Yeah, that's the thing, right? It's easy to get lost in the gear and forget you're working on a living animal that moves a certain way. That old guy cutting through all the jargon with one plain sentence is the best kind of lesson.

That sticky note idea is smart. My wife and I had a similar thing with a whiteboard in the kitchen. We'd just write numbers, like the checking account balance or a big bill due that week. Seeing it out in the open made it less scary to bring up. It stopped being a secret we were both keeping. We started talking about it while making coffee instead of having a big stressful meeting.

The project model you're talking about is actually really expensive for clients too. I saw a tech startup last year spend over 80k just on freelancer onboarding and project handoffs for a single app. That's a hidden cost that gets passed on. Sure, the office is empty, but the client is still paying for all that fragmented management time.

Yep, learned that lesson the hard way too.

That "let in more light" logic is the same reason my barber gives me a buzz cut.