Month: July 2017

When you order flowers online, they’re usually delivered by a local florist.

Which means the florist has a dilemma:

He can deliver his very best effort and the most beautiful flowers he has in stock, even though the sender will never know his identity or buy from him again.

Or he can use up the damaged stock and the fading flowers, confident that the sender will never know his identity or buy from him again.

You can average up or average down.

You can hide or you can show pride.

It turns out that the florist who doesn’t use up the damaged stock and the fading flowers never seems to have trouble affording better stuff.

Back in the day, hitchhikers held cardboard signs with their desired destination city clearly written out. After all, if you’re headed to New York, it doesn’t make sense to pick up someone headed for Denver (it’s a bad idea for the driver and the passenger).

If you’ve got people on your bus who are headed somewhere you have no intention of going, today might be a good day for them to get off the bus.

Express trains run less often, make fewer stops, and if they’re going where you’re going, get you there faster.

The local train is, of course, the opposite.

Some people hop on the first train that comes. A local in the hand is worth the extra time, they say, because you’re never quite sure when the express is going to get there.

On the other hand, there’s a cost to investing in the thing that pays off in the long run.

Now that you see that, you’re probably going to notice it in 100 areas of your life.

The local requires less commitment, feels less risky, doesn’t demand a point of view. The express, on the other hand, always looks like a better idea after you’ve embraced it and gotten to where you meant to go.

Express or local?

It’s not unusual to describe a heavy object in tonnage.

But no one has any idea how much a ton is, really. Is 250 tons a lot? How much?

250 tons is 500,000 pounds. About the weight of 8 houses. Or the weight of 100,000 bricks.

Which is a solid stack of bricks 10 x 10 by 1,000 bricks high.

It would take you more than 2 months, working 24 hours a day, a brick a minute, to unload that many bricks.

Facts are facts, but images resonate.

Isn’t this the essence of design thinking?

I have a great wool hat that I wear in the winter. Does it help?

Well, that depends on what it’s for.

If it’s designed to keep me warm, then yes, it helps.

How about that meeting you’re going to, that website you’re updating, that question you’re about to ask?

What’s it for?

Does it help?

If it doesn’t help, or you don’t know what it’s for, perhaps it’s time to revisit your choice.