Author: Роман Петров — 786
Planning backwards
A big goal gets clearer if you start from the last step. The decision researcher Gary Klein proposed a simple technique — the premortem. The team imagines that the project…
The Cherry Stone
You cannot force a tree to bear fruit. You can choose the spot, prepare the soil, water it, protect it from pests and prune it in good time. Between effort…
Languages as infrastructure
Knowing a language is rarely a profession in itself, but it often becomes the infrastructure of a profession. A language gives access to: education; documentation; the labour market; clients; a…
Respect or Distance
Family morality sometimes demands that closeness be preserved regardless of what is left of the relationship. But steady contempt sits badly with closeness: if respect is not restored, it is…
Can the Spark Be Calculated?
I tested harmony by algebra. — Alexander Pushkin, “Mozart and Salieri” The figure “94 percent” sounds more convincing than “you may well have something to talk about.” Samantha Joel, Paul…
Where Calculation Ends
Economics is at its strongest where a hidden constraint needs to be found. It asks what is scarce, which information is unevenly distributed, who can refuse, onto whom the cost…
Other people’s lives without expertise
People are remarkably eager to discuss how others should live, spend money, raise children, build relationships and choose clothes. Especially when their own decisions temporarily require no attention. Not every…
Someone else’s scale
Society is happy to measure freedom by the number of deeds done, trips taken, victories won and prohibitions broken. But freedom includes the right to act — and the right…
A Career Without a Diagnosis
The popular view of careers offers two caricatures: only the unprincipled get to the top, or it’s enough to do good work and the system will reward the deserving on…
Let the joke live out its life
When someone starts a joke you know, it is easy to stop them: I know this one. Technically this saves time. Socially it says the teller’s pleasure has no value.…
Statistics Against Fate
The average preference among women for slightly older partners doesn’t prescribe a choice to any particular woman; a raised divorce rate under a certain style of behaviour doesn’t assign divorce…
Beauty: The Public Rating and the Private Taste
Ugliness has one advantage over beauty: it doesn’t fade with time. — Serge Gainsbourg In 1878 Francis Galton set out to obtain the face of a criminal. He took photographs…
Adults Without Halos
Children’s culture rests on a convenient fiction: an adult knows better for the simple reason that he is an adult. Age does increase experience, but it issues no guarantee of…
A proving ground with consequences
Youth really does let you try out several versions of yourself. You can change hobbies, friends, style, educational route and your idea of a future profession. A mistake at seventeen…
Do not announce the building site
Modern culture likes public intentions: announce the goal, collect approval and start a new life in front of an audience. Talking about plans delivers part of the pleasure ahead of…
Business starts after the first buyer
Entrepreneurial culture likes to start with a name, a logo and the founder’s story. A business starts later — when someone appears who is willing to pay more for a…
Do We Know What Will Make Us Happy?
In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. — Oscar Wilde, “Lady Windermere’s Fan” Photography students were…
Criticism to Specification
School correction culture teaches you to spot every mistake and demonstrate the right form. In ordinary conversation not every correction improves the meaning; some only redistribute status. If the meaning…
Do We Know Who We Want?
Men never know what they want, but they will go to any lengths to get it. — Don Marquis A week before a speed dating event, a participant writes that…
Parents Without Serfdom
Family morality often describes upbringing as a lifelong advance payment: the parents invested, so the adult child now has to repay the debt with obedience, money and access to his…