When I leave my wife alone with our two kids, there’s always that question: Will anything happen while I’m gone? I don’t mean in the tragic sense—I’m not so inveterate of a worrier—I mean more in the pedestrian sense. As in, will the baby wake up? will the toddler have a meltdown? That momentary uncertainty … Continue reading On Schrödinger’s childcare
Author: T Coe
On the planning fallacy
Oh, dear. If there’s a cognitive bias that defines my life, it’s this one. Ever an optimist, I am often—always—greatly underestimating how much time and effort it will take to do—well, go do just about anything. Write an email, review an RFP, eat lunch, pick a toddler up from daycare. It could be anything—the planning … Continue reading On the planning fallacy
On synecdoche
Synecdoche is a device best known as the substitution of the part for the whole, as in “all hands on deck” or “mouths to feed.” But what I’d forgotten is that the reverse is also synecdoche—the substitution of the whole for the part. What I hadn’t realized is that I’m a a frequent user of … Continue reading On synecdoche
On reinventing the wheel (of project marketing)
The question of how to market architectural projects for my firm has left me feeling cynical. Here's the cycle I have wrestled with: Realize that I'm neglecting the work of project marketing—narratives, photography, project data. Develop a system to manage this work, defining deliverables, schedule, etc. Activate the system—actually doing the work. Neglect the system … Continue reading On reinventing the wheel (of project marketing)
On wherever you go, there you are
I finally finished reading Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow this past weekend. It's a monumental read, dense with insight into how our minds don't work the way we think they do, and how much of the thinking we do is an uphill battle against biases that are hard (or impossible!) for us to see. … Continue reading On wherever you go, there you are
On 7 things from last week (5/1/23)
Downpours. The Front Range is pretty dry for the most part, so true downpours are hard to come by. Last week we had two separate rainstorms, loud enough to hear drumming the roof. Made me nostalgic for my East Coast upbringing. Outdoor hangs. Post-rain, we had some actual spring weather and, with it, the opportunity … Continue reading On 7 things from last week (5/1/23)
On the joy of music lists
There’s no need to make a list of your Top 50 songs, my friend cautioned. He and two friends went through the arduous task a few months before, and he was encouraging me to do the same—but he wanted me to know that it was no simple road ahead. “If you’re like us, it’s going … Continue reading On the joy of music lists
On project photos and thinking like a marketer
Some things you can’t delegate, I am learning. I can give a minutely detailed set of instructions with a blow-by-now video of how to make mark up a floor plan for photography… But I can’t tell you how to think like a marketer. I recently attempted, as you could guess, to delegate this work. But … Continue reading On project photos and thinking like a marketer
On effort justification
The more effort you put into something, the more value you see in it. The best-known example of this may be the "IKEA effect," wherein people place higher value on the IKEA products they have bought and assembled—because of the assembly effort involved. Effort justification is one route to resolve lingering cognitive dissonance, a state … Continue reading On effort justification
On antimetabole
A showy device, if you can manage it, antimetabole is a rhetorical device that sets two parallel phrases against each other while inverting the position of key words. The antimetabole structure looks like this: A...B / B...A A simple example would be: I know what I like, and I like what I know. "I know" … Continue reading On antimetabole
Taylor Coe 