May, 2009

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May 09

Decide Now

About indecision and too much analysis, Seth writes:

“Deciding now frees up your most valuable asset, time, so you can go work on something else. What happens if, starting today, you make every decision as soon as you have a reasonable amount of data?”

This seems to be a theme for him lately.

“Do nothing is the choice of people who are afraid. Do nothing is what you do if too many people have to agree. Do nothing is what happens if one person with no upside has to accept downside responsibility for a change. What’s in it for them to do anything? So they do nothing.”

Same basic idea as the Done Manifesto. Highlights:

#2. “Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.”
#5 “Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.”
#8 “Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.”

Love it. Decide, do, and move on to the next thing. Refinement doesn’t happen before you do something, refinement happens while your doing it, or later with version 2.

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28
May 09

Real Priorities

Merlin Mann has some interesting thoughts around priorities:

“You eventually learn that true priorities are like arms; if you think you have more than a couple, you’re either lying or crazy.”

He goes on to say that your priorities are what you are doing, not what you might theoretically like to do at any given moment.

“Example. When my daughter falls down and screams, I don’t ask her to wait while I grab a list to determine which of seven notional levels of “priority” I should assign to her need for instantaneous care and affection. Everything stops, and she gets taken care of. Conversely — and this is really the important part — everything else in the universe can wait.”

I like to think of this in terms of checking email at work. Any any given moment during the work day, you can work on a project, or check your email. It is true that checking your email can lead to changes in a current project, but, at the moment when you pulled yourself away from whatever “priority” you were working on to check your email (before you knew what the contents of the email – which might have simply been some company wide memo about Earth Day), your priority was checking your email, not working the project.

As Merlin says, the priority was observed, not assigned.

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26
May 09

Innovate Faster

Steve Borsch has a great article on Innovation in a Time of Accelerating Change:

“there are many ways to think about the process of innovation, but almost never do you hear entrepreneurs, business analysts or corporate strategists openly discussing the rate of change that’s occurring … and how that rate of change is accelerating exponentially.”

Changes, memes, technology … are all springing to life more rapidly than ever before. Take Twitter for example: 3 years ago the company and technology didn’t exist, but today they get some 6 million unique visitors to the site every month.

If you can’t keep up with the exponential rate of change, you really can’t call it innovation.

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24
May 09

Office 2010 Salad

I like to think I’m a smart guy and am able to handle new things, but I’m with Steven F on the Office 2010 interface:

“This is impenetrable. It’s UI salad. I realize this is not (yet) shipping software, but my god. If you sat me down in front of this, I wouldn’t have the slightest idea where to begin.”

[via Daring Fireball, via Lifehacker]

voicemail_01

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20
May 09

More Hours does not equal More Success

David on the lifestyle business:

“It’s been a long time since there was a direct correlation with the number of hours you work and the success you enjoy. It’s an antiquated notion from the days of manual labour that has no bearing on the world today. When you’re building products or services, there’s a nonlinear connection between input and output. You can put in just a little and still get out a spectacular lot.”

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