05 Feb 2025

The Demonic Force Sedating Your Soul

It’s February, and your resolutions are dead. I made a 2025 resolution to write prose for thirty minutes each day. It’s a modest goal… Read →

01 Jan 2025

Seattle in Zazen

After a year hiatus, the turtle emerges from the frozen land of Minnesota with a story. Last August, I sat on a park bench and tried to… Read →

19 Dec 2023

The Trust Ratio

All ratios are wrong, but some are useful. I’ve recently started to track my weight, subcutaneous fat percentage, basal metabolic rate, and… Read →

21 Nov 2023

Core Product, Whole Product

If Thanksgiving were a product, it would have mixed reviews. Some people love turkey and stuffing. Others hate the heavy food. Some enjoy… Read →

14 Nov 2023

Yogurt Making

I started making homemade yogurt. It’s not complicated: mix some starter, vanilla extract, and whole milk and cook it over low heat for… Read →

24 Oct 2023

Halloweenacy

On Friday the Thirteenth, my cousin married a man with a pumpkin on his head. As storms raged outside the unheated barn, I watched the… Read →

12 Oct 2023

The Preference Pyramid

A donkey died in the desert. Some say it died of dehydration, yet it was only a stroll to a watering hole. Others say it died of starvation,… Read →

19 Sep 2023

Fork in the Stone

The Bear is a television series that follows an award-winning chef who returns to Chicago to run his family’s sandwich shop. In the second… Read →

05 Sep 2023

Papercuts

Let’s play product designer for a moment. Imagine this user story: As a corporate employee I want to increase my 401K contributions So that… Read →

24 Aug 2023

Woodshedding

Saxophonists create magic with improv jazz—their free-flowing harmony knowing no rules yet delighting the ear. Like any magician, jazz… Read →

12 Aug 2023

Maps and Territory

I have this arbitrary goal to climb the highest point in each of the fifty United States, and enough other people share this arbitrary goal… Read →

10 Aug 2023

Galápagosization

In a rural Chinese village, Wu Yulu builds robots from scrap metal. One of his walking, talking robots with rubbery lips pulls the farmer… Read →

03 Aug 2023

Welcome the Hydra

Hercules underwent twelve labors, and his second labor was iconic: slaying the Lernaean Hydra. A reptilian creature with twelve venom… Read →

28 Jul 2023

Beware Scale

I live three blocks from three grocery stores with three unique names, yet they’re all owned by one company. QFC, Fred Meyer, Safeway… Read →

08 Jun 2023

The Portmanteau Strategy

Urban planning nerds love to hate a stroad. “Too ugly!” they say, “Too dangerous!” Most towns built in the last century revolved around a… Read →

26 May 2023

Bike Commuting

When my office reopened in 2022, I had to relearn commuting. I tried driving, but I couldn’t stomach the daily parking cost. I tried public… Read →

05 May 2023

The Ski Lesson

Ski season is over in the Northwest, but I’m grateful for my experiences on a half-dozen mountains this winter. From the upper bowls of… Read →

24 Apr 2023

Glass, Rubber, and Cloth

Cloth In high school, I was obsessed with unicycling. I filmed videos balancing on the roof of my parents’ house, won the school talent show… Read →

05 Apr 2023

After-Dinner Mints

My favorite Seattle restaurant scores high on three dimensions: friendly staff, reasonable prices, and tasty food. Aptly called Amazing Thai… Read →

15 Mar 2023

A Party of One

I never played Dungeons & Dragons, but I was always fascinated by the character classes. Like the fellowship in The Lord of the Rings or the… Read →

22 Feb 2023

Rootwork

When I was ten and obsessed with Redwall, I arose an hour early to write a page for my fantasy saga about warring anthropomorphic animals… Read →

08 Feb 2023

Cover Crops

February is the month when New Year’s Resolutions go to die. We might as well cancel that gym membership, pause our Duolingo subscription… Read →

26 Jan 2023

Start with the Jar

If you’ve seen Rudolph: The Red-Nosed Reindeer, you’ll remember the Island of Misfit Toys. When sitting around a fire on Christmas Eve, the… Read →

11 Jan 2023

Four Frames

I have a document called “resolutions.doc,” where I log my new year’s resolutions. I’ve been writing resolutions for so long that the file… Read →

23 Dec 2022

Social Arithmetic

Any good novel or film illustrates that people “contain multitudes” and aren’t reducible to numbers. From a humanist perspective, this… Read →

