This attempt at daily emails started well, but, as soon as I was out of my routine (on holiday last week), it was easy to let this fragile and not-yet-a-habit slide. 

I’ve made peace with it.  There’s nothing wrong with switching tactics and trying something else.

I wonder sometimes if ambition is waning in society, what with our shortening attention spans.  Maybe; maybe it’s just me.

While on holidays, I watched 15 endurance runners compete for Australia and there was serious ambition on display there.

Life was different five years ago when daily was doable for me.

November: weekly instead. 

Coming from a background like mine, rife with striving for high standards, and making and sticking to important goals, it has been interesting to me to observe that I’m not as invested or committed as I’ve been before.

Not only the “daily” commitment to this newsletter (granted, I gave myself ‘almost daily’), but also my exercise commitment wavers more than it used to.

I think it’s because of age, I really do.  I think our brains change in our 50s, and that’s why many retire around this time.  Not all, and I’m not:  I am facing the changes head on.

Skills develop through repetition and practise. This especially applies to technical skills like calculations and problem solving.  Solving something once, even done well that one time, doesn’t mean you’re skilled at it.  We’re not “skilled” at something until it is second nature, or a habit.  It’s a skill when, for example, a problem to solve comes up and you don’t have to think about how to solve it, you just do.

The problem with advancing quickly through a career, is that there’s little opportunity to practise, or repeat, a skill, after demonstrating it once.  Developing skills takes time.  And repetition.

[ Cheap vs Good Investment ]

I think maybe there’s too much focus on the 'cheapest form’ of whatever.

There should be more interest in ‘good investment’, for the long term.

What happened to a focus on good value?

I can easily find cheap shoes, or a cheap car, or cheap appliances, but I can also tell you they are not good investments.

Societal infrastructure should be about finding good investments instead of being the cheapest.

Alas, this pendulum of cheap over long-term value is in full swing the wrong way; it will likely take a generation of disappointment before long term value is recognised again.

In 2006, I was part of the originating group of young pipeliners who met up for a “YPF” event (young pipeliners forum). 

In 2026, today, we reconvened with many of those originators, and current members, to celebrate 20 years of YPF, reflect, and look to the future.

The one message that came out strongly, repeatedly, and almost ad nauseum?  It’s the people that make the difference. 

The people, networking, connections, mentors, friends:  everyone today raised these as impactful.

It takes a non-trivial amount of time and effort to maintain relationships with colleagues and friends: people.  But it’s so worth it.

I naturally lean towards structure and organisation.  I like to know what’s on for the day, and having some autonomy over it, a little bit of control.  And I mostly have that, most days.

I believe people perform better when there’s some predictability about outcomes, behaviour, and expectations.  This works both ways in relationships – both work and personal relationships.  When you know, for the most part, what’s coming next, there’s less anxiety and uncertainty.

I’m not naturally musical but having a rhythm to life is another way to think about structure and organisation.  But don’t ask me to explain jazz.

As our work style changes from coming up with answers ourselves based on our own knowledge, to prompting a machine, it changes what is meant by ‘competence’.

For the past few generations, those people who were better than others at choosing, storing, and recalling previous experiences, were able to demonstrate better mindfulness and judgement under pressure.  They’d ‘seen it before’, or ‘handled a situation like it’ in the past, and so could apply that to the new problem.  Some were good at recalling from memory and applying past experience; this skill moved them up the career ladder. 

It still should.

In a recent WSJ article, Adam Grant stated:  “human creativity is changing: it's much less dependent on idea generation and much more dependent on idea selection and elaboration.”

I agree with that: human creativity will evolve to utilise and expand on idea ‘selection’ and ‘elaboration’ but possibly in the act of selection/elaboration, there may be generation too.

It’s the same faced by many with technical work on the computer:  there will be no shortage of ‘word salads’ of what “could” be done.  But implementation, especially where there are trade-offs and consequence management, should continue to involve human judgement and ethics.

Too many documents are created without purpose, without an ultimate owner, nor a defined lifecycle.  It’s too easy to start writing a document, when possibly it’s not needed, or there’s already a similar one already in existence. 

For any document you think you need to create, establish some associated metadata for the document.  Why does it exist, who would notice if it wasn’t created, and, what happens next to that document.  And it should be very clear who the audience of the document is.

A strategic documentation approach saves time.  Figure out the purpose, role, and lifecycle of that document.

7 Sept 2022

The problem with writing it down is that it takes so much effort.   But yet, deep down, we know the importance of recording stuff for future use.

The purpose of records are obvious:  communicate information, justification for decisions made, track performance and trends, enable verification of the assessment, provide an audit trail.

But we know all that; yet we generally don’t like paperwork or checklists or documentation (ok, well, I do, but that’s beside the point). 

It’s so important to review procedures and processes for efficiency, usefulness, and relevance.  If a document or procedure isn’t being used, figure out why.

