J. Shirley

Inspiration, Motivation

2013-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

Inspired by Seth Godin, questioning just what is school I have to wonder something about a subject very interesting to me. What is inspiration?

There is a growing clamor for mindfulness, peace and happiness in society. Over the last 150 years we have excelled in an industrious capacity, producing and consuming in fantastic quantities. However, this doesn’t provide the type of meaning nor happiness. Inspiration and motivation are common words attached to this low-happiness life.

Without definitions, how can I be effective in chasing the dream of a meaningful, happy life? What follows is my subjective view on what inspiration and motivation means to me. Feel free to tell me what they mean to you, more (genuine) information is always better.

Inspiration, the beauty of inaction.

Inspiration is a passive experience. As we read, listen or watch we feel a tingling within ourselves. Inspiration then is a metric, the intensity of that tingling, that aids us in figuring out direction. Inspiration itself cannot be acted upon.

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

That’s a great quote. It inspires a direction, to be more daring. There is no prescription, no distinct action. To be daring doing what? Inspiration helps answer that. Inspiration generates momentum, so that we have motivation to succeed.

Motivation, harnessing momentum.

If inspiration is a metric of internal energy, motivation is the metric of external energy. Inspiration creates momentum, and with momentum we can be pushed into action. That first step takes the most momentum, but motivation allows us to continue.

Motivation is how we translate this momentum in efficient ways. The energy into motion, the movement in our life and our progress. Without motivation, all the inspiration in the world can be used to merely tread water; there is no distinct end. Without inspiration, motivation fizzles and we get stuck.

This is a good distinction that allows me to seek out what I need. Am I feeling like I’m trudging through mud? Seek inspiration. Am I simply not moving, even though I have the energy to do so? Motivation.

Finding Inspiration

Inspiration is easier. Read a good book. Search for TED on YouTube. If you aren’t inspired after that, you may not have a pulse.

Finding Motivation

Motivation is about the end, and it’s unique to each person. This makes it harder to find but more compelling when it is found. Visualizing the result and having clear actions to get you there.

When I need motivation, I look to existing products that are finished. I think about what I would do different, what I really love. This gives more direction and helps focus energy so I can be productive. Without productivity, motivation fades away quickly. Without inspiration, motivation never surfaces.

Competition

2013-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

I am speed. I’ve never identified more with a movie than during the opening scene of Cars. Maybe I love speed would be more accurate. I love to drive, especially swiftly. As I grew up and made fewer dumb choices and more smart choices, I also changed the way I studied the concept of going faster.

Racing is very competitive, but it really isn’t against other drivers. Racing is against the track. It’s about getting the best time on that lap on the track; the other competitors are working to the same goal, but not to slow you down. Just like life.

Consistent excellence against the track creates consistent winners. By competing against the people who coincidentally are chasing the same goal may occasionally produce a fluke victory. The problem is in fixation. Closely following a leading car’s movements means staying in their shadow, and worse, making the same mistakes. If you do not drive against the track, you are following a leader. Followers don’t win races.

Preparation is the solution. Learn the track, inside and out. Know every corner, every dip and every bump. Preparation is 90% of victory. Preparation is the key to consistency, and consistency brings confidence.

The remaining 10% doesn’t need to be worried about. That’s what everybody focuses on: the leaders.

Plan less, do more.

2013-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

Want to lose weight? Grab a smaller plate. Want to do more? Plan to do less.

I’ve previously written about my strategy for accomplishing more through the days. Since it’s very brief, I’ll do a recap. At the end of the day, before “clocking out” I:

Write what I will do tomorrow.
Put things away and verify everything is complete.

This type of simple loop is beneficial, but it requires discipline on two fronts: First, never (ever ever) commit to something you can’t do. Second, do everything on your list.

When starting the day, it’s easy to see what’s on the list. These are the priorities. Nothing else matters until these are done. After they are complete the day is done. Spend the rest of the day doing whatever you want.

This has helped me to accomplish more over the last 18 months. It isn’t perfect, though, which is why I’m tweaking it now. The biggest problem is that I end up losing long-term direction. My time slices were too narrow, but this system scales upward.

Planning weeks

Now at the beginning of each week (Sunday night), I list out at least 3 priorities for the week. Things I feel must get done and can get done. The same rule applies: Don’t put it down if it can’t or won’t be done.

My week now has a framework. My daily priorities must support my weekly priorities. In most professions, especially software development, there are plenty of moments where things come up. We’re working in the unknown or we’re dependent upon things out of our control.

By committing to a bare minimum, prioritization is forced and typically the things we must do comprise a small portion of the day. My average tasks I must do take up anywhere from 3 to 4 hours.

The rest of my day can be working with people or things outside of my direct control. If I cannot control the outcome, it is not one of my top priorities but a nice to have. By doing what I can I get a boost, which means I’m more successful in tasks that are outside of my control.

Why it works

I’m no psychologist, but I love reading about productivity hacks. I believe it works because there is a very positive experience from checking a box off. Even if it’s just mental. To set out to accomplish something, no matter how trivial, and succeeding feels very good.

I am the most productive when I feel good. When I feel bad, especially if I’ve let myself or someone else down, I’m not very productive. I languish and lethargy kicks in. By minimizing negative moments I’m keeping my momentum up and achieving more.

Tips for success

Anything you cannot control is not important to you until you can control it.
Question urgency. A phone ringing is not urgent. You are your master, not your phone nor email.
Schedule Review and Reflection times. Review first thing in the morning and at the end of the day reflect and make your workspace orderly.
Write everything down so you can review it. Your memory is not as good as you think it is.

Shameless plug for TDP.me here. Every night at 4pm I get an email (TDP Reminder) for “List tasks for tomorrow”. I can sit and think, and just reply to the email with what I’m going to do. The next morning I just review what I wrote as my refresher. If you use a similar system, let me know!

The problem with fun

2013-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

There is a problem with having fun. Fun has a hidden cost. A cost that people think they can handle or may never acknowledge. This cost creeps up, compounding and can really bring havoc. It just lurks, waiting to explode and disrupt your life.

We shouldn’t not have fun. In fact, I fully support having fun. But just like practicing a skill, having fun should be very deliberate. Unlike a skill, though, the dangers of not being mindful of our fun can be harmful. In any moment we haphazardly pursue fun, we are putting off important things in our life.

The shoulds and the musts that are, intentionally or not, discarded in our search for fun add up. In the aimless pursuit to alleviate boredom, we’re cheating ourselves of our greatest moments. We don’t have to, though.

This past year has been an exercise to change my perception of fun. I think I have more fun now than I previously did. I’m more deliberate and more careful. I used to just think, ”I’m bored, let me do the thing that made me un-bored last time.” Usually I was just as bored, but doing something that should have been fun. It wasn’t, then I felt empty and lazy.

Choosing fun is always easy

It’s hard to turn down an activity that we think of as fun. Even if we’re asked about it and don’t find it fun at the time. For example, in Flow people report low levels of enjoyment while watching TV. However if you ask people if they would have fun watching TV, they say yes.

In these experiences, we’re delaying what matters for the purposes of trying to rekindle a previously enjoyed experience. We can’t. We’re putting off what matters now by what once mattered then.

Often times this delay catches up to us when it’s far too late for us to truly be happy. More importantly it comes up when it’s far too late for us to catch our life’s meaning. Whether it’s involvement with family, starting a business or simply finding inner-peace.

Choosing fun over happiness is the most efficient way to sabotage life. It’s not a battle of tug-of-war. Happiness and fun are not competing, unless we make them.

Fun + Happiness = Meaning

If fun is perceived as a partner to happiness, we attach meaning and purpose to our activities. Instead of merely being fun, they are also meaningful and enriching. This takes a great amount of deliberation and practice. It also means getting rid of things once thought of as “fun”.

Right now I feel I have a ton of fun in my life. I also have a great deal of happiness and a feeling of joy. Most days I wake up doing exactly what I want to be doing. I have worked to prune the things I thought were fun away, and deliberately choose my activities based on what the real rewards are.

This conscious effort takes a few minutes, but is really a powerful tool. It’s just a habit I’ve been working on to ask myself a simple question whenever I happen to remember it.

Am I having fun now? If so, am I also happy?

Sometimes I’m not happy. That’s ok. I may have fun playing a video game but I’m not happy. Again, that’s ok. I just need to keep sampling my feelings. Once I’m bored (which usually takes very few minutes), quit and move on to something else. We need to take a moment to breathe, and fun activities without meaning do have meaning once we correctly identify them.

But now I find myself answering the second question more often in the affirmative. Yes! I am teaching my children skills that will open their eyes to the world. I’m figuring out some complex piece of software, or new design, and I’m having fun doing it!

That is happiness and fun. These are moments I seek out each and every day. Just like I can’t always find happiness in the fun activities I do, sometimes the activities that bring happiness just aren’t fun. I’m happy to have a house that I love, but it isn’t fun to repair it.

Unfortunately happiness is harder to find than fun. It’s up to me to create happiness in what I do.

Unless I master creating happiness, I will never master creating meaning.

Symptoms, Solutions and Products

2013-03-11T00:00:00+00:00

The other day I heard a good way of categorizing products but it needed more work. While it was a very simple way of defining a product, it didn’t go any deeper. I had to think hard about the products I develop; and rethink how to describe the features and requirements. This lead, ultimately, to rethink the ambitions as well.

Products are remedies. They treat symptoms, have side-effects and are potentially (hopefully) habit-forming. Now I have an easy to understand list of points to address, as well as a framework for answering critical questions that otherwise lack structure and guidance. This lets me tackle each step clearly and with an agenda.

Clearly define the symptoms

We seek a remedy in response to experiencing symptoms. We have defined symptoms with a variety of causes. Products are remedies, but not for an underlying cause; products treat symptoms.

If there isn’t a well-defined symptom, there isn’t a well-defined product.

This doesn’t mean that the end-user can describe the symptoms or even the desired remedy. As someone building products, this is my responsibility. Without framing the discussion any product will be susceptible to feature creep, whims and that carries through and is evident to the user.

By clearly defining the symptoms a product will remedy, clarity in my thoughts has increased dramatically. This is invaluable, it forces me to fully contemplate on what I am really solving. The singular focus the end-user will benefit from is a side-effect, I’m really solving my own feelings of aimless thinking.

Speaking of side-effects

Any remedy has side-effects. Products, too. Either they cost money, involve a time investment (sometimes just time wasted) or the worst: using the product itself is just frustrating. Without paying attention to these, both opportunities and problems are being ignored.

List out the side-effects of the product. This can be daunting, as people naturally shy away from the negative side of things. Remember all the pharmaceutical commercials. People will consume a remedy even with disastrous side effects. As long as the remedy is worth it the side effects can, and will be, excused.

Just because the user excuses them doesn’t mean that you, as a product developer, can ignore them. After this exercise is done, it’s trivial to compare the side-effects against the resolved symptoms. Another benefit of this is a list of side-effects to remove in future versions. Possibly even creating follow-up products as new remedies to the very side-effects your product created!

With the symptoms defined, the side-effects listed the product will simply be better. And a better product will have happier users. Happy users stick around longer.

Is it habit-forming?

A habit-forming product is exactly what any product developer wants. Simply reliving a symptom does not create a habit, though. That takes a little something extra.

Habits are hard to create. More so when they’re being created in someone else. Yet many people succeed. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and many others have spawned hundreds of copy cat products. Those products don’t ever form habits, though.

Why not? Perhaps an imbalance. Resolving a symptom that not enough people suffer from, or the side-effects aren’t worth the remedy. More importantly, you have to look at how people are dealing with those symptom without your product.

The real habits, though, are the products that create the symptom as they resolve it. This is the holy grail of products. The Instagrams and Facebook have solved this. Now people can’t eat a meal without feeling compelled to tell and show people. The symptom and remedy, all in one.

Time isn't fair

2013-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

Life is not fair. I was raised with this understanding and never expecting fairness has served me well. The depth of this simple statement was lost on me until recently. Time itself isn’t fair. The value of a minute changes, and what could be fair for me now is not fair later. This leads us to another popular expression: When it rains, it pours.

I try to keep myself busy in general, but I still often times find myself with 5 or 10 minutes where I’m idling. I never valued these minutes, or saw how they exist in conjunction with the world around me.Right now, these moments are usually occupied by humankind’s favorite pastime: talking. It does’ thane to be. Those five minutes can be more valuable than five minutes at other times.

My wife and I have divided up the responsibilities quite clearly in our household. There is little to no ambiguity. I have responsibilities and so does she, it keeps our house chugging along nicely with very little friction. After dinner, she cleans the kitchen and fixes lunch for our son. I stand around yammering, not valuing the time I have.

Then my wife simply asked, “If you aren’t doing anything else, could you load the dishwasher?”

This was a powerful question. I certainly can load the dishwasher, even while I continue my orations (much to her chagrin). It didn’t even take a full 5 minutes, which meant it was a trivial time investment. This simple act was of immense help to her. Her evenings are busy, each minute is of extreme value.

My evening is my relaxation time, her evening is her busiest and most taxing time. A trivial gesture of giving her five minutes has a huge impact. This shows the distinct and direct imbalance in the value of time. Trivial expenditures from someone can bring disproportionate value to someone else.

It is wrong, and all together too common, to think that the value of each minute is constant. More importantly, to think that the value of someone else’s minute is constant and relative to our own.

By being mindful and understanding the experiences of others, we can learn how to maximize when and how to spend our time to reap the maximum benefits for them.

Ask yourself in any idle moment if someone would value your idle moments. Many of these actions are trivial. Actions that wouldn’t be remembered 30 minutes later, but the recipients will remember for hours, if not days or longer. That’s a good trade off.

Exciting developments!

2013-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

I haven’t been writing lately and I really have been missing it. I also haven’t been working on TDP as much as I would like. I have not been idle though!

Towards the end November of 2012, I flew out to New York to meet up with the guys at Cojourneo. They were looking into the future and figuring out the ever important what’s next question.

My experience in building TDP and studying the methodology of small, consistent steps to achieve great things struck a chord with them. We really hit it off, they have a great team and together we came up with a vision that will create real, lasting improvements.

Long story short, I’m now their CTO. This is against my own previous statements, as I was opposed to the idea of a startup. I don’t like the required grind, and have a special distaste of pleasing some investor who is detached from the real mission.

In Cojourneo, I’ve found something different. Jerry Colonna is that something different. As an investor, he has demonstrated his involvement is not about the return. My desire to create a sustainable, growing business that focuses on helping people achieve more is shared by everybody there. Including, or I should say especially with the investors. Also, Jerry is an amazing person.

Now I’m officially at a startup. I didn’t expect to be here, and over the last 3 months we’ve already accomplished some really great things together. I feel excited and anxious to see what the future delivers.

Where does this leave TDP?

TDP isn’t changing. It’s still my beloved project. I still pay the hosting and am free to work on it. It was a condition of joining Cojourneo!

Granted, I have less time to work on it but I think things will ultimately be mutually beneficial. Ideally, I’ll be able to power a lot of Cojourneo’s new product with many of the same features that go into TDP.

Up next…

Now that things have solidified more with Cojourneo I have resumed my normal, externally productive life. I’ll be writing more (I have a lot to talk about), working more on TDP, and hopefully learning lots of great new things I can share.

At the core, I’m a full believer in the Cojourneo methodology; I feel fortunate to be a part of it.

Ramit Sethi taught me how to buy a car

2013-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

Being opposed to shallow and manipulative sales tactics has limited my view. I was close-minded. I have been reading a lot from Ramit Sethi and he advocates using scripts. Initially I thought this was some gimmick, designed to exert influence without going for a proper win/win outcome. They aren’t.

Scripts are merely a way of preparing how we are going to act and what we are going to say. We do this anyway with habits, or worse, we blurt out something and embarrass ourselves.

Over the last few months my perception on this has changed and I view them more as a tool to get to a win/win situation. It’s not a script that I follow, but many scripts designed to help me interact with specific people. Recently I had a test to use a script in a way that mattered financially and in a more competitive scenario. I went to buy a new car.

I prepared myself by listening to the script an FBI Hostage Negotiator used when he bought a car. I reworked the script to be entirely genuine. Then I went to buy the car and learn a lot. I succeeded in both.

Be prepared but be flexible.

My plan was immediately ruined. The car we all thought was the one turned out to be a different, higher model. I had to quickly revise my script and make snap decisions I didn’t anticipate. I did this before engaging again. I still made a mistake here, but it was relatively minor.

Understand their script, too.

All sales people have scripts they use. That’s just basic competence. By familiarizing myself with the scripts I was able to gauge how I was doing.

I was also able to put in hooks for my own script based on what they said and did. This, however, almost made me laugh at one point. I was presented with a terrible offer, with “Ok, you win” and balloons drawn on the paper. Just like the Hostage Negotiator. This meant it was working!

My script is a guide, not doctrine.

It is really frightening and exciting when the script works. However, even when it was working flawlessly I felt some anxiety that I was going to fail immediately. I made some minor concessions that deviated from the script. That was ok because I was making the choices on my own, not in response to their tactics.

It’s important to understand that these scripts can, will and should change. We have to be flexible. The more scripts we have and practice, the better equipped we are to deal with unexpected events. Ideally, unexpected events simply mean merging two scripts.

A script is still genuine.

Not once did I tell a lie or felt exploitative. I know it’s impossible to exploit a car salesman, but this expands into a way of life and of thought. My scripts mean I’m prepared, but I’m preparing myself for someone else.

This is genuinely me and how I present myself. This is my best foot forward. Having a script is more representative of the real me than improvisation.

Habits start small, rewards start smaller.

2013-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

Habits are small. They succeed and live not with a blaze of glory but through unnoticed evolution. Bad habits creep in, covertly and hopefully unspotted. Good habits are formed through daily adjustments and careful curation.

Now that New Years is here and resolutions are falling by the wayside, I feel compelled to think of these mysterious things. Why was the gym packed today? Why will it be empty next week?

Big rewards don’t work

I have a friend who wants to lose weight and curb an unhealthy eating habit. She had a great idea. She bought clothes that were too small for her, in hopes of motivating herself to eat better and exercise more. She failed.

I’ve tried many habits, promising myself rewards that never arrived. Each time I’ve wondered why. This year I think I know.

These rewards never work because the path to the reward does not lie within the habit. A successful reward is only available through the habit. It’s also very, very small. So small it is hardly worth mentioning. It still is a reward, though.

A penny saved

I saw a post a few days ago talking about a 52 week money challenge. The challenge is simple: for every week of the year you deposit that amount. In the first week, just a dollar but the last week of the year you deposit $52. Small amounts, even at the end but increasingly large rewards. At the end of the year you would have $1,378.00. That’s substantial.

Habits, and their rewards, compound similarly. The first week I started jogging the rewards were miniscule. I felt proud after each jog. I started to crave that feeling and I watched the miles add up and the times decrease. However, each time I went out was only minimally rewarded. Just the feeling of “Good job” kept me going, and the desire to stay healthy.

After a year or so I experienced my first large reward. I entered my first 5K race. I certainly could have ran 5K earlier on, but I wanted to do well. I did, even winning a prize. This was a profoundly rewarding experience, compounded and only made available by my previous regular, minor victories.

Cart, meet horse

Whenever we lose track of our minor, daily rewards we’re getting further from our ultimate goal. Slow down, take your time. It’s better to succeed over a year than fail in a month. Focusing and appreciating on daily, small rewards will lead to success.

Reward yourself every day for a job well done, soon every day will be more rewarding.

Thoughts on a momentary break in habits.

2013-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

A month ago I started to feel a bit cramped. I didn’t feel bad at all. I was merely questioning my life, which is a good thing. Maybe I wasn’t really enjoying things as much as I thought I was. Maybe they were just habits. I was so caught up in being reliable with writing (and other things) that I wasn’t sure if I was enjoying it all. I really think I was, but at the time I wasn’t sure.

I decided I was going to try a new writing project and take a step back from my existing goals. This meant pausing my normal private and public writing. Each day I set out to write 500 words; though many things I write are never designed to reach the public. I had some ideas for deeper writings and thought it may be more enjoyable to go down this path. It was complex though, and things like outlines and story boards seemed necessary.

My daily goal of writing became merely working on this larger project. However, this goal was very vague. Because it was vague I ended up, quite naturally, doing less and less. I had brief flickers of motivation that popped up and even a few impressive days. By and large over the last month I languished until, towards the end, I eventually stopped progressing at all.

I quantify what I do so I know exactly how well, or poorly, I am doing. I was not meeting my own standards, which was somewhat expected. But how would this impact the rest of my life and my happiness?

As I let this one habit fade away I found myself struggling with everything else. I realized how much of my routine is based on the time I set aside to simply write. It is my cue for many other positive habits. Without that structured time I was constantly battling an invasion of chaos.

It was very rewarding to have this experience. Intellectually, I knew that if I sacrificed a keystone habit my life would be more disordered. I wasn’t sure how, though. I wanted to see how deep the disorder went. In some ways it was worse than expected but on the whole it was not disastrous.

All in all, I realized the only way to maintain the trajectory in life I want to take was to explicitly define the goals that are important to me and schedule time to accomplish those goals. With that, I naturally build routines which help me maintain and continue the pattern. From there, I succeed. Without these routines I fail.

I don’t want to fail. I want to be amazing0.

The vacuum of life

2012-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

Children, like the Universe, descend into chaos. My children are very good kids. I love them and find them intriguing and interesting. It still amazes me how quickly our best efforts for good behavior simply wear off. The bad habits return.

My son chews with his mouth open. This bothers me so we set out to fix it. We made strands of colored beads that are put down in front of him while he eats. He has 3 strands: green, yellow and finally red. When he chews with his mouth open a strand is removed. If the red strand is removed he is not allowed to eat dessert.

It works well and quickly breaks the habit. I think only once did he actually lose his dessert. Just the constant visual reminder is enough. But it returns!

As he breaks his habit we gradually forget about the beads. Then in a few weeks his habit slowly returns. His mouth opens and we’re all in for a terrible dinner show. The beads come out and the process repeats. It’s encouraging to see the time between beads lengthens each time. Soon this habit will truly be gone.

It’s excusable that his habit returns, though. He’s six. It’s my job to help him form good habits and give him the tools to succeed.

As adults, I feel our biggest collective problem is unknowingly falling back into bad, and dangerous, habits. Our lives are vacuums which eagerly suck up habits as we go. If we do not choose our habits bad ones are chosen for us. It doesn’t quite seem fair, but that is the way it works.

I’ve figured out for my own life that simply writing my own narrative and deciding who I want to be was enough of a reminder. Deciding what actions I want to take and what traits and attributes I want to possess allowed me to then choose my habits. However, all of those decisions do nothing to either achieve those goals or to form the habits I want.

Unfortunately, the goals I have are not simple habits that will be completed by staring at colored beads for 2 weeks. My habits are life-long, as all adult habits tend to be. The worst part is that these good habits are the easiest to break. I must defend my good habits and fight away bad habits with continued vigilance.

It’s a good fight, and the tools we have are our weapons. Choose the best tools. Find new tools. Figure out your own colored strands. Don’t want for some arbitrary holiday to start forming habits you should have for the rest of your life. Do it now, even if you feel silly.

Set your goals. Define your habits. Create you.

Revisiting Mental Renewal

2012-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

I start last week with the goal to enhance my mental rejuvenation. I’m definitely making progress. Here’s a few things I learned:

Pomodoro Technique removes my enjoyment. It increases my stress.
Starting the day right is hugely important. Beginning each morning with a 10 minute quiet period is amazing. I can’t recommend it enough. It’s getting easier to ignore my email.
Meditation doesn’t rejuvenate my mind. I wish it did. It does help with fatigue. It does make me feel happier. It doesn’t allow me to get more done (yet).
As I get older, I believe in meditation more. Adding in more structured times for meditation has helped me simply feel better.
I get very frustrated when I can’t find a good path forward.

This past week I was hoping to make more discoveries. While my new morning routine is wonderful, it doesn’t actually affect my goal. I want to find ways to renew my mind, and so far they’ve been in short supply.

Since I believe in deliberate practice, I must layout some further ideas to try next week. I do have success with physical activities, but my options are still limited.

Draw more. I got a graphics tablet a few months back and I enjoy using it, but don’t set aside time. I’m going to set aside more time. Right now I’m struggling with the tool, which is blocking my ability to create.
Take a nap. I feel silly I’ve never tried this before. I’m not a person who naps much. I don’t even sleep all that much. I sleep sufficiently. I’m going to try to nap to see how I feel after, if it helps my mind. This will be a struggle.
Sit outside with a notepad. This is a stretch. The weather is fine, maybe a bit windy. I should just simply sit outside, maybe with a cup of coffee or tea. I’ll have my notebook to jot down any ideas. I’m not sure what to expect.

Those three ideas will keep me busy. Worst case, none of them work and I start new ideas next week. This isn’t something I would normally post, but this will compel me to think more deeply about the outcomes.

Morning stillness

2012-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

In the morning, a mountain lake is calm and tranquil. The water is cold and refreshing. The surface is smooth and glass-like. It reflects the world around it accurately. As the day progresses, the winds start and the sun warms the water, causing ripples and waves.

Photo by Ron Coscorrosa, amazing Landscape Photographer

Our minds should be the same. We should start each day with startling acuity. We must reflect the world around us accurately. As the day progresses, our ability to focus will diminish and we must renew. I always thought I did well in the morning, today I realized I was not.

This morning I started something new. Yesterday I watched an interview with Investor turned Life Coach Jerry Colonna. They spoke about the benefits of simply sitting still; primarily in the morning. Before email, news, Facebook and Twitter just stop and sit still. I wanted to try, even though I thought I started my days well.

I woke up like any other morning. I gathered my myriad of devices that are our modern day teddy bears. The real challenge lay ahead of me. I had a Meditation Timer setup in a browser window. I had to start it without distracting myself. It was right next to my email. If Gandhi could sleep next to naked nubile young girls^*, I could click a button without glancing at my email or Twitter feed.

I succeeded.

I sat down, perfectly still. My personal moment of calm started. I would think of nothing except being still. If my mind drifting into any thoughts, I loudly thought STOP. The STOP would echo through my thoughts as I refocused on simply being still. There were many, many echoes.

As the minutes ticked by I didn’t feel anything different. My computer turned off the display, in an effort to conserve electricity. I thought, “This should be nicer in a darker room.” and just as I was telling myself to STOP that thought the chimes indicating my 10 minutes were up.

This was an interesting disconnect. I knew my display turns off after 10 minutes, but my conscious mind was focused on my activity I didn’t use that as a trigger my exercise in stillness was over.

I opened my eyes and slowly regained awareness of the world around me. I stood up to make coffee and now I felt different. I wasn’t one with the world, I was one with consequences of my actions. Everything was clear. How long it stays this way I don’t know. It’s been 4 hours and I’m still feeling the positive effects.

A 10 minute time investment in the morning for this great mental state is a minor cost. The return is staggering. Now I understand this a little more:

I am so busy today, I can’t meditate one hour. I must meditate for two.

Optimizing mental rejuvenation

2012-11-26T00:00:00+00:00

My wife and I have been together for 10 years now (in a few more weeks, anyway). It’s pretty amazing and I’m very lucky. Partnerships always require work, honesty and devotion. That’s something we’ve both practiced since the beginning and it’s paid off.

One of the very few issues that we were far apart from a mutual understanding was about my mind. She couldn’t understand it and I wasn’t good at explaining it. Then with the help of a book, it became clear to her. I don’t even remember the book, but the message was simple. Cognitive or mentally stressful efforts (typically from work) require periods of mental rejuvenation. The book called this “Fire Gazing time”.

My fire gazing is not very conventional, at least according to that book. I don’t like to watch TV. I really love watching soccer, but still am very productive while watching. She didn’t understand this. This isn’t to say she tried to prevent this time; she merely didn’t understand it and as such treated it as if it was unimportant. She instead tried to fill the time with something fun for both of us. She had a hard time understanding my brain needs this time!

I spent a lot of energy trying to explain it and illustrate it’s importance. I spent a lot more energy explaining than I ever did trying to make myself more efficient. This week that imbalance finally floated up to my conscious mind and immediately felt it must be solved.

A new goal

I need to improve. If I truly believe in making five minutes today more valuable than 6 minutes yesterday why have I not targeted this before? I was missing out.

The first steps to achieving any goal is to clearly define what the end result is. What is my victory condition? This is actually pretty challenging for something as nebulously defined as fire gazing.

Fortunately, I’ve had years of focusing and explaining, so I can define the outcome for me:

I am able to selectively focus and concentrate on a task of my choosing.
I am able to visualize what I hope to achieve.
I feel happy to be doing the work I choose to do.

This is essentially the state I wake up in most mornings. I want to recapture that sensation later in the day.

Current methods

My favorite activity for this is jogging, however right now I’m unable to run. A 2 to 3 mile jog is amazing to clear the mind and instill fresh vigor into my being. This continues to be my preference, but it is very time consuming. At a reasonable pace, my 3 mile run takes about 30 minutes with stretching and cool down. Then I need a shower. All in, about 45 minutes and I truly feel fresh. This has amazing success rates.

Another activity is writing. This is very hit or miss. I often times find myself flittering away, since the entire problem I’m attempting to solve is waning focus and concentration. If I know what I want to write I’m able to be more successful. The challenge is that I rarely know what I want to write. Often times I don’t want to be typing anymore. It’s a careful balance and only works when the stars align. It’s too inconsistent.

Reading is enjoyable, but I’ve never found the end result to be a renewed creative and focused mind. I wish reading did provide me with this but so far it hasn’t. If I’m really enjoying a book I will find myself reading for hours, spending far more time than I originally anticipated. If the book isn’t that engaging, the time merely passes and then I’m back to where I was.

The final method is playing video games. Any game that require active concentration and thought will work. My success rates are pretty low, about 50%. Even if I’m successful, I tend to have increased fatigue. I’m able to multitask and let the background thoughts bubble up. In this regard, it is better than even running. I keep paper next to me and write down problems I’d like to solve or ideas to explore. If playing online, I’m sure my teammates hate me; I will frequently stop playing to write down some thought or idea.

The major issue with video games is that I feel very unproductive. I enjoy games, but the time spent rarely seems worth it. Only when I truly am done and want a break (or playing with my son) do I feel ok spending my time playing a game. The rewards are not high enough.

Since my knee is out of commission, games and writing are all I’ve been doing. It’s inadequate and I need to change.

New ideas

Ultimately, I want to feel very productive. My renewal and refreshing requires my mind to be focused on a task, but the task can have no consequences attached to it. I cannot worry about competing or failure. When I run, I focus on a few things and simply zone out. It’s a meditative experience. When I play a video game, I think about the gameplay but there are no consequences to it. Writing is similar, thinking of construction and if I’m not posting it I don’t care how terrible it is. Consequences cannot exist to renew my mind.

The idea I tried today was easy. Doing something around the house that I want to do. Not a chore, just something that I think makes the living space better. I’m trying this through the week. It gets me up and moving around, allows me to be creative and feel like I’m solving a problem I’ve noticed. I’m free to even stop if inspiration hits abruptly.

I have some other ideas, but will write on those after I see how a week of home improvement goes.

Constructive Critique of pv.Body's failures

2012-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

This is more tangible than my typical posts. Customer service has been on my mind a lot.

Tony Hsieh (that shoe guy) made a name for himself with amazing business acumen. I associate him with something different, though. He revitalized a dying customer service culture. Whenever I hear his name I think of the legendary stories of amazing customer support and it makes me smile. My favorite story is when he asked people to call up the Zappos.com 1-800 line to get pizza recommendations. They succeeded.

Fantastic customer service is not entirely altruistic, it helps companies at astronomical rates. For myself, I believe this is simply the right way.

This is why when I’m really shocked when I encounter bad customer service. Perhaps more so than others, unless they’re also trying to create awesome products. Bad customer service happens, this time I got to see someone else experience it.

My wife saw a promo for pv.Body. It’s a “We send you clothes every month” subscription services. What got her was the offer: a $25 Lululemon gift card. She did her research and very excitedly signed up (she loves Lulu and clothes). This was abnormal for her; she doesn’t like shopping online, only recently even using Amazon. After a few anxious days, her package arrived and it was like early Christmas.

Except the top didn’t work for her. “No problem”, she said, “I can exchange this! It says so on the site, I researched!”. At this point she had no frustration and was expecting a good experience. She was, and has been, completely let down.

The timeline:

2 weeks ago she emailed their Customer Service team. No response.

1 week ago she emailed their Customer Service team again. There was no response.

Then she reached out to them on Facebook. There she got a response, which was to email them again.

So, she emailed them (again). No response.

And then she emailed them again. No response.

A pattern, and she isn’t alone. There are several posts on the pv.Body Facebook page from similarly abandoned people. We talked about it and I even made some excuses for them. I thought maybe the Lululemon gift certificate overwhelmed their staff and they couldn’t keep up. Growth is hard.

That changed today, though. My excuses were invalid. They sent her a promotional email to subscribe. She already subscribed, and only suspended her subscription recently due to this frustration. They haven’t even sent her the gift card yet.

This is the type of customer service that was common in the old way of business. Not in the new model, certainly not tied to a trendy, subscription based clothing business model. I believe in being constructive, though. This is a learning experience.

How to fix it

Now I get to play What if. If I ran the zoo, er, pv.Body (coincidentally if you’re from pv.Body or another company struggling, email me and I can actually help). How can I fix this mess?

First, stop the complaints! Their Facebook page is filled with a lot of similar, “Haven’t heard anything, what’s going on?” How? Implement an SLA. Maximum 48 hours for a ticket to be open. Then 24 hours. Hire temporary staff if this isn’t achievable. Increase automation as much as possible. They already use ZenDesk, which not only has great reporting but also macros and a ton of other tools. Use the tools! Setup macros! Empower your customer service team to do the right things.

Second, quit losing subscribers. This is different than stopping complaints. When people complain, a negative referral is being created. Negative experiences travel fast. I’m sure my wife already told her friends, but not to punish pv.Body but because she is frustrated. She needs to vent. How? Don’t send frustrated customers inappropriate promotional materials! Find out who you are emailing, increased targeting. This is really important.

Find all customers who emailed support and suspended their accounts, email them. Don’t email them spam, though. Instead, send them an apology. My wife was excited for this and now she regrets her decision. Send them a free shirt or something, it’s cheaper than a lot of those promotions. Maybe you don’t even need to send them something.

Third, make customer calls. Use the data being aggregated and collected to figure out a schedule on which customers to call. I guarantee if you call customers to check on them to make sure they are happy with what they received, the referral sales will skyrocket. A lot more than giving away a $20 bottle.

Finally, and most intensive, increase automation everywhere. This has a tangible net effect of empowering the customer service team. The customer service representatives represent the business. This means the customer service team must absolutely be empowered to, in the moment, handle and resolve any reasonable request without escalation or approval. If the customer service team is not trusted with this responsibility, fire them and start over. If you cannot trust your companies representatives you will fail to achieve sustainable growth.

Will it happen?

Probably not, unfortunately. I can’t imagine a company that has already established such bumbling ineptitude in dealing with customers can change. I hope they do, though. For now, I have to console my wife. She still hasn’t received her Lululemon gift card.

In closing and in contrast

I’ve been dealing with Lowe’s for the last 2 years. They installed 2 french doors and they’ve been leaking the entire time. Water just comes right in; I’m glad I live in the desert. It’s been maddening but Lowe’s has been (mostly) communicative. Keeping customers informed when things go bad is the first step. If you aren’t doing that, things need to change. That’s an easy shift that doesn’t require any significant investment.

