I wish I could point to the first time I did it, but as long as I can remember I’ve had a habit when faced with an either-or choice:

• Go for a run or lift?

• Hiroshima- or Osaka-style okonomiyaki?

• Should we build it fast or reliably?

Why not both?

It’s been my experience that in most situations, when someone presents an either-or decision, the most useful way to understand the decision is to imagine how you would do both. Experience both. Try both.

It might be too costly or time consuming. You might not have the resources or expertise.

Or, it might lead you to a new position. Take the “fast or reliable?” question that every engineer uses to bludgeon managers into either forgiving sloppiness or giving them more time or resources. Except, here’s the thing.

It’s total BS. The whole reason we have prod infra or pick efficient platforms/technologies is that so we can deliver products fast and reliably. If that isn’t your reality, fix it! Worse, if you allow teams to operate in the space of this tradeoff, suddenly everyone accepts that slowness is the price of being good. Charity’s “In Praise of Normal Engineers” is another dichotomy buster.

But you might not know it’s bullshit until you really try to do both.

Feeds and high volume content

How I’ve changed my thinking on attention is similar. Do you want to deliver content that’s high quality or from a broad corpus? As if there’s no way to do both.