I believe this because the primary attribute of youth seems to be a freedom of lifestyle, and a freedom to follow one’s passions—not the age of our bodies. Getting old, in other words, means embracing an external, society-defined set of restrictions on ones behavior. Some examples: Old people work jobs they don’t like, because they have to Old…
Fear of Failure is Debilitating
We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure. It is a powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the progressive narrowing of the personality and prevents exploration and experimentation. There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure — all your life. It’s as…
Manage What Matters, Not What’s Measurable
There’s a simple formula for effectively managing something using metrics. Determine what matters to you and your organization Figure out how to capture it into a simple metric Manage that metric to improve your outcomes Number one is crucial, and it’s the step most people miss. People instead skip to two and three by picking from metrics that…
Start With Top Life Regrets and Work Backwards
I’m a proponent of reverse planning, i.e. deciding what you want and then working backwards until you get it. That’s one option for pursuing happiness, but it’s hard to do because people don’t know what they want. A better approach may be figuring out what went wrong and then doing the opposite. Regrets Considerable research has been done…
The Secret to High Productivity
I get asked a lot about how I write so much. The answer is simple: I don’t watch TV I don’t use Facebook It’s remarkable how much time is available when you don’t do those things.
Engineer Around Your Weaknesses
I have a friend named Andrew who used to play poker professionally. And when I say professionally, I mean he’s made hundreds of thousands of dollars doing it. One of the lessons he learned from that experience is the concept of figuring out what your natural tendencies are, and engineering around the weaknesses of those tendencies. More specifically…
Three Types of Employees
Typically, organizations tend toward a MacLeod hierarchy with three tiers: the Sociopaths, the Clueless, and the Losers, in that order from top to bottom. Sociopaths, who take an up-or-out strategy and either end up at the top or fired, are strategic and dedicated but not subordinate. They’ll never sacrifice their individual career goals for the benefit of the…
Four Types of Project
If we classify projects into four categories by important vs. unimportant, and interesting vs. unpleasant, we can assess what happens under open allocation. Important and interesting projects are never hard to staff. Unimportant but interesting projects are for 20% time; they might succeed, and become important later, but they aren’t seen as critical until they’re proven to have…
The Concept of Open Allocation
When open allocation is in play, projects compete for engineers, and the result is better projects. When closed allocation is in force, engineers compete for projects, and the result is worse engineers. via Tech companies: open allocation is your only real option. | Michael O.Church. This is an interesting alternative approach to running projects. I’m not sure how practical…
3-Phased Information Processing: The IT Meta-skill
Having worked in IT for a good bit of time I have thought a lot about various information technology skillsets and which will become more vs. less important as we move forward. Software development is quite strong vs. time because it’s a skill that is highly correlated with intelligence and creativity–two things that are likely to remain most…
Deleting Horizontal Lines From Word
If you’ve ever had a problem deleting a horizontal line in Microsoft Word, this post is for you. The answer is something of a trick, as the horizontal line is not a line (or a graphic), it’s a bottom border. Removal In Office 2013 go to the Design tab and look to the far right for the Page…
This Essay Might Improve Your Life
This is an essay about being productive to the world around you. Confused, you say, “How does any of that fucking matter when my (wife/husband/best friend/parent) is lying here bleeding! I need somebody who knows how to operate on bullet wounds! Can you do that or not?!?” Now the man becomes agitated — why are you being shallow…
Using jk vs. jj for ESC Remapping in Vim by Steve Losh
Some people prefer using jj instead of jk, but I prefer jk for two reasons: jk is typed with two separate keys, so you can “roll” your fingers instead of using the same one twice, and pressing jk in normal mode out of habit will move down and then up, leaving you exactly where you started, whereas hitting…
9 Enhancements to Shell and Vim Productivity
If you enjoy the command line then you don’t need to be sold on efficiency or purity of action. But even those who grok CLI are unaware of a number of ways to be more elegant accomplishing their tasks. Here are a few of my favorites. Remap Your CAPSLOCK Key Use ctrl-r For History Autocomplete Switch to iTerm…
