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Saturday, 9 May 2026

Seth's Blog : The narrow window of redemption

The narrow window of redemption

Where did the five-second rule come from?

Science makes it clear that if disgusting germs are going to go from the floor to your toast, it’s going to take less than five seconds for that to happen.

It might as well be the four-minute rule as far as food safety goes.

But it’s compelling and universal. A chance to fix a relatively small error, one associated with an outcome you were hoping for.

Innovation involves lots of failure, but we rarely encourage ourselves to adopt a five-second rule when we’re brainstorming, inventing or developing what’s next.

Please do.

Tiny mistakes are fixable. Avoiding them is how we get stuck.

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Friday, 8 May 2026

Kinds of fast

There’s the fast of a drag racer. Purpose-built, difficult to steer, expensive and fragile.

There’s the fast of the marathon runner. Beat by a sprinter every time, but able to keep it up for hours.

And the fast of a well-integrated team. Communications, clarity, and respect enable them to produce far more in less time.

Or consider the fast of the craftsperson who spends most of her time studying, measuring, and sharpening before even beginning.

We could choose the fast of the iterator, who produces a dozen or a hundred variations in the time a resistance-fueled perfectionist produces just one. Sometimes it’s faster to do it over than it is to do it right the first time.

And there’s the fast of the follower, copying what came before, avoiding false starts and errors and only coming out ahead at the end.

There’s the fast of the resilient and quick agile professional, who builds with the unexpected in mind. Flexible and not brittle.

You can have the fast-per-project of a custom one-off, or the fast per unit of a high-quality mass-production process.

The fast of chickening out and getting back to work, or the fast of dancing with the chicken and doing what matters.

Or the fast of the well-maintained craft, which rarely gets sidelined with a crisis.

What they all have in common is intent. Each requires trade-offs and is chosen with a purpose in mind.

And then, of course, there’s the slow of “let’s see what happens” or “we always do it this way” or “I don’t care enough to do this well.”