Craft and Competence

Explores how skilled practitioners develop, maintain, and extend their capabilities through tools, routines, and deliberate practice in knowledge work and making.

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Posts (333)

2024-08-15 Intellectual Menopause
2024-07-14 Imagination vs. Creativity
2024-06-05 Bangalore Meetup Report
2024-05-14 Arbitrariness Costs
2024-03-13 Storytelling — Just Add Dinosaurs
2024-03-08 My Post-AI Writing
2024-02-21 Four Modes of BDFxing
2024-02-06 A Tale of Two Kits
2024-02-01 The Bartleby Trough
2024-01-31 Lego Soup
2024-01-23 Can Robots Whittle?
2024-01-18 Adventures in Mediocre Sweetmaking
2024-01-17 Universal Kit Template
2024-01-10 Knowledge Management
2023-11-09 Touching Transistors
2023-04-05 Permissionless Research
2023-03-16 Report Cards
2023-03-01 Salt-Seeking
2022-12-29 2022 Ribbonfarm Extended Universe Roundup
2022-11-17 The Art of Gig Books
2022-07-28 Tubeworld
2022-07-13 Storytelling -- Tellability
2022-07-07 Virtue Degeneracy
2022-04-21 The Ribbonfarm Lab
2022-03-30 Fermi Estimates and Dyson Designs
2022-02-10 Tools
2022-01-20 Animation Sublimation
2022-01-06 Random Acts of X
2021-12-29 2021 Ribbonfarm Extended Universe Annual Roundup
2021-12-06 Thinking in OODA Loops
2021-10-27 MJD 59,514
2021-08-10 MJD 59,436
2021-07-29 Mediocratopia: 10
2021-07-01 MJD 59,396
2021-06-24 Storytelling -- Matthew Dicks
2021-04-22 MJD 59,326
2021-04-19 MJD 59,323
2021-03-18 Kinds of Potential
2021-03-11 Elderblog Sutra: 12
2021-02-16 Storytelling -- Harmon vs. McKee
2021-02-11 MJD 59,256
2021-01-21 Nostalgia for Network Effects
2020-12-31 2020 Ribbonfarm Extended Universe Annual Roundup
2020-12-09 Stoned Strategy
2020-11-10 MJD 59,163
2020-10-21 MJD 59,143
2020-10-14 Clockmaking: 2
2020-08-24 Notes: Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee
2020-08-19 Convergent Evolution
2020-08-13 Clockmaking: 1
2020-08-04 Amateur Vigour
2020-07-30 Elderblog Sutra: 11
2020-06-04 MJD 59,004
2020-05-21 New E-Book, and a Portfolio Update
2020-04-23 Quarantine Art
2020-04-14 Liminality?...Well, there's a free sample!
2020-04-12 Now Reading: Pandemic Edition
2020-03-04 Predictable Identities 26: Academic Identity
2020-02-24 A Text Renaissance
2020-01-03 MJD 58,851
2019-12-31 Complete 2019 Roundup
2019-11-25 Elderblog Sutra: 10
2019-10-11 PermaPunk - Visionary Non/Fictions
2019-09-16 Mediocratopia: 8
2019-09-10 Elderblog Sutra: 8
2019-08-16 Multitemporality: 1
2019-07-09 Elderblog Sutra: 7
2019-07-04 Semi-Annual 2019 Roundup
2019-06-19 Mazes as Mirrors of Creation
2019-05-09 A New Newsletter: The Art of Gig
2019-04-23 Elderblog Sutra: 6
2019-04-02 Worlding Raga: 4 - Who Worlds?
2019-03-21 Constructions in Magical Thinking
2019-03-18 Elderblog Sutra: 5
2019-03-07 Mediocratopia: 3
2019-03-05 Worlding Raga: 2 - What is a World?
2019-02-21 Worlding Raga: 1
2019-02-19 Elderblog Sutra: 4
2019-02-11 Elderblog Sutra: 3
2019-02-05 Elderblog Sutra: 2
2019-01-31 Elderblog Sutra: 1
2019-01-10 Remembering Pierre Kabamba
2018-12-20 Why We Slouch
2018-12-07 “Something Runs Through The Whole Thread”
2018-10-25 The Speakeasy Imagineering Network
2018-07-19 Quiver Doodles
2018-07-13 Hedonic Audit
2018-06-21 Near-Deathness
2018-05-10 Notes on Doing Things
2018-05-03 The Art of Longform
2018-04-06 Deep Laziness
2018-03-29 The Key to Act Two
2018-02-20 2018 Annual Letter
2018-01-09 Boat Stories
2017-12-21 Complete 2017 Roundup
2017-08-10 Questions Are Not Just For Asking
2017-07-26 On Being Nosey
2017-07-20 The Ominouslier Roar of the Bitcoin Wave
2017-07-13 Crash Early, Crash Often
2017-06-13 Ten Years of Refactoring
2017-05-30 Y Tribenator
2017-04-25 One Weird Longform Trick...on the Blockchain!
