Margins on digital documents
Word processors typically default to 1" margins. Before when most documents were eventually going to printed this made sense, but increasingly documents are only consumed »
Progress isn't linear
Progress is rarely consistent or predictable. Anyone who has spent time at the gym, running, or brainstorming ideas knows that progress comes in bursts. So, it's »
Assessments shouldn't allow for perfect scores
Assessments lose their potency when people can attain perfect scores. Rather than helping to discriminate between those who can demonstrate relevant competencies and those who cannot, »
Stress cases
Edge cases are annoying to fix; often they feel more like stumbling blocks than opportunities to improve the current solution to a problem. While this may »
Complaints are a measure of engagement
Customer complaints are a sign that a product needs improvement. Sometimes that's because a product doesn't work, but other times it's because users are pushing the »
Talking about work in social settings
I've noticed that people, as working adults, are rarely interested in hearing about professional accomplishments in social settings in the same way that they tend to »
Why confirmation matters
Web forms make it easy to collect information. They're particularly well-suited for surveys where individual submissions are less important than the overall corpus of data collected. »
Scripting is the new typing
When typewriters were new, typing was a marketable skill that could land you a job. If the main difference between candidates was that one could type, »
What not to measure
When you're unsure how to improve a key performance indicator, it's best not to measure it. While metrics are a great way to focus energy on »
The power of shadowing people
It's difficult to take direction from people when they don't fully understand what they're asking for. They tend to underestimate what's hard and what's easy, implicitly »