Field Notes

Short notes on data and decisions, with examples from analytics work.

• Out of your box. Into mine.

  When someone asks you to think outside the box, ask which assumption they want you to reconsider.

  20 Sept 2026

• The directional-answer trap

  A rough answer may be enough. Agree on how much error the decision can tolerate before choosing how much analysis to do.

  19 Sept 2026

• Gen AI without data is a house on stilts

  An agent needs to know what your data means, how it fits together, and when to trust it. Choosing a model is only part of that work.

  19 Sept 2026

• Don’t pick one. Main one.

  Learn SQL for analytics work, and choose a main language around the tasks you do each week. Keep the third familiar enough to read and adapt.

  19 Sept 2026

• Avoid the trap of “fake” A/B tests in business

  Before proposing an A/B test, check whether you can run it and what the result would tell you about the decision.

  18 Sept 2026

• Cognitive fallacies in action

  Common reasoning mistakes in data and business work, with examples.

  18 Sept 2026

• Why correlation is not causality

  When two variables move together, what would you need to establish that one causes the other?

  18 Sept 2026

• The expert-consultant trap

  Advice depends on context. Check how well an expert understands the circumstances of your decision.

  18 Sept 2026

• Forecast vs. targets

  A forecast estimates what is likely to happen under stated assumptions. A target sets the outcome you want to reach.

  18 Sept 2026

• Garbage in, garbage out

  Check the quality of the inputs before trusting the output.

  18 Sept 2026

• Junior, mid, senior

  Seniority includes responsibility for decisions and for what happens when an answer is wrong.

  18 Sept 2026

• Over-engineering by the book

  Best practices need to fit the problem. Applying them without that judgment can add unnecessary work.

  18 Sept 2026

• Plan, goal, tactics, strategy

  How goals, strategy, tactics, and plans relate to each other in day-to-day work.

  18 Sept 2026

• Skin in the game

  When weighing advice, consider whether the person giving it shares the consequences of the decision.

  18 Sept 2026

• The happy-path trap

  Plan for the ways a process can fail as well as how it should work.

  18 Sept 2026

• Think for yourself

  Check AI-generated answers, question their assumptions, and take responsibility for the conclusions you use.

  18 Sept 2026

• Trade-offs vs. balance

  Be clear about what you are optimizing for and what you are willing to give up.

  18 Sept 2026

• Vanity metrics

  A useful metric helps you decide what to do. Growth alone does not make a number informative.

  18 Sept 2026

• How to have “awesome” meetings

  A meeting is productive when its members fulfill their roles: organizer, process facilitator, timekeeper, recorder, and prepared participants.

  15 Nov 2023

• Strategy vs. Tactics

  Strategy is the set of underlying choices; tactics face specific circumstances. Not year vs month.

  24 Aug 2023

• OKRs — Objectives and Key Results

  Focused, aligned, trackable, stretched goals: outcomes, not tasks, set half bottom-up.

  15 Mar 2023

• SWOT

  Internal strengths and weaknesses, external opportunities and threats, and the traps in telling them apart.

  7 Nov 2022

• Agile

  Adaptive planning, early delivery, and a rapid response to change, plus the sprint ceremonies that make it run.

  31 Jul 2021

• Blue Ocean Strategy

  The simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and low cost, to open up uncontested market space and create new demand.

  31 Jul 2021

• Box Plot Charts

  A five-number summary drawn as a box and whiskers: the centre, spread, and outliers of a distribution at a glance.

  31 Jul 2021

• Coding

  Instructing computers to perform specific tasks: an engineering tool for everything from sleeping better to achieving world peace.

  31 Jul 2021

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

  Stephen Covey's approach to effectiveness: align yourself to your true north before expecting success outside yourself.

  31 Jul 2021

• What does Customer Centric mean?

  Putting the customer first across pre-transaction, transaction, and post-transaction: a mission for the whole organization, not a concept.

  31 Jul 2021

• Excel

  The formulas that make spreadsheets worth using for business decisions, and what each one is better than.

  31 Jul 2021

• Flowcharts

  A visual representation of the steps and decisions of a process: see the flaws, the bottlenecks, and who owns each step.

  31 Jul 2021

• Google Apps Script

  A rapid application development platform to script the Google ecosystem: JavaScript for everything Drive cannot do.

  31 Jul 2021

• ISO 9001

  The world's most widespread quality stamp: a generic standard for documenting, measuring, and certifying your processes.

  31 Jul 2021

• Lean + Six Sigma

  Two frameworks in one: eliminate waste (Lean) and eliminate errors (Six Sigma).

  31 Jul 2021

• PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act)

  The twentieth century's schematic for improving things through measurement, applied three ways.

  31 Jul 2021

• Project Management

  Frameworks for resource-allocation decisions under uncertainty: plan 30%, execute against the plan, close with lessons learned.

  31 Jul 2021

• Tableau Software

  Interactive data visualization software, from connecting a data source to publishing a dashboard.

  31 Jul 2021

• Design Thinking

  A non-linear, human-centered approach to innovation: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test.

  1 May 2019