2017-04-13 Idiots Scaring Themselves in the Dark
2017-02-28 A Brief History of Existential Terror
2017-01-31 The Throughput of Learning
2017-01-24 Lies, Caffeinated Lies, and Operating Systems
2017-01-10 Rolling Your Own Culture and (Not) Finding Community
2016-11-01 Ribbonfarm Longform Blogging Course: Nov 10 - 22
2016-10-11 Radical Candor
2016-07-28 Fat Thinking and Economies of Variety
2016-06-29 The Daredevil Camera
2016-06-16 Meta-Skills, Macro-Laws, and the Power of Constraints
2016-05-26 How to Take Your Brain Off-Road
2016-05-12 Artem vs. Predator
2016-04-21 A Framework of Experimental Habit Formation
2016-04-14 A Good Name Points to You
2016-03-24 The Holy Grail of Self-Improvement
2016-02-02 Podcasts with Longform and Farnam Street
2016-01-28 Productivity for Precious Snowflakes
2015-12-23 Complete 2015 Roundup
2015-11-23 Artisanal Hand-Crafted Electrons
2015-10-08 LCD Curtains
2015-09-22 Significance Appreciation
2015-09-17 How to be a Precious Snowflake
2015-09-10 Why Nerds Have Bad Taste
2015-09-08 The Greater Ribbonfarm Cultural Region 2015
2015-08-25 Learning is the Opposite of Healing
2015-08-11 Low Humanity Orbit
2015-07-28 Breaking Smart
2015-07-21 Inbox Zero versus Flow Laminar
2015-06-12 The Things You Carry
2015-04-02 The Art of Gig III
2015-03-26 The Art of Gig II
2015-03-19 The Art of Gig
2015-02-18 A Dent in the Universe
2014-12-18 Learning from Crashes
2014-11-16 When Monitoring a Behavior Makes it Worse
2014-10-29 Crash-Only Thinking
2014-10-21 Playing Games to Leave Games
2014-10-12 I Will Not Rest Until...
2014-09-17 We Have Them Surrounded in Their Tanks
2014-09-03 How to Fall Off the Wagon
2014-09-02 When is a Year not a Year?
2014-08-05 The Four Seasons of Lifehacking
2014-07-09 Effort Shock and Reward Shock
2014-06-18 The Physics of Stamp Collecting
2014-06-11 The Deliberate Practice of Disruption
2014-06-05 The Rumsfeld Behavioral Landscape
2014-05-08 Science! and Other Off-the-Wall Études
2014-03-12 Authors and Directors
2014-03-10 Reboot Travel vs. Pause Travel
2014-02-24 Packaging-Heavy Projects
2014-02-20 The Cactus and the Weasel
2014-02-10 Running Lean, Running Fat
2014-01-27 Discovery-Heavy Projects
2014-01-21 The Poor Usability Tell
2014-01-15 Resident Bloggers for 2014: Sam, Jordan, Kartik, Keith
2014-01-13 When Finishing is Easier than Starting
2014-01-01 Free, as in Agent
2013-12-16 Maintenance Thinking
2013-11-19 Deep Play: An Impressionistic Theory of Innovation
2013-11-11 Is Decision-Making Skill Trainable?
2013-10-31 On Staying Grounded
2013-10-18 Frictional and Structural Unknowns
2013-10-02 Truth in Consulting
2013-09-25 Rough Books for Roughening School
2013-08-26 On Thinking Caps
2013-08-11 Personality Ambidexterity: Or How to Turn Yourself Inside-Out
2013-08-08 On Freedomspotting
2013-07-23 Inside the Miscellaneous Folder
2013-07-10 You Are Not an Artisan
2013-06-06 On the Unraveling of Scripts
2013-05-30 Aphorisms: Collection 1
2013-05-14 Deliberate Practice versus Immersion
2013-04-29 Sensitive Dependence on Paperwork Conditions
2013-04-01 Why Habit Formation is Hard
2013-03-18 How Many Steps Do You Really Look Ahead?
