The Art of Finishing via Bytedrum [Shared]

Posted on February 22, 2025 by Douglas E. Welch

A concept for life in genreal, not just coding. – Douglas

The Art of Finishing via Bytedrum

The Art of Finishing via Bytedrum [Shared]

“It’s a quiet Saturday afternoon. I’ve carved out a few precious hours for coding, armed with a steaming cup of coffee and the familiar urge to dive into a project. As I settle into my chair and open my terminal, I’m confronted with a challenge that’s become all too familiar: deciding which of my many unfinished projects to tackle.

I navigate to my project directory, greeted by a graveyard of half-implemented ideas and stalled works-in-progress. Each one represents a different problem I’ve tried to solve, a different technology I’ve attempted to master. They’re all interesting, each with its own purpose and potential. But as I scan through them, I can already feel my enthusiasm waning. I know that whichever one I choose, I’ll be facing not just the original problem, but a hydra of new challenges that have sprouted since I last looked at the code.”

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Be A Thermostat, Not A Thermometer via Lara Hogan [Shared]

Posted on February 21, 2025 by Douglas E. Welch

Be A Thermostat, Not A Thermometer via Lara Hogan [Shared]

Be A Thermostat, Not A Thermometer via Lara Hogan [Shared]

As I’ve learned more about how humans interact with one another at work, I’ve been repeatedly reminded that we are very easily influenced by the mood of those around us. It’s usually not even something we do consciously; we just see someone using a different tone of voice or shifting their body language, and something deep in our brain notices it.

If you’ve ever attended a meeting where there were some “weird vibes,” you know what I’m talking about. You couldn’t quite put your finger on it, but something about the energy of the room was off—and that feeling affected you, even if it was super subtle.

We’re wired to spidey sense this stuff; this gut instinct is part of what’s helped us stay safe for millenia. Our amygdalas are constantly on the lookout for threats in our environment that could be bad news. Plus, we tend to infer meaning from those weird vibes. Our brain is trying to make sense of the shift in behavior, so we’ll make some (often subconscious) guesses about what’s truly going on. We often even jump to the assumption that those vibes are about us.

Read this entire article – Be A Thermostat, Not A Thermometer via Lara Hogan

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Building a Creativity Kanban via Will Patrick [Shared]

Posted on February 16, 2025 by Douglas E. Welch

Building a Creativity Kanban via Will Patrick [Shared]

Building a Creativity Kanban via Will Patrick [Shared]

To get more creative work done, think like a car manufacturer. A system for optimising the creative process and breaking through your barriers.

Always Be Shipping

Have you made anything lately?

Have you published anything? Shipped anything? Finished something and put it into the world? Your answer will lie somewhere on the spectrum between ‘Yes – today!’ and, ‘No. Never.’

Your answer is important.

Tell me how often you ship, publish, or show the world what you’re doing and I’ll tell you where you’ll be in five years. In short: you’ll be doing incredibly well and far, far better than the person who said, ‘No. Never.’

If you are someone who is in the business of creating anything – whether it’s code, books, photographs, videos, lessons, physical products – the importance of regularly shipping what you make cannot be emphasised enough.

It is vital.

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Employees Are Sick of Being Asked to Make Moral Compromises via Harvard Business Review [Shared]

Posted on February 6, 2025 by Douglas E. Welch

Employees Are Sick of Being Asked to Make Moral Compromises via Harvard Business Review 

Employees Are Sick of Being Asked to Make Moral Compromises via Harvard Business Review

Summary.   

Moral injury is experienced as a trauma response to witnessing or participating in workplace behaviors that contradict one’s moral beliefs in high-stakes situations and that have the potential of harming others physically, psychologically, socially, or economically, and it could prompt people to leave a company. It was first studied in veterans who’d witnessed atrocities of war. More recently, this research has been extended to health care, education, social work, and other high-pressure and often under-resourced occupations. The past two years have made it increasingly clear that moral injury can occur in many contexts and populations, including the workplace. As a new world of work unfolds before us and the pact between employee and employer gets rewritten, leaders have to learn and evolve to keep pace. The authors present six things leaders can do to ensure their actions aren’t unintentionally injuring the moral center of those they lead.

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Feeling unfulfilled or stuck at work? 3 ways to help you get unstuck via Ideas.Ted.Com [Shared]

Posted on February 5, 2025 by Douglas E. Welch

Feeling unfulfilled or stuck at work? 3 ways to help you get unstuck via Ideas.Ted.Com [Shared]

Feeling unfulfilled or stuck at work? 3 ways to help you get unstuck via Ideas.Ted.Com [Shared]

Today, so many of us are wishing to safeguard ourselves — and our careers — against uncertainty. But how do we do this in a world where the waves of change keep coming and it can take all our energy just to stay afloat?

