Sketchplanations
Big Ideas Little Pictures

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Explaining the world one sketch at a time

A drawing of 3 people resting on a cycle, one standing, one sitting, one lying down

Stand sit lie

It's an old cycling mantra for recovery: If you're standing, sit down. If you're sitting, lie down. It's something I like to keep in mind after a big workout, particularly on the legs — get the weight off them!
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A sketch of extrinsic motivation with a donkey being followed by a man with a stick and in turn following a carrot that's strapped always just out of reach

Extrinsic motivation

Extrinsic motivation is the carrot or the stick — when the motivation for doing something is an IF/THEN reward or punishment. We use extrinsic motivation all the time like paying people to come into work, or issuing speeding fines to make people slow down. It can work well for simple problems, basic compliance, and short-term results. However, when you need long-term behaviour change, when creativity is needed, or you're tackling complex problems, external rewards and the threat of punishments can even decrease performance and productivity. Rewards only go so far if you want to inspire a hit album, create the next Oscar-winning film, or create a breakthrough product. That is, for most of the important work we do in our lives, including I believe parenting, using extrinsic motivators of rewards or punishments is likely to be far less effective than tapping into intrinsic motivation — motivation that comes from inside ourselves. I like Dan Pink's Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose framework for intrinsic motivation. His TED talk on the Puzzle of Motivation is also a fun and interesting watch.
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A meeting with some in-person participants and one remote participant showing the disadvantages of each

Hybrid meetings

A hybrid meeting is when some participants are in-person, using shared equipment, and some are remote using their own. Generally speaking, hybrid meetings have a number of disadvantages you may have experienced and are best avoided if possible. Perhaps you've been on a call where everyone's laughing about something except the people joining remotely who have no idea what's going on. It can be pretty rubbish. For the in-person participants, it's easy to chat with the people in the room, but with just one person controlling the screen it can be hard to see details of any docs that are shared, and it's difficult to see the remote participants as clearly as those in the room. Those not driving also can't scan through docs at their own pace, or share a screen, or collaborate on a document. It's like having just one person with access to the whiteboard. The remote participants have it worse. Because the camera is likely not as good for the in-person participants the people are smaller and it's hard to see expressions or track who's talking. Some may be off-picture. Without seeing expressions, and with a delay even a tiny bit longer than being in-person it's much harder to find when to join in a conversation. The sound quality ƒrom the room will often also make it harder to hear some of the participants and because the shared mic won't be on mute there'll be background noise. Taken together these disadvantages make hybrid meetings best avoided where possible. Where possible, for the in-person meeting have everyone use their own equipment, joining the call on their own laptop so their video is clear and if not using headsets buy a high-quality speaker. Thanks to GitLab whose list — hybrid calls are annoying — made the disadvantages much clearer to me and led to better meetings at work.
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Someone asks to cut in line at the photocopier with a lame reason - but the favour and reason combo mean the person mindlessly complies

Because

It's an old study now known as the photocopier study. The experiment had the experimenter try to cut in line at a copy machine at a University campus. The researchers found that when the ask was small — just 5 pages to copy — asking to cut in line with the rather circular reason of 'because I have to make some copies' was almost as successful as asking to cut in for the valid reason of 'because I'm in a rush', and both of them beat providing no reason at all. The effect disappeared with a larger ask of 20 pages. The theory was that with a small ask just providing any reason after the word 'because' may trigger an automatic script of 'Favour + Reason --> Comply' — if we don't really think about it we just see the pattern and act. Which suggests that a) if you have a small ask you might be better off providing a reason for it, no matter how small, and b) if we want to avoid acting mindlessly when people ask a favour it may benefit us to pay closer attention. The study was led by Ellen Langer who has since gone on to write a host of books on mindfulness. Also see narrative bias From: Langer, E. J., Blank, A., & Chanowitz, B. (1978). The mindlessness of ostensibly thoughtful action: The role of "placebic" information in interpersonal interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(6), 635–642.
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The tyranny of small decisions: 3 people order more expensive items and end up with a large bill because they knew they were splitting it

The tyranny of small decisions

The tyranny of small decisions is the challenge we face when many individual decisions, when taken together, result in an outcome that is suboptimal or that the group as a whole doesn’t want. Say you’re at a restaurant with friends and early on there’s a plan to split the bill. Your thoughts of a cheap night evaporate with the knowledge that just getting a salad makes little difference if others are getting martinis and appetizers. Heck, if you’re paying for those anyway why not get a dessert? And so a group will often pay more when splitting the bill. It’s also an example of the tyranny of small decisions. Named in a paper by the Cornell economist Alfred E. Kahn, he also discussed the example of the passenger services on the Ithaca railroad. The many daily decisions of people choosing to drive or fly rather than travel by train ended with a train route that was no longer viable and closed, even though each person may have actually wanted to keep a train option. Similar ideas to the tyranny of small decisions include the tragedy of the commons, the Abilene paradox, and local optimisation.
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Banner cloud on the Matterhorn showing strong wind of cold dry air on one side and warmer humid air on the other producing the cloud in a banner shape

Banner cloud

Banner clouds can form on the side of a high or exposed peak and seem to stick to the mountain face like a banner, even on an otherwise cloudless day. There are several theories for how they form but in general strong winds of cold dry air from one side likely interact with warmer humid air on the other. Look out for them next time you're in the mountains. Also see lenticular clouds, thunder clouds, and more clouds.
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