17 Dec 2022

The Conversational Octopus

The words we use to frame an interaction can flavor our behavior. For instance, are we having an argument or a conversation? Argument is War… Read →

09 Dec 2022

Seven Puzzles

It’s puzzle season in North America. During these dark, cold months, I’ve come to enjoy jigsaw puzzles to get off screens, do a low-stress… Read →

02 Dec 2022

Steering Pegasus

Everyone has the potential to do great things, and I’d venture half of us have the ambition to realize that potential. But few can manage… Read →

20 Nov 2022

Going Reptilian

The world is complex. But navigating complexity is taxing, so we gravitate toward simple dichotomies of this or that, one or two, red or… Read →

10 Nov 2022

Thinking Caps

Are we anything but the roles we play? Be it at home, work, or play, we wear a dozen hats: Parent, friend, volunteer, manager, peer, runner,… Read →

29 Oct 2022

Frankensteining

I hope you’re enjoying spooky season. With Halloween around the corner, I thought I’d spill some ink about a season classic: Frankenstein. K… Read →

21 Oct 2022

Finding and Making

I spent the last two weeks in Budapest visiting coworkers. Alongside goulash, bathhouses, and palinka, I enjoyed learning a Hungarian folk… Read →

17 Oct 2022

Embracing Seasonality

What if knowledge work changed with the seasons? Last week, my sister and I hiked the Skyline Trail at Mount Rainier—a beautiful romp… Read →

22 Sep 2022

Caves and Cathedrals

How does our environment shape our thoughts? My favorite short story is “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver. Carver is known for his grounded… Read →

17 Sep 2022

Exploring the Great Lake of Knowledge

Should we generalize or specialize? What if there was a sixth Great Lake? Beyond Michigan, Huron, Erie, Ontario, and Superior imagine you… Read →

08 Sep 2022

Creative Distillation

“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” — Blaise Pascal, French mathematician, 1657 Imag… Read →

01 Sep 2022

Concentration Muscles

If I wasn’t sweating, I wasn’t working hard. This perspective served me well in entry-level jobs that required physical exertion, like… Read →

25 Aug 2022

Crawl, Walk, Run

Remember being a baby? Of course not! But let’s pretend we remember how it felt to drag our little bodies across the floor for the first… Read →

11 Aug 2022

A Square Sees a Sphere

I have this strange little book on my shelf called Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott. It’s not a particularly good book… Read →

04 Aug 2022

The Tragic Sandwich

A customer wanders into a deli to order a sandwich. He’s hungry after a long and stressful morning and wants something easy for lunch… Read →

28 Jul 2022

Wicked Problems

Let’s talk about wizards and muggles. And no, not the Dursley kind of muggle. Jazz musicians in the 1920s coined the term “muggle” to… Read →

21 Jul 2022

Recursive Pareto

A rook, a bishop, and a pawn discovered a scroll. The pawn unrolled the parchment and read, “Buried treasure lies beneath the chessboard… Read →

14 Jul 2022

Four Stages of Competence

I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed. But I’m also not the dullest. I am merely as sharp or dull as the average tool in the shed. Over time… Read →

07 Jul 2022

Wabi-Sabi

Picture a small clay bowl. It’s not quite a perfect circle. There’s a dimple on its rim and a chip on its side. This bowl is wabi-sabi (侘寂).… Read →

23 Jun 2022

Baseline vs. Target

How many words do you write each day? If you don’t have a clear and precise number, the answer is zero. To make progress on any metric, you… Read →

21 Jun 2022

Input vs. Output

Imagine a big, strange Dr. Seussian machine. You feed it groceries, and it spits out gold bars or useless goop. You don’t know how the… Read →

19 Jun 2022

Cobra Effect

During the British rule of India, venomous cobras plagued Delhi. The government offered a bounty per dead cobra to reduce the snake… Read →

09 Jun 2022

Dogfooding

Dog food is a $56B industry, only $11B short of the $67B baby food industry. Given declining birth rates and an ever-growing preference for… Read →

07 Jun 2022

Localhost Trap

In the 2000 film How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Jim Carrey recited his to-do list, and one item was especially salient: “Solve world hunger… Read →

05 Jun 2022

Vocal Minority vs. Mobile Minority

Two types of minority groups could drive majority change: one that exhibits perceived change and one that creates actual change. The Vocal… Read →

