Googleverse; Competence; Rabbit holes
Issue #358
💡Think
Hey everyone 👋,
When it comes to growth, you really can’t replace the net positives of trying something out. I’m asked daily what the “best practice” is for something design related, before discovering what isn’t working or what needs to be improved. Without an established zero, we can’t move upwards!
“Have you tried it out yet?” is the easiest response to someone who is stuck, or spinning their wheels, because it forces movement in a direction. Moving in a direction is way more beneficial to getting through block periods than sitting still.
Similarly, planning ad infinitum is a surefire way to ensure that those wheels continue to spin, and we move nowhere. Aligning on a strict goal and agreeing on the loose steps to achieve it may be all you need, rather than trying to predict every step along the way; typically ending with projects that run over budget and over time due to the detailed plan missing key edge cases.
📷 Look
📖 Read
❶ The end of the Googleverse?
Do you still search with Google every time you want to find something? Or do you go direct to a website, pop over to a social network, or use some shiny artificially intelligent engine? This article is part throwback to the early internet, and part analysis on just how the internet is shifting in tone.
❷ The illusion of competence
This article mostly talks about the Dunning Kruger effect, but has a few great examples to explain how we all suck at estimating how good or bad we are at things. There’s a particularly funny one about a thief tho covered himself in lemon juice to try and be invisible to security cameras. You don’t wanna miss it.
Read this article
❸ Few people are falling down the YouTube rabbit hole
Remember when YouTube was the place to birth bad behaviour? The endless recommendations that in honest hands was harmless, but in bad hands ended with, well, 2016. In 2019 they started a project which has seemingly worked! Extremism rates are down on the site, which is pretty impressive. This is an article about what went before and where we are now.
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Bonus round
An article about the importance of “feeling it” in making product / design decisions
🎧 Listen
Stop setting goals
This is a short and snappy Ted X talk from an ex-professional American footballer about how setting goals can tee us up for falling short of what we are capable of. This is because we see the goal as having a clear end, rather than trying to incrementally improve upwards all the time, and achieving smaller milestones along the way. I dig it.
Listen to this podcast (11 minutes)
Spotify – Apple
Have a great week,
@disco_lu