TWH#S7: What I Read This Week

The Sunday Edition #7

Welcome to another TWH Sunday Edition. 👋

Kick back and enjoy these 5 good reads. ☕️

And if you like what you read, please consider hitting the ❤️ button and sharing it.

(Total reading time: 26 min)

✍️ Management and Systems Thinking

(Kevin Goldsmith • 4 min read)

Thoughful engineering leaders, at all levels, usually want to focus on improving the overall system they’re responsible for—to be an “architect of human systems” as I like to call it. But most tend to look at engineering leadership as doing management things: creating processes, running meetings, fixing problems. Kevin Goldsmith helps the former by bringing a bit of systems thinking into the picture, and the role of proactive communication in it.

✍️ 11 Things That Make Introverts Happy

(All About Introverts • 5 min read)

Introversion is still poorly understood and empathized with, despite a book like Susan Cain’s Quiet having kind of gone mainstream a few years ago. Some studies have suggested that introverts may be overrepresented in certain fields that require analytical thinking, such as science and technology—which makes intentionally creating an environment where their full potential is tapped all the more important in the tech industry. Alas, it’s still the opposite. This article is also a great resource for introverts themselves to understand themselves better. (I’m an introvert, by the way. 👋)

✍️ Cynefin for Developers

(Liz Keogh • 10 min read)

The Cynefin framework is an excellent tool that provides a way to understand different types of problems and to apply complexity thinking to software development. Unfortunately, not many people understand that most work in product and software development is complex, not complicated or obvious. Liz Keogh helps us not only gain that awareness but what to do with it for better outcomes: “If you find yourself in a space with high uncertainty, rather than trying to eliminate the uncertainty with analysis, it’s better to try something out – safely, so that it’s all right to fail – and respond to what you find.”

✍️ Needing to Pay Attention is a Novel Problem

(Scott H. Young • 2 min read)

I’m a sucker for how the theory of evolution explains so neatly many of the challenges we deal with today. In this short piece, Scott H. Young shows us how we are really not wired to deal with the existing demands on our attention, just like we are not wired to deal with an abundance of food in a healthy way. So, it comes down to intention and choice. As he puts it, “A life of focus means you pay attention to the things you choose to pay attention to.”

✍️ 3 Skills From Psychotherapy That Can Change Your Brain

(Christopher W.T. Miller • 5 min read)

Overcoming limiting beliefs and trauma is difficult, but important work. Not every approach is going to work with everybody, and sometimes the same approach works differently with different people. I loved this piece because it explains what talk therapy can do to our brains from a neuroscience perspective, uncovering principles that can be applied just as well in a people leadership context. One bit I especially loved: “Bring softness, not hostility: We often assume the worst about other people when they say something we don’t agree with. Even if people are behaving or speaking in a way we disapprove of, it is useful to remember that they have a story behind their perspectives. The stronger the negative feelings we have about people, the more it might help to get to know them better. This helps us develop empathy and connectedness.”

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That’s it for this week’s Sunday Edition. Thanks for reading The Weekly Hagakure! And if you liked this, please consider hitting the ❤️ button and sharing the post.

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