“You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute.” — Tina Fey
Working with a group of data scientists a few months ago, I started a workshop with a simple icebreaker exercise that had them name their favorite film and tell a brief line or story from the movie. This is always fun and gets a lot of laughs and insights into people.
But on this day, we were about three people in when it broke down. I started getting questions and analysis: “What do movies have to do with data? Shouldn’t we be timing each person? Are you judging these?” and the like. Finally, I said, “Hey, we’re just having fun. You guys are overthinking this.” One guy said, “Duh, that’s we do!” That got a good laugh.
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