Idea Surplus Disorder #79

Welcome to Idea Surplus Disorder. In this week's edition, SuperCollider, prickles vs. goo, inspirational effort, policy benefits, design insights, storytelling rules, the fajita effect, analog tapes, background music, pickup basketball, and more.

I'm Matt Homann, and I'm glad you're here!

It's SuperCollider Week

Join us on Friday, October 4th, at Filament for another edition of SuperCollider, where you can give your team a practical, results-oriented mix of learning, teamwork, and co-working.

This week, we'll share ways to move from one type of meeting to another (from Dream to Debate to Decide to Do) and tips for turning frequently contentious meetings into productive, collaborative ones.

Ideas + Insights

Everything has a price:

Most things worth pursuing charge their fee in the form of stress, uncertainty, dealing with quirky people, bureaucracy, other peoples’ conflicting incentives, hassle, nonsense, long hours, and constant doubt. That’s the overhead cost of getting ahead. A lot of times that price is worth paying. But you have to realize that it’s a price that must be paid. There are few coupons, and sales are rare.

Are you a Prickles or a Goo person?

See, there are basically two kinds of Philosophy – one’s called prickly, the other one is called goo. Prickly people are precise, rigorous, logical – they like everything chopped up and clear. Goo people like it vague, big picture, random, imprecise, incomplete and irrational.

Prickly people believe in particles, goo people believe in waves. They always argue with each other but what they don’t realize is neither one of them can take their position without their opposition being there.

You wouldn’t know you are advocating prickles unless someone else was advocating goo. You wouldn’t even know what prickles was and what goo was. Life is not prickles or goo, its gooey-prickles or prickly-goo.

Keep trying:

Inspiration comes on the twenty-fifth attempt, not the first. If you want to make something excellent, don't wait for a brilliant idea to strike. Create twenty-five of what you need and one will be great. Inspiration reveals itself after you get the average ideas out of the way, not before you take the first step.

Next time you implement a "policy" at work, describe its explicit benefits for individuals, not just for your organization:

No one creates a policy with an explicit intent of causing pain; it happens by accident. If the policy dictates only “what must be done,” and not “how it benefits everyone, in different ways,” it is likely that the latter wasn’t sufficiently considered while the policy was being made.

Require policies to have sections that detail how this is beneficial for various parties; if any piece of that section is found wanting, that means our policy isn’t good enough yet.

How can your business take advantage of The Fajita Effect?

Long before the term became popular, Chili’s sizzling fajitas went viral. Cooks called it the “fajita effect”: When the first order of the night came into the kitchen, the cooks fired up several skillets and started prepping ingredients for the bunch of orders that always came soon after. The boom moment of the first sizzle of the night always kicked off a multisensory chain reaction that made the whole dining room want the dish. 

This is a fun icebreaker question:

What do you see out of the window that you look out the most?

Want to do something extraordinary? Remember, haters gonna hate:

If you want people to love your work, you have to be prepared for others to hate it. Taking a strong point of view divides those who "get" what you're doing from those who don't. Venturing someplace new demands that you take risks. If you haven't made any enemies, you're not venturing far enough.

I'd recommend reading all of these 101 Design Rules, even if you don't consider yourself a "designer." My favorites:

• When talent doesn’t hustle, hustle beats talent. But when talent hustles, watch out.
• If you lose the desire to be silly, the power to laugh, and the ability to poke fun at yourself, you will lose the power to think. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy for one reason: It kills off his imagination.
• Do you find yourself surrounded by people who whine that “clients don’t understand what we do”? Those people will never have good clients.
• Stay away from people who confuse pomposity for profundity. Articulate incompetency is contagious.
• Never hire people for “cultural fit.” What a pernicious term. Instead, hire insanely talented people for their “cultural contribution.” For how unique they are. For why they are different from you. For what they will add that you do not have.
• Everybody starts out with good intentions. Not everybody finishes with them. This has been the most painful thing I’ve ever learned.
• Companies are no longer in competition with each other. They are—we all are—in competition with the future itself.

Pixar's Rules for Storytelling work in so many different areas:

#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
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​#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
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#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
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#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.

Fun Finds

• Museum of Cassette Tape Design
• Peelable (Un)Paint
• A Taxonomy of Background Music
• AlphaGuess is a Maddening Word Guess Game
• Radio Design
• The Secret Code of Pickup Basketball
• Yes, Owners Do Look Like Their Dogs
• Inside the AITA Ecosystem (If you know, you know)

Words of Wisdom

"There are three ways to be a professional writer: 1. Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich. 2. Tell the truth to those who want the truth, and you’ll make a living. 3. Tell the truth to those who want to be lied to, and you’ll go broke." – Jason Zweig

"Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence." – Lu Xun

"Replace fear with curiosity." — Steven Spielberg

“The only way to measure the distance you’ve traveled is by measuring from where you are back to the point where you started, not from where you are toward the horizon.” – Dan Sullivan

"It is tiring to deal with someone who has made an enemy of you when you do not think of them at all. But, of course, this is often why they hate you." – Christopher Buehlman

"Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory." – John Steinbeck

“What we do for ourselves dies with us when we leave this planet. What we do for other people can live on forever.” – Ken Robinson

“If you can’t be happy with a coffee, you won’t be happy with a yacht.” – Naval Ravikant

“If you ran into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole.” –  Tim Ferriss

“Don’t take criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from.” – Someone