9Jan20

“Some people are just better at solutions than they are at support.”

Sometimes, when we’re in a drive to be all things to all people, and while expecting all things from all people,   I wonder if we’ve forgotten our individual uniqueness.

When there’s a problem to solve, be it technical, emotional, or organisational, there are many ways to approach it.  This quote reminded me that some people dive confidently into a solution, and others are better at simply providing support while the solutions are worked out.

(For the record, it was in Ted Lasso, S4:E8.  Yes, I like Ted Lasso).

I’m having a bit of a tussle with ambition these days.  Whether it’s due to the normal ageing process, or it’s something more societal and wide-spread, I’m not sure.

With a backdrop question of “what do I actually “get” from striving for this goal”, sometimes I come up short.  I’ve not experienced that before in my life.  Hence, I’m allowing it to be related to age.

Then I get inspired, and carry on.

“Drive works. Ambition works. Companies get built, infrastructure develops, goals get set and delivered. It’s one of the most effective tools we have for getting shit done.”* Paul Watkins

Statistically, a study of a population will yield a bell curve result, or the ‘normal distribution’, where the most common answer or result clusters around the middle.  It shows up again and again.  Sure, there are outliers, long tails, and flat curves, but there’s usually a bump of popularity right in the middle.

Given that statistically common phenomenon, it kind of contrasts with the relentless drive for perfection, and, having a deep focus on the outliers. 

Striving for the top/best/perfection/outliers is worth doing.  But designing things for public good should recognise that most of us are hanging around the middle.

If ever there was a skill that is growing more important every day, it is how to explain things.

The best way to check your own understanding about something, is to explain it (or teach it) to someone else.  That’s when the rubber hits the road, as they say. 

Some of the most frustrating conversations I’ve had are those where, in hindsight, I realised that neither of us were explaining our positions or expectations very well.

In the evolution of work style, being able to explain what we want (knowing what we want), clearly and unambiguously, will be like magic. 

The recent change in card fees allocation has another problem:  the consumer pay choice effect on business cashflow.

The consumer chooses how to pay (if options are given); the card convenience fee is now covered by the business (me).

But the irritating crux of the issue is: for each transaction, I don’t know what the consumer will choose.

So, will I get 100% of the price, or, some percentage of it after fees are taken?

Each transaction: I don’t know how much I’ll get.

So, while there’s no charge for the consumer, my cashflow prediction has become a guessing game.

If you deal with documentation or knowledge, you’ll often or occasionally do a peculiar action of ‘redirecting’ it.

By redirecting, I mean that after you’ve read it, written it, edited it, used it, and / or approved it,  it will probably need to be redirected, to the right person with the right expectations (next step) outlined.

We’re not really taught clear or efficient ways to redirect documents or knowledge.  We just wing it around by email or casual conversation. 

 A redirection without explanation puts more work on the receiver.  Redirection with clear expectations: that’s the better way to do it.

(20210222)

As a project reaches the commissioning stage, the role of the pre-commissioning engineer and/or the punch-list manager is to get the kit working, with a strong focus on safe operation.  They may need the close-out paperwork for the role, but not after the kit is operational.  The design engineer seems to want to design the next fancy new solution, not put all the paperwork in place for the old one. 

A ‘project finisher’ role is different: it is all about the paperwork.  It’s the librarian, with quality control knowledge, some contracts expertise, and strong writing skills for the lessons learnt.

(20210620)

hope it won’t be long before we’re scrambling back to revere HI over AI.  By that I mean, human intelligence over that artificial stuff. 

The green shoots are visible:  I’m hearing stories from businesses like law firms and compliance consultants that have spent months trying to get value from AI, and are now switching back to HI. 

AI will make doing known, factual tasks more efficient.  This is a paradox, though, because humans will just fill that recovered time with more tasks.   It’s also a paradox because faster isn’t always better, and chasing cheaper rarely results in good value.

Welcome to October.  I like the symmetry of starting things when the calendar turns over to a new month (or week, or year… or even a new day). 

Calendars, though, are a human construct: it’s made up and artificial.  But these artificial constructs bring structure and reliability to our lives.

The repetition, the reliability, the “here it comes again” expectation are a framework and a standard to build our goals around. 

Welcome to 100 Words – The Newsletter.  Some newsletters will be short, like this; other times they will be longer, but not much.  Just enough to get a point across.

I've landed in Darwin today, the location of this year’s pipeline industry conference.  I’m so looking forward to the many conversations, interactions, and story-sharing.

No matter what changes are occurring in our working life, the energy system, technology or politics, one truism holds for me:  humans benefit from in-person gatherings.

The conversations are deeper, because we can see (feel?) instant feedback from the other person.  The interactions are richer because we are in each other’s personal space.  The stories are embellished because, well, why wouldn’t they be.

It’s professional and courteous, and, it’s also a heckuva a lot of fun.