Hold That Thought
3 thoughtful finds every other Thursday to help you turn overthinking into forward thinking.
What we can learn from sunken ships
What we can learn from the Titanic, the Vasa and all your unfinished projects “Jacobsson already knew what needed to change. He simply hadn’t felt able to say so with sufficient authority until the failure was so large and so visible that a change of approach was essential. That’s a high price for an organisation to pay for a lesson its own people already knew.” — Lessons from the Vasa disaster My great great aunt's account of the sinking of the Titanic, as reported in the Fall River Evening...
“Jobs are just a silly phase work is going through”
“What matters is the process of getting [results]: the development and application of methods, the training of minds, the creation of people who know how to think about hard problems. If you hand that process to a machine, you haven't accelerated science. You've removed the only part of it that anyone actually needed.” — Minas Karamanis Existential box, by wenwenf_foto from pixabay. Hello Reader, This week I’ve been thinking about what it means to work. Here are three things on that theme to...
Marching backward into the future
“We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backward into the future.” — media theorist Marshal McLuhan. Rear view mirror, by Sinitta Leunen from Pexels. Hello Reader, This edition is a bit longer than usual. This week I've been thinking about how we got here. And where we're headed. Here are three streams of thought to help you turn overthinking into forward thinking, situated in the past, present and future: The past is complicated. We understand new things by looking at...
Craft on the mind
“Craft, to me, is the skill developed, applied, and made manifest through practice and discipline in the fabrication of a work of art. Could be a chair, a lasagna, a painting, a symphony, or a monologue.”— Nick Offerman, woodworker and co-host of NBC’s Making It Hold That Thought Using craft to think about what I want to say. Photo by me. Hello Reader, We did it! Lens Not Label is off to the publisher. Please come bask with us on LinkedIn and find out what's next. It's been a big week so far,...
The only thing that ever has
None of this is new. Only our future is. Graffiti on Stone Age petroglyphs in Namibia by Focus_on_Nature from Getty Images Signature Hello Reader, I've had my head-down these past two weeks, working on the final edit of our book, Lens Not Label. By the time I send the next newsletter, the final draft will be off to the publisher 😬 Here are three things I've been thinking about related to that: I've been thinking about how not-new this all is. Millennia before the Autism label was developed by...
Anthem for the Apocalypse
”I think that we [are] going to need ways to understand what we’re going through, and that means our idea of mind, too, is going to reinvent itself for this age.” — Umair Haque Image by Alfo Medeiros from Pexels. Hello Reader, These past two weeks I've been thinking about anxiety. My own, but others', too. With multiple catastrophes happening globally and locally (the word we're looking for here is polycrisis), I've strung together three things to turn overthinking into expert thinking…or...
Appreciating the role of the first pancake and other imperfect circles
We're all pancakes. Photo by Mae Mu on Unsplash Hello Reader, These past two weeks I've been thinking about models – as lenses, as metaphors, as roles I look up to. Here are three things on that theme to turn overthinking into expert thinking: On Copernicus, First Pancakes and Early-Wave Catchers — my thoughts as we chart a path through the universe of neurodivergence All Models Are Wrong (and Some Are Useful) — by Tom Geraghty at Psych Safety Appreciate Everything Endlessly — a delightful...
Getting a good heart unstuck
Leadership is about so much less than changing the world. Photo by alleksana from Pexels Hello Reader, This week I've been thinking about leadership and lollipop moments. Here are three things on that theme to turn overthinking into expert thinking: "As long as we make leadership about changing the world, we give ourselves an excuse to not expect it, from ourselves and from each other.” — Drew Dudley on Leading with Lollipops (6 min YouTube) “You start by realizing that nobody can clean up...
Getting back to the game
Free as a birdie Photo by Sóc Năng Động from Pexels Hello Reader, This week I've been thinking about what we need to get unstuck and get moving. Here are three things on that theme to turn overthinking into expert thinking: “Analysis happens in the realm of abstraction and infinite possibility. Action happens in the realm of the concrete and the constrained.” — How smart people stay stuck, by Joan Westenberg Whether or not you have kids, the struggle is real. Michael Thompson offers five...
Slightly off
Working While The Ground Shifts Underneath You The Presentable Slices: refreshed website, evolving book, half-painted office. Hello Reader, This week's newsletter is a bit different. Lots of change happening, mostly positive but nonetheless stressful. Maybe you can relate? For example, I'm working in an office that is currently half-painted; moving objects to one side while improving the other, all the while making sure the visible half looks presentable. (And that the chaos-side isn't too...
3 thoughtful finds every other Thursday to help you turn overthinking into forward thinking.