Alright, let’s talk about this “numeros 10” business. It wasn’t some fancy math thing, not for me anyway. It was more about this one time, this specific project, that got stuck on the number ten. Like, really stuck.
So, I was working on this feedback summary. We’d just finished a big user survey, tons of responses, all sorts of comments. My job was to boil it all down for the higher-ups. And the instruction I got? “We need the top 10 takeaways. Just 10. Nice and clean.”
I remember thinking, “Okay, 10 points. Sounds straightforward enough.” I started digging through the data, pulling out common themes, looking for the big hitters. Initially, I had like, maybe 12 or 13 really solid points. Some were critical, some were suggestions, a good mix.
The Tricky Part Begins
Then came the fun part. Trying to squeeze those 13 points into exactly 10. My manager was adamant. “It has to be 10. It’s for the big presentation, and they love round numbers. Especially ten.” So, I went back to the drawing board. I tried combining some points. You know, like “Users want feature A” and “Users are confused by feature B” – maybe I could lump them under “User Experience Issues”? Sometimes it worked, sometimes it felt like I was forcing a square peg into a round hole.
I spent a good couple of days just shuffling these points around.
- First, I’d identify the absolute must-haves. Those were easy, maybe 6 or 7.
- Then, I’d look at the next tier, the important-but-maybe-not-critical ones.
- The real struggle was with the last few slots. Do I merge two smaller, distinct points into one vague, weaker point just to hit the magic number? Or do I drop something potentially valuable?
I even remember printing out each point on a separate piece of paper and laying them out on my desk, moving them around like some kind of strategy game. It felt a bit silly, to be honest. All this effort just to make it fit a number. There was this one point about a minor bug that was really annoying a small group of users. On its own, maybe not top 10. But if I combined it with another small issue, it lost its punch.
Pushing Through
We had a few back-and-forths. I’d present my list of 10. Then someone would say, “But what about X? We can’t miss X!” And I’d be like, “Okay, if X goes in, what comes out? We only have 10 slots!” It was like that game where you have to fit everything into a tiny suitcase.
One time, I even tried to sneak in an “10a” and “10b”, but that got shot down immediately. “No, just 10 distinct points. Clean.” they said. So, more juggling. I had to really simplify some complex issues, sometimes losing a bit of nuance, which always bugs me. But, the goal was 10, so 10 it had to be.
Eventually, after a lot of tweaking, wordsmithing, and a few compromises, we landed on a list of 10 points that everyone could sort of agree on. It wasn’t perfect, in my opinion. I felt like point number 11 and 12 were pretty important too, but they didn’t make the “numeros 10” cut. That’s just how it goes sometimes, I guess. The presentation needed its clean, simple list of ten.
So yeah, that was my practical encounter with “numeros 10”. It wasn’t about the number itself, but the strange constraints it can put on things. Made me realize that sometimes, the presentation format dictates the content more than the other way around. A bit frustrating, but a lesson learned, for sure. We got it done, and the presentation went well, apparently. They liked their ten points.
