Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes it is better to see the Eiffel Tower from across town instead on being on the Eiffel Tower and seeing the slums.

I’ve seen many photographs of the great pyramids in Egypt. I have only seen a few photographs of the city next to the great pyramids. Yikes. I prefer the view of the pyramids from the slums. The same is true for the Eiffel Tower, the Washington Monument, and so on.

Do we want to see something from afar or be inside of it? We use systems at work. We have to be inside those systems to use them. What is the view from inside the systems? Let’s consider that when we build the systems. Does it look like a slum to the folks doing the real work? That shouldn’t be the case.

Who wants to see a slum eight hours a day? If we are going to spend a third of our life inside the systems, let’s improve the view.

by Dwayne Phillips

We aren’t as smart as we assume. Sometimes we need to do the simple things first before we move forward.

“Can we introduce ourselves before we start?” I asked at a meeting.

“No, we know each other here,” said the person presiding.

We introduced ourselves first. The person presiding was thrilled to know that I was Dwayne Phillips. He had been trying for weeks to contact me.

We introduced ourselves first. We didn’t know as much as we thought we knew. Learning what we didn’t know was a major breakthrough.

Sometimes we need to:

• introduce ourselves
• draw something on the white board
• hand out paper materials
• use name placards on the table
• give each other business cards with contact information
• explain the obvious things

The list could go on. “We’ve got this, we don’t need to…” Perhaps that list of things we don’t need to do are the things that we absolutely must do.

by Dwayne Phillips

What are you talking about? What level of abstraction are you discussing?

There are levels of abstraction. A car moves me from here to there. A car has an engine, a transmission, wheels, and fuel. An engine has spark plugs and belts and hoses. A spark plug has a housing, insulator, and electrodes. These are levels of abstraction. If someone asks me about a car, I should probably not first discuss the electrodes on the spark plug.

This is pretty obvious, right? Obvious is in the eye of the beholder.

Let’s convey information better. What level do you wish to understand? Let’s decide on the level before beginning the discussion. Let’s just discuss that level. While discussing a level, we may wander to one level above and one level below to enhance understand. No more, however, than one level. We don’t jump from an engine to insulators. We don’t jump from a system to which scheduling package we are using in software. That is a jump of several levels.

Let’s keep it simpler. Note, we cannot always keep it simple, but we can choose to keep it simpler and improve understanding for everyone.

by Dwayne Phillips

Busy at work? But are we doing the real work?

Consider for a moment the “fast food industry” in America. I think we Americans invented this endeavor. What are the key words? I believe #1 is “industry” and #2 is “fast.” The concept of “food” is … well, not so important.

This is an industry. The main component is logistics. Move the things to the right place at the right time with a minimum of space devoted to holding inventory. The average food distribution location (we used to call these “restaurants”) has surprisingly little storage capacity. No trucks arrive, no food in a day or two.

This is fast. In and out. We complain if in and out are not less than two minutes.

Food? Preparing and serving food with love? Are you kidding?

The real work of preparing and serving food with love is gone. The actual work is industrial-grade logistics and precision timing.

Now consider your workplace. What is the real work? Caring for the sick? Securing the nation? What is the actual work? Staying awake in meetings and writing reports that are redundant with everyone else’s reports.

Are we doing the real work or something else and pretending? That is up to us.

by Dwayne Phillips

Lots of things to do. Which do I do first? Perhaps I go with the worst first.

When my sons were little, they had tactics about the order in which they ate their food at dinner. One tactic was “worst first” in which they ate their least favorite food first so that they ended the meal with a good experience. Kids.

People have studied job queuing theory (and how to spell queueing queuing) for many years. There are many tasks to do, which do you do first? There is “first come, first served” and “save the best for last” and “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” and “age before beauty” and the like.

My “do worst first” seems to work for me these past couple of years. I am going to write a few things like blog posts. Some have been in the “I’ll get to it” list for a while. I need to do them, but really can’t find the energy. Others are easy and fresh and will pop out in a minute. If I do the easy ones first, that saps my energy for the moment and I don’t write the difficult ones.

The easy ones are easy. Do the worst first. Once done, the easy ones still pop out because they don’t require much energy.

Again note that this is what has worked for me the past couple of years. There were other times in my life when other queuing ideas worked better for me. Find what works best for you at this place at this time and use it.

by Dwayne Phillips

It may be a good idea to have your friends test your system.

Who should test your system? Who should tell you what they think about your idea? Who should read the manuscript of your novel?

Friends or a “friendly audience” may be the answer to these and related questions.

Consider the opposite—let a grouch or someone who hates everything you do perform the above. They may come back and say, “Your system flopped. Your idea stinks. Your novel is awful.”

Now what do you do? Well, that grouch who hates everything I do hates everything I do. Of course that grouch hates my system, idea, and novel. I hate that grouch more than ever.

Not much of an outcome.

What, however, if a friendly person or a close friend tells you that your efforts flopped? They like you and usually like everything you do. This time they don’t like what you did.

Now you have some valuable information.

Of course, your friends could tell you everything is wonderful when it isn’t. They could be so friendly and nice that they won’t be candid with you. That is a risk. If they tell you all is well, move on to another critic. If they tell you, “Sorry, I don’t want to ruin our friendship, but this isn’t very good.”