26 May 2022

Red Pill or Blue Pill

Near the beginning of The Matrix, the protagonist receives two pills. Either he can take the Blue Pill to expunge dangerous thoughts and… Read →

24 May 2022

One-Way and Two-Way Doors

Amazon popularized the idea of one-way and two-way doors to encourage employee decision-making and appropriate risk-taking. One-Way Doors… Read →

22 May 2022

System I & System II

Here’s a puzzle: Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and bright. She majored in philosophy at an American university. As a student… Read →

12 May 2022

Lindy Effect

“Older is better.” When I lived in California, I drove a 19-year-old truck with electrical issues. I took it to a few mechanics, but they… Read →

10 May 2022

Locksmith Paradox

“Faster value is perceived as worse.” I once slept in a Walmart parking lot in West Virginia. Late that night, I arose to use the restroom… Read →

08 May 2022

Aesthetic-Usability Effect

“Beauty over function.” In 1995, researchers at the Hitachi Design Center studied the “aesthetic-usability effect” with an ATM. A less… Read →

28 Apr 2022

Eudaimonia

Language constrains our range of expression. It isn’t easy to express a thought or a feeling with words when the language doesn’t have a… Read →

26 Apr 2022

Potemkin Village

To impress Empress Catherine II during her journey to Crimea in 1787, Grigory Potemkin supposedly built fake, portable villages along her… Read →

24 Apr 2022

The Tokyo Effect

Tokyo has ~14M people, making it the largest city on Earth. It has thousands of unique stores, like Ma-suya Azabu-Juban—a shop that only… Read →

14 Apr 2022

Stonecutter vs. Mechanic

The other week, my friend and I went skiing on Mount Baker—a glaciated volcano near the Canadian border. We cruised along gravel roads until… Read →

12 Apr 2022

Fragile, Resilient, Antifragile

Last month, the power went out at the gym. Lights went black, the treadmills stopped moving, and huge, medieval-looking doors slammed shut… Read →

10 Apr 2022

Zone Two

I’ve been training for my first marathon for the last few months. I’ve never been much of a distance runner, so my running workouts were… Read →

31 Mar 2022

Magical Buckets

Sometimes I think about that scene from Fight Club when Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt) holds a gas station attendant at gunpoint and… Read →

19 Mar 2022

The Slowest Hiker

I love the scenic beauty of Washington State—it’s the main reason I moved here. The problem is that everyone here loves the scenic beauty… Read →

17 Mar 2022

Secondhand Smoke

I’m always amazed by how quickly a clever framing can sway public opinion. In the US, smoking went from a commonplace activity to a near… Read →

15 Mar 2022

Gravitational Pull

Imagine a group of people as a solar system. Be it a family, company, sports team, organization, church community, or a gaggle of friends… Read →

05 Mar 2022

Eating the Frog

My cousins and I used to visit a place in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula called “Black Rocks”—cliffs beside the icy waters of Lake Superior. The… Read →

03 Mar 2022

Underpants Gnomes

On an infamous episode of South Park, the boys do a school presentation about “underpants gnomes”— little elves that sneak into a house and… Read →

01 Mar 2022

Gray Time

Imagine time as black and white, where black is work time, and white is playtime. If our days were a chessboard of activity, we’d starkly… Read →

17 Feb 2022

Chronos and Kairos

The Ancient Greeks had two concepts for time: Chronos and Kairos. Chronos is quantitative, purpose-driven, and marked by hours and minutes… Read →

15 Feb 2022

Cliffhangers

King Shahryar’s wife cheated on him, so he beheaded her in rage. Her beheading wasn’t enough to assuage his anger, so he picked up a… Read →

13 Feb 2022

Zeignarik Effect

In the 1920s, Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik observed a waiter taking orders at a restaurant. When prompted, the waiter could easily… Read →

06 Feb 2022

Warrior vs. Soldier vs. Police

A “marketer” in a year-old, ten-person tech startup will vastly differ from a “marketer” in a fifty-year-old, five-thousand-person Fortune… Read →

04 Feb 2022

Maker vs. Manager vs. Minder

Investor Paul Graham once argued that a maker (such as a software engineer) requires long bouts of uninterrupted time to create valuable… Read →

01 Feb 2022

Reader vs. Listener

To improve at anything, we must learn. To learn, we must know how we process information. In Managing Oneself, Peter Drucker claims that… Read →

20 Jan 2022

Mind Mapping

Sometimes a visual artifact helps us understand a problem. A mind map is a tool I like for getting stuff out of my head. How to mind map: 1)… Read →

18 Jan 2022

What? Why? How?

