Hi everyone,

It’s Monday, one of the best days to start a week.

Welcome to Afirmativo!, where I send updates about articles that I publish on my blog and share things that have been on my mind lately.

Just like last year’s, here is my collection of interesting things I clipped from the web during 2024.

The year the checkbox died

I try my best to escape from nostalgia, but this quote by Carmel Hassan really resonated with me.

People who, like me, started working in the 2000s didn’t have the opportunity to pursue formal education (there weren’t many options available) and had to rely on books, blogs from industry leaders, and connecting the dots on our own as best as we could.

It’s from her excellent en la interfaz, the Interaction Design knowledge base she is building (in Spanish, translation mine).

It was back in those early 00s that I learned how URLs work, my first few HTML tags off of this document that Tim Berners-Lee had published back in 1991, and proper methods to Design Research — what kids these days call “discovery”.

When I say design research I mean asking and answering questions in a systematic way in order to make more intentional and informed decisions about planning and creating new things and ways of doing things.

From the Erika Hall’s brilliant Design Research Process model I saved.

And last, I clipped this fun and smart piece by Nikita Prokopov suggesting the death of the checkbox following Apple’s release of their new VisionOS:

How to tell a story

I loved this practical masterclass on successful storytelling by South Park creators (and therefore I saved the video).

Furukawa, President of Nintendo, definitely didn’t follow their formula when he shared news about the successor to Nintendo Switch on X. What a hilarious non-pitch.

And, speaking of pitching, this year I learned that Marc Randolph pitched Reed Hastings hundreds of ideas (including personalized shampoo and customizable dog food) before they landed on “video rental by mail” which eventually became Netflix.

Bits of processes

With the new year, maybe you are thinking of improving bits of how your company operates.

Stefan Smalla, founder and CEO of furniture ecommerce Westing says that a “company operating system exists, whether built intentionally or accidentally, so better to work on it with purpose”. If you’d like to build your company OS and you need some inspiration, his public Google Slides example is a good place to start. You will find a collection of principles, performance indicators, good practices and rituals, which is often a better name than meetings, because nobody says “this ritual could have been an email”.

By the way, do you take notes in meetings? I used to have a very good manager who seldom did. He said if something was important he’d remember it, and if it wasn’t, what was the point anyway.

You should be smart enough to remember this. If you’re not smart enough to remember this, you shouldn’t be in this meeting’.

This quote credited to Steve Jobs puts it more bluntly.
(I tend to distrust the level of accuracy in these quotes, especially when they are memories of something someone heard nearly 30 years ago, but my clipping above includes an interesting distinction that Apple implicitly makes between financial metrics and product metrics).

How you do things is not as important as why you do them and what you or others get out of it. That’s why I have always clashed with some Agile practitioners who are too focused on checking methodology boxes.

What we have not learned well enough yet as an industry is the difference between methodology and mindset.
It’s the mindset of learning and adapting that’s really important. Some of us have it, but (…) prescriptive agility (…) unfortunately is (…) a throwback to the 90s

I enjoyed this extract from a video interview with Jim Highsmith, author of “Adaptive Software Development”.

One of my tech-bro-guilty pleasures is listening to Brian Chesky, Airbnb CEO, who I always find inspiring. He offers a simple formula to impactful work: “if you want people to work hard, have a launch deadline, make the goal crazy ambitious and check progress every week”.

But sometimes — as this description of eating a pastrami sandwich at Katz’s deli accurately portraits — how something is done matters, especially when it’s customer-facing:

Bits of what in theater is called “business” are more than half the pleasure: the ticket, the turnstile, the wait at the counter, the pepper-crusted preview slice offered for your approval, the cash tips you stuff into a plastic quart takeout tub. Pastrami ordered and eaten at Katz’s is both a meal and a ceremony, one that can turn tourists into New Yorkers and New Yorkers into tourists.

Simple answers to hard questions

Is it South?
One of the things I’ve always struggled with in U.S. geography is the concept of ‘South’: how is Delaware South but New Mexico not South? Since 1950, the United States Census Bureau defines four statistical regions, with nine divisions. Here’s their handy map.

What’s your definition of happiness?
Here’s Alfred Hitchcock’s (video, 00:20): “A clear horizon. Nothing to worry about on your plate. Only things that are creative and not destructive”.

What’s your most important career advice for young people?
“Just learn how to get stuff done”. Check out Obama’s response (video, 1:05).

Why does AI work?
Bertrand Serlet (retired Sr VP of Software Engineering at Apple) explains LLMs (video, 32:40)

How many books should I take on holiday with me?
Well, it depends. Tom Gauld made this hilarious chart

How does an Almadraba work?

What does a great cup of coffee taste like?
James Hoffman’s answer is a beautifully produced video (7:03)

How many tablespoons are there in a pint?
Handy imperial system chart

How long can you work on making a routine task more efficient before you’re spending more time than you save?
This classic XKCD comic strip does the math for us

And the final link gazpacho

Kim Dabbs says each one of us carries four identities.

Ken Beck says there are 3 stages to an idea/product/business lifecycle, and I found his simple word chart pleasant and kind of synesthetic.

The NYT’s editorial board against Trump was a beautiful example of web-native journalism.

Javirroyo brilliantly illustrated a dinner with that narcissistic friend.

Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night after hearing your own brain snap? I do. It may happen to about 14% of us, it’s said to be harmless, and it’s called Exploding Head Syndrome.

That’s all for now. If you enjoyed reading, please share this link with someone who will enjoy it too.

And know that I will keep collecting stuff over on my Tumblr!