Reading Queue and Review

2012-11-20T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve had a pretty good reading year. Since I started tracking my reading I’ve done better, especially in terms of focused reading. I’m going to try to do posts like this regularly. Just small book reviews, with the last few books I’ve read and what is coming up in my queue.

I’m skipping over a few books, primarily Malcolm Gladwell’s writings. I’ve read or re-read all of his books this year, and enjoyed them but I feel they’re so well described elsewhere it isn’t necessary.

Recently Completed

7 Habits of Highly Effective People

This book is perhaps one of the most amazing reads of my life. It has helped me establish a vocabulary for many of my beliefs, clarify my thoughts and help me explain things. It’s been an amazing and rewarding experience.

Verdict: Definitely read it

Leadership & Self Deception

This book surprised me and wasn’t what I expected. I enjoyed it and definitely learned from it. The outcome is tangible; I learned something about myself and that I needed to change my view of people. It’s a very quick read, worth it but may not reach people who are unable to be sufficiently open minded.

Verdict: Read it if you’re open minded

Don’t Shoot the Dog

Honestly one of the most poorly written books I’ve picked up in a long time. There is a lot of referenced material that is good, but the stories, construction and editing are terrible. I didn’t actually finish it, but got close enough to the end I felt ok putting it down. I’m pretty sure the positive reviews are just from the fanatics who love Clicker training.

Verdict: Throw it in the trash

Design for Hackers

Enjoyable read that taught me a lot. While it isn’t the type of psychological journey I typically read, it helped shore up a lot of knowledge I was missing. It would have been a quick read if I weren’t going for maximum retention and comprehension, it took me a lot longer to get done with this book than I expected but I really enjoyed the journey.

Verdict: Read it if you like pretty things

Coders at Work

I expected this book to be low in learning, but it exceeded my expectations. This book is a simple collection of interviews with prominent coders throughout the world. One thing that stood out was the different styles of recognizing and hiring talent. After recently making a poor hiring choice, I feel compelled to ramp up and improve my own abilities. Reading this part of the book was very helpful. I would imagine that anybody struggling with a software or people in tech problem would find gems buried inside.

Verdict: If you have time, read it. Better books out there

Current Reads

Since I can’t review books I’m reading, I can write why I’m reading them.

Flow

This book is special for two reasons. One, I’m a big sucker for being happy and crafting experiences that deliver happiness. Two, it was the first time someone I didn’t know bought me something off my Amazon wish list. TDP was useful to them, so they emailed me asking about it. This was a couple weeks ago and I’m still smiling.

Rise & Fall of the Third Reich

When I was first starting to really establish myself as a developer not merely in the trenches, I voraciously read military and world history. I didn’t read it out of interest, but I found many parallels with project management and software development teams. This is a longer issue, and deserves its own post. This is another book in that line. What inspires people to be authoritarian dictators and how do people get entranced and forget their own conscience?

Upcoming Reads

Purple Cow

This is a re-read, and I already wrote a review on it. I enjoyed the book and the message. I feel I need to remind myself about great products. I know I let a lot of warts slip through with TDP, and I’d like to stop that.

The Skinny on the Art of Persuasion

A common discussion between my wife and I is the difference between manipulation and persuasion. I struggle with this, and would honestly prefer not to do either. I present my case (strongly) and just hope the other side makes a decision I’m happy with. She tells me I’m in the wrong, I should be more persuasive. This book will hopefully help me.

Seeing people for what they are

2012-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

I recently took a trip to New York and knew I could change my life forever. Not by what happened there, but by adjusting my perspective on people. New York is not known as a hospitable place. It’s not known as a city you encounter friends-to-be. I decided to start an experiment.

I have a problem. I’m not alone in this problem, and I didn’t even realize the depth of my problem. I don’t see other people as people. When I don’t know someone, they are only their function. That is to say that a waiter is not a person, they are someone who brings my food to me. A taxi driver is an autonomous car.

This didn’t seem problematic. I was raised to be polite and have always practiced kindness. Politeness and kindness are different than identifying someone as a person. It isn’t relating to them as a deep and unique individual; this is what I need to do. Time to change, and this was an amazing opportunity for an experiment.

At first I really struggled with how to change this long held view. After quite a few encounters until I figured out a method that mostly worked (and probably just seemed creepy until then). I had to narrow my focus to the problem, and only practice if I was interacting with them as part of their job. This change made it easier to acknowledge them as people. I simply thought of myself doing that job. Waking up, going to work and trying to do it. Thinking of what I would need to know. It was a very quick though exercise and it really helped me recognize the people all around me.

Immediately I noticed a difference. I’ve always tried to be kind to everybody. The genuine concern for their well-being was completely absent. If that person was unable to perform their job, I was happy if they were swapped out and unhappy if they remained. These people were commodities, mere robots I expected to perform a function for me.

After I made this mental shift, I tried hard to not alter my words or posturing but the differences were astounding. In most cases, I was immediately involved in deeper conversations. People would ask what I was up to and other personal questions, completely on their own. I had several people ask what I did, and were very surprised when I said I built software products. It was extremely rewarding.

I laughed a lot more. I learned a lot about random people. I talked to a guy about being attacked by pirates. Perhaps most importantly I was unflappable. I was happy and the inevitable speed bumps in life didn’t affect my mood. I think the people I talked with were happier, too. I never felt rushed, nor did I find I was waisting time.

Right now it’s certainly more effort, but all new things are. As I continue to practice I’ll be better at it and more effective. Soon, without thought, this will be the only way I interact with people. That’s my goal now.

I also encountered quite a few people who had no interest in any discussion or interaction. When they would ask, by obligation only, “How are you today?” and I replied and then genuinely asked them in return I invariably received, “Okay…” as a response. It was peculiar that the uniform response was a dull, single word answer. I think they simply didn’t know how to respond, and weren’t interested to question why. But that doesn’t matter to me.

I’m not changing my view on people for their response, though. I don’t hold doors for other people to thank me. I believe this is the way people should behave towards others.

Because I believe this, I commit to it.

Because I committed to this, I will do it.

Tip of the iceberg.

2012-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

The other night my wife and I were at a great dinner party. It was upbeat, lots of laughing from funny stories going around. My wife was in a different circle and I strained to hear what was going on. It was a very different group. It was serious and somber. I worried they were even going to talk about politics. I promptly reverted my attention back to my group.

Later, the couple that was talking with my wife came to talk with me. The levity and joy I had vanished and was replaced with an awkward seriousness. This rapidity of the change took me by surprise. When we finally left to head home, the negative feeling stuck with me. I share this with my wife and she was not surprised.

How can people who go out of their way to go to social events be so negative? Why would they be that way? I doubt they knew, but it has to be such a deeply ingrained habit. Anything this vast I have no hope to really understand. Maybe if I got to know them very well and could empathize and understand them I would be able to. But wait, why would I want to get to know them? They’re no fun!

Instead I took these thoughts and applied it to people I do enjoy visiting with. Why are they fun? What gives them joy? What can I do to help them have more fun and be happier? Then realized something. The depth in which I understand most people is strikingly shallow.

My level of involvement stops at what I see. Sure, I know this guy. He has 2 children, but I don’t know those children. I never think of this guy as a father. The joy I see him have every day may come from the love his daughters have for him. Maybe he just loves his job. I honestly don’t know, and until today I never even thought about it. He was merely a face, he was happy and I enjoyed visiting with him. His life was hidden from my thoughts.

We can’t possible connect with everybody. Sometimes only that shallow connection is what we have. That means it’s better to treat everybody with innate value, even when we can’t see it. We should strive to connect effectively, not efficiently. There is depth behind the scenes we can’t hope to understand, except to acknowledge it’s there.

I need to practice acknowledging this.

An unexpected life hack, removing a clock.

2012-11-11T00:00:00+00:00

My stereo wouldn’t turn off when the car was turned off. This was annoying. I’ve been busy enough and my knee wouldn’t let me do any repair. I took the easy route. I simply pulled the fuse and forgot about it for the time being. In the process of troubleshooting, I disconnected the battery. This reset my clock.

I didn’t notice it until the next time I went out. I left with ample time, no big deal. I knew when I left and how much time it would take to get there. I wasn’t worried, so I didn’t bother setting the clock. This repeated several times over the next couple of days. I was surprised to learn that I enjoyed the experience of driving a little bit more.

I certainly miss having the stereo working, but I don’t drive enough to justify the time it will take to do the repair myself. Nor do I particularly want to have to take it into a shop just for this. I’m coming up close on a major service milestone, so figure I can just have them look at it. The solitude while I’m driving is a little nice, but after 30 minutes it wanes.

Now that this has been going on for a few weeks I can form a full opinion. I love the lack of a clock. If I run into traffic and run late I feel more relaxed. I don’t have a clock constantly telling me I’m running behind schedule. I don’t have a constant worry. I arrive when I will arrive.

Being punctual is an important trait for me. The clock was not helping me be punctual. It’s just one of many similar items we buy to try to make us better; instead they simply introduce stress or frustration.

The other day I heard a great comment, “Do not let your money rule you, make your money a servant.” If anything we have, whether it’s money or a material item, we should question it’s impact and effect on our lives. We acquire so much in the name of convenience and entertainment, and end up becomes slaves of fleeting desires.

I’m going to keep the clock turned off. It forces me to plan correctly and then just relax. The burden is on preparation, which is precisely where it should be.

I have no stress, and this is my story.

2012-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

I don’t want stress. It’s not enough to simply say that, though. I must have a narrative to guide me there.

Last week I listened to a great guy from Providence, RI talk about building the tech scene there. He runs a start-up accelerator program, making introductions and arranging for funding, removing the stops and lubricating the wheels. It’s a good thing.

The point he really drove home was the need for a narrative. Don’t talk about where you are. Talk about where you’re going and where you want to go. The trick is to talk about now like it’s then. Then will be now much sooner than we all think. We have to choose our story well, or it is written for us without our consultation.

This realization made me focus clearly on how I want to live my life. Our lives are habits. If we don’t put effort into forming good habits, bad habits will take over. Sometimes the effort is just our narrative, repeating it and living it. I think I have it figured out.

Instead of saying, “I want to be free of stress” I will say “I am stress free.”

I will not say, “I want to always enjoy what I’m doing.” but “I always enjoy what I am doing.”

I cannot “try to study as a way to achieve my goals”, but I will use learning and study as a means to that end.

I will not try to be the best father and husband. I will nurture my family and my family will support me. We share our joy, triumphs, failures and tragedies.

It’s almost a paradox. Think of tomorrow like it’s today, today will be better for it. If we can do that we will succeed in controlling our lives, our happiness and our successes.

Yesterday my wife asked me, “Is it really necessary to always work on improvement?” I didn’t have a good answer and I said no, but I needed more time to think.

Why isn’t it? Very few things in life are compulsory. We don’t’ have to improve. The price of hard work is not paid at the time. It’s compounded interest that takes its toll on us through our lives. It makes our happiest moments fleeting, able to be broken without warning.

That’s a price I won’t pay. I control my future. I am happy.

Value of tranquility

2012-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

I really hate daylight savings time. It’s a terrible thing. Today I woke up feeling off. What better way to get back than to get started on my routine. I did so and took notes in TDP. It was a very typical Monday. Except it wasn’t. It was broken. It didn’t look like it should. My streaks were wrong!

Every time a goal is marked as done, the system calculates the streak. It then tucks this away. It’s an awesome metric and it encourages me a lot. I really love it. I was devastated it was broken, but I was motivated to fix it. The code here is complex.

I started to look at it. The most demoralizing part to this exercise is a note I left for myself:

FIXME I think this is broken, I wrote unit tests to cover this but I feel this is not right.

Great. I knew it was wrong but at the time I couldn’t place why. My subconscious was telling me and I tried to listen. It just didn’t click. Now I was faced with a problem that was hard to track down but I felt pretty good about fixing it. Right then I thought about it a bit harder and started to panic.

I could feel the stress creeping in and my confidence leave me. My breath quickened and I stared blankly. I did what anybody would do. I started banging on keys. Mash! Mash! Mash! It still wasn’t working!

After 30 minutes of swinging a wrench at the problem my stress was building. I wasn’t any closer to a solution but I did a good job of increasing my stress. The little voice in my head told me to stop and finally I listened. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and held it in for just a moment.

On the exhale, I opened my eyes and deleted all the code in question. It was causing me stress. Time to throw it out. I had a lot of unit tests (all of which were telling me there was a problem). I needed to just start over. This is a luxury with software, we can throw our problems out and rebuild!

I still felt panicked and a bit of stress, though. I tried to relax but couldn’t. I wasn’t seeing a clear vision of the end result. I knew I wanted it all to work but I still didn’t have a plan. I got up and stepped away from my computer. I had a piece of paper and I defined a plan. I thought it through while not facing the problem.

I sat back down and succeeded. The best way to solve the problem was to move away and stop. I need to do that more often.

Unfreezing the sled, or, regaining momentum.

2012-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

When dog-sledding, heat is generated on the runners which melts the ice. When the sled stops the water will freeze. The sled becomes frozen to the ice. There is specific knowledge required free the sled. Brute forcing certainly could work, it requires more effort. It’s a matter of teamwork between the dogs and the driver.

At the start of this week I felt frozen. My momentum seemed to have evaporated completely. It was rough. I was a stuck sled.

It shouldn’t have been this way. It should have been a great week! The TDP app went out to the app store. I worked hard on the app, even though there are some bugs I’m really happy. However, right when the app was done and in review I felt my motivation leave. I stopped achieving any measurable progress and I quickly realized, ”I’m frozen in place, my energy isn’t freeing me.” I really struggled with how to fix it.

By Wednesday I had enough. I vowed to fix this problem. That was my only real task to complete on Wednesday. My normal techniques weren’t succeeding. They should have, though. Then I was honest with myself. In my moment of honesty I learned I wasn’t being honest with myself. I was failing to really employ the techniques that have worked for over a year.

My strategy is to lay out detailed tasks I must do the following day. I was doing this, though. Doing it in the most minimum and basic sense possible. Every task was vague and so poorly defined there was no measurement of success. Since anything could fit the criteria it did and then I would inevitably throw it away because it wasn’t good enough. This went on for a few days.

This is what I took away:

Be honest with yourself always. Listen and obey that feeling of inadequacy.
Rapid course correction is extremely important.
The early you identify feelings of failure the quicker you can remedy them.
Have well defined goals.
It’s better to break a chain than to be unproductive and keep it.

In the two days since I’ve redoubled and clarified my tasks, my productivity predictably improved. I was been back on target and moving quickly again. Today, however, I didn’t get all my tasks done. I certainly had reasons. Had I thought enough about today I wouldn’t have committed to so much. But I did, and now my chain is broken.

I’m not discouraged because I’m motivated to improve, and most importantly I have developed a system to keep me focused and motivated. It works for me. I’m very happy with how much I achieve. My achievements are worth more than an unbroken streak.

Sometimes it’s best to fail so we remember how far we’ve come. Doing something 100 days in a row is great, but I briefly forgot how much focus this takes.

The bit about the dog sleds is something I read once, I think in a Jack London book. I hope it’s true, if not let me know.

The power of vocabulary.

2012-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

The last few days have been filled with spirited discussions about life, psychology and improvement. My wife has been and continues to be great; I love her involvement and our discussions. We’ve both had to work to reach this level of communication. Recently the books I’ve been reading have given us a shared vocabulary to formalize what was before loose concepts.

Until now I didn’t understand the power of vocabulary. It’s significantly easier to discuss, explain and understand when complex concepts are standardized and commonly understood.

Every culture has their own vernacular, and to outsiders it’s complete gibberish. What about at a larger stage? What about when we’re talking about improvement, or simply learning new things? The vocabulary available to describe and explain the trials and tribulations we all share is woefully inadequate.

Experience without explanation

With varying depths we’ve all been asked or have asked how a blind person could describe color. How many of us have faced an even more important question?

How can the sighted describe a color?

This is a great exercise. Try it, right now. Describe the color green to yourself. Probably pretty easy. Now, try to describe the color green without any comparisons. If you take away the ability to say, “It’s the color of healthy grass” the task is significantly harder. We’re removing vocabulary. We’re used to relying on similes and commonly understood items. Without this the task is harder.

After I did this myself, my own answer takes away everything human about color. The most correct answer is a beam of light with a 510nm wavelength. The best real answer I can come up with is that it’s merely the fourth color of the rainbow. Both are mediocre descriptions that fail to properly describe green. These are consistent and correct answers, though.

When I asked my wife this question she initially answered in poetic fashion. I then removed the vocabulary and she floundered. She had the same feelings I had. Frustration and annoyance popped up. I’m not sure if the frustration is due to having something taken away or the inability to perform adequately. She knew what green was but wasn’t able to explain it.

The dangers of an empty cave

Unless I’m explaining things to myself, I’m going to fail without the proper terms. I’m leaving things out. I’m not increasing my knowledge I’m subconsciously filling the gaps with nothing more than memories. These memories are not reality, they are tinted through the lenses of time and mood. We need a second party to engage with to maximize our knowledge.

Without explaining what we encounter in formalized language, with a defined vocabulary, our understanding is limited. The polite term for this is artistic license. When we’re talking about our own knowledge, it’s more of being an ass than an artist.

Surrounded by assumptions

The same problems we have explaining things to ourselves are present when explaining them to others. In our minds we fill in the missing links with memories and our imagination. With others these gaps are filled with assumptions and bias. It’s extremely unlikely these assumptions and biases match to our own. We create conflict and misunderstands not just by missing parts of the story, but not even knowing about the parts that are left out.

When we formalize our explanations and descriptions, there is both implicit and explicit information that is attached. The implicit knowledge is the context in which we speak. Instead of saying Jane we can say she. The explicit information is being able to clearly and effectively describe something as it is, not what we think it is. Explicit information requires vocabulary and increases clarity, but is substantially more work.

Clarity takes time

Students of any field have a tremendous amount of vocabulary to learn. While I’ve used an adz, I have only recently learned the name. I only learned it because of Scrabble. I’ve never studied woodworking. All things are like this. There is a common language that has evolved over time, these vocabularies organically grow out of necessity.

The first step to improving ourselves in any discipline is to learn the vocabulary. We must learn how to ask questions. We must learn how to understand the answers. Without understanding the words we will never understand the ideas.

Rescheduling my future.

2012-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve been having a really hard time writing and posting something. It’s not just lately, it’s been fairly consistent failing. My goal was to write every day, and publish something publicly every 3 days. It seems like a reasonable goal.

I fail at this frequently. Often times I fail because I struggle for material that I want to post. I have ideas and certainly go through situations that would be good to write about. It is very hard to develop these ideas. What are the best ideas? What can be grown into a coherent and ideally helpful post? This type of refinement is challenging.

How can I proceed with this? I’d like to have more success, and I’ve been trying for long enough. I must revisit my definition of success. This is the great part about being sentient and self-aware. At any point I can adjust my expectations and my definitions of success.

In thinking about this I realized I have a good post here. I shouldn’t feel so bad, I have 90 published entries here. That isn’t insignificant, but it is short of my previously defined level of success. In considering this, I figure three likely options.

Option one: Write more, badly.

This is a blog, not a collection of essays submitted to a stodgy University professor. I could post (more) half-baked, poorly thought out and terribly written posts. I don’t think I should do this. I appreciate the time I take proof reading and editing. I enjoy it and I think I learn more from re-reading, and subsequently correcting my own writing.

This option would be defeating my entire motivation for writing. It certainly would defeat my goal to always progress and improve myself.

Option two: Publish less frequently.

This is a very reasonable option. This is what I’m leaning towards. If I wrote once a week, would I feel more inclined to take me time? Would I perhaps enhance my posts with some doodles? I think I would, but I worry I would abuse this and not be any more successful than I have been.

The great part of TDP is I can see exactly how unsuccessful I’ve been. I typically have gaps in between my entries. If I break my streak I don’t immediately jump back on the bandwagon. I stop. I take my time and I write something I really want to post. Just like this post here.

This is different than procrastination, though. I still write every day I just get more selective. I’ve really never been a procrastinator. Instead, I simply don’t do things I don’t want to do. That’s an over-simplification, but captures the essence. I still think if I reschedule this to be a weekly goal, I would find new and different failures. Maybe I will, but that’s not a reason to not do anything. By discovering the ways in which fail we also learn how to succeed.

Option three: Expand on the topics.

My primary subject is improvement and the psychology of people heavily involved in technology. We’re a strange breed. Writing about this has started organically, as I’ve found myself having to explain these things to various people; sometimes it’s managers and leaders and others it’s to my wife or other family members. Some are receptive and some are not but it’s been a common discussion and has been extremely rewarding for me.

People involved in technology and creating products tend to be highly logical. This culminates in what I would describe as a distinct culture (or better put, a culture with many sub-cultures). For example, I typically feel equally comfortable talking to a developer who grew up in crime ridden parts of LA or Chicago or a graduate from Stuyvesant. In between the vast differences in upbringing there is more in common in our minds. This fascinates me and I feel connected.

I don’t know if this is unique to geeks. It seems it is but I don’t know. This is the only life I’ve been a part of, and am well entrenched in it. As such, I enjoy thinking and subsequently writing about this. The psychology and understanding I can gain here helps me in life. It’s just one way of improving.

Improvement in general is my main, broad passion. Every day I try to make my world a better place. I think it trickles down and helps other people’s world be better. Some days it really is only my world, but I try to share. Over the last year I’ve been reading at least 2 books at a time about psychology and improvement, and before that I studied the simple idea of how to maintain happiness.

I’m certainly not an expert on any of this. However, I’m truly and genuinely happy in life. Even in times of extreme tragedy, I can rely on my inner happiness to see me through. This is tremendously valuable and ultimately is my inspiration to continue writing. I hope I can share this feeling with others and writing is my best chance at succeeding right now.

In conclusion

I don’t have a conclusion. I don’t want to write about other subjects right now. Sometimes I feel like making technical commentary but that’s all well covered. The world doesn’t need more John Grubers. Writing about improvement is very personal. I am a unique snowflake, just like everyone else. I sincerely hope that what I write helps others who want to improve.

The best change I can think of now is to allow myself to go on a weekly schedule, but then also saying I must improve quality. I haven’t committed to any change yet. It still needs more consideration.

Go read this book. Right now.

2012-10-21T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve been reading 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. You should too. I’m stunned it’s taken me this long to read it. I’m just glad I finally started. I’m only through the first habit and it’s already made a fantastic impression on me. The craziest part of it is that not one of the ideas are new. They’re similar to my own thoughts and feelings, but that’s what makes the book so enjoyable and profound.

No matter how developed my own thoughts and feelings are, they are no where near what is presented in this book. The eloquence and clarity are above and beyond my already high expectations. Reading it is surreal, things are so similar that they are comfortable but yet so new. It’s like going from playing video games to the real sport. It may just be where I’m at in life, though. I think anybody who wants to better themselves will feel this same way.

Had I read this book earlier in my life I certainly would have benefited. I don’t think I would benefit as much as I do now. In the future I would benefit more. This is the type of book you read many times. I expect to read it next year and the year after. Each time I’ll be rewarded and enlightened.

Sometimes just a few pages will serve as an affirmation, but perhaps in tumultuous times an entire chapter is needed. There is definitely a level in maturity and open mindedness required. He handles this requirement deftly and cleverly, but I don’t know if that would work in all cases. The 20 year old version of myself would not have been open to the depth of consideration requested.

Even though I haven’t finished the book I feel compelled to write this. I feel compelled to urge people to read it. I’m being proactive. That’s habit one, the chapter I just finished. It’s been very beneficial to me right now.

Lately I’ve been struggling with my knee recovery. It’s been nearly 3 months and I still battle every day with the fear I won’t get better. The proactivity and responsibility discussed in the book has helped me a great deal with this.

I am in a lot of discomfort.

That’s not me, though. I choose to be happy. I would prefer to be happy than be sad. I choose to be what I want to be. I set out realistic goals and am working towards them. Because I am making this choice, have reasonable expectations and plans I will be successful. The key to proactivity is to be what I want to be, plan and execute. Writing this is a reminder, it’s easy to forget. I catch myself slipping.

I am grumpy.

I am grumpy because I am not choosing to be happy. Without a choice and action, I will descend into a state of irresponsibility. I will feel helpless because I am not helping myself.

I was never able to put this into words until I started reading this book. Now I can, and it’s making all the difference right now.

Tranquility of the float.

2012-10-16T00:00:00+00:00

Life is not so flat. We are not walking on a field, free to choose any direction we wish. We live our lives floating on a river. More accurately in modern times, an artificial river at an amusement park. As we float by we are free to enjoy the spectacles that other people have created for us.

We are also very fortunate, we can get off our ride and choose another. Sometimes it takes a bit of work, but we always have a choice. It’s not merely changing directions, it’s a new path to experience. We can take our fellow passengers with us or leave them behind. We are always on a ride, though.

Our best efforts, greatest strengths and ambitions cannot change the direction of the ride. We can only choose a different ride. This is why we must give the most consideration to not only which ride we are on, but who we share the ride with. I share my particular ride with a spectacular family and a few select friends. I am in good company.

Whenever I have changed rides after finding myself in a miserable situation, I try to apply the magic of hindsight analysis. I’m very obsessive over this but most people are. Usually the problems are obvious, in hindsight. Time and time again we find ourselves failing in the same way over and over again. Sometimes we fail again and never change the river we’re floating on, then we’re surprised at the outcome. How can we fix this?

There are so many books to read, people to talk to and maps to study. Why do we still fail? I believe it is a result of not studying the likely outcomes and then simply trusting our intuition. We do not make conscious choices that are backed up by our intuition. Instead we fight it. “Well, my gut says no but I can think of no reason not to!”.

Many paths in life have a worst case scenario that is better than our current direction. We feel trapped and don’t make the leap to change. It’s understandable and very hard to make a leap into the unknown, regardless how much study and preparation has been made. That leap can be wonderful and lead to amazing new experiences but our comfort keeps us still.

With adequate due diligence and forethought, there should be no fear. Accept and enjoy the moment of discomfort; adjustments are always necessary, discomfort is a sign of adjustment. Be attuned to signs of stress. Tension in the jaw or shoulder. If you didn’t change course and feel that, think again about change. If you decided to change and have manifested discomfort from stress, figure out why. Maybe it wasn’t the right choice.

Our subconscious and our body knows more than our conscious mind ever will, but it cannot tell us anything directly. These muttered messages are the best we have.

I’ve been relaxed for a while now. My jaw is relaxed. My shoulders loose. I have a smile on my face. This is what life is about. It’s not about a big paycheck, exotic cars or world travels. It’s about looking at people you love and smiling from the inside and out, and seeing them smile back.

Make choices.

2012-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

I didn’t make the best choices the other day. Yesterday I did great. Today may be better. I sat at my desk. I stared at the work I needed to get done. My todo list stared back; telling me what needed to be done. After a few minutes, I gave up. I made a bad choice. I loaded up a video game and relaxed for a little bit. It wasn’t a good choice. It made me worse off. I don’t really feel guilty about it, though. I felt I needed it.

I budget this unproductive and wasted time. I do this so that I can make a choice, know and acknowledge it’s not good and productive. When I do this I end up still meeting all my goals and I get to stay sane. This is really important as I am undergoing rehabilitation and have been cooped up. I sincerely wish I didn’t crave this unproductive time, though. I resent that I have this attachment, but I do so I accept it. I choose to limit how harmful it is by identifying it and managing it. Use your strengths to make your weaknesses irrelevant.

I don’t have a lot of these bad habits, thankfully. A lot of times the subject of TV and various shows comes up. I don’t watch TV. It’s not that I’m opposed to it or think it’s stupid. It doesn’t have any draw, I’d rather do other things. Some people famously call out TV as bad; some even call it an income reducer. It’s just one other unproductive habit many people have. It’s not bad, unless it’s unmanaged.

By just consciously acknowledging that the time spent watching TV, playing video games or any other unproductive sedentary activity you’re ahead of the curve. It is wasted time but that’s ok. Wasting time isn’t bad and our minds need the break. Wasting time without realizing is the problem. Just realize it and turn the activity into a choice.

Make a choice. It’s ok. Choose to waste time. Choose to take that mental break. By simply choosing it and thinking about it, you’ll feel better. Also, you can then limit the time by consciously planning. This will increase time spent on doing productive things. That keeps a balance and increases deep, meaningful joy.

The satisfaction and joy that comes from investing in yourself is powerful. It’s a magnificent motivator and easy to create habits around.

Sometimes I don’t want to chose something unproductive but don’t want to work on what is the most important. I also make this a choice and it helps. I simply look at the list of things I want to accomplish and pick the one that seems the most fun. I work on it for just 5 minutes. 5 minutes is a very small time investment. After 5 minutes if I’m still struggling, I move to the next one. Eventually I will find something that I enjoy.

The key is to make choices. Think about your actions and make choices. Deliberate actions done with thoughtful consideration will yield significantly better results. It’s the water for the seeds of productivity and is very important.

Dissecting Product Growth

2012-10-09T00:00:00+00:00

How do products become products? Something sold, with value and people pay money. When I see some brick and mortar business, this is fairly apparent. Some people wanted a product and someone could provide that product. A shop is created. Software products are different, typically. They’re significantly more speculative.

Why we use a product

Products serve to make our lives better. Mainly, this is done in the following ways:

Reduce the burden of life. I don’t need to know how to shoe a horse, skin a cow or even hire a blacksmith. Everything is a product now.
Improve productivity in another activity. Most software products fall into this category. The software isn’t the focal point, it’s increasing productivity doing something else.
Fun and games. Instagram and Facebook are these. Prior to that it was board games and countless other activities.

I’m going to focus on increasing productivity. That’s what I’m passionate about. This is the goal and focus of TDP, and will be the focus of any products I would be building.

I won’t be revolutionizing anything, but I want to evolve what we do on a daily basis and make it better. How then, does one take that desire and turn it into a product? Anthropology, my friends.

Life before it all.

Productized electricity (light bulbs, telephones) and indoor plumbing are amazing products. They have revolutionized the world, increased lifespans and have truly shaped the world. Very few other products have done this.

Instead things just get better. Even the most revolutionary of Apple products is just improving on what’s already there. Nothing special, just better. Just making things easier. Reducing the burden to enjoy life more. This is a noble pursuit.

People will use a product that reduces the burden of life and creates enjoyment either directly or through enhanced productivity. It feels good at the end of the day to kick back and appreciate today you could do more than you could yesterday. We crave that type of progress.

In the name of progress.

When building a product the best place to be at is in front of a line of clamoring customers. This is exceedingly rare. In normal situations, customers must be enticed and coerced. Prove that the product is Snake Oil free. All of that is very hard.

The challenge to convince customers that your product is legitimately going to enhance productivity and increase joy by decreasing burden seems insurmountable. It’s a confidence issue, and there are many products trying to sell that specific service. In reality it’s about word of mouth and passionate marketing.

Apple marrying technology and humanity stems from this notion. Passionate marketing is genuine marketing. It’s marketing by showing the product and showing how it reduces the burdens of life. It’s about demonstration and not convincing. Let the customers imagination work.

Sometimes, imaginations can be scary, though. They get away from you and you think about all the dangers. This should not be avoided! These worries can be a powerful motivator to sell and advertise a product, provided the product truly fits as a safeguard.

Previously I wrote about Superheroes ignoring wolves; accept that sometimes a wolf has to be eaten. There are good products that simply protect against scary wolves, and good products that do that as a by-product.

Taking these lessons and learning how to adapt my marketing materials is important. I can get more users and genuinely help people do better. No longer is uncharted and unkept habits a wolf to fear. I just need to productize this feeling.

On a related note, the Daily Practice mobile application will be hitting the Apple App Store in the next week or two.

Superheroes don't cry wolf

2012-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

I previously wrote about my secret, how to be a superhero by merely acknowledging danger. That’s it. There’s danger, point to it. If you do that you’ll be far ahead of the crowd. However, not all dangers require action. There are acceptable risks and acceptable losses, but how do we know which are which?

Acknowledging dangers and balancing precariously

We all have a balancing act we maintain in life. I want to accomplish and do so many things. I want to own a Lotus Evora. I can’t, though. Not right now. I could, but my family needs financial stability more than I want a Lotus. More reasonably put, I want to simply have the energy and discipline each day to knock out each of my goals. Life, often times, does not allow this. I have to balance life with desires.

Wolves pop up every day in life. Sometimes they simply prowl, other times they ravage our entire flock. If we reacted to every wolf we would never have the time or energy to accomplish the things we set out to do. We would be ran ragged, stuck in place and in misery.

Is it ok to let the wolf attack? Is it ok to even let the wolf take a sheep or two? Yes, it is. There are acceptable losses in every aspect of life.

Acceptable Losses aren’t free

If you accept that acceptable losses are present, that a wolf will come and snatch a sheep or two away, then what next? Do you abandon all protective measures? Do you stop protecting your life? Absolutely not.

Each time an acceptable loss is tallied, morale and momentum suffer. It’s inevitable and even if the loss is known ahead of time it still hits hard. Usually, only when the loss is actually recorded the emotions start to fire. The frustration and despair are often more damaging than the actual loss.

Progressing through quicksand

I’m a parent now and my children are both at the age where reasoning starts to manifest itself. My daughter is nearly 4, learning that logic is merely something that exists in the world. My son turns 6 next week and is understanding consequences and logical outcomes. He chains together scenarios and attaches consequences at each point.

Witnessing this, and helping usher along these thoughts, has been extremely rewarding for me. Children always cry wolf. When they first encounter some danger, it is at that moment, the worst danger imaginable.

Experience teaches us that some negative consequences are better than any alternative. There are acceptable losses. Without that experience such decisions are horrifying.

Crying wolf isn’t just claims of imaginary creatures; there may be a wolf. Ignoring the wolf and accepting the consequences may be the best course of action, even if you lose a sheep.

What are acceptable losses?

The damage that comes from constant acceptable losses accumulates. It should be done deliberately, with forethought. Otherwise it’s nothing more than unacceptable acceptable losses.

In hindsight, it’s easy to say there are no acceptable losses. The leisure of studying history removes the stress and tension of the moment. Real life deprives us of that ability, so we have to make quick decisions to determine what is acceptable.

How do we make those decisions? How do we cope with the consequences?

Trust your gut, except when you can’t.

I trust my intuition when it speaks to me. This doesn’t absolve me of analysis after the fact. In fact, any decision I make that is based in a gut feeling gets extra scrutiny when things settle down. At the core, I listen to my intuition and try to be receptive. Sometimes my gut is silent.

When intuition can’t be relied on, traditional decision making comes into play. Quantify the loss if you do nothing. Quantify the resource expenditure to stop the impending disaster. Balance them out and act accordingly.

You may not always win, but you can be victorious.

Whenever I engage in something, I try to setup victory conditions. This is especially important when you are fighting a losing battle. You’ve quantified the risks and rewards, it’s time to engage and protect, or sacrifice, a sheep. This is not a passive activity. It requires careful engagement.

Discover your victory condition; that final scenario you can live with. Accept it and whatever losses comes with it. Let it happen and move on.

Setting the bar unreasonably high just leads to injuries. Succeed when you can but fail responsibly when you can’t.

A moment of solitude.

2012-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

As you can imagine, I track my goals religiously. I take great pleasure in doing this. It allows me to objectively judge my personal growth over time. It’s far too easy to enter a slump while simultaneously believing you are progressing. Charting my progress is the only way I can prove to myself I’m doing as well, or as poorly, as I think I am. I take it very seriously.

However, I frequently drop one of my goals. Well, actually two. Both are centered around writing. I’ve struggled with this over the last year and with how frequently they get dropped. This week I made peace with not writing.

A moment of solitude is invaluable.

