Author: William Kerr

…is a method early software coders used to help debug their work.

The term stems from a book, ‘The Pragmatic Programmer‘ which relates the story of a programmer who carried around a rubber duck and used it as a sounding board to explain, line by line, what the code was supposed to do.

Though it sounds silly, it’s a process to force one to walk through ones thinking in order to clarify.

Richard Feynman used a similar method of pretending to teach any new learning he was undertaking to a child so that he could be sure he himself understood what he was learning. If he couldn’t explain it to a kid, he most likely didn’t understand it himself.

Using the Feynman technique to learn new things is, in itself, not only a useful thing to learn but brings up a different application for the practice.

Many of us have been subjected to the ten page report or the PowerPoint pitch deck that’s so full of information that the smallest font is chosen so that it fits onto the slides. We can’t actually read it but all the information is there.

In Steven Pressfield’s book, ‘Nobody Wants To Read Your Sh*t,’ he wrote “In the real world, no one is waiting to read what you’ve written. Sight unseen, they hate what you’ve written. Why? Because they might have to actually read it.”

We could take a lesson from Richard Feynman and our coding colleagues and put our reports and pitches to a pretend twelve year old, or desktop rubber duck, to see if we’ve over-complicated or over-explaned the topic. If we can simplify and clarify, someone may actually want to read what we’ve written and catch what we’re trying to convey.

Written while listening to Philip Glass’ Koyaanisqatsi (Yep, that’s a real word which means ‘life in turmoil,’ or ‘life out of balance,’ in the Native American Hopi Tribe Language.

The best thing I came across online over the last week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdbbcO35arw&t=20s&ab_channel=RSA

…can help the work along in a different way. A place for workings as well as meetings.

A meeting is about the work, often necessary and essential, frequently in a board room or around a board table.

A working, on the other hand, is the work. Everyone in the room, whether physical or digital, working simultaneously instead of throwing it here and there waiting for responses and approvals.

In our present ‘at a distance,’ ‘remote,’ and ‘distributed’ work environments this could be a worthwhile practice, something one can try out or work with which will also help build teamwork and culture.

It can also be valuable in a co-located work environment.

That board room down the hall, which seems empty most of the time, doesn’t have to be just for meetings about work. It can also be for work, where the group gets together, working their corner of a project, not in their office alone but together with the other members of the team.

A few hours in the same room simultaneously working on the same project seems to help clarify things more, issues get solved quickly and people are able to see each other’s processes a little better.

The practice can be more intrinsic in both settings than just team and culture building.

Remotely, everyone can leave their Zoom, Skype or Google Meet open as they work. Colocated, take over that ‘bored’ room or table and put it to a better, or at least a different, use.

Not an everyday thing, just when something needs to get done or moved forward.

Written while sitting at the beach listening to Hania Rani.

The best thing I read online last week,

“Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires or ambitions we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.”

though I can’t remember where I read it.

…it contains the word dead.

Maybe we could be a bit easier on ourselves and call it a finish line instead, with all the sports, racing, and success connotations that go along with it.

In like manner, instead of ploughing through a pile of reports, we could maybe just breeze through them.

Language is one of the many ways we create our mental model of the world and, as noticed in the linguistic arena, language is pliable and we can reframe our experiences through different uses of language.

With this in mind, we could stop insisting on ‘working hard’ or ‘doing the hard work‘ to achieve something and just work.

This might make things a bit easier, getting us to the ‘finish line‘ with a little less stress, a little more motivation and maybe, a little more fun and enjoyment along the way as the ‘working hard’ versus ‘work’ images linked above illustrate.

Written in my studio/office while listening to Slavic Trap Music.

Best thing I read online last week.