I was likely a simple change to add this to the scale’s UI, but it has saved me and others lots of time. It’s a reminder to strive for continuous improvement, and to frequently check products for simple changes that might make a big difference to consumers.

Design Thinking is a way of designing by using prototyping. Marty Cagan advises that instead of detailed technical specifications (of which I have myself written several), functional prototypes should be used. Design Thinking brings this step closer to the beginning of the development process by incorporating prototyping into the actual design of products, services, or ideas. By getting the customer or client involved early in the process, and by having tangible prototypes – even in the form of simple Post-It notes – available for customers to see, touch, move around, or play with, designs can be evaluated and improved upon without the need to spend money to rework or redesign things that are already well underway in the product development process.

In other news, some friends and I went on the Tron Lightcycle Power Run ride at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom last week, and it was pretty neat! I must admit, having just read a lot about Design Thinking during the previous days, I spent a little extra time wondering about the design of the experience, and finding little details that interested me!

Then this evening came around. I was tired. I’d eaten dinner not too long ago. And to top it off, it had rained during the afternoon, and if I went out, it looked like I might get rained on. I really didn’t want to go. But I did it anyway. I put on my exercise clothes and running watch, headed for the park, and completed my full run. And I did end up getting rained on.

While on my run I listened to an audiobook, as I often do. Today I listened to Stephen R. Covey narrate his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, where he cited a book called The Common Denominator of Success by Albert E. N. Grey. In his book, Grey sought “the one denominator that all successful people share”. It didn’t end up being intelligence, hard work, or an innate skill in human relationships. The one denominator was this:

Successful people have the habit of doing things failures don’t like to do.

This doesn’t mean that successful people thoroughly enjoy doing the things unsuccessful people don’t like to do. It means they do them anyway. They complete the tasks that need to be completed in order to achieve their goals.

Doing things you don’t want to do builds willpower. The more you subject yourself to performing uncomfortable tasks, the more you will be able to accomplish important things when you really need to get them done in order to achieve success.

In the end, I was glad I went on my run. I felt better afterward. And to be honest, learning that doing things you don’t want to do was the thing that separated successful people from unsuccessful people made me feel kinda good about my choice!

Maybe you have some things you’ve been putting off that will help you move forward with your goals? If so, I invite you to join me in getting them done – even if you just don’t wanna.

By the way, I took the picture on this page while on my run in Folimanka Park, Vinohrady, Prague.

I have never been one of those people who can work toward a big, nebulous goal… it seems I can never find momentum toward fulfilling my dreams if I try to work with a big goal in mind. Instead, I allocate a time block every day to something that will help me to achieve my dreams, and then I do that thing every day, without fail – be it writing fiction, learning a foreign language, studying business, or working out every day to ensure my future health. Keller mentions that there are different types of people in this world; some people are able to get a lot of work done by setting big goals for themselves, but other people (such as myself) achieve their dreams more effectively by setting small goals – even daily goals – and working toward them every day. Basically, whatever method works for you is the correct method.

Reading Keller’s book got me thinking about the future goals I’ve been working toward, and how I should be prioritizing them. And I found that I was asking myself this question:

Once I achieve my goals, am I going to enjoy the results?

Here’s what I mean by this. Imagine you’re attending university, studying to become a chemist. Now imagine you’ve graduated university, and you’re an apprentice chemist working in a laboratory, performing chemical work – a lot of it routine. Now imagine that you’re older, still working in a lab, performing important chemical research, attending conferences, and overseeing junior chemists as they complete their work. Perhaps you have a Masters degree or a PhD. You have built yourself a fulfilling, respectable career.

This sounds great… but really imagine that you are now this “older self”, and that this is your daily job. Now ask yourself… is this really what I want? It’s something that a lot of people want, true. For some people, it is their dream job. But is it yours?

Everything you do is moving you toward something. Your actions today will result in what your life looks like tomorrow. If you’re working toward your dream job, make sure that when you imagine what your daily life looks like while working at your dream job, it’s something you really want. If your dream career is to be a writer, you should remember that working as a writer means hours of tedious work sitting by yourself in front of your computer. Having the fame and accolades of being a New York Times bestselling author is one result of becoming a successful writer, true. But sitting down and writing every day is another – and in fact, that’s the one that will take up 99% of your time. Can you imagine yourself enjoying that life?

I’ll write more about this later, but for now, I just wanted to get this concept across. If you’re not working toward doing something you want to be doing every day, it may be time to change course!

In my example, there are only three results, one of which does not contain the word Christmas in its title. But trust me, usually when I initiate a search like this, I get dozens of results, the vast majority of which are not useful to me! In order to find the result I need in such a search, it takes considerable effort to go through the files in the results to find the one I’m looking for.

