{"id":11,"date":"2023-04-27T19:19:04","date_gmt":"2023-04-27T19:19:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/?page_id=11"},"modified":"2026-03-11T04:15:53","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T04:15:53","slug":"richard-arnesons-thunkingspot","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Arneson&#8217;s Thunkingspot"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"328\" src=\"https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/P1013750-wide-2-1024x328.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-162\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/P1013750-wide-2-1024x328.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/P1013750-wide-2-300x96.jpg 300w, https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/P1013750-wide-2-768x246.jpg 768w, https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/P1013750-wide-2-1536x491.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/P1013750-wide-2-2048x655.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-left has-large-font-size\"><em>Featured Thunk<\/em><\/h1>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-media-text has-media-on-the-right is-stacked-on-mobile is-vertically-aligned-center\"><div class=\"wp-block-media-text__content\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/09\/ai-steinbeck\/\">Everything I Needed To Know About AI, I Learned From Steinbeck<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><figure class=\"wp-block-media-text__media\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/School-Desk-1024x683.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-301 size-full\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/School-Desk-1024x683.png 1024w, https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/School-Desk-300x200.png 300w, https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/School-Desk-768x512.png 768w, https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/School-Desk.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-left\"><em>About Me<\/em><\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p>I cultivate effective software teams. <s>Building good software<\/s> Building AI specifications for good software is hard. But hard things are accomplished by doing the easy things correctly until you succeed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Provide people a clear objective &#8211; a hill to take<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Give people latitude to exercise judgement<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Expect people to own the objective<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The only real progress is observable progress<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Never make success contingent on a free lunch &#8211; there is no free lunch<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Unfortunately, even the easy things can seem obscure in the fog of real world constraints. One of my most effective tools to help people see through this fog is writing down complex ideas in ways that expose what is essential to inform better decisions. I care deeply about helping people do their best work. When people are doing their best work it creates more degrees of freedom to thrive for both the individual and the ventures they pursue. <a href=\"https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/richard-arnesons-blog\/\" data-type=\"page\" data-id=\"10\">For more in-depth treatment of my approach to building software check out my blog<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I can be contacted at&nbsp;<a href=\"mailto:graybeardforhire@thunkingspot.com\">rich@thunkingspot.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-left has-large-font-size\"><em>Other Places<\/em><\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-medium-font-size\"><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/richard-arnesons-blog\/\" target=\"_blank\">Things I Have Thunk<\/a>  |  <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.alignable.com\/lynnwood-wa\/richard-arneson\" target=\"_blank\">Alignable<\/a>  |  <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/arnesonrichard\/\" target=\"_blank\">LinkedIn<\/a>  |  <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/photo.thunkingspot.com\" target=\"_blank\">My Photo Site<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Featured Thunk Everything I Needed To Know About AI, I Learned From Steinbeck About Me I cultivate effective software teams. Building good software Building AI specifications for good software is hard. But hard things are accomplished by doing the easy things correctly until you succeed: Unfortunately, even the easy things can seem obscure in the fog of real world constraints. One of my most effective tools to help people see through this fog is writing&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-11","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":48,"href":"https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":305,"href":"https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11\/revisions\/305"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunkingspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}