Author Archives: Jeff

Finishing projects is highly underrated. Its also extremely hard. It seems that many people are very good at starting things, accepting new opportunities, and so on, but they seem to be terrible at actually completing most of what they set out to do. I am highly guilty of this. In this post I considered whether its possible to have too much ambition, and ultimately concluded that unchecked ambition is indeed a bad thing. Since that blog post, nearly two years ago, I have worked towards a more deliberate decision making strategy and on completing/minimizing my number of pots on the stove, so that I can pursue the most important things to me in life with every ounce of ability in my body while also maintaining a healthy work/life balance. Since that blog post, I have completed my undergraduate degree (mind you, no small feat for me as it was extremely tempting on a number of occasions to drop out), simplified my living situation, and dedicated a tremendous amount of time towards honing my craft (building software) and continuing to learn about startups. At present I am contracting on a job that is stable and enjoyable but not very sexy, in addition to working my arse off to finish the car I started building 3.5 years ago. My plan is to finish the car, and then replace the 20-30 hours a week I’m spending on the car right now with a new project which might eventually turn into a full time thing. No school, no time-sucking hobby (I’ll still work on cars, but at my leisure and with shorter term projects), no other distractions in life. I have a wonderful girlfriend who is independent and lets me do my thing, but who also provides even greater amounts of inspiration and motivation to me than I might otherwise have. She’s wonderful for many other reasons; she significantly enhances my overall happiness. I have a small number of very close friends who I hang out with as we can, and also a great relationship with my immediate family. I can’t think of a position I’d prefer to be in. Now that I’ve graduated, I regularly receive offers from people asking me to come work on this job or that, startups, contracts for enterprise, whatever. One of the most valuable thing I’ve learned how to do so far is turn down new opportunities. Many of them are exciting and initially look promising; however, it is crucially important to be very critical of every opportunity that comes your way — scrutinize it from every angle, think about what risk is associated with it both for you personally as well as those you care about around you, and even the overall chance of success that the opportunity poses. Is there money to be made doing it? What technical hurdles will you have to overcome? Most importantly, is the team itself that you will be working with rock friggin solid? Also, I believe in turning down solid opportunities if taking them would preclude me from fulfilling some prior commitment to other folks. Everyone seems to be different on this principal, but the thing I value most in people is integrity. No one’s perfect, but I do my best to follow through on things I say I’m going to do.

As someone who is a passionate and easily excited person, its difficult restraining myself when new and sexy opportunities come my way. Also, I don’t want to be turning down opportunities for the wrong reasons — fear of the unknown, fear of success, whatever. The lizard brain will hold you back from putting yourself out there at every turn. Those are not valid reasons by themselves for avoiding opportunity. Discerning the fine line between fear of the unknown and avoiding unreasonable risk is the challenge here; if you are able to do so and act accordingly, your chance of achieving your overarching life/career goals seems to increase dramatically.

I recently read Scott Belsky’s “Making Ideas Happen”, and I have to highly recommend it to anyone who’s ever felt like they have a surplus of great ideas but very few of them come to fruition. This seems to be a common problem amongst creatives, and Scott aims to address this. He breaks “Making Ideas Happen” down into three main components:

1. Organization/task management – This part of the book felt very GTDish, with a couple ideas I hadn’t heard/thought of before
2. Communal forces – Focused a lot on things having to do with the community, both in terms of friends/family to support you, people in your field to give you feedback/collaborate with you, etc
3. Leadership ability – Focused on how to lead others and yourself

I thought the entire book had a lot of good insight and useful anecdotes throughout, but one idea that has made an immediate impact on my personal productivity is the notion of religiously following up.  Scott talks about this and gives some stories related to it, but I’ve begun using Things to keep track of every time I send an email and am waiting to hear back, or am expecting a call back, or anything of that nature.  When I send the email or whatever it is, I simply create a new todo with the tag “followup”, describe who and what it is I’m following up about, and select a date that I want to be reminded about the followup.  At this point I simply hide it and its out of sight/out of mind.  Its brilliant!  For the last two weeks I’ve not had to worry a single time about “who was it that I needed to email?” or think while shopping for groceries (or some other activity where I can’t do anything about it) “oh yeah I need to call so and so back!”.  Things just takes care of it for me.  So simple and yet so powerful.

There were many other ideas in Scott’s book that I’m still simmering over and will probably influence me at some point, but I just wanted to share this particular one which has been so simple and so powerful for me personally.

It seems that a large number of people make a lot of noise about what they’re going to do, but when it comes right down to it, are you a Doer? Do you make things happen?  Or do you wait for orders?

