I write almost every day in this blog. Some think i do this for money. No, a year's worth of blogging revenue is less than I make in a day with a client. So, I write for getting my name out there. No, I don't focus on marketing myself as most people don't even know what I do. So, why write? Because it gets me every day spending a bit of time, sometimes more than others, sometimes less, on thinking about what is going on in the industry that is worth writing about. This every day effort for the past 6 years has made it so it is natural for me to analyze and write what I observe. Part of observing is understanding how things work.
Reasoning from observations has been important to scientific practice at least since the time of Aristotle who mentions a number of sources of observational evidence including animal dissection (Aristotle(a) 763a/30–b/15, Aristotle(b) 511b/20–25). But philosophers didn't talk about observation as extensively, in as much detail, or in the way we have become accustomed to, until the 20th century when logical empiricists and logical positivists transformed philosophical thinking about it.
The first transformation was accomplished by ignoring the implications of a long standing distinction between observing and experimenting. To experiment is to isolate, prepare, and manipulate things in hopes of producing epistemically useful evidence. It had been customary to think of observing as noticing and attending to interesting details of things perceived under more or less natural conditions, or by extension, things perceived during the course of an experiment.
As a skill I have found being able to document the analysis process for my clients and myself is useful. Parts leak into this blog when I think it is useful to my friends and there is a public disclosure. Many times when I write I have specific people I am thinking about like the departed Olivier Sanche.
If you want to get good at something practicing every day, making mistakes, learning, and getting better is powerful. Here is an article in Fast Company on this idea.
WANT TO CONQUER A NEW SKILL? DO IT EVERY DAY
AT THE INTERSECTION OF PSYCHOLOGY AND PRODUCTIVITY LIES A SIMPLE TRUTH: TO DO SOMETHING WELL, YOU MUST EMBRACE QUANTITY.
...When you're learning a new skill--whether developing dance moves or websites--quantity is way more important than quality.
Why? Over at Medium, entrepreneur-essayist Herbert Lui expounds on expansion:
Quantity should be a higher priority than quality, because it leads to higher quality. The shorter path to maximized quality is in maximized quantity, and executing on the feedback after each finished product.
To put it into startup terms, you're making yourself maximally iterative. To put it into hardware, the idea is to get as many cycles as possible. To put it into workout terms, the idea is to get as many reps as possible. Try fast, fail fast, learn fast.
Why does the do-it-a-bunch technique work? Take it away, science:
- On average, an action becomes an "automatic" habit after 66 days of doing
- The subconscious mind rebels against big changes, but you can woo it with gradual shifts
- The more familiar a task is, the less scary it is. Cut to: public speaking for introverts,negotiating for non-negotiators