A product team or organization that moves slowly (e.g. reviews, gatekeepers, heavy process) in introducing changes moves slower over time. As slowness increases and the chance of success remains constant, then each failure is more expensive. This leads to a negative feedback loop where more slowness is introduced to try and guarantee a positive outcome.
Links to this note
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Time Saved Using Keyboard Shortcuts
I use Alfred to switch between applications using keyboard shortcuts. On average, I use Alfred 127 times per day, mostly to use keyboard shortcuts.
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Imagine a busy executive trying to work with multiple people. They’re coming in and out of meetings and working on several projects all day long. They have maybe 15 minutes to concentrate on a thing to try and keep things moving or prevent holding things up. Every time there is a broken link, spelling error, obviously incorrect statement, or something that needs to be double checked, it creates delays and more work.
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Faster is more productive because it is a multiplier on tasks you spend a lot of time doing (thinking, writing, typing, debugging).
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Moving Quickly Lowers Activation Energy
Speed matters because it lowers the activation energy needed to start a task. If tasks feel quick, the perceived cost of doing it is lower and you are more likely to do it. Conversely, if tasks feel like a slog, you are much less likely to do it because the perceived cost will feel higher.
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In frontend development, a component-driven workflow is a way of building websites and applications by breaking down the UI into smaller components and iterating on them independently and composing them together. This has been popularized by Storybook.js where you write stories around components to make a faster feedback loop compared to loading the whole application (and data) every time.
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The Complexity of AWS Lambda Stems from the Need to Internalize the Runtime Model
On it’s surface, AWS Lambda seems simple—it merely invokes a function with some arguments. However, the complexity is deceptively high. This is best highlighted when something goes wrong.
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Shipping and Hiring Velocity Are Predictors of Successful Pre-Product Companies
In the early days of a pre-product startup there is little to measure. There’s no sales, there’s no product KPIs, no press releases, and so on.