HAR replay matches URL and HTTP method strictly. For POST requests, it also matches POST payloads strictly. If multiple recordings match a request, the one with the most matching headers is picked. An entry resulting in a redirect will be followed automatically.
Because the OpenAI retrieve run endpoint has the same URL through all polling calls, the Playwright network does not know how to differentiate between them.
Solution: custom header
But wait a minute! If you look closely at the docs:
If multiple recordings match a request, the one with the most matching headers is picked.
Can we introduce “most matching header” ourselves? In the most naive implementation, we would just iterate a counter on each request and add it as a header.
Here its overriding the default OpenAI fetch implementation to provide an extra header:
const newOpenai = new OpenAI( { apiKey: accessKey, dangerouslyAllowBrowser: true, fetch: async (url, init ) => { // We are overriding fetch to add request counter header so that we can differentiate between polling requests in tests. if ( ! window.reqCounter ) { window.reqCounter = 0; } window.reqCounter++; init.headers['x-req-counter'] = window.reqCounter; return fetch(url, init); }, } ); const newThread = await newOpenai.beta.threads.create();
Now, playwright sees these as distinct requests and retrieves appropriate ones from the HAR file.
Howdy to 104th issue of Deliberate Internet – my newsletter combining nuanced perspectives on Remote Work, Technology, Psychology, and other latest obsessions.
Sometimes, I feel like productivity influencers are running a grift to make “productivity” more complicated than it needs to be.
You don’t need a whole morning routine of journaling, gratitude, and meditation.
You don’t need to do a workout before work.
You don’t need to set up your workstation, adjust ten monitors, and measure the angle of your chair with a ruler purchased from Switzerland.
It is sometimes more important to keep up momentum, than it is to go through your 12-item morning checklist.
Sure, preparation pays off, and doing stuff deliberately – even more so. But – and I can hardly type these words – you actually can be too Deliberate.
Preparation becomes an excuse to endlessly fine-tune the process, to get the mental game so right that the work does not even need to be done at all.
Guess what!
The work needs to be done. The more you put it out, the more of a chore it becomes. Just do the ting. I won’t rat you out to productivity influencers.
Jakob’s approach to productivity seems more elaborate than presented above, but still quite simple:
“Do what you feel like”
More specifically, he recommends keeping lists of stuff you can do in different frames of mind. Instead of fighting with your current mental state by weaponizing the morning routine, he recommends just going with the flow.
Step 1: develop meta-awareness of your state of mind.
Step 2: pattern-match to identify your mind’s most common modes.
Step 3: learn to pick activities that match each mode.
Trying to force yourself to do a task that is not a good fit for your current state of mind is not only a poor use of time but actually counter-productive
Adam takes us on a deep dive into the science of great conversations. He reminds us to leave a lot of doorknobs – statements that our conversation partners can grab on to, get excited about, and branch the discussion in a completely new direction.
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system
Welcome to the first “Deliberate Internet” issue of 2024. I hope this will be your most deliberate year so far 🌟.
Programming note: You might have noticed this issue of Deliberate Internet looks a bit different, as I have migrated my substack to WordPress.com
Like every year, I reflected on the previous one. I highly recommend the practice as you get to course-correct or relive the best moments again.
I took my notes, Google Photos, and calendar to see the enjoyable things each month and what activities I would like to avoid. There were no surprises when it came to the types of activities bringing me joy: meeting friends, cycling, water sports, spending time in nature, and building cool stuff constantly delivered.
Additionally, I enjoyed months where I got to do a lot of stuff, and I was most annoyed by the liminal moments – waiting, getting around, and getting shit together. All those momentum killers.
The science of momentum
Momentum is the energy (in physics, the kinetic one). It is the flow of things where one thing happens after another without much effort. Once you get a flywheel going, you need less effort to do the next thing:
Each following sentence flows easily when writing
The next step comes naturally when running
You follow the next idea when indulging in your curiousity.
You find it less daunting to invite one more friend to a party
Momentum is not only about keeping up speed. It’s about aligning yourself with what you want done:
You are now a person who writes
You are a person who is intellectually curious
You are a person who runs
The energy you get out of momentum is also keeping you happy and even alive.
Unused muscles atrophy, underutilized brains turn to apathy, and unrealized potential turns people bitter.
The hardest part is the start
Starting is the hardest. Once you start, momentum keeps you going – in fitness, diet, reading a book, or being that sort of a person.
