There’s just so much to extract from Jef Raskin’s book. Here’s something about how “attention” tend to ruin our “habitual competence” which Raskin is referring from another author, Lewis Thomas:
Working a typewriter by touch, like riding a bicycle or strolling on a path, is best done by not giving it a glancing thought. Once you do, your fingers fumble and hit the wrong keys. To do things involving practiced skills, you need to turn loose the systems of muscles and nerves responsible for each maneuver, place them on their own, and stay out of it. There is no real loss of authority in this, because you get to decide whether to do the thing or not, and you can intervene and embellish the technique any time you like; if you want to ride a bicycle backward, or walk with an eccentric loping gait giving a little skip every fourth step, whistling at the same time, you can do that. But if you concentrate your attention on the details, keeping in touch with each muscle, thrusting yourself into free fall with each step and catching yourself at the last moment by sticking out the other foot in time to break the fall, you will end up immobilized, vibrating with fatigue. (p.19)
I think this paragraph applies not only to habitual competence, but also to business leadership. I had a job where the boss(es) were constantly micromanaging the employees. The result was loss of creativity and willingness to perform. The boss(es) were micromanaging everything from employee behaviors down to how often managers should have meetings. By f*cking around with employee autonomy, sometimes the only result is in loss of effective management. Too bad the boss(es) weren’t (and still aren’t) big on being effective leaders. Someone told me their behavior matches what Malcolm Gladwell describes in his book The Tipping Point — when placed in positions of power, must people tend to abuse the power and think they are the sh*t. Sound familiar, my ex-coworkers?