I got curious, and looked at the DOM, and seems the editor when empty is just one line of the full page, which if you click anywhere else (like what I did initially, in the middle of the page) the editor can't be focused. Are you sure you clicked in the middle of the page?
Incredible comment. I live on biz side of insurance but use tech/automation skills all the time. My industry should have solved so many problems so many years ago.
But it didn't because of exactly what you said: "how lazy people are about learning and adopting them"
Except in other industries it is usually the lazier people who got the power to fix the things as they were like 30 years ago. While in IT they got washed out quickly.
Recommendation: use Hemingway (hemingwayapp.com) or something similar.
That apps spots problems I often don't see in first drafts. Weakeners like adverbs/passive voice. Complicated sentences. Fancy words over simple words. Etc. Stuff that makes writing harder to read.
Not perfect here at all! Always practicing. But more and more use helps me spot problems in first drafts, or avoid them altogether.
> Writing a blog is like talking in the town square. Except because it’s digital, we seem to forget how communication works. If you just start talking in the town square, you’re standing alone talking. Sure a person who passes by might pause, but the odds you’re saying something really relevant to them are low, so they’ll move on.
An optimist take on your statement is this: we need MORE folks writing/talking in town square. More chances to encounter something valuable (to you).
Otherwise, I first read your statement the other way: too many people communicating into the ether with no audience and no feedback. But I suppose I prefer people practice that communication somehow rather than not...
Is your point that people do not understand how to present themselves and a point of view (on anything) in front of anyone? Work presentation to executive. Writing a coherent email. Running a meeting. Etc.
Meeting optimization is great, but I don't want to spend my entire day in Teams/Slack messages with people that start messages saying "hi" with no follow-up.
Same with email. Email is not chat! Don't send me 10 1-line emails a day. Call me instead. Or send me 1 10-line email. Make email intentional and high-value.
Point being: if any one of (1) email, or (2) chat, or (3) meetings is not working well, I bet you have problems in either or both of the others.
> There wasn't a SINGLE ONE that would tolerate someone declining EVERY MEETING when the culture does not align to the ideals this presentation outlines.
Exactly. Love the deck. Like you, agree with many things.
My similar suggestions (but a little looser):
1. Long meetings need agendas. But don't expect perfection. You can get away with no agenda in a short (30 or less) meeting.
2. Very large meetings need a DRIVER (person). I hate a big meeting when someone says something like "so who wants to bring something up" - no no no. I don't want free-form conversation in a large meeting. I want someone to drive the hell out of the meeting. Keep people in check!
Most important:
3. Do what you can to discover the underlying motivation of the meeting organizer and solve their motivation some other way. Recently sat through a disastrous JIRA-focused meeting. Talking about tickets, their purpose, their descriptions, etc. But I knew the person needed the data for executive-team reporting. So I offered to help fill in gaps (without a call) to improve their reporting. I saved myself future time, he got better reporting - a win.
Constant and outright decline behavior will probably backfire.
I don't think most folks are both interested and trying to sit in mindless meetings (like my JIRA example).
That JIRA example is particularly annoying. It's a product team (with an external consultant) using JIRA to track progress. But like anything with a reporting component, people are now optimizing toward what's reported - not toward real work. Success in a week (or sprint) is number of tickets closed not whether anything actually happened.
I declined several of these JIRA update meetings. At least two invites popped onto my calendar as agenda-less hour-long blocks.
Then I joined one, asked all the questions around purpose, and suggested what I would do to help with less overall effort and a reduction in pesky meeting invites.
> I hate a big meeting when someone says something like "so who wants to bring something up" - no no no.
This makes the meeting end really quick when nobody has anything to discuss right? For some people the only way you are ever going to get them to bring something up is by asking in a meeting.
I support the idea of bringing something to table. Instead maybe ask for simple 1-sentence ideas over email (or chat/etc.) in advance and then you use those as the driver of the meeting.
> I am no longer solving any mentally-stimulating problems.. I am just copy-pasting code from an AI assistant.
I'm using AI plenty but looking at my use with a different lens. I like to code. It's fun. It's rewarding. I produce things with it. But it is also practically a means to an end for me. My job isn't purely code but also analysis, strategy, etc.
So, having lots of fun zooming through code problems that slowed me down in the past. I have more time for the analysis/strategy/etc.
I'm not a professional dev but I would encourage author to find a similar lens in their work, if possible. Not saying its easy! And if that solution isn't helping or attainable, maybe it's time to move on?
I could (I mean in theory - practically, I'm not technically proficient enough to do so), and in fact one of the most promising web browsing agents I've tested is director.ai, which just writes Stagehand code on the fly to achieve the objectives you give it. Unfortunately it can't be invoked via API yet, so doesn't work for my use case.
Honestly, it takes such a relatively small amount of time that it makes sense to just do it myself until there's an agent that can easily handle it; I'm really only spending time trying to automate it now as a test of AI capabilities. If I actually wanted to get it automated tomorrow, the most time-efficient way to do that would just be to involve a VA from somewhere cheap for the work I'm doing.
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