The Goldilocks Approach to Ideas

This is a tale of two ideas.

Earlier today, I saw a great post by Ron Tite. This shouldn't be surprising. He's a great communicator, and very well regarded for his ability to put ideas across. When I read it, I was like, "This is a great post with a really useful idea, tied together well but the perfect visual."

Moments later, I saw a post by another person. The idea was flimsy. They wrote an okay post, but the gist of the idea was really basic. It could have easily read, "To succeed, you must win." It was one of those ideas where, when you finished reading it, you forgot it because it was so basic and not useful.

Other times, I'll see someone have a great idea but bury it within far too much information. Thus, I found myself thinking about Goldilocks. You know. "Just right."

Entertaining. Informative. Useful.

We have such limited time, and with robots now able to write decent enough content, people will now try even harder to waste our attention on material that doesn't matter. It surely doesn't help that people (like myself) are rewarded by simply putting out a volume of work.

This, by the way, is one of the strange compliments (compliment?) I've received over the years: Chris puts out a LOT of work. Sometimes, if they're nice, they'll say a lot of GREAT work or a lot of USEFUL work.

Goldilocks the warrior knows that the best material you can put together is entertaining (has an angle at least), informative (gives you something worth thinking about) and useful (you can actually do something after you consume the information).

When I finished the article by Ron Tite, I sent it to some product management friends. They got the analogy right away. They also thought the visual was such a great way to emphasize a sometimes-hard-to-grasp design detail. You've got to put the "thing" where someone would expect it to be. That's something you can run with.

Goldilocks Would've Got Away With It

She ate the porridge. She broke the chairs. She slept in the bed. The story would've ended better for her, if she'd just left after a short nap, but she stuck around too long. Wore out her welcome. People do this with ideas.

What's the soul of wit? Brevity.

"Brevity is the soul of wit."

I prefer: "Brevity is."

And just like that, Goldilocks lives to fight another day. Get in. Give the idea. Get out. Don't belabor anything.

With me?

Chris...