I believe that learning languages particularly fits the learn-by-doing mindset and anyone that knows lyrics to a random foreign song or found their Spanish magically improve after a few cervezas would agree. Besides, that’s how all of us learned our first language.

Unfortunately, unlike painting a picture or writing a blog, there hasn’t been an easy way temporarily immerse yourself in a new language on a day-to-day basis. Classes are too time consuming and structured, at-home learning systems lack opportunities to apply learnings to the real world, and both are plagued by boring, artificial content.

That’s what I want to fix. I want to build language learning tools for fearless people. So shove off linguistic experts, learning algorithms and 8th grade Spanish teacher Mrs. Ramos! I don’t want to learn how to conjugate the subjunctive infinitive form and I don’t care if Maria and Luis visit a farm. I’ll learn the words when I need them, not because they’re in the next chapter. Let’s figure out how to do this together.

Be Bold. Keep Learning. Tell Good Stories.

However, the benefits of doing your own testing is more than just catching the nuances and details that someone who isn’t deeply invested in your product would let pass. Most crucially, it’s about suffering when your customers suffer. It’s easy to dismiss a few seconds of wait time when you see it on a testing report. But when you personally have to watch that progress icon grind, correcting performance delays instantly move to the top of your list.

When it comes down to it. If you don’t care enough to check every aspect of your product before it goes out the door, then you don’t care about your product, your customers, or your reputation. Even mafia bosses jab that little knife into the white bricks personally before accepting shipment.

Do your own testing, or you are literally worse than a drug dealer.

What do you believe?

I’ve been delayed in my writing because at every step along the way these absent months, I believed that the next milestone would bring relief. I thought the next person added to the team would lighten the load. That the next release would solve problems. However, I’m slowly coming to realize that this isn’t going to be a tidy story, no soaring Homeric arc of hubris and redemption. Instead, it’ll probably be more like old-school video game, just getting harder and harder, faster and faster, until I run out of quarters.

Recognizing this, the metaphor between my marathon training and business grows ever stronger. I came across this commercial while looking for inspiration and it resonated so powerfully that I felt like I had to share it:

Yes/No. Onward brave soldier

I made some delicious things, ate heartily, watched some good movies, interspersed with some good TV. All in all a very comfortable day.

But it certainly wasn’t the day I was planning, and now tomorrow is going to be full of everything I was supposed to do today. My frailty won today, and I hate to say, it happens more often than I’d like.

I don’t have a boss or an office anymore, so all of the old sticks and carrots are gone. I think the greatest challenge of striking out on your own is that rewards and consequences are distant and no one notices if you slack off. Everyday is a test of will, a battle with my personal frailty. Yes/No.

This is the main reason I started running in the mornings. Running is simple, it’s tiring but it’s a battle I can win every time, I just have to show up and the rest works itself out. Let me tell you, it makes all the difference to start the day with a win.

I love great speeches, and of all the greats, this is my favorite – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouRbkBAOGEw

Choose to do the thing that’s hard, as much as you can bear, a little bit everyday.

1. You’re alone
2. You can slow down, even stop, at any time and no one would know
3. It just keeps going and going and going

I’ve only realized this now that I’m training in earnest for the 2010 NYC Marathon. My morning runs still suck, but they have had an unintentional benefit. They get me get focused for the day and keep me on track and productive in a way that I wouldn’t have expected.

I think the magic lies in running’s simplicity. You don’t have to think about who to pass to, or when to shoot, or what play to make. Running only asks you to make one decision: Keep going? Yes/No

Then you go a few more steps and it asks you again – Yes/No

Yes/No

And make no mistake, it’s a decision every time. One that only gets harder the further you go. It’s unpleasant, but after 40 minutes of that, once you come home and shower and eat something delicious, it’s so much easier to say “Yes” to all those other things you have to do.

And when it comes to running a business that’s really the only question that matters.

Keep going? Yes/No

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Please donate for a great cause – https://www.runwithtfk.org/Donate/Member/1657

My brother introduced me to it (Thanks Evan!) and I’ve been doing one a day for the last week. Essentially people post things that they’re willing to do for $5. This includes a lot of ridiculous stuff like “I’ll call anyone and say anything you tell me to” (http://bit.ly/b2iT4N), but also some useful things like I’ll tweet about your company or review your iPhone app or promote your page on Facebook.

It’s all essentially the little stuff you might want if you were asking a friend for favor, but instead of the messy emotional obligations, it just cost five bucks.

Over the last week I’ve ordered five, three of which to review (positively) my iPhone app, one to “Digg” my site 50 times, and one to see broadcasts about my website out on Twitter. I’ll keep you posted on the results and effectiveness of these ploys as they make their way out to the world.

– Ethan

Essentially you can get any menial repetitive task for pennies. It allows anyone to outsource intern-level work with a few clicks of a mouse.

Description doesn’t do it justice. You just have to try it once to get your mind blown, but in brief it works like this:

1. Pick a menial, repetitive task. Almost anything that can be done in front of a computer will qualify as long as the final results can fit into an excel spreadsheet.

2. Upload your list of tasks to Mechanical Turk.

3. The list gets broken into individual tiny jobs for which you pay a few pennies each. And these go out into the world.

4. People do them! From all over the world and for pennies, it’s mind blowing. Ah, blessed geo-arbitrage

5. Once the list of tasks is complete, you download it and wah lah, hours of works done for a few dollars.

It’s really amazing. Go check it out!

– Ethan

It’s a strange feeling creating something and putting it out there for the world to see. Will people like? How can I make it better? Does my voice sound weird?

Doesn’t matter, create create create, the rest will fall in place. This story has just begun.

– Ethan