About this episode

The episode explores the importance of understanding the true purpose of tools and relationships by examining what problems they solve.

My book, Productiveness, is now available. It's about the difference between doing more and doing what matters, and how we lost the ability to tell them apart. I'll send the release date the day it's set. Visit https://mikevardy.com/productiveness to learn more and get your copy today. Patrick's wife has an iPad mini she uses for exactly one thing: reading. She's never called it an iPad mini in her life. She calls it her Kindle — and she isn't confused, she's being precise. The name follows the job, not the packaging. That's the second time in two months we've stumbled into how the words people choose quietly reveal what a thing is actually for. This month's PM Talks opens there and lands on a question Patrick puts plainly about twenty minutes in: what problem does this solve? We get into Clayton Christensen's milkshake, why a tool that does everything usually does nothing especially well, why the unused device in the corner is a capital-P project you've been sitting on rather than a small privileged annoyance, and — less comfortably — what happens when you point that same question at a friendship, a marriage, or a default nobody ever asked you to agree to. Six Discussion Points…

Topics covered

• productivity
• decision making
• communication
• technology
• relationships

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