I really liked what I wrote last and I had a follow-up already outlined and ready to go. I’m eager to write it and I sat down a few times to try. I failed, though. I couldn’t flesh it out. I would read what I wrote and be disappointed. It is time to change things up when you can’t even follow your own writings from five minutes ago.

The struggle this time, though, was different. I knew why. I also knew I wasn’t going to spend any time harping on it. I wasn’t going to be continuously rewriting without any positive changes. It wouldn’t help. My brain was simply too busy.

The last few weeks I’ve been working on the mobile TDP applications. I’m utilizing a highly efficient strategy to obtain maximum reach between Android and iPhone users. There is a lot to learn and figure out, even with this sharing. All this crammed into a short period of time. It was mentally exhausting and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Even in my sleep I was thinking about it. I rewrote two pieces of code in my sleep, and quickly implemented the changes when I woke up.

This type of distraction is very bad for my writing but it’s excellent for myself.

A fine balance means excellent growth.

All last week I spent my time learning, tweaking and experimenting. It was tremendously enriching. I feel substantially more well-rounded and versatile. So what if I missed writing? I love to write, but writing in and of itself is not going to allow me to obtain my fantasies.

It is critically important to not justify missing goals. It’s an undesired event. However, sometimes it makes more sense to leave them behind so large leaps can be made improving other areas. Put simply, the ends justify the means.

Now things have slowed down. I’m not filling my brain with new information each day, instead rehashing and absorbing what I learned. I’m more calm about the work and my brain isn’t so tumultuous. I still have so much to do, and add more to my list each day. The difference is how much new stuff is being incorporated. If I’m maximizing efforts in one category, other things must be put on hold. I’m limited in capacity and capability.

I can never hope to accomplish everything, but working steadily each day I am guaranteed eventual greatness.

Developing software without the Bystander Effect.

2012-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

In the late 1960s, some studies were done to attempt to piece together the Kitty Genovese murder. How, as a society, could we sit by and let a woman get killed right outside her home? While absolutely tragic, failures of all kinds are created from the same psychological reaction that can be blamed for Kitty’s death.

The most well known study that was done to explain this was the Smoke Filled Room. The study was focusing on what is known as Bystander Apathy, which showed that people will sit in a room filling with smoke as long as other people are there with them.

It amazes me how poorly we act when we think someone else will. Even if it’s just as much our responsibility as theirs. Even when self-preservation is in question. This is a very curious phenomenon, and I believe it explains some of the more bewildering things I’ve seen in creating products through the years.

Many team organization ideologies focus on small, agile and lightweight teams. It’s a good natural defense against Bystander Apathy. When a team becomes too large, the individuals start ignoring the smoke filling up the room. In fact, the more people in the group the more likely we are of not doing anything.

I am a very jittery person. I don’t believe that “when the going gets tough, the tough gets going.” Smart is better than tough. I find a better way, and failing to find a better way I just stop. I’ve never been in a situation where flailing in any direction was, in hindsight, the right decision.

In a group, when you think about Bystander Apathy, inaction must be expected until the problems are so dire they cannot be ignored. At that point it is too late to gracefully handle the problems.

People subconsciously react to these signs of failure, but they are not discussed. In back channels and hushed whispers there may be mentions, but actions are not taken soon enough. People may even work harder, but without fixing or addressing the problems it’s a futile effort. Just like fanning the smoke away while more pours in from under the door.

Problems rarely go away on their own.

Early on in my adult life, I made a few bad decisions. Those bad decisions obviously had consequences. For a long while I tried to ignore or delay dealing with the consequences. Unsurprisingly, they added up. They got significantly harder to deal with. One day my bubble popped, but I was happy ignoring it until then.

It was a hard lesson but I came away with the simple knowledge that you can’t ignore problems. They don’t go away. You address them and, at a minimum, figure out how to mitigate the consequences.

When problems first are visible, our natural inclination is to look to the left and the right. We find comfort and solace in our peers. Often times we find it, which is the first step to our downfall. Those same peers are staring at us for comfort and solace. We are stuck in a loop.

Break the loop, talk about the fire.

It’s absolutely imperative to shirk off the bystandard effect. You are not a bystander. You are a superhero.

You can save the day, just don’t cry wolf.

Win once, or pivot trying.

2012-09-09T00:00:00+00:00

I read something that struck a nerve with me. I immediately felt anger and anxiety, with a cold sweat starting to form on my neck. What horror was this? It was about pivoting. What startups do when they run out of steam. Except this article was encouraging it. Keep pivoting until you are profitable. Eghads!

Pivoting is the opposite of clarification and focus. It’s discarding evolution in favor of revolution. Evolution is absolutely required for a business to survive and grow. Pivoting in many cases is simply starting over. A drastic revolution is forced; and revolutions are so often fueld with desperation. This is why it bothers me.

This isn’t about money.

Too many bad entrepreneurs are in it for the money. They want to work hard for 4-10 years and cash in, riding it out for the rest of their life. That isn’t me, and I don’t think anybody who creates truly successful companies is in that boat either. I can’t think of anybody who has created something great that wasn’t already financially sound. Even the illustrious Zuck, well, he was at Harvard. Nobody at Harvard worries about their long term finances.

I’m doing this journey to create a product I’m very happy building and using. There are many opportunities for products. Too many, in fact. The world is entirely unexplored, and with software there is no limit. We simply don’t know what products we need yet.

The world gets bigger and smaller every day. I’m more connected than ever before, but new possibilities are created daily. As such, I fervently believe that any product I would pay for will be a sustainable business. I believe this because I read Purple Cow and Malcom Gladwell books. I am not alone and there are enough people similar to me to make a business out of my own tastes.

This knowledge is a blanket of security. It doesn’t mean challenges aren’t present and knowledge evaporates difficulties. I simply must learn to market to myself correctly. While that may be an insurmountable challenge for myself, someone else should be more successful. Rarely are companies successful with just one person. In short, I believe that the business I’m working to build is sustainable. That as a truth in my world.

But what if, during this journey, my livelihood isn’t sustainable? What if I really need money to continue? I have a family to support, afterall.

Enter the siren song of the pivot.

What if…?

I don’t ever want to “sell out” on what I’m working on. I want to always focus on improvement. I have some excellent ideas for bringing this into the business to business sector, but am still laying the foundations. As the days tick by, I think about hastening this. It would be premature.

Then I think about some what if’s. What if someone wanted to come along and change things. What if my idea just needed a few tweaks to get some revenue now, and in the process changes the entire idea and focus. It’s no longer mine. I wouldn’t care. Gradually and steadily my passion would wane and I would get burnt out. Nobody gets burned out working on what they love. That’s the biggest risk with a pivot I see. Passion is a hidden casualty.

Opportunities can be missed.

The fear and lack of confidence can easily create a mindset where one believes every opportunity must be seized. I stay away from that, and run in the opposite direction. I only need to catch one opportunity. The right opportunity will cascade and create countless more. Choose wisely and never worry again.

Of course, there is now more pressure on choosing. The gained freedom from not feeling compelled to pick is worth it. Through the years, I’ve figured out the right balance for me:

Invest enough time to decide something is wrong, but not enough time to justify the decision.

I trust my intuition and gut feelings. I trust my business is sustainable and I trust in the knowledge I only need to be successful with one opportunity.

But only one!?

I was reading Patriot Games a few years ago. There is a very powerful statement in that book. The enemy needs to only win once, but the defense must win every time. Starting up a company is like that. We’re the bad guys in this story. If we choose our targets correctly, that one successful mission is all we need.

Target sparingly and specifically.

Be committed and succeed, we only need to do it once.

The Second Month.

2012-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

Two months ago I started a journey of independence. I quit my job committed to focusing on TDP, my healthy lifestyle assistant. Lots has happened since then, some good and some bad. Just two weeks ago I finally published my One month of freedom writeup. This was 2 weeks late because of catastrophic knee failure.

Now I’m entering the third month, my knee is recovering and my vigor renewed. What better way to celebrate than a monthly report.

What is it you would say you do here?

I’m going to recap everything that I added or accomplished in August. Looking back at the logs, I did a lot. While this was happening it didn’t seem like much got done through August. It felt that my knee was keeping me from accomplishing anything.

Standardized and revamped the style using a heavily customized Bootstrap.
Nailed down how to authenticate the mobile client. This also is 100% using the API! As soon as I have the first round of testers on the mobile site, I’ll be opening the API.
Improved load times through reducing HTTP requests. This was very necessary for mobile, even though the site is still fairly unusable on mobile.
Have a functioning mobile-friendly client, though not released or talking to the production webservices. Next week I’m hoping to wrap this up. It works now and is in testing!

The Good

I’m thrilled with how TDP is going. The new features that were completed and shipped were great; the new features are more exciting. More importantly, I’m happy with how rapidly I can add new bells and whistles. I’ve been extending the API with ease, plus work to switch out views based on the viewing device. It’s been a lot of fun to see this stuff mature.

I chronically suffer from not talking about what I’m working on. This is starting to change. I’m so happy with where TDP is I want to talk to people about it. I also genuinely think it can help people. People want to improve and get better, and just need a little help getting there. I’m certainly no exception. If I stopped tracking my progress on TDP, I’d drop all the good habits I’ve built up.

The Bad

Still no revenue. I’m certainly not stressed, I wasn’t expecting to get revenue until September at the earliest anyway. Maybe in October if I have no revenue I’ll start to get stressed. I’ve been freelancing to close the cost of living gap. We have a reasonable chunk of money set aside, plus our living expenses are relatively low. No reason to fret.

I’ve also seen a lot of other similar sites start popping up. I think their focus is different, and I love competition. I love seeing (and stealing) the good ideas. I hope I can offer some good ideas for them to steal as well.

The most beautiful one, which deserves a shoutout just because of looks, is Lift.do. It’s gorgeous. I still like TDP and the focus on not breaking the chain though.

One of those, “This is bad but really good” items here is that I don’t think I can successfully just go back as a developer again. Being in charge of a product like this feels to good. I don’t want to lose that feeling.

The Awesome

Last week I had the opportunity to explain to a new acquaintance about what I’m doing. I’ve always struggled with this. In fact, I turn into a bumbling idiot when I try to explain any of my projects (see above about talking about it).

But not this time! I had a prepared elevator pitch. This surprised me, as I don’t remember preparing it. Unfortunately, the pitch was being delivered to my physical therapist as she was inflicting pain upon me. There were some awkward pauses.

This confidence and passion gives me comfort and reassures me. I’m making the right choices because I’m happy. I love showing TDP to people. Since I believe it can help people and businesses accomplish more and be more productive, I want to share. I want people to do better.

I’m about to launch the first mobile version. Once that is done I’ll be focusing on business level features. I’m running about a week behind, which is excusable due to my knee.

All in all, this is still the best career decision I’ve ever made.

Carpe Diem, Indeed.

Learning, criticism and being offended.

2012-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

My wife was a bad driver when we met. I avoided riding with her; I tried to always drive and limit how much time she spent behind the wheel. It took her quite a while to come to terms with this. For a while she didn’t believe me. It was interesting to watch the transition from blissful ignorance to awareness and acceptance of reality. Her world, very distinctly, changed.

She became fearful and anxiety crept in. I honestly don’t think this was a bad thing. She was dangerous. The ignorance kept her happy, but it was only a matter of time before a nasty accident happened. It is easier to ignore the dangerous consequences and just assume luck or divine intervention will keep us safe. When awareness of reality hits the world seems a little more scary.

Around the same time we moved to Seattle. Seattle is not an easy city to drive around in. Water, bridges and a large population creating traffic makes it daunting. It wasn’t long before she had her first accident. Fortunately, just running into parking garage pillars. Twice, but fortunately not in the same day. Unfortunately it was the same parking garage (and possibly the same pillar, but I don’t remember). We had a conversation and it was decided I would give her driving lessons.

I had never taught anyone to drive. I sort of remember learning, but not in a compact lesson style fashion. I learned to drive through my entire life. On farms, I would drive by myself from probably age 12 or 13. Because of this and from starting so young, I never encountered learning to drive while under any level of stress. I didn’t have to worry about hitting anything or running anybody over. It was enjoyable and I learned a lot.

What was most interesting is that as her lessons continued and she caught a glimpse at the gap of knowledge, she became more fearful. She had more stress.

I believe this level of stress was helping keep her a little more alert while she was driving. However, it was a hindrance to her learning to do better. That stress that was always present was a huge barrier to work through. She became very worried about making a mistake. She really didn’t want another dent in the car, or worse, a dent in a person.

And now, 8 years later we’re living in an area with no water and no bridges. The roads are sensibly arranged on a grid, it’s less populated and easy to navigate. Her anxiety has dropped and her intuitions have improved. I credit this from the near immediate reduction in stress.

In the 2 years since we’ve moved here her skills have improved drastically, but it was because she didn’t feel overwhelmed. The roads are easier to figure out here. She isn’t trying to do too much at once. There is less traffic, certainly around where we are. Of course there is still practice, but removing the stress from the practice was the key to unlocking her progress.

You can’t learn, especially increase your intuition, when battling stress. If you want to truly improve, reduce or flat out remove stress. After that put the focus on getting better.

How can you be stress free when mistakes have such dire consequences? A mistake could kill herself or someone else. Removing stress from the situation so the right instincts can be developed is hard. In our case we had to move, and I had to learn to teach and instruct without contributing stress.

How I critique and offer feedback is very important. If I’m harsh, or simply say the right thing at the wrong time it can introduce stress. Suddenly the efforts have no reward. She may know what she did wrong, and just needed encouragement. It’s hard to know the difference, but focusing on the levels of stress is important.

If I’m teaching and introduceing stress, the student isn’t learning. We learn the most when we are the most comfortable. Life, however, doesn’t allow us to be that comfortable so we must make do. I just need to remember that things are only stressful and scary when learning.

We’re only calm when doing something we’ve mastered.

The problem with learning.

2012-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

I was talking to a friend who felt a bit detached from life. I recommended setting aside 30 minutes a day for any activity that is entirely self-centered. It doesn’t matter what, just something that focuses on you. I hope she does, but she couldn’t think of things to try. This, coincidentally, is a great advertisement for Pinterest.

When searching for something new, it’s amazing how much exists but were unaware of it. It’s really demoralizing and gets in the way of starting new things. I feel that every day I learn something new. Not just new, but that I didn’t fathom before. The world is amazing like that.

I really enjoy writing. I write every day and read and re-read what I write. I read what other people write in hopes of getting better. I never really studied how to write, though. My English courses growing up were, to put it mildly, useless.

The other day I learned that I don’t know what the passive and active voices are. I can certainly identify sentences that use them as different, but I never knew what was different. I couldn’t explain it, as I never knew what that was called. I’ve seen them mentioned and read examples given; I’ve even read Elements of Style. However, if someone asked me to explain them I was completely at a loss. I couldn’t even identify the usage in my own writings.

Rather than feel shame or embarrasment, I try hard to embrace these moments. I follow history back to identify how I managed to write so many words and take so many courses without ever learning that. That seems to be how life goes. Once you learn something exists, it seems so wonderfully obvious.

So more importantly, what else have I missed?

There are too many things out there. Things we should know and can’t. What frightens me most is the things people should know and willingly seem to ignore. As an example, I used to argue that a basic civics exam should be given to anybody voting. My centerpiece was, “At least teach what is the Bill of Rights!” But nobody I talked to knew that the Bill of Righs is merely the first 10 amendments. They all emphatically agreed with my suggestion, though.

I believe that we are at an age where we expect to know the answers to all our questions simply by reading the preface. We started with cliff-notes and decided that was too long. We willfully condense all that we should know into the tiniest nugget that allows us to know the keywords. It’s a shame and we’re often wrong.

Read the whole book, it’s worth it.

Thriving on progress, through defects.

2012-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

If you are a product creator, whether a software developer or chair maker, and don’t thrive on resolving negative feedback you should adjust your perspective. Your products probably suck.

Think about using your product. How does a user feel? Too few developers are the actual primary users of their software; many never use it at all. I used to write software for Amazon and not once did I ever purchase anything off Amazon (now I do). Now I’m building a product I use every day. This means there are many things I see every day I hate.

In my ticketing system I have 432 tickets. 339 are closed and 94 are open. While that is a lot of completed work, it shows how much remains to do. More tickets are added every day and I love it. It is how I measure progress, but the number of tickets isn’t the metric I use.

Resolving the ticket may not fix the problem.

Recently I had a support request come in that confused me. It could be a real problem or user error. After discussing the problem and doing some testing, we found that a potentially destructive activity could be done with limited intention. In short, deleting people’s data is bad but allowing them to delete their data on accident is even worse.

The nature of the ticket was different than the actual problem reported. A new ticket was created now, because we stopped and considered what could have been the root cause. We improved and resolved an issue but it was completely separate to what we started with.

All problems should be thought about before they are fixed, and even before the solutions are thought of. Even the tiny, small ones that have harmless fixes. Wonder why and question yourself.

This thought loop is important and I wish all tickets I closed got the same treatment. I don’t do this but I’m working on it and improving. It’s hard to distrust ourselves, it goes against our nature.

Question yourself, nobody else will.

When I get some bug I try to always analyze what the root cause was. I don’t expect to be perfect and this isn’t meant to blame myself or someone else. Certainly I’m not going to beat myself up over it. Bugs happen.

But it’s important to question myself. What can I do better so it won’t happen again? Or, more importantly, what can I do better so the next time it happens I can fix it easier or faster?

I do this to improve. I do this to write more and product more tomorrow than I can do today. If I’m writing the same code 5 years layer, what’s the point? I’m not doing this for a paycheck, I’m doing it to make great product that I want to use.

Focus on the result.

Any developer that doesn’t thrive on receiving and resolving issues is going to produce a shoddy product. Their perspective is wrong. It’s the “works on my machine” mentality. The developers machine is the least important machine that it works on. In 5 years, they’ll make the same mistakes. They’re making the same mistakes they made 5 years ago.

Let’s stop and think about the users. They’re the ones who matter. Use your product. Use it like someone else built it. Chances are you’ll need a drink afterwards.

One month of freedom

2012-08-18T00:00:00+00:00

I intended to write this last week, but life got in the way. It’s been a month since I made a huge decision, and started working on my own.

I’ve been focusing on building a recurring to-do list called The Daily Practice.

I care very deeply about improvement and achieving new things, and building a tool that helps myself (and others) is very cool. When I see people using TDP to learn Japanese I’m in awe. There are nearly 5,000 people who have registered (though significantly fewer active users). This blows me away.

It’s been an interesting ride, and writing on this helps me reflect. So how has it been?

The Good

I’m really productive. I was actually worried when I started that I would find myself with mental blocks and have diminished performance. I think it’s common for people to think they need to have some manager above them guiding the ship. I certainly felt that I wouldn’t have clear direction. I even enlisted my wife to help me stay true to the course.

I’ve succeeded at it, though. I’ve had some divergences, but they’ve been in response to usage and some new ideas. It’s been really great and I’ve accomplished more than I thought I would. I try to track everything pretty closely, so I can go back and look at how well I’m doing and get immediate visual feedback. This visual feedback is a running theme in my life.

The Bad

It can’t all be good. Though even the bad is ok. TDP still isn’t pulling in revenue, mostly because I don’t have the business application done. I’m close and the framework is laid, but it’s not there yet. This means I have no salary yet!

This has been offset by working with an awesome group of car racers for a few hours a week, and that’s actually been a lot of fun. It’s working on technologies that I find interesting, plus it’s pretty autonomous. They have features they want, I add them in. I wish all consulting was like that!

The other bad part is that I’m isolated. I don’t have any geeks to share my passion with that are part of TDP. When I do something neat, I can’t show it off to someone who has a vested interest in its success. That part is kind of a drag.

I intended to offset this by going to more of the Vegas Tech meetups. Instead, I’m stuck on crutches and a knee brace for another few weeks. Soon I’ll venture out more often.

The Awesome

I can’t leave this on a negative note. Especially when I’m doing something that is so spectacular. This has ruined me. I hope that I can keep this momentum going. I hope I can continue to create useful products.

This independent life? It’s just too awesome to give up. I know that if TDP gets some business traction life will be hectic, but I thrive on this. I love having a product out there with real users.

I can think that I wish I would have made this change earlier, but the time wasn’t right. The best fruit is only good when ripe.

Presentation matters.

2012-08-12T00:00:00+00:00

I’m not good at matching colors. I can’t distinguish certain colors and I know some I just don’t see correctly. In fact, my eyes themselves don’t agree on what colors I see. My left eye tells me something is blue and my right says it is green.

The result of this is that I just didn’t try. I delegated and attempted to coerce people (now my wife, who fortunately enjoys it) to pick out clothes that match for me. Now I’m presentable!

Through all those years of not trying I’ve been cheating myself. The more honest statement is I’ve been cheating everyone. It’s my presentation and I should put the best foot forward. Always.

There is no excuse to not devote ample attention to any task that must be done.

I’ve been guilty my whole life. Not just in picking out clothes, but any time presentation matters. I tell myself that I can’t present myself well so I shouldn’t do it. I try to delegate and find someone to help. The reality is that these matters you cannot delegate until after you don’t need the help.

Friends in high places?

The people who can be of the most assistance will only be available after they are the most needed. It makes sense. These people are in demand; time and resources are scarce and must be protected.

We must make do with what we have. We must do good enough and learn and improve. So much of our days are spent idling by and five minutes a day can yield huge rewards in the future. That is our strength.

Weaknesses can be irrelevant, eventually.

Anybody shooting for the stars will agree that good enough isn’t good enough; good enough is a weakness. A couple of years back I heard a quote that has, and will, stuck with me.

Don’t use your strengths to fix your weaknesses. Use your strengths to make your weaknesses irrelevant.

I thought I understood it back then, and at some depth I was right. Now I understand it differently.

If I can demonstrate my strengths I can attract talented partners. This ability makes my weaknesses irrelevant. I must demonstrate my capabilities in a quality fashion. I can’t allow a gentle dislike to stop me. While it’s true we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, nobody with talent wants to work with someone who visibly doesn’t care. We all need covers that show we at least put thought and care into them.

Do what you love as best as you can. Do what you must even better.

Back in the saddle.

2012-08-09T00:00:00+00:00

As I wrote at the beginning of the week, my productivity was dealt a blow. Not major, but a lot of minor annoyances have been heaped up.

I’m on crutches still for another 3 weeks and in a rigid brace. It’s very difficult to work and get around in life with a straight leg. Maybe difficult isn’t the best word. Annoying and frustrating are better descriptors.

I was really struggling to stay productive and was dealing with negative thoughts. I drafted up a list of ideas to try and I’m revisiting them now.

Writing in the morning.

I didn’t do this at all, really. The day after I started to, but instead I just looked at the list of tickets I keep open for things I want to do. I abandoned writing and focused on the tickets. I just forced myself to find 2 or 3 tickets to close. It meant I sought out easier things to do, which are great since those tend to get neglected but they still matter.

However, after those first early morning tickets my motivation faltered. I moved on to my next idea.

Spend more time reading.

This one went very well, actually. If I an measuring enjoyment; productivity didn’t increase and I was still steadfastedly in my rut. I spent some time reading about various technologies and ideas. I read some great articles. I was really surprised this didn’t motivate me. I thought for sure that I would be very excited and focused after reading a few articles. One article started to get me feeling the flow of productivity. I opened up my text editor and promptly sat, frozen failing to write any code.

I gave this up after that first day. I spent a lot of time reading and enjoying myself but it wasn’t productive.

Doodle more!

This one was a resounding success. I took a sheet of paper and started sketching. I started with an amorphous blob and created a very nice looking bird. I will adopt this as my mascot, as I crafted that doodle and enjoyed it.

Amusingly, I was the most productive after looking at my bird with satisfaction. I felt good and it was easier to stay focused and be productive. I was not expecting this. Now I’m distracted by wanting to digitize and really craft my little bird. It’s ok, it’s enjoyable and breaks the block.

Talk to people.

I didn’t do so well here. Outside of my normal Internet social contacts I didn’t branch out. I didn’t think I would do this one, either. I’d like to go to some local tech events, but I can’t drive and certainly am not going to burden my wife with taking me there.

Do something new.

This happened immediately after my delightful bird. I had a great idea for TDP while I was whining, er, writing the previous article. I didn’t think I would really do it, though.

After my bird came into existence my thoughts changed. Now it seemed the right thing to do. Coding was immediately exciting again and I started up. Then I hit a roadblock that required something larger. Something that I really wanted to have done but desperately did not want to do. Now I’ve tackled it, in significantly less time than anticipated.

I finished it up today and will have it done and out the door tomorrow or Saturday. Wow.

Then my secret new feature will be completed next week. I’m really happy how this one has turned out.

Just writing about my trials and difficulties were enough to overcome them, because it forced me to put deliberate thought into what I was doing.

Doodling and thinking of a new unplanned feature seems to be my secret, at least this time. Next time? I really hope it’s not talking to new people.

Dealt a blow.

2012-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

Two days before last Christmas, through no fault of my wife’s, I slipped and fell walking through the house. Seriously it wasn’t her fault, I just like to blame someone other than myself. I was just walking, but immediately something felt wrong.

I kept delaying looking into it and would try to run through the pain. It wasn’t working. I eventually gave up on running temporarily and started down the path of figuring it out. I thought I maybe just tore some cartilage and that was the problem. The doctor who referred me to the orthopedist thought this, too.

Once surgery was started, it was apparent that the damage was significantly more severe. There was cartilage damage through the entire knee and in one spot no cartilage at all. The treatment is really fascinating. It’s called microfracture surgery, where holes are drilled so bone marrow seeps out and some replacement cartilage grows in place. It was a surprise to wake up to, but hey, a full recovery? Excellent!

Except my expectations were soundly executed.

I went into surgery expecting to be able to walk the next day. No big deal. Now I’m in a rigid brace, my leg is immobilized and I can’t put weight on it. For a month. The rigid brace is uncomfortable and it’s impossible to sit at a computer without straining.

The brace will be part of my life for the next 6 weeks. After that I will not be able to run for 6 months.

Any time expectations are shattered like this there is a huge amount of left over emotional baggage to deal with. Now I’m dealing with the hit to my productivity and my spirits.

Getting back on the horse is hard with a busted saddle.

I really am trying to get back into the groove. I’m struggling to find the motivation I had just last week. I was really blitzing through new features, enhancements and bug fixes. Last week I felt unstoppable.

This week I’m languishing, even though it’s only the third day since surgery. I just feel that I have a huge hurdle to leap over to get back into the groove, except I can’t leap.

As I sit and try to get stuff done I find myself awkwardly positioned and end up distracting myself. I’m struggling to figure out how to be comfortable and productive. It’s a balancing act I haven’t figured out yet.

And the outcome…

Last week I was amazingly passionate and excited about TDP. I loved working on it. Now today I find myself questioning everything. Is it a viable product? Is it something people really want to use? I even ask myself, “Are people just using this to be nice to me?” It’s completely absurd.

I know that TDP is a viable product. I know because I’ve been using it for a year. I know because other people use it.

I have to cope with the lost direction and momentum, though. I have to ignore the negative voice in my head that isn’t helping me. I normally don’t have any self-doubt; I simply don’t allow it. I struggle to deal with it.

How to regain my momentum and vanquish my inner demons? I’m not sure, but here’s what I’m going to try:

Start my morning out by writing what I want to accomplish. I can’t do this at night because I don’t know how I’ll feel in the morning.
Spend more time reading. Lately I’ve been reading, but only Coders at Work that is topical. I’m spending more time reading Vonnegut. I get motivated when I read interesting things.
Doodle more. I like to doodle. It helps my brain relax a little bit. I need to doodle more, I think. I can doodle anywhere and it’s hard to be uncomfortable while doodling.
Talk to people. Since I’m mostly independent, I am sitting in a vacuum all day. I don’t have a captive audience of coworkers. I’m still not able to drive, but I need to figure out a way to talk about ideas I have.
Do something new. I need to do something new. That always excites me. Even if it’s something silly, just doing something new will help me.

Benefits of organization.

2012-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

I recently wrote about writing tasks for tomorrow so I have clarity. That has been really good, but I quickly ran into organizational problems. I was storing them in a Wiki and that just doesn’t scale.

For tracking work on TDP, I’ve been using JIRA. JIRA gets a pretty bad rap and I don’t really understand why. Sure, it isn’t free and the pricing scales up a bit strangely but it’s easy. JIRA OnDemand works very well and it’s worth $10 a month (until we get to the 11th account!)

However, JIRA doesn’t have any organization support for this concept of ticket stacks. It’s a short-coming that can be addressed through a few different ways. I most likely will end up writing a script to gather and organize these, but for now I came up with a simpler way.

While I’m writing about doing this in JIRA, it isn’t JIRA specific. Anything here could be adapted into any reasonable ticketing system. A reasonable ticketing system is one with custom fields and search.

The Timeline

Each ticket now has a custom field called Timeline. This field keeps me sane, and it has the following options:

Vapor (actually “None”, the default option)
Backlog
Active
Done

Vapor

Vapor is something that is an idea, observation or some other ticket that I can’t work on. Something I’d like to do but I have no idea when I’ll be able to get around to it. In scrum terms, it equivalent to the product backlog.

In this scenario, it’s a backlog that I’m not ready to really think about. Once I am, I put assign the Backlog label to it.

The Backlog

The backlog contains tasks I’m mentally aware of but don’t know quite when I’ll work on them. I’m actively hoping to get them done in the foreseeable future. I will tell people about them. I try to limit this to things that will definitely be done in the next two weeks.

The in the scrum world, they have a defined sprint backlog. I don’t. Mine is a conveyer belt. I guess you could say that I simply have one day sprints.

Active

The tasks I setup at night that I will be working on tomorrow are in my Active stack. This also includes new work that will take more than one day. The task simply stays in “Active” until it is done. Once I start working on something, I try very hard to not move it out. I may in the future require a “stalled” status.

It’s very simple to think this way. At the end of the day I look at the tickets listed “Active”. That’s my tomorrow.

Anything in the Active queue should be actively worked on. It’s very simple.

Done

As I complete tickets, I mark them as Done. This moves them out of my Active worklog. Anything that is marked as Done I can then worry about deployment and continuing in the normal ticket workflow (such as resolving it and passing it off to QA).

Tickets for everything!

Now, this means I’m creating a lot of tickets. Some of which have no product relation or are simply tasks that would be better suited as a single line item in a Wiki. However, why bother?

This system works very well and I have project space for it. There is no limit to how many tickets and tickets have a built in history for managing everything I could possibly want.

I can add comments and talk to myself all day, and it’s very useful.

A little organization goes a long way

This organizational step has really helped me in the last few days. I hope to keep it up, and with TDP goals to keep me honest, it’s really not hard.

I’ll definitely want to automate some of it to make it easier, but that part will come soon.

Very Scrum Like

I like the Scrum methodology) a lot. In the past when I’ve used it I’ve found it to be very natural. When I thought how I wanted to model my workflow right now I looked to it for inspiration.

If I were working with more people I would formalize on Scrum and utilize that. For now, I have a very simple way of doing Scrum-like work in a way that matches and doesn’t introduce friction.

Associations of trust.

2012-07-29T00:00:00+00:00

This is entirely anecdotal. I am writing this from my own observations on how I feel, plus in discussing these matters over the last few years with my friends and peers. There is likely several studies that prove I’m foolish and wrong.

Brand identity is a big business. Large companies routinely spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in maintaining their brand. This is because of consumer trust. When I walk into a Starbucks I know exactly what to expect. Starbucks protects their identity and I trust Starbucks to deliver what Starbucks has delivered in the past.

Sometimes branding is larger than a single corporation. People buy American, German or Japanese cars just by the virtue of what country hosts the headquarters. Even when the cars may be made in Mexico, Kentucky or Canada.

More important than specific brands (or nationalism) is the associations of products. Certain classifications of products have certain attributes, just by being in that category. Some have significantly more trust, purely because of their neighbors. The example that seems so obvious is newspapers and magazines.

Which do you trust more? I’d be willing to bet it’s a newspaper. Newspapers have journalistic integrity and reporters dying to break a story. They deliver the truth! Magazines don’t. Magazines have current but attention-grabbing stories. Magazines are for entertainment, newspapers are for knowledge.

Why this matters.

If I am building a product, which I am, do I want to be seen as trust worthy? Everybody should say yes. The associations we chose have trade-offs; increasing trust can decrease the fun. Some products do well to be serious and somber and others do not.

It’s very important to match. If you make a serious product with loads of informal glitz, the end result is a clash of sensibilities. The amount and style of glitz and glamour must match the tone being set.

I had to make a decision early on what tone I wanted to set. I opted for a more serious tone. A utilitarian tone that would evoke the spirit and sense of a librarian. A librarian can have effects that enhance usability, but they should always have a purpose. Sparkling and shining is not a purpose, certainly not in a serious application.

Matching the tone.

Recently I was adding a feature and I wanted to be able to provide the user with feedback. The feedback was very specific and direct, however I didn’t want it to be seen as superficial. This is not some Coney Island game. The librarian is always on watch, ready to shush anything too noisy.

If I put in some accoutrement with too much appeal, it throws the balance of the product out.

I think the obvious example of what happens is the slicked-hair sales guy. Sure, he may be wearing the same suit a respectable business person is wearing but the other things stand out. The general feeling is one that it doesn’t match. When things don’t match, they aren’t trusted.

Trusted and serious can still be fun.

A lot of current software products have a great deal of fun baked right into them. Google is a good example of this. They’re trustworthy and very fun. How serious is Google? Well, now they’re getting more serious. When I look at Google+ I’m not thinking of the old amusingly and light hearted Google of 2001. It’s rigid, and dare I say cold.

However, it wasn’t an abrupt change. They slowly transitioned from a fun and light-hearted entity to a serious entity. They did it very subtly and they still kept all the individual pieces of fun (gmail and iGoogle themes) in tact. Except they got a bit more sterile.

This sterile joy must come secondary and the reason why so many complaints were lodged over Gmail changes and Google+ is because it was replacing light-heartedness with seriousness. That was the real complaint. The products were still equally fun, but people had different expectations.

Expectations matter more than anything else.

You should never judge a book by its cover, but damnit, if the cover doesn’t match the book someone should be fired. It’s the job of the cover to set the tone for the book.

Failed expectations create user frustration. Frustration detracts from the joy of using a product; even if that product is a book, enjoyment can be diminished by something so insignificant as the cover. Tone matters.

If I have a serious, librarian-helmed product the type of fun must match the tone. It isn’t bright colors and informal language. Instead it’s ease of use. It’s clicking intuitively and having the sensation that someone, behind the screen, is guiding your experience and making it what you want before you know it’s there.

I’m not at that point, but that’s the direction I’m going. It’s a lot of work but it’s a tremendous amount of fun. Just not the type of fun most people want to have on a Saturday night.

If programmers were carpenters…

2012-07-26T00:00:00+00:00

I write software and part of that requires a lot of reading. Every day I try to read something about my craft and how to improve, but lately I’ve realized that I’m more focused on the finished product. Subsequently, the books I read are more about products and less about code. I don’t care so much about the code anymore. I really just care about the product.

I need to be cautious, though. Focusing on any single part without respecting the whole can lead to inferior products. Especially not understanding the history and heritage, understanding how I happen to be building this specific product right now.

Upstream knowledge is imperative!

If programmers were carpenters, many wouldn’t know that wood comes from trees.

For all practical matters wood simply comes from the store. They use the type of wood recommended for their task. They shape it in a way they’ve seen before or read about online. They may even know how to make a very, very nice bench. But when a table is made it conspicuously looks like a bench.

This is a symptom of not knowing the history and heritage of the craft and the product.

Lately I’ve been reading Design for Hackers and Coders at Work. The two books have dovetailed nicely and created this train of thought.

