Defining what your tools, teams, processes, and even you yourself are good at is hard, and often we stray past the boundaries of focus that would keep us performing to an optimal degree. In this episode, I encourage you to perform an exercise of inversion, to look at tasks your tools are simply not suited for.

Our ability to make sense out of things is powerful. When we hear "90% of the way there", our brain fills in the gaps and often stretches that to mean "basically 100%." However, this is a cognitive error. In this episode, we talk about the importance of combining statistical thinking with sensemaking.

Opportunity comes in moments of convergence. Loss is measured in divergence. Pay attention to what is converging now - this is how you take advantage of opportunities and reduce your cost from divergence.

Everything we do in our teams is based on trust. Trust, however, is a limited resource. We should spend it wisely.

You're a new engineer - what should you start doing in your first 30 days? In this episode, we talk about 3 behaviors you might be resisting, but that you should actually embrace in order to improve your team. Managers especially need to listen up on this one.

In the mid 20th century, Marshall Mcluhan brought philosophy into the spotlight with his claim that the "medium is the message." We discuss the meaningfulness of this, and apply it to our work as engineers and on distributed teams, in today's episode.

The world around us isn't static, but our brain processes as if it is. In this episode we talk about subtle shifts to help break that mold for the most important interactions we have in the world.

In today's episode, we discuss the fact that intuition isn't all that bad to use when estimating... we just shouldn't use it to estimate a number. Taking advantage of things humans are already good at (rather than limiting people to processes that work around those skills) is a powerful shift in thinking.

When we have context, we predict more accurately. When we translate numbers into more meaningful concepts, we create context where previously things were fuzzy. This makes our predictions more meaningful and grounded.

In today's episode we talk about a concept called excessive cohesion - when our brains fill in the gaps when information is missing. This is an important function of our brains, but sometimes it can lead us to wrong conclusions or faulty processes.

Increasing clarity informs perspective. Changing perspective often brings new clarity. When we manage our work through effective process, we are seeking clarity on that work. We refine our to-do list by clearing up ambiguity. We add clarity by getting input from others, breaking work down into simpler pieces. In this episode, I talk about this relationship between clarity and perspective, and how simplification benefits my productivity drastically.

How do you consolidate all of the advice you receive? More importantly, how can you put it into practice day in and day out? We'll talk about two strategies for making this happen in today's episode.

Why are you getting blocked every sprint? Find the root cause. In this episode, we discuss 4 common root causes for engineers getting blocked. Which ones do you face?

We continue our discussion with Julian Gutman about community and culture in today's episode.

Today, Julian Gutman, Chief Product Officer at Patreon, joins us to discuss community, culture, and buy-in.

First off, thank you for an incredible 7 years! Our listeners and sponsors make it possible to do this show, and I'm incredibly grateful for every one of you. In this episode, we continue our discussion with two more exercises for making meaningful and purpose driven behavior change resolutions.

In today's episode, we discuss purpose-oriented resolutions. We'll discuss an exercise you can use to help drive this development process. We'll also continue this discussion about resolution development in the next episode of the show.

If you can't focus, you are paralyzed. Everything you do in your career and life will be served better with clear and continuous focus. We revisit this topic after nearly seven years because it is profoundly true.

It's hard to remember sometimes, but our priorities are our own. We have agency over our time. Even our obligations are more often determined by our chosen values than they are by actual survival. When we accept that we have agency over our priorities, we can start to reclaim time that we feel is being taken from us, eliminating a feeling of chaos and frustration and regaining a sense of calm and intention.

Mental models are very useful, and we tap into them even without knowing it. But just like any cognitive tool, our brain can play tricks on us when using mental models. In this episode we'll talk about three ways we can go wrong with mental models.