No #175 | June 29, 2025

by Matthew Boyd

Good morning, welcome to the weekly Lead It Cool newsletter.

My super amazing, beautiful and accomplished wife (Valentina) has her birthday this week.

She is getting very close to publishing her fourth book in two years and I am eternally impressed at her ability to create such beautiful characters and stories. If you're interested in reading her work check it out here: www.valentinaburns.com 🥰

In this week's Lead It Cool newsletter:

• 🧠Memes for the Mind
• 🤔It's in the Details
• 🤣Fake European Vacations
• 😎Cool Links

🧠Memes for the Mind

I’ve always been fascinated by simple ideas that try to explain complex parts of the world.

These mental models, sometimes called laws, effects, or principles, are like memes for thinking. They catch on because they ring true across industries, cultures, and experiences.

Whether I’m trying to understand productivity, learning, challenges, or how people behave in groups, I find myself returning to these core concepts.

Here are a few of my all-time favorites and what they reveal about the world around us:

⌛Parkinson’s Law: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. We've all attended a meeting where there is only one agenda item but the meeting still lasted the full hour. This law highlights how activities often become more complex or time-consuming simply because we give them too much room. If you allot two hours to write an email, you’ll likely take all two hours, regardless of whether it’s actually a five-minute task.

⚖️Pareto Principle (80/20 Rule): 80% of outcomes come from 20% of causes. Anyone who has ever done a school work group project has learned this principle the hard way. Named after economist Vilfredo Pareto, this principle shows up everywhere: from school, to business to health to relationships. A small number of inputs often drive the majority of results.

🤦‍♀️Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Not just pessimism, Murphy’s Law is a reminder to build systems with resilience, backups, and contingencies. It’s not about expecting failure, but being ready for it.

💡Dunning-Kruger Effect: People with low ability at a task often overestimate their competence, while experts tend to underestimate theirs. One of my favourite concepts that I often talk about with friends and colleagues. This cognitive bias shows how confidence doesn’t always track with competence. I went through my own full Dunning-Kruger lifecycle as I was learning to dance over the past couple of months 😅.

🤔Occam’s Razor: The simplest explanation is usually the correct one. When faced with competing hypotheses, favor the one that requires the fewest assumptions. It’s a powerful tool for decision-making, problem-solving, and cutting through noise.

🫣The Comfort Zone Bias: People migrate toward tasks they’re already good at and avoid the difficult ones they’re not. This is the one I'm most guilty of. We often prefer familiarity over challenge, which means we can get stuck in loops of competence rather than growth. Real development lies in pushing into discomfort, not retreating to what’s easy.

😊Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by ignorance or misunderstanding. I once had a colleague who had a post-it note at their desk with the initials A.P.I. When I asked what it meant, she said it's a reminder to always Assume Positive Intent. A great piece of advice in an increasingly complicated communications world.

🔎Availability Bias: We overestimate the importance of information that is recent, vivid, or emotionally charged. An anecdote I always love hearing is that the plural of anecdote is not data.

🤔It's in the Details

There’s an expression I’ve always liked: “God is in the details.”

The idea is simple: when you get the little things right, everything else tends to fall into place.

My brother (thanks, JB) recently lent me Eleven Rings, Phil Jackson’s biography, and there’s a great anecdote in it about Tex Winter who was the legendary architect of the basketball triangle offense.

Tex had a story he used to tell his players to help them buy into the power of focusing on the details when he was teaching the complicated offense.

🤣Fake European Vacations

For those that are sticking closer to home this summer and want to cosplay a European vacation🤣

😎Cool Links

💡The real work of leadership that many don't talk about. Great article on the importance of having peoples' backs.

👖The new rules of office attire. Ask 100 people what “business casual” means and you’re bound to get 100 different answers. To simplify matters, The Washington Post compiled a list of 39 rules to dress for success while keeping it informal. Among the items considered acceptable: pants with an elastic waistband; jeans any day of the week; socks with quirky patterns; flowy dresses and crisp T-shirts. But crop tops, flip-flops and tight pants are best left at home, the paper suggests.

🎥The 100 best movies of the 21st century. How many have you scene?

💡High Agency in 30 Minutes. I revisit this article every couple of months. A fantastic read that I love talking to my kids about.

🤔What makes certain leaders unforgettable? People prefer to be inspired rather than simply told what to do. Leaders who master the art of energizing others and bringing positive energy to work create highly engaged workplaces where people feel motivated and connected to their purpose. These leaders understand that emotional contagion is real—their energy becomes the team's energy.

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