The Indie Experts List

A Point of View is an opinion you can argue for; one that is located in a distinct perspective. This is a nice example: https://write.as/harold-lee/theres-a-phrase-going-around-that-you-should-buy-experiences-not-things Part of what makes a point of view a… point of view is some consistency in how you see things. It helps to really lean into the reason(s) you see things the way you do. This causes your writing to come from the same origin point every time. Part of this consistency is topical focus; you focus your publishing on a single topic or narrow range of topics. And part of the consistency is that …

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If someone (me!) wanted to have a better model with which to answer the question “Why do some people want to improve their condition?”, are there any books/papers/articles you’d recommend I read? I ate a lot of vegetables reviewing Goal Constructs in Psychology: Structure, Process, and Content and I felt like it would have been helpful if I had a more foundational understanding of this question, or was working with a basic-but-functional model that that paper could help me evolve or replace with a better one. I want a model that helps with questions like the one above, and related …

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Sometimes I enjoy being difficult. It’s not one of my better attributes, I’ll admit, but it can have value in some contexts. Here are some difficult ways to respond to someone saying “That’ll never work”. Maybe these responses can be productive, in the right context. “That’ll never work.” “In what context will it never work?”” “That’ll never work.” “At what scale will it never work?” “That’ll never work.” “What makes it obvious to you that it’ll never work?” “That’ll never work.” “What part of it dooms it to never work?”

Earning a slice of money a business expects or plans to spend (training budget, conference budget, book budget) is different than persuading someone to spend money they hadn’t expected or planned on spending. Persuading someone to spend $5 more than the $100 they’re already spending is different than persuading someone to spend $5 they hadn’t expected or planned on spending. (See Searching vs. Distribution) As I start building the Lead Generation Operating System, the notion of genre keeps coming up. You see this in the most vivid way with cold outreach. In that context, there’s a huge difference between these …

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This research paper, on the topic of whether focusing on competitor companies and market share helps financial performance, has an interesting appendix where the authors describe their research method. Because the paper is both a publication of their own findings and a summary of related findings, they did a literature review. This is the first paper I’ve read where I’ve seen the “professionals” — academic researchers — describe their lit review method. (I’m sure it’s not the first one to do that, just the first one I’ve encountered.) It’s intimidating. It’s so sophisticated that I just don’t know how any …

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This is the Whole Foods checkout line sometime last year in Santa Fe, NM. Some things are discovered when people search for them, and some are encountered because of how they’re distributed. Some observations on distribution. Almost nobody — and not Seth Godin’s “almost nobody cares about your thing; and that’s plenty” but really almost nobody — would search for that “The Power of Learning” magazine. I’d bet they sell 10x to 100x more because of the distribution leverage that Whole Foods offers them. The distributor “owns” the reason people are there. In this way, Whole Foods and social media …

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From https://blog.devgenius.io/are-14-people-currently-looking-at-this-product-e7fe8412f16b: The number of people viewing the article is thus a complete fabrication. The code simply generates a random number every five seconds. This makes it appear as though people are constantly browsing the website, making it seem lively and busy. It’s probably supposed to make the website look more trustworthy, as many other people appear to be browsing. It can also encourage customers to checkout as quickly as possible, as the product they are interested in might be in high demand. I wonder how common this practice is. I understand where it comes from: the desire to have …

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“Psychologist Amos Tversky once said “the secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.” Source: http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/inefficient/

I’m always on the lookout for research methods that are useful in a small-scale research (SSR) context. This study has one: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/when-it-comes-to-culture-does-your-company-walk-the-talk/ Their research question: do Glassdoor.com reviews of companies contain evidence that the culture and values described on the company’s website actually exist inside the company’s operation? Any time you can build a dataset by scraping websites, it’s a potential efficiency in your research effort. It can be faster and easier to scrape than to speak (with people in an interview). The quality of the scraped data, of course, could be good or garbage, but the speed with which …

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The world was long on dismay and fatigue in 2021, and perhaps a bit short on delight? Here’s what delighted me in 2021. All of these were surprise delights, which makes them extra delightful. Obsidian, an open source knowledge-management/note-taking/writing tool: https://obsidian.md There’s a learning curve to it and some rough edges remain in the software, but once I got even partway up Obsidian’s learning curve, I felt like I’d found a really wonderful note-taking, knowledge management, and writing tool that works well in a cross-platform environment and, via the theming and plugin ecosystem, fits my needs and preferences like a …

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