Yesterday I watched Mel Robins (see below). Besides the usual mantras (move yourself, act, etc.), the thing that caught my ear was her “I’m fine” bit.

Today, I got to test it and directly said what I’ve felt (instead of the “imfine”). The reaction was a mixture of shock and surprise – I’d say, that’s a good start.

We all just need to cut the proverbial crap and call it as we see it. Life will be much fuller then -> Isn’t that what we all want?

You’re working with someone that responds rigorously to your emails, but the content (and the pattern) is always the same – you ask for A and the response is that A is being worked on and it will be available tomorrow, due to X, Y, Z.

Then tomorrow never comes.

What do you do?

My technique has been to log these promises and bump on the promised dates. After a while, person in question gets it.

Do you have any better solutions?

Read a good article on the upcoming data paralysis on Datanami.

It is useful to see people understanding their problems (we cannot decide, as we have too much and too little data), but it seems we’re still not very much aware of the problem we’re creating with the Big Data hype.

Quite simply – there has always been the need to:

• have data,
• have people with domain knowledge and experience in the domain data comes from,
• to learn from data and
• to interpret the data, using the said domain knowledge AND knowledge about the algorithms used for predictions or modelling.

Currently, we usually have data. Domain knowledge expertise is hard to get by (and no, no newfangled job descriptions will change that :)). We also have very good machine learning people. But, the intersection of all the requirements from above is usually quite lonely place.

So, you see, the big data paralysis is not coming. It’s always been here, but now, it’s uber-hyped, so we acknowledge it :).

I need to say this: when your team fucks up (and they surely will)

• Please accept that as a fact, learn from it, make everyone understand that it is safe to make mistakes, as long as we care and learn about them. In short: mistakes make us grow, develop business instincts – in short – every fuck-up, if dealt with properly, will multiply in good and sound decisions, better work, better processes.
• You DO NOT FLAME on the public email list!
• You don’t go and indiscriminately flame everyone (=multiple teams) on the public list (not even saying which team borked up) !
• Please act, but act responsibly – it’s your team, you depend on them.

NEVER FORGET: If your team fails, you fail. If your team learns, succeeds, you learn, succeed. 

There. I feel better now.

Proposal is in the stage of a brainfuck when the core idea of the proposal is known to everyone and common shared understanding is confirmed. All the other extensions of the proposal are understood in a completely different way and the proposal looks like a mash up of random paragraphs, each completely certain it’s compliant with the core idea AND the other bits and pieces.

After some years, I really missed my notes, made on Blogger platform. It seems all the note taking/preservation/cross-sharing/local/mobile/* programs do enable me to *not forget*.

But in reality, this is somehow better. Old. Good. Proven.

Plus, the reader (myself and the imaginary one) will provide some comments once things develop.

Final disclaimer: the writings here are NOT views of any of my employers. Strictly private.