2013-02-19 The Cloistered Hedgehog and The Dislocated Fox
2013-02-15 Adventures in Amateur Talking-Headery
2013-01-11 Refactorings Extended: Please Welcome Mike, Drew and Kevin
2012-12-30 Roundup of 2012 Tempoblog Posts
2012-12-19 Complete 2012 Roundup
2012-11-14 Jason Ho on Cultivating a Jiu-Jitsu Mindset
2012-10-31 Deskless in Seattle, Future of Data Survey
2012-10-15 Economies of Scale, Economies of Scope
2012-10-02 Annealing the Tactical Pattern Stack
2012-09-17 Demystification versus Understanding
2012-09-11 Romanticism and Classicism (Assembly Required)
2012-08-23 Waste, Creativity and Godwin's Corollary for Technology
2012-07-31 The Guerilla Guide to Social Business
2012-07-13 The Generalized Hawthorne Effect
2012-07-03 Five Years of Blogging
2012-07-02 Not Important, Not Urgent
2012-06-13 Getting Ahead, Getting Along, Getting Away
2012-06-05 Towards an Appreciative View of Technology
2012-05-31 The Art of Refactored Perception
2012-05-21 The Daily Ugly
2012-05-14 How Life Imitates Chess by Garry Kasparov
2012-05-07 Creative Desks versus Administration Desks
2012-05-03 Rediscovering Literacy
2012-04-30 The 6-Hour Maker-Manager Work Day
2012-04-25 Go Deep, Young Man: 2012 Call for Sponsorships
2012-03-26 The Tempo of Code
2012-03-19 The Fundamentals of Calendar Hacking
2012-03-09 Routine, but Cannot be Automated
2012-03-01 The Second Most Important Archetype in your Life
2012-02-29 Just Add Water
2012-02-09 Refactor Camp 2012: Generativity and Captivity
2012-01-11 Seeking Density in the Gonzo Theater
2012-01-06 2012 Reading List, January - June
2012-01-04 Squeakastination: The Opposite of Procrastination
2011-12-22 Tempo: Year One
2011-12-21 Complete 2011 Roundup
2011-11-29 The Pomodoro Technique
2011-11-21 Tempo Now Available on Kindle
2011-11-11 Technology and the Baroque Unconscious
2011-11-02 A Pilgrimage through Stagnation and Acceleration
2011-10-25 Thrust, Drag and the 10x Effect
2011-09-23 The Milo Criterion
2011-09-22 Forgivable Sloppiness: The Art of Epoch-Driven Time Management
2011-08-19 The Calculus of Grit
2011-08-17 Daemons and the Mindful Learning Curve
2011-07-22 Tempo and OODA: The Backstory
2011-07-14 Diamonds versus Gold
2011-07-13 Storytelling for Problem-Solving
2011-06-16 The Las Vegas Rules II: Stuff Science
2011-05-16 Startup Deathwatch in Memphis
2011-05-14 The Author's Journey and the Blogger's Journey
2011-05-12 Functional Fixedness and Kata Learning
2011-05-09 Week 2: Ann Arbor, Nashville, Atlanta, New Orleans
2011-05-09 Week 2: Ann Arbor, Nashville, Atlanta, New Orleans
2011-05-05 Why Some Drives are Fun
2011-05-04 The One Way of the Beginner
2011-05-03 The Tempo of Food
2011-04-28 The Tempo Road Trip
2011-03-31 Tempo Stealth Edition
2011-03-01 Where the Wild Thoughts Are
2011-02-23 Memories of Namdapha
2011-02-10 Waiting versus Idleness
2011-01-01 How Leveraged are Your Resolutions?
2010-12-13 Update on Tempo
2010-11-29 What Does it Mean to Work Hard?
2010-10-07 How Good Becomes the Enemy of Great
2010-09-28 Learning from One Data Point
2010-06-03 Three Off-Ribbonfarm Posts
2010-05-19 Intellectual Gluttony
2010-05-04 The Lords of Strategy by Walter Kiechel
2010-04-28 Be Slightly Evil
2010-04-12 Four-Hour Workweek or Executricks?
