David Seah | Provisioner of Functional Stationery and Related Goods

The Direct Approach

Posted Sun Jan.22.2006 under Productivity tagged Introspection

I was writing about making Borscht last weekend, and in the process got onto a tangential thought: Production vs. Invention. The following line has been popping up in my thoughts all day:

I can think of a million ways to get around something, but I haven’t developed my direct confrontation methodology to the same degree.

There’s a certain pride in that statement; I’m saying I’ve spent a lot of time working out ways to get around obstacles, and I’ve gotten good at doing it. I haven’t neglected direct personal dialog either. I deal with people straight and I do everything to ensure that I keep my word, once it is given. I feel pretty good about that.

However, there’s the second part of the statement: I haven’t developed “direct confrontation” to the same degree. I believe this has been a missing element in my ongoing pursuit of increased personal productivity.

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Better Living through Borscht

Posted Sat Jan.21.2006 under Culture, Personal tagged Ideas

[yes, I rewrote this article almost entirely...that's what I get for posting laaate at night when I was too tired to think straight]

A Russian-born friend of mine sent me a simple recipe for the beet soup known as Borscht. I’ve been very interested in cooking lately as a money-saving measure, and have been seeking out hearty soups as an inexpensive way to eat well. Borscht is one of those ethnic foods I haven’t tried, and I’ve never seen it or tasted it. My curiosity was piqued!

Here’s what it looked like (this is right out of the fridge, btw):

It’s interesting to make a dish that you’ve never tasted or seen before, especially if you’re also unfamiliar with the soup-making process. About halfway through burning my borscht, I was struck by how similar this was to creating an innovative software product. For the vast majority of development work, we can point to an existing product and say “it’s going to be like that.” Pre-existing patterns are a big time-saver. With the borscht, I only had a vague vision of a soup, but really no idea how it would come out. I knew intuitively that the combination of root vegetables in the “soup” form factor was appealing, but would it really work? While it’s true I had a recipe, I was following it rather loosely, discovering key steps a little after I messed them up. It was invigorating!

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Recognizing a Stroke

Posted Thu Jan.19.2006 under Encounters

I got an email chain letter that encouraged me to send it to 10 other people. Now I hate chain letters, but for once this one has actually useful information, at least from an awareness-building perspective: how to recognize a stroke:

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Work Surge

Posted Wed Jan.18.2006 under Freelancing

It’s been a pretty quiet January, up until a few days ago. I’ve been thrust in “new business” mode, a little earlier than I was expecting. But one of my new things this year is to be less worried about having everything in place before making the connection, and so far it’s going well.

The downside is that I’ve deferred a few interesting articles that I’ve wanted to put out there, like the one on how cooking beets is like developing software, and the continuation of my 2006 resolutions posts (particularly, the one on being frugal, which is personally a little hard to face).

In the meantime, I have a few general observations on my business development activities for the past few days.

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Operation Network

Posted Tue Jan.17.2006 under Freelancing

One challenge I face as a freelancer is finding good people to work with. And how do you find good people? Well, you find the ones that appeal to you, I guess. So it’s important to have some filtering criteria.

The one I think might work for me is filtering for the story gene. It would go like this:

I’m seeking experienced, talented, and conscientious freelancers for creative networking You should enjoy discussing, sharing, and making cool stuff! Designers and developers welcome!

The price of admission is one story: Tell me what you stand for as a professional, and how you came to be that way. And…why it’s so important to you personally.

I think something interesting would happen from this. I don’t know what exactly. That’s why it’s an experiment :-)