I haven’t been posting as regularly the past ~2 months or so—was out of the country for a month, and was busy with some things. Just to quickly add this gem I found today by Seth Godin. Coding, programming, developing, writing software, or whatever you want to call it, is creative work. And real artists ship. Ship it, damn it!
I think I found myself feeling guilty on at least 2 counts from watching this short video. Check it out!
This is a cross-post from my other for-own-use developer blog. I’m posting it here because people often ask me what I’m so busy with.
It’s been a while since my last post; I have been real busy. Anyway, just to quickly say this, I’ve made a change in direction in my development efforts.
I’ve said earlier that I am determined learn a new programming language this year because my brain is starting to rot, but have since decided a few months ago that it will not be Cocoa Touch, for various reasons: too niche (the emerging global mobile apps market is highly fragmented by Nokia, iPhone, Android, Crackberry and possibly Palm as a viable contender), and skills here only attacks a small piece of my larger effort, which my gut tells me it’s a task that could probably be farmed out and done cheaper/faster by outsourcing to a iPhone dev shop where Cocoa Touch is their core competency.
A mobile app that does not utilize any connectivity, nay, “intelligent” connectivity, is not much different from calc.exe on your WinXP desktop. It’s fine for a narrow and specific, uninteresting task. An interesting mobile app would tap the cloud for some form of intelligence. Why not leverage that mandatory data plan from AT&T for your iPhone?
When the time comes, if necessary (such as if the iPhone app will be an important part of my competitive advantage), then I’ll pick up Cocoa Touch myself. For now, I do not think that will be the case, thus I’m going to spend more time on laying the groundwork for the more important piece: the back-end, web 2.0 / cloud computing / SaaS piece. And as Microsoft knows, as Tim O’Reilly says – nobody with their right mind would bet against the Web! (Have you seen HTML5?)
The past month or two, I’ve tried real hard to squeeze time in to learn Python, Django and Google App Engine – all at the same time in parallel, not sequentially. Yes, I’m trying to rush – because I am impatient.
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“Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.”
From “Personal Renewal” by John Gardner, posted on PBS. It’s a long post, but full of gems:
“We tend to think of youth and the active middle years as the years of commitment. As you get a little older, you’re told you’ve earned the right to think about yourself. But that’s a deadly prescription! People of every age need commitments beyond the self, need the meaning that commitments provide. Self-preoccupation is a prison, as every self-absorbed person finally knows. Commitments to larger purposes can get you out of prison.
Another significant ingredient in motivation is one’s attitude toward the future. Optimism is unfashionable today, particularly among intellectuals. Everyone makes fun of it. Someone said “Pessimists got that way by financing optimists.” But I am not pessimistic and I advise you not to be. As the fellow said, “I’d be a pessimist but it would never work.”
I can tell you that for renewal, a tough-minded optimism is best. The future is not shaped by people who don’t really believe in the future. Men and women of vitality have always been prepared to bet their futures, even their lives, on ventures of unknown outcome. If they had all looked before they leaped, we would still be crouched in caves sketching animal pictures on the wall,”
“You’ve known such people — feeling secretly defeated, maybe somewhat sour and cynical, or perhaps just vaguely dispirited. Or maybe they just ran so hard for so long that somewhere along the line they forgot what it was they were running for [...] Life is hard. Just to keep on keeping on is sometimes an act of courage.”
“We learn by accepting the commitments of life, by playing the roles that life hands us (not necessarily the roles we would have chosen). We learn by growing older, by suffering, by loving, by bearing with the things we can’t change, by taking risks.”Â
It’s new year’s resolution season! But I don’t make “resolutions” because by and large, it’s mostly an excuse for people to make promises they don’t keep, just to give themselves the illusion that this new year would somehow be different than the last, better than the last.
More fat people and smokers are still fat or are still smoking, after the new year’s “resolution” effect wears out, usually before mid-year. There’s absolutely accountability, no follow-through’ing on the commitments. I really, really, need to know how and why and really how, my year is going to be different. Anyway, I’m calling mine “goals“. As in, S.M.A.R.T. goals.
I won’t share my entire list (some of it is private) but among my non-work list of goals -
A few days ago I saw Om Malik’s list, and I’d like to share that here as the lessons learned are valuable. Om had a heart attack last year and made a promise to drastically change his lifestyle for the better. Folks, you don’t need to be at the brink of death to change your ways. Without further ado, here are Om’s lessons (and how I’m going to use it as a guidelines for myself)
Lesson #1: Set simple goals
When I came back from the hospital on Jan. 17th, I made a silent pledge to myself: I am going to do whatever it takes to make it to the first anniversary of my heart attack.
I am not a big advocate, however, of simply surviving. Rather I want to feel a sense of winning, on a daily basis. In order to do this, short-term goals had to supplant those focused on the long term. The result has been two good weblog posts a week, two great conversations a day, and more smiling, day and night.
Looking back last year .. I did sometimes feel demotivated because I found it difficult to stomach a steady diet of negative outcomes. This year, I need to celebrate even the small wins.
Lesson#2: Binary choices help make better decisions
When faced with a binary choice — live or die — I made the following upgrades:
1. After a 40-Dunhills-a-day-habit for nearly 20 years, I stopped smoking.
2. No more cigars, either.
3. No drinking.
4. No red meat.
5. Caffeine, sugar, salt and all unhealthy foods are now banished from my diet.
6. I go to the gym every single day.Making such drastic changes wasn’t easy, but they offered me the best chance of staying alive — and 50 pounds and 12 months later, have clearly worked.
How bad do you want it? For Om, it’s “how bad do you want to live?” I just need to ask myself, how bad do I want <insert goal here>? If I treat it like life or death, then you betcha I will be ruthlessly brutal on execution.
This also means I will be saying “no” to a lot of things. I will be brutal on cutting down on activities that doesn’t in some way help me get to my goals. I don’t care what it is. If it’s not aligned with my goals, I won’t regret not doing it.
Lesson #3: Simplification through elimination
A culture that emphasizes success, like the one here in Silicon Valley, can make setting parameters especially hard. Lucky for me, my cardiologist, Dr. Eddie Rame, came right out and told me that unless I stopped working more than 10 hours a day I would be back in the hospital.
In doing so, he set parameters for my daily work schedule, leaving it up to me to be figure out how I would be most productive. Those parameters helped me make tough choices -– like cutting back on excessive public appearances, travel, frivolous RSS feeds and unnecessary company pitch meetings.
One year later, nearly 75 percent of my conversations are with people I love to converse with and nearly every topic on which I write (or focus) is something that I care deeply about.
Sometimes when I don’t limit and time-box an activity, I tend to end up spending more time on it than I initially would have wanted to. Sometimes because I’m a perfectionist, when “good enough” was all I needed. Sometimes going that extra mile cost me diminishing returns on my effort and time. So this year, I’m going to let myself be sloppy and “good enough” for non-core goals, so that I can focus my effort on my real core goals. (more…)
[...] These are the July results of a hardworking internet entrepreneur, think 16-20 hours days, including weekends…it’s all about how bad you want it, f$%^ the 4-hour work week you fat lazy American slobs, working hard, and honestly, is the path to righteousness and fulfillment
I admire Tim’s transparency, drive, and laser-sharp focus on execution. He’s also willing to admit mistakes and he is on a benevolent mission to shine the light towards the dark corners in the industry he picked.
And here’s a vid clip of his interview with Wallstrip from some time ago. I’m long on Tim Sykes.
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