Harvard Business School professor and author Clayton Christensen recently wrote an article discussing the subject of “How Will You Measure Your Life?”, with a target audience of the HBS class of 2010, but I think it applies resoundingly to anyone in their early to late 20s, and certainly any person could glean some wisdom from it.  In particular I found the discussion of family to be very insightful.. One excerpt:

“When people who have a high need for achievement—and that includes all Harvard Business School graduates—have an extra half hour of time or an extra ounce of energy, they’ll unconsciously allocate it to activities that yield the most tangible accomplishments. And our careers provide the most concrete evidence that we’re moving forward. You ship a product, finish a design, complete a presentation, close a sale, teach a class, publish a paper, get paid, get promoted. In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It’s really not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, “I raised a good son or a good daughter.” You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t seem as if things are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers—even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.”

I am guilty as charged of unconsciously allocating every last ounce of energy and every last half hour of time to activities that yield tangible accomplishments.. At the very least I have the tendency to do so, but I have found that curbing this tendency leads to greater overall happiness and fulfillment.

I will leave you with a quote from Steve Jobs, giving a commencement address at Stanford University:

“‘If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.’ It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something…. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose…. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Insanity can be defined as “doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.”  The trick to this definition is what you define as “doing the same thing.”  Its easy to convince ourselves that what we’re doing this time is actually different than the last 25 times, and this time it will really work.

Damn you consciousness, for giving us humans such an exquisite ability to fool ourselves.

The word “love” is a funny thing. In theory, you use it to talk about an intimate bond shared with another person. But we also use love in the context of our possessions:

I love my car
I love my computer
I love my phone

I think our language is a symptom (or a cause?) of our consumerist attitude towards relationships. People and objects aren’t really that different to us in terms of our attachment. “I love my car, but I need the new one that just came out this year.” or  “I love my wife, but I need the younger secretary.” And so on.

I’m always amazed at how backwards a lot of things in life are. For example, “knowledge workers” often times get paid tons of money to sit inside all day, work with paper or computers, or do complex math and that sort of thing. They put in a few hard years at college, but for the most part their jobs are pretty easy for them (unless they’re making it more difficult than they have to).. Basically they happen to be good at something that the majority of the human population isn’t good at. If everyone was great at calculus then being an engineer wouldn’t be such a prestigious title.

And then you have everyone else, who is struggling severely to make a living.. They perform manual labor, they sweat and bust their backs all day.. They have work that is actually hard, in that its hard on them.

If you were fortunate enough to be born with intelligence, and were fortunate enough to have an upbringing that allowed/encouraged you to pursue knowledge-based work that allows you to live comfortably, do you feel entitled to it? Do you think you deserve it more than anyone else? Or do you realize how stupid lucky you are.

Even if you think that you think for yourself, it is possible that you actually aren’t. Falling into unthinking is incredibly easy for anyone and everyone, including you. This is why you constantly need to ask yourself whether you’re thinking? This goes back to the “Question Everything” mantra.. Do I really want what I think I want? Do I really believe these things? Do I really care about x, y and z? Is Jane actually being truthful with me? Are my parents? Is my government? What about the media?

Every day make sure that you’re thinking for yourself. Otherwise what the hell is the point of having a “consciousness”?

I started writing a follow up to my “Too Much Ambition” post, that was going to be a “What Am I Doing In Life” update, but it became far too lengthy of a post. Instead, here’s a quick version:

• Finishing my undergrad in Computer Science
• Contracting part time as a software developer
• Building my locost
• Running every weekday morning at 5am
• Spending real time with my family and close friends
• Reading books
• Cooking more

What I’m not doing (which is just as important)

• I’m not watching TV (literally I have no cable)
• I’m not playing video games
• I’m not working on a startup company in earnest until after I am done with school (this was a difficult decision for me, but ultimately a necessary one in order to be focused and successful)
• I’m not eating crappy/greasy food
• I’m not spreading myself too thin socially.. i.e. I try to spend as much time as possible with people who really matter to me, and give myself to them as much as possible

What about you?  Where is your energy going, what are you focusing on?  Look where you’re heading, is it a place you’d like to be?

In today’s world of tweets, iPhones and Facebook, we are constantly bombarded more than ever with a never-ending stream of inputs. People indulge an enormous number of distractions in their daily lives, from television, to the internet, to all of the things we let ourselves get hung up on.

Think about two things. One, imagine what it would have been like to live before electricity was invented. Imagine having to read, or spend time outside, or have conversations, to enjoy life. Imagine not having people constantly texting, instant messaging, calling you.

Two (a much less simple/quick exercise), ask yourself what do you really need in order to be happy. You may think you want more money, or more things, or more tv shows, but think about it long and hard and I bet you’ll conclude its none of those things.. Remove as many non-important things from your life; simplicity will set you free.

If you can be truly focused for even a subset of your time on this earth, you’ll still be way ahead of most people.