Lists, Vibes and References
16 Thoughts and 3 Articles and 7 Links
I keep spotting articles consisting of short, numbered sections. I don’t mean listicles. They’re not “10 interesting things about potatoes, number 4 will shock you.” I’m talking about almost long-form bits of writing, broken into numbered lists, with each point a discrete thought.
The Notices from Nick Parker is a good example. Or Afternoon Slow by Russell Davies.
Sometimes these lists are braided. A thought arrives, then another unrelated thought, and a bit later the first one is picked up again.
Perhaps these lists are inspired by tweets. The Twitter/X thread is a new way of writing (and reading) where each thought is broken into a discrete unit that can, in theory, stand-alone. “Tweets can be threaded, but they must be ordered in a quasi-logical fashion,” says Steve Fuller in an LSE blog, “Twitter has all the earmarks of a ‘Modernist’ medium.”
In practice, of course, threads don’t stand alone. The thread begins with an announcement heralding a thread: “1/20” or, for “pantsers”, it’s “1/n”. Even though each tweet is a separate item, you read threads as one amorphous lump (think of tools like ThreadReader that “unroll” threads back into essays). Yet I still find the fact that threads could be broken down somehow appealing.
Some put more effort into threads than others. You see some people stop halfway through a word when they run out of letters and carry on in the next tweet. That’s not like the numbered lists I’m talking about. That's someone trying to shoehorn something that doesn't fit into a tweet. They might as well type into the Notes app and screenshot it like we used to.
Several Short Sentences About Writing is a whole book like this. Verlyn Klinkenborg puts a line break after each full stop. It forces you to pause before moving on to the next point.
Elon Musk’s latest Blue-Tick monetization options have made threads suddenly profitable. “Ten tricks Warren Buffet uses to make a fortune that you can use too. 1/11”. Hey, we’ve re-invented the listicle.
Perhaps the thing with numbered lists is that you get regular natural breaks. It’s long-form prose, but somehow it doesn’t feel like it. Bitesize, fun-size, chunks of content. It’s eating a dozen Miniature Heroes rather than a whole Dairy Milk.
Maybe Several Short Sentences About Writing doesn’t count as the points aren’t numbered. They're just individual sentences on separate lines.
It’s taken me a while to spot that the numbers don’t do anything. They’re bullet points. Maybe not even bullet points. Markers of new thoughts. A dinkus. That’s the actual name for a thematic break. “Not to be confused with dingus,” Wikipedia adds sardonically.
When you write lists in HTML, you can use “ordered lists” or “unordered lists”. Unordered lists are bullet points. Ordered lists are numbered. It always takes me a second to remember which is which, partly because they’re all ordered. You still read bullet points from top to bottom. Lists, like life, are linear.
When you create a list like this, should you ensure you have a round number of things? Should you aim for 10? There’s something weirdly special about 12 (A dozen. Months in a year. Inches in a foot. Ribs). If you can’t get a round number, perhaps you should go for a random number. 16, say. It feels like you’re making a point when you say 16. Like you're being purposefully difficult. Even though if you have 16 points that means there genuinely are 16, whereas when there are 10 it probably means you had to invent a few to round it off.
I’ve written myself into a corner here because now I don't know whether to end on a round number of points or just stop. To do either will seem like I’m coming down on a side.
In Everything I Know about Life I Learned from PowerPoint, Russell Davies (Not the Doctor Who guy) recommends always using an unusual number of points as it feels more real. It’s the negotiation tactic of never offering a round number because an unusual number feels more carefully considered. If they’re offering £242,650 for your house, there must be a reason. (Rather than the truth: they’re trying to push you under £250,000)
And so I leave you on this, my 16th carefully planned and considered thought. Or perhaps I’ve run out of other thoughts and just stopped. Or perhaps since I mentioned 16 earlier, I now need to end here. Chekhov’s 16. I won’t waste your time by attempting to force four more thoughts out of nothing to pad this up to 20. I know, I know: not all heroes wear capes. And now, here’s a dinkus for you.
Elsewhere
Vibe Driven Development by Robin Rendle:
Ah, analytics. KPIs. Measurements.
when it comes to building a product, all data is garbage, a lie, or measuring the wrong thing. Folks will be obsessed with clicks and charts and NPS scores—the NFTs of product management—and in this sea of noise they believe they can see the product clearly. There are courses and books and talks all about measuring happiness and growth—surveys! surveys! surveys!—with everyone in the field believing that they’ve built a science when they’ve really built a cult.
It’s not that I hate data, it’s more that I don’t think good products (or art or books) are made simply by looking at surveys or click rates. The whole point of being the person making the product is so that you get to choose what goes into the product. You’ve been hired for your judgement and taste.
(Just look at the product and it will tell you why it sucks.)
It comes down to this annoying, upsetting, stupid fact: the only way to build a great product is to use it every day, to stare at it, to hold it in your hands to feel its lumps. The data and customers will lie to you but the product never will. And most product orgs suck because they simply don’t use the products that they’re building; they ship incremental nothings without direction because they’re looking at spreadsheets all day long filled with junk data nothings. […] If you have good experience of the product, your vibes will lead you down the right path of what to build next. I think this is why small orgs make better things faster than large orgs; they’re all about the vibes.
Not from this article, but I can’t help thinking of this quote from Tony Benn, ostensibly about politicians, but maybe really about human agency:
I have divided politicians into two categories: the Signposts and the Weathercocks. The Signpost says: 'This is the way we should go.' And you don't have to follow them but if you come back in ten years time the Signpost is still there. The Weathercock hasn’t got an opinion until they've looked at the polls, talked to the focus groups, discussed it with the spin doctors. And I've no time for Weathercocks, I'm a Signpost man.
The World We're Designing by Chris Ferdinandi:
Ferdinandi shares a quote from Stolen Focus:
James Williams […] addressed an audience of hundreds of leading tech designers and asked them a simple question: “How many of you want to live in the world you are designing?” There was a silence in the room. People looked around them. Nobody put up their hand.
It’s a short piece, barely more than this quote itself. But over the last few years, I’ve started to find myself thinking versions of this thought. Part of this is about technology, but it’s about governments and companies as well. I wonder if you asked the last few Prime Ministers what policies of theirs made the world a better places which policies they’d reach for.
In Praise of Reference Books by Daniel M. Rothschild in Discourse:
I’m a sucker for articles that praise something weird and boring-sounding. Yes, show me some tiny detail in something I’ve written off.
an obnoxious essay printed recently in the Financial Times on reading offered advice that one must “[not] read fewer than 50 pages in a sitting” and quoted Philip Roth with admiration: “If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don’t read the novel.” […] Pish! and Feh! say the reference books. Pick us up as you will and read as much or as little as you choose. Sit in a library and leaf through our pages. Look up a quick item. […] I discovered Martin Gilbert’s “Atlas of British History” in a charity shop for £1 and have taken more from it than many “serious” books, a few charts and maps at a time. […] And therein lies the joy of reference books: You as the reader can make them comply with the demands of your knowledge, intellect and time constraints, not vice versa.
That’s all for this time,
Simon