Bennett's Five Links #066

Perfect Days; Slick Subtitles and Robots

Photo by Theo Bickel on Unsplash

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Sangria in the park ..

I got a lot out of this short post from a blogger named Nicky (who, incidentally, seems fairly honest about where he’s at in life), on an exercise he went through with his therapist in which he set out what his ‘perfect day’ would look like.

I’m sure I’ve read about this exercise before but it wasn’t until I saw it laid out by someone else that I really saw the benefit.

What would your perfect day look like?

And what’s stopping you from achieving it?

'Are you saying you can't fit in one hour per week to study something?'

The answer of course is yeah, I can fit in an hour somewhere. It's just that I want to do more. Unless I can, I just resign myself to my fate.

and

The overall lesson is the perfect day isn't reachable. I can use the above as a guideline, but it'll still never hit the notes exactly the same way, and that's ok.

Nicky’s point resonates with me. I think sometimes, if I can't achieve my perfect day exactly as I imagine, I give up on making any steps towards it. On reflection, that seems pretty dumb.

Lessons from my unattainably Perfect Day

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What did he just say? ..

Kisha and I have noticed lately that we can’t enjoy a tv show if it doesn’t also come with subtitles. Anyone else?

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Lookin’ slick ..

Entrepreneurial subscribers will no doubt be familiar with the concept of the minimal viable product.

It’s not a bad idea. It helps combat entrepreneurs’ yearn for perfection. At the very early stage the entrepreneur will never truly understand what the market wants or needs, and so the theory goes that it’s much better to get something out there quickly and then tweak it based on initial feedback.

If a founder spends too long finessing a prototype until it’s just right, she risks having invested an awful lot of time and money into the product only to find the market doesn’t ‘get it’.

But I really liked this short post on why the MVP goes perhaps too far the other way.

Don’t finesse too much - sure - but make sure the product is good.

That means features should be complete. And should be fun. Because if you can’t get that right, you’re not getting the feedback you need from the market anyways. Users will be too distracted by ‘this doesn’t work’ or ‘this is clunky’ to understand the benefit being offered.

Less, but better.

Over the past decade, it’s been overused and misunderstood to the point where something labeled as an MVP is automatically assumed to be pretty shit. Most MVPs are unfortunately too M to be V, and the culture of “ship it while you’re embarrassed by it” tends to lead to products providing users with an embarrassingly bad experience.

and

Instead of building MVPs, we should be building SLCs. Something Simple, Loveable, and Complete.

Why products should be “slick”, not just viable

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Cybernetic role models ..

I never really got into the Sims. It was just never my thing. But I know many people still love it today, especially younger gamers, and so it’s really great that EA is still putting out updates like this one, which provides the ability to customise the little Sim dudes with continuous glucose monitors and other medical devices.

It’s a continuation of a recent(ish) feel-good trend, where entertainment products are created with thought given to the type 1 diabetic audience; especially children. Dolls with CGMs and insulin pumps. TV show characters with type 1 diabetes. It’s lovely - and hopefully will go a long way to help children reconcile with and manage their condition.

Everything New in The Sim’s 4 Latest Update

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A poet and I didn’t beep-boop-bop! ..

I’ve been really enjoying this Chat GPT stuff. I’ve not implemented it into anything productive yet, but it’s still so much fun. And I’m learning a lot about sea shanties!

Check out this riff on Biglaw Careers written by our soon-to-be-new-robot-overlords.

The bonus in sight, a carrot to chase,
A constant push, with no time to pace.

But with every hour, comes a cost,
Of time and energy, that’s forever lost.

Family and friends, fade into the past,
As work consumes, all that we have.

We strive for success, with no end in sight,
But at what cost, this constant fight?

The money may be very nice,
But at what true cost, this constant vice?

We’ll look back and wonder, if it was worth the price,
Of a life consumed, by the never-ending grind of Biglaw, and a life of sacrifice.

ChatGPT Has Pretty Depressing Thoughts About Biglaw and the Billable Hour

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Bennett

bennettgreen.com