Learn to Think in Color

Why Do People Use Acronyms at Work? Shorthand saves time. It also tells you who feels safe, who feels lost, and who is trying to sound fluent. Framing the Question Why do people use acronyms at work? Because organizations are always fighting two pressures at once: the need to move faster and the need to be understood. Acronyms promise speed. They compress long ideas into portable labels: KPI, OKR, ARR, SLA, RFP, CRM. But every acronym also creates a small doorway. Some people can walk through it easily. Others have to pause, guess, or pretend. People use acronyms at work for five main reasons: efficiency, belonging, precision, habit, and status. The first three can be useful. The last two can quietly damage communication. An acronym is not automatically bad. In a hospital, airport, software team, or sales organization, shorthand can reduce repetition and make complex work manageable. Nobody wants to say “customer relationship management platform” twenty times in a meeting when “CRM” wi...

What Has AI Revealed Was a Waste of Time? The machine did not devalue work. It exposed work that was never where the value lived. Framing the Question AI busywork is becoming easier to see because the machine is fast at the very things many workplaces quietly rewarded: producing an acceptable first draft, restating available information, filling templates, and making routine communication look finished. The question is uncomfortable because time spent is often mistaken for value created. When a tool compresses an hour into a minute, it does not prove that the person was useless. It asks whether the hour had been spent on the right part of the job. The Direct Answer: Work That Only Imitated Value AI has made one category of work especially hard to defend: predictable production performed as though production itself were expertise . That includes writing the fifth variation of a standard customer reply, converting meeting notes into a familiar summary, manually reformatting information a...

Why does work feel heavier even when hours don’t increase? How invisible load, context-switching, and emotion quietly add “phantom hours”   Big Picture Frame When work feels heavier even when hours don’t increase, it’s usually because the  shape  of your work has changed, not the clock. More decisions, interruptions, and emotional friction can make an eight-hour day feel like twelve. In this post, we’ll unpack why work feels heavier without more hours, how cognitive load and context-switching drain you, and what subtle signals to watch for before burnout sneaks in. You’ll walk away with a simple lens to diagnose “phantom workload” in yourself and your team and language to talk about it without sounding like you’re just complaining. Why work feels heavier without more hours The short answer: “hours worked” is a terrible proxy for “energy spent.” Two people can both work 8 hours. One finishes energized, the other feels flattened. What changed? Usually it’s a mix of: Cogniti...

How do you decide what not to work on when planning your year? <  1x The underrated skill of strategic quitting and intentional neglect. Big-picture framing Deciding what not to work on when planning your year is often more powerful than adding another ambitious goal. By cutting projects and habits that don’t support your direction, you free up bandwidth for work that actually moves the needle. This question isn’t just about productivity; it’s about what you want this year to mean—and which commitments quietly get in the way of that. When you learn to consciously decide what not to work on, your calendar starts to reflect your real priorities, not just your loudest obligations. Why deciding what not to work on matters Most annual plans obsess over new goals—launch the product, get promoted, start the podcast. But the quieter, sharper move is to ask,  “What will I  not  do this year?”  When you decide what not to work on up front, you’re really choosing how yo...