Everything else is compounding
Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.
Albert Einstein
Momentum is so powerful because it lets you exploit compound growth in any area of life:
You work out
You see results
You feel good
You work out more
Compound growth is typically talked about in terms of investing, but this newsletter is a momentum / compounding hack. I created a weekly loop ( which sometimes breaks, like over the last few months ) to keep up my curiosity and share my thoughts.
The more I write, the more ideas I have, the more feedback I get from you – the more I can refine them.
Negative momentum
Momentum also can be negative.
We often do things we regret because we built up momentum:
We binge-watch entire TV show in one sitting
We eat way too much
We scroll tiktoks all day
A reframing of rest
During my sabbatical I decided to “rest”, so I stopped writing for a while. I now regret losing my momentum in being intellectually curious. It has been hard to start again, and the longer I waited, the more problems piled up, the longer I waited.
The first rule of compounding is to never interrupt it unnecessarily
Charlie Munger
We all assume you need “rest” to be healthy and sane, so we deliberately kill momentum and I am not sure that is good.
Regardless if we talk about work, busy social schedule or a diet, its useful to think of rest in fitness terms. When you are going to gym a lot, you need:
Recovery to deal with the negative side effects of whatever momentum we are keeping up
Leg Day – or a focus on different area to enjoy a full range of human motion or experience: reading a book, meeting with friends, swim in the lake.
A whole day of scrolling tiktoks will only leave you tired and frustrated.
Optimize for momentum, and everything else will take care of itself.
A few things I’ve read
This week, I’m sending you only one thing to read. But it’s a good one!
“How to do great work” by Paul Graham explores all the factors and implications you should consider when endeavoring to achieve something great.
If you collected lists of techniques for doing great work in a lot of different fields, what would the intersection look like? I decided to find out by making it.
(…)
If you asked an oracle the secret to doing great work and the oracle replied with a single word, my bet would be on “curiosity.”
Paul’s essays are impossible to summarize, so instead, I’m going to point out the overlap with the science of momentum:
Momentum is about keeping the pace of iteration.
Great things are almost always made in successive versions. You start with something small and evolve it, and the final version is both cleverer and more ambitious than anything you could have planned.
Momentum also keeps you prolific. You do stuff, you try a lot and you learn. By trying more you have more shots at discovering something about yourself or your ideas:
Being prolific is underrated. The more different things you try, the greater the chance of discovering something new. Understand, though, that trying lots of things will mean trying lots of things that don’t work. You can’t have a lot of good ideas without also having a lot of bad ones
Here is a list of experiences I particularly enjoyed in 2023. You might sense a thread here! And not technically a lot of stuff.
Waterfalls in Lauterbrunnen
We stayed at Camping Jungrau in the valley Lauterbrunnen. It’s one of the deepest in the Alps and has multiple waterfalls on its steep walls. I spent the whole seven days staring blankly, to the continued amusement of my wife.
Windsurfing and a hidden waterfall in Riva del Garda
Yes, another waterfall. Close to an abandoned hotel on the shores of Lago di Garda, there is a hidden waterfall behind the bridge. You can swim with a kayak or Stand-Up Paddleboard.
Riva is also a perfect place for Windsurfing, as the wind is steady and predictable.
Biking with Ewa
We bought a foldable Thule Courier bike trailer for our baby, but it can also convert into a dog trailer.
I love riding around with Ewa, but I gotta admit steep hills are much tougher when you’re pulling 20kg behind you. I hope for more bike trips with my girl in 2024.
The eBike helped me with the grueling 1000m vertical climb, with some energy spare to get me back. It always blows me away, and I’m buying one as soon as I have space to store it. This means that I have to build a house, but more on that later this year.
My absolute favorite places to park are ski campgrounds in the Dolomites, with huge sauna complexes, ample swimming pools, and breathtaking views.
Meetups
Oh how I missed meetups! This year, I met my coworkers in Vienna, New York, Berlin and Munich. My favorite ones are the big events where you get to meet people from different parts of the company and reminisce on those projects you did together six years ago.
Because most of my meetups were in Europe this year, I may lose my gold status :(.
Posting my Family to Times Square
You can pay 40USD to post your photo for 30 seconds in Times Square. Yes, I did.
Grill life
We decide to test-drive real country life and bought a proper gas grill to throw a huge party. I turned out to be such a success, that we decided to build a house around that grill.