Specifically, Joshua Bloch’s interview and focusing on simply knowing where things come from. You don’t need to know the details and certainly not the ugly warts (looking at you, C++). Learning and understanding the history, differing philosophy and concepts is of paramount importance to producing quality craftsmanship.

It’s not about knowing everything about trees. Leave that to an arborist. Simply knowing that wood comes from a forest, different woods grow different because of climate and ecology and whatever else. Use that knowledge to make better products. Use any knowledge to make better products.

History repeats itself…

We often hear that history repeats itself until a lesson is learned, however this mentality also (unfortunately) pays the bills. Reproducibility is a good trait to have, because when someone sees something they like they want to have one. In software products you see this frequently.

There are always clones of software. There are always employees leaving to try to recreate the product, but in their own way. And yet, somehow, it typically is just a failed knock-off. Or just developers who constantly write the same type of code, even using different programming languages in a way completely unintended.

The medium in which products are created must be understood so that the best products can be made.

The fit and finish are different depending on the ingredients of any product. Treating every type of wood as equivalent will result in some brittle, ugly and broken furniture. In software, we get ugly mismatched clones. How many Facebook killers have been built?

The reason isn’t because the builders fundamentally cannot make good products. No, instead they failed to study not only the medium, but the upstream knowledge that went into creating the product.

Understanding the need and heritage of any product is just as important as understanding what tools are used in its construction. Failing to understand either is disastrous.

Just one thing.

2012-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

My wife and I were having a discussion about the book Outliers. She was trying to explain a point and I wasn’t getting it. Her thoughts were disjointed, trying to draw together several parallels and I struggled to keep up. I ended up drawing my own lines, dancing around her ideas and forming my own. I didn’t understand what she wanted to convey.

Lyndon B. Johnson performed what was called “The Treatment”. He barraged the poor listener with a steady stream of high intensity words and ideas. He would convince the other person through fear and inundation. He was very successful using this technique.

Lyndon Johnson giving “The Treatment” to Richard Russel

But he didn’t educate anybody with it. A barrage of information that nobody can keep up with. You can quickly and easily overload someone by providing too much information at a time. Too many ideas. They don’t learn, they give up.

But it’s just one thing.

Instead, I have a new technique to work towards. It will be hard for me. I get excited and passionate when I explain an idea. I need to remember that it’s an idea. A single piece, on a tower, that deserves to stand on its own. Everything else is merely supporting it. Nothing else deserves the spotlight.

When I explain something, I’m trying to focus on the one, single thing I want the person to walk away with. I want them to be able to explain that and justify their time listening. But just that one thing. Everything else is optional.

We think in parallel.

As we go through life and think, we get into a habit of multi-tasking and competing thoughts. We learn to learn in this way. We may be focused on a single idea, but in between thoughts we drift. At least I do. I think it’s normal.

In most cases, this is how people convey ideas. I know it’s how I convey ideas. It isn’t helpful. The imaginary thought lines that bring me between concepts don’t exist in any other minds. The associations are mine and mine alone.

Every time I jump between concepts I’m making it harder for the other person to keep up. I may think and believe it’s a great way of explaining some other related concept, but chances are it isn’t. Chances are it’s not helping.

Single file, please.

Each idea deserves the utmost attention until we’re certain the other person has received and accepted delivery of that idea. I don’t mean they have to agree with it, but they should understand.

If they haven’t understood yet, continue on that one single idea. Do not jump to other concepts, metaphors or ideas even if I think they’re supportive.

The burden is not on the recipient.

It’s hard for me to talk to other people and not assume they understood. However, often times it becomes clear that I flooded them with information and the piece that I really wanted them to leave with was left on the floor. Oops.

It’s my duty to guarantee delivery. I am the postman for my ideas, responsible for delivery. It’s ok if they’re not home, my job is to get it to their house.

If I’m struggling and juggling with several ideas at once, I’m going to fail delivering the understanding.

It’s my job to deliver the message, no excuses.

Daily notes let me sleep at night.

2012-07-20T00:00:00+00:00

I have a hard time sleeping. When I lay down, my mind starts to race. I think of all the things I did. I think of all the things I need to do and want to do. I think of things I could have done better. I’m not unique in this, a lot of people have this problem.

Before my wife entered my life, I cycled through many inefficient strategies. I would watch the same movie every night to fall asleep. I would listen to various white noise generators. They all worked, sort of. And then one day my wife discovered that it’s pretty much impossible for me to stay awake when I get a foot massage. She’s a massage therapist. Talk about a match made in heaven.

However, that doesn’t help the overall sense of why I can’t sleep. It treats the symptom (and does so very, very well) but not the cause. Although to some degree it does because I have lucid dreams and think about specific problems. I still have to know what those problems are before hand, though. If I can clearly identify what I’m trying to accomplish, it helps. But now I have to know what I’m trying to do.

We rarely know what we’re doing.

In my years in college studying everything but computer science, I took a lot of psychology and sociology courses. In one course, the focus of study was on subconscious actions. On average, we are aware of 10% of our outward behaviors at any given time. We do the majority of things without any awareness.

We also tend to get through life this way. It seems that only 10% of the time we’re doing something on purpose. I don’t like that. It feels like a waste of time to me, and a magnet for bad habits.

Aside from tracking my goals religiously, I’ve found a new technique that really helps me stay on task and focused.

Write down tomorrow, today.

I spent 5 minutes at the end of every day writing down what I will accomplish tomorrow. If I have doubt about getting it done, I don’t write it down. Very simple, and it’s never taken me more than 5 minutes.

I usually only have about 4 real specific items to do, and a few notes and other miscellaneous tasks. It still is a challenge to get them all done. I even missed one the other day and felt terrible about it.

Recognize, review and reorganize.

If I miss my tasks on any given day, I need to recognize why. This part may take more than 5 minutes. I try to ask myself a few questions:

Was I being lazy? Did I spend time doing something damaging to my productivity (video games, etc).
Was I being too ambitious? There is a limit to how much I can do, I must recognize that limit.
Was I just wrong? Sometimes tasks are very intensive and I can’t do them. This is bad estimating and I need to not do that.
External forces? The universe can conspire against us, take that into account.

Defending against laziness.

If I’m being lazy, I just need to review why. Typically I’m procrastinating because I don’t know how I want to do something. Rarely is it that I just don’t want to do it. If that’s the case, I spend 5 minutes at the task and give myself a break. After 5 minutes forcing myself at a task I typically finish it. The first 5 minutes are hard.

If I don’t know how, I should spend more time reading on the subject. Usually reading gets me motivated to try new fixes or figure out what I want to do.

Fly to the sun without burning wings.

Being too ambitious is hard, because when I’m excited I tend to think I can conquer the world. I can move a mountain overnight, of course! When I feel I’m being too ambitious, I write down my tasks I want to do and then remove half of them. What is important is that I do not move them to the next day. Every day my tasks are new. I do not plan more than one day in the future here.

By removing half after I write them down, I still feel like I’m being ambitious because I write down a few things that I know I’m going to remove. I then force myself to remove one big thing. It’s about honesty, but if you can’t be honest with yourself you have other problems.

Being wrong sucks.

When I miss an estimate I really beat myself up. I get frustrated and sulk. I pride myself on my estimating abilities so when they go wrong I tend to disassemble the entire situation. I try to pinpoint exactly where things went off the rails.

Because of my own personal level of loathing for missed estimates, this tends to be something I don’t encounter frequently. Fortunately.

When the world gives you lemons…

I don’t believe in making lemonade. If I wanted lemonade, I would have already made some. Be proactive and have backup plans.

Specifically because I don’t write down tasks for future days beyond tomorrow, I know other things I want to work on. If life gives me lemons, I pick something up from the backlog.

It’s important to track this still, so on my task lists I comment and write down what happened. I may or may not add the task for the next day.

Harping on something that becomes strategically difficult or has an unnecessary burden to complete has no benefit. It’s important to know what things you don’t have to do, and focus on doing the things you are doing instead.

There is always tomorrow to accomplish what you couldn’t today. The day after tomorrow? Who knows, we may be drinking lemonade.

Partial success is still success

2012-07-17T00:00:00+00:00

I haven’t written here for a few days. I have good reason for it, sort of. I was pretending I was a spoiled princess. I had some friends in town, so obviously it was hard to maintain my goals.

Foolish people let me do this!

No problem, I know how to handle this. I revised my expectations and it worked fine.

There’s the catch-up, though.

The problem with catch-up

Catch-up work has a lot of unexpected variables to it. Things stack up, or some things you think will go smoothly don’t. Moving quickly contributes some degree of carelessness.

This is exactly what happened and just as soon as I felt I was caught up, I hit a speed bump due to lack of future planning.

Nothing major, just my time estimates on completing some tasks were significantly off. On my todo list for today I had 4 main items and by dinner time it was pretty clear I was going to have to get by with a 50% success rate.

50% isn’t bad

I shouldn’t feel bad about this. It doesn’t help me at all to beat myself up over it. I still got 2 really important things (ok, one important thing and one trivial thing) done. That’s what counts. That’s what matters.

You move mountains one stone at a time, and some days you can move more stones. That’s the nature of progress.

I need to stay positive, but it’s hard. It’s too easy to use the negative emotional response as an excuse to not improve.

Be your own worst critic

Being positive doesn’t mean you excuse your behavior, though. In an old Joel Spolsky article, he talks about Evidence Based Scheduling. What I took away is that there is significant value in being able to estimate accurately. I agree with this.

I need to be able to meet my estimates. Either I thought I could do more than what was possible or I was careless in thinking about other tasks. Neither of which is acceptable behavior.

It’s important to be able to correct your mistakes and move on. Making mistakes is to be expected, but making the same mistake is the biggest mistake.

I need to be able to tell myself I failed in clear terms. Not to accuse myself of failure, but to make myself better. It’s not an easy thing, because as adults we forget how to take criticism or blame. Even when it’s from ourselves.

If I am to succeed I need to learn how to address my mistakes and correct them, not to shy away from them.

Teaching Beginners

2012-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

Yesterday I had a great yoga session. The teacher leads the class in a way that is very compatible for me. I really enjoy my time and leave the class feeling fantastic.

I leave feeling mentally alert, physically tired but amazingly energetic. It’s a really great experience and the feeling lasts the better part of the day. I know that my experience is very different than other people’s experiences there.

Today I noticed a woman in the class struggling right from the start. I watched her demeanor change for the worse. She started with eagerness but then the willingness to push herself faded away. She was not tenacious. I was very curious to see how my favorite yoga teacher would react.

She didn’t. She moved on.

Interact with those putting in effort

The struggling woman quickly showed that she wasn’t going to push herself. She stayed well within her comfort zone and didn’t try to keep up or stretch herself.

She fell further and further behind, and at no point was she given any special instruction. I don’t think it would have done much. Mentally, she was already giving all she was willing to give. That much was apparent by her body language.

It wasn’t that she was out of shape, either. She was of average build and looked like she at least knew her way around the gym.

She was a beginner and would stay that way.

Perpetual beginners aren’t rewarding to teach

My wife said it best when I was talking about this with her.

If she went to a beginner class, she would be happy but she would never stop being a beginner.

It’s true. There are a lot of people like that. I see this a lot with software development, but I’m sure it’s in any field.

There are people who put in only the level of energy they’re comfortable with. They stay beginners forever. That’s no fun.

Choose the people with passion

There are billions of people in this world and so many are eager to make a difference. The passion to push themselves harder and further than others is a common thread.

Several years ago I was interviewing for a fairly high level position (though in a relatively small company). As part of the reference checking, my outlook on leadership was discussed.

The CTO of the company laughingly relayed the punchline to me. “You don’t suffer fools gladly!” I heartily agreed. I don’t.

Why suffer fools when you can live in the company of greatness?

The passion for change creates greatness

Every day I try to do better. The mantra I’ve lived with for my whole adult life is that I can do more in 5 minutes tomorrow than I could today.

I push myself out of what is comfortable to improve myself. It’s not unreasonable to want to surround myself with others of similar mindsets.

The yoga class today showed me it was ok. You let the people who want to be beginners stay beginners. Maybe some day they’ll wake up and want more.

Maybe I could help them. Maybe I can show them how to want more. I don’t think so, though. I’d rather save my energy working with and living with the best people I can find. Quality over quantity.

It’s hard to tell when someone is perpetually a beginner or simply out of their depth. Sometimes they simply need a little encouragement. I should work on being able to tell the difference.

When they’re ready, I’m ready. People need to find their passion on their own and it’s not my job to guide them there. When they find their passion, I should do everything I can to help them. Countless people have helped me hone my skill and have worked with me. I think, and hope, it is because they’ve seen my passion, too.

Staying positive.

2012-07-08T00:00:00+00:00

My mom, like all other moms out there, taught me a very nice quote:

If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

This dovetails nicely with:

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

Never complain, always critique.

There is a fine line between complaining and criticizing. I try to criticize but never complain. Try being the important word there. The difference is subtle but has a distinct meaning to me.

When I criticize something, I am expressing a way in which is falls short and sharing an opinion on how to make it better. Even using negative words, my intention is positive. I want to make things better.

In contrast, complaining is just making noise. To point out flaws that either are not significant or can’t be solved is complaining. It has no value. The intent is not to make the world a better place.

Why do people complain?

When I find myself complaining about something, it’s usually because I’m grumpy. I do allow myself some level of misdirected annoyance on these days. Sometimes it is necessary, but I treat it as an exception.

Of course there are also just negative people. People who can’t see the great parts of life and wallow in the sour parts. The exception is the rule, perpetual grumpiness. There is a deeper problem with them, but the outcome is often times the same. Lots of meaningless complaints.

Far worse are the people who complain because they see critics being listened to and earning respect. They want to be listened to and get respect, so they try to mimic the behaviors they see. Great artists steal, bad artists copy poorly.

Complaining typically makes you look stupid.

When someone complains to me, I can’t help but think they’re just being dumb. I feel dumb when I complain (after, anyways, when I’m looking back on it). I’ve yet to see someone complain and look smarter for doing it.

Most of the complaints I’ve ever heard in life are either shallow or about things completely unchangeable. If the complaints are things they could change, they are usually the result of their own mistakes. I know people who put themselves in terrible situations and simply wave their hands and expect life to get better. Then they complain when it isn’t. They look dumb.

It’s no surprise they’re in that situation, though. Any objective review of their situation will show, quite clearly, what the problem is. Them. That’s why I don’t like to complain, because anything shallow enough for me to complain about is likely my fault. If it isn’t that shallow, I probably can’t change it anyway.

Don’t sweat the small stuff.

If a complaint can be changed and is serious, people would (or rather, should) be motivated to solve the issue. Or at a minimum, improve it. Even if they themselves aren’t going to improve the situation the complaints would turn to critiques. Improvements would be suggested in clear terms. They would label the bad and then offer better ways.

The intentions are focused on improving.

This is how I know if I’m complaining. I just have look at the outcome. If I’m not offering a solution, I’m complaining.

So I try not to complain. It’s important to stay positive. The world has enough negativity, but intent matters more than words.

Negative words spoken with good intent are innovations greatest ally.

Conserving energy means spending it.

2012-07-04T00:00:00+00:00

My wife and I know a very talented person. He often gets picked up for larger projects, we hear frequently about opportunities presented to him. He is excited and eager for them but his lethargy eventually ruins everything. It’s certainly tragic, because with his talent he could do great things for the world. More than the tragedy, I’m just plain confused.

Why do people with talent and ability squander opportunities? I don’t believe it is possible to capture all the opportunities available to us. We have to be observant and have good judgement. The most successful people in the world know to identify the most rewarding opportunities. However, a large subset of highly capable individuals miss out on opportunities purely because they would rather sleep in.

When I was talking to my wife about this, she understood it perfectly but couldn’t articulate it. She understood my confusion, but she struggled to explain it to me. Finally, she broke through my mental barriers.

Conserving energy for a future event doesn’t work.

She said to imagine someone preparing to run a race. They don’t run races, and don’t know what to expect. They worry they’ll need all their energy. Instead of training by running the distance and getting into prime shape, they sit around and conserve all their energy.

It’s a misunderstanding of consequences and preparation. Newton already told us this was a mistake; an object at rest tends to stay at rest.

Any person who doesn’t actively seek capitalizing opportunities will be unable to perform when an opportunity is presented. The habits and lifestyle choices are detrimental, just as not preparing to run a race will end in failure, and probably a pulled muscle.

The habits of lethargy develop quickly.

One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that when I’m working on my projects, my momentum is based on how my work day is. When my nights and weekends are dedicated, I have to be very careful with my mental state and momentum.

On days where I am very busy, being ran ragged and stressed, I can produce a lot in the evenings. It’s the mundane, boring stuff, though. I generally stack up the boring tasks specifically for those days.

Other days are seemingly perfect. I’m able to exercise my mind through the day, applying new logic to new problems but using previously discovered solutions. I am very happy for these days, I get home and that momentum continues. I am very productive.

However, the days where I’m stuck waiting between projects or have little to do of any consequence, I struggle. Sometimes the fire never comes. I get frustrated but no amount of frustration breaks the curse.

The lethargy continues and affects my future. After a good nights sleep or some other break in routine I usually do better.

Just tonight I had this happen. I cooked dinner for the family, thinking it would definitely get me back into gear. It helped, a little bit, but not enough. I still stumbled along, feeling half asleep.

It’s a terrible place to be, especially if it was a lifestyle habit.

Protect your energy.

What’s the solution? It’s about protection and it’s about preparation. The more you prepare to have a lot of energy, the more energy you have on a daily basis.

Treat every day like you have a race to run tomorrow.

Be prepared, have things to occupy yourself with to combat the mundane. The great thing about mundane tasks is you can typically take a break from them to do something more stimulating, even if it’s only for a few minutes.

Don’t engage in the pacifying behaviors that are so appealing when battling for motivation. I know when I struggle for motivation I typically spend time doing non-productive things. Maybe play a video game or something else. Stop. Just don’t. Instead, pick up a book. Read something interesting. Find inspiring Wikipedia articles (picking a random president works well for me).

After some time, motivation should trickle back in. An accomplishment will be made. Then it all opens up and comes back.

Opinions on Opinions.

2012-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

A lot of people have told me if 10 experts are in a room, you’ll get 10 different opinions. Usually to counter me citing a respected expert in a field. They say this like it’s a bad thing. It’s not. Everybody needs opinions, especially experts.

I’ve been thinking lately about my opinions. Specifically, my opinion about opinions. It comes down to a small list:

Have an opinion or stay quiet.
Opinions must be backed by research and not bias.
Defend your opinion or stay quiet.
Nobody knows what they’re doing exactly, do your best.
Ignorance is inexcusable.

The problem with opinions.

Opinions are never completely right. Very few things in life have a proper, correct answer. I’m not really sure 2+2 is 4, but it’s close enough for me. I don’t even really believe in right or wrong. I only believe in consequences.

I love the vague nature of the world, it means it is chaotic and needs attention and curation. When people have opinions on the way things in the world should be, the world changes. Hopefully for the better. Opinions curate the world in the way dedicated, thoughtful and motivated individuals feel it is best.

The only problem with opinions is when they aren’t based in research. It’s not about facts, it’s about research. We spend our lives learning facts, but facts are always interpreted differently. We end up with opinions formed from whatever limited facts we’ve been exposed to that fit inside our perception of the world.

When an opinion isn’t sourced from research and knowledge, it’s created from a bias. Whether the bias is from someone admired or religious beliefs, these opinions are harmful. They’re naive and indefensible. You can’t argue for or against when the foundation is no more deep than “because that person over there said so.”

I’ve tried to figure out how to determine the foundation for opinions. The best I can figure this is to see how someone reacts to two very general questions. One is easy and generally safe, the other dangerous but more revealing.

The first, to ask them to support or verify their opinion. To say it out loud, clearly. Simply asking them what their opinion is. It’s very direct, but it works.

The second way is to ask them about any popular contrarian position. Unfortunately asking about contrarian positions paints you as you support the opposing view. Caution must be exercised. I try to always go with the first option.

If emotion enters and vague answers are given, bias is likely the cause for their opinion. Better move on.

Opinions, The Good Parts

The best part of opinions is defending them. I thoroughly love it when someone asks, or challenges, my opinion on something. As long as they’re doing it with an open mind and armed with research, I will be having a good time. I hope they do, too.

I debate passionately, because in all of the opinions I’m willing to argue I’ve invested myself in. I’ve spent many hours researching and thinking about it. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be talking about it.

This research and enlightenment is important. It makes me a better person. Even if someone comes along and dislodges my opinion and shows me a new truth, my mental investment is not lost. I carry knowledge to the new opinion.

The cost of learning to hold a well-reasoned opinion is applied in full to new found truths. There is no way to lose when you learn.

You can win when you keep quiet

An important part of opinions is something I fail at frequently. It’s so simple but it seems to go against my nature. I’m not alone, but that doesn’t make it excusable.

Staying quiet, mentally and verbally, when it’s appropriate.

If I haven’t put in sufficient research, don’t just not voice an opinion, do not have an opinion. I know earlier I said I argued my opinions, but I do at least only argue opinions I feel confident and comfortable arguing for.

However, I still feel the opinions formed by nothing more than bias creep into my mind from time to time. Someone I respect tells me about something that is the truth and I believe it. I know I shouldn’t, but I do.

There is a side-effect to this. Some people may think you’re a cynic or overly skeptical. That may be, but I think it’s more valuable to verify information and not be fooled because someone happens to be right more often than not. I’m disappointed when someone listens to me without learning for themselves.

Improvement is a journey.

2012-06-28T00:00:00+00:00

Improving yourself is a journey. There is no destination.

Some days you cover a great distance. Arriving in a new and unrecognizable place; a strange and exciting new world. Other days it feels like no progress obtained. Sitting dead in the water. Perhaps a day repairing yourself, hoping to recover that momentum lost.

Just don’t give up. Keep the habits up.

That’s not easy, though. Good habits are hard to maintain, bad habits are hard to break. Another way life is unfair. The most damaging to my positive habits is taking a trip. Whether a family vacation or a work trip, I get derailed. Then there is the inevitable struggle to get back.

Taking a vacation from improvement.

Traveling to the most beautiful and exciting places on earth won’t allow you to take a vacation from yourself. Subsequently, you can’t take a vacation from improvement. However, the targets and goals will change; the specifics can take a vacation with you. In fact, this is the only way I see to keep in my good habits.

While doing the same thing, day in day out, is how habits are formed that is also how to kill yourself.

The same patterns that build habits burn them out.

We need to protect ourselves from this burn out. We must change our habits sometimes and prevent burn out. Taking trips, picking up new projects or just seeking out new challenges helps us with this. It keeps us fresh and excited. Excitement is the fuel for improvement, but only if properly harnessed.

Happiness is a byproduct of change.

Happiness and improvement are the result of changes in our life. Differences from the day to day. Each new thing we learn changes us. Each activity is a change. Just doing different activities causes these changes, and the byproduct of that is ourselves being improved.

If you do your favorite thing every day, it will become old hat. You will improve at it, but it won’t be as fun. There is diminishing returns. We can’t win this battle, so we must recognize it and accept it.

When we take a break and go on vacation, or simply take a break from specific goals we set out, we’re renewing ourselves. Making that shine and shimmer come back. Letting our fields lie fallow, and it’s very necessary.

Always be set up for success.

One lesson I learned early on in life that has proved very valuable is quite simple:

Never act without a victory condition.

Knowing what victory is doesn’t mean you will succeed. It just means success can be measured and recognized. Similarly, so can failure.

Before I travel or encounter any disruption, I must know my victory conditions surrounding my continued self improvement. If I can’t define this, I shouldn’t go. It’s easy and that type of pressure means I will really put thought into defining my victory conditions.

Once I know what successes I want to take away, I’m able to plan. Sometimes this means putting a goal on pause. Sometimes it means changing focus for a time. It may even mean moving on, shuffling things up and picking new things to work on.

For example, every day I read for knowledge. Sometimes it’s a book on design, other days it’s a book on programming. Most often? I read Wikipedia articles on completely unrelated subjects. If I take a trip, I focus my attention on reading about the places I visit. It keeps it topical and it keeps me engaged and I still meet my goals for self-improvement.

If I can adapt my goals and change focus so that I can succeed, I will succeed. If I can’t, I pause the goal until I return. It’s very simple.

Picking up where I leave off.

The hardest part is picking it back up. Resuming those old goals that I had paused. Last week I was traveling, I still did most of my goals but I didn’t write and my morning exercises were interrupted a little bit. Now today, a week later, my shoulder still feels week. It’s hard to get back on the horse.

By changing things up, I’m doing much better. Before I go, I have a plan and I can stick to it. Sometimes I don’t, but if I don’t I’m eager to get back into it even more.

It’s not ideal, but it helps. I think I need more practice at resuming this. I’ll have to take some more vacations, obviously.

Psychology of Improvement and Progress

2012-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

Last year I had a mole on my leg go bad. It wasn’t cancer, yet. That was still a couple years away. It was, however, needing to be taken out. Then more needed taken out. Now I have a quarter size hole in my leg. It’s a sizable scar.

I wasn’t done, though. My dermatologist said that I needed screenings every 6 months. Early detection is key. The alternative is cancer growing, and growing fast. That’s pretty frightening.

What happened next surprised me. The subsequent screenings were a typical pattern of some suspicious looking mole being removed, and then a biopsy with either bad or good news. However, the psychology was consistent and unexpected.

2 weeks before the appointment I started to feel some anxiety. 1 week before the appointment I started to feel something very different.

Nonchalantly, I stopped believing.

The prevailing feeling was that it was all unnecessary. I didn’t think everything was fine, just that it wasn’t necessary. I didn’t want to go through with it because I could feel myself, by the hour, convincing myself more and more that I was ok. Everything was ok.

I think I was, and still am, scared of the consequences. Rather than be honest about it, my brain lies to me. It tells me everything is ok and I believe it. I don’t have much option, it’s my brain after all.

Logically I knew it was wrong but the feeling remained.

We lie to ourselves to stay safe.

I didn’t realize this, but it’s true. I’m going to tell another story, this one is a bit more inflammatory.

I was standing around waiting for my luggage to drop into the carousel. A distinctly overweight guy runs up, grabs his bag and waddles off. Next to me I hear a very distinctly white trash voice exclaim, “Ha! Look at that fat ass!”

I look over. I blink. The guy was at least, quite possibly more, overweight as the one he was ridiculing. I blinked again.

His brain was obviously lying to him. He looked the very essence of unhealthy lifestyle. I would imagine he finishes, and probably starts, every meal with at least 3 beers. It exuded out of him.

He thought he was healthy. His brain convinced him that he was fine, his lifestyle was ok.

We are never as good, or as bad, as we think.

It works both ways I think. My fears and worries about myself that I try to keep tucked away are probably not as bad as I think them to be. If they were, I would be divorced and everybody would hate me. I really worry about that.

In the reality, it’s somewhere in the middle. I like to think I’m healthy. I can even compare myself to many other people and say, ”I’m healthier than them!”

Except comparisons don’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you are healthier, happier, skinnier, more beautiful or the opposite. What matters is that you are you.

If I’m not living a life I’m happy with and able to achieve all of my goals, I’ve failed. Comparisons don’t matter. Two broken down cars don’t get to argue over who has the least rust.

Stay healthy and happy in comparison to the you of yesterday, not your neighbor. Focus on what you need to do, not what other people are doing.

Track your progress. Cut out soda and mark down every day you go without it. See how well you do, it’s probably not as good as you think. But over time, it will be as good as you think you are and you will be better.

It all changes now!

2012-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

For the past few years I’ve been putting aside money. At one point, we had quite a bit of money set aside. Then I decided I couldn’t handle living where we did, and I wanted to move. That was an expensive decision. At that point we had lost 20% off the value of what we owed on our house. Sanity has no price tag.

It was a great move. We love living here and we love our house. I started saving up more money and I have mostly made up the gap.

I always had a reason to set this money aside. It wasn’t to buy a nice car or even to put my kids through college. It was for this moment. Not to say I don’t want a Lotus Evora, but that can come later.

I did it for one moment, and that moment came today.

I’m independent, mostly, as of right now.

I turned in notice today. I resigned from a great company. It doesn’t make sense to do it, but dreams hardly ever make sense. That’s what makes them so spectacular.

While I’m chasing this dream, I am prepared. I’ve been setting out goals for this to happen and it’s been years in the making.

Most importantly, I’m not alone in this. I have a fantastic network of people who encourage me in various ways.

Without those people supporting me I wouldn’t be able to do this.

It may be rash, but it feels right.

I don’t think very many people are willing or able to understand what compels someone to make this decision. It’s a rash decision but it feels necessary. As of right now, I think I am simply too distracted by other things to even be a good employee. It’s not fair to be a bad employee, so I shouldn’t be an employee.

What’s next:

My primary focus will be working on TDP. Using the application has resulted in huge gains in productivity and ability.

I believe this is a fantastic application and it has a growing community. While I’m not making money on it, I have ideas that could do that. It’s worth exploring.

I have a big feature list I want to plow through. Most notably, I really need to:

Add unbroken streaks and leader boards. Competition is good.
A great mobile view and app container.
Better group support.
See popular goals and search for them, and better categorization of the goals.

I’m excited for this and for the future. While the situation is scary, I’m not scared. I’m at peace and I’m energized. That’s how I know it was the right decision.

Why I do what I do.

2012-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

There has been a lot of controversy in the software world. Lately, most of it is towards gender-bias and clear cut sexism. All the controversy is (mostly) irrelevant to the point I want to write about.

The side-effect of reading about such controversy is that it makes me think about what I do for a living. My upbringing was certainly not atypical, but it was probably less common for a software developer.

During my youth every adult hated their job. If they didn’t vocally hate it they still all complained. The only single exception I encountered was a guy who, I think, did electrical engineering. He never complained.

Then, I met a programmer.

I clearly remember when I first started to see exactly what programming was. It was very interesting and I was excited by how much control I could exert over a system. And this was just in BASIC.

At the local college, which I hung out at far too often, I met a guy who worked in the records department. He wrote software for them. Mostly just file transformation; by today’s standards his job was completely mundane but it was amazing to me. He loved his job, too.

I would stop into his office and he would show me silly programs. Things that would animate a cow walking across the screen. Different file tricks. I was amazed. Years later I would realize I was really amazed at how much fun he had at work. I wanted that.

Then, I was a programmer.

From that point forward it was my ambition to become a programmer. I had no money. Going to college was going to be a challenge but things were changing. In 1995, software was really exploding. It was possible I wouldn’t need a 4 year degree to do this.

So I started working on it. Every job I had I thought of software to make it better. This was hard when I worked at a restaurant, but I still thought about it. I think I nearly got fired at one of my first jobs for constantly pushing little programs I wrote. And, of course, not actually doing what I was supposed to do.

Eventually I made it. I was in the software industry. My inexperience was masked by my bold immaturity and confidence. I fooled enough people into hiring me and learned as I went. I even did pretty well.

Somewhere it became a job.

I met a guy who was a software developer for 10 years. Then a manager for 10 years. At the time he was a VP and doing well. He drove a fancy car. He didn’t love his job, though. It was pretty apparent. He said he loved programming.

From that point I worried I would be like that. I would get a great paycheck, drive a great sports car and hate what I do. Probably with an envious glare I would watch the young kids write their fancy code. I would then going home, feeling frustrated.

Right then, abruptly and magically, it all became a job. As soon as I saw this the mystique of what I did wore away. It became a job. I realized I’m either marching towards obsolescence or a job I won’t love.

But wait, maybe I will.

Back then I was really harsh about such a fate. Unjustly so, even. Now that I’m on the cusp of that life I don’t think it’s so bad. I’ve realized that what I really love doing is solving problems.

I love to produce things. I love to see people happy with that product. I don’t think it matters if I’m doing the work, as long as I’m happy with the outcome.

That’s what I really love, and software is simply a means to an end.

Being positive reaps benefits.

2012-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

Recently my son has picked up being negative. It’s an odd experience, because by nature he’s an optimist. I know he is just trying it on, much like clothes. Seeing what fits, what he likes. It will pass.

I have a singular difficulty in explaining to him the benefits of being positive. Being disrespectful or insulting is easy; he understands feelings and how people can hurt them.

Why bother being positive?

The first time he asked me about being positive, and using positive words or thinking about the good and not the bad, I don’t know if I answered well. After a few more times, I think I had a much better answer. It’s very simple.

Would you rather feel happy or sad?

Unfortunately it’s far too easy to slip into a bad habit of being pessimistic. We often times feel negative or simply look down upon things. It’s a lot easier to be this way, which puzzles me. What is it in our genetic makeup that makes us all natural pessimists? It has no benefit.

Just browsing the Internet briefly will yield a trove of disdain and condescension. It’s tragic.

The habit is the challenge.

Explaining a habit is also easy. The Berenstain Bears have taken care of that, thankfully. But a habit of being negative is a level of complexity that most people, child or adult, fail to properly consider. Certainly not to the depth required.

I find that I can put a simple test for myself when I’m thinking about something. I try to remember to ask myself this anytime I’m really thinking about something. It’s an expression I picked up from watching Once Upon a Time in Mexico:

Are you a Mexi_can_ or a Mexi_can’t_?

I also use this with (against?) my wife often when I notice that she is being negative. Regrettably now that I having kids I’ve had to stop saying this. I don’t want them to misunderstand the expression and say it in the wrong context (which, honestly, is probably any context).

I really like the feeling of the expression of just do it. If there is no reason, don’t fabricate one. Be positive. Don’t sabotage an experience. This surprisingly doesn’t come natural and I struggle to enforce the behavior. The right behavior can bring in a lot of related good experiences to what otherwise wouldn’t exist.

Complaining has no value.

I try very hard to temper any negative expression. It’s been very, very hard. I may even have a reputation as a hater, but really I am attempting to be a critic. I think it’s perfectly ok to say something negative as long as it is productive. This is not complaining, it’s critiquing.

I want my kids to have this trait. I want myself to have this trait. I want to spread positivity by pointing out the great things. More importantly, I want to simply ignore the mundane and the not fun parts of what otherwise would be a great experience.

It’s hard to build this habit. I’ve had far too many years being overly negative without adding value. I need to not complain but to critique. I need to be positive and clearly lay out the things I think are good. Then maybe my kids can have this trait, because they’ll get it from watching me.

Success is who you know. Maybe.

2012-03-10T00:00:00+00:00

I think we’ve all heard commentary about people being in positions because of who they know, or worse, who they’re sleeping with.

To some degree, I think this is all very, very true. It is important.

It is who you know.

I’m not a very social person. I don’t go to social gatherings, even though I should. I don’t really like to go out. I try hard to enjoy myself when I’m out. But even after I’ve had a good time, I find myself not really eager to go out again.

This doesn’t do well for me and my goals, because I really believe that a big part of achieving my goals is to enlist the support and help of those around me. Steve Jobs wouldn’t have made it anywhere if he didn’t have the people around him helping him out. Same with Bill Gates, but also the same for the VP of any company. It’s not just the celebrities; it’s everybody.

We are only as capable as the people we rely on. That’s tough, especially if you don’t rely on many people.

Effort is required.

I need to figure this out I think. There are some people who are very valuable to work with, the people everybody wants to be involved with. Obviously being involved with them is desirable, but there is a lot of competition.

It’s also important to be able to recognize the people who really will work with you. I think a lot of people will make an introduction or two, even talk about some work but nothing comes out of it. It takes study to figure out how that will ultimately plan out. My golden rule is expect to be treated the same as someone treats others.

Simply knowing the person isn’t enough, I have to work to cultivate a good relationship. I also must be careful to watch how they treat others and expect to be treated, at some point, in the same fashion.

