Agile Otter Blog

Sometimes we get what we expect. The reactions to that? Either satisfaction or no real reaction at all. When I put my bread in the toaster and it toasts it according to the settings, I don't throw a party. After all, that's what the toaster is for.  The water tap dispenses water, just like always, and that's what I expected. I'm glad for toast and water, but it's not something that will occupy a lot of my thoughts. If I put in bread and got back a waffle, that would be surprising. I would spend more of my day on that.   Likewise, if I put in bread and received a flood of fleeing insects, that would be surprising. Which brings us to the point: sometimes what we get is different from what we expect. We can feel that as delight sometimes, because our results were far better than we expected. Other times we feel it as disappointment. If we judge this space, we will feel it as frustration, failure, embarrassment. even disrespect and loss of control. We c...

As another bit of speculative, observational humor let me introduce you to the Relevance Ratio. What it is: Consider where you are sitting right now, and the last task you tried to do there. Now, consider/remember the information around you on all sides. The posters, conversations, sounds, words, materials. Pretend you measured this information content and assigned it a number like maybe 100 (just to make the math simple). Next, look at all that information content and determine how much of it is not relevant to the work you are doing. Do you have posters? Clutter? Radio? A television playing? Reminders of other work to do? Clocks (not pomodoro)? Dilbert posters? Are there things you have to reach around or past in order to do your work? Consider it all. Do you have a coffee cup? That's information too -- because it urges you to make a beverage decision. Candy dish or lunch box? Food decisions.Say it's a 60.  About 60% of the information in your view has nothing to d...

I look at how hard people try to combat fear with fear -- X is afraid of Y, so  X tries to make Y afraid of them in return, and  X escalates to make sure Y is the more afraid, so  Y cranks up the intimidation even more, because Y can't let X win. Y says "X needs to fear US!", so  (repeat paragraph)... I wonder, how long will we keep doing this? And I'm told: as long as the other guys are winning. Breaking the cycle is possible, but you can bet that when it ends, it won't be because one side won.