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- March 30, 2006
The 80/20 Rule
March 30, 2006Read moreBrad forwarded me this article from Yaro Starak about The 80-20 Rule, aka The Pareto Principle. It’s something we’ve been talking about lately in the context of our backburnered personal “change the world, starting with us” projects. Yaro’s article is much more interesting than the Wikipedia entry. Thanks Brad!
- March 30, 2006
Obsessing over Lost Ideas
March 30, 2006Read moreI tend to have a lot of ideas, which is a kind way of saying that I’m easily distracted. The way I control this impulse is by recognizing that most ideas aren’t worth much without the solid execution to bring them into reality. So when I talk to someone about an idea, I will assess our ability to work together with a set of rules like this:
- Do we have the skills?
- Do we have the time?
- Do we have the resources?
- Do we have the chemistry?
- Do we really have the motivation?
It’s amazing how many ideas don’t make the cut, if you’re being truly honest. In a lot of cases, I’ll do something because I’m actually not sure…in the process of doing, I’ll find out. Of course, I have to disclose this fully to any involved parties, because otherwise the second battery of tests will fail:
- Are we maintaining momentum?
- Are we setting our expectations correctly?
- Was our initial assessment accurate?
- Do we keep going?
Not many personal projects make it past the second battery either, at least in my limited experience. That’s why if you ever find someone to team up with that can repeatedly pass this test, you should make every effort to work together. You have found something magical.
But I digress. I just realized that though I can keep my distractions from turning into failed projects, I am absolutely obsessive about documenting them. Witness this blog. And this obsession is actually driven by fear.
I have a terrible memory, or so I think. I remember being commanded to memorize and repeat phrases on the spot in French class, and not being able to do it to great personal embarassment. I also hate losing information, or feeling stuck because I am lacking some critical piece of information that could solve some workplace conundrum. And it’s probably related overall to a fear of not being competent. So I work really hard at being competent, and I suppose I have succeeded in certain respects. But the fear is still very much there, lurking deep in the shadows.
How does this relate to the documenting of every idea that I have? Well, I’m not really sure. It may be that for all the noise I make about ideas being worthless by themselves, it happens to be one of the things that I truly enjoy and am actually good at. So the upshot is: I’m really good at doing something that I know is worthless without execution behind it. Sheesh…I didn’t see that coming! By documenting them, perhaps I am attempting to generate some kind of value from them. At least when they’re written down, other people can benefit, and therefore attribute some kind of value to me.
So facing up to myself, I’m recognize I am being silly. Let me work this out:
- First of all, if I’m so good at generating new ideas, then I will never lack for them. Ever. So starting now, I’m going to stop obsessing about remembering them (which I suck at anyway) and focus on generating new ones. That’s not to say that I’ll stop blogging them; I will just not run to the computer to write them down and get caught up in it every time a thought crosses my mind. This should have an effect on my personal productivity.
Secondly, I should worry about the ideas that do make it past the two filters, because those are the ones that matter in terms of executability. And that means the creation of tangible, life-sustaining assets.
Thirdly, my core business might actually be packaging ideas for consumption. Content creation, in other words. I have a nice skill set for doing that: design, development, writing and all that related stuff. It’s not experience design or graphic design, or storytelling/journalism in itself.
Fourthly, the ability to generate and package ideas very cheaply (in terms of mental energy) is a competitive advantage, in some business circles. Identifying what businesses those are will be an interesting challenge.
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p>I’m pretty confident that everyone has some kind of trait like this; it’s just difficult to see it from your own perspective. For some reason taking showers seems to trigger these insights, and since I’ve been taking a lot of showers lately as I try this polyphasic sleep schedule out, I guess it’s my own darn fault. :-)
- March 29, 2006
Information Catering to Specific Customers
March 29, 2006Read moreLifehacker has linked to me again, having discovered The Printable CEO™ Series Page; they had only linked to the original article before. I saw spurts of 870 pages served per hour, which for me is pretty good, and perhaps an indication that my site was choking with the old server config even with caching. In previous hits, I saw a maximum of maybe 200-300/hr. We’ll see how the numbers are tomorrow.
Anyway, it occured to me that Lifehacker took several months to become aware of the PCEO summary page; they must have just stumbled upon it again recently. No fault of theirs, of course: one problem is that my site is pretty eclectic, with productivity being only one of several topics I write about. I’ve thought that creating a separate blog for productivity might be the way to go, but on the other hand I like writing in the context of what else is going on with my life. It’s an important part of who I am, and I would rather not dillute the continuity of the writing either.
The solution occured to me in a sudden duhstorm:
- Make a Productivity-Only RSS Feed.
Duh! Duh! Duh! The feed-by-category feature has been built into WordPress since 1.5.
Idea extension: I could conceivably make a new blog that sucks the RSS into itself directly, which could be the way of packaging other content streams, complete with targeted advertising. I’m sure this is what other people do, but hey it’s new to me. The question is: am I making my own spamblog by doing this? Is it evil if I’m using my own content, and packaging it in a more convenient form for a target audience to derive AdSense revenue?
I shall go to the 24-hour Walmart to buy some pork rinds and reflect on this matter. Any opinions are appreciated.
- March 29, 2006
I am a Hack
March 29, 2006Read moreI did something sort of bad to my CSS stylesheet, to fix a long-standing bug in the right sidebar for Internet Explorer 6. Geeky notes follow.
- March 29, 2006
Again with That Microsoft iPod Parody
March 29, 2006Read moreOk, everyone’s seen that fantastic video parody of how Microsoft would have ruined the iPod packaging. I’ve also seen numerous comments how this video “perfectly captures how clueless Microsoft is”. This kind of “they suck so we’re cool” commentary usually irritates me, but in this case I had to admit that I felt the same way. That was a sign that I should probably engage in a moment of reflection: How true was this? And could I personally justify my stance?
I had to admit that part of me secretly liked the overblown nature of the package design: Ooo…specs! Ooo…features! And as much as this style of package design represents something of the lame commodity design you see at the big box retailers: it works on people. Also, I couldn’t help but notice that the parody designer had done a great layout job on all that text. Far better than what you normally see on a package. I’m not saying that it’s better, mind you…I’m just saying that it didn’t suck. That’s part of what makes the video work: the competent execution of an opposing idea is something that I have to respect.
And what about different audiences? I once read an article that compared the package design preferences of Windows users versus Mac users. Windows users, for whatever reason, preferred packaging with pictures of concrete things and people. Mac users were far more likely to pick packaging with abstract graphic design. I unfortunately have lost the original article link, but the thought is this: Microsoft knows who they are designing for. They may not be designing for you and me, but I wouldn’t so carelessly assume complete incompetence on their part.
For example, did you know the video was commissioned by the Microsoft packaging team? They do get it. I had assumed, like everyone else, that this had been the work of an anonymous genius somewhere in Appleland. Oops.
I’m reminded that “thinking different doesn’t necessarily mean your thinking is better”. That’s an assumption we tend to make, and it’s not always right. Apple has a kind of rock-n-roll creative empowerment vibe, positioned in opposition to the Establishment that Is Microsoft. I don’t want to write off an entire segment of the population as irrelevant to me just because they use Windows. This starts to get into Platform Wars territory, so I’ll shut up now :-)