Someone who is very generous may not be generous towards me now, but I expect in the future that things may change. Conversely, if they’re manipulative and screw someone over, I must be defensive.

Also, I expect them to watch me as well. If my contributions slip or if I become a drain, I would want them to cut me off. I would certainly cut someone off who was merely a leach.

Knowing someone won’t keep you elevated.

Because just knowing them isn’t enough I can never coast. In fact, I think I must work harder. I firmly believe that the only way to improve in anything is to compete against those who are better than you. Whether it is chess or life, the thing is the same.

When I meet someone who has some trait or is in a position I admire, I visualize why. What do I think they would do in a situation. Why would they do that? What type of experience do they have that helps them decide. It’s a lot of thinking but it pays off.

In the end, it could be that through years of study and being surrounded by those who I admire and inspire me, I can inspire others. That’s obviously my goal. When I am turning 60, I hope to be able to inspire a group of young entrepreneurs and innovators, helping to fuel the unstoppable engines of their progress.

Practice Failing.

2012-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

My wife feels a lot of anxiety. Pretty much anything new will set of a series of thoughts that inevitably cause her a great deal of anxiety. In this time, she’s preoccupied and edgy. I can’t imagine it’s pleasurable. We’ve been working on breaking down the anxiety and what leads to it, but we have a ways to go.

Ultimately, what happens is that she gets hung up on the idea of failure. Instead of thinking of actual failures, she thinks of the consequences of failure. This is an important distinction.

Failing takes practice.

When I think of failure, I think about exactly what part is preventing me from reaching my goal. Instead, my wife thinks about the consequences of that failure. That unfairly raises the risk assessment of achieving the goal.

If you artificially increase the risk of failing to achieve a goal, the value of the goal is decreased. That is certainly something to feel anxiety about.

It’s hard to think about failing, visualize it and then move on to another strategy. It’s even harder to really understand why something didn’t succeed. Far too many people attribute failure (and success) to luck.

True luck is about being observant, which means you observe why things fail or succeed. The specific things that contribute to the outcome and ignoring those that don’t.

Failing is like reading.

Because of this, you start out rough. I know when I started out failing I had a hard time of it. It was big and it was messy. I made a lot of big mistakes, but I learned.

Every night I think about the day. Mainly I try to answer two questions:

What did I accomplish today?
What could I have done better?

I remember being started as a young adult and asking myself this. The answers were usually depressing. It was so tempted to answer #2 with, “Everything”.

Watching my son read is kind of like that. There are so many words he doesn’t know. So many words he can’t quite sound out. He struggles and makes mistakes, evaluating and constantly revising his reading knowledge.

This is exactly like learning how to fail. You have to do it and you have to do it out loud. Eventually it comes easier, even when you don’t really know what you’re trying to do. More importantly, I’ve also learned where to look for answers.

Learning the best lessons.

Learning how to get the best answers is a challenge. I have to stop and think hard about the outcome. I imagine what would be different as I change little things.

More importantly I think it’s helpful to talk about it. Even if I’m talking to myself. It goes back to learning to read, it’s easier to sound out the failures.

I don’t want to ever feel embarrassed over saying a stupid thing aloud. Sometimes it just happens. It means that I’m still growing and improving. I believe that not growing and expanding out to fulfill my potential is the only true failure.

Value in the eye of the beholder.

2012-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

The other day I met someone who was very, very confident. It spilled out of her without control, effusively dominating all aspects of our interaction. It was tiring. She had no value that I could perceive; certainly nothing that I value.

So I left, there was no entertaining conversation, no relevant knowledge to share. It was just a complete loss. Then I wondered if I was that way. I wondered even if I wasn’t, how can I better control and influence how other people perceive me.

First impression is only the first step.

Growing up everybody told me to put my best foot forward. First impressions last. Snap judgements are a part of life. All these things. I think that’s true, but really, that’s only part of it.

In any encounter, without my reputation preceding me, the other person should come away understanding my value. This means I need to highlight and advertise. This is also why people buy expensive suits. They want to be seen as valuable, as their clothing is valuable.

Real value is a lot deeper and harder to advertise and demonstrate. I have a very brief window to show, “Yes, you want to know me.” I really want people to want to have my email address. To want to have my phone number. To want to know that if they need technical knowledge, I’m the one to call.

It’s hard, though. I don’t know how to best accomplish this.

Nobody pays attention to a show-off.

If I constantly spout my knowledge, especially unsolicited, nobody will want to talk to me. There is a fine balance to this, and I’m certainly not sure I have it even close to right.

First, I think I must always listen to what the other person wants or needs to talk about. I then need to know the detail in which to answer. These things are hard.

To simplify the process, I wanted to come up with a list of a few categories of things that I want to make an impression on. I thought of it like shopping for a car.

When I look at a car, I look at many technical aspects. Styling comes fairly low down the list. For my wife, it’s not. Styling, comfort and luxury are for her. That’s ok. We all look for different things.

Much like there are luxury and sports cars, different people specialize in certain things. So what’s my specialty? Absolutely I’m utilitarian. I want to advertise this, so how?

Be able to adapt my answers to the audience.
Answer confidently, but only when I am confident. No BS.
Engage in debate when necessary and be always prepared.

I think if I focus on those three points, I’ll do well advertising exactly what I want to advertise. The people who value those traits will value me. Those who don’t will acknowledge the build quality and perhaps just introduce me to people who value those traits.

In any case, I think it’s a net win. Now I need to think how I can adapt my life practice to enhance these traits.

Be a master of your craft.

2012-02-29T00:00:00+00:00

My son is struggling with reading now. He just doesn’t practice. He doesn’t really want to practice but he desperately wants to read. He starts gets frustrated at the first hard word and gives up.

It’s a hard thing to explain to him about practice. Why must we practice and why we must never stop. He finally got it the other day while I was reading.

He came up to me and said, “Dad, how can you read without using your words?” I explained that with practice that happens. But more importantly, I told him that there were words I didn’t know. Words I had to look up (eschatological, as a recent example.) It wasn’t a big deal to not know a word. It’s ok to not know all the words as long as you keep practicing and know how to get answers.

Knowing how to get answers is a learned trait.

We all have to learn how to learn. It doesn’t come naturally and it certainly used to be hard. Not really any more. Now it’s easy. We have access to the Internet, in all its glory. I can be an expert on any subject in the world.

I can read about it on Wikipedia, take classes through the Kahn Academy or even MIT. There is no subject I could not desire to master and not have the means. That’s a surreal experience.

Except very few people know how to accomplish it.

Enter the help vampire.

In the tech world, there is an old concept of a help vampire. I’m not sure if this carries over into other sectors, but I’m sure there are similar categories of people.

People who rely on others to spoon feed knowledge (or even better, solutions) to them. This always worries me, especially in skilled labor positions. We have a craft, we should excel in our crafts and care deeply about it.

We should practice and study, finding new ways to succeed. Unfortunately, this is not typical. That’s ok and a story for another day.

Master your craft, then master it again.

That different level of expertise I have with computers in comparison with the average person is wide. It’s not a fair comparison; and it certainly does not carry over to a pool which is filled only with software developers. Once I’m in that group, I feel I just barely scrape by as an average developer. That pushes me to continue to study techniques, focus on what’s happening around me and learn.

If I didn’t compare myself to those I should (software developers), I wouldn’t improve. I would think I’m awesome and stagnate.

You only improve by playing against a stronger opponent.

Losing and failing is awesome. Being weak and needing to be spoon-fed is not.

That’s what we need to teach and teach it well. I really hope I can teach my son that, because right now he hates failure.

How I plan to be amazing.

2012-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

I don’t watch TV. This isn’t a superiority holier-than-thou thing. I wouldn’t mind watching TV. It just gets in the way of things I want to do more. I’ll watch some things while I have mundane tasks to accomplish; movies playing in the background and I am only half-way paying attention.

The only thing on TV I’ll set aside time for is watching a nice game of soccer. I still work while I watch it. Can’t help myself.

I wake up at 5am every day, even on the weekends. I feel better doing this. It also means I go to sleep at the same time, even on the weekends. My mind works better and I simply feel better when I know, precisely, what time to wake or sleep.

Everything else in my day is scheduled. I really, really like this. I have blocks of time I use to get things done.

This was inspired by reading about Benjamin Franklin’s daily schedule. It’s a wonderful, simple thing:

There are two important things:

What good will I do today?
What good have I done today?

I absolutely love this and adhere to some degree to this schedule. I didn’t start to do it consciously. It fit something I was already doing and helped me formalize it.

In contrast with working long hours.

It is especially noteworthy how much Benjamin Franklin managed to accomplish while still sleeping for 7 hours each night. His only real work was constrained to 2 4 hour blocks. The rest was in contemplation and planning.

I bet Benjamin Franklin wasn’t really stressed out.

I was reading about Lyndon B. Johnson, who was said to have worked 18-20 hour days. He was indefatigable. Right until he had a massive heart attack and lived the rest of his life in pain, with failing health until another heart attack did him in. He was stressed out.

Both men did a lot, but I don’t want to be LBJ (I certainly don’t want to send kids off to die). I don’t want to be high strung and wound up.

I want to be relaxed. I want to be structured. I want to be stress free. I want to be like Benjamin Franklin.

Words mean things.

2012-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

I told my wife that I was surprised how many parents don’t sacrifice their happiness for their kids. She was surprised at what I said and we discussed it further. I had to admit that my wording was melodramatic.

What I really meant was that parents will often times choose their own happiness over family obligations. Maybe it’s just having a beer and ignoring their kids after a hard day at work. Usually it’s something minor.

When I want to go do something and don’t because I need to do something for the family, I’m sacrificing my happiness. It may just be for 5 minutes, but it’s a sacrifice. The way I phrased it made my wife think I meant something more meaningful. Oops.

The thing is that I meant exactly what I said, just much smaller. Saying “sacrifice” brings a lot of meaning and size with it. Context matters, but still the word is packed with meaning. Lots of words are packed with meaning.

People do not wield the power of meaning correctly.

I often encounter people who say something intending to be polite while the recipient ends up receiving the message incorrectly. It’s politicking and it’s a problem.

However, it’s an admirable problem. It’s a problem because people genuinely want other people to feel happy and secure. I have to constantly balance what I say with the interpretation of the other person. I speak very directly and often times without emotion. The associated meaning of someone talking flatly, without emotion is that they’re upset.

So I speak with emotion, or try to. Intensity usually blends in. Then people think I’m angry. At least for a little bit, then they get to know me and either think I’m always angry or that’s just the way I am.

In any case, we learn to communicate and I have to adapt the way I talk to the audience. It’s the only way to ensure my message is delivered. That is what counts, that is why we talk. Delivery of the message. Never forget that when talking to other people.

The biggest danger is when people think unspoken rules are understood. Or even known about.

The Second Rule of Miscommunication is wondering what rules.

A few months ago I was away from the house, and I call home to talk to the family. I had a very rude reception because my wife found a bug in the house. Not just any bug, her least favorite bug. I maintain a 3 month schedule of spraying insecticide down and it keeps the bugs out. Except for the last few weeks, a straggler or two may make it through and die on our kitchen floor.

I didn’t understand why I was being blamed for it. I maintained my schedule that we had both agreed upon. However, before my trip she casually mentioned, “I better not see any bugs while you’re gone!”

In her mind, the delivery of her message was complete. What she was really saying was, “It’s been a while and I think it’s maybe rained, so if you could spray before you go I’d feel better!” She didn’t say that, and what I heard I thought was a joke about her anxiety.

She was very, very unhappy about the bug. We sent it out to jury to see who was in the right, and it was ruled mostly in my favor. Purely because of the expectations of understanding were on her, not on me. She needed to make sure I understood her message. I didn’t, not my fault.

The two prongs of miscommunication.

Incorrectly applied politeness is easier to detect if you’re observant and not the type to take advantage of others. It can be handled by the recipient easier. Missing veiled messages is a lot harder, especially when people have a sense of humor. It’s the difference between saying what you want wrapped in wonderful, happy words versus not saying what you want and leaving a step of indirect inference on the part of the listener.

In addition to gentle nudges being indiscernible from jokes, missing these can make one look foolish. The other party thinking, “Geez, can’t this guy take a hint?”

Really, I can’t. I shouldn’t have to. Deliver your message in a clearly addressed envelope. Watch me open it. Make sure I read it. Then you can move on.

Today I had a sales guy come into my home and miss very obvious “Not Interested in your Swim Group, Church or you hints.” Thank him for this writing, and for my wife finding a bug in mid-August of 2011.

The carrot and the stick of stereotypes.

2012-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

My wife constantly surprises me. I always find myself learning new things. Not just about her, but about life in general. Recently, I was surprised by her reaction when I relayed a quote I saw on Twitter that amused me:

Overheard in yoga: there’s NOTHING you will ever be able to do in yoga that a young Asian girl can’t do better.

From James Altucher

Since my wife is (relatively) young, Asian, does yoga and is in shape I thought she would appreciate this. She didn’t. She immediately starting explaining why it’s so annoying.

Peer pressure sucks.

My wife has never been very flexible. When she says this, people automatically append a disclaimer. What they hear, instead, is ”I’m not very flexible for an Asian.” Well, I don’t know if this is what they hear, we just assume. I still believe that all Asians are ninjas. It does seem this is standard from the responses and reactions from other people.

And now she is always under pressure to live up to this reputation; she must always honor the disclaimer. I never, ever thought about this from her perspective. Just by the virtue of what we are born as, expectations are set for us. That part I got, but I never thought about feeling obligated to meet those expectations.

Escaping is failure.

I don’t know if this is a problem. Unless, of course, you’re Irish and trying to live up to the expectations of being drunk. That’s probably not too good for you.

Whatever the predestined expectations, whether it is to be better at math, better at yoga, better at running, you either meet the silent expectations or you fall short. Even if it doesn’t come natural (like my wife’s flexibility) there is pressure to preform at predefined levels.

Failing to live up to these standards means people have to make themselves worse. Giving up means not being the best you can be. All because the common cultural zeitgeist thinks you should be able to perform at certain levels.

For my wife, not meeting those expectations is not acceptable. Fortunately she loves doing yoga and yoga has done wonders for her flexibility. Now she can live up to these expectations.

It’s still not fair. I know I’m guilty of assuming people can or should do things based on what they are and not who they are. Even if it’s not inherently harmful, it’s not fair.

I don’t mind this to be a discussion about race, but it could easily be viewed as one. It’s made me rethink how I view and what expectations I subconsciously set for everybody.

Benefits of success.

2012-02-16T00:00:00+00:00

It was a really, really bad night. The software I was writing wasn’t working. My laptop lay dead, its hard drive not working. I wanted to be done and my hard quitting time for the day was approaching rapidly. I really, really wanted to be done. I wanted it to all work. I wanted to leave victorious.

But I wasn’t. It was time. The kids needed their stories read. I had to. Family is the biggest priority for me. After the stories and the kids were in bed I resumed fuming. I wasn’t going to go back to get more work done but I knew my office was a mess.

One of my daily goals is to clean my desk at the end of the day.

I didn’t even want to be in my office. I was just frustrated and wanted to avoid it. I buckled down. I did it. I trudged into my office, and with the happiness and energy of a kid at a candy store I organized. I cleaned.

It was bad. I had screw drivers laying around. Tax papers I pulled out earlier. The bills and other letters from the day. The remnants from paying for our house painting. It was a busy day and I couldn’t even see my desk’s surface.

I devoutly follow a few general rules in life:

Expect others to do to you what they do to others.
Do more today in 5 minutes than I could yesterday in 6 minutes.
Treat any activity as though I love it even when I hate it.

The last item is what this is about. I forced myself into enjoying cleaning. I made myself smile through it. I mean physically forcing myself to smile. It makes it easier to enjoy things you don’t want to do. Smile while you’re bleeding.

So I cleaned and I happily went to bed as soon as everything was put away.

The morning after.

I went to bed and my wife spoiled me with a wonderful foot massage. I slept a deep sleep; it was a sleep of frustration and energy combined. I dreamed of the code that failed me, but I was rested.

I woke up about 40 minutes ahead of my normal time, ready to tackle the day. Ready to fix what had triumphed over me the night before.

I walked into my office and sat down at my chair. I looked at my desk. It was so nice. It was clean. I immediately felt even better. I felt relaxed and serene.

In 30 minutes I fixed the problems I had with the software I was writing and my laptop was happily booting up on its new hard drive.

It was a good day.

I owe a great deal of my inspiration and motivation to my wife. She constantly encourages me and helps me in my efforts to improve. Without her I would have just had a nice, clear spot on my desk to slam my head into.

Star Wars and a 5 year old.

2011-12-28T00:00:00+00:00

My son has been introduced to Star Wars characters very early on through toys. However, the movies were a mystery to him until recently. He doesn’t watch a lot of TV and movies, and when he does he tends to stick with Pixar style movies. I really wasn’t sure if he’d like the movies. A New Hope is filled with so much dialog, I nearly lost him entirely.

What I wasn’t expecting was how informative it would be for me to watch with him. It was a very interesting experience engaging with his psyche as he worked.

Through the movies he asked a lot of questions and made (too) many comments. Some of which were obvious but others really surprised me. Things I hadn’t thought about or just from a different perspective. Now I’m convinced my son has more intuition regarding social dynamics than I do.

While the overall story of the movie was too complex and actually didn’t interest him very much, he was amazed at the world and the general situation about it.

Philosophical Explanations

The idea of Good vs. Evil is easy to understand. The concepts of alliances and nationalism are much harder to explain. My son wanted to know why there were two sides. What were they fighting over? Why would people fight against Darth Vader’s team?

I honestly explained that I didn’t know why. I still don’t know why they’re fighting. The empire is bad, the rebellion is good. I diverted it to tell him that they are like teams. He knows that teams play and “battle” in the course of a game. What makes the Empire bad and the Rebellion good is the actions of the people.

He could understand this. It was made even easier by Darth Vader unceremoniously executing everybody who makes mistakes.

Why is Darth Vader mean to people on his team?

Through the movies, Vader is quite fond of the Mental Choke Hold. And taking out high ranking crew for making minor mistakes. The promotion, and attrition, rate is high in the Imperial military. My son simply wanted to know why. Why would a leader be so mean?

I explained that some people in power are mean, like bullies. He’s aware of bullies already. He then said, “But you shouldn’t get rid of people on your team.” I tried to press for more information but we were moved on to more exciting scenes. I believe he meant that you are weakening yourself.

Up next, when Vader and Skywalker are engaged in battle he was very curious why Vader kept encouraging Luke to join him. Also, my son refuses to call Luke anything but “Skywalker”. Why? Well, that’s what Darth Vader calls him.

Why does he want Skywalker on his team?

I explained that the best way to win is to have the strongest players on your team. It doesn’t help to fight against strong people if they will join you. That just makes your team, and you, stronger.

He responded, “But if I was the strongest, I wouldn’t want anybody on either team!” A bit anarchist, but it makes sense in a world where that’s an option.

There was a lot of additional comments about various strength, and how Yoda can be strong when he seems small and weak. Yoda failed to inspire him at all. Even lifting the X-Wing didn’t get Yoda many points.

I’m pretty sure my son would happily join the Dark Side, just because the Empire has bigger and cooler ships. He seemed to really look at the whole of the organization. I don’t think he cared much about the story but was fixated on the imaginary world. This leads to his final question, which really surprised me.

Is Princess Leia the only Star Wars girl?

I never noticed this. We were half-way through The Empire Strikes Back when he asked this. I stopped and asked him to clarify. He rightly pointed out that, with the exception of Luke’s aunt, there are no other females in the entire story (up to that point).

There aren’t a tremendous amount of characters in the original Star Wars movies, but it does seem only one main, recurring character is a woman. No wonder Leia thinks everybody is trying to hook up with her. Even the extras are mostly men.

When I asked him why he noticed, he said, “Well, there is a lot of fighting and girls don’t like fighting.”

Failing at solved problems, or, identifying bad leaders.

2011-12-11T00:00:00+00:00

It’s been nearly 30 years since Mythical Man Month was published. Yet to this day, inept leadership throughout the world tries to do the same things studied and shown to fail from the book. I am amazed by this.

Bad Leaders make bad products.

The leader of a software product is under tremendous stress. They must deliver, or they must answer for their failures. That’s how they earn their money. When delivery dates start to slip the beads of sweat start to form. Then, one of two things can happen.

The first is that the leader adjusts expectations. They may strip features. Simplify the product. They don’t add more resources. They don’t pressure developers to work faster. Neither works. Go read Mythical Man Month before trying to debate this point.

The second option is really just noise. Lots of it. Yelling at those involved to work harder, work faster. Absurd things are said. Earn the fraction of a fraction of equity. They add resources. Then, the project slips more. They get more angry and the cycle downward continues.

The outcome of the bad leader is a bad product. Pressuring developers to work faster and harder just moves the time to the QA and final stages. If it’s not paid for there, it’s paid for in the final product and with customer good will.

Recognizing a Bad Leader.

I believe bad leaders are fairly easy to spot. I’ve worked for many, many bad leaders. I’ve been promised fantastic wealth (though only a fraction of what they would earn) and a “set career”. When I finally caught on, they yelled and even told me the cliché, “you’ll never work in this town again!” (I went on to make a lot more money immediately).

In retrospect, they have all shared a few things in common.

They don’t listen to ideas that don’t fit their world view. What’s worse, they get angry when presented with ideas that run counter to it. The first sign of a bad leader is someone who only accepts evidence to support their conclusions. If they actively sabotage or ignore contrarian constructive opinions, they are the worst type of bad leader.

They get angry at inevitabilities. When schedules start to slip they get angry; this makes them a bad leader. A good leader shows constructive ways to succeed. Often times this means changing the final product. That’s ok, it means ambition was too high. The bar was too high. It’s better to succeed where you can, than fail and claim success. The product is for the users. If the users hate the product it’s a failure.

Bad Leaders, can they be taught?

I like to think that nobody sets out to be bad. It’s a case of under-education, not people waking up telling themselves they want to be the worst possible at their job without getting fired. That just wouldn’t make sense.

The problem is when ego gets in the way and people believe they know best. Nobody knows best. There is always room to improve and learn. To try new things. To analyze, revisit and approach in fresh new ways. The best leaders are those who are constantly finding weaknesses and mitigating them.

More importantly, they focus on strengths. Focus on strengths to make weaknesses irrelevant. They read books. They talk to other successful leaders. They embrace challenges and constructive opposing views.

Good ideas are created through natural selection.

If an idea is not challenged it can never be better than any other idea. If an idea cannot not be modified to embrace positive changes from counter ideas, it is a weak idea. Ideas grow and evolve through natural selection. A weak idea is killed off, unless kept alive by inept leadership.

Ideas are not conjured up, completely new and untested. Ideas should be grown. Inspected and analyzed, verified and changed in deliberate ways. This makes sure the risk is minimal. The idea slowly gets better.

Ideas become better because they weather countless challenges. It has incorporated additional merits in each debate, growing and changing through time. They don’t get strong because of noise and mandates.

A good idea is not a mandate. If others cannot be convinced of its merit, it’s entirely likely it is meritless. If people get angry about this I find they simply resist learning new methods.

Thus, we come to the final trait of a bad leader. Bad ideas are maintained because that’s the way things have always been done. Familiarity is not a reason, it’s an excuse.

Thoughts on Google.

2011-12-08T00:00:00+00:00

I don’t really fault Google. They need to monetize. There needs to be a push for a cohesive product offering.

Google is a company built through acquisitions, both talent and technology. It’s invariably going to be disjointed. There will be many leaders and few followers. What we’re seeing now is an inevitability.

Last night my wife sits down to check her email and recoils back. “What happened?” she asks. The obnoxious “New Look” dialog box startled her. It’s an entirely reasonable reaction to think the service or your account had been hacked or fallen victim to a virus. It was a bad experience for her.

As technology experts we berate users who don’t pay attention and fall victim to phishing scams then surprise them with new and obnoxious warnings to get their attention. We should do better.

Now there is a new danger in using Google and GMail for our apps. We are at their upgrade mercy. It’s a catch-22. Even very well-built commercial services for email don’t offer the same convenience that Google has given us. I would have happily paid Google money to not mess with my email experience. Just like, you know, a real app. I choose the upgrade path.

Unfortunately, what has been forced upon me is a bad situation. I have the same mediocre experience between GMail, Google Plus and YouTube. Without anything I’ve done, though. I had a separate YouTube account and now automatically it’s connected to my Google+ account. It looks and functions differently. I didn’t ask for this upgrade.

There were a lot of changes forced upon me. I don’t like this. This is the inherent danger of web/hosted applications (really, any application you don’t own a license to). Microsoft can’t make me upgrade from XP to Vista to Win7. They can certainly stop supporting XP. That’s their privilege, but they cannot upgrade the software I want to use without my consent and my activity.

Now I’m taking a really long look at any other hosted application and wanting to separate myself from them. I don’t want to be upgraded to a different experience. I’m happy to try it, but do not force an upgrade on me that suits a business case but not my case.

I largely missed the Google Reader fiasco because I discovered Reeder. That was great. I would have even missed GMail, since I mostly use Postbox. However, the fact it is all coming together between every service without my consent means I can’t simply ignore the upgrade. I have no choice.

I’m getting no benefit that I want and am instead forced to deal with changes I didn’t ask for. This is putting Google squarely in the evil category and I feel I should just find alternatives. I already have given up on Google+, should I also give up on GMail?

Don't ship it. Please.

2011-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

Over five years ago, Jeff Atwood wrote Fail Early, Fail Often. Since that time I’ve seen two wildly different interpretations manifest themselves. From application developers and from VCs pushing products two strategies have seemingly been developed.

Two Strategies: One is right.

The first is the tried and true method of failing early. To take an idea, quickly build a product that conveys the idea and samples the market. The best example of this is the first generation iPod. There were plenty of music players, but having a hard disk was still largely untested. Apple stuck with what they already knew (Firewire, etc) where they could. The first product was very, very simple. It only served to test the idea. The product worked, though. That’s what matters. It may only cover 25% of the possible features, but with 100% completion.

The second strategy is a very different approach. It seems that in the last 5 years this is also the more common approach. It’s a “Quick to market” push that is misguided. Actually, it’s just bad. The strategy of covering as close to 100% of the possibilities but only with 25% completion is wrong. Navigating and using these products is like the Winchester Mystery House. There are stairwells right into walls. It’s maddening.

However, I understand. I know why it happens. Entrepreneurs are vigorous in their pursuit of a goal. It’s very difficult to look into the future. The idea seems so concrete at the start, but as the features near completion, new ideas and thoughts rise up. The pursuit of the new and noteworthy outweighs completion.

Define failure.

I believe that Jeff Atwood has it right when he says to focus on the failures. T biggest repeating failure in my own endeavors is my own ambition. I want, desperately so, to build grand products. I’m just one person. That can’t happen.

If I have people working for me then I can delegate completion. This only works if I can trust the developers to execute the vision I have. The last mile is the most important. Even great developers sometimes struggle to match up on a vision. Especially the young, ambitious developers that are attracted to developing new products. They want to solve problems.

Trying to cap the inevitable feature creep is a mighty challenge. By the time the real problem has been solved the enthusiasm wanes for the product. The real work then begins to build the product; a solved problem is not a product.

It’s far too easy to confuse a solved problem with a product. This is the source of many product failures. They deliver the solved problem but not a product. A product is the decoration, the experience. People, at worst, worked around the problem previously. Never forget that. Until a product is entrenched within the masses, it is always optional.

Measure failure.

A specific function of a marketing team is to be able to describe and measure the success and impact of a marketing campaign. At least the good teams, that is. They are able to determine if changes result in a positive outcome. They test ideas with statistics and information gathering. I wish application developers could do this, too.

I’ve heard and seen a confusion between success and failure countless times. Not just from young startups but from established companies old enough to know better.

Tablets vs. the iPad are a good example of this . Are tablets a good idea? The iPad would answer a resounding yes. However, the Blackberry Playbook and HP Touchpad have been abysmal failures. Even other Android tablets have failed to sell in any competitive quantity. Are tablets then a bad idea?

What exactly are people measuring? In order to measure the merits of an idea, the product must do the following:

Clearly and distinctly solve the core problem.
Offer a solution that is easier (or better) than the previous way of doing things.
Not fail.
Be better or cheaper than alternatives (See #2)

A failing product frustrates a user and removes them from wanting to use it. This in no way tests the idea. Likewise, a product that makes life more difficult with it than without, isn’t testing the idea. It’s testing the patience of the user, not the idea.

What actually failed?

So, assuming you can measure the success of the idea itself and not the perseverance of your users, you’re on the right track.

In the case of failure the most valuable lessons can be learned. Hopefully not much was invested and you failed early.

If there is certainty the idea is what failed, migrate the lessons. Evolve the idea or simply move on. Engage with the users.

Proving the wrong thing isn’t helpful.

But if the users aren’t talking about the idea but the product, the idea probably wasn’t tested that well. Unless they say the product is awesome, in which case congratulations.

But please, avoid the early release of a product with broken features. Remove the features entirely.

As I get more experience building products I’ve started to realize something. You don’t release with many features. In fact, the first release should strip away everything but the essential features. Then those features should be flawless.

If a product is released with a dozen features but they are built for seemingly the sole purpose of delivering misery, the product and the idea are unfairly persecuted. However, a product with one feature that operates well will develop a loyal and outspoken following.

The users will know their excitement will translate towards future greatness. Greatness happens through years of evolution, not months of furious and haphazard work.

Do your idea, your product and your users a favor. Strip out everything but the essentials. Use them day in and day out. Attack bugs and bad user experience with indefatigable commitment. Until then, don’t ship it. Please.

What has inspired me to write this is my frustration with the Amazon Kindle Fire. At the price point it has an amazing feature list. Unfortunately it’s maddening to use. I have yet to use it without getting frustrated.

Starting a new tradition.

2011-11-25T00:00:00+00:00

I am not a fan of holidays. I don’t really want to dislike them. I’m just not excited. I want my kids to grow up with fond memories of holidays and have an excitement even when they’re older. Leading up to this Christmas, I thought for a long time on how to do this.

But first, an introduction.

Growing up, to fund our Christmas and ski trips, we would make swags. They’re like wreaths, but no holes. We went up into the hills, cut off boughs from trees, loaded them up and spent the next several weeks making them. We got a portion of the sales, plus we also got to go to the ski hill. That is really my memory of Christmas. It wasn’t about Christmas at all.

I look back on that with fondness. It was great to do. We sold them at the bazaars and just around. I learned how to tie ribbons into nice bows, a skill I’ve completely let languish. I wouldn’t want to do it again, but I enjoy looking back on the memory.

Building memories is about repeating memories.

We did this for some unknown number of years. I could ask my mom, but why bother? Every year has blended into one continuous lump of what Christmas was to me growing up. I don’t mind.

The constant, repetitious nature that defined what Christmas was made it something special. I knew what to expect. For a kid, that’s important. It made me feel very secure.

In order to continue doing something every year, I think I need to enjoy it (or do it out of necessity). So I thought about what are the things I would like. Then it came to me.

Building an ever-growing Lego village.

I loved Legos as a child, and as a grown-up the memories have only increased in fondness. The kids also like them. Last Christmas, a neighbor had a train running around their Christmas tree.

This is all coming together.

This year, the day after Thanksgiving, we open up the Emerald Night. 1085 pieces of Lego glory. The first of many sets to come to build a winter village beneath our tree.

It was great to do this. The kids love it and drive it on a pathetically tiny track (I’ve ordered 2 more track sets). I think every year it will be more exciting, as they know there will be some new set they can add into the village.

Every year we will do this. Every year it will grow. Every year my kids will look at it as a Christmas tradition. I know that there will be a time when they’re older and don’t want to. They may even hate the idea of Legos. I hope not, but I can’t control how my kids will be in their teenage years.

I can only try to point them in the right direction. In any case, I’m thankful for my family. They’re awesome.

Temporarily Embarrassed Googles.

2011-11-20T00:00:00+00:00

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

Steinbeck said that. It definitely starts a conversation up. I don’t want to talk about politics. I want to talk about products.

But first, a metaphor.

In the quote above, my mind naturally shifts it to things I do care about. In this case I find it easier to read it as:

Great products are so rare because companies see themselves not as producers of mediocrity, but as temporarily embarrassed Googles.

Now that I’ve fixed that up, I can move on. It seems the vast majority of startups have a mentality that their product needs to scale before it even functions. They build it to support a million users a day before it even has a thousand. They do this at the expense of building great products.

Build Beautiful Products

Beauty is subjective, but functional beauty can be measured. Does the product always work? When it doesn’t work, does it fail gracefully? These are important traits. They make users happy and are happy (well, happier) to put up with the inevitable failures. They come back. They evangelize.

In the early stages of a product a lot of energy is spent. The nurturing of a young idea, gently formulating a plan and getting users. These are all very fragile steps. Spending time planning out what the product will span before the product is in use takes very valuable energy away from the steps that need to be done to build a beautiful product.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about a product and making intentional long-term sacrifices. I use Twitter as an excuse. Twitter has rebuilt everything several times now. It’s ok. A system that is modular enough to be replaced is still hard to build, though.

It’s easier to take a solid, well built but simple product and make it modular than it is to design a modular, scalable product. That takes hard work. It’s not worth it until you need it.

It may turn out that those wonderful scalable features aren’t even necessary by the time you need them. I think that’s the more likely scenario.

Judge yourself fairly

I also think the scaling focus is a crutch. It’s too easy to excuse bad behavior because a software product runs against a document database that is geographically diverse. That’s all wrong.

The product, to the user, is simple. It’s the tip of the iceberg. Except the product cannot sink ships. Not very fair, but that’s life.

If a user experience ends up with ships sinking because of features behind the scene, the product deserves to fail. Users judge this harshly, and they should.

Focus on the right customers.

To get around this it’s all about focus. First and foremost, I believe you have to either user your products yourself or be strongly tied to the early customers. Get constant feedback. Make sure the customers are happy.

Make sure you are happy with the product. If you aren’t using the product yourself that’s harder, but still possible. Fake like you are using it.

I can name more CxOs that never just use whatever product they offer. They trust it works and assume it does. They delegate that. I’m a fan of delegation, but not for using and being an expert of your own product.

If I can’t judge my own product to be a success, how can I expect to satisfy a customer?

Being Content

2011-11-16T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve climbed to the summit of a proper mountain once in my life. It was an enjoyable experience and I’d like to do it again. I sat at the top for a fraction of the time it took to get there. Then I had to descend. It didn’t make sense to sit on the top of my mountain peak any further.

What’s after the summit?

When we’re children, we think of 10 professions a day and want to be each one. We rule out the bad ones and keep the good ones. Life is simple back then.

When I was a kid I would write out on notecards various things of intrigue. Usually it was professions. I wrote a little summary about that job, what it entailed and as I was older what was required. The magic faded away.

I always wanted to build something. Software was easy and convenient for me. I didn’t need materials. I didn’t need a formal education or certifications. I’ve continued on this path since I made that decision and enjoyed it.

Envy for those off the path.

I’m not exactly where I want to be in life. Plenty of other people are. Some even at young ages. They’re doing what they want. I envy them. I haven’t made it there (hopefully just not yet). Even with envy, I doubt many of them are more content.

I must wonder what’s next for them? If someone’s ambition was to just escape a cubicle farm and do so, does their content and the freedom they created create happiness in themselves and others? Are they really happy? Do they want more?

Leaving a corporate job is not, on its own, disruptive. It can be very, very good for certain people (like myself). However, if someone like myself craves creating a disruptive product, and is still unable to, there is no happiness. An environment that fosters a disruptive product’s creation is required. Without that there is no happiness. It’s not unhappiness or discontent, just a lack of happiness. At best, it’s being content.

