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Working Up in Project Management, Systems Engineering, Technology, and Writing

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Entries Tagged as 'Mistakes'

Hand Jamming

June 17th, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips When building systems, reduce the amount of intricate typing required by users. Sometimes we forget this and require too much hand jamming. I ran across the phrase “hand jamming” recently at work. I hadn’t heard that in years. I was happy to hear that some people still knew it and knew what […]

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Tags: Design · Error · Mistakes · Simple · Tools · User · Writing

Typing and Interruptions

April 11th, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Reducing the time spent typing on the keyboards reduces the number of interruptions. There are new tools that reduce both. I can type fairly fast. At least I give myself credit for that. Like everyone else, I am interrupted while typing. I could estimate number of interruptions per hour or some rate […]

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Tags: Artificial Intelligence · Improvement · Mistakes · Technology · Time · Tools · Writing

Do What Is Best (Or at Least Do What Is Better)

February 26th, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes, the better thing to do is let people do what they think is best or at least what they think is better on any given day. “We are a fill-in-the-blank organization. We use best fill-in-the-blank practices as described by fill-in-the-second-blank who described fill-in-the-blank in the seminal blog post on fill-in-the-blank,” said […]

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Tags: Decide · Management · Mistakes · People · Permission · Practice · Reaction

Student Driver

August 17th, 2023 · No Comments

By Dwayne Phillips Despite what I have noticed the past couple of years, declaring, “I’m just learning” does not allow us to do whatever we want. Earlier this year, I wrote about using Emergency Flashers to gain allowance to do whatever I want (not). I’ve noticed something similar with stickers on cars that say something […]

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Tags: Leadership · Learning · Management · Mistakes · Notice · Permission

Predicting the Future

June 15th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We predict the future poorly. We know we do. What we don’t seem to realize is how often we predict the future. We predict the future poorly. Very poorly. Very, very poorly. Which among us predicted ChatGPT would arrive? And then become that fastest adopted system ever? I am waiting. Okay, I […]

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Tags: Leadership · Learning · Management · Mistakes · Reframe

Whose Words?

May 1st, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips It is important to remember whose words we are discussing. If you mentioned something, we are discussing your words. If I mentioned something, we are discussing my words. There are ways to back away from our words. I read the words from the PowerPoint. They were wrong. Simply wrong. 1 + 2 […]

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Tags: Accountability · Communication · Humility · Learning · Meetings · Mistakes

Meta Mistakes

March 9th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Some of the worst mistakes I make are my mistakes about my mistakes and the corrections of my mistakes. Confused? Most of us are. We all make mistakes. Sorry to write that, but it is true. Then we make meta mistakes. These are mistakes about our mistakes and the corrections of our […]

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Tags: Accountability · Choose · Excuses · Leadership · Learning · Mistakes · Reaction

Not This Place and Time

February 23rd, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips The persons who are in this place at this time to decide this thing are usually in the wrong place and time and deciding the wrong thing. Let’s decide. We are the deciders. We are in the deciding position because at some time and place in the past we showed how well […]

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Tags: Choose · Decide · Learning · Mistakes · People · Time

Spilled Coffee

October 31st, 2022 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips I finally did it—I spilled a cup of coffee on my computer (first time ever over 40 years). A few lessons learned. After 40+ years of using my own personal computer, I spilled a cup of coffee on my current Apple MacBook Air. After a couple of hours, the coffee saturated the […]

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Tags: Accountability · Chaos · Cloud Computing · Computing · Failure · Humility · Learning · Mistakes

Mistakes and Learning

May 5th, 2022 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We all make mistakes. Some of us learn from some of our mistakes some of the time. The choice is ours. We all make mistakes. That is part of being imperfect humans. How many mistakes did I make this week? How about just this morning? (Forgot to bring my laptop’s power cord, […]

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Tags: Choose · Humility · Learning · Mistakes