Paved With Good Intentions

For the last two years I've kept a red soft-cover Moleskine notebook with me at almost all times. It's in this notebook that I invest a bunch of time every Sunday night planning out the coming week by hand. I use a page-per-day method. I find that the physical tax of re-writing items you don't get done, combined with the limit of a single page per day makes for a surprisingly effective productivity workflow. 

When I worked at Amazon, I learnt the benefit of writing to a fixed document length: either 1 page or 6 pages and nothing in between -- and always as a narrative! In this episode of Paved With Good Intentions I'll talk about the benefits of this writing style for the author and the reader. The amount of clarity you gain around your own thinking, and the improvement in your ability to concisely communicate it worth every minute spent writing documents using this method.

This video is based on these two articles:

https://jameswilson.io/the-importance-of-writing/
https://jameswilson.io/my-writing-process/

I'm often asked, "How can I get started in software development?" My reply is always, "Find a problem you wish to solve, and then learn just enough to solve that problem." Learning by identifying and solving problems that are meaningful to the learner avoids endless learning without doing, and provides the motivation to keep going in the face of challenges presented by ambiguity and unfamiliarity. Best of all, it builds confidence along side capabilities. 

Rapidly evolving languages, frameworks and paradigms mean that when we look back on old code we instinctively want to rewrite it -- because now we know a better way to implement it! However, rewriting code is almost always an anti-pattern that overburdens teams and results in burn-out. Incremental progress toward a desired end state is the antidote.

This video is based on an article that I wrote here:

https://jameswilson.io/never-rewrite/

A relentless pursuit of simplicity is the discipline to say no to an idea despite the potential it might hold, a dedication to simplicity for the end user despite the difficulty in delivering that, and the vigilance to divest non-core activities and reclaim those resources to power innovation of your core product. 

Mental Models allow us to step inside the mind of the user to uncover their intent, expectations and extenuating circumstances. The key to building a great app or service that your customers will love is to understand and leverage their mental model. 

This video is based on the article I wrote at https://jameswilson.io/mental-models/

When you walk out of the room after a difficult conversation, as the person delivering the message there are some follow up steps that are crucial to making sure your message drives the change you seek. For the person receiving the message, how you respond immediate after you walk out of the room will determine your ability to be successful from this point onward. 

This video is based on the article I wrote here: 

https://jameswilson.io/difficult-conversations/

When you walk in to deliver a difficult conversation, the most important thing you can do is to separate the problem from the individual. Explaining the problem you're seeking to resolve in terms of actions and outcomes, and staying away from insinuation of intent, avoids shame and instead puts the other person in a place where they can understand how to grow and learn from this. This is the second of three episodes on Difficult Conversations.

This video is based on an article I wrote here:

https://jameswilson.io/difficult-conversations/

It references the work by Dr. Brene Brown on Shame and Guilt:

https://brenebrown.com

We make difficult conversations so much worse for everyone by delaying, procrastinating, and ruminating. Don't delay, but do prepare. Own the message and deliver it with conviction. This is the first of 3 episodes on difficult conversations that will focus on preparing, being in the room and following up after a conversation. 

The video is based on the article I wrote here: 

https://jameswilson.io/difficult-conversations/

It references the following books:

https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking-Stakes-Edition/dp/0071771328

https://www.amazon.com/When-Things-Fall-Apart-Difficult-ebook/dp/B00BBXJH2C

Social Style is a typology framework that describes the four archetypal personalities in the workplace: driver, analytical, expressive and amiable. Learning about Social Style helped me identify weaknesses in my own leadership style and provided my colleagues and I with a language and understanding to improve our interactions. It's also quite powerful in a performance management scenario by allowing you to drive separation between the individual and the behavior as a factor of their social style.

This episode is based on an article I wrote here:

https://jameswilson.io/social-style/

And refers to the Social Style framework by TRACOM:

https://tracom.com/social-style-training/model