Posts Filed Under ‘Philosophy’
April 9th, 2009, 3 comments
The hardest part about being a freelancer for me is deciding what jobs are worth taking on, and what I should turn down. I want to do and have it all--but the whole "only 24 hours in a day" thing really throws a wrench into that plan.
Fact is, when you're the boss of you, you've got to be a really good editor: recognize the good gigs and avoid everything else. Over at the FreelanceSwitch blog this morning, I published a piece called How to Craft Your Personal Business Model, in which I describe how I am attempting to do just that. Part of it was designing my ideal work mix, a high-tech pie chart I scribbled on a piece of paper, which you see here.
The work you turn down says more about you as a professional than the work you take on. While I'm still figuring out exactly what I want to be when I grow up, I do know what's important to me, and right now I'm trying to use those values as best I can to guide me to the right people and projects. For more of this kind of touchy-feely career mush, check out the full article.
March 30th, 2009, 2 comments
I love that cartoonist Hugh MacLeod captured the thesis of my entire tech blogging career in 11 words almost two years ago. When people ask me "What does 'smarterware' mean?" I now have a much shorter answer. (via pistachio)
March 23rd, 2009, 2 comments
Got a case of the Mondays this morning? Techie Andre Torrez says he loves Mondays because:
It's the start of the week. You get to see what ideas that were so important on Friday stayed important until Monday. [...] Mondays are a fresh start. They're like a reset button for the doldrums of your Wednesday afternoon meetings where two people are going on about something the other eight people in the room don't even understand.
I need to work on an attitude like his. Here's to appreciating the weekly reset button. The full post from Andre: I heart Mondays.
March 19th, 2009, 5 comments
You've got to wonder what makes a guy who builds 3D printers which also ice cupcakes tick. Apparently it's an obsession with getting things done. Maker-of-crazy-cool-things Bre Pettis posts his and Kio Stark's manifesto for the "Cult of Done," 13 edicts about finishing. Here they are, bolded bits mine:
1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you're done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.
Check out the cupcake-icing, 3D-object printing MakerBot here. Here's The Cult of Done Manifesto, with two posters you can download and stick to your wall to stare at while you procrastinate. Image by spatulated.
March 10th, 2009, 7 comments
Creative agency Nothing in Amsterdam wanted to make their entire office a "blank slate" so they built it out of cardboard. The desks, chairs, shelves, cubicles, and from the photos, even steps and a small loft is constructed entirely of brown cardboard, which invites lots of cool drawings. The Nothing web site explains:
The idea being, to create an office that will turn our clients into brand advocates, by using the most Nothing-building material we could find. At the same time, have the walls double as a blank canvas, on which people can leave their mark.
Here are a few photos of the cubicles and cool drawings:
Read the rest »
March 5th, 2009, 7 comments
The straight-faced definition of crowdsourcing is using the ability to communicate with thousands of people efficiently on the internet to get those people to do something for you. To me, "crowdsourcing" is also one of those annoying internet neologisms that's overinflated by "Web 2.0" marketing hype, so I qualify it with quotes. Even though I "crowdsource" information all the time, quality results require stringent editing, checking, and yes, curation. I'll be on a panel at South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, TX called "Curating the Crowd-Sourced World" on March 13 to discuss just this.
As a part of their SXSW coverage, The Austin Chronicle quoted me as saying,
For a blogger, crowd-sourcing is just outsourcing your research. Without fact-checkers, why not?
Since the reporter asked for a definition to go in his "glossary with a sense of humor," I said that with tongue lodged firmly in cheek. The truth is that crowdsourcing research--and editing and even fact-checking(!) the results--is a serious subject with lots of issues. Because I felt like being cute, I crowdsourced what "crowdsourcing" means, by asking about 9,000 people on Twitter. My followers didn't disappoint; several nailed some of the thornier aspects of the issue in their 140-character responses.
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February 13th, 2009, 5 comments
Anyone who makes things for a living should watch author Elizabeth Gilbert's 20 minute talk at the TED conference this month (full video below). Gilbert published the mega-Oprah-bestseller Eat, Pray, Love which is soon to be a movie starring Julia Roberts. In this talk she explains one way she's found to quell the anxiety that comes with following up after a big commercial success. Namely, she's gone back to the ancient idea that creative inspiration is an entity separate from us, which speaks through us: the muse, as it were.
It's not a popular idea these days.
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My Five Rules for Life (Today, Anyway)
February 12th, 2009, 3 comments
Because I'm a total sucker for life lesson self-help crap, I love the idea of
February 9th, 2009, 10 comments
60 Minutes interviews Coldplay's front man Chris Martin about how he writes hit songs. Being "openly neurotic," Martin makes sure he captures song ideas the moment they strike him--even if it means scribbling them onto his piano with a Sharpie. He's got a marker holder mounted to his whitewashed piano for just that purpose, as shown. In the video below, reporter Steve Croft asks about it.
Croft: You have notes written on the piano?
Martin: Yeah, look, but this is just the beginning. In six months, this will all be covered.
Croft: And you have to repaint the piano?
Martin: Yeah. When we finish something, we repaint.
Read the rest »
Chasing the New Doesn’t Get More Done
February 5th, 2009, 3 comments
Programmer Jeff Atwood says that using "new and shiny" technology isn't what counts; it's about using tools that work. His rant is programming language-specific, but it rings true for gadgets, software, social networking sites. (via)
January 28th, 2009, 1 comment
Ultramarathoner and Ironman triathlete Graham Cooper is a 38-year-old father of two who lives in the Bay Area and holds down a full-time job 500 miles away in San Diego. His athletic accomplishments are impressive enough, but it's his ability to find the time to train between commuting to work during the week and being a weekend dad that makes you think he must be a robot who doesn't sleep. Turns out he's not; he's just ruthlessly disciplined about cutting out every unnecessary activity out of his day in order to log his training miles. Competitor magazine reports:
When Cooper is in serious training mode, a few luxuries fall by the wayside.
"I don't watch TV. I don't socialize much. I don't read as much as I'd like. I don't do long lunches and I don't drink. When I'm training, I get about six hours of sleep a night. When you're getting up at 4:30 or 5:00 and starting your day with a workout, you get a lot done."
Cooper starts from a thesis that most of us have an inefficiency in the system. The key, he says, "is to squeeze as much of the slop out of our lives as we can."
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January 26th, 2009, 1 comment
Actress Felicia Day writes, stars in, and produces the hit web series The Guild, which is one of my favorite things happening online right now. In a recent blog entry, she describes what made her start writing the series:
I had a strange realization that time passes whether you’re doing something with it or not. It would be easy to let every day go by easily with no risk and then, at the end of the day (my life), I would look back and realize that fear ruled me: At that point there would be nothing I could do about it. So, I got off my butt! It wasn’t easy and I had a lot of lapses (I still do) but the experience of being ruthless with myself was an amazing lesson to learn.
The Guild is in season 2 right now, and a new episode comes out every Tuesday on Xbox Live, and then on MSN Video. Even though the webisodes are only around 10 minutes or less, I look forward to them as much as I look forward to a new episode of 30 Rock. See also my starstruck interview with Felicia over at Lifehacker published a few months back, or her full blog post: How I Started Writing.
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