Figure It Out

my own need to make sense of things has been more than a job—it’s a way of living for me, one that shows up in nearly everything I do, both professional and personal

research has shown that weight has an influence on how you perceive drinks—a whiskey served in a heavier glass is perceived as a more premium beverage.

Understanding often means adjusting the balance between the information you have and the understanding you need.

The phrase “I have read, understand, and agree to the terms ...” has been called the biggest lie on the Internet

We have learned, often the hard way, that simply giving people information, or making it easier to find, is just a halfway measure. Providing information is merely the start. The whole job includes figuring out how to fit the pieces into a cohesive, useful, understandable whole in much the same way that a recipe and the freshest of ingredients does not make a meal. Understanding, like dinner, doesn’t happen by magic

the problem is not that we have “too much information,” as we so often hear. Rather, it’s that we don’t know what to do with the information we do have. Email. Tweets. Newspapers. Podcasts. Data. Knowledge. Content. Statistics. Technology has made it easier, faster, and cheaper to do much with information: create, publish, share, organize, search, consume. But this ready access to information doesn’t promise understanding. We’re given information, but not in a form that makes sense to us.

It’s not about the story that’s shared or the picture we see—it’s about how these things change our perceptions