{"id":21473,"date":"2019-08-29T23:16:43","date_gmt":"2019-08-30T04:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=21473"},"modified":"2019-08-29T23:16:43","modified_gmt":"2019-08-30T04:16:43","slug":"super-powers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=21473","title":{"rendered":"Super powers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We are starting on a new research direction at the lab. When I first started drawing up plans describing this direction, I listed a set of projects we might work on.<\/p>\n<p>It all sounded ok, but it wasn&#8217;t particularly exciting. The word &#8220;project&#8221; can evoke the idea of something you do because it needs doing. Like the &#8220;project&#8221; of repainting your bedroom or cleaning out the garage.<\/p>\n<p>But then I changed things a bit, and started describing the same capabilities as &#8220;super powers&#8221;. Instead of stuff we need to implement, things are now framed in terms of cool new abilities we will end up having when we are done.<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly the whole thing reads like something exciting &#8212; a grand and even epic adventure. I think there is a principle at work here:<\/p>\n<p>In order to create excitement, it&#8217;s not sufficient to describe something. You need to create a compelling narrative. If you want to really inspire somebody, tell them a good story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are starting on a new research direction at the lab. When I first started drawing up plans describing this direction, I listed a set of projects we might work on. It all sounded ok, but it wasn&#8217;t particularly exciting. The word &#8220;project&#8221; can evoke the idea of something you do because it needs doing. &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=21473\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Super powers&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21473"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21474,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21473\/revisions\/21474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}