In October 2021 Google added a new kind of event to Google Calendar, called Focus time. Google’s announcement said it lets users of some paid Google Workspace plans “block out and protect your time for heads-down individual work.” A Focus time block can “automatically decline conflicting events.”
The OODA loop
John Boyd, a US Air Force colonel, built a model of decision-making out of his experience of air combat: observe, orient, decide, act, then repeat. His central claim was about speed — that cycling through the loop faster than your opponent is what wins, because it leaves them reacting to a situation that has already changed. As a Weapons School instructor he was nicknamed Forty Second Boyd, for his standing bet that starting from a position of tactical disadvantage he could defeat any student pilot within forty seconds.
The model spread from the Air Force into American business and sports coaching. It is a formal argument that acting quickly beats acting correctly.
Ready, aim, fire
The correct sequence exists in English and is used mainly to mock people who follow it too literally. Analysis paralysis names the failure state, paralysis by analysis is the older form, and both treat thinking as a thing that can go on too long and become a disease.
Action items
The American meeting produces action items, and a meeting that produces none is described as having gone nowhere. Not conclusions, not understandings, not positions. Items — countable, assigned, with a name next to each.
Bias toward action
Named as a virtue and used in hiring and promotion. Amazon lists it among its leadership principles: speed matters in business, and many decisions are reversible and do not need extensive study. The word bias is chosen deliberately — it concedes that the tendency is not neutral, and recommends it anyway.
The 80 percent solution
American military and business usage: a good plan executed now beats a perfect plan executed later. The claim is not that 80 percent is acceptable, but that the remaining 20 percent costs more in delay than it returns in quality.
Paralysis
Analysis paralysis. Overthinking it. Navel-gazing. Spinning your wheels. Stuck in the weeds. American English has an unusually large vocabulary for the failure of thinking too long, and no comparable vocabulary for the failure of acting too soon. The second failure is described, when it happens, in ordinary words.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good
Used in American business to end a discussion — specifically, a discussion about whether something is ready. The sentence casts perfectionism as an adversary, and the good-enough version as the thing under attack.
Prototype
American design practice builds rough physical versions early, specifically in order to find out what is wrong with them. The prototype is not a draft of the product. It is an instrument for generating objections.
Beta
American software ships in beta and says so. Gmail carried the label for years while being used by millions. The product is released unfinished, on purpose, with the unfinishedness advertised.