Join me in a rant against the “minimalist aesthetic”.
When we were decorating our first apartment, my wife and I sought the help of a professional indoor architect. We declared ourselves minimalists and proceeded to list many, many, many minimalist items we would like to have in said apartment. We never got that secret room behind the cupboard.
We love our apartment, but all the things we actually enjoy are not minimalist at all – the chicken on the wall, or the rainbow strip with 900+ LEDs.
Now, we are preparing to build a house together, we don’t consider ourselves minimalists anymore. Furthermore, we feel cheated into pretending to be ones.
Minimalism as an overreaction to consumerism
As our parents and grandparents enjoyed the spoils of capitalism, industrial production, and the most prosperous period in human history, they had to learn how to deal with the world of abundance. Everybody could have bought anything. So they did.
Gadgets, clothes, and home decor in every conceivable flavor became affordable faster than good taste, and responsible consumer behaviors managed to catch up. Our homes became cluttered messes of stuff fast. We needed a solution.
Enter “minimalism.”
The textbook minimalism can be understood as making do with bare necessities. Buy only what you really need, and use what you have.
Marie Kondo, the guru of minimalism, has a useful “does it spark joy” heuristic:
In the KonMari Method™, your feelings are the standard for decision-making – specifically, knowing what sparks joy. To determine this when tidying, the key is to pick up each object one at a time, and ask yourself quietly, “Does this spark joy?” Pay attention to how your body responds. Joy is personal, so everyone will experience it differently; Marie describes it as “…a little thrill, as if the cells in your body are slowly rising.”
Through the process of selecting only those things that inspire joy, you can identify precisely what you love – and what you need.
The concept is not new. William Morriss, of the “Arts and crafts” movement born in the 1800s in opposition to industrial production, expressed this as:
Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
So far, the ideas make sense: buy only things I care about and decorate my home only with aesthetics that I really love.
No excess, no showing off, only timeless beauty and joy.
And we get:
Does this spark joy? Is it beautiful?
The gray-white look is sold as “clean”, “modern”, and the best antidote to visual clutter and the aggressive decor of your grandma.
When we try to look under the “clean and modern” non-descriptors, we really cannot find anything more substantial. It’s because that look is all about absence.
It’s about avoiding cringe, commitment to any particular style, and not risking ridicule.
It is not a style, but the absence of style, and in particular – avoiding choices, avoiding developing your own taste, and avoiding putting effort into your environment.
It is the highest expression of treating your surroundings as a commodity – essentially something that you will not care about.
So…. how does it spark joy?
The things that truly spark joy are being used, cared about, and improved over time. You cannot buy a lovely home straight from the catalog.
Do not be tricked into believing that modern decor must be slick or psychedelic, or “natural” or “modem art,” or “plants” or anything else that current taste-makers claim. It is most beautiful when it comes straight from your life—the things you care for, the things that tell your story.
(…)
But the irony is, that the visitors who come into a room don’t want this nonsense any more than the people who live there. It is far more fascinating to come into a room which is the living expression of a person, or a group of people, so that you can see their lives, their histories, their inclinations, displayed in manifest form around the walls, in the furniture, on the shelves.
-Christopher Alexander, “A pattern language” considered the bible of architecture.
“minimalism” is the highest expression of mass production
I am using “minimalism” in apostrophes because the idea of genuinely caring about a few things got coopted into a philosophy of removing everything worth caring about.
It is easier to mass-produce, sell, and market an “aesthetic” that raises no objections, because it is supposedly for everybody, in every context, from any material.
The intellectual roots of Minimalism lie in cubism, purism, and constructivism – finding the one purpose, the true soul of an item, and exaggerating it. But the reality of “minimalism” is about selling more crap that can be produced more cheaply.
People need affordable, mass-produced homes. Not every place needs to be cared for, and not everybody has time to work on turning their home into an expression of a unique taste.
We should aspire to have some places that spark joy, are worth caring for, and are built with style. “minimalism“ is not that style.
“minimalism” is only a symptom of a larger issue. In a fantastic deep dive, Alex Murrell shows how cars, landscapes, brands, interiors, people, and media are all getting similar. Fast Company has coined the term the “blanding”:
The worst branding trend (…) is the one you probably never noticed. I call it blanding. The main offenders are in tech, where a new army of clones wears a uniform of brand camouflage. The formula is sort of a brand paint-by-numbers. Start with a made-up-word name. Put it in a sans-serif typeface. Make it clean and readable, with just the right amount of white space. Use a direct tone of voice. Nope, no need for a logo. Maybe throw in some cheerful illustrations. Just don’t forget the vibrant colors. Bonus points for purple and turquoise. Blah blah blah.
