I’m going to be heading down to South By Southwest in a couple of weeks, and I am stoked … I’m even going to be taking the Startup Bus! Unfortunately, I’m going to have to miss one of my son’s gymnastics meets. He has ten this year, so making 90% is a decent percentage, but [...]
Archive for the ‘Other’ Category
How geeky
Posted in Other, tagged Gus, Money, Skype, Startup Bus, Streaming, SXSW on February 21, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Planning ahead
Posted in Other, tagged Planning on February 18, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
As life gets more complicated, planning gets more important. I’ve never been a good planner. I don’t like planning, so I naturally resist it. But as work gets more challenging and my 9-year-old son Gus gets more active, planning is simply unavoidable. There’s the school of thought that if you want to learn to swim, [...]
Oops!
Posted in Other on February 17, 2012 | 1 Comment »
When you break a streak, the best thing to do is start another one …
Deadlines
Posted in Other on February 15, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
The nice thing about deadlines is that they force you to ship. Your article, your app, your art will never be perfect, so of course you can always make it better tomorrow. Deadlines force you to give that last burst of effort to make something at least “good enough.” I’m OK at externally imposed deadlines, [...]
What money can buy
Posted in Other, Work, tagged Money, Startups on February 14, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
A while back, I mentioned Jacob Needleman’s Money and the Meaning of Life. One of the points Needleman makes is that for almost any problem in life there is a very specific amount of money that will solve it. If you are building a software company and have figured out how to scale, there is [...]
Envision then do
Posted in Other, Work, tagged Conductor, Craft, Envisioning, Music, Software on February 12, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
You have to know exactly how you want the music to sound in your head, hear exactly how it actually sounds in the room, then bring the two as close together as possible. That’s paraphrasing a knighted British conductor – I read the quote at school more than twenty years ago and since then haven’t [...]
The wisdom of low quality
Posted in Other, Work, tagged Brad Feld, Email, Fred Wilson, Seth Godin, Startups on February 11, 2012 | 2 Comments »
There are some things in life where it’s important to do a great job. For example, the difference between being an OK musician and a great musician is an enormous amount of work … but it’s worth it, both to the musician and the audience. Surprisingly, there are things where it’s NOT important to do [...]
A warm welcome
Posted in Other on February 10, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Last night was the holiday party for Microsoft’s West Michigan office. I work at home, and I report into a different organization than most of the people who work around here – heck, my boss is based in St. Louis – so I only get to see my local coworkers once or twice a year. [...]
A little hungry
Posted in Other, tagged diet, exercise, Fat on February 9, 2012 | 4 Comments »
Don’t forget – Smart Bear Live recording is today, 2/9/2012 at 5p EST with special guest VC Mark Suster! Join us at Jason’s BlogTalkRadio channel. A friend posted a recent video of me speaking (no, I’m not linking to it), and I have to confess … I looked fat. Not terrible, but not good. When [...]
Don’t break the chain
Posted in Other on February 4, 2012 | 5 Comments »
I read where someone asked Jerry Seinfeld the secret to success. “Don’t break the chain,” he said. He was referring to a chain of big Xs you make on a calendar … You figure out what’s important to you, and then you do that thing every day. When you do it, you get to cross [...]