Creativity is seen as messy, chaotic, squishy, and overly associated with art, so its practical benefits are lost. But creativity can use a… Read →

16 Jan 2022

Faster Horses

People claim that if Henry Ford built what people asked for, we wouldn’t have cars; we’d have faster horses. This statement is more myth… Read →

13 Jan 2022

Red, Yellow, and Green Energy

Imagine you could plug yourself into a power outlet and work all night. Like a computer, you could crank away around the clock at a steady… Read →

11 Jan 2022

Appetite Planning

With resolutions, our eyes are often bigger than our stomachs. It’s easy to set big, hairy, audacious, pie-in-the-sky goals without the time… Read →

09 Jan 2022

A Ritual of Retrospectives

New Year’s Resolutions are forward-looking—commitments we make (and likely don’t keep) with ourselves to create a future we’d like to… Read →

30 Dec 2021

The Hedgehog & The Fox

The Fox knows many things, and the Hedgehog knows one big thing. Presented in a 1953 book of the same title, The Hedgehog and The Fox define… Read →

29 Dec 2021

The Overton Window

What is tolerable to the public? What will 80% of people tolerate? The Overton Window defines the answer to these questions as it sets the… Read →

28 Dec 2021

New Math

I’m forever surprised by the strength of imprints. Despite overwhelming evidence that says otherwise, sugary breakfast cereals never feel un… Read →

23 Dec 2021

Astroturfing

An army of Twitter bots disguised as real people complain about cannibal rights. “The meatpacking industry is suppressing #CannibalRights!”… Read →

22 Dec 2021

Poisoning the Well

A boss arranges one-on-one meetings with two underperforming employees: Becky and Bill. He plans to fire one of them. Boss: “Becky, why did… Read →

21 Dec 2021

Gaslighting

In the 1944 film Gas Light, a husband turns on and off gaslights at night. When she brings it up in the morning, he tells her he didn’t… Read →

17 Dec 2021

Jakob's Law & Decorum

Jakob Nielsen had a simple principle in web design: People expect your site to work like all others. People spend 99% of their time on other… Read →

16 Dec 2021

First, Do No Harm

George Washington was out late riding his horse, got caught in the rain, and developed a sore throat. The next day, his doctor came to heal… Read →

15 Dec 2021

Unforced Errors

Tennis players make two errors: Forced. The player errors because of their opponent, like not returning a powerful first serve. Unforced. T… Read →

14 Dec 2021

The Sorting Hat

Some college friends were in town, so I joined them to watch Michigan clobber Iowa for the Big-Ten championship. Like most good friendships,… Read →

09 Dec 2021

Framestorming

You can’t help but wonder: Is this the right problem? Brainstorming is fine, but you might solve the wrong problem without the right frame.… Read →

08 Dec 2021

Five Whys

You find out your team wants to deprecate a legacy codebase, but you don’t know why. So, you embrace your inner five-year-old and ask: “Why?… Read →

07 Dec 2021

In What Context?

You pass an old mare at pasture as you approach the farmhouse-style tech office. You enter the office and head to the conference room. “We… Read →

03 Dec 2021

Luck Surface Area

Leprechauns Patricia and Patrick collect lucky objects, such as rabbit’s feet and four-leaf clovers. But their approaches are wildly… Read →

02 Dec 2021

Whitespace

Writing is more than words. It’s how we present words. Whitespace is a neglected element—not a passive background but an active ingredient… Read →

24 Nov 2021

The Mythical Mother Month

Clarence wants a baby. Clarence reasons that a baby requires nine months of effort, so rather than one woman spending nine months, he could… Read →

23 Nov 2021

Cheap, Fast, and Good

People want an excellent product delivered quickly for a low price. But it often becomes a “you pick two” scenario. If it’s good and fast… Read →

18 Nov 2021

Alligators and Kittens

A sad woman in Louisiana loves kittens, as their little meows fill her with joy. So, she adopts a dozen kittens and brings them to her house… Read →

17 Nov 2021

Don't be caught by the passive voice

Passive voice is objectively wrong in any writing—business, academic, or artistic. Edge cases exist, but the passive voice is often unclear,… Read →

