‘Don’t be a knee-jerk’
Jason Fried on building systems that encourage thoughtful consideration of new ideas:
We don’t want reactions. We don’t want first impressions. We don’t want knee-jerks. We want considered feedback. Read it over. Read it twice, three times even. Ponder. Sleep on it. Take your time to gather and present your thoughts — just like the person who pitched the original idea took their time to gather and present theirs.
That’s how you go deep on an idea.
Although in my previous job we never quite got to the asynchronous freedom that Basecamp was designed for, it was something I wanted dearly and tried to push. As someone who likes to take their time with reactions to ideas, the deliberate slow-down of a write-up, rather than a live presentation, for new ideas was very appealing.
I do less of the type of work that requires presentations these days, but I still come back to writing things down when I need to think them through.