Things I changed my mind about

I went through this site’s older notes last weekend to see what I would write differently. Five opinions I used to hold, none of which survived.

Meetings should be short. I used to think length was the problem. It is attendance. A 90-minute workshop with the right six people beats a 30-minute sync with twelve.¹

Everything needs a template. I still like the meeting template, but I tried a template for design rationale and nobody filled it in. Some things want to be a paragraph.

Research should be rigorous. Rigour is fine. What I really wanted was for people to believe me, and that is a different project with different tools.

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Write less. I used to cut my billing log down because it felt self-indulgent. I now think the long version is the only one that taught me anything.

Be consistent. Consistent with what? In the second year I realised that I had been consistent mostly to avoid deciding.

I will probably disagree with this list by 2028, and that’s fine. I would rather have a dated record of being wrong than a clean record that says nothing.

Footnotes

1. The workshop in question was in Porto, in March 2025. The six were chosen by Hana, who knew who would argue and who would listen. ↩