Is being content enough?

Being a cog in a machine is unpleasant. For a motivated individual it’s impossible to be content in that environment. Being outside of the corporate machine, however, brings positive feelings. The warm embrace of simply being content. It’s not happiness, though.

Much like I envy those who have stood on their own, created their own empires and built their own jobs, I also envy people who are happy just being content. I’m not. I want more.

Being content is more dangerous than misery; nobody is apathetic about relieving themselves of misery.

The value of happiness and loyalty.

2011-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

First, the context of this is a consulting agency out in Tennessee that wrote about evaluating job performance and providing immediate feedback and rewards.

The idea is very simple. During a bi-weekly evaluation they earn badges for above-and-beyond. Badges can be redeemed for small monetary rewards. This is a very good idea, and I don’t think it’s incredibly unique.

What are badges really good for?

As an employee, earning a badge must feel good. It probably doesn’t feel as good as the reward though. My cynical side wonders how many repeat earners there are and what the distribution is. If I was offered an incentive to write for my company, I probably would. I enjoy writing.

There are other things they could offer and I wouldn’t do. I don’t enjoy doing them. That’s what makes this great. It’s entirely optional.

I think that by incentivizing employees to voluntarily take part in activities they enjoy, and rewarding them accordingly, you build happiness. You do not build loyalty, though. Loyalty is a different issue.

Happiness ≠ Loyalty

My first thought, not even in words, was this separation. Loyalty and happiness are not the same thing and trying to lump them together will result in failure.

When I was later trying to articulate this thought, I settled on this:

Loyalty is when an employee will not leave their job even when a slightly better offer comes along.
Happiness is when an employee will leave only when the company is better than where they are at.

I think many bosses in the world would appreciate loyalty. It means they wake up and today is the same as yesterday. They can count on employees being there. They may even have fun.

Happiness, however, is a sign of improvement. Happy people are defensive of their happiness. Happy people would only leave to go to a job that is simply better. They would only go to a happier place.

Happy people are worth more.

It obviously hurts when someone goes to a happier place. Those left behind feel a twinge of envy. The bosses panic. How will the shoes be filled?

If you have a good company, it shouldn’t be a problem. There should be happy people looking to find their happier place. Let their happpier place be your happy place.

Lessons from U6 Herding.

2011-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

Coaching started somewhat accidentally. As an avid -football-soccer fan, I obviously wanted my own son to play soccer. He always enjoys watching games with me, at least for 15 minutes.

I register him and shortly after this get a notice that they’re short on coaches. I wait a few days and they still need coaches so volunteer. I wasn’t sure what I was getting into. I was excited. I don’t think I’m particularly good with kids.

I set some goals for being happy at the end of the season. I figured that the biggest obstacle would be parents, and in some ways I was right but in others I was quite wrong.

I came up with a list of 5 things I wanted to accomplish:

Teach the kids the core parts of soccer. Essentially, why it is the beautiful game.
Establish an understanding of teamwork.
Have a lot of fun.
Have the kids looking forward to practice and games.
Increase my own patience.

Magnet Ball is a genetic condition.

In the first game it was evident that some kids are destined to be ball chasers. Whether or not they’re good at it is a separate issue. Other kids avoid the cluster. They catch the rebounds or they simply run away. A few avoid the cluster and have good positioning so they’re helpful when the ball inevitably escapes.

Interestingly, the kids who play magnet ball aren’t always blind to the field. One kid on my team is guilty of magnet ball, but he does a good job of keeping awareness of the field. At our final game he even backed off when another team mate was in a better position and moved off to accept a pass. This made me very happy to see.

It is the beautiful game.

Today was probably the best game. It was the least magnet-ball style play. The other team and ours was aggressive but keeping spread out.

The children were spacing out. Looking for passes. Staying fluid. At our last game of the season, the game being played resembled soccer.

Soccer is a game of balance and dynamics. This is very difficult for 5 and 6 years olds to see. It took a lot of practice with spatial awareness and understanding incremental steps to success (scoring a goal).

The first player to get this was (can I have favorites?) a shy girl who avoided magnet ball as much as possible. She still had very good spatial awareness, though. She asked about the cluster of people. I said to go around, to run down the line. She did so. She even ran down the side and passed the ball in, earning an assist on her record.

It’s very impressive to watch such young children figure out and discover things. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would.

I even took away lessons that I am applying to my own life. I’ll write about those later, but so far I just feel very lucky to have had such a great time.

Nearly Smooth Sailing

Most of the problems were minor, except for a selfish and inflexible parent who just never showed up. Nor dropped out. This meant we always ended up at least one player short. There is no lesson from that. Some people are simply rude and there isn’t anything to do other than move on. After hearing some stories from other coaches I’m lucky. I had a great group of parents and kids.

In some coaching material I read at the start, the advice at the beginning was simple.

Just laugh. Many things will be funny, even if they make you want to lose your patience. You’re here to have fun. The kids are here to have fun. Laugh at the funny stuff even if it’s inappropriate and everybody will have fun.

I tried this and I think I succeeded. I think the kids made me laugh (and I them) much more than I thought. I don’t laugh enough. Coaching U6 helped me realize that and take more enjoyment out of the little things in life, even when it’s inappropriate (except when people are hurt, that’s still wrong to laugh at. Unless it really is funny.)

I’ll miss them. I’m not sure if I will be reunited with them if we play next season.

Defying Failure, or rather, Failing trying to Defy Failure

2011-11-03T00:00:00+00:00

One of my all-time favorite movies is War Games. Any respectable geek will understand why. I wasn’t old enough to see it when it came out. I’m not even really sure how old I was when I saw it first. I know I was already programming.

I’ve seen the movie countless times. By the time I was 16 I’m sure I’d watched it at least 20 times. I would put it on just because I was bored, and really, Ally Sheedy was in it.

It wasn’t until I was older, I think with kids or at least getting close to that point, that I actually understood the real message.

The only way to win is not to play.

It’s not really about winning. That’s what I missed. For years. It’s about being successful and doing the right thing.

Professor Falken explains this in vague terms. The price of failure, or even winning individually is extinction. To be successful means that you consistently are awesome. That’s his point with it. If you are not consistently fit to survive, you don’t.

As I stumbled through my mid- to late teenage years, I seemingly sought out these games to play. I think they gave me a sense of worth, or at least a metric to evaluate my own worth. I don’t really think I ever succeeded. I’m not sure how I would have even managed success. These experiences are where I developed one of my golden rules. Never act without a victory condition.

I struggled through these situations with no clear goal or idea of if I was succeeding. It was an aimless existence. I mostly felt devoid of purpose.

It was during this period where I think the entrepreneurial spark first ignited. I thought of all the effort I was expending just to see if I could give myself some quantifiable measurement. This was dumb.

My floundering was hard to give up, and I honestly think if I didn’t meet my wife when I did I would still be engaged in it. I didn’t value peace and quiet. I may have outgrown it, but I know it would have taken me a lot longer.

Now I strive to maintain a simple balance in life. It may be selfish or hedonistic, but it really doesn’t feel that way to me. I exclude myself from negative situations and people.

Sometimes this is hard, but there is always a way out. A lot of situations come up that seem very good but fall quickly into a morass of disappointment and despair. It’s important to be able to remove the emotional aspect of these situations before they impact general mental health.

The challenge is finding a new opportunity that is truly better. When you’re waist-deep in shit anything seems like an improvement. The problem is making a bad decision and ending up neck-deep in a different type of shit.

The key that I’ve found is that it’s easier to remove yourself from a negative situation or person and not replace them unless you are certain. Nothing, as in the absence of anything, can be a big improvement over a negative or hastily decided action.

The victory condition in these cases is to restore balance to life. If I find myself thinking, “my luck is bad” it’s usually because my situation is bad. Taking all the negative things out helps. I usually find myself having good luck after that.

This realization on luck is what finally allowed me to understand War Games. The message isn’t really about winning by not playing a game.

The only way to live is not to play.

Learning when to get out of your way.

2011-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

Every so often in life I learn something that hits very hard. It becomes painfully obvious. Even worse, I question my sanity and intelligence. I ask myself,

How can I be learning this just now?

It’s hard to ask that and answer it in a constructive way. I think I must accept the inevitability it will happen.

So what next?

What next is I learn how to quickly recover my momentum. The danger isn’t in learning something I should have already known; the risk is in letting it affect me negatively and slow me down.

I think I’m already fairly observant, at least to adequate levels, about learning new things. Some things are quite obvious, others you must hunt for. I know I could do better but I think I’m doing well. This just makes it harder to maintain momentum.

Shiny things always win.

The problem with learning new things and momentum is that often times new things change perceptions. The problems I solve are different. When you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Then even worse, every new thing learned must be applied to problems. Even when it doesn’t make sense, the compulsion is there to try out new found knowledge.

I go back and forth on whether to allow this to happen. Do I let myself use knowledge that is still in its infancy in my brain, or forbid it until I can practice exercising it in a controlled environment?

I wish I had an answer.

The fascination with the obscure.

2011-10-25T00:00:00+00:00

Recently we went out for Tapas. The server had an accent I couldn’t place. It sounded familiar, but quite different. It reminded me almost of a Romanian accent, except latino and speaking Spanish.

Eventually I had to ask. “Cuba”, she said. I was shocked. I’ve never met anybody from Cuba. I’ve met people who grew up in the US and parents lived in Cuba. This was a first.

I was very amazed by this.

I immediately wanted to know how she got here. What was the journey like. Now, I didn’t ask her these questions. I should have, but she’s working. I don’t want to intrude. She probably has recounted these stories over and over again.

I’m genuinely interested in it though. I’d love to hear about it. In talking about it with my wife, I said I should offer to take these intriguing people out to dinner. They pick the restaurants, and just talk about what brought them to that part in life.

I really think I need to try this sometime. After all, knowing other people’s life experiences is a good way of learning their life lessons. I just have to be attentive and listen.

The balance of customers.

2011-10-24T00:00:00+00:00

Today I dealt with a problem. A silly problem that was easily avoidable and largely inconsequential. I even wanted to deal with it. A business indiscriminately attacked good customers (us). At the core, the problem really could be my wife’s fault. She wasn’t punctual enough. It’s forgivable, we were busy.

At her gym, her locker was broken into and the credit card we use for all our payments was stolen. Fortunately it was just that and some cash, no important documents. The gym is also paid from this credit card.

She didn’t give the gym the new number until after their batch processing was started. She was then hit with what they were calling a late fee. This was very frustrating, as she called on the due date to give them the new number and find out about alternative ways to pay.

Nope. $20 fee. Ok. But this seems pretty bad to me. She called today to talk to them. The fee stands. No apology, but they were nice about it.

I then call back. I really wanted to engage with a business that had such a customer-unfriendly policy. I wanted to hear their argument and ask about their exceptions.

The first girl I spoke with was very nice. I explained the situation. She said the due date meant they needed the payment the day before. I explained that words mean things. Due date is a universally understood term. I then asked her to explain how I could avoid this if the situation happened again.

“Well, you would need to give us your new card number the day before.”

“So, I need to tell you the new, yet to be requested, card number before my credit card is even stolen?”

“Uhm, no, that’s totally not right. Can I transfer you to someone who can better assist you?”

Yes. Please. Assist me.

This is where I struggle with companies. I understand that bad customers must be dealt with. There must be policies in place that keep abusive customers in check. Costco had wonderful return policies. Now they don’t because people would return TVs every year, getting the new latest and greatest models. Abusive people breed abusive policies.

Back to my story! In talking with the next person I learn the fee is a “return fee”. They charge $20 for any declined credit card. Now, this is a negligible fee (if any) incurred to them. If they’re paying any significant amount (in excess of amounts described in pennies) they are very inefficient.

But I understand the sentiment behind they charge. They want to get paid. They don’t want to have to chase people down to get paid. They provide a service. That is a very fair sentiment.

Instead of coming up with a business policy that suits everyone, it only targets the problem. It doesn’t handle the good customers caught up in it.

Policies should reward the good as much as the bad are punished.

I really believe that good customers are the best marketing dollars you can spend. I learned a lot of this from reading Purple Cow.

Bad customers should, and can, be fired. Or warned. Or attacked.

You don’t want to attack good customers. My wife regularly attends the gym. She evangelizes the gym. She really likes it and the facilities. She is a very good customer.

Because we got caught up in their policy dealing with abusive customers, we were inadvertently attacked. This is a big business folly and one that seems to be easily avoided.

I understand that most companies, even large local gym chains, lack intelligent automation and technology. This is exactly why falling behind the technical curve is a problem. They cannot manage their billing and invoicing in an intelligent fashion that really handles the variables of their business.

The lesson for me…

As I think back on this and the phone call I think I can distill it down into 5 things.

Every representative of a business should be able to identify good customers vs. bad customers.
Representatives must always know the correct terminology to use. Misinformation and miscommunication, especially on the part of the business, are particularly insulting. Training is important.
Never make a customer facing policy without thinking of the common exceptions. Train representatives on the exceptions, not the rules. Apply the rules to the Bad Customers.
Always, always think about what is fair. A customer who thinks something is unfair is volatile.
When dealing with someone unhappy, ask exactly what they want. What will pacify them and what will make them happy.

Missing Goals

2011-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve been working on improvement software lately. I’m really enjoying it. It lets me track if I’m on target and meeting my goals. My mantra is simple. “Tomorrow I should be able to do more in 5 minutes than I could today.”

I have a series of things I track specifically to make that mantra real. One of my tasks is writing publicly, twice a week. It’s not about seeking an audience but to get me to do something I generally don’t enjoy. I write frequently, pretty much every day now.

However, I do not write publicly. I don’t really like writing publicly. I feel I must have something to say and have a point. I don’t but the feeling doesn’t go away.

Putting a goal down for this works. Twice a week. I can handle it. I think it’s an easy task to think about two things I want to say. Unfortunately, I failed at it last week.

What was really frustrating about this was the two articles I wrote that said something. That were good enough ideas to post. I needed to edit one and possibly rewrite the other. I really meant to do it.

I then waited until Saturday, the end of my week.

Saturday came and was very busy. I was very tired at the end of Saturday. I didn’t do it.

Now today I have to look at my record and it is forever marred. I didn’t get a solid line of completion.

What I’m taking away from this is that procrastination doesn’t have a place in self improvement. I knew for 3 days that I had articles ready to go. I just kept putting it off. “I have 3 days.” “I have 2 days.” Eventually, ”I’ll do it tonight.”

I never did. Oops. Now, I don’t think writing publicly is a big deal outside of the habit building. Slipping on a harmless goal is the quickest way to slipping on an important goal.

So now, today, is the opportune time to check myself before I wreck myself.

Working on something you love.

2011-10-18T00:00:00+00:00

Anybody who knows me knows I work a lot. I hack a lot. I work on some product I think people need. Whether I’m on my own clock or someone else’s matters very little to me. I strive to help people.

Recently I’ve found a project I want. I want to use it. I want to work on it. This is the first time this has happened to me. It’s an amazing experience.

Normally when I get close enough to done, my motivation and interests wane. I lose the enthusiasm to get it over the last hill. The last 10% is always lacking. I solved the problem and moved on. It becomes uninteresting and I want to work on a new problem.

That’s always how I’ve looked at programming. Solving a set of problems; not building a real product.

Now things are different. The closer I get the more exciting the project is. The more motivated I get. The more ideas I have. The better the entire experience.

I feel strange. I’ve been doing this for so many years and just now I have what I may think is real passion for a project. I’ve been missing out.

I’m envious of people who find this passion for Open Source and other altruistic projects (such as research). However, I’m happy that now I’ve found something that really, truly excites me to work on.

I’ve always enjoyed what I do, but rarely through an entire project do I love the project. Now I get a new look. It’s a great one.

I’ll be releasing the app to the public after I thoroughly dogfood it. I don’t expect it to apppeal to the masses, but it appeals to me. Hopefully it can help other people as it has helped me.

When I grow up...

2011-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

I have a problem. It’s a small problem. It’s definitely a first world problem.

I am what I wanted to be when I grew up. I’ve done it! Honestly, it’s very fulfilling. I love what I do and I love who I work with. I have for several years now and I’m able to sharpen my swords and feel good about it.

So now what?

The million dollar question is what comes next? Early in my life I found my passion for problem solving to be insatiable. When I discovered that writing software is problem solving I knew that was what I wanted.

Notecards can solve anything.

Prior to this discovery, frequently I wrote down things I learned on 3x5 notecards. I wrote a lot. I’m not sure where we had 3x5 notecards but I always seemed to have them. I loved them and used them prolifically. I wrote a lot about professions. Not really in the form of what I wanted to be, but simply what they were.

I wrote about astronomers, pharmacists and many countless others. Then I wrote about programming and I never wrote about a profession again. I was in 5th grade.

Spending decades doing something makes you really good. And complacent.

This year marks the twentieth year since I compiled my first C program. Twenty Years. Most of that wasn’t professional but I’ve been writing software for a long time.

I think I’m pretty good at it.

Now my focus has changed and my expertise has certainly gotten more specific. Most notably now I feel completely adrift in life. I feel very happy but adrift. I feel as if I’m coasting. More specifically, I feel that no matter how hard I work now, as a creator of software, I will not progress.

You can’t progress without a direction.

Progress is just activity unless you can measure it. Without knowing exactly what I’m after, I can’t measure it.

Growing up I knew that I wanted to love my job. That was really the most important thing for me. I still want that. I have a fear that I cannot truly love my job unless I’m responsible for it.

This drives an entrepreneurial side to me. However I don’t have the bold desire to change the world. I just want to create something useful.

When I sit and think, completely honestly, I don’t need a huge paycheck but what I need is my own ownership. As long as someone else is signing my paychecks, I’m at their mercy. That’s a big responsibility on them; if I’m unhappy, I look elsewhere.

Being responsible for my life is my responsibility.

So now I’m wondering if I’ve reached the limit of what I love doing, how can I still be responsible?

One of my beliefs is quite simple:

Never act until you have a victory condition.

This goes back to measuring progress, but slightly different. I want to know when I’m done. I can’t evaluate how much work or even what acceptable failure is without knowing what victory means to me.

Because of this, I haven’t acted on anything, really. I don’t know what victory is. Life is funny. If my life continued as it is right now, I would be extremely happy. I have a very blessed life. That doesn’t stop me from eagerly waiting for more, I just don’t know what more is yet.

Blogging is hard.

2011-10-13T00:00:00+00:00

I made a deal with myself about writing. I would write two posts a week. By post I meant a public post. I would try to write at least every day. In the last few weeks, however, I’ve been writing privately. Only. And even that, at most twice a week.

I need to get back to writing publicly. I stopped because I got distracted, amusingly, on a project to help me meet my goals.

I’ve been rather consumed by this project. It’s been a learning exercise, with most large chunks taken out of it on the weekend. During the week were small bug fixes and research.

I’m pretty proud of it. Not because it looks good, because it doesn’t, but because it functions well and is an application I will use daily.

Now that it’s largely stable, I can focus on the user experience more and polishing that aspect of things. Then I can release it publicly, and hope to help others meet their goals.

For now, I’ll just be happy if I can resume writing my two posts a week.

Blogging is hard, let’s go programming.

The dangers of following along.

2011-09-05T00:00:00+00:00

For the first few years programming was typing the letters off a page in a book (or a download from a BBS I printed) into a file. Then I ran it. Sometimes I had syntax errors. I’m not sure what I learned back then.

After that I learned something solid. I learned how to mix and match. I knew where to look, at least. I recognized examples in books as a way to go from point A to B. Years later I learned about shared libraries.

More years later, I sat with my mouth was agape as I saw, “This code is from the black horse book on page 375, it’s similar to what we need.” as a comment to some code I had inherited. I guess some people never progressed. This code was not well designed. I had great job security.

Danger 1: Never learning beyond the superficial.

This guy never figured out what programming really was. He thought it was a typing job. You found in a book what your manager wanted, typed it out and told him it was done.

Programming is not typing. Programming is thinking. The study of the intricacies of a problem and how to solve it, step by step. Following examples from a book never teaches how to think about the actual problem.

Danger 2: The transparent nuances.

This second danger is what inspired me to write this. I was reading through some code and eventually realized I lost the thread. It was gone.

I missed a very subtle single line of code that glued everything together. It confused me for about 30 minutes.

Imagine if I never caught it? I would have sat, frustrated, staring at software that seemed inadequate. While brooding, I would have developed a workaround. I would have created an alternative and extremely inefficient method for doing something the system itself handled quite elegantly.

This is quite common. Out of all my development flaws, I’m still guilty of this the most frequently. However I share great company. Many times have I reviewed code written where I gently say, “Why did you not use the actual built-in method for this?” The answer is usually that they didn’t know it existed.

Sometimes it is excusable. It’s a trivial detail documented in a sea of literature. Usually a single line. It’s odd how the most important things get single lines, where clever but largely useless systems get essays devoted to them. The end result is predictable. Just following along with other developers creates situations where it is far too easy to miss the important details.

When lost, I step back and ask myself, “How would I allow developers to use this system?” This usually allows me to figure where to look. Then I find what I was missing and I happily move on to the next mistake.

Danger 3: Inadequate understanding of the caveats.

This may sound like the last point, but it is subtly different. The last point is about rebuilding and wasting effort. This is about missing a logical detail and introducing critical issues into the product, even while the product is completely functional.

The worst scenario is when it is a security problem.

I see toolkits that advertise easy handling of inter-system communication. Things talking from one system to the other, then have a big CAVEAT section in their documents explaining how it exposes all aspects of your system to the network and by default is insecure. These are usually accompanied with an explanation of how to protect the system.

Nobody ever reads it.

That’s obviously the more dramatic example, but I often times see serious bugs introduced (and potential workarounds later in the code) because of inadequately understanding caveats.

Sometimes it’s unavoidable. As another example, proper unicode (the thing that lets me type 日本語 here) handling in most scripted languages is very hard. The documentation is confusing. There are various levels of understanding, where each level you doubt your sanity more and more.

Then you get something that works and everybody is happy, up until some unexpected string is entered into the system and suddenly all data is corrupted. Oops, should have read the entire docs. But again, nobody ever does. Nobody wants to and it is unreasonable to expect people to read a morass of documentation just to use software correctly. That is, unfortunately, the standard.

Avoiding it all.

Here’s how I avoid the above pitfalls, after years of practice not making the same mistake over and over again:

Never follow a single example. If I’m learning some new software system I try to find 2-3 examples. I then read each one and write my own notes. I try to engage whoever I can to review my notes. I then introduce more (hopefully helpful and not long winded) documentation into the system.
I treat bugs as first-class citizens. If I encounter unexpected behavior in a tool I am using I isolate the behavior. I figure out by feeding it controlled input and inspecting the output. Only when I feel I’m thorough in my understanding do I move on. Most of the time the bugs are my own invention or my own misunderstanding.
I am paranoid. I believe it is my responsibility for my software to show the user what they expect, or a reasonable error message. I will never allow an underlying system I rely on affect my users experience. If there is an exception, I want it to be handled correctly. This is probably my weakest trait that I’m focusing on the most.
I pretend I’m brilliant. When I first start getting confused I stop. I take a breath. I think how I would build the system. What business case would I be looking at. Why would I solve it this way. Then I usually feel more equipped to understand what exactly is going on.

Following the above I think I’ve managed to produce and create better software. I still have a long way to go, but I feel I’m improving. Building better software makes me happy. Being happy is exactly why I do this.

Why Open Source matters.

2011-09-04T00:00:00+00:00

Software development is hard. It’s an adventurous discipline. There is always more than one way to do anything, including evaluating which way to do something.

Someone leading software efforts, whether it’s a talented developer or a fearless but non-technical manager, is a brave soul. There is so much quirkiness. Software is art and science mixed together, and ego is liberally applied on top.

The two worlds of software development.

I believe there are two worlds. Two distinct poles, perhaps. On one hand, you have the closed-off, gated world. Software is hidden from view, exposed through things like contracts and protected APIs.

Then you have the hippies. You have the long-haired beard-wearing types. Software should be free. Software should never not be free. Ever.

Outside of eccentrics, nobody lives in either of those two worlds. However, people near one side think the other is always extreme. Both sides are usually pretty moderate in their views. Most Open Source contributors work daily on closed source systems.

Two Worlds are a shade of gray.

In reality, there are various degrees of openness. Some developers are quite open but used a closed source toolchain. Other developers use open source toolchains and hide their software through layers of obfuscation.

Very few people have precisely the same view on software being open. Some people are very possessive and secretive of their software. This is a damaging trait. Any developer who is unwilling to listen or justify their decisions is a danger to any project.

It’s easy to excuse the secrecy and protectionism. To say it is due to shyness or some other endearing trait. It’s easy to say a lot of things that aren’t true.

Us vs. Them

I believe that most developers do not share their code with outsiders because they like the Us vs. Them mentality in most companies. They like teams. They like the idea of making a stand against the world. Of not accepting outsiders or their code.

If they were so good, they would work for my company because we’re good.

(Obviously this is only true for companies that have good developers.)

I hear so often that nobody would understand some problem set. I’ve even had someone tell me that processing millions of records a day is hard. So hard they have to developer their own stack.

Open Source shatters the notion of Us vs. Them. In a true Open Source world, we’re all us.

Breaking down the barriers

When the wall between us and them falls, what is left is a feeling of shock. There is a lot of opinion with open source software. That is what makes it both amazing and tragic.

If a developer at any company is unwilling to publish software they’ve written, it’s most likely terrible code. Deep down they know this. It’s not that they can’t write good code. They don’t need to write good code. The world at large won’t see it. It’s private.

Elitism is harmful

Developers who don’t share code are elitists. They’re convinced they have the best solutions. They don’t talk about the details because they already believe it’s the best.

It’s not the best. It’s mediocre at best.

Ego is a difficult thing. Developers get attached to their productions. In each system developed a developer matures and grows. Ideally they have a cycle at the end to be introspective. To study what they’ve learned and to acknowledge what mistakes they’ve made.

Then, having a peer review is even more helpful. Being thrown into the fire and having to answer for each decision made.

Open Source is an environment where the entire world are coworkers. I learn more from people I don’t work with than those I do. People I would not have the opportunity to learn from if I didn’t work in Open Source friendly businesses.

It’s taught me to be humble. More importantly, it’s taught me what I’m good at and what I’m not good at. Then, I even know who to talk to to shore up my weaknesses and produce better software.

Graciously Adopting a New World

Many business owners are well intentioned but wrong. They believe that if they have some problem, others do. Then they take it a step further and think one of two things:

If we develop this software and release it, our competitors will have an unfair advantage.
If we develop this software, we can sell it and make even more money.

Neither is (usually) true. On the first point, if the software is something core to the business it should not be released. It’s a trade secret or a business methodology. It should be protected as such. If it’s not core to the business methodology itself, release it. Competitors have already crossed that bridge or are making the same decisions.

The second is foolish for many reasons. It can build up hope that a developer will create a new business. It distracts from the core problems. The usual outcome is code half-way to beautiful but just barely functional. Nobody wins.

With Open Source, developers can learn from the ecosystem. There are bug fixes from similar developers. Feedback and fame. There is credibility. It makes it easier to hire great developers.

I’ve heard many bad reasons to not join the Open Source communities and to contribute. I’m still waiting to hear one good one.

Being helpful with conflict.

2011-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

My entire life, more than anything, I’ve felt compelled to be helpful. I really, really want to help. I just want to take people’s problems away.

I want to be their superhero. But only when it’s something I agree with.

I’m quite selfish, perhaps the most selfish superhero ever.

Why do I want to be helpful?

I ask myself this often. The altruistic reason is simple. I wish to make the world a more efficient place. I don’t think better works; it’s far too subjective. I love efficiency. I love being able to accomplish more today than I could yesterday. I want to share that feeling.

Then my reasons stop. I don’t know if I have a reason. I don’t even really believe that I want to share the feeling of efficiency. I think to some degree the world will simply be less annoying to me if it’s more efficient. I’m probably wrong.

Helpful itself is subjective.

Thinking about myself being wrong makes me wonder what else I’m wrong about. Maybe I’m wrong about being helpful. What if what I deem helpful is not a common view?

I’m going to tell a story now. It was a few years ago when I still lived in Portland. I hate Portland and hated it then. I think my time enjoying Portland definitely lasted less than 2 years. These types of occurrences contributed to why I hate Portland.

My wife, son (age 2) and I were walking into Ikea. Ikea is a good store. They have a Family Parking area. We didn’t park there. Able-bodied parents with one child shouldn’t.

What also shouldn’t park there is a motorcycle. Which there was one, parked right in the very well signed Family Parking lot.

As we were walking in I commented about how rude the person was. As luck would have it, the man on the motorcycle was coming out. My son loves motorcycles and pointed and the man said something. I told him not to talk to my son. I don’t want people like him talking to my son. I still feel strongly about this and I’m not afraid of confrontation.

He incredulously asks why. I explain anybody who parks a motorcycle in a Family Parking zone is a terrible person, and I don’t want my son associating with terrible people.

The rest of the conversation didn’t go well. I refused to back down and he lamely tried to justify himself. Including, “I have a family.” My response was, “I don’t see your car seat.”

I personally don’t think I’m threatening, but that’s because I know me. To him I probably was. That’s life. In fact, I hope he felt threatened. I sincerely hope he felt I would cause him physical harm. I wouldn’t, but I hope he felt that was a real possibility.

I wanted him to feel this way so the next time he felt so inclined to be such a callous and rude citizen he would think twice. He would reconsider and he would not.

I acted in a vocal manner informing him of his loathsome status because of the many women who do have to take their children shopping. Who love the Ikea Family Parking and appreciate it.

I understand many people don’t find my methods helpful. I think we can all agree that the ends are correct. I stand by my actions because I didn’t do anything inappropriate. I didn’t hit him or make threats of violence.

People naturally eschew conflict.

I’ve never been able to grasp this notion that conflict itself is bad. I think it may be because many times in life I’ve been forced into conflict; physical and emotional.

Assigning value to conflict is irrelevant. Conflict is inevitable and controlling yourself in times of conflict is incredibly important. When a conflict is freed, the amount of energy released is substantial.

I view conflict as a consequence of inconsiderate actions. It is not an end and it isn’t even a mean.

Conflict is a state of being.

Conflict is nothing more than a state where the environmental friction prohibits progress. It is (or should be) temporary. It must be dealt with because it is not a stable state.

If you live life from a perspective where conflict is not something to be avoided, but simply a cresting wave which carries tremendous momentum, what amazing things can be accomplished?

My wife was, for many months, unhappy with me after that Ikea moment. It actually took her years to understand that I’m not looking for a fight but I don’t get bothered by conflict. She didn’t appreciate my stance until she took both our kids out.

Perception is reality. Even after perceptions have changed.

2011-08-17T00:00:00+00:00

Today my wife called me over. She was half-way up the stairs, looking out over our sitting room (which is just a big open space for the kids). Odd place for her to be. The room has vaulted ceilings and half-way up along the edge are shelves. The shelves are about 10’ up so it’s just out of broom reach. Getting a ladder is agonizing. We have many, many toys stuck up there.

She points to the corner in distress. What is that? I look over. It certainly looks like a huge spider. I mean huge. The type of spider you post photos to Facebook and receive a plethora of Likes.

She’s obviously worried. I want to say that it is most definitely not a spider, but it really looks like one. It continued to look like one in my head as I went into the garage to grab the ladder.

It was still a huge spider in my mind as I climbed up. I knew it wasn’t a spider. That knowledge didn’t prevent a nugget of anxiety forming as I climbed the ladder. Not because I am scared of spiders. I’m scared of a panicked wife. I just sprayed insecticide last weekend.

It wasn’t a spider. It was a toy. It was a toy that is impossible to think of as a spider. I looked at it and was remarkably confused by it. I couldn’t see it anymore. It no longer was a spider. I couldn’t make it into a spider. I tried. It wasn’t a spider and wouldn’t be ever again.

I always see the old lady. Sometimes I can see the girl. Then immediately it switches into the old lady. I’d rather look at an elegant young woman than an old hag. I can’t help it.

When the water is clear…

After our perception are corrected, one of two things seems to happen:

Complete inability to see it how we saw it (incorrectly) previously.
A lingering sense of apprehension. A belief that it may return to what it was.

My wife is in camp number two. A mode of disbelief. This makes me wonder things about myself.

Why do misconceptions linger?

Why can’t I clear myself of a mistaken first impression? Why do those first impressions matter so much. If a first impression is incorrect and is rectified, the person’s reputation is not clean. The reputation lingers. A sense of distrust permeates the relationship. Perhaps it eventually fades away, but not quickly enough.

Why can I not see things as they were?

This is very common in technical circles, especially in Open Source. When people understand something and their misconceptions are cleared away, they lose the ability to think how they once thought.

As an example, developers writing documentation. The more someone learns about the workings of a system, the less they are able to write documentation intended for a novice. Too many things are taken for granted. The levels of understanding and fine details are taken for granted.

I don’t think this is negative. Taking knowledge for granted is fine, but I think it should at least be acknowledged. I fail at this. I need to be more aware of what knowledge I may take for granted. What experiences I’ve had that assist me in removing preconceptions and truly understanding things?

If I knew that, I’d better know how to mentor those who I need to mentor. Perhaps I would even be better at mentoring myself.

Building a reputation and reputation management.

2011-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

My wife doesn’t speak English natively. She speaks English very well but there are a lot of things she doesn’t fully understand. Reputation was a hard concept for her. It helped me a lot in explaining exactly what it is. I couldn’t even cheat. There is no translation of Reputation in Japanese on Wikipedia.

However, the definition of reputation doesn’t matter to me. What matters is what my reputation can get me. A good reputation can open doors and present opportunities. Conversely, a bad reputation can ruin everything. Reputation can get me a wonderful partner to work with or thrown out on the streets. It’s up to me to decide what I get. I control my reputation through what I accomplish.

The discussions on reputation have naturally led me to wonder about things I don’t have. What do I need to accomplish to get my reputation out there in the way I want? What can I do that will give me what I feel I need?

As a simple example, one thing we’re missing is a business-side partner. Someone who matches our zeal, except on the business side. The focus, the drive, the energy. Just on business development. Being our visionary. We need a Steve Jobs. We’re bad at that. It’s ok to be bad at that.

A very wise man once told me, “Don’t use your strengths to overcome your weaknesses. Use your strengths to make your weaknesses irrelevant.”

So why would a Steve Jobs caliber business person want to work with us? Reputation answers this. I can use my strengths to get there. Then my weakness in business is irrelevant.

It’s a heavy burden. I must be able to show my worth immediately. At any time. I failed at this recently and it hurt.

It’s fair for any business partner to demand this from me. It’s what we expect of any partner we would pick.

Handling Failure, or trying to.

2011-08-11T00:00:00+00:00

Today I failed at something important to me. It was very hard and left me brooding all day. I can say, perhaps even rightfully, that it wasn’t my fault. There were a lot of factors influencing events. They do not matter. I failed.

Failure to me isn’t external. It’s not what people think of me. It’s not how people feel when engaging with me. Those are byproducts of my internal desire to succeed. I hope my influence and reputation are positive but I act in a way that I see is the path to success.

That means failure is completely internalized. Even in a situation where nobody else notices, failure eats at me. This wasn’t the case today. People noticed. However, now that I have failed I want this feeling. I want to feel the gripping, sinking feeling and waning confidence. I will work harder. I will improve. I will try to remember how it feels right now.

This is the best motivation to fuel my desire to constantly improve. This reminds me why I improve. Failure is always present. Sometimes it’s even impossible to expect.

After much consideration, today’s failure was a matter of being caught off-guard and acting before I was ready. I wasn’t prepared but I acted anyway. Being prepared is what matters for success.

