Binary Oasis

Joel Spolsky experiences in the corporate world (especially application development) mirror many of our own experiences, but Joel has a way of describing and analyzing those experiences in a way that is especially clear. In his book “Joel on Software” he defines “hit-and-run management” as “intense periods of micromanagement followed by long periods of complete neglect.” I think that describes the way that a lot of us feel about managers. It’s not that we feel that they shouldn’t exist. It’s that they often combine micromanagement and neglect in just the right proportions as to maximize frustration and distrust.

Just as we got used to hearing about the hot real estate market in 2005, We’ve been used to hearing about the slow market in 2006. Imagine my surprise, then, to be greeted by this headline in an email from the National Association of REALTORS:

• “2006 Is Third-Highest Sales Year on Record”

That sounds pretty positive! Compare this with some other headlines on the same content:

• “Annual Existing-Home Sales Fall Most in 17 Years” (Washington Post)
• “Home Sales Figures Signal a Slowing Market” (New York Times)
• “Existing Home Sales Plunge in 2006″ (Associated Press)

As is oh-so-common, oversimplification or bias to a particular point of view is not new. I guess I can’t blame either party. Trying to reduce a relatively complicated landscape into 6 to 10 words can be challenging. Perhaps one can either pick a side or be arbitrary. I suppose a new job may be in store for the editor that writes the headline “Home Sales Figures Released” or “Home Sales Metrics are Mixed.”

We are constantly bombarded by news and messages, yet as a general rule we don’t employ the logic tools necessary to analyze these messages. Too often (and perhaps by necessity in response to information overload) we skip logical analysis and instead suscribe to the conclusions of “trusted” sources without careful analysis of their reasoning (if any) to get to the particular conclusions.

The podcast “LSAT Logic in Everyday Life” is a good primer for the tools that we should be employing. I’ve listened to just a few of these so far, but it seems that they are well-reasoned and well-produced.

I’m catching up on my Science Friday podcasts, and I found this one on pigeons to be very interesting. Ira Flatow interviews Andrew Blechman, author of “Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World’s Most Revered and Reviled Bird.” Most of us are familiar with the reasons to not like pigeons, but this book gives us some reasons to like them (and perhaps be inspired by them?). Pretty interesting stuff.

I know that I’m not alone when I say that I will that I could stay focused on important tasks.  It’s worthwhile, then, to share this link, which looks into some of the causes and possible responses to procrastination.  I particularly liked the quote: “Convenient access to inferior choices is decidedly inconvenient.”  It follows that we’ll either have to change our environment or change our response to our environment if we want to procrastinate less.  Yeah, I know, that seems pretty straightforward, but we don’t always see things clearly even when they seem obvious.

I suspect that Piers Steel (the quote above is attributed to him) has some more recent published studies, but I found this paper that is fairly insightful, at least for the more analytical minds out there.  I think I’ll read that later.