Norman Tran

…entional here: I put down any new commitments, and review existing ones to get a sense of the week. My rule of thumb is to look two weeks into the past, for anything I need to follow up on, and 4 weeks into the future, for anything I need to start preparing for.

…amount of “reserves” we have at any given time is primarily a result of our perception (appraisal). This would imply that we can increase our psychological capital just by seeing things differently.

… not just shallow or nefarious ones — for why things are the way they are. And always remember that every solution brings new problems. Related to this is the fact that all problems have many solutions; in the words of Karl Popper, “W…

…hen evaluating an industry, commercial practice, cultural tradition, social norm, or anything else, start with trying to understand why its evolved, what problems it was the solution to, before doodling out your revolutionary improvement. Assume there are reasons — and not just shallo…

…nt; the fact that they have no profile and therefore you can’t be searched and judged by others is. We should try to learn more about business, sociology, psychology, economics, and technological history than we maybe thought we should! If we understand how development works (and fails), how people form mental models, and what the mos…

The application gave me license to be whole and authentic. I was pleasantly surprised to hear my answers referenced later in conversations with team members.

…y. And he has a great thought from one of his books that just made me laugh out loud. He says that “Procrastination is the most useful, or one of the most useful human thought processes.” I mean, imagine a world where we had no procrastination. If there was no procrastination, you woul…

D: Yeah, as I say, the line between intuitive holding and procrastination is very thin. My definition of procrastination is, you’re not doing something but you’re feeling bad you’re not doing it. As opposed to “Hmm, I don’t feel like doing it right now.” And that’s not procrastination. That’s m…

And I find that that applies very much to knowledge work. We are in denial, many of us, if we have no time-tracking habit, we’re in denial about how much time things take. About how much time it takes to think, and to plan, to prepare, and to debrief afterwards. And I think I’ve just been able to be more realistic about things.