3 Ways to Use Vim Commands in Other Applications
I recently converted (from TextMate) to using vim for all of my text editing, and it turns out there are a number of places where knowing your vim strokes can help you. Vimium Vimium is a Chrome extension that allows you to use vim commands to control your browser. It’s stunning how fast browsing can be when using…
Avoid Junk Information Like You Avoid Junk Food
Smart, educated people tend to avoid junk food. They tend to be thinner and have better diets because they’re simply more aware of the downsides of eating crap, including the negative effect it has on productivity. It should be the same for junk information. This includes not just television shows and entertainment news, but more stealthy forms of…
Planned vs. Random Leisure
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the habits of productive people. When I say productive I mean successful–as in setting out to accomplish something and then doing it. I’ll put up Paul Graham and Sam Harris as examples. They produce. They spend very little time on random enjoyment. They plan their fun, and that fun comes in…
Mandatory States for Human Happiness
I’ve been thinking recently about what states of being are required for optimum health. A few things bring this on: 1) Paul Graham’s writing on how he manages inputs and controls distractions has always penetrated deeply for me, and 2) when I find myself without options for inputs I fiercely enjoy the resulting silence and thought. To say…
A Potential Issue With Immersive Fantasy Games
I’ve been a role-player since junior high school, and I have been a reader of non-fiction long before that. I have a group of friends from junior high that still game (role-playing), and I noticed over the last couple of years that there was something very negative about it for me. I haven’t been able to capture it…
Human Accomplishment: Engines vs. Fuels
I think a lot about why some people are highly productive and successful while others produce nothing in their lifetimes. Some get Ph.Ds and spend their time writing books, giving talks, and working on their next big idea. Others punch a clock somewhere, refuse to eat right or exercise, and consume hollow media until they die. The difference…
Ideas Suck: A Tale of Lust vs Love
Ideas suck. Ideas are everywhere and pop into our heads all of the time. Ideas are not the inspirational spark that ignites us into becoming startup entrepreneurs. We only ever need one of them and the rest suck because they do nothing more than cause noisy distractions. I hear new ideas every day. Usually pitched by enthusiastic, slightly…
Searching Google Bookmarks from Chrome’s Omnibox
When Google first launched Google Bookmarks a few years back I immediately stopped using del.icio.us and migrated everything to it. It was a controversial move at the time, as Delicious was so well established while Google was just throwing services at the ceiling to see what stuck. But it paid off. It is now possible to search all…
The List of Apple Trackpad Gestures
Apple just released a new, dedicated trackpad to be used with desktop systems. This reminded me that I always forget all the options available on my Macbook Pro trackpad, so I decided to put together a list of them. General Show the Desktop Swipe four (4) fingers upward. This invokes the Expose feature that shows your desktop. Show…
I Wanted to Congratulate Malcolm Gladwell on His New Book, But Now That I’ve Read It I Know He Doesn’t Deserve Much of the Credit
Gladwell’s new book, Outliers: The Story of Success is phenomenal. It covers something I’ve been thinking about for years: the algorithm for success. It’s a common and popular subject, and it usually ends up reducing to a nature vs. nurture debate. I’d say the new Gladwell book scores big for nurture. I’m only in the third chapter, but…
ROWE: Results-Only Work Environment
ROWE is a simple concept: let people do what they want at work — as long as they’re getting work done. Evidently Best Buy has put the system into place and has increased productivity by 41% This, like democracy, is another example of a great system that works for the best among us, but fails to deliver for…
OS X: The Keyboard Shortcut for “Don’t Save”
If you’re an efficiency/productivity nut like I am you are probably also obsessed with keyboard shortcuts. One of the main ones for me is the ability to close documents in OS X without saving them. So, given the dialog above, how do you select “Don’t Save” without using your mouse? You can’t use the arrow keys, and you…
A GTD Approach to Organizing and Reading Your Feeds
