My greatest professional accomplishment of the year: I got my exec & manager teammates saying "point positive," a term from whitewater rafting and kayaking.
-
@eanakashima Ha, didn't know boating people used that as well - motorcycle people are told "do not look at the tree" (or more generally, look where you want to go, not what you want to avoid).
The Wikipedia page is disappointingly terse, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_fixation .
@richlv @eanakashima "Target fixation" is the term I'd heard in conjunction with motorcycle safety training
It's a surprisingly accurate pattern of behavior when any sort of fear or panic takes over
-
My greatest professional accomplishment of the year: I got my exec & manager teammates saying "point positive," a term from whitewater rafting and kayaking.
Meaning: when facing hazards, point people toward where to go/what to do, rather than drawing attention to everything to avoid.
@eanakashima I think I'd heard this phrase but didn't know it came from rafting and kayaking. Thanks for the background!
And I sure do have to keep reminding people “tell people what to do, not just what not to do”…
In the vein of not focusing people's attention in an unwanted direction, I'm reminded of this bit from the 1987 edition of the Apple Human Interface Guidelines (second paragraph):
-
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @eanakashima
When I was a young lad getting to mild mountain biking someone said "what you see is what you hit"
@ColmDonoghue @GhostOnTheHalfShell a surprisingly catchy rendition of the concept
-
@richlv @eanakashima "Target fixation" is the term I'd heard in conjunction with motorcycle safety training
It's a surprisingly accurate pattern of behavior when any sort of fear or panic takes over
@recursive @richlv @eanakashima It's not only fear or panic based. "look where you want the car to go" is a principle I was taught with driving.
-
@tab2space @eanakashima I imagined some mighty legendary hero who in a pinch affixed two large fir trees to their feet and used them as skis.
@richlv @tab2space @eanakashima Sounds like something Paul Bunyan would've done, had he skied.
-
My greatest professional accomplishment of the year: I got my exec & manager teammates saying "point positive," a term from whitewater rafting and kayaking.
Meaning: when facing hazards, point people toward where to go/what to do, rather than drawing attention to everything to avoid.
@eanakashima now if you could only build on this and get us in the world wide fediverse to "point positive" instead of perma-ranting against all and every hazard, that would be no small feat

-
My greatest professional accomplishment of the year: I got my exec & manager teammates saying "point positive," a term from whitewater rafting and kayaking.
Meaning: when facing hazards, point people toward where to go/what to do, rather than drawing attention to everything to avoid.
@eanakashima The benefits of this are obvious to me when facing immediate threats where there's no time to orient and plan a path to safety. Sharing common language so that you can get to safety with a single glance is huge.
Bringing this to the office, where emergencies are rarely this immediate, seems to be little more than applying the name to preferred behaviour where we want people to do more than just point out problems.
Is that assessment correct, or is there more to this?
-
My greatest professional accomplishment of the year: I got my exec & manager teammates saying "point positive," a term from whitewater rafting and kayaking.
Meaning: when facing hazards, point people toward where to go/what to do, rather than drawing attention to everything to avoid.
@eanakashima Ah, the flipside term to target fixation, nice. TIL!
-
@eanakashima I think I'd heard this phrase but didn't know it came from rafting and kayaking. Thanks for the background!
And I sure do have to keep reminding people “tell people what to do, not just what not to do”…
In the vein of not focusing people's attention in an unwanted direction, I'm reminded of this bit from the 1987 edition of the Apple Human Interface Guidelines (second paragraph):
@boredzo on a tangential note, I like the last section: "Design in black and white" (and add colours later)
Some of the reasoning may seem outdated, as it initially did to me even though I am currently reading this on a black-and-white e-paper monitor

I learnt a similar concept as a drawing style from Hergé who always made sure his illustrations worked in black and white, where it would sometimes stay unless colour was added as a bonus on top. Works wonders for xeroxable art

-
My greatest professional accomplishment of the year: I got my exec & manager teammates saying "point positive," a term from whitewater rafting and kayaking.
Meaning: when facing hazards, point people toward where to go/what to do, rather than drawing attention to everything to avoid.
@eanakashima @praveen society is not immutable. If you just avoid conflict, always take the way of least resistance, never fixing things, never identifying obstacles and problems to address everything will stay bad for everyone forever.
If your job is like a death ride on a wild river reconsider your life choices, if you have enough privilege to do so.
-
J jwcph@helvede.net shared this topic