By trial and error, I figured out how to get around this problem. If you type “filename:”, or even better, simply “name:” before your search, only the files with your keyword specified in their filenames will be included in the results. For example, here is a search for “name:Christmas”:

And that’s it! That’s how to search for a file with a specific keyword in its filename, and not a keyword that might be found anywhere within the file. And if you’re anything like me, with tons of different files on your computer, wading through such results can be very time-consuming.

I hope this helps you with your Windows searches!

When Josh was 19 years old, he moved to the big city after growing up in the country. Upon his arrival in the city, one of Josh’s new neighbors invited him to a fancy annual dinner party. Josh hadn’t had any experience with any sort of fancy social event before, so much so that he didn’t even realize that some preparation for the dinner might be wise. So he put on his best clothes and headed to the dinner.

At the dinner party, Josh was the only person not wearing formal clothes. He grabbed a seat at a nearby table before it was polite to do so, gaining disapproving glances from the other, more civilized partygoers. When dinner came, he used the dinner for for his salad, drank wine from his water glass, and had his elbows on the table much of the time. And truth be told, he probably drank a little too much alcohol, since that was what he was used to when he attended social events with his friends back in his tiny village.

The other partygoers were quick to judge Josh on what he had done. Why did he not prepare for this dinner? Did he not realize that this was a fancy engagement? How could he behave like this? What a horrible, uncivilized person.

Fast forward a few months. After socializing in the big city for a little longer, Josh came to realize what he’d done wrong at the formal dinner party. He studied etiquette. He asked a lot of questions. He bought some really nice formal clothes. He learned proper table manners.

Exactly one year later, Josh was invited back to the very same party, attended by the same guests. He dressed properly. He socialized properly with the other guests. He used the correct utensils. And this time, having learned the error of his ways, he chose not to drink a drop.

So here’s the question. Should the guests at the party continue to judge Josh based on how he behaved when he was 19 years old, before he even realized that he should act a certain way at a formal dinner party? Or should they instead judge Josh based on how he behaves today… or, even better, not judge him at all? After all, Josh was a good person who came from a village full of good people who hadn’t grown up attending fancy dinner parties in the big city.

That’s 19-year-old me in the picture at a hotel in Chicago. To my knowledge I’ve never used the wrong fork at a fancy dinner party (or maybe I have and nobody told me!) but there were certainly plenty of things that I was ignorant of back when I was a teenaged university student. And when I say I was ignorant, I don’t mean it as an insult, as some people like to use the term today – I mean there were plenty of things I legitimately had no knowledge of or experience with, and I behaved accordingly.

When I was a kid, like many of my friends, I would say things like, “that’s so gay”. That was before I had actually met a person who identified as gay. The first gay person I knew was my friend Chris at the University of Waterloo. We’d been friends for a while when one day he showed up at the campus cafeteria wearing a little pink triangle pin on his jacket. “What does that mean?” I asked him. In a level voice, he answered, “it means I’m a fag.” I laughed, then said, “no really, what does it mean?” “That’s really what it means,” he answered. “Today is Coming Out Day”. That day I started to learn about people with different sexual orientations from my own, and I haven’t stopped learning.

What about racism? Have I said racist things in the past? Yes, I have. I grew up in Canada, so I was surrounded by multiculturalism from a young age, and I like to think I benefited from that. Even so, I said and did some things as a teen and young adult that I am not proud of, and probably hurt some people in the process. Would I take those things back if I could? Of course I would. I am sorry I did those things. Since I’ve said and done those things, I have learned a lot about different people, their cultures, and the places they’re from. I’ve toured the world in a musical group, performing community service in the various cities we visited. I’ve made friends from all over the world. I’ve lived in numerous countries. I studied Chinese as part of my MBA program in grad school, and recently I’ve studied both Chinese and Japanese for a half hour each, every single day, for over six months. From ignorance grew deep respect and admiration for different people, places, languages, cultures, and traditions across the globe.

I believe that when people change for the better, we should celebrate the people they’ve become, not berate them for the transgressions they committed in the past. And if someone is doing things that are racist or sexist because they are ignorant, we should not be so quick to fight with them. Instead, we should find out why they feel the way they feel, and start to educate them, so that the ignorance can melt away and they can start treating other people – all people – the way they deserve to be treated.

“Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Have you been asked this question during interviews? I have. It’s a tough question to answer.

Some people recommend answering this question with “perfectionism”, as it sounds like a strength as well as a weakness. But perfectionism that stops you from achieving your goals is much more of a weakness than a strength. Perfection is an ideal, and if you’re always waiting for your work to be perfect, you will constantly be spinning your wheels, as ideals by their definition are impossible to meet.