The fundamental problem when managing feeds is input management. Most of us simply have too many feeds to read in a single sitting. How can we be sure we’re reading the right content at the right time? The goal is to avoid the anti-GTD state of not being sure – a state that consumes valuable brain resources and…
A Three-Dimensional Approach to Organizing Your Feeds Using Google Reader
I’m constantly optimizing how I do things, and nowhere is this more important to me than with my feed reader. I happen to use (and highly recommend) Google Reader, and what follows is a multi-tiered approach to classifying and reading your feeds using an often ignored feature of the application. The Problem The fundamental problem is input management.…
Better Quicksearches with QuickSilver
Like many out there I’m rather obsessed with doing things the best way possible. Up until yesterday I was using browser-based quick searches to perform quick Internet searches. But there’s a better way. QuickSilver (sorry, OS X only) allows us to get the same quick search functionality, but from anywhere. So if you’re working on some code in…
How To Effectively Manage and Process Your RSS Feeds [GTD]
Those of us who use RSS tend to struggle constantly with two impulses: 1) the drive to reduce your information inputs in order to focus more on output, and 2) the urge to seek out additional stuff that you’ll likely end up pruning later in step 1. But even after people settle on a good set of feeds,…
Firefox Quicksearches + Google Keywords = Sick Power
Back in 2005 I wrote about how you can use Firefox Quicksearches to vastly reduce your search time. You do this by adding a key-character for searches, such as “g” for Google, and “w” for Wikipedia. Then you just do a ctrl/cmd-L to get to Firefox’s URL bar, and then type: g ron paul …to search for Ron…
My Letter To A Linux Desktop User
I know you don’t believe me, as we’ve had this conversation before. But there will come a time in your life when you will grow tired of fixing your tools. This will likely lead you to Windows or OS X — both of which, if you avoid tweaking, offer much more stability through updates and patches than Linux…
GTD Basics
Collect Capture everything that you need to track or remember or act on in what Allen calls a ‘bucket’: either a physical inbox, email inbox, tape recorder, notebook, or any combination of these. Get everything out of your head and into your collection device, ready for processing. All buckets should be processed to empty at least once per…
3 Steps to Highly Efficient News Reading
Few things are as important to geeks as how they stay informed. Knowledge is so key to us that the ability to pull it in, process it, and ensure that it’s recallable, is absolutely vital to being effective in our work. One of the main problems we as information fetishists face is the lack of a solid, repeatable…
How Managers Should Be
This is an excellent collection of 10 beliefs that managers “should” have — or, good ones anyway. I find the list to be quite accurate, and I liked this one in particular: “Managers believe that people are innately good. Without this core belief and faith in people, great management is not possible.” It’s funny because this is exactly…
Reading News The GTD Way
The way most of us take in daily news is horribly inefficient. The problem isn’t how fast we read, or even what sites we go to — it’s the process of finding news, taking it in, and returning to work. Our current habits are based in the need for distraction and the fear that we’re missing something. We…
The Power Of Firefox Quicksearches
One of the coolest (yet little-known) features in Firefox is the ability to search virtually any website via your address bar. To do this, simply right-click in the search field of a site you want to search and select, “Add A Keyword For This Search”. Once you’ve done this you’ll be prompted to create a bookmark. Call it…
Books and Demons
I have an obsession with reading. Well, actually, as it stands now, it’s more of an obsession with being able to read if I wanted to. I’m sure many others share this ailment; it involves purchasing this book or that one with much glee and anticipation, reading the first part of it, and then repeating this upon the…
Addicted To Better
If you’re like me (which you likely are since you’re reading this), you’re probably obsessed with GTD, Lifehacker, 43 Folders, and a number of other productivity/optimization resources. I love this stuff. It’s downright exhilerating to pursue betterment in all these various forms. Diet, speed-reading, excercise, personal organizers, operating system tools and tweaks, etc. — all these areas offer…
Podcasting + Excercise : A Perfect Match
I think a big part of a person’s strengths is knowing how to properly handle his/her weaknesses. In my case, I hate to be bored. This is particularly devestating to the prospect of getting regular excercise, as the majority of tasks such as running, biking, etc. are all somewhat boring to me when done by themselves. The thing…