By thinking long term, says Dorie Clark, consultant and keynote speaker. “Long-term thinking protects us during downturns (of all kinds), because it keeps us moving toward our most important goals … It’s the surest path to meaningful and lasting success in a world that so often prioritizes what’s easy, quick, and ultimately shallow,” writes Clark in her new book The Long Game.

If we want to play the long game, one of the first things we must do is identify those goals so we’re able to make the adjustments needed in our lives to move towards achieving them. In this excerpt, she shares some strategies to assist people in pinpointing their goals.

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Aloneness, Belonging, and the Paradox of Vulnerability, in Love and Creative Work – The Marginalian [Shared]

Posted on January 28, 2025 by Douglas E. Welch

Aloneness, Belonging, and the Paradox of Vulnerability, in Love and Creative Work – The Marginalian

Aloneness, Belonging, and the Paradox of Vulnerability, in Love and Creative Work – The Marginalian [Shared]

“A great interview does something else, too. A great touches the nucleus of being and potential, untouched by the forces of time and change.

One January afternoon several selves ago, I entered the corrugated black walls of a snug recording studio at the School of Visual Arts to sit at a microphone across from a woman dressed entirely and impeccably in black — a woman all stranger, all sunshine. I didn’t expect that, over the next hour, the warmth of her generous curiosity and her sensitive attention would melt away my ordinary reticence about discussing the life beneath the work. I didn’t expect that, over the next decade, we would become creative kindred spirits, then friends, then longtime romantic partners, and finally dear lifelong friends and frequent collaborators.”

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Get the book mentioned in the article

Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman

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Overwhelm: The Survival Guide by Leo Babauta [Shared]

Posted on January 21, 2025 by Douglas E. Welch

Overwhelm: The Survival Guide by Leo Babauta

Overwhelm: The Survival Guide [Shared]

Feeling overwhelmed with work and personal tasks is one of the biggest problems that the people I work with are facing.

It turns out, our lives can be pretty overwhelming.

There’s so much to do, never enough time to do it, and who knows what we should be focusing on? We’re always behind, barely treading water. That’s our usual experience of life, it seems.

What can we do? It turns out, there are some powerful things we can practice with overwhelm, and there are some practical things we can do as well.

What follows is meant to be a kind of survival guide – not only how to survive your overwhelming life, but how to turn it into a life of joy and impact.

There are a lot of things below, which ironically can be overwhelming. Pick one, and try it.

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How to Make Smart Decisions Without Getting Lucky via Farnam Street [Shared]

Posted on March 31, 2022 by Douglas E. Welch

How to Make Smart Decisions Without Getting Lucky – Farnam Street

How to Make Smart Decisions Without Getting Lucky via Farnam Street [Shared]

Few things will change your trajectory in life or business as much as learning to make effective decisions. Yet no one really teaches us what it means to make consistently high-quality decisions.

I started working at an intelligence agency on August 28, 2001. Two weeks later, the world would never be the same. 1

My computer science degree lost its value after a few promotions. I came from a world of 1s and 0s, not people, families, and interpersonal dynamics.

Just out of school, I found that my decisions affected not only my employees but their families. Not only my country but other countries. However, there was one small problem. I had no idea how to make smart decisions. I had no idea how to reduce errors. I only knew I had an obligation to make the best decisions I could. But where do you start?

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Managing people 🤯via Andreas Klinger [Shared]

Posted on March 28, 2022 by Douglas E. Welch

Managing people 🤯 | Andreas Klinger

Managing people 🤯via Andreas Klinger [Shared]

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

I believe almost all first-time founders burn out their first employees as they learn how to manage groups of people. If this advice helps avoid a few cases, it’s worth writing it down.

I wrote this article for managers of small teams/startups. I’d assume that most might not apply to management in larger enterprises. Btw here are my recommendations on joining hypergrowth companies in general.

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Remote work, innovation, and the Great Resignation via Vox [Shared]

Posted on March 18, 2022 by Douglas E. Welch

Will the pandemic fundamentally change the nature of work? We can hope so, but the pull of the status quo is strong. — Douglas 

Remote work, innovation, and the Great Resignation – Vox

Remote work, innovation, and the Great Resignation via Vox [Shared]

Employees want to work from home. Their bosses, however, can’t wait to get back to the office. Knowledge workers think being remote makes their jobs better, while managers worry the arrangement could cause the quality of work to suffer. But in scapegoating remote work, companies may be disguising the real scourge of creativity right now: too much work.

Read Remote work, innovation, and the Great Resignation – Vox

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