16 Nov 2021

Inversion is Not

Inversion is not thinking forward. It’s thinking backward. Inversion is not pursuing positive outcomes. It’s avoiding negative inputs. Inver… Read →

11 Nov 2021

Shaving Yaks

A man wants to buy bananas, but his car has a flat. He needs his air pump but remembers he lent it to his neighbor. He can’t ask his… Read →

10 Nov 2021

Four-Blade Razor

“Razors” are critical thinking tools designed to “shave away” complexity, and some are especially useful. Stay sharp with Turtle’s new four… Read →

09 Nov 2021

Hairy Arms

Asha is a young marketer pushing the boundaries for extraterrestrial fashion. Little green people have immigrated to Earth, but humans… Read →

04 Nov 2021

Cosmic Insignificance

I once set Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” as my phone background because I thought the grainy photograph would put my problems into… Read →

03 Nov 2021

Six Blind Folks

Six blind folks bump into a mysterious thing. Out of curiosity, they grope it. Person 1 feels its trunk: “It’s soft and long. It’s a snake!”… Read →

02 Nov 2021

Temperature Check

Weather is the universal small talk. Don’t let your struggles with temperature conversion force deeper conversation! Americans use… Read →

31 Oct 2021

Beware the Bike Shed

Engineers gather to discuss two designs: One for a nuclear reactor and one for a bike shed. The reactor discussion is smooth and short, as… Read →

29 Oct 2021

The road to hell is sloppily paved in adverbs

Words are alchemy. They transfer abstract thought from your head to another head and can change the material world. Clear writing makes that… Read →

28 Oct 2021

Color Coordination for Dummies

We’re all designers. Whether we create slide decks, flyers, or menus, it’s helpful to learn design basics—like color. When done right, color… Read →

25 Oct 2021

The Asymmetric Crab

Too many Slack conversations start like this: 8:05 AM Pesty Coworker: Hi Justin 8:10 AM Pesty Coworker: How are you? 🙂 8:20 AM Pesty… Read →

13 Sep 2021

Two Lists

This is part five of my “Draft One” series on writing the first draft of a novel. #5: Two Lists One of my favorite Netflix originals is Aziz… Read →

05 Sep 2021

The Shapes of Euchre

The other day, a friend and I taught Euchre to our partners. For those not familiar, Euchre is a popular card game in Michigan. Since my… Read →

29 Aug 2021

Bones Before Flesh

This is part four of my “Draft One” series: Writing the first draft of a novel. Strategies (i.e., Go Big) set a direction. Tactics (i.e., Po… Read →

28 Aug 2021

How to Play Euchre

First, make a Euchre deck. From a standard pack of 52 playing cards, discard everything except 9s, 10s, jacks, queens, kings, and aces. Set… Read →

22 Aug 2021

Don't Miss Two

This is part three of my “Draft One” series: Writing the first draft of a novel. Let’s start with a dogsledding reference. My last two… Read →

02 Aug 2021

Pomodoro

This is part two of my “Draft One” series. #2: Pomodoro A Machiavellian businesswoman answers her own question: “How do you eat a whale? One… Read →

28 Jul 2021

Draft One

Exciting news! I finished the first draft of my novel. After a year of cycle time and six months of effort, a full draft is sitting on my… Read →

01 Jun 2021

Doorstops

April 2021. Mount Hood, Oregon — A midnight alarm stirs me from my bunk at the Timberline Lodge. There’s a wall of snow outside the window… Read →

25 Apr 2021

os28

I turned 28 last week. Late-twenties are an odd age—a major fork in life’s road. For some career-oriented urbanites, 30 is the new 20. For… Read →

14 Apr 2021

Death of Default

The Palm Springs of Washington… While Miranda Cosgrove didn’t share this view, I appreciated the analogy… Read →

08 Apr 2021

Seven Plus or Minus Two

At work, I inherited this tool to help people use a poorly designed product. While the long-term solution was to address core issues in the… Read →

28 Mar 2021

24-Hour Arcade

Time is the great equalizer. Everyone gets 24 hours per day, 365-366 days per year, 73.2 years in a lifetime. But how much of this time is… Read →

20 Mar 2021

Honey, We Shrunk the Animals

The other day, I saw a bald eagle’s nest. Masterfully crafted in the tallest tree in a two-mile radius, it summoned images of leathery… Read →