It’s easier to understand what we ought to do than it is to actually accomplish it. You can know the right thing to do and say, but if you can’t persuade others that you’re correct, your knowledge has little utility in the real world.

The best that you can do after failing to persuade others that the theory that you espoused was correct is a hollow “I told you so.” Few people like the “I told you so” guy, even if the data validates the theory.

“I told you so” is a consequence of taking inappropriate credit for the truth of a theory. The theory of universal gravitation is true independent of how awesome a guy Isaac Newton was (he was actually a jerk).

Doing the work to turn a theoretical observation into something that other people can use is something to take credit for. Just ‘being correct’ doesn’t help anyone.

For example, just saying “This ad campaign won’t work. You’re using AdWords inappropriately for your goal.” is not persuasive unless you have enough accumulated authority that anyone will listen to you without needing to provide supporting argumentation.

People usually dislike being told that ‘they’re wrong.’ A person is never ‘wrong’ nor ‘right,’ they’re just a skin-bag of meat and blood with higher mental functions than most mammals. Their thoughts may be incorrect. Their predictions may be based on bum theories.  Their observations may not be based in reality.

As I understand it, it’s best to focus on the thoughts instead of the person espousing them. Personality clashes may be entertaining, but they rarely shift minds.

I’m addicted to winning competitions. This is one of those fake “greatest weaknesses” that an asshole might bring up in a job interview.

I like seeing my name at the top of a list. When I can’t win something in one area, I figure out how to get the need met in some other context at the same time.

My love of winning all the time sometimes leads me to do dumb things, like get into pointless debates. I’ll win, but I’ll leave the other person feeling like shit about themselves. Sometimes, it’s better to let someone else stew in their wrongness than it is to “win” a pointless debate against them.

It’s easy for me to forget that the ideal purpose of debate is to expose the truth to all participants — not for me to come out on top as the “winner.”

One of the reasons that I like playing video games is that my name winds up at the top of a list so frequently at the end of the game.

One thing I’ve noticed about my habits is that I stay away from games that I lose frequently. I became bored with the real time strategy genre when ranked match-making became popular, which ensures that players at all skill levels will lose a significant proportion of their matches.

I’m getting better at coping with not being the best all the time. I write on Quora partly because I like seeing my name at the top of a list in a competition.

There are good and bad things about the chip on my shoulder that nags me to win. When I win something, I feel satisfied. I sense that my efforts have been worth it.

• I’m always looking to gain competitive edges
•  I compete inappropriately sometimes, but I stop it when I catch myself
• I’ve become more comfortable with risk, loss, and failure as I’ve aged (winning is meaningless if all the competitions are too easy — don’t get into boxing matches with toddlers)
• Im accustomed to succeeding. I’ve an orientation to believe that if I make a serious effort, I’m more likely to win.
• I see losses as the result of being out-competed. I self-reflect to determine what I can do to improve my chances in the future instead of blaming ‘the universe,’ ‘god,’ or other factors beyond my control.

I didn’t start out that way. I began from a typical ‘over-achiever’ perspective of “if I’m not the best, I’m shit.” This wasn’t a sustainable point of view. It encourages an over-narrow specialization, avoiding hard competitions, avoiding learning, and avoiding risk.

It’s possible to encourage this behavior in others without expecting people to rebuild their personalities. I do this by:

• Emphasizing the progress of a group after a failure to reach a goal instead of ruminating on the fact of the failure (if the group is regressing, it’s time to pause and determine why)
• Articulating what our group’s competitive edges are
• Picking competitions that are worthy challenges, but not doomed from the outset
• Reviewing successes as much as failures (it’s often easier to dissect failures and carp over everything that everyone did wrong — it’s just as important to review what made an attempt successful)
• Applying the same process to myself that I apply to groups that I work with

It helps me to write all this out. I hope it’s useful to you, reader.

A pen and paper are “easy to use.” You just take the pen, remove the cap, put the point on the paper, and carve out letters. Children learn how to do it over a couple years of practice as they learn language.

Typing a message on a keyboard into a Twitter update box is “easy.”

But how long does it take to learn how to type? How many people in the world know how to do it? How many people in your market can touch type? How fast do the people in your market read?

How long does it take to punch in a sentence on a smart phone? Is that ‘easy?’ It might be ‘easy’ for a kid who grew up texting. It won’t be for a 55-year-old arthritic.

