A book on the art of productive disagreement based on the Cognitive Bias Cheat Sheet, and 20+ years of experience as a product leader at Amazon, Twitter, Slack, and a few startups. Includes hundreds of illustrations, real world examples, and practical tips.
This book was 3+ years in the making, evolving out of the Cognitive Bias Cheat Sheet, the 2016 election, and in response to a world (professionally, personally, and politically) that seems to be getting worse and worse at having productive disagreements. Ask me anything about the book, the process of publishing the book (I did this with Portfolio / Penguin), or anything else related to the topic of disagreement.
@buster listen at youtube, is really good. doubt yourself, be vulnerable, greatest enemy is myself. For me the biggest belief is going back to my childhood, especially if that was a trauma. I see in myself, my brother and other people. Going back to childhood is my biggest payback to heal in time. The other brainwashing in general again as we grow up, we accumulated tons of belief.
@motmot Thank you! Yeah each of us is a bundle of experiences, internal voices, and tactics for disagreement learned mostly through imitation and trial and error. We weren’t taught how to disagree productively, or even why it’s important. Our tech platforms and media ecosystem ended up sharing these same blind spots with us. Given all that, what can we do now?
Congrats on the launch, @buster! Is the title of this book referencing Brick Tamland? If so, 👏🏼.
Curious how long it took to write this and what your process was. Asking for future book writing self. :)
@rrhoover The book title process was convoluted but when this one came up association with “I DON’T KNOW WHAT WE’RE YELLING ABOUT! LOUD NOISES!” definitely helped tip the scales.
I tracked the ups and downs of writing this book, which took over 3 years, here: https://busterbenson.com/book/ti...
I went in knowing I cared more about writing a book I loved than writing a book quickly, and not unlike the challenge of building any other product, it was harder and took longer than I initially expected.
So much of the process was a mystery to me going in, and I was lucky to find an agent and editor who both had the patience of answering my million questions (and always comparing publishing to tech, which I’m sure was annoying). That’s why I’m so interested in sharing everything I can about the process for others. We can all write better books if we go in knowing how the process works (and where it struggles).
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