"My son hasn't come to visit me at my house in over a month" 🥺

We're at a small gathering with some of my dad's cousins when I hear this little gem of a quote leave his lips. He was telling his cousin this when I interjected.

"Umm, father? Why are you saying that?"

"Because it's true! You haven't come to visit in so long 😔"

"But you do know that last month, we had the water tank issue at my house, and you've been coming over a few times a week to help me with it. Plus we've been going out to eat at least once a week. You make it sound like I haven't seen you for a month"

"But you should come visit me anyway, it's been a month!

This man, I swear 😅

One of the more interesting things about my dad is how he keeps in his head how long somebody hasn't passed by his house in a bit – even if they've talked or been with him elsewhere! It's a weird quirk that, let's just say adds to his character.

This situation got me thinking about the idea of framing

This is a sort of lower-level and niche soft skill I don't see many devs talk about. It's about the way we choose to position a truth to make it more interesting, appealing, or relevant to an audience. This is important everywhere, from giving a presentation to explaining a hard topic to a co-worker.

All truths need a frame.

The words you use, the images you show, the way you start the presentation – it all helps highlight certain aspects of a topic over others. It helps prioritize the most important and relevant info to the front so you know what needs attention.

To end this email with a quick example – the other day, we released page speed optimizations for a big project I worked on for months. We got a pretty slow site to be 5 seconds faster on the initial load, which was HUGE for us.

But if I go up to anybody – parents, family, friends and just say:

"I just spent months on a website so it's 5 seconds faster 😎"

People look at you weird and think you have a weird niche obsession with websites. (Which I mean I do... I have a newsletter about developing them!)

But if instead I came up and said:

"I just made this company thousands of dollars extra by making their website faster 😎"

THEN people start asking questions. Because I put the focus on the increase in revenue page speed optimization instead of the speed increase itself.

You can also see this idea of framing in my Exceptional Questions Toolkit sales page I made. Notice what I focus on to try and sell you on it (and what I don't).

And hey, perhaps you could purchase into the pre-sale while you're at it 😉