Linknote — — 179 words

Social science — Society

The one thing about your spouse’s personality that really affects your career — Andrew O’Connell — Harvard Business Review

Two pairs of sandals

It has been found that having a conscientious spouse helps lead to an increase in income, number of promotions and job satisfaction. Why?

> First, conscientious spouses handle a lot of household tasks, freeing employees to concentrate on work (“When you can depend on someone, it takes pressure off of you,” Solomon told me).

Or, put another way, if someone else is doing all the dirty work at home, it gives you the privilege to focus on your career.

I wonder if there’s research to say what the effect is if both people in a relationship share household duties equally. Hopefully if both partners are conscientious, both feel the benefits in their careers.

Support each other. Teamwork! 🐌🐢

> You can support your spouse in supporting you. If you depend on his or her reliability, diligence, and goal orientation, don’t take those traits for granted. Maybe you’ve been standing heroically at the bow for so long that you’ve forgotten how much effort it takes to row. So sit down and row for a while.

Linknote — — 190 words

Business — Digital — Economics

Own it! — Matt Jukes — Notbinary

On the incredible story about Hertz suing Accenture for a failed “digital transformation project”.

Alarm bells ring at the best of times when website redesigns are described as “digital transformation”. But to then completely outsource the product owner role — to the same management consultancy firm that was carrying out the redesign — underlines just how much the top brass seemingly didn’t get it.

Particularly important is this:

The private sector is NOT intrinsically better at these things than the public sector. Occasions like this and the TSB meltdown should never be celebrated but should surely be greeted by a wry smile by those of us who have been hearing about the incompetence of public service digital for years from some corners — and particularly why there was never any need to bring things in-house because all the expertise was with the big suppliers.

I would argue that this isn’t even just about digital. The idea that public sector organisations are inherently worse at anything than the private sector has long been spurious. Large organisations perhaps do find certain things more difficult — but in both the public and private sector.

Linknote — — 184 words

Economics — Technology — Web

Typewriter

On blogs in the social media age — Cal Newport, Study Hacks

Putting into economic terms the distinction between blogging and social media, and articulating what we have lost through the decline of blogging.

If you want attention for your blog you have to earn it through a combination of quality, in the sense that you’re producing something valuable for your readers, and trust, in the sense that you’ve produced enough good stuff over time to establish a good reputation with the fellow bloggers whose links will help grow your audience.

I first realised this about blogging when it became clear that comments sections on major websites were almost always cesspits. People in comments sections are generally attempting to freeride on the quality of the website they are posting on.

Bloggers, on the other hand, really need to be high-quality to get any sort of audience at all. That makes blogs generally good.

Social media is quite the opposite. To start getting traction on social media, the threshold is rather low. In fact, often, lower quality works better.

Link via Khürt Williams

Linknote — — 103 words

Current affairs — Social science — Society

Younger Americans better at telling factual news statements from opinions

About a third of 18- to 49-year-olds (32%) correctly identified all five of the factual statements as factual, compared with two-in-ten among those ages 50 and older. A similar pattern emerges for the opinion statements. Among 18- to 49-year-olds, 44% correctly identified all five opinion statements as opinions, compared with 26% among those ages 50 and older.

I find this a bit weird, because knowing a fact from an opinion is quite a basic and fundamental concept that was drilled into us at school. Perhaps older generations were not taught this. That would certainly explain a few things.

Linknote — — 173 words

Business — Social science

How to regain the lost art of reflection

[A] focus on information processing, reaction, and execution — while it may feel productive — causes the quality of our thoughts to suffer. We believe that corporate leaders in today’s complex world urgently need to recultivate the art of reflection.

In an increasingly busy and complex world, how do we make sure we have the space to think reflectively? It’s the classic notion of having your best ideas in the shower.

I think this is part of the reason why I feel a benefit from walking so much — about two hours most days. This gives me the unstructured thinking space this article argues for.

On a recent cycle, I found my thoughts subconsciously drifting towards a knotty work problem. For a few seconds, everything seemed crystal clear. “I’ll remember that later,” I thought, and on I went with my cycle. When it came to it, it took some time and effort to recall what seemed so obvious when I was cycling with my wandering thoughts.

Linknote — — 109 words

Culture — Social science — Society

From the collection: Blissymbolics

The story of a utopian attempt to introduce a universal pictographic writing system, Blissymbolics.

It is a noble but unrealistic idea that seems typically mid-century, and it’s unimaginable that it would fly today. Not that Blissymbolics flew either. It reminds me of Esperanto.

Even in this brief article that contains a few examples of Blissymbolics, many of the explanations seem rather tenuous. My favourite is stick (“linear thing + tree”). Or perhaps branch, which is a division symbol next to the tree symbol (“part (of) + tree”).

I also wonder how skewed by western culture Blissymbolics is, and if it could genuinely be said to be universal.

Linknote — — 122 words

Architecture — Business — Social science

Open office plans have a surprising effect on communication at work

More on the seemingly negative effects of open plan offices.

When forced to share space, humans behave much like swarms of insects. This has appeared to be true in a range of contexts, the authors note, citing studies involving the US Congress, college dormitories, co-working spaces, and corporate buildings.

However, as far as we’re aware, hornets and wasps are not as psychologically and socially complex as people. For instance, they do not regularly switch between their front-stage self and back-stage self, managing the impression they’re making, per a longstanding theory about humans.

See also: It’s official: Open plan offices are now the dumbest management fad of all time.