So, this is your call to arms. Whether you’re in film or fashion, media or marketing, architecture, automotive or advertising, it doesn’t matter. Our visual culture is flatlining and the only cure is creativity
The advocates of the new minimalism are, by and large, urban dwellers, tied to stratospheric real estate markets in prime locations
(…)
So “buy experiences, not things” is less a bold new philosophy than a mere rationalization of life choices that people have already been forced to adopt
(…)
There are experience-like things; like a basement carpentry workshop or a fine collection of loose-leaf tea. And there are thing-like experiences, like an Instagrammable vacation that collects a bunch of likes but soon fades from memory
A little background on false memories and a rant about paper straws.
The AI models have a well-documented behavior where they would return plausible-looking responses that are effectively “made up”. We call them hallucinations:
The human brain is much more adept at remembering pieces of information than remembering where those pieces came from. In particular, it can easily confuse fiction with facts and treat hearsay as proof.
Many people will defend an “irrational” stance because the questionable media they consume become part of their lived experience. They can remember manufactured stories as happening to them because of source monitoring errors.
Source monitoring mechanism evolved in the times when the only fiction around was stories told near a fire. As such, the richness of the memory is an important cue:
Our brain count on the real memories (contrary to the imagined ones) typically having more texture, details, smells, colors, and other sensory data. Real memories also tend to include more emotion (according to what is called “encoding specificity rule”).
Why AI Hallucinates
An LLM equivalent of Source Monitoring is “Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback” – a process where people would spot-check some responses of the model and provide feedback. Reducing hallucinations is only one concern, and naturally -not all facts in the model can be checked.
LLMs do not have an internal tagging mechanism distinguishing produced tokens as coming from fictional sources or facts. But this is not a limitation of AI – we wouldn’t even know how to label all the content ourselves.
The fact that LLMs hallucinate is not an example of their inferiority – it’s a very human behavior. A one that we have failed to eradicate in humans.
A few things I’ve read
Bad UI Battles
Aleksandr has collected some of the best/worst UX from the BadUIBattles reddit, where designers compete to create the worst UX possible.
The paper was the short straw of the bunch, with chemicals detected in 90 percent of the brands tested. PFAs were found in 80 percent of bamboo straws, 75 percent of plastic straws, 40 percent of glass straws, and none of the steel straws. If you’re keeping score at home, steel was clearly the safest.
I hate paper straws so much that I carry a silicone rubber straw with me during the summer so that I can enjoy my espresso tonic without the depressing mushiness of the paper one. I prefer silicone over steel because it’s easier to carry without poking a hole in my pocket or somebody’s eye.
I checked the original study, and while I didn’t find any information about my favorite material, I got more bad news:
The presence of PFAS in plant-based straws shows that they are not necessarily biodegradable and that the use of such straws potentially contributes to human and environmental exposure of PFAS.
Get a steel straw now, put it in your glove compartment, and thank me in 5 months.
This is the 100th issue of my Newsletter, Deliberate Internet. Congratulations to me! I have now made it as a writer.
A friend asked me what I get out of this whole newsletter business. It struck me as an excellent question to ponder, and try to answer in this 100th issue.
Reasons to Write
The upside is limitless; the downside is just a sprinkle of embarrassment.
– David Perrell, Write of Passage.
Writing hones your thinking. It is quality assurance for your thoughts.
Whenever I set out to pack for a business trip or vacation, I am always surprised that my shirts need ironing, my cables are all over the place, and my sweater is half-eaten by clothesworms.
I always underestimate how much work it will take to get my stuff properly packaged, cleaned, prepared, and packed for travel.
It is the same with your ideas before you set out to write them down. You may think you have great insights and coherent thoughts, but only after examining them up close, can you review their state, mend their inconsistencies, and ensure they support the point you are trying to make.
The linear structure of the page requires you to explain your reasoning clearly and persuasively. The form factor of a page, blog post, or newsletter enables specific and actionable feedback to improve your process and thoughts.
The more you write, the more you get average ideas out of the way.
