(Side note: even knowing he was talking about British currency, his mention of a "15 pound mouse" and a "60 pound mouse" had me momentarily concerned about how big rodents get on tea and crumpets and Marmite.)

If it’s not aligned, you may need to change the direction or type of force you’re applying.

Plus there’s that old saw about hammers and nails…

Minor disagreements in some places, or "but wait, there's a better way" notes. But solid, defensible advice even where I might disagree.

Note this would not make a great light and fluffy vacation / beach read.

I guess the good news is we can go ahead and get vaccinated with no worries about autism, as long as we avoid Tylenol?

My calculus instructor in college insisted we understand the concepts, not memorize details, because we could always reconstruct the formulas once we knew the concepts.

Great article, Ilona, definitely got stuck in my brain.

It was a very iterative process (like you call out) to build the mental framework to understand all the pieces. And once the pieces came together, I didn't have to work as hard to keep the specific bits of knowledge in my head. They sort of stuck together and reinforced each other.

You had me thinking back to the pre-Internet 90s when BBSs were a thing. I read Boardwatch and BBS Magazines, devoured the manual for Wildcat v4, worked really hard to understand how to configure "door games"...generally went really deep in that way teenage nerds do.

I have been chewing on this since I read it, because I think this idea of knowing something deeply and intuitively ("Fingerspitzengefühl" or "fingertip feel" is another good term) is getting lost in a firehose of shallow ask-ChatGPT thinking.

It’s one that I am highly likely to pull out and flip open to a random page when I’m feeling stuck and need a dash of inspiration 🙂

Old enough to remember a world where threats of violence weren’t the knee jerk response to disagreement.

So, uh, at least 28.

(Or 10 if you had parents good enough to explain “just because someone tells you you’re wrong doesn’t give you the right to threaten them.”)

Less age, more…decency?

Good! That one looked complicated.

Wear the merit badge with pride!

Who won?

Starter Villain is so ridiculous in a good way.

Anyone who liked Despicable Me for reasons other than the minions will probably like SV.

Should you be drinking alcohol when you don’t have a liver?

The book also describes resource and flow efficiency, shows you can select the balance you want (you can't have 100% both!), and shows pros/cons. Context determines the balance you want.

(I wrote about resource vs flow efficiency in Learn About Workflow From the YMCA, in slightly different terms.)