Now you have some valuable information.

by Dwayne Phillips

Take care when assuming that something was done correctly at some time in the past.

“I’ll copy this, modify it, and move on,” said a brave and trusting person.

Perhaps “this” was done correctly in the past. Copying and modifying is a good, time-saving tactic. What, however, if this was done incorrectly in the past? Copying further spreads the error. But if it has existed for so long, surely it was correct, right? Maybe. Maybe not.

I am installing software on a computer system. The right way to do it…yikes this isn’t working. But this is the right way to do it. Perhaps the computer system was not setup correctly. No wonder the installation procedures don’t work. Therefore, we will have to install this software incorrectly so that it is incorrect in the same way that the computer system is incorrect. Well, we have it working. All is well. Pity the poor fellow who comes along next week and tries to install something on top of this incorrect software which is on top of an incorrect computer system which is on top of an incorrect…

There are many systems that appear to work correctly, but are incorrect. Something or other was done incorrectly, but the result was good or good enough. Folks moved to the next thing in their long list of next things to do. No one ever went back and made the incorrect system correct. The next person who walked in the door had to do their work incorrectly to match the incorrect system.

How do we ever exit this loop of incorrectness that we assume is correct? We probably won’t, but we can.

This is hard work. Wait. Stop. Fix this. Now. And let’s hope that making the system correct won’t break everything that was installed incorrectly to match the former incorrect system. If it does, repeat the difficult process. Wait. Stop. Fix this. History provides us examples of how someone “bit the bullet” and exited the loop of incorrectness. Join that history.

by Dwayne Phillips

A conversation about writing and publishing and the like.

A: It sounds like you have a book—in your head, in your ear, maybe even on paper. It also sounds like you would like to one day have a book in your hand and maybe in the hands of others.

A: Tell me about what you have and where you would like to go.

B: I would like to make lots of money.

A: Well, if that is your goal, I suggest working on other ideas instead of writing a book. The great and vast majority of books don’t make a cent.

B: I would like to be published.

A: Okay, that isn’t too difficult. Amazon, among many others today, has a system where you submit you book and then buy a few copies of it yourself for about $10 a copy. Now you have published a book.

B: But what about the money?

A: See above. Sorry. Book writing very ever rarely brings any money.

B: I would like to be published by a real publisher.

A: Write a complete book. Go to the web sites of about two dozen book publishers. Follow their instructions on how to propose a book. Some of them, perhaps one or two, will ask you for some sample chapters. Send them you complete book. If they like it, they will send you a contract.

B: Now I make money!

A: Maybe, but probably not. If your book is priced at $20, the book seller (the book store or web site that carries you book) keeps have or $10. That leave you and the publisher with $10. The standard publishing contract says that the author keeps 10% or 12% of the income. So, you get $1 for every copy of your book that sells for $20. If your book sells a million copies, you get $1,000,000. If it sells a hundred copies, you get $100. Most books sells less than a hundred copies.

B: But when do I make a living?

A: Write a hundred books. $100 times one-hundred books is $10,000. I guess you better write a thousand books, so you can earn $100,000.

B: But when do I make a living?

A: In the daytime at your day job.

B: If I am working all day, when do I write these books?

A: At night and on weekends.

B: Why would I write at night and on weekends.

A: Because you enjoy writing stories. You do it because you enjoy doing it. You can’t beat that.

by Dwayne Phillips

Athletes are wearing encyclopedia’s on their wrists (some call them wristcoach). The device helps the memory at critical moments. Why can’t the rest of us wear them?

We have all seen these on TV for the past several years. They are great big wrist bands that have all the plays or something on them. The coach sends a number, the player looks up the number on the wrist gadget, and they have the play. Some call these things “wristcoach.”

The player is under pressure, tired, nervous, having a tough day. They should be able to remember things like what number is what play, but given the stress, they have this big thing to remind them. Some of these players are paid $30 million a year. They admit their memory is not perfect.

What about the rest of us? We have days when we are tired, under pressure, have people yelling at us, etc. Our memory fails us. Why can’t we wear a wristcoach that contains all the things we know we should do, but sometimes forget? If $30-million-a-year persons can admit their memory failings, why can’t we?

Our wristcoaches can contain simple things: sit up straight, don’t tug your collar. They can contain complex things: the list of AI models and their standard uses.

But we bring notebooks to meetings. Yes, but will I remember what page has the information I need? Will I remember to look at my notebook? And when I am in the hallway and confronted by monsters, will I have my notebook with me? I would have my wristcoach on me.

Look silly? How silly does that $30-million-a-year quarterback look?

by Dwayne Phillips

Employers give little clues that they won’t hire you because you are told old.

Here are a couple of age discrimination clues I have heard:

This job is really deep and difficult to learn. It will take smart person at least a year to learn all you need to know before you can start to contribute. Hence, we only hire people we know will be hire five years, and you will retire before then.

You don’t fit in our strategic plans. Our strategic plans reach more than two years into the future. By the looks of you, you will retire in two years. Hence, we aren’t interested in you.