Inside all of us, a teenager is trying to make the obvious point. Some ideas just need to be heard. After you write them down, you can move on to more complex ones.
Regular writing practice lets you flush out these more obvious ideas so you don’t repeatedly annoy your friends with the same truisms.
Writing turns chaos into a coherent narrative.
I use writing to manage my ADHD. My brain usually jumps all over the place in a way understandable only for myself and only on a good day.
The page provides an anchor and a strand to weave my thoughts. Once I package them, I can try and explain them to others.
Reasons to Publish what you write.
Thinking is a multiplayer sport.
Every idea builds on a previous one and can lead to something better when improved upon.
The entire history of humanity is a series of individuals building, improving, and verifying the ideas of others.
Progress is not moved forward by the divine inspiration of hermits hiding in caves but by a dialectic process of confronting ideas with reality (or other thinkers), fixing the issues, and facing them again.
If you want to be part of that history of progress, you have to publish your ideas, so others can find them.
Finding your Tribe
Your thoughts are YOU. Once you polish and unleash them into the world – they become a magnet for like-minded people. You can lead with the idea to discover who’s interested in it.
Just plant your flag in the ground and let like-minded people find you.
A digital postcard
Your writing does not have to be very popular to spark fascinating conversations.
I treat my newsletter as a digital postcard sent to my friends, and it brings me the utmost joy when a friend I know from high school or work brings up a point I made three months ago, and we can continue the discussion in person.
Sharing your writing gives your friends more “pickup lines” to reach out.
Increasing the Luck Surface Area
Putting yourself out there increases luck surface area. A friend of a friend can share your writing with a potential employer. A subscriber can reach out to meet for a coffee when he is in town. Somebody who you met once may be into the same things, but it failed to come up when you met.
Luck requires help. By publishing, you can cast a wider net.
Digital immortality
A few issues ago, I made a point about being included in the AI training data:
Large Language Models (the AI stuff) are essentially compressed knowledge of humanity. In particular, knowledge it can get its digital hands on. And it can most easily get to anything published on the Internet. This would mean that writing on the Internet is your best bet for preserving your thoughts through time and – essentially – achieving immortality.
I highly recommend the Write of Passage course as the best resource focusing on the inner game of writing online.
ChatGPT that talks like you is in equal parts awesome and annoying. Last week, when we wanted to make Kimchi, ChatGPT laid returned recipe full of Garlic and Bad Puns:
I will spare you the longer parts, but I am particularly proud of ChatGPT absolutely ignoring work-life balance, and mixing metaphors into a thick paste:
Emanuel Maggiori shares his shocking struggle, and failure in trying to get something done in a big tech environment:
I soon realized that the project was overstaffed and most people were pretending to work. And I also realized that that was the job I was hired to do; my job was to pretend. If this had been the only time this ever happened to me, I would consider it an anomaly. Unfortunately, this has been the case with almost every tech job I’ve had for years
He goes on to explain the business reasons, management structure, and the scrum religion that leads to thousands and thousands of employees being paid to not really work at all.
This thread serves as a fantastic illustration to the above points.
It is very hard for technical managers to handle productive employees, so in the name of control and predictability, they will sabotage their productivity:
Tynan explains his home automation setup in great detail. I took plenty of notes, especially since I am gearing up for a home renovation project.
They also might seem pointless— why not just flip a few switches? The main reason is that to generate a really nice atmosphere you might need to set 4–5 lights to specific brightnesses and even colors, so you just won’t do it. It’s also just really nice to have everything set right all the time. When I walk into my office in the morning, the shades are already open. The hot tub turns off and saves money when my wife and I are both outside of Vegas. The AC also goes into vacation mode automatically. When we come home, everything is set back how it should be. In the early days I wondered if things were even working because I never saw any lights off. It’s nice to know that all the doors are locked when you’re sleeping, rather than have to check them all.
A long time ago, we used to make nice doors. I wouldn’t even know where to find such a beauty now, and I am wondering how hard would it be to build a pair on my own.
I have a great take on AI and Hallucinations, but I decided you need some rest from my insightful AI-related commentary. So here is an issue WITHOUT AI (more and more rare in all things these days).
There is a Japanese term, 三日坊主/mikka bouzu, which translates to “three-day priest”, used for people who start a new thing with fervor and enthusiasm, only to get bored and quit a few days later.
Do you have friends like that? Are you sometimes like that? I know I am!