2010-04-01 An Elephant, Some Batteries and Julianne Moore
2010-03-18 The Turpentine Effect
2010-03-13 Linchpin by Seth Godin, and 8 Other Short Book Reviews
2010-03-01 The Expedient, Desirable Product
2010-01-23 Impro by Keith Johnstone
2010-01-09 Drive by Dan Pink
2010-01-02 2009 Roundup, 2010 Preview
2009-12-27 Work-Life Balance: Juggling, Spinning or Surfing? (Rerun)
2009-12-16 The Right and Left Brains of Enterprise 2.0
2009-12-13 Random Promotions and the Gervais Principle
2009-10-26 Fear of Improvisation (and Clunkers)
2009-10-14 Hello to Slashdotters, Gervais Principle Follow-Ups
2009-09-17 Your Evil Twins and How to Find Them
2009-09-03 The Manager on Labor Day
2009-08-24 The Pregnancy Metaphor
2009-07-21 The Crucible Effect and the Scarcity of Collective Attention
2009-07-17 Cloudworker Board Game Revisited
2009-05-21 Bay's Conjecture
2009-05-05 Ribbonfarm at the Crossroads
2009-04-20 How to Draw and Judge Quadrant Diagrams
2009-04-15 Coworking: \"I'm Outta Here\" by Jones, Sundsted and Bacigalupo
2009-04-08 Design and Architecture
2009-03-31 The Slash Effect
2009-03-20 Succession Planning: Marshall Goldsmith vs. Eric Raymond
2009-03-11 Neatness, Organization and Unsociability
2009-02-17 The Training of the Organization Man
2009-02-10 Health and the Happy Hamster
2009-02-03 Who: The A Method for Hiring by Smart and Street
2009-01-23 Enculturation Recapitulates Civilization
2009-01-18 The Cloudworker, Layoffs and The Disposable American
2009-01-07 Allenism, Taylorism and the Day I Rode the Thundercloud
2008-12-31 Six Personal Favorites for 2008
2008-12-26 Complete 2008 Roundup
2008-12-15 How to Make New Year's Calibrations
2008-12-10 Serious Games for Serious Business
2008-12-03 Brain Rules by John Medina
2008-12-01 Future-of-Work Mini-X-Prizes at Cloudworker.org
2008-11-18 The Organization Man by William Whyte: Introduction
2008-10-31 My First Book, A Board Game and 'Cloudworker' on the NYT
2008-10-29 Cloudworker Economics
2008-10-23 The Cloudworker's Creed
2008-10-07 The Headcount Myth and the Value of Overbooking
2008-09-29 A Generational War (Guest Post on Enterprise 2.0 Blog)
2008-09-11 How to Measure Information Work
2008-09-06 Organizing to Disrupt
2008-08-24 How We Fly: Aircraft as Career Metaphors
2008-08-17 The Impossibility Triangle in Talent Management
2008-08-13 Some Pointers to Thinking Styles
2008-08-05 The Next Level of the Game
2008-07-17 Peter Cappelli's "Talent On Demand"
2008-07-13 Work-Life Chemistry and How to Measure It
2008-07-06 Happy First Birthday, Ribbonfarm
2008-06-22 Theory W, Theory X and Theory Y
2008-06-20 The Three-Leaps-of-Faith Rule
2008-06-09 How Geniuses Think
2008-06-03 Context-Switching Metaphors for Work-Life Blending
2008-06-01 Three Great Jobs in the Fourth Xerox Revolution
2008-05-28 Outsider Innovation 101
2008-05-26 Information Overload and the FOOD IS THOUGHT Metaphor
2008-05-20 The Evolution of Work-Life
2008-05-11 What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith
2008-04-19 A Map of the World 2.0 Canon
2008-04-15 The Coming Triumph of the Strengths Movement
2008-04-08 The New Location, Location, Location
2008-04-05 Generation Blend by Rob Salkowitz
2008-04-03 Against Clouds
2008-03-23 Johnny Bunko and the Future of Work
2008-03-09 Trollope, Fitzgerald and Holmes for the Generalist's Soul
2008-03-05 The UnAha! Experience
2008-03-02 The Varieties of Innovation Experience
2008-02-21 The Blue Tunnel
2008-02-19 Entrepreneurship, Intrapreneurship and Cross-preneurship
2008-02-06 Creative Destruction: Portrait of an Idea
2008-01-24 How to Pick Business and Self-Improvement Books
2008-01-22 Mousetrap 2.0: A Comicbook
2007-11-19 The Deeper Meaning of Kindle
2007-11-14 How to be an Idea Person
2007-10-25 An MBA in Gordon's Restaurant
2007-10-22 Iron Filings on Your Brain
2007-09-04 Meditations on Cataloging the Telluride Library
2007-08-27 Dan Pink, Howard Gardner and the Da Vinci Mind
2007-08-20 Open Innovation, or is Business War?
2007-07-22 Book Review: Competing on Analytics
2007-06-20 The Silo Reconsidered