diet. Part of that is different foods. Part of it is skipping breakfast altogether.

I've also found the same principle holds true for work and teams. Approaching problems in a new way, trying out a new method, changing up the routine can all inject some randomness that may make things more tumultuous in the short-term, but will add long-term benefits by challenging our assumptions and forcing us to grow.

Loving Growth
When we boil it down, the point is to continue to grow. We want to grow personally, and allowing for randomness is part of that. Embracing randomness is even better. When we allow for it on our teams, in our businesses and ultimately in our society, we become far stronger than if we tried to plan every detail or manage every interaction.

Additional Links

• In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed - I keep riffing on this topic, but the idea of slowing down and concentrating rather than being constantly distracted is so important. Doing your best work is only possible if you are able to concentrate.
• How to structure product management according to Rich Mironov - I found this article and it sparked a nice twitter exchange with Rich about "hops" in product organizations. Go check it out on my timeline and check out the article as well.

​Favorite Books from the Month
It was another lighter month for reading, but a really good one. I finished the Incerto series that I started last month, and highly recommend it. More to come on that soon.

• Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder 
• Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life 

I've been thinking a lot this past month about how to gain better understanding. I'll probably have a few more posts about the topic soon, including how to think more critically about everything as well as how to better read and retain information. But a few thoughts for now:

Writing
One key to understanding is writing. I wrote about this a few weeks ago in my post Why Writing Out Your Ideas is the Key to Better Understanding. 

This is one of the reasons why Amazon adopted writing over presentations. It can be too easy to BS your way through a presentation. But its much tougher to do that in a document. Especially because you have to fool yourself first and then fool everyone else. 

Finding Insight
Another key to understanding I believe is finding insight. This can be a process in itself, involving thinking deeply through a problem, studying it, probably writing about it per my suggestion above, but then also allowing space for our subconscious mind to ruminate on an issue.

In an interesting podcast episode, John Kunios explores how we can get more "Aha" moments in our lives. Personally, I'm a big fan of finding these Aha moments. I like to take frequent walks throughout the day to allow myself some time to think as well as allow myself some time to let my mind wander. 

Asking Questions
To gain understanding, you have to be willing to ask questions as well. It is so easy to assume that we know all the answers. Most of us want that to be true. It is difficult to think that we don't know all the answers. We may fear losing face, losing credibility, or simply looking foolish in front of friends or colleagues. 

I wrote about this in a short story this month as well, called Speaking Your User's Language. It was about my son being able to get to the heart of a problem my daughter was having by understanding what she wanted. He got there by asking the right questions.

Empathy
Finally, in order to truly understand, we need to have empathy. As a product person, I talk about this a lot. Most product managers and people in product development talk about empathy for users all the time. It's funny though, because often our calls for empathy are very siloed. We seem to fall into the trap of domain dependence, where we call for empathy for users of our products but forget to call for empathy in other areas (like the person who takes the escalator rather than the stairs on the way to the gym).

So I'll call for empathy here. Not just for our products or users, but everywhere. As we try to gain a better understanding of people in general, as well as the problems we're facing, we'll be better able to tackle issues and make things better. Not just for our users or customers, but for everyone.

A key theme from some of my posts over the past few weeks has been the idea of intentionality. Being intentional with what we're doing, whether it is forming teams or eating.
From my post Co-Located vs. Remote/Distributed Teams: What Works and Why:

The key to creating a good team, whether it is a remote team or a co-located team, is being intentional. Sometimes good teams can simply happen without much effort, but that is likely the exception, not the rule. So being intentional in the creation and leadership of a team, especially when it is distributed in some way, is going to be a key to success.

The same can be said when it comes to losing weight. While this isn't my normal writing vein, it is another helpful illustration of the point. To be successful at losing weight, you have be very intentional, especially with your eating. At least that is what I discovered for myself. While I would love to be able to exercise my way to fitness, that turned out to be impossible. From my post about weight loss: 

Life, in general, requires a degree of intentionality. While we may have some success for a time without being intentional about our direction, I don't think that will be long-lived. We'll find much more success, and much more joy in life, by being intentional about our decisions. 

What does that mean?

• Be intentional about the work you choose to do. Take on the projects that not only further your career but that are interesting and fulfilling.
• Be intentional about the time you spend with the people you love. Set the phone down. Pay attention. Be present and engaged.
• Be intentional about how you spend your time. Stop saying yes to things only out of a sense of obligation. Your time is incredibly limited. Use it wisely.
• Be intentional what types of things you consume. That goes for food, entertainment, media, etc. Feed your mind and body with what you need. Don't let yourself get filled passively with whatever comes the easiest.

I'll be exploring this topic more in some other posts and in weeks to come. If you have thoughts or ideas, let me know.

Additional Links of Interest:

• ​​Five Lessons From History - Almost too many good points to summarize, so go check out this article. Really an enjoyable read.
• Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (Podcast) - Looking forward to reading this book, but a great interview about why being a generalist isn't a bad thing at all.
• A Song of Ice and Fire - Facts don't care about your feelings. And facts don't care about your theories.

Favorite Books from The Month:
It was an awesome month for reading. I'd recommend a bunch of books, but trying to keep it to a manageable list, here it goes:

• The Innovators - A great read about all the innovators who helped shape modern technology. 
• ​Deep Work - I'll be writing more about deep work soon, but I'm a big fan of the concept and this is a must read book for anyone interested in the idea that you have to actually focus for extended periods of time to get real work done.
• Algorithms to Live By - A fascinating read about computer algorithms and how you can apply them to your life.

I wrote about this topic a while ago, and it has been top of mind recently both from personal experience as well other articles that have come out. So I wanted to dive a little deeper. 

​From my original post:

Simply throwing around the term "agile" does not an agile team make. But everyone wants to think of themselves and their teams and their organizations as agile. Unfortunately, simply using the term or using frameworks loosely associated with agile will not make you agile or flexible or dynamic. 

SAFe, as a framework, is way too complex and puts too many barriers in place. It literally removes teams several steps back from customers and the impact of that becomes obvious quickly.

You can read more about it here: The Major Problems with SAFe

Understanding Fake Agile
"A particularly worrying variant is the Scaled Agile Framework or SAFe. Essentially this is codified bureaucracy, in which the customer is almost totally absent."

Stepping Back from the Scaled Agile Framework
​I saw Al talking about this on Twitter, and found this article about stepping away from SAFe. It's not as dramatic a call out as "Fake Agile", but it does acknowledge SAFe as generally too complex.

The Horror of the Scaled Agile Framework
A quick rant, but it's fun to see the emotion that SAFe can elicit. I often feel the same way.

Favorite Books from the Past Month:
Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions
This was a great read that dove not only into computer science, but how we can apply it (or not) to our lives. Really worthwhile.