I am a bit fascinated by the organizational culture at Apple. You can make obvious criticisms about their products, but they have shipped consistent quality at an enormous scale for decades (which the market recognizes).
Seeing how hard it is to ensure the quality of your software at a larger organization, it impresses me to no end how Apple can do so. Andrea Pacheco uncovers some of the secrets in his post:
Projects get built when enough people believe in them. From small talks to elaborating decisions to VP presentations. The way we speak, project ourselves and elaborate our thoughts is fundamental for getting consensus, influencing people, and moving things forward.
Oh yeah, the hidden labor of innovation. Getting stakeholder buy-in is probably the most overlooked cost in shipping your stuff. It sounds excruciating, but then Andrea follows up with the insight that the famously restrictive top-down culture is the way to solve this problem:
How many times in a bottom-up culture, do we spend weeks and weeks, sometimes even months, trying to get alignment with +10 people, because every single person needs to agree with the point of view? It is exhausting
As an employee in a bottom-up culture organization, it is exhausting indeed.
To illustrate how impressive Apple looks, Austen has a great thread about the industry baseline:
As startups grow there is an extremely strong pull into what I call the death spiral of bullshit. More people → more teams → more buy-in required → more meetings → being persuasive rewarded more than building → builders leave → nothing gets done I’m growing convinced that the single most important cultural aspect of a company is if/how they avoid this spiral
The remedies he lists are particularly interesting, as I have settled on exactly the same list by randomly experimenting:
Things I’ve seen work:
– Teams as small as possible
– Extremely high talent bars
– Explicit decision-maker + disagree and commit
– Permission assumed in all things
– High tolerance for the (good) failure
– High tolerance for (good/non-infra) technical debt
– Zero tolerance for not being in details
The ideas of small teams and even encouraging some technical debt are the hardest to sell.
I may write a whole essay praising technical debt since the efforts to unconditionally avoid it usually backfire and rot into complexity, scope creep, and multi-month delays. When the stakeholders finally demand results, projects are haphazardly shipped and produce more technical debt than a comparable, non-perfect solution.
Hard to locate sounds
When an ambulance is trying to get through traffic, you are supposed to let it pass. But whenever I hear one, I have great trouble pinpointing where it is coming from, especially at the intersection.
I was under the impression that I’m the only one, but it turns out there is an explanation for why ambulance siren or smoke detector beep is so hard to pinpoint:
HRTF (head relative transfer function) gets much of the information from differential results across frequencies. A rich tone is better than a sine wave, and a human voice going “Hey!” Would be even easier to find.
Found a person who’s growing their own tool handles by placing the tool heads over small branches & allowing them to grow in place over the span of a few years
This is the correct pace of life & the ideal orientation towards work
Stop offering up advice with a question mark attached. That doesn’t count as asking a question
“The Coaching Habit” by Michael Bungay Stanier offers a practical framework for managers aiming to develop a coaching habit rather than jumping to provide solutions. By engaging in meaningful conversations and asking the right questions, managers help their team members find their own solutions, fostering greater self-reliance and reducing overdependence. This aligns with the recognition that people learn more effectively through reflection on their actions rather than being spoon-fed answers. The book advocates for a shift from a directive stance to a more empowering one, allowing team members to explore, learn, and grow, thereby adding value not just to the task at hand but to their overall development.
Creating a habit of coaching people instead of jumping into solutions
The book argues against a common managerial tendency to provide ready-made solutions, recognizing that although it may offer short-term relief, it cultivates a culture of over-dependence and can overwhelm the manager in the long term.
People don’t really learn when you tell them something. They don’t even really learn when they do something. They start learning, start creating new neural pathways, only when they have a chance to recall and reflect on what just happened.
You’ve spent years delivering advice and getting promoted and praised for it. You’re seen to be “adding value” and you’ve the added bonus of staying in control of the situation.
it’s not enough just to get things done. You have to help people do more of the work that has impact and meaning. (Location 173)
It is nice to know that I was not the only manager with a predisposition to jump straight into solutions.
7 Questions
The book lists seven particularly good questions to use:
The Kickstart Question: “What’s on Your Mind?”
The AWE Question: “And What Else?”
the first answer someone gives you is almost never the only answer, and it’s rarely the best answer.
When you use “And what else?” you’ll get more options and often better options.
What’s the Real Challenge Here for You? (Location 636)
The Foundation Question: “What Do You Want?”
