The Messy Middle

The most actionable advice I once heard was, when you find yourself distracted by technology or some other preoccupation while with your children or loved ones, pretend you’re forty years older and longing to have just one more moment with these people at this time in your life. It helps.

that you succeeded not because of what you know but despite what you don’t.

It is impossible to know how you come across to others. People see you through a very personal lens made up of their own experiences, insecurities, fears, and aspirations, just as you see others

frequent example I observe is the “people don’t use this” proclamation. While the raw number of customers using a particular feature can be easily measured, it is a meaningless stat without the context of how many total customers have the need for the feature, what percentage of them know about the feature, and what the usage patterns look like for other features. Despite the drama of a particular piece of data, you can’t make decisions until you understand how the data was collected and its full context.

Avoid too many measures, because the more numbers you’re tracking, the less attention you pay to any of them. Some teams I’ve worked with, especially in large companies, have built large digital dashboards of dozens of metrics that become the focus of every executive meeting

Was it something that could be “a first” or a “category killer”? He wanted to hold out for projects that could really redefine a category rather than keep him in a competitive space.

preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”
So said Dwight D. Eisenhower,

Your challenge is to create product experiences for two different mind-sets, one for your potential customers and one for your engaged customers. Initially, if you want your prospective customers to engage, think of them as lazy, vain, and selfish. Then for the customers who survive the first 30 seconds and actually come through the door, build a meaningful experience and relationship that lasts a lifetime

You want to see what people are saying about your content, and you’ll keep checking. Instagram’s activity feed is an example of what I’ve come to call “ego analytics”; it shows you what people are saying and strokes your ego after taking the risk to publish or share a creation of your own. The same goes for other apps, as well as gallery openings, press coverage, and book launches. We are all hardwired to tune in to what others are saying about us if given the opportunity to do so.

During these first 30 seconds of every new experience, people are lazy, vain, and selfish