by John Macdonald | Feb 10, 2026 | Human, Leadership, The250
No, not that swamp. The swamp of everything is urgent, they’re all number one priority, and we don’t have enough resources. The inbox overflows. Every meeting requires two more meetings. Nobody can push back. You can’t even figure out what the real highest priority is... by John Macdonald | Feb 9, 2026 | Human, Leadership, The250
But they rarely are. All things being equal is the English version of the Latin phrase ceteris paribus, which economists and scientists use to talk about the effect of one change while theoretically keeping everything else the same. It’s a useful academic approach,... by John Macdonald | Feb 8, 2026 | Human, The250
We think the universe is about 13.8 billion years old. If we laid that out on the ground at 13.8 miles, your lifetime is about 1/2 an inch. If we put 13.8 billion years into a 24-hour day, all of human civilization shows up in the last blink before 11:59:59. We think... by John Macdonald | Feb 7, 2026 | AI, Leadership, The250
It’s not, really, but some things are. Take a day in the 50’s (F). That feels cold in July, but warm in February. Push harder motivates if the team has headroom, but it’s destructive when the team is already drowning. The relative load of the individuals and the... by John Macdonald | Feb 6, 2026 | AI, The250
Now we’re at the point in software development where we have agents talking to agents to create code. One of the best use cases for agentic conversation is “the skeptic.” Here’s how that works. One agent writes code, and we pass that code to The Skeptic. The Skeptic... by John Macdonald | Feb 5, 2026 | AI, The250
If you’ve been doing something a long time, it can be hard to teach someone else. I can stop on ice skates, but I struggle to teach new skaters how to do it. For me, I just think it, and it happens. I’ve been skating for over 50 years. I can play Master of Puppets on...