How Can I Help?
If You’re Saying Yes to This, What Are You Saying No To?
“So, what was most useful here for you?”
My other highlights
Ask One Question at a Time
INSTEAD OF… Adding another question. And then maybe another question, and then another, because after all, they’re all good questions and I’m really curious as to what their answers are… I WILL… Ask just one question. (And then be quiet while I wait for the answer.)
the Small Talk Tango, the Ossified Agenda, or the Default Diagnosis.
Coaching for performance is about addressing and fixing a specific problem or challenge.
Coaching for development is about turning the focus from the issue to the person dealing with the issue, the person who’s managing the fire.
A challenge might typically be centred on a project, a person or a pattern of behaviour.
When you’re talking about people, though, you’re not really talking about them. You’re talking about a relationship and, specifically, about what your role is in this relationship that might currently be less than ideal.
Even though we don’t really know what the issue is, or what’s going on for the person, we’re quite sure we’ve got the answer she needs.
When someone’s told you about a course of action she intends to take, challenge her with “And what else could you do?”
“And what else is a challenge here for you?”
When you start your weekly check-in meeting by asking, “What’s important right now?” keep the pressure on by asking, “And what else?”
“And what else?” works so well because it keeps people generating options and keeps you shut up. So the trigger here is the opposite of that. It’s when someone has given you an
So it seems that committing to an answer and then having a chance to reflect on it creates greater accuracy.
So you’ve mastered the fake question.
If you’ve got an idea, wait. Ask, “And what else?” and you’ll often find that the person comes up with that very idea that’s burning a hole in your brain.
When people start talking to you about the challenge at hand, what’s essential to remember is that what they’re laying out for you is rarely the actual problem.
“If you had to pick one of these to focus on, which one here would be the real challenge for you?”
Quite often there’s talk about “us” and “we,” but there’s no talk of “me” and “I.”
Learn to recognize the moment when you ask the question and there’s a pause, a heartbeat of silence when you can see the person actually thinking and figuring out the answer. You can almost see new neural connections being made. (Location 720)
Reframe the question so it starts with “What.” So, as some examples, instead of “Why did you do that?” ask “What were you hoping for here?”
You can see there are many reasons that the ship of “What do you want?” might never make it out of the harbour.
George Bernard Shaw put it succinctly when he said, “The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
“What do you want?” is an extraordinarily strong question. Its power is amplified when you not only ask the question of the person you’re working with but also answer the question for yourself.
In other words, start with the end in mind rather than (as often happens) collapsing the “what” of the outcome with the “how” of the next steps and immediately getting discouraged.
Get Comfortable with Silence
INSTEAD OF… Filling up the space with another question or the same question just asked a new way or a suggestion or just pointless words… I WILL… Take a breath, stay open and keep quiet for another three seconds.
that when you offer to help someone, you “one up” yourself:
“Just so I know…” or “To help me understand better…” or even “To make sure that I’m clear…”
“What do you think I should do about…?” is the cheddar on the mousetrap.
“That’s a great question. I’ve got some ideas, which I’ll share with you. But before I do, what are your first thoughts?”
Actually Listen to the Answer
Yet rattling around in your head is a riot of distraction. Perhaps you’re worrying about what question you should ask next. Perhaps you’re thinking about how to get this whole conversation wrapped up as fast as possible. Perhaps you’re wondering whether it’s your turn to cook tonight, and whether you have enough garlic in the cupboard or if perhaps you should pick some up on the way home. In any case, the wheel is spinning but the hamster is dead.*
“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”
Bill “Mr. Simplicity” Jensen taught me that the secret to saying No was to shift the focus and learn how to say Yes more slowly.
For instance, if you write down someone’s request on a bit of paper or a flip chart, you can then point to it and say, “I’m afraid I have to say No to this,” which is a little better than “I’m afraid I have to say No to you.” Say Yes to the person, but say No to the task.
What is our winning aspiration?
Where will we play?
How will we win?
What capabilities must be in place?
What management systems are required?
Remember to acknowledge the person’s answers before you leap to the next “And what else?”
“What Was Most Useful for You?”
Your job as a manager and a leader is to help create the space for people to have those learning moments.
Winston Churchill said that people “occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.”
“Before I jump into a longer reply, let me ask you: What’s the real challenge here for you?”
Too much certainty, thinking you know the destination and the path to get there
