“Survivor bias is the logical error of concentrating on entities that passed a selection process while overlooking those that did not. This can lead to incorrect conclusions because of incomplete data.”
— Wikipedia”

It would be easy to think that all cognitive bias is a bad thing. When we hear people talking about it, it’s often in the context of the collection of biases that make up racism or sexism or other generally negative things. Yet, the truth is that cognitive bias is the way that our brain manages energy use and is overwhelmingly a positive thing for us.

I had a client once that went all out for Halloween. Just about everyone showed up in costumes and there were prizes for individual or team costumes. At the time I was there, it was commonplace for work to be outsourced to India so my group decided to do a team costume of “IT outsourced to Mars”.

For remote workers, the issue of cameras on or off keeps coming up. There’s no question that having cameras on allows for much richer interactions. We can start to interpret body language and can pick up on so many subtle hints that just aren’t possible when the cameras are off.

Back in the 1990’s, it wasn’t uncommon for people to check code into the repository that didn’t work. Sometimes it wouldn’t even compile.

We often hear that people are “resistant to change”, and yet as a friend of mine is fond of saying “all we are is change”.

I was coaching a team once and I made a suggestion to one of the developers about something they could do differently. The actual suggestion isn’t important to the story so I’ll ignore that.

We have a biological need for fairness. If we perceive a situation that is unfair, even if that unfairness doesn’t directly affect us, the anterior insula is activated¹. The insula is a key part of our brain, relating to empathy².

Feeling stressed? Getting out in nature might be that quick fix that you need.

The conscious competence model describes four, or possibly five, different stages that we move through as we are learning a new skill.