I think if I just politely asked for 2 minutes it would have been happily granted. In any scenario, I cannot think that an audience would be unwilling to donate 2 minutes. Those 2 minutes would have saved me. I didn’t ask for them. I didn’t get them. I failed because of it.

I watch soccer frequently. I am also frequently frustrated at the style of play in America (MLS) compared to Europe. The difference is in the US there is action without decision.

To succeed at the highest level, strategy is only one component. Being able to quickly identify what needs to be done is only a part. How to do it and what resources and preparation must be instinctively known. Tis is what separates great players from international stars.

They create time. They survey the field. They devise a course of action.

It’s so simple but in a moment of panic and under pressure that is the first thing to slip out of my brain. I react to the incoming stimulus and not to what is my victory condition.

Acting without a clear course of victory will likely lead to failure.

I know this, now I just need to remember it when it matters.

Being exceptional.

2011-08-09T00:00:00+00:00

The other day my esteemed colleague wrote on the Twitters:

Thought of the day: You want exceptional employees. What is exceptional about your organization to attract them? Be real with yourself.

There’s something missing, though. He doesn’t explain what exceptional really is. Well, he can’t in 140 characters.

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, exceptionalism is definitely snug in the pocket. What one person may find pedestrian another person will be awe struck. I’m pretty sure when David Copperfield watches a magic show with a 5 year old, the 5 year old is reeling with excitement and awe. The magic is exceptional, but only to a limited audience.

Exceptional people have exceptional demands. They smell the problems first. They feel the wind. They react accordingly.

Google would still have exceptional people working at Google even if they didn’t have the 70/20/1 model. They have exceptional people because:

Exceptional people already work at Google (or any other exceptional company). Larry and Sergey already had names for themselves. I went to a party at Stanford in 1997 and heard someone talk about BackRub. That’s exceptional.
Getting hired at Google has meaning. Not everybody can do this, a lot of people don’t make the cut.
Exceptional companies do things differently. Zappos, Google, etc. They all have very different ways to keep employees happy.
There is a culture that is grown around employees being productive through happiness.
The leaders are all exceptional, at least to a marginal degree.

Now I think that I can start to define what I think exceptional truly means.

People are unable to do all things all the time. Exceptional people do everything they can do well. They don’t do everything exceptionally good. They do everything they can do well. Well enough they don’t have to repeat it. Well enough it’s done when they say it will be done.

Exceptional people do not simply do more. They do it right. They do it right the first time. They understand that saving time over the long term is achieved by immediate success or immediate failure. They avoid immediate failure.

Now that I have this concise guide, I can manage my own tasks easier and I can work towards being more exceptional.

Golfing for the next generation.

2011-08-08T00:00:00+00:00

When my wife and I started dating she was appalled I was playing video games. They were for children, teenagers at best. For years we went back and forth. I earnestly tried to explain the positive effects and the social aspect. She said they were for children and was not being swayed. I never played games like World of Warcraft. I played silly first person shooters. The important thing is that I could get up from at any time.

It is, and always has been, about that mental escape. It’s guided meditation. It lets my brain forget about a task at hand and explore.

I keep a notebook next to me while I play games and I only play games that have reasonably long pauses in between turns. So when I die, I get a minute to write down what I thought. There are sometimes I just stop playing completely, much to the annoyance of whoever I happen to be playing with.

That’s the other negative thing about this style. I’m forced to play online. Single player games don’t make you think about what you’ve done wrong for a minute. Nobody would play those. Except me.

This brings me into the social aspect. I’m pretty sure that when people hold congress over a game of golf, the golf becomes that focal point. People can speak freely. Same with fishing. There is friendly competition which makes it easier to talk about more important things.

When people are focusing on something silly, the serious things also become silly. This is why golf is where it’s at. I have heard many people say they don’t enjoy the game but they enjoy the competition and the experience of being out there with colleagues or potential business partners. Then to get better, they take classes and invest time.

This is why I will never play golf. I can’t invest time in something like this. I see no reward in it for me. I’m not competitive on a golf course and doubt I ever would be. I like to play racquetball, but I’m not competitive there, either. I then worry and wonder if my lack of a competitive drive on the golf course means that in business and product development I’m also not competitive. If I wonder that, I’m sure potential partners do.

It’s fair. I don’t think I would be cutthroat and ruthless to get a deal. I’d want everyone to be happy. The products I develop won’t be the best products for everyone and I want customers to like me. I don’t think I can have customers that like me and my company by being a blowhard that can always sell them. Sure, we probably can make what the customer wants but it won’t be good and it won’t be deserving of their money.

At this point I get filled with self-doubt. Is it really correct I can be successful without being extremely aggressive with sales? I think I can, but I don’t know I can. When I don’t know something, I lose confidence. Without confidence when I pitch a product to customers I stammer.

I remind myself that this, for me, is about enjoying the journey. I want to be tired, exhausted and when I get to the top take pride in the route I took. It’s not about riches or fame, it’s about having happy employees that love their job.

That’s the way I want do it, and if I can’t do it my way I won’t do it at all. I’d rather fail doing what I want than succeed at something else.

Perception as a vice

2011-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

I’m thinking about what progress means.

Progress is hard to quantify. In some cases it’s about going from point A, which is easy to define to point B, which is also easy to define. In most scenarios the path is impossible to define, though. What really is B? Is it clear enough? Is it known? Have we been there before?

The world is hard.

It infuriates me when I see attempts to put processes in place because the notion it makes hard problems simple. That is not what processes are for. Processes are a safety rope.

Processes are to defend against known dangers. They are to keep you safe in a specific environment and are built looking at that specific environment. They are flexible and reusable.

Processes and methodologies are for guaranteeing progress. Nothing in the world guarantees success. Neither are processes useful for reporting on progress.

Imagine Lewis and Clark laying an interstate highway behind them. They never would have made it out of Missouri. Corpses entombed in the cement of unnecessary process. I imagine people would still be dying of boredom in central South Dakota now. This is the vision most developers have when thinking of process.

Hyperbole aside, it’s important that processes exist. The most important aspect of implementing development processes is that it assists in moving faster.

Process is for guaranteeing an acceptable average speed. Processes may slow down and limit maximim output. It normalizes and smooths out the rough edges. The smoother trajectory covers more ground over time. While the peaks are muted, the valleys are not so desolate.

I think bad processes come about by not trusting your employees. There is a fantasy that implementing process and methodologies automatically have performance gains. Fantasies vs. goals, and the dangers of confusing them.

Fantasies may be achievable; but really they’re just a group of inadequately defined goals. A fantasy is a person saying, “I want to make $100,000 a year!”

A goal is declaring, “I will become a subject matter expert to get a job doing what I love in a field that is growing.” (Well, those are two goals.)

The $100,000 a year salary is a symptom of a goal. A by-product.

I believe any sufficiently motivated person can make $100,000 in a year. Motivation is fueled by passion, though. Without passion there is no motivation. Without motivation there is failure. You can’t succeed if you don’t care.

Implementing processes for business and development must follow this pattern. If the goal is really a fantasy it will fail. Nobody will be motivated. If the goal is to be better and the processes are a stepping stone it will succeed.

The real goal is to be better, though. Success is unobtainable if it is tied to a false idol.

And this is why progress is hard to quantify. People quantify, and value, the wrong things.

How to build an informative web presence.

2011-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

I am opinionated but please, listen. The advice below can get you additional customers. Simply by not having potential customers immediately close the browser and move on. It’s hard for a business owner to build a web presence. They’re at the mercy of other people. It’s hard for them to gauge quality and skill. Obviously, everyone wants someone good to work with.

How do you determine good? In this case it’s easy and can be determined in one simple question. How do my customers go from the Internet to the door? If your potential partner can easily explain all paths a customer will take in finding you to making a purchase, they’re good. If not skip on to the next one.

In the current brick-and-mortar world customers make purchases in one of three ways:

Non-Internet (word of mouth, local ads, etc), not covering this here.
Internet Search and coming to your store.
Internet Search and buying something online.

Most local stores cannot be competitive with online vendors. Amazon will always cut a better price. Don’t optimize for the online shopper unless your online shoppers account for the majority of your business.

The main path you want to optimize for (pick one path, and only one) is the person who wants to come to your store.

Optimizing for the local visitor.

A local visitor needs 3 things to get to your location:

A reasonable image of what the store front looks like.
The address and preferably a map.
The business hours.

Anything else that is prominent on the front page of your website is distracting. Distractions lead to lost customers. Avoid distractions.

Above is an example of a fairly good restaurant webpage. It’s from a local ramen place we frequently eat at.

Notice that all the important text is highlighted.

They clearly state the hours; and they’re open 7 days a week. The important information reads from left to right. When they are open, how you can call them and then the address.

If I were to design this page, I would put the address in the center, though. A map on the entrance is not that useful, but having a link to a Directions and Map page is.

The photo is good as it shows exactly what they serve. A photo of the exterior would be helpful. Unfortunately, this restaurant doesn’t have good curb appeal. Probably a better choice to go with the dish. It’s important to be flexible but always be focused on optimizing for a specific path. Having a photo of the exterior can be placed on the Directions and Maps page.

For a business that does primarily does local, in-store transactions the Internet presence is extremely important. Having a website does not optimize for the local visitor means missed opportunities. That translates directly into lost sales.

Get a piece of paper, write down each decision someone may make while deciding to visit the business. If the site doesn’t do that easily, potential customers are being lost.

Also, any animated entry page, especially if it plays music, is losing customers. Not only because it is annoying, but also because the iPhone cannot display those pages. Many people find local businesses on mobile devices. This is why sites like Yelp are so popular. They present more useful information on the business than the business itself does. This means the business is losing the dialog with the customer and is at the mercy of a third-party. Even with positive Yelp reviews this is a different experience than what a business wants to deliver.

One final tip: Don’t focus on graphic design, focus on the information being conveyed. It’s easy to get graphic design put on top of an informative website. It’s much harder to take a useless but beautiful page and make it informative.

After this is mastered, then worry about Twitter and Facebook and Groupon. One thing at a time.

Technical Debt for Executives

2011-07-28T00:00:00+00:00

Debt seems to be a hard concept to truly understand. I think everybody gets it, but then sink themselves in debt. As Brother Ali puts it, everybody wants to look good while they’re drowning.

Understanging debt in practice is hard. I think it’s because debt has many perceptions. Debt on its own is not really harmful. Sometimes it’s a good thing. Too much debt certainly is. Everything in moderation, right? Interest rates really makes the difference between good and bad debt. On the surface.

Nobody would really argue that 0% interest on debt is bad. But what if you don’t pay the principal in time? Or you’re late on a payment? There are a lot of variables. Those variables can have an impact that is hard to forecast.

Ward Cunningham originally developed the term and idea of Technical Debt. It has since been written about by people far more well-written than myself. It’s still apparently not widely understood or propagated. I see companies unwittingly incurring high levels of technical debt. Without batting an eye, even.

This amazes me. It seems that the people who should most understand these concepts simply do not. This is what technical executives are supposed to know, and they don’t. Technical executives who fail to understand this are doomed to an abysmal career. An abysmal career getting paid a lot of money, being duped by consultants and likely never having any accomplishments. To me that’s failing, others not so much. That’s why they ignore it.

I still find it hard to explain the concept to people who should understand it but don’t. It seems business owners have a different perception of technology. I don’t really know what that perception is. It’s no black and white, as in it works or doesn’t. They don’t even value quality in the same way.

When I explain it, I struggle. Especially when asked to cite sources (which any good executive will ask for.) I find it very challenging because it is a metaphor and then they try to extend that metaphor to things they more closely understand.

Here is a summary of how I view it and the impact it has on business. This is from my own attempts to explain the concept.

When any project is undertaken estimates are given for each component. (Well, hopefully. If they’re not they should be.) Estimates are important. Without a good plan a lot of hours will be wasted. Developers love to say a good plan isn’t necessary. Developers are often very, very wrong. Nearly any software product proves this.

The reason for this attention to detail is simple. Every component either increases or reduces technical debt. To be more specific, every decision increases or reduces technical debt. As mentioned above, some debt is fine. It can be lived with forever and never cause any issues. Some is disastrous. Some can go from harmless to harmful. Sometimes with little warning. It is very hard to determine what is harmful debt.

A common theme in the Mythical Man Month essays is the importance of a very solid architect. A lead that is responsible for all decisions of a system. I don’t mean they make every decision, merely that they are responsible. They sanity check everything. This person is the only source to be trusted on whether something incurs or pays off debt. This give a face to the debt of any product.

This is where I diverge from the explanation of technical debt and instead focus on solving the problem. Just like executives don’t need to know how to write software, they don’t need to know the details of technical debt. They instead need a policy and trust people to guide them. For this, I’ll talk about the role of the architect.

Architects Decide Success

Every organization should have architects leading products. Someone who is in charge of all technical matters. Every decision. A single source for all information. They should also have a backup (which can be a lead developer.)

Each decision contributes to debt. Sometimes debt is incurred deliberately. Debt knowingly accrued often is not negative. This idea can be harmful in practice, but is always good in theory. The negative outcome is because certain conditions can change and bring harmful debt where it was once benign. This is difficult to forecast.

A project must be delivered and must always have attributes that give a rough idea of the debt incurred. I have never seen a project that was shipped and forever neglected. There is always maintenance. Maintenance is where technical debt is paid.

The architects decisions directly relate to the bottom line for maintenance costs.

After maintenance is entered, a good opportunity is presented to put people being groomed for architect roles in place. They are now responsible for every technical decision regarding maintenance and growth. Mythical Man Month says this person should have served as a backup several times before taking the helm. Probably a good idea. However, it’s maintenance. The biggest decisions have been made and the debt is being paid off (hopefully). I believe that the best way to learn is to witness the mistakes made previously. This is ideal.

Good Code is Faster. Bad Code is Slower.

There is a trade-off with debt. That is time. To incur no debt (such a thing is not possible) is to write excellent code. Everything is well architected and designed to be future-proof (to me, future-proof means able to be replaced without harm in the future.). This takes slightly more time. Covering every edge case is a lot of decisions. It’s hard. It incurs an up front cost.

It’s up to the architect to determine what is worth the cost paid now, versus the cost paid in the future. Additionally, whether that decision have an impact before the project is complete. Sometimes debt is painful far too quickly in the life cycle of a project. Martin Fowler has an excellent point about this, all in one sentence.

The whole point of good design and clean code is to make you go faster.

Read that again, please. When a developer speaks about clean code or a good design they often times fail to articulate the reason for this passion. It’s very hard to explain this reasoning to non-technical people.

To continue this parade of analogies, it’s like wine tasting. Someone who rarely drinks wine (if ever) is unable to taste the details that are the most important. They simply are not present. However, in the case of quality developers they are being asked to pair the wine (the product) with dinner (the business).

There is much at stake, the customers coming in may not appreciate the technical merits of the wine but they will feel the quality of the pairing. Understanding this and the limitations

Forecasting Debt

There are different types of technical debt. Most must be incurred just as a matter of course. There is nothing more dangerous than a technical lead who is not learning new technology. Many thousands of people spend countless hours finding ways to do things better.

This almost seems counter-intuitive. If a technical expert uses the tools they know well, they should be guaranteed to succeed. Except they aren’t. Instead, they also duplicate the same mistakes through each project. Usually reserved for whoever is lined up for maintenance. If a technical lead chooses technology only which has proved successful in the past, the solution will be inefficient.

A race car using 5 or 10 year old technology would not be competitive. Software and tools are even more dramatically different. A solution 5 years old is likely to be riddled with high interest technical debt. The silver lining is there are usually many people well-versed in older tools. Most companies do not allow their technical people sufficient time to advance their own knowledge.

Often times if technical people are stifled, so are other parts. There is inadequate preparation for research and design. This lack of planning combined with an aversion of new techniques (or even as basic as allowing for mistakes to be made intentionally) yields painful debt. I believe this is the most common source for debt.

Leaders expect perfect solutions with poor planning from inadequately trained sources. They then fail to account for the inevitable mistakes. At that point, they wonder what went wrong. Basically, insolvency.

Continuing to improve is hard. Why?

2011-07-26T00:00:00+00:00

My statement I’m amazed at how many people seem to think they can improve in life by wishing. I’m amazed every time I see lottery pots. Not even the big ones, just thinking of $30 million. That’s a lot. That’s often the best attempt at improvement and that’s pretty sad. Improving is really hard, though.

First, it’s a challenge to just figure out how to improve. It’s very difficult to plan accordingly. It’s like New Years Resolutions. Good intentions but too much to do. You don’t move a mountain, you go a rock at a time. The problem I have is losing the motivation to keep picking up stones.

The best example is this site. Before I published I was writing daily. I enjoyed it and was having fun. Then I start publishing and my frequency went down to every other day (even less if you look at what gets published). I thought I’d want to write more after having my work up in public. Nope. I have to still exert the same level of energy into continuing it. When I slacked off, I stopped writing. As expected.

The best way to maintain momentum to set low expectations. Low expectations are easy to achieve. But they’re just the stones. They don’t give any happy tingly feelings. It’s just a stone that was over there and now it’s not. Hardly a cause for celebration.

If the best hope is to stop and reward yourself after a certain number of stones, you’re doomed. After every celebration the Good Enough bug creeps in. Motivation decreases. Also, the focus is on moving a certain number of stones and no longer moving a mountain.

Staying focused means you never lose sight of the goal. The rhythm must not be interrupted. Every day, the same thing. This makes me think of punishing yourself if you don’t meet goals. I don’t believe in this because I think every journey should be a happy one. If you can’t have fun doing it, give up and buy lottery tickets.

So many people attempt to build products, services, hold seminars or take up careers as personal coaches. They do this because everybody wants the same thing. They want to improve but struggle.

The struggle itself becomes more of an issue than the lacking motivation and decreased productivity. It’s a fixation.

Software and coaches can’t save you. They can’t even really help you. The fire must come from within.

You must surround yourself with people who are committed to your vision. Committed to your improvement and your goals. In life there are many people that want nothing more than to be followers. Be a great person and have great followers.

Those followers will keep you productive. They will be your confidants. They will be your fuel.

Practice Excellence and make a dead Greek guy proud.

2011-07-22T00:00:00+00:00

People say funny things. Sometimes inane, inflammatory, loving or just pointless. My favorite is when a simple comment is made that unwittingly alters the listeners reality. I think it happens more frequently than expected.

Years ago when I was young and (more) troublesome I was complaining about a project. My friend and coworker was listening. He turns to me, “Someone once said character is continuing on when you don’t want to anymore.” It affected me deeply that day. I incorporated that quote into my life. I buckled down and got the project done. Several years late I told him how significant of an impact it made. H just looked at me with a blank stare. There was no recollection. Life’s great.

Most of the time it’s more obvious that some quote has meaning. It’s usually because it is sourced to some philosopher or other well-established person in history. My favorite quote is the work of Aristotle. I’m sure he has no clue it’s changed my life, but that doesn’t change that I’m happy he said it.

We are what we repeatedly do.

I can stop it right there. I don’t need the rest. I’m going to throw out another quote from The Root’s newest album. “The Devil want me as is, but God he want more.”

I’m not religious and don’t think that quote has anything to do with religion. God and Devil are just common pro- and antagonists.

The enemy of success is repeatedly continuing action that hasn’t been good enough in the past.

You must always want more, and repeatedly strive to do more and be better. That is what excellence is. You must practice excellence.

Deliberate practice is what allows this to happen. I don’t mean just in the subject matters more relevant. We are what we repeatedly do. Not repeatedly do for work. Do. Be excellent in all aspects. Never settle for second best. It’s hard, but it’s a habit.

Often I hear people think that any master of any industry has talent. That talent is what explains their rapid and impressive ascent. Wrong. They practice.

More quotes. Thomas Edison, who is a master of success, said “Success is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration”. He’s right but I don’t believe perspiration alone contributes to anything resembling success. It has to be guided. It has to be deliberate. It must be purposeful.

Failure is inevitable without practicing things related to, but not directly the same as, what life demands for success.

James Altucher has written many pieces that talk about how diligently he reads and studies on subjects. Any subject that is relevant to his being. This is a man who has obtained expert status in a variety of fields. He has deliberately and methodically worked his way through a staggering amount of material.

He doesn’t fixate on the task at hand, but the entire ecosystem. The forest first, and then the trees.

It’s a struggle for me. A struggle for me to justify the time spent. A challenge to not be content just enjoying a weekend. I feel I must study more. I have a compulsive demand to continue learning and continue practicing. I sometimes feel guilty.

You aren't the hottest girl in the bar.

2011-07-19T00:00:00+00:00

Confidence is an interested thing. I’m a man so it’s hard for me to identify with the emotions and thoughts of a cute girl in a bar. I imagine that there really is not a large amount of confidence. I say this because if the girl was so pretty why couldn’t she find Prince Charming already? Where was his white horse? Why is she still here.

Then there are the men. Certain types of men, I mean. The near-criminally confident men who can walk in and secure their position and the get the attention of the most beautiful of girls. They have a different sort of confidence. A confidence very few people have.

Then you have the normal, average fellows. Who sit around and wish for nothing more than the courage to stand up, walk over and introduce themselves.

That was all a metaphor, just to clear that up.

I write about (the software) business. Here is how buying drinks at a bar relates to my world of entrepreneurial floundering.

The pretty girl is the enviable position. You get to relax, elbows up on the bar and simply wait. Good things come to those who wait. There is the time spent prepping yourself. After that it’s clear sailing. Study hard and become desirable to suitors.

The confident guy who everybody really hates are the Zuckerbergs of the world. These guys have done it. They’re usually brilliant and honestly I don’t think care that they’re brilliant. They care about success, but not about succeeding. They care about accomplishing things. They don’t care about failure because it’s not success. They only care about success. Mark Cuban is a good example of this. Why do they not fail? I think because they can pick up on subtle traces of failure and lose interest. Of course, they have to have all the traits someone needs to succeed.

The third is the category nobody really wants to be in. The average guys. They have to spend all the time preparing and getting ready, just like the girl. They don’t feel comfortable, though. They have to then evaluate the scene, decide on a course of action and how to execute. Then they are committed and simply hope they prepared enough. Not having confidence means they don’t act. Or when they do they don’t act with enough confidence. Tunnel vision consumes them and they steadfastedly refuse to back down, after all, it took too much effort to start.

This last category is the type of person most people fall into being (myself included). Networking may land good, ground level startup positions. From an entrepreneurial perspective, that’s different. That means believing in another’s dream, following their direction. The technical cofounder bought by an MBA to make something a reality, where the technical guy just wants to get paid. Then probably start their own thing.

Don’t be the pretty girl. Be the guy buying the drink. That’s the one with the vision. In control and ready to do great things. It takes guts, confidence and a lot of other things I know I don’t fully believe I have. I won’t know until I try. The advice is the same thing people tell you when you are lacking courage to chat up the girl. She says no, big deal.

Just figure out she’s going to say no before she says it. Fail early. Move on to the next one.

Revisiting Delicious

2011-07-17T00:00:00+00:00

Delicious (or del.icio.us) is a good site. It was a great idea when it came out. I think it still is. I really do like the idea. I always think to myself, “I really should use Delicious more.”

I never do.

I made an effort to revisit Delicious. The thing that prompted me was I went to restart Safari and it said, “You have 5 windows and 83 tabs open.” That made me pause and think. I’m obviously doing something wrong.

I cancel Safari and go through each window. I keep a backlog of work in a lot of the tabs. About 10 or so. Ticket I’m working on now, up next, etc. Then any tabs that support that. Reasonable usage. I can move on.

Then the other 70 tabs are because of interesting things in the world that I’ve found and either want to read later, bookmark because of some impending project or task, or things I just find neat.

In other words, those 70 tabs are the exact reason why Delicious exists. So why can’t I use it?

From an overly eager business-starter point of view I can study myself. What about the Delicious offering isn’t compelling to me? Why is it easier for me to open and maintain 80+ tabs than to use their tool?

First, the features. Everything is compelling. There is no argument I could make that shows the service is lacking. It has everything I would need. This is just me being stubborn, so I can move on from this point.

Now I look at usage. It doesn’t fit my workflow. If it did, I would use it. I have priorities, essentially. Things are attached to specific projects or tasks. This is very important, but I believe I’m an edge case. It’s transient, I think.

What I ultimately need is to develop a workflow using Delicious and stick with it. I think this means clever tagging, really. Nothing that doesn’t exist already. If I tagged things based on what project or task I think it is helpful, I can use the API to then extract all things for that.

Because Delicious is public, I am hesitant to do so. If I have something tagged “Sinclair” that could confuse the tags or have people looking at it for the wrong reasons. I could mark everything private but that also seems silly. I don’t like having to make these decisions. So I don’t and I keep my browser tabs open and add the public stuff to twitter.

That’s the crux of the problem.

Posting to Delicious feels permanent. It feels like I have to be correct. I know it really isn’t. Doesn’t matter. I feel weighty responsibility when publishing something on the internet. It can last forever. I want to link correctly.

So what’s the solution? I think it’s about making the publishing feel temporary. Twitter does well with this. Just framing a question, “What are you doing right now?”

What are you reading right now? If I think of using Delicious this way it becomes much easier to want to use it. Psychology is weird.

Making Quality

2011-07-14T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve criticised software because it is, in general, low quality. I define quality software in 3 ways:

It strives to be as future proof as reasonably possible.
It does not negatively surprise the user.
It performs its function correctly.

And now, for more details.

I. Look Towards the Future

Being future proof doesn’t mean something won’t be replaced. To me it means the product has been guaranteed to be replaceable. That the product assists in creating its own replacement. The majority of software products I encounter that are being phased out are very, very hard to work with. They’re not future proof. They are built sometimes with an outlandishly optimistic view that they’ll be around forever. Sometimes they are built to satisfy the needs of the day without thought to the future. Both are equally bad, though it seems the latter is worse. It isn’t, unless you are judging based on intention.

I don’t think it’s too difficult to create products that are future-proof. It is harder. It requires more thinking. However a lot of very smart people already thought of it. Support standards or standard techniques! If an existing standard does 90% use that and fudge the 10%. If there are off the shelf components each must be evaluated. Evaluate on its own future proofing. If a product uses proprietary formats or vendor lock-in it should be avoided at all costs. Even if it is Microsoft. You will be bound to that product. When it comes time to replace that component life is very difficult.

II. A crash is not a surprise.

By negative user surprise I don’t mean the occasional exception that is thrown. That’s normal and I think most users accepting if exceptions are handled gracefully. Negative user surprise is something like this:

Grab a mobile device and go to Google.
Google for something.
Click through on link and be redirected to the mobile site.
Re-search on the mobile site to find the original link.
(3?) Click through on link and be redirected to the mobile site.

These are unforgivable traits of low quality work. They’re poorly thought out and annoy users. Annoying users is the very worst thing software can do. It happens far too often and for less savvy users they often blame themselves. They walk away saying, ”I’m no good with computers.” In reality, it’s some lazy developer who refuses to learn how to do things right.

III. Correct is absolute.

Right is not subjective. It’s defined. If it isn’t defined it must be defined. It is the only measuring stick to compare. The choice of what brand of tool to use is subject. Being correct is an absolute. The problem with most lazy developers is that if the spec doesn’t explicitly say something they omit it. This is why applications die in a horrible mess if phone formats are wrong or something trivial. “Well, the spec didn’t say to allow dashes in phone numbers!” This mentality is stupid and wrong. Even worse than stupid and wrong, it’s lazy. It’s 2011 and we have tools to make all this easy.

Abiding by the spec is only half of the responsibility. This is because most specs are only half way done. The other half of any product is abiding by the spirit of the specification. This is best tested by developers dogfooding. The sad truth is that very, very few developers use the products they build. If they did, they would be ashamed of themselves. Instead they follow the same code paths and never diverge. If they did they would see just how bad their work really is. This is why QA is very important. Developers can spend an hour on their own application and not find bugs a QA person will find in 5 minutes.

The problem is not using the right tools at the right places.

In Summary

Above I mentioned I criticised a software product recently. It was partially because the choice of tools didn’t blend with my own opinion but more that they are not quality. When I asked about it the answer was very political.

This is what we have experience in working with and are faster using it.

The magic “faster” word. This is a very, very dangerous word. Faster makes business owners excited because they equate faster with cheaper. Unfortunately, faster in the context of tool choosing means “worse”. Faster and worse is the most expensive combination. It means inadequate thought, boiler plate code and woeful testing.

The people are very clearly saying, “I don’t invest in myself enough to compare with alternatives.” This means they are either overworked or lazy. Usually it’s lazy.

A developer who does not invest in themselves will not invest in a product. This will invariably lead to poor quality. That poor quality may not be apparent until years later.

Mentoring vs Teaching

2011-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

I think Google Summer of Code is a fantastic program. A lot of these things happen and I regret not being born late enough to participate. On the other hand, I’ve been involved in the whole Internet thing since nearly the beginning. A dot-Com kid, so to speak. School of hard knocks, no mentoring needed here!

The mentors are amazing. They devote a ton of their time towards simply bettering people and software. There is a general passion for this. Before I saw GSoC at work, I thought it is just teaching.

Now I don’t think so.

Teaching implies something else, something completely different. Teaching is compulsory, in a class room with people who are obligated to be there. They may even love what they do. At least the small minority of people who are engaged in the class love it. These are the people who want to learn and compulsory education may not be enough. They need a mentor. Being a mentor means you can be selective and the minority becomes the majority.

In a business environment this is interesting. On one hand, someone in a mentoring position can be selective with astute students. On the other hand there is perceived favoritism that can cause issues. There are also people who desperately want to mentor and are either unqualified or force their knowledge on others.

This is totally where if I could make awesome infographics I would put up an infographic. Oh well.

Even if mentoring is awesome, it is very hard to balance the desire to help. There are categories of people. Those who are able to mentor, those who want to learn, the people who want to teach (incompetently and unnecessarily) and, the worst, the unteachable and the uninspired.

Help Vampires are the unteachable, just wanting to glean enough knowledge to complete their task at hand and then promptly throw it away. Then there are the uninspired who show up for a paycheck and hope through some sort of luck they maintain their job and maybe get promoted even though day-in and day-out they don’t learn anything. They don’t read relevant blogs or articles. They just are. They are like house plants. They oxygenate the air and may provide some decoration around the office. You don’t want to get rid of them, because they occupy a specific place.

I believe the unteachable can be taught better habits. I do not believe the uninspired are able to be trained in the same fashion. The help vampires should be put in a position of defined learning. Goals that must be accomplished and actually focusing on the permanent accrual of knowledge. This may place a burden on the business to start with, and certainly on those mentors, but in the end it keeps the mentors happier and will (ideally) create better skilled workers.

The uninspired simply need to see the benefit of getting better. I believe that the uninspired are usually quite smart but lack the particular fire that makes developers great. It’s just lighting a spark. This can be a challenge. Finding out what they are interested in. Forcing them to engage in the community. I believe Open Source projects do a very good job countering the lethargy.

Some component in any business can be posted to GitHub and maintained. The uninspired are the perfect candidates for this. It’s not about manipulating them, it’s about showing them the larger and more exciting ecosystem.

Investing in staff is crucial. It is necessary, unequivocally. To set a goal for anything less than the utmost quality means the business will not last. It will not endure competition.

Investments in staff is an investment any business should make. I’m always amazed at employers who dismiss sending employees to conferences. The cost of sending someone to a conference is largely negligible for an established business. Flight, hotel and the tickets are probably along the upper bounds of $1500-$2000. This is, for most developers, a small percentage of their salary. If after going to the conference they’re 5% more efficient, a great gain! 5% more enthusiastic? 5% more valuable? Well, that’s just an even better return on investment.

I heard this a while ago and it summarized my point in two simple sentences:

CFO asks his CEO, “What happens if we invest in developing our people and then they leave the company?”

CEO answers, “What happens if we don’t, and they stay?”

Protecting Misconceptions

2011-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

When I was young I would run through the kitchen at lightning speed. As fast as my little legs would take me. Part of my racing circuit included a section where there was a pull-out cupboard. For my whole life I was shorter and ran under it. This was my reality. This was my perception.

One day in full sprint I suddenly wasn’t shorter.

I then learned and (involuntarily) adjusted my perceptions of self.

Recently I took my wife to an MLS game. Landon Donovan goes tearing off in front of us and I say, “I would love to race him.” I think I could beat him. I’m pretty swift. She then said she could beat him and then she would beat me. Our perceptions are likely both very, very wrong. I could totally outrun her and Landon Donovan would embarrass both of us.

I don’t want to let go of my perception. I like this perception that I’m still very fast. Even if it isn’t true I still like it. I want to continue to believe this notion.

I would never utter these things out loud. Except to my wife. Oh, and writing here but it’s only to illustrate my learning exercises. However, if Landon Donovan or his agent does ever read this I will totally race him. $1000 for charity over the length of the pitch. I’ll even drive to LA.

Why do I want to keep this perception? Why do I want to maintain a belief that is likely no longer true? There is some distinct and isolated drive to persist in this foolish behavior.

What frightens me is that there is some fervent belief that I don’t recognize as foolish. That I truly believe. I know there has to be some aspect of my being that I perceive incorrectly. I wish I knew what it was.

This lead me to the conclusion that it’s impossible to discover myself independently. The best solution was to look at how people say things to me. Usually it’s just some comments about being unpleasantly acerbic, which is fine. I know all about that. I’m good there. This isn’t the right path and doesn’t feel correct. It’s a frustrating conundrum.

I think about the other people then. Who is providing me with feedback? The signal I desperately try to process. Maybe that’s flawed. I know a lot of people who seemingly glaze over important messages, missing all hints and missing the actual point. The point that the story is to be a cautionary tale, stop being like this person in the story. Missing the hint is worse than being guilty of the bad trait in question.

I think this level of obliviousness reduces a lot of opportunities in life. That’s a different writing, but being aware produces opportunity. People who are oblivious are not given the same level of respect or trust.

My self-doubt kicks in. Do I catch the points? Maybe I’m just as bad? I hope not. That would be really terrible.

My childhood neighbors were truly awful people. One day when I was probably 7 or 8 years old, they came over and were telling me about their cousin who did something (I can’t remember now) and cried and how he was a big baby. He was guilty of being all sorts of mean things. I was thinking, “I don’t want to agree with them, I would have cried, too.” I remember this event clearly. I was proud of myself for making this connection.

That’s the last time I ever felt certain the story was really about me. I knew even then that there was no cousin.

Two decades (at least) is a long time to go without that feeling of certainty. It seems unlikely that nobody has told a story with me as the veiled subject to try to deliver a jarring message more gently.

Years later in life I ran into a friend I worked with. She was sitting in a cafe with a friend of hers picking out paint colors. I don’t know how the conversation really went, but abruptly the friend of my friend said, “You have a habit of bringing the conversation to being about you and right now we’re trying to pick paint colors.”

Without merciful honesty nobody will be sure of their own attributes.

I have profound respect and admiration for that person. That was fabulous advice. Whether it was or wasn’t, that was the perception. I probably was. I maybe still do, but I try to be mindful. Back then I probably wasn’t an enjoyable person.

I like to tell stories. I think it’s fun. My stories are true (as best as I can recollect) and I generally get laughs. My favorite times in life are sitting around taking turns telling amusing stories. Usually about being stupid, like running into cutting boards.

I try to be what I would call a good conversationalist. I can’t gauge success and have only my perception of telling amusing stories. That perception could be completely wrong for some people. The final problem to judging perceptions is that it’s only for some people. It’s entirely subjective.

This is a most unfortunate conundrum. Anybody who feels comfortable with me enough to be honest will be biased. Those who don’t will be distrusted (usually).

