Category: General

i.e. = “that is” (Latin: “id est”)
e.g. = “for example” (Latin: “exempli gratia”)

I turned my notecards upside down – grabbing from ‘bottom’, each task is a new surprise!

I was just reminded of something Omar at Surly Brewing told me during our podcast (22 minutes in):

“It’s not ‘are they drinking 1 beer’, but ‘are they drinking two’?. It’s easy to sell someone 1 beer.”

I’m excited for 2009. The New Year is just the landmark I (we?) need to shake off the malaise of 2008 and start fresh. New.

My goal for the year is clarity.

Clarity of priorities, clarity of mind, clarity of spirit.

To achieve this clarity, I’ve identified a handful of small (easily measurable) and big (less measurable, more directional) ideas.

SMALL IDEAS

• Take a walk, outside, daily.
• Inbox Zero daily (including notecards).
• ‘Respond To’ Zero weekly.
• Review Project list weekly.
• No more To-Do lists
  Just schedule it in 2-hour time blocks (in my early tests, 2 hours is the minimum time it takes to switch contexts and accomplish one small thing). This means my stack of notecards will be strictly for capture. Next actions will be scheduled on the calendar. Should make weekly reviews easier.
• Publish a new podcast monthly.
• Release a new code sample monthly.
• Release 1 small project quarterly.
• Release 1 new, revenue-generating project every 6 months.

BIG IDEAS
Spend more time…

• …with actual people.
• …writing (code, blog posts here, etc).
• …making (podcasts, code, etc).
• …reading books.
• …reading /Important in my Cullect reading lists.
• …at Eastside Co-op and local farmer’s markets.
• …with people that make me feel good about humanity.

Spend less time…

• …with characters (movies, etc).
• …reading /Lastest in my Cullect reading lists.
• …reading real-time services like Twitter, Facebook, and Friendfeed.
• …with ad-supported publications (including MPR & NPR).
• …with people that say we’re going to hell in a handcart.
• …at Rainbow, Cub, Target.

(I’m posting this more for my reference than anything else)

It all started back in 1955, when an advertisement for Sears Roebuck & Co. urged children to call Santa Claus, but misprinted the telephone number and accidentally listed the hotline for the commander in chief of the Continental Air Defense Command’ (CONAD), NORAD’s predecessor. Colonel Harry Shoup, who was the director of operations at the time, decided to play along and enlisted his staff to participate in the monitoring of Santa’s whereabouts via “radar.” – Julia Angwin, Lead Editor of Wall Street Journal’s Digits

Jen and I start our 12th year of marriage this week. We’ve been together for 15 years. There’s a good chance – Murphy willing – we’ll see our odometers flip together, that’d make 75 years of marriage.

Assuming we get there, we’ve got 2 more entire lifetimes in front of us.

A decade ago, my profession didn’t exist. Nearly all the companies I’ve worked for since, gone.

Assuming I’ve only really got 1 more ‘productive member of society’ lifetime left in me:

• Is the work I’m doing now what I want to be doing for another 3 decades?
• If not, what kind of work would keep me curious, interested, and fed for multiple decades?
• What can I start now, that will make my 2nd and 3rd lives less stressful and more enjoyable?
• How do I imagine for 6 decades out when I have a hard time imaging past June ’09?

After 3 years, nearly 1500 updates, exploration from many angles, numerous conversations, and wastebaskets full of crumpled analysis, I’m proud to say, I grok Twitter. Like I’ve never grokked it before¹.

I also know why Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, et al, are better* than WordPress, Blogger, MovableType, etc.

And it’s completely the blog-engines’ fault. They’re some how locked into what a ‘blog’ is.

It’s not.

While I share Dave’s complaints², I feel any free, hosted service has the same primary issue – people with accounts have no leverage in service availability.

*Poof*

and all my data is gone and I’m at the mercy of someone else’s feature set. I’m not comfortable with that. Not for my writing.

1. Hint – I’ve got a blog. The difference between this blog and something like Twitter – especially Friendfeed – is smaller than you think.

2. Dave, interesting note – the people I have lunch with are on Twitter. I suspect the people you have lunch with are on FriendFeed. Though – how we schedule lunch is less important than actually having lunch. I have a Friendfeed account primarily for your stuff that I personally preferred you published @ EGC, but either way, I pipe it through Cullect.

Back in June of ’08, I wrote a (relatively-speaking) lot here. Writing here is much more satisfying than almost any of my neigh 5k 160-character updates. Aside from the obvious freedom-to-be-verbose and control over visual presentation, and self-archiving, here is satisfying. Here is home.

Elsewhere isn’t.

When you comment here – it feels neighborly.

Elsewhere it feels like shouting at each other over the din.

While the updates here may be short (or long), this blog has regained write-of-first-refusal over other places.

“When software works, it all looks the same. When it doesn’t work, it all looks different.”

“How’s that?…Fella, I said, How’s that?”

“When software doesn’t work, it all looks scared.”

(apologies to Tom Wolfe)

Typealyzer just Myers-Briggs-ed the most recent posts on here. Turns out this blog is….

…happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.