Tempo (2011) is a book about what I call narrative-driven decision making.
“TEMPO is one of the most insightful and original books on decision-making I’ve ever read…”
— Daniel H. Pink, author of DRIVE and A WHOLE NEW MIND
“An uncannily accurate analysis of our choice-making behaviors”
— David Allen, author of GETTING THINGS DONE
“Tempo is a highly original and engaging book…In a world where timing is increasingly central to success…an essential read…for everyone.”
— John Hagel, co-author of THE POWER OF PULL
Posts from the Tempo Blog
This is an index of posts published on the Tempo book blog that existed as a separate site between 2011-14, and was absorbed into Ribbonfarm in 2019. You may also find the Tempo Glossary useful.
- Colin Dickey: Tempo Shifts
- When Monitoring a Behavior Makes it Worse
- I Will Not Rest Until…
- When is a Year not a Year?
- Why Sleeping-In Makes You More Tired
- The Four Seasons of Lifehacking
- How Different Cultures Understand Time
- Effort Shock and Reward Shock
- Language and Strategy
- Time, Money and Bandwidth
- Everyone is Special
- The Rumsfeld Behavioral Landscape
- Frustration Effects and Curse of Optimality
- Two Examples of Narrative Time
- Reboot Travel vs. Pause Travel
- Packaging-Heavy Projects
- Running Lean, Running Fat
- Discovery-Heavy Projects
- When Finishing is Easier than Starting
- New Year’s Resolutions as Self-Directed Camp
- Maintenance Thinking
- The Three Clocks of Trial and Error
- Is Decision-Making Skill Trainable?
- Frictional and Structural Unknowns
- On Thinking Caps
- Personality Ambidexterity: Or How to Turn Yourself Inside-Out
- Inside the Miscellaneous Folder
- Coincidences and Correlations
- Lagrangian and Eulerian Decision-Making
- Extrovert-Introvert Fog
- Schleps, Puzzles, and Packages: Solving Complex Problems the Iron Man Way
- Deliberate Practice versus Immersion
- Sensitive Dependence on Paperwork Conditions
- Overtake on the Turn, Overwhelm on the Straight
- Why Habit Formation is Hard
- Allowing Personality to Flow
- How Many Steps Do You Really Look Ahead?
- Tempo Interview on ‘Smart People Podcast’
- The National Day of Unplugging
- The Cloistered Hedgehog and The Dislocated Fox
- Resilient Like a Fox
- Data is Eating Clocks
- Roundup of 2012 Tempoblog Posts
- Should You Count Near-Misses as Successes or Failures?
- Jason Ho on Cultivating a Jiu-Jitsu Mindset
- The Examined Life
- Annealing the Tactical Pattern Stack
- Demystification versus Understanding
- Breakout Moves and Exponential Outcomes
- Literary Darwinism
- Positioning Moves versus Melee Moves
- Stress Failures versus Decay Failures
- Not Important, Not Urgent
- Fertile Variables and Rich Moves
- Analysis-Paralysis and The Sensemaking Trap
- Appreciative versus Manipulative Mental Models
- Time Lensing
- Forged Groups
- The Daily Ugly
- How Life Imitates Chess by Garry Kasparov
- Creative Desks versus Administration Desks
- The 6-Hour Maker-Manager Work Day
- Thinking in a Foreign Language
- Hacking Grand Narratives
- Trigger Narratives and the Nuclear Option
- The Tempo of Code
- The Fundamentals of Calendar Hacking
- Routine, but Cannot be Automated
- The Second Most Important Archetype in your Life
- Live Life, Not Projects
- Motifs, Mascots and Muses at Refactor Camp, 2012
- The Tempo Glossary
- Does Culture Eat Strategy for Lunch?
- Steer, Ready, Fire
- Squeakastination: The Opposite of Procrastination
- Tempo: Year One
- What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447
- Tempo now available on the Nook
- The Pomodoro Technique
- Tempo Now Available on Kindle
- Ancora Imparo: Warsaw, Poland.
- Quandary: Seattle WA
- A Pilgrimage through Stagnation and Acceleration
- Thrust, Drag and the 10x Effect
- Tempo Review on BoingBoing by Cory Doctorow
- Mental Models and Archetypes Explained
- Forgivable Sloppiness: The Art of Epoch-Driven Time Management
- Tempo goes to Burning Man
- Bandwagon Timing verus Biding Your Time
- New Research on Decision Fatigue
- Daemons and the Mindful Learning Curve
- A Proposed Grand Narrative for the History of Debt
- Chet Richards’ Review of Tempo on Fabius Maximus
- Tempo and OODA: The Backstory
- Storytelling for Problem-Solving
- The End of the Parade
- Never Stop Marketing, Silver Spring, MD
- H.M.S. Cock-Robin, Cambridge, UK
- Kindle Edition Status, Glossary, Global Availability, Road Trip Contd.
- Bardic Mystique: Maastricht, Netherlands
- Towards Thick Strategy Narratives
- Review at Zenpundit.com
- Dulce Domum
- IARPA Starts Metaphor-Based Decision-Making Research
- Timepass and Boredom
- My Competition?
- “Ready, Fire, Aim,” with Wild Bill
- How Clock Time Replaced Narrative Time
- Smalltalk with Gary and Harpreet
- On Rest Stops 2.0
- The Best Chips in the World
- Mississippi Flooding
- Startup Deathwatch in Memphis
- The Memphis Drum Shop
- Rabble Rouser: Seattle WA
- Lame name: Belmont, CA
- Week 3: Memphis, St. Louis, Omaha, Carhenge, Deadwood, Yellowstone
- Strategies, Counter-examples and the UnAha! Experience
- On Ritual Time
- The Author’s Journey and the Blogger’s Journey
- Functional Fixedness and Kata Learning
- Freytag Staircases in Nashville
- The Car/Truck Ratio
- Week 2: Ann Arbor, Nashville, Atlanta, New Orleans
- Time Travel for Ghosts
- Darwin, Some Rationalists and the Joker
- Peak Oil and the Tempo of the Earth
- Talking Temporal Illegibility in Montreal
- Why Some Drives are Fun
- The One Way of the Beginner
- Haircuts and the Guy Clock
- An Evening of Pace, Pace, Lead with Chuck
- Island Time vs. Mainland Time
- The Tempo of Food
- A Moment of Silence with John Boyd
- Week 1: DC, Wilmington, Albany, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto
- The Tempo Road Trip