One of the basic rules of Esquire was, if you're going to write about a bear, bring on the bear!Byron Dobell, former editor of Esquire This has to be one of my favorite insights about how to structure a piece of writing, partly because I think bears are the coolest. Bring on the bears! A … Continue reading Bring on the bear!
Author: T Coe
What if you choose not to look at our inboxes every five minutes?
Here are two quotes that have profoundly affected the way I think about my email: Your inbox is a to-do list written by someone else.Tom Chatwin One of [email's] overlooked disadvantages [is that] it is used for everything. Daniel Levitin I'm sure that my colleagues are a bit tired of hearing that first quote, which … Continue reading What if you choose not to look at our inboxes every five minutes?
Stop reading this and close those windows you’re not using
If the past 18 months have taught me anything—combining a pandemic with new parenthood—it's that multi-tasking is a myth. Between the stress of new responsibilities and the maddening lack of sleep, my attention span was shredded, and I found that I had to re-prioritize how I focused. For instance, in my previous life, I could … Continue reading Stop reading this and close those windows you’re not using
Why does bureaucracy keep growing?
Why does bureaucracy grow and grow and grow? Business consultant Ichak Adizes, in his book The Pursuit of Prime, suggests that the kudzu-like growth of bureaucracy is because bureaucracy is easy. Form is simple. There is no need to think. We have only to repeat what we are used to doing. Over time, form wins … Continue reading Why does bureaucracy keep growing?
A return to memo-writing & the “vagueness and nonsense” of conversation
In the past few weeks, I've finally had the time to dive into a couple of those big, monster projects—the type that you always talk about getting around to, but something more urgent always seems to come up. And yet here I am, with a pause in ongoing proposals (my firm is saturated with work), … Continue reading A return to memo-writing & the “vagueness and nonsense” of conversation
Why ER’s “give me the bullet” catchphrase might be a bad idea
Over the past month, my wife and I have made an episode (or two) of ER a staple of our evenings. In our pandemic era of complex public health policy, there is a strange pleasure in watching fictional medical personnel execute the routines of emergency medicine over and over again. One thing we have noticed … Continue reading Why ER’s “give me the bullet” catchphrase might be a bad idea
What if you adopt the wrong image for yourself?
For as long as I've known him—and it's been nearly two decades—one of my friends insists on introducing me in the following way: "This is my friend Taylor—he's a writer." I find this introduction both flattering and mildly embarrassing at the same time. "Well, sort of," I offer. "He's being generous with that word writer. … Continue reading What if you adopt the wrong image for yourself?
Being aware of metaphors that we live by
A few months ago, I skim-read Metaphors We Live By, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, a fairly academic treatise on the use of conceptual metaphor in language, a book regarded as seminal in the field of metaphor studies (it's a thing!) and in the more broader field of cognitive linguistics: . This short but … Continue reading Being aware of metaphors that we live by
Can you combat social loafing in large meetings?
While certain academic terms frustrate me to no end with their inscrutability—say, social anthropology's "synchronic analysis" (meaning no more than the analysis of the present, rather than the historical)—others delight with their clear identifications. One of those is social loafing. The first time I encountered this term, I knew exactly what it was referring to. … Continue reading Can you combat social loafing in large meetings?
How much more time should I spend on this project?
I think about this graph all the time. I first encountered a version of this graph in the Ballast ARE Review Manual, where it accompanied a description of what the authors termed "Project Perfection Syndrome": In their efforts to complete a job, a project team spends time working toward some established or idealized level of … Continue reading How much more time should I spend on this project?
Taylor Coe 