Skills
A meeting ends on time because of decisions made before it starts
Overrunning is a design failure rather than a discipline failure, and almost all of the fix happens outside…
· 3 min read
Skills
Most work writing fails in the first two lines
A workplace reader is deciding whether to keep reading and what they are being asked to do, and the conventions of essay writing actively obstruct both.
By Tara Mukherjee · · 3 min read
Skills
Nobody assigns you a curriculum after your last exam
The structure that told you what to learn disappears entirely at the point where learning has the highest…
· 3 min read
Skills
Your estimate is wrong in a direction you can predict
Underestimating is systematic rather than random, which means it can be corrected without becoming any…
· 3 min read
Skills
Learning to be reviewed is a separate skill from doing the work
How you respond to criticism of your output is watched more closely than the output itself, and most of the…
· 3 min read
Skills
Keep your own record of what you did, because nobody else is
Almost every conversation about your career depends on evidence you can only gather while the work is…
· 3 min read
Skills
Specialising and staying broad are both bets, with different failure modes
The choice between depth and range is usually framed as a matter of temperament, and it is better…
· 3 min read
Skills
Most of what you learn at work will come from people who are not your manager
Development is widely assumed to flow down the reporting line, and in practice the reporting line supplies…
· 4 min read
Skills
Getting up to speed on something nobody is going to explain to you
Sooner or later you inherit a system, a process or a body of work that has no documentation and no…
· 3 min read
Skills
Working with a colleague you did not choose and do not much like
You cannot select your peers, the friction is usually structural rather than personal, and there is a…
· 3 min read
Skills
Presenting to a room more senior than you
Senior audiences listen for different things than your own team does, and most presentations aimed at them…
· 4 min read
Skills
Being the only person who knows how something works
Sole ownership of a critical thing feels like job security, and it functions much more reliably as a…
· 4 min read