Shipulski On Design

Archive for October, 2025

I’ve written a blog post every Wednesday for the last sixteen years.

The first years were difficult because I was unsure if my writing was worth reading.  Writing became easier when I realized it wasn’t about what others thought of my writing.  For the next ten years, I let go and wrote about things I wanted to write about.  I transitioned from describing things to others to writing to understand things for myself.  I learned that writing about a topic helped me understand it better.

By writing every week, my writing skills improved.  I learned to eliminate words and write densely.  Early on, I wanted to sound smart and, over time, I became comfortable using plain language and everyday words.  My improved writing skills have helped my career.

Over the last several years, writing has become difficult for me.  After 800 blog posts, it became difficult to come up with new topics, and I started putting pressure on myself by trying to live up to an imaginary standard.  I blocked my own flow, everything tightened, and the words came reluctantly.

Then I became tired of paragraphs. I wrote in topic sentences, bulletized lists, and a sequence of questions.  Each topic sentence could have been the topic of a blog post; the individual bullets were standalone thoughts; and the questions ganged up to build the skeleton of a big theme.  For some reason, it was easier to come up with a collection of big thoughts than to write in detail about a single topic.

I’m not sure what the future will bring, but thanks for reading,

Mike

Image credit — chuddlesworth

When do you bring your whole self to the endeavor?  You can’t do this every time, and that’s okay.

What are the conditions that cause you to engage fully?  Full engagement is expensive.  Spend wisely.

What about the situation causes you to run toward the problem? Solve the right ones, but leave some for the rest of us.

Which situations bring out the best in you?  Sometimes your best isn’t very good, and that’s okay.

When do you block yourself from jumping into the adventure?  All adventures aren’t worth the jump.  Block wisely.

What are the conditions that cause you to phone it in? Sometimes the best choice is a phone call.

What about the situation causes you to give others a chance to run toward the problem?  There’s nothing wrong with that.  Save yourself for the right problems.

Which situations demand that you protect your best self?   It’s okay to protect yourself and live to fight another day.  That’s why they make bulletproof vests.

Sometimes we get caught up in the heat of battle and bring our energy in an unskillful way.  And sometimes we are lulled into inaction when bringing our energy is the more skillful action.

I have found that maintaining awareness helps me allocate my energy wisely and skillfully.

May you be aware of your surroundings and your self.

Image credit – Jan Mosimann

If a decision can be unmade, it’s okay to make it quickly.

Delaying a decision is a decision.

When a decision remains unmade, there’s a reason. However, that reason is often unspoken.

The effort to make the right decision is proportional to the consequences of getting it wrong.

Decisions are sometimes made without the non-deciders realizing that they were made.

Trouble arises when the decision maker is not the customer of the consequences.

Decisions are made slowly when people are afraid to make them.

When you don’t know a decision was made, you’ll continue to behave as if it wasn’t.

If five people are responsible for the decision, who is responsible for the decision?

Even if you are unaware that a decision was made, you’ll likely be expected to behave as if you knew it was.

If no decisions will be made at the meeting, don’t go.  Just read the minutes.

Documenting decisions is not standard work, but I think it should be.

Decisions can be made, not made, unmade, re-made, and re-unmade.

Decisions aren’t decisions until behavior aligns with them.

When a decision is yet to be made, you can influence the decision by behaving as if it was made in your favor.

If you wait long enough, the decision will make itself.

Image credit — yawning hunter

When the ocean gets tired from holding its water up to make high tide, it lets go and relaxes into low tide.  The ocean takes direction from the moon who knows it can’t always be high tide.  This is The Way.

When the earth gets tired from heating up the northern hemisphere it wobbles on its axis and relaxes its northern territories into cooler weather.  And the reduced energy demand in the north frees up energy for the earth to focus on heating up its southern hemisphere.  Taking direction from the  sun, the earth knows it cannot always be hot in the north or the south.  And it know it doesn’t have enough energy to make it hot in the north and south at the same time. And it knows it can’t be lazy all year and let it be cold in both hemisheres year round. It’s natural for winter to follow summer and for the hemispheres to be out of phase.  The earth and sun know this.  It’s natural for them.

Bears have their fun in spring summer and fall.  They are all-in on eating, taking care of young bears, and making new ones.  After three seasons of fun and games, bears know they need to hunker down and rest for the winter.  That is how it is with bears and how it will always be. It is natural bear behavior. And it works.

When you work out hard, your body knows it needs to rest the next day.  It knows it needs to recover from the elevated stress of the workout so it gives you feedback that it’s important to do less the following day. There’s nothing wrong with that.  In fact, there’s everything right with that.   It’s natural and it works.

And there are natural rest cycles at work,  After a full week of planning meetings, people need to downshift into work that is less taxing and gives their bodies time to process the plans.  This is not weakness, it’s natural.

And there are even natural hibernation cycles at work in the form of vacations and holidays.  Like with bears, our bodies need (and deserve) deep rest.  And just bears don’t check their email when hibernating, neither should we.  Taking time for deep rest is not irresponsible or wasteful, it’s natural

Without a trough there can be no crest.  And without rest there can be no high performance.  This, too, is natural.

Image credit — Geoff Henson

996 is all the rage.  You work 9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week.  Startups are doing it.  Might non-startups start doing it?

Productivity is important and competition is severe.  And I’m all for working hard, but I don’t think the 996 schedule is the most effective way to achieve productivity goals, at least not for all jobs.

My decision-making capabilities diminish when I am tired, and I would be tired if I worked a 996 schedule. My interpersonal and organizational effectiveness would suffer if I worked 996. My planning skills would degrade if I worked 996. My family life would suffer if I worked 996.  And my physical and mental health would degrade..

In my work, I make many decisions, I create conditions for teams and organizations to do new work, and I contemplate the future and figure out what to do next.  Maybe I should be able to do this work well with a 996 schedule.  But I know myself, and I know I would be far less effective working 996.  Maybe my work is uniquely unfit for 996? Maybe I am uniquely unfit for 996?

Some questions for you:

• How many hours can you concentrate in one day?
• How about the second day?
• If you worked a 996 schedule, would you get more done?
• How many weeks could you work 996 before the wheels fall off?

The startup pace is rapid.  Progress must be made before the money runs out.  At these early stages, when a company’s existence depends on hitting the super agressive timelines, I think 996 is especially attractive to startup companies  The potential financial upside is large which may make for a fair trade – more hours for the chance of outsized compensation.

But what if an established company sets extremely tight timelines and offers remarkable compensation if those timelines are met?  Does 996 become viable?  What if an established company sets startup-like timelines but without added compensation?  Would 996 be viable in that case?

Some countries and regions work a 996 schedule as a matter of course – no limited to  startups and (likely) no special compensation.  And it seems to work for them, at least from the outside.  And 996 may be an important supporting element of their impressively low costs, high quality, and speed.

If those countries amd regions can sustain their 996 culture, and I think they will, it will create pressure on other countries to adopt a similar approach to avoid falling further behind.

I’m unsure what broad adoption of 996 would mean for the world.

Image credit — Evan