Even so, if someone I didn’t know well said something to me I didn’t agree with I may be protective of my potential misconception.

A girl I was dating once said, “I know you think you’re funny. You aren’t. You should stop trying to be funny.” We broke up. My wife thinks I’m hilarious. I think she’s just easily entertained because I can’t be that funny.

People have different perceptions, too. Who can be trusted? My mom raised me to believe there were 3 sides to every story. It seems there are 3 sides to every personality trait. How I perceive it, how the other person perceives it, and what it really is. I think every person will have a different perception. So, now instead of 3 sides we have my perception, reality and every person who interacts with me.

Oh my.

I can’t stand some people and really enjoy others’ company. Some people I like very well also like people I can’t stand. We see different things.

And now I’ve written all these words and I am no closer to any answer. I haven’t even clarified my thoughts sufficiently

It’s impossible to gauge your own traits. It’s impossible to trust others’, because they are biased or having varying perceptions themselves.

Maybe it’s not important. The only conclusion I can come to is that what really matters is not that my perceptions are correct. What matters is that I improve myself and improve others. That I’m a positive influence and am not negative matters more. If I’m positive, who cares if some people don’t like me. It’s more important that those who do like me benefit from me.

My thoughts on improving myself.

2011-07-07T00:00:00+00:00

I try to always improve myself. Daily rituals, even. Sometimes it’s physically, other times mentally (or what people may call spiritually) but often it’s intellectual. I try to always learn something new and interesting. Sometimes for the wrong reasons but there is usually a valid reason.

I was discussing this with my wife. She said it’s perceived as a negative thing to talk about doing this. Natural talent is a good thing. Nurtured and grown talent is not. People like to think those inspirational awesome figures were simply born that way.

What a depressing way to think and I’m not sure I believe it. I’m not sure I don’t believe it though.

John Steinbeck so famously said, “socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” (or at least the Internet says he said that).

If this is the case, why do people not always acknowledge that the way to not be a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, but just a plain old millionaire, is through hard work and continuous improvement.

A lot of people talk about this. 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration and all that. If it is common knowledge (at least enough for the quotes to enter cliche territory) that one must work harder than anything else, why is this confused?

Why is it seen as bad form to publicly dedicate time and energy towards improving yourself? Why is it taboo?

People in general don’t seem interested in improving themselves. A lot of people will seemingly put effort into making people who do improve themselves feel bad about it.

We should celebrate and praise those who actively work to improve.

I understand it’s hard to give praise to someone who brings out a feeling of shame. When I listen to people who have read countless books on software development and can digest them down into a simple, unified summary I can understand I feel guilty. I try so hard to show my appreciation for them and hide my guilt, rather than turn it around and blame them.

Praise shouldn’t be reserved for the entrepreneurs who create disruptive companies. It should include the retired cop who still runs every day and spends his days reading about history. It should be anybody who works hard. I read stories about athletes who get heckled and shamed for showing off, but then hear how they spend hours every day beyond other athletes perfecting their game.

These people are all making the world a better place. To be dramatic, I think these are the only people making the world a better place. If you aren’t improving yourself you are damaging those around you. Everybody has a foot print. Either negative or positive. Not improving yourself moves to the negative. Not improving means you may be subversive to those who are. Everybody loses. There is no reason to not improve. We’re here on this Earth right now and it makes no sense to spend it in misery.

I hate being made to feel lazy or ignorant. I think the hate for that feeling is what pushes me to try to improve myself. When I close my eyes to try to sleep I think what I’ve done through the day. If I’ve not improved myself I lay there and think why. Why did I not do what I promised myself I would? I turn my shame into some constructive advice for myself. New ways to stick with it.

I’ve consciously been working on this for about 8 years. It’s still not any easier. I still have to nag myself. I still feel shame when someone has knowledge that I should have had. That I would have had if I wasn’t being lazy. I am calmer now. Instead of trying to redouble my efforts I try to make it easier to want to continue.

I want to always enjoy myself, and frankly sometimes improving myself is just not fun. That’s ok. I try to think of ways to make it fun. Then, indirectly, I’ve just improved myself by finding ways to do that are more enjoyable. Sometimes it works.

The Trust Paradox

2011-07-06T00:00:00+00:00

Trusting people is hard. I constantly struggle with this. I identify with people who have had similar backgrounds. This means I’m trusting people that may not deserve it.

When it comes to subjects I’m not familiar with, this trust could be dangerous. I’m also very cynical. I find myself compulsively consulting Wikipedia when I hear new information. Even Wikipedia may not convince me on its own. Usually by the end of this cycle I’ve educated myself as much as one can be educated in the course of a day or two. I spend way too much of my time doing this. Not efficient.

For the most part I think I have good judgement with people. At least as far as who to trust (those who know me would joke, “nobody”). I lean towards the negative, though. I probably cut out plenty of people who are certainly trustworthy because of some small red flag that alarms me. I’m like a deer, spooked by a cracking twig and in flight before even assessing the danger completely. Which is odd, because in the physical realm I’ll fight before flight. The ethereal network of trust just spooks me.

When I evaluate someone to see if I trust them as a provider of information I first consider the scope of their expertise. A good example is a lawyer. If I’m talking to an IP lawyer and they give me advice, I independently verify it. I feel I must do this. By the time I’ve come to terms with the information and understand it, I have increased my knowledge of IP law. I’m surprised how often I get wrong information by experts.

There has to be some balance between knowing enough to trust people and being a subject matter expert. I’m still desperately trying to find this. I spend an inordinate amount of time learning things that are not directly beneficial. I’m always a fan of learning and I love to study but there are countless things to study that are more topical and relevant to my life. I’m giving up time to do something that seems I shouldn’t have to be done.

I think this is why reputation is so important in life. It’s the metric of trust. If people I trust trust someone, I should also trust that person. The less I trust the person referring, obviously the less I trust the stated reputation.

Often people tell me that I should meet someone they know. This requires I trust the person making introductions. Rarely does this work out in everybody’s favor. I know that I generally avoid making introductions except for a very small number of people. I want to make sure my introductions have value.

What drives people to make these introductions? I know plenty of people who seem to have no other purpose in life other than to introduce people. I find myself avoiding these types of people, and I probably shouldn’t. I assume they’re successful in the introductions they make for others or they wouldn’t be able to do it. It is too much of a leap for me to trust blindly. Partially because I don’t think they know enough to trust me or judge me accurately enough. If they don’t know me how can I believe they trust the person on the other side? How is it better than just posting on Craigslist?

It probably doesn’t matter. I think the only time the trust and accurate judging really matters is when people are in a position of extreme power. The people that can change a life drastically with a boolean decision; venture capitalists and angel investors are this type. Even most employers. In spite of all the above, given an opportunity to meet with any person in the position to alter lives, I will meet them.

By their very position in life they are worth trusting in many categories. I may not trust their technical knowledge or other specific knowledge, but sitting down over a cup of coffee with any established business person will yield tremendous amounts of information. Information I’m depriving myself of due to my cynicism.

That information may turn into trust for the source. Or it may turn into skepticism. I know there are people in positions awarded only through deceit and abuse. It’s sad, but true. This is where my golden rule in life comes in.

If someone does something to someone else, expect they will also do it to you.

That’s the core of my trust evaluation. I see how someone works and interacts with other people.

I stole something today and don't feel remorse.

2011-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

Today I stole something. I fired up a torrent client and grabbed a cracked copy of Reeder. This is after searching for a trial. I wasn’ tsure if I really wanted it. I’m not going to spend $10 to discover I just like Google Reader better. Google Reader is very good. Something has changed. A few years ago it was standard to have a Try For 7-14 Day version. Not having that would have been suicide, I think. Now it seems nothing I want has a trial (except for products from older software foundries).

What we have now is this ridiculous “SomeApp” and “SomeApp Free” pairing. Usually the “Free” has some annoying limitation that prompts you to pay. Or a free version just doesn’t exist and there is no trial. Like Reeder. Now I’m using Reeder illegally because there was no trial. If I stick with it after a week I’ll buy it. Promise. If not, I’ll delete it. Seems fair to me.

This entire idea of a Free vs Paid version is wrong now. Free (other than games) should be a time-locked full version. Anything else is inadequate.

This pairing strategy clutters the app indexes. Each version gets different reviews (people rating a free app have less invested). This devalues ratings and reviews can’t be trusted. It’s damaging the app store.

I trust app store reviews less if there is a free version. It even works the other way. When people buy the full version they see perceived value (at least enough to warrant the cost). If the app doesn’t live up to expectations (which is very possible) it is rated it even more negatively because of promises made from a free version. Someone inexperienced with the free app will have a different interpretation.

If the App Stores support DRM, which I expect they all do, this is an easy problem to solve. Let any app run for some period of time, set by the publisher, without paying. Then you must pay. This would work. Reviews would be more valuable as people are getting exactly what they will pay for.

It annoys me that the current state of applications is going backwards. Being deprived of being able to physically interact with something you are going to buy is just bad. I never defended piracy and always called copyright infringement theft, but if this is the way things are going I’ll be stealing a lot more. I don’t want to steal. I just want to make wise purchases.

I’d also like to whine about Reeder having separate iPad and iPhone apps, which I assume is purely because they want to sell two copies. It’s greedy and bad form if that’s the reason, but all that is a separate write-up.

Momentum matters. Software development succeeds by it.

2011-07-03T00:00:00+00:00

I found myself amiss. On a deserted island, stranded. Wondering what to do and where I would go. I glared. I scowled. The computer would not come back to life.

After much fussing about, I narrowed it down to something that I would call unrepairable. By this I simply mean that the cost of repairing is more than what it would take to buy something new. It’s an opportunity to upgrade. In this case, it was a substantial and enjoyable upgrade. I rewarded myself.

This is one way to lose (or gain) momentum. I used the computer upstairs while my kids are getting ready to go to bed. I hacked away or write while they are getting bathed and enjoying quiet time. I didn’t use it for any important work, though. Only things I could get interrupted from and not mind. I still got a lot done, though. All the little things. The yaks, needing to be shaved.

Momentum is easy to understand. Here is what it means to me:

Five minutes of work today should always be worth less than five minutes tomorrow.

It was amazing how much I wasn’t getting done after this system died. It was frustrating and that frustration turned into lost momentum. I found myself needing to work on mundane details at inopportune times. Those times where I was secluded, free from interruptions. This caused me to push back things that were important and difficult.

At the core of my being things were out of sync. I lost momentum. Momentum is very hard to get back. In an effort to rekindle I rewarded myself with a new system. It is extravagant but now I am happy. Working on a system that is very, very nice has the expected result; I want to work. That desire builds momentum.

Having a computer fail is just one way to lose momentum, but it’s the easiest to solve. In this case I think it may have helped me gain some momentum (ignoring the time in between where I did nothing.)

What if there is a disruption that isn’t hardware? Something vague in a group that seems innocuous to outsiders. Staff changes, leadership changes. Language or platform choices. These changes are difficult to track. Sometimes they are successful and build momentum. Sometimes they are not, but hidden and very hard to isolate.

There was an article from 1995 (they had computers then?) by Orson Scott Card (author of Ender’s Game). It was titled, How Software Companies Die. A brazen title, but worth the read. So go read it. Now. It’s ok if you don’t come back, it’s better writing.

At the center a lot of the article I believe it is really about momentum.

Developers have variable amounts of energy. What separates a brilliant developer from the mediocre is that amount of energy. It’s almost like hit points in a video game. When a high energy developers loses momentum, the energy goes somewhere. In the article, it talks about developers becoming uncooperative and disobedient. This is true and it is a result of lost momentum. The energy must be applied somewhere.

I don’t care about lost momentum, though. I think it’s the result of inept leaders. The best way out? Quit. Don’t look back. Don’t work for a bad leader. If the company is good demand to be transferred. If it isn’t, quit. I know of at least a dozen really good companies that are hiring.

The more important question is how do you build momentum? My thoughts lately have given me some suggestions, but I haven’t put these in practice. I’m mostly judging the ideas by what I think would work for me.

If momentum stalls or is low because of a leadership change the second in command needs to step up quick. Fill the void internally or hire someone famous. Someone every person feels they’re just plain lucky to work with. It’s expensive, but an idle team is more expensive.

Outside of organizational changes there are tool changes. Sometimes people have to use a new tool or programming language and don’t like it. The momentum gained (or lost) from learning a new tool or programming language is rarely transferable. The product of the group will suffer. People will make the same mistakes they made with the old tools again. Then they’re likely to overcompensate (something like the Second-system effect. More lost momentum.

Again, I think the solution is to hire someone well respected and well versed using the new tools (or language). This will be a beacon of light on a stormy sea of uncertainty. Employees will be thankful instead of fearful. Being thankful builds momentum. Being fearful hurts it.

The worst, and I believe irreparable, situation is losing faith. Not believing the direction of the product or company. Even if the tools, language or platform is agreed to be a good choice, developers and employees can still flounder.

The hard, cold answer is to let them go. You’re with us or against us. Why worry about these employees anyway? If they don’t believe in the new company and you know better, cool. If you don’t know better you should have listened to them. You won’t know until everything is done and over. Nobody can see the future. If the company direction changes and fails, all the departed employees will be dancing. That has to be very hard to cope with.

In these situations the leaders must either stay the course and ride out the storm of all the talent quitting (or worse, being outwardly subversive and difficult but not quitting) and try to replace it or cancel and regroup.

There is no shame in retreating if it builds momentum to cross the finish line in a different direction. There is shame in blindly pushing forward against all odds. Fortunately, employees who feel wronged are never shy to point out they were right and the leaders were wrong. Sometimes this works better for them in the long run.

This is the first essay written on the new system. It’s delightful and I’m greatly enjoying it. It feels good to be writing again. That was a painful week.

Software is made of people.

2011-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

Software is like internally consumable products. For the most part, the only thing I internally consume is food and occasionally some medicine. This keeps me fit (well, alive) and free of foreign objects passing uncomfortably through my system. I am then ready to tackle the challenges laid out for me in life.

Just like Software. Sort of.

If you think of software as a consumable product it’s easier to categorize the software. Especially if you fancy yourself a software connoisseur (like myself). Food is made by chefs, Software is made (hopefully) by developers. I’m not necessarily talking about big box Microsoft or Oracle software. Those don’t have personalities behind them. They’re devoid of it, even.

Following software and design, one quickly learns who the best developers are. Thanks to twitter and the new Internet world, you follow them. You learn who works well together and who has issues. You learn to trust (or shy away from) their products purely because of who they are. The Apple App Store is great for this.

The great thing about the software world over restaurants is that you don’t have to deal with annoying websites. We have github and language specific sites tracking all this for us.

When I look at software, the best thing I can see is this:

This is someone who works on YUI full-time yet still spends his weekends optimizing it. This is different from part-time contributions. I would expect him to be tired of YUI by Friday. Nope, he’s making it more awesome.

Software is people, and these people make awesome software.

I look at this and think how poorly I contribute back to the ecosystem. I am a critic, going from producer to producer and judging them. I only hope my judgements are thorough and fair.

Fantasies are the enemy of progress

2011-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

Since I was a boy I’ve heard this talk about goals. I’ve always heard them done wrong. I don’t mean everybody is always wrong, but I mean every time I hear people list goals at least one is wrong.

Wait, how can a goal be wrong? Goals are good, they make people better! I disagree.

First I must define what a goal is. Goals are a few things to me:

Goals are good.
Goals are obtainable with the knowledge at hand.
Goals have a clear victory condition.

I debated writing an example of a bad goal or a good goal first. Instead I’ll write about my own goals.

It’s no secret I want to start my own business. To do so I have a series of things I want to accomplish. The most important is to get a paying customer for our document storage system, Docuvent. This isn’t a goal, it’s a fantasy. With the knowledge and resources I have available to me I cannot achieve this. Also, there is no clear victory condition. I may get a paying customer that gives us a small one time payment. That doesn’t put me closer to what I truly want.

A fantasy is a byproduct of goals. My goal is to build an awesome product that saves companies money, because they would have to hire staff to do what our software does. The fantasy is that then they are happy to pay us. Eager to pay us, even. I don’t get distracted by the fantasy any more than I need to be. It is fuel for my goals and my ambition, but it is not my goal.

I have the abilities, experience and can deliver a superb product. I’ve done it before, just not for myself. It’s certainly a large goal and we have a great many tasks to do this. The sign of successfully achieving this goal is that our fantasies start to come true.

This is how I know my goals are correct. People fantasize about being where I’m at. There’s no overnight success, there is only careful planning and realistic goals. The fantasies are the reward. When I see someone I never want to be where they are at, I want to take the journey that will get me there.

Book Review: Purple Cow by Seth Godin

2011-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

I read Purple Cow on a quick trip. During the trip my wife went to a Japanese book store in LA that sells used books for $1 each. In the pile of books she found The Complete Manual of Suicide and immediately had to buy it.

This book is an example of a Purple Cow. Something remarkable that compels certain people to evangelise the product. In this case the book also caused a furor. My wife was a teenager and wasn’t able to buy it or even read it. Through word of mouth alone she wanted it. She desperately wanted it but it wasn’t available for 18 years.

The book just contains a very encyclopedic list of suicide methods. Success rates, pain, etc. As she was telling me about her excitement in finding the book I questioned her motivations. I knew that it was the Streisand Effect and she really had no interest in the information. Her interest was purely in the word of mouth marketing and controversy.

That interest kept hold and as she entered a book store 18 years later she felt compelled to buy it. And it was only a dollar.

The primary message I got from Purple Cow is:

To be exceptional, and building a successful company is exceptional, the product must be remarkable. A remarkable product is created from the beginning to be remarkable. This requires every person involved in the engineering, sales and marketing to be involved in product development.

As for the book itself, I felt the book was too repetitive. Fantastic message and explanations but it was hard to churn through. There were many chapters that were rehashing previous examples. These chapters usually had some nugget of wisdom buried that was easy to overlook. The very last chapter was the best, as it just quickly isolated various companies and products and how they were (or weren’t) remarkable.

All in all, the book was far too long. I doubt any publisher wants to bind a 30-50 page book and sell it for the same price as a 150 page book.

And a minor digression.

This is the problem with the literary and publishing world is that we have blogs. Previously when a subject or story was too short for a book, people wrote filler. Now they cut more fat out and it turns into a blog entry. The happy medium is eBooks, which can be nice and short but still organized like a proper book.

I think the self publishing revolution will give us this, and it will be the biggest gift of all.

Self publishing is also a Purple Cow. It is a remarkable product. My business manifesto I’ve been writing for months? Self Publish. It isn’t a book, not nearly long enough and I won’t pollute it with fat. Even if I do put it on my blog it will be scattered into several sections.

Even just 2 years ago there was not a feasible way for me to take that collection and clean it up then publish. Now in a weekend I could have an ePub and by the next have it available on Amazon.

Life is amazing for those individuals who do remarkable things.

It’s hard for me to recommend people read Purple Cow because I believe the message is very simple. The book just beats the dead horse. Like Brother Ali says, Beating a dead horse isn’t killing it. Seth makes excellent points everybody should really think hard about but the book itself is not remarkable. Oh, the paradox. Oddly, I wrote this a few weeks before it was announced that J.K. Rowling would be self-publishing her next series.

Resignation is a good word.

2011-06-24T00:00:00+00:00

Resignation:

An act of retiring or giving up a position.

The most important phrase there is giving up. I am a quitter. Quitters never win, but what is much worse than not winning now is not winning in a year, or two years from now. It’s not really so bad to not win. Not winning is different than abysmal failure.

People quit for a variety of reasons. It’s like breaking up.

It’s not you, it’s me.

We all know we say reasons that are just plain wrong.

For someone making $100,000/year and receiving 20% more is honestly not a huge shift in life. There is nothing you can’t do at $100,000 a year that you can do at $120,000. Things just get a little nicer. A bit shinier. Perhaps more often, but not a blocker.

It’s not money. People will stay at good jobs with bad pay much longer than they stay at bad jobs with good pay. Citation needed? Nope. Just my personal opinion and observations.

It’s about the company. It’s always about the company. If the person is good and people regret their departure, it’s because they are too good for the company. Plain and simple. I’m not talking about the people who quit and everybody rejoices.

Companies that try to justify or make excuses for why people leaving are missing the message. The message is very obvious. Unfortunately, it’s not obvious to the people being left behind (at least not those in charge).

It’s also very easy to take resignation personally, both the person resigning and the manager. Really, though, unless it is the CEO it isn’t personal. The CEO is the one in charge so it’s always their fault. Goes with the territory. It’s also the immediate supervisor to some extent. If the immediate supervisor or group leader is bad it is still the CEOs fault for not fixing it. That’s their job. They hold the keys to the environment. Their actions alone determine if it is good or bad. If it has friction or not.

I am writing this because of my own recent resignation from a job. The reasons that I resigned (and share with other talented people that resign) are easy to understand.

Very simply, the company no longer benefits me. There are people there I will genuinely miss and regret working with. Unfortunately they are part of a very small minority. There are no other benefits. No career growth that I want. No challenge. No excitement. I am not a factory worker.

Much more importantly is not growing or learning. This is the biggest problem that will cause any talented developer to leave. They need to be learning. The culture of “We do it this way because that’s what we’ve done before” is damaging and wholly unrewarding. Talent runs away from this philosophy.

The second reason is being undermined. Saying you’ve been undermined is vague. Again I look to the dictionary and it’s very easy to see:

Erode the base or foundation.

In this environment I saw all of the aspects of quality and achievement that we were proud of and then saw they were all being chipped away.

The environment became one of high friction and low reward. It is hard to accomplish anything, especially the tasks at hand.

Finally, the last point is related to the previous. The complaints go unheeded. I don’t expect anybody to follow my advice, but I always expect and demand to be listened to. In more petty terms, this allows me in the future to say, “Look right here, I was right. I told you so.”

When complaints go unanswered or the attempts to remedy them are worse than the underlying issue, it is obvious that I am not being heard. I am not being listened to. There is a response but it is over simplified. It is a response intended to make me happy with the minimal amount of effort put into it. It is political, not actionable.

When supervisors put in just enough effort to not get people to quit, the best people still quit. Then they are surrounded by the warm blanket of mediocrity and happily can report things are just fine, because that’s what they are able to understand.

Hiring Passionate Developers

2011-06-23T00:00:00+00:00

I’m passionate. A lot of developers are. When I hear people say they struggle to find passionate developers I get annoyed. It’s trivially easy to find passionate developers.

First, find out where passionate developers hang out. It’s really not changing rapidly. When it does change, there are usually big names involved. Find some developers on Google through generic queries for open source software or just really good companies. See what they’re talking about and look at the community. This shouldn’t take more than 15-30 minutes. If it takes more than that, it’s a good idea to put someone in charge of technology.

Second, spend an hour browsing whatever social coding site is liked the most. Maybe StackOverflow or GitHub, it doesn’t matter. Spend at least an hour on the site just exploring people (not projects). Clicking around to find something interesting but always be moving. See what names pop out. It is usually very apparent who is active and what their demeanor is. Look at the bug reports on their projects. How they respond to bugs is very important to how they will be in a job.

Finally, don’t email asking if they want a job. This is perceived as spam. Period. Passionate developers get job opportunities frequently. Most passionate developers know other passionate developers. There are always jobs for quality developers and there is competition for these developers. Don’t ask if they want an interview, they don’t need an interview. Instead, ask for a phone call. If they’re local ask them to meet at their favorite coffee shop. If not, pay them for their time in the form of a wishlist purchase.

Make it worth their while and show appreciation. This is money that would go to a recruiter that would only find some inadequately screened candidates and blindly forward resumes. It’s worth the time and the money. Get to know developers. Be known as someone who understands, not as someone who pays recruiters. I’ve taken head hunter skill tests. They are inadequate and in no way measures how well someone will actually perform on the job.

For anybody wanting to hire a passionate developer the advice above is mandatory. A passionate developer won’t want to work with someone who can’t be bothered to be at least partially engaged in the culture. The culture of passionate software development means a lot of things, but being aware there is a culture goes a long way to finding proper talent. Things like Open Source, using Git, using good tools.

These things are important to a passionate developer. More important though is the commitment to a company. Work is a big commitment and it is to a company. However, it breaks down to two people: the employee and the supervisor. If a developer is too eager to join, be wary. Someone who rushes into making any important decision will exercise that same hasty judgement in their daily work, or they just don’t understand what importance really is.

I generalized above about recruiters. Not all recruiters are bad and not all resumes from them are garbage. However, in my experience the only passionate developers that use recruiters fit one (or more) of the categories:

Very young or inexperienced. This isn’t a bad thing, they just don’t have a network.
Very specific in their career. They may use a recruiter to find them opportunities they are specific about (not just, “Get me a job” but “Get me a job where I can work from the summit of a mountain, in Perl and pays over $100,000”).
Getting out of being “just a developer”. Hanging the gloves up and going into management. Their network may not have enough high level positions available but they’re ready to make the leap.

If the above is too long, developers have an expression. Too long; didn’t read. tl;dr. Here’s the tl;dr version:

Browse the websites programmers hang out on.
Get a short list of people who are active and have a suitable personality, sourced from bugs, commits, messages, etc.
Inspect their projects.
Engage them in a neutral fashion seeking advice and opinions. Not to hire them.
Pay them for their time in the form of gifts. Most developers have Amazon Wishlists (don’t give outright cash, that’s tacky).
Become known in the community as someone who “gets it”
Really do “get it” and get the best developers around.
Get more developers because people want to work where the cool kids are.
Succeed but protect your culture and grow with a good business and better environment.

Environmental friction and developers coasting along.

2011-06-22T00:00:00+00:00

I had a good conversation. It is easy to summarize.

Certain people are like rocket boosters, launching developers and giving them an impressive burst of speed. Depending upon the environment, this momentum is kept for inordinate amounts of time or it is absorbed and halted entirely too quickly.

I believe, essentially, when people talk about “synergy” this is what they mean. There are people I work very well with. However, that on its own isn’t sufficient to accomplish great things. We must also be in the correct environment. That means both parties must be in a frictionless environment (as much as possible, anyway.)

Building a low friction environment is a challenge because they aren’t grown organically. It’s developed and nurtured and is a unique ecosystem that can’t be assembled. There are no instructions or guide books. It’s bonsai, not a tomato garden.

The biggest killer is when companies see these forming and try to emulate or make them a mandatory aspect of life in a new imagined corporate culture.

As an analog, I am trying to get a well balanced pond setup.

It is very difficult. I can make proclamations that mandate the beneficial bacteria grow faster, and even add in things that help this. I can even add in the bacteria. I can buy more fish and more plants, or take them out. It still takes time and I have to see which way things go and react accordingly. Right now I’m contending with algae but I feel I’m on the right track.

Companies that throw too much into the mixing pot end up with sludge. There is too little time taken to make sure the changes are good and accepted (a good change can go bad if it is introduced too quickly). Often times there is too little attention to the details. There is no thought into tracking the all important question. Are we doing better? Repeat it. Are we doing better? If that can’t be answered, at best it’s a guess if the environment is growing positively.

To make it more complicated, a change on its own doesn’t stick. It requires constant care and the consequences may be completely unforeseen down the road. There is psychology in all this and everybody is not only unique, but the pairing of people is very unique.

The interworking relationships that develop are what ultimately determine the amount of friction. When people are able to get along well without outside interference it doesn’t need to be adjusted. Merely trying to observe this phenomenon can disrupt it. When things do need assistance in being productive, gentle changes require time to manifest themselves.

The order cannot be dictated but it can be guided. With anything guided, patience is important to track and watch progress.

The value of committing.

2011-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

A while ago I had a friend stay with us and we’ve been having a good time. He’s been displaced because of the Japan disaster and was living quite rough for a few weeks (no power, no water). Then in the US he’s enjoying the civilized world with running water, electricity and stocked liquor cabinets again.

His first day in, my son ceremoniously clogs the toilet and causes an overflow. I was not home, but came back in time to see the disinfecting. My wife comments about how my friend jumped in, grabbed a bucket and without regard or thought to the “ick” factor admirably stopped the continued flooding and began clean up.

This is committing to the moment.

I see a lot of short-cuts taken in life and work. I know I’m guilty but I always try to do it right. If there is some part broken off deep in the recesses of something, I dismantle the casing and take a proper look to fix it instead of try to figure out how to get a flashlight beam into the bowels.

Shortly after the toilet flooding I had a very small crack in some PVC piping in my backyard. It wasn’t flooding, I wasn’t running frantically trying to find the irrigation shut off valve, it was a leak. Just a drip. There is the temptation to use various shortcuts and try a fix but at what cost?

For the piping, it could spring a subtle leak and I wouldn’t find it. I would waste precious water, spending money and wasting it away. That’s bad. The real fix took about 30 minutes and help from my dad. I had to call in a favor but the end result is I don’t have to worry about when it’s going to crack again. He told me a story about a pipe with a pesky leak they kept patching with some epoxy like compound. When it came time to replace the pipe completely, the entire section was devoid of metal.

In the product development world I believe it’s even more important to fully commit yourself to the right solution. Mistakes may be made but the mistakes made from committing to success are different. They’re good mistakes. The type you look at and laugh at later in life. The type that don’t wake a company.

As an example, I stumbled on some code that was written years ago that looked so similar to my own. I knew I didn’t write it; it was my partner in crime and we went through similar growth and learning. We shared in a lot of what we learned and our code is similar in this period.

The code written was naive, not exactly elegant and even in a silly place. However, we were both committed to this new pseudo-functional-programming style and solving problems right. It’s a good style resulting in code that is easy to test, use and extend. With this, and our current years of practice and knowledge, it wouldn’t take much to go from naive to excellent. Any difficulty in testing could be remedied with a few slight changes. It was successful.

I think this is the first time I’ve looked back at software I’ve written and instead of cringing, I laughed. I looked at it, fixed the naive mistakes but the core idea was still sound. A light refitting rather than a wholesale replacement.

We commit to learning and still write foolish code. In the end our foolish code from yesterday is better and still has an atmosphere of being future proof. We succeeded in what we set out to do. Not write better code, but write smarter code and we committed to it.

This is what we do.

2011-06-19T00:00:00+00:00

“My job is harder than typing, and I don’t make that much!” she said. This acquaintance overheard a discussion she shouldn’t have heard. It was about my salary at a new job. She was a nurse. I agree that her job is probably more stressful and physically more demanding. Harder? That’s subjective.

It’s unfortunate that to write and build software products its required to type so much. This is 2011. We shouldn’t type this much. Not just because it is inefficient but because it makes us look like typists. There isn’t anything wrong with typists or the data entry professions but it is just not what we do. At all. I was trying to think of some other profession where it looks like you’re doing something completely different but can’t really come up with anything. Building a credit card processing system is not about typing, but anybody doing that just appears to be typing.

Lawyers study in law books. They’re still studying, even though they’re not reading. It’s related. We don’t have that relation. Right now as I write this my wife would have to look at cues (my posture and body language) or just ask.

Even between categories of software there is such a wide variety of skills. The differences between cryptography or eCommerce cataloging is so wide, but it still looks the same. Just typing.

I have been blessed with a very wide career swath covering desktop applications, embedded systems, backend service development and web applications. With my background I can safely say that the learning curve between each broad category of software type is huge. I would imagine it to be much larger than other professions, but I don’t know. My only other jobs were a brief stint in customer support and some manual labor. I’ve been very lucky.

Any good developer is not a software engineer. The word “developer” means something very different than the word engineer. When you’re talking about software engineering as developing products, its not even real science. It’s sort of science. It really is Research. Research and Development (see, it flows so well!).

Every time a developer writes something it’s the first time. Always. Anything I create is essentially a research project that I learn from. Sometimes it immediately passes the crash test, but most the time it fails. Hopefully it fail before a real person falls victim to my mistakes. This is not science. Science has proofs. It has exact metrics of success. Developing products is too personal. It’s too opinionated.

It’s very important to understand that all developers are constantly experimenting. The worst developer is the one that doesn’t experiment or try new techniques. When a developer says, ”I’ve done this before” they mean only in concept. They’ve never done that specific thing before. If they did they wouldn’t be needed. The software would be purchased and setup by an administrator.

More importantly, a solid developer will never stop. Ever. A core fiber of being that is nearly a curse. We don’t have off hours. We’re always on. We may go home but our brains continue working. We’re not typing when we work, we’re solving an abstract problem.

We may have brief pauses but our inspiration and thoughts continue long into the evening after we leave the office. Even at events we should be paying attention to. Going on a cruise? Well, I’ll be thinking about how to handle local and remote data sources and how to sync them in against a remote API. That’s how I roll. My wife still puts up with me which is the most surprising thing.

I have weird behaviors because of this. I will abruptly stop what I’m doing to sketch something out. Sometimes even running into my office or grabbing my laptop. Mid-sentence. Bam, here I go to write some code that may or may not work. I’ll come back and pick up the conversation, but my mood will be drastically altered. I’ll be happier than I’ve been all day or more sullen than all week.

I will even wake up in the middle of the night on rare occasion, running downstairs to hack up something that I dreamt about. I dream about what I do. I’m not alone in this.

We are developers. We research problems and try to solve them in the best way. These problems are abstract and opinionated and our solutions are matching. We are not commodities and we are not equal.

Hello.

2011-06-12T00:00:00+00:00

This maybe started for the wrong reasons. I’m not doing it for myself. I’m doing it because James Altucher told me to. I don’t have a reason to not, and I’ve generally lived my life with the philosophy that if I don’t have a reason to say no, I say yes.

So I am writing because he told me to. It took me a while to figure out what to write about. What am I passionate about? This took me days to answer. I thought about things that were pretty common. I’m passionate about building software. I’m passionate about my family.

Then I was reading something else that James Altucher wrote and it clicked. It’s not about being an entrepreneur in business. It’s about being an entrepreneur in life. Improving on all aspects of my life. This is what I’m passionate about.

I know it sounds silly. I am pretty sure every person out there wants their life to be better. This is why the lottery is so big. That’s different though. I want to make my life better. I want to work on new and innovative ways to make my life better.

A lot of the personal stories I write will likely never be published. Maybe they will, who knows. As I write this, I have a backlog of 30 posts to work with. Some won’t be published but I hope most will. Most of them focus on the topics that I’m dealing with now that make me feel not at 100%. They are related to business and how I view it. How I get stuff done and how I deal with things. More importantly, how I think they should be dealt with. In most cases I’m happy to be wrong, but these are my opinions that I’m writing for myself.

The purpose is to help me be clear. One of my tenets is that I do not understand something if I cannot explain it to someone. Often times I explain it to myself. That leaves a lot to be desired. In writing these articles I am still explaining it to myself, but I hope to gain outside feedback and perspective. Even if people disagree with me (and they will, it is the Internet after all) I hope they can be constructive and help me either clarify my thoughts or even change my opinions.

That is what I hope to gain. To be better equipped to think about what it is that I think. If it turns out I fail and don’t improve my ability to think, focus and explain I’ll be disappointed but so far I’m glad I’ve started this project. Writing nearly every day has been a fantastic exercise and has turned into more of an addiction than I ever thought.

I am writing this for me, for my benefit, and I welcome any participation that comes. If none comes, it still will be beneficial as it helps me improve me.

That is what my life is about, and I take it seriously.

I owe a great deal of thanks to James Altucher, also. He’s probably the first time I’ve looked up to someone who I didn’t know personally. I know normal kids wear sports jerseys of their favorite athletes or have posters of actors. Normal fans. I was never a fan of anybody, except perhaps for MacGuyver. I don’t mean Richard Dean Anderson, I didn’t care about him. MacGuyver. The MacGuyver. I was his fan but he wasn’t real. James is, as far as I know, a very real person who has written very real words that inspire and challenge me.