I loved the bit in the the latest episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast where John Siracusa says:

We judge ourselves by our motivations and others by their actions.

This hit home to me.

It’s very common for people to make less-than-generous assumptions of others when they have very little information about them. Once you know someone better, you have more empathy for their situation, their thought process, etc. Anil Dash is a guest on the latest episode of The Big Web Show and he talks about this very thing as it applies to government (or more specifically, the people within government).

The big takeaway for me from all of this? Slow down. Be patient. And look for more generous explanations for things that involve people, constraints, and compromise.