Programmers and other professionals assume that their specialized skill-sets are standard issue. They’re not.

A lot of people in the US and abroad read much slower than you do, can’t touch-type, and struggle to comprehend text. It takes many more multiples of effort on their part to gain knowledge. Their lives are tougher as a result. Their problems appear tougher for them to surmount.

Creative people have a tremendous structure of knowledge inside themselves built up over years of effort. As we’re all trapped in our own heads, it takes extra effort to figure out how other people think and act.

It helps me, at least, to make an analogy with areas that I’m ignorant about. Some people are as ignorant about gaining and applying knowledge as I am about cleaning drain pipes. Or building a plumbing system for a large office building. I’m dimly aware of the principles of water pressure. That’s the extent of my plumbing knowledge.

It would take me years of focused effort (or months of crash-studying and apprenticeship) to become a good enough plumber that I could be trusted to lay pipe.

Many users become frustrated by a product when it assumes that they have skills that they don’t. There’s nothing that you can do on Instagram that you can’t do with a pirated copy of Photoshop.

Photoshop is intimidating to someone who hasn’t yet learned its esoteric mysteries. Editing a photo that you’ve taken on your smartphone on a desktop copy of Photoshop takes at least several steps and perhaps some format conversions.

Instagram allows anyone to transform poorly-taken photographs into pretty pictures in a few taps.

People who are ignorant of photo editing and don’t care to cure that ignorance can now achieve their ends.

There’s a wealth of product ideas to extract by examining tasks that requires special knowledge to accomplish and then using technology to eliminate those requirements.

It seems like an obvious concept. It’s not. People continue to mistake complexity for utility. A complex product may be powerful, but increased complexity limits how many people can derive utility from it. The complex product delivers zero utility to a wide swath of the population, but may have a lot of potential for a skilled operator.

Photoshop is worth nothing in the hands of someone who doesn’t know how to use it and doesn’t want to learn. A designer can use Photoshop to earn a salary and equity besides.

During development, ask:

“Who’s going to use this? How skilled are they? How much effort are they going to expend using this before they give up?”

“How much utility are those people going to get from this?”

“How many people are we losing for every new feature we’re adding?”

“What skills are we assuming the user will have?”

Many products would be drastically different if the principals creating them took those questions seriously.

On Fred Wilson’s blog today, user Mark Slater commented

how many of you have young kids? (2-4 yrs)

how many of you have had that experience watching them swipe and tap on a device.

My 2 year old picks up the Ipad – swipes the unlock – swipes to the youtube icon, launches the app, locates saved searches, selects “how to milk a cow” puts it down on the floor and watches as a farmer demonstrates the milking process…….”

its absolutely amazing to watch – and i know i am not alone.

i’ll tell you what disruption is – disruption is doing away with the entire notion of a textbook in the first place – replacing it with digital immersive experiences coupled to structured conversations.

textbooks are like phonebooks. An archane outdated approach to packaging and organizing a body of information. explode the textbook in to a million digital pieces – let innovation put the particles back together.

ofcourse – some old world entitty thinks it has the rights to that body of info and will end up suing its customers much like the labels did i guess.

The technical problem of sharing knowledge with the people who want it has been solved.

The political problem of managing a system that inculcates obedience in the name of providing knowledge is insoluble. If you want to know something, you can learn how to do it with a search query. Even a toddler can do it. Social networks allow anyone to track down someone who knows what they’re talking about and grill them for information.

Now that this powerful networking technology is ubiquitous, it introduces a painful question  to conventional people. Why do we still force children to attend technologically antiquated schools for such a large portion of their active hours?

Are they really receiving the best education at the lowest cost possible? What’s the opportunity cost of keeping a curious young child confined to a chair?

Is community college  or ‘vocational school’ really the best way to turn an unskilled person into a capable factory worker?

The most important distinction between a knowledge worker and a laborer is curiosity. No one will become a world-class developer unless they have the motivation to continue their studies throughout their working life.

The internet generates pleasurable feedback loop for curiosity. Curiosity is repaid with the reward of new knowledge time and again. When I search on Google, I usually get what I want. When I want more detail on a topic, I can download a book from Amazon in less than 30 seconds for a small fee.

Schools train passivity and rote learning. Machines are better at obedience and rote learning than humans are, which is why low-level laborers have been replaced at such a rapid rate since the industrial revolution began.