It took psychotherapist Dr. Robert Glover six years to write his book No More Mr. Nice Guy. He found himself stuck in a constant cycle of adding, revising, and removing information. Eventually he realized that worrying about creating a polished “publishable work” was keeping him from creating anything at all. Only by changing his perspective was he able to finish his book. He had this to say about his change of perspective:

“I realized that I had gotten away from my original goal — to write a few insights that would help a few men live better lives. Once I let go of the burden of having to get published, be a best-selling author, and appear on Oprah, everything changed. I went back to my original agenda. From then on when I wrote, I only asked myself one thing: “Will this help my clients find answers to their problems?” I also kept reminding myself that my clients would never get a chance to benefit from my insight if I never finished the book.”

I’ll be the first to admit that I have the same issue as Dr. Glover had while writing his book. A lot of times I won’t even start a task because I don’t think it will be “good enough”. I have several books that I’ve written and had stashed away for years, and I’ve never even tried to even find an agent for any of them. It has also hurt me professionally – the desire to “do great” has sometimes overwhelmed my desire to do anything at all, which frequently means I’ve missed amazing opportunities to do useful (if not perfect) work.

There are also the dreaded “have tos” that can keep you from achieving your goals. If you’re a professional blogger, you might say yourself, “I have to post every day… if I can’t post every day, why bother?” “I have to find the perfect photo for this blog post… until I find the perfect photo, I can’t publish it.” “I have to cater to my target audience with my post. If I’m not reaching my target audience, this post will be a waste of time.” These are poisonous thoughts that will trick you into believing that creating nothing is a better option than creating something that isn’t perfect. This, of course, isn’t true.

Instead, strive to create something that’s good enough. Create something of value. If it’s a bit rough around the edges, that’s fine. And do it from a place of personal passion, not from a place of worrying about what other people will think about you or your work. After finishing his book, Dr. Glover realized:

“Trying to do it right only sucked the life out of No More Mr. Nice Guy! Letting go and letting it just be “good enough” set me free to embrace my passion and create something of lasting value.”

I’ve been reading Dale Carnegie’s classic book How to Win Friends and Influence People, which contains some surprisingly modern advice considering it was first published in 1937. What I find especially fascinating is the various stories and examples Carnegie uses, many of which are from his personal experiences working with people as a writer, researcher, and self-improvement expert during the 1920s and 1930s.

Benjamin Franklin, who died in 1790, was obviously not one of those people. But Carnegie’s very first principle, Don’t Criticize or Complain, features an important quote by the Founding Father:

“I will speak ill of no man. . . and speak all the good I know of everybody.”

That’s a bold statement. Speak ill of no person? I wouldn’t say that I am a malicious person, but I can’t cop to never speaking any ill of anybody. But in his book, Carnegie has some great examples about why criticism simply doesn’t work, and will in fact come back to bite you. “Let’s realize that criticisms are like homing pigeons”, he says. “They always return home. Let’s realize that the person we are going to correct and condemn will probably justify himself or herself, and condemn us in return”.

I’m going to make a habit of never speaking ill of people, and see where it gets me in my personal and professional life. And meanwhile, if Carnegie’s words about criticism don’t convince you, there’s always this quote by John Wanamaker:

“I learned thirty years ago that it is foolish to scold. I have enough trouble overcoming my own limitations without fretting over the fact that God has not seen fit to distribute evenly the gift of intelligence.”

Senior Project Manager: We do precision guess work based on unreliable data provided by those of questionable knowledge

I see where the T-shirt maker was going with this, but it frustrated me to think there are project managers out there who might share this attitude. In my opinion, it is a poor project manager that questions the knowledge of the people on his or her team. That’s because as a project manager, you aren’t outputting a whole bunch of project deliverables on your own. It is your team that is doing the majority of the work on project deliverables. If you don’t trust the knowledge of your team members, and if you can’t find ways to work with them to provide reliable project data, then you’re going to be a pretty poor project manager.

It’s crucial as a project manager to get to know and appreciate your team’s strengths and weaknesses and to learn to work with your team members to create a schedule for deliverables that your team is realistically able to accomplish. If the data that you are receiving from your team members is unreliable, then it’s up to you to find ways to help your team members provide reliable data. The same principle applies when it comes to working with customers or clients. If your clients are providing you with unreliable data, then you should work with them to provide realistic data that will allow you and your project team to get the expected work done in a predictable and efficient manner. This will make everybody happy…. except for maybe the T-shirt makers.