This Week in Tech by Digital Africa
One big idea – the twin enemies of progress and innovation
Everything we have and see in the world today is the result of thousands of years of human innovation and progress. In all that time, one thing we have learned is that progress isn’t automatic. Dogma, conservatism and sheer fear of change have resisted agents of progress throughout history.
But those are benign compared to the twin evils of perfectionism and mediocrity. Perfectionism prevents us from shipping code. We want to ship the perfect code on day one. Mediocrity on the other hand makes us ship code that just doesn’t meet the minimum state of the art. When we just can’t be bothered, mediocrity is the result.
On the surface, it looks like they are two different things. But in reality, mediocrity and perfectionism are the two guards working in concert to imprison innovation and progress. And they are pretty good at it.
Be neither of them. Do your best today. Then push the code, idea or product into the market. Start working on version 2 immediately.
Two quotes to think about
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music – Friedrich Nietzsche
Three questions to think about as the year ends
- Are you busy or are you building leverage?
- What is the difference between a logo and a brand?
- Where could I have done more?
Four headlines from the world of tech
- Litigation filed against FB by almost all US states, the Federal Trade Commission and Australia
- Covid-19 vaccine rollout starts globally
- Google bids farewell to Android things
- Google suffers outage to critical services
Five mental/intellectual concepts to research as we end the year
- Falsifiability
- Domains of competence
- Inversion of control
- Leverage
- Sunk cost fallacy
That’s it for this week. We love to hear your comments and feedback. Some people have reached out to appreciate the style of writing, and we say a big thank you. This newsletter is written by a small team of communication professionals. If you are looking for help in crafting your brand identity via regular communication, as nofodile@digitalafrica.com.ng to introduce you.
Enjoy the holidays!
