Stripe allows anyone to read anyone else’s email!
https://stripe.com/blog/email-transparency
“So far, our experience has been that an ambiently open flow of information helps to provide people with the context they need.”
Fortune Article Featuring Me! :)
http://fortune.com/2014/12/29/startup-you/
"Julka may sound like a case study in craziness, a modern-day Ben Franklin whose entrepreneurial energy and efforts cannot be easily matched. But while he exists at one extreme, he’s the prototype for what it takes to navigate one’s career these days."
Seneca: Moral Letters To Lucilius
Mike Susi, LinkedIn's Global Wellness Manager
· sitting is new smoking
· squatting is opposite of sitting
· 6 tenets
o thoughts
o breathing
o hydration
o nutrition
o movement
o rest
· mind-body
· nothing destabilizes brain and nervous system more than blood sugar fluctuations; nothing stabilizes the brain and nervous system as well as healthy dietary fats
· Hydration impacts mind
· “be conscious being, and not bundle of emotional reaction.”
· between stimulus and response is your space - space for your decision
· breathing should be at stomach
· hydration
o #1 trigger of daytime fatigue
· Should not drink a lot around meals
o dilutes acids
· 75% of Americans are dehydrated
· Nutrients
o To eat is necessity
o eat intelligently is an art
· Macro nutrients
o protein
o carbs
o fats
o no eyes or eyes
o mood +
o mental acuity +
o energy +
o Pick, pull, catch, slaughter = food
o Not pasta or bread
· Movement
o Dynamic movement
o squat, lunge, bend, push, pull, twist
o plains of motion
o need twist
o Sitting - shorten chest
§ bench-shorten chest
o balance each
§ 1 push
§ 2 pulls
o diversity of routines
o take things out of contest
o muscles are pumps
§ need to pump appropriately
o rest - 6-8 hours
o as dark and quiet as possible
o consistency - in high time and morning routine
o active rest - walking paths
Ray Dalio Principles
http://www.bwater.com/Uploads/FileManager/Principles/Bridgewater-Associates-Ray-Dalio-Principles.pdf
How I got my first Valley-Based product Management Job in 5 Weeks by Nitin Julka
5 love languages The 5 Love Languages are: Words of Affirmation Acts of Service Quality Time Gifts Physical Touch Languages of Love depend on how you were raised. Most people were raised with one or two languages, and then marry someone who has other languages. The key is to know your language of love, communicate it, and be aware of your partner’s language of love. Then, speak in your partner’s language of love on an ongoing basis for a long period of time (eg. > 6 months) with no expectation in return. The problem with the "in love experience" is that it is totally unrealistic. When falling in love, everything is about serving your partner. You allow your world to revolve around your partner- often at the expense of your other responsibilities and relationships. Average in-love experience lasts around 2 years. It is excessive and unrealistic. You need to learn the languages of love to survive a relationship in the real world. 1) words of appreciation. Try noticing and complimenting things that your partner does, even if those things are already expected and within their responsibility. Encourage and be positive to people for doing what they should be doing anyway. Ideas: Compliments Compliment your spouse daily without any expectation of anything in return Encouragement Kindness Kindness is the way you say things. You can even express disappointment in an honest and kind away. "I am disappointed that you didn't help me this evening." Babbling brook (someone who talks a lot) and Dead Sea (someone who only listens). Advice...track feelings and limit to 3 things… 2) Quality time Talking to each other...and doing activities together. Focused, uninterrupted. Engage in the other person's interests 3) Acts of service. changing diapers, taking out garbage, cooking, etc Even if it is already expected and within their responsibility, it's still an act of love and service 4) Receiving gifts. Gift giving transcends cultures Note: You can't make demands and love. You can only make requests. It should always be a request and not a demand. With criticism and demands- when people finally do things, it will not be out of love- just acquiescence and avoidance for more nagging. Make requests out of love. Criticism is an ineffective way of describing what is emotionally important to you in the realm of love 5) Physical touch Physical affection of any kind- holding hands, hand on a shoulder, ruffling hair, hugs, kisses, etc. Ways to discover your love language are to See when you criticize what love language are you seeking Picture the ideal mate and to see what's most prominent in your mind about that person- what do they do/say? Check your spouse’s "love tank" three times a week to gauge how loved they're feeling and how well you're communicating in their love language. Have them rate it from 0- empty to 10- full. If your spouse is at 10 every day then you know that you're doing good job. Try different love languages each week and see which gets the most response from your partner The expression of love in your spouse’s love language unconditionally over the long term is the key to success
"Apply everything you know about everything to solve every problem you come across"
Phenomenal podcast from a serial CTO (and person I quoted for the subject line):
http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=3175
Why BitCoin Matters
http://blog.pmarca.com/2014/01/22/why-bitcoin-matters/
Justin Rosenstein from Asana
http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=3117
I LOVE Asana for work project management
The Questions that Will Save Your Relationship
BulletProof Exec: Using your Diet to Optimize Performance
http://www.bulletproofexec.com/
http://www.bulletproofexec.com/83-be-real-be-bold-be-innovative-with-stew-friedman-podcast/
BulletProof Skeptics:
Updated Presentation on Personal Productivity by Nitin Julka
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1dFvtWDHvbq6xPUK-b0CBgm7jyolVQrM8GaJZwIZodzM/edit?usp=sharing
Have Strong Opinions, Weakly Held
http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/07/strong_opinions.html
NRA Calls for Teachers to Keep Loaded Guns Pointed at Class for Entire Day
http://www.theonion.com/articles/nra-calls-for-teachers-to-keep-loaded-gun-pointed,34336/
The Age of the Product Manager
Why it is Hard to Make Friends > 30
Paxata makes Data Prep Easy
http://gigaom.com/2013/10/28/with-10m-from-accel-paxata-wants-to-make-data-prep-a-breeze/
Product Managers: Who are these Mini-CEOs and What Do They Do?
Kleiner Perkins adds Year-Long Product Manager Track
David Kadavy: Design for Hackers
Inspired by Marty Cagan, Lean Analytics by Benjamin Yoskovitz, and Lean Startup by Eric Ries
[My notes are pasted at the bottom...]
Into the Night with Gary Kasporav and Peter Thiel
AARRR Metrics
http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/startup-metrics-for-pirates-long-version
Felton Reports
Mentor/Investor Whip Lash
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/07/mentorinvestor-whiplash.html
Amazon Shareholder Letters
https://www.dropbox.com/s/45h1edhstrc3bsv/Amazon%20Shareholder%20Letters%2097-12.pdf
What is Amazon’s Approach to Product Management and Product Development … (start with the Press Release)
http://www.quora.com/What-is-Amazons-approach-to-product-development-and-product-management
What does a Great Product Manager do at a Tech Startup Day to Day?
My RSS Reader Replacement … e-mail newsletters and Newsblur
Favorite E-mail Newsletters:
http://www.mediaredefined.com/
http://www.hackernewsletter.com/
https://delicious.com/bencasnocha (I used http://feedburner.com to create my own feed)
The Internet by Nitin Julka (Nov 9, 1995)
https://sites.google.com/site/njulka02/internet
The Steve Jobs E-mail that Show how to Win a Hard-Nosed Negotiation
http://qz.com/87184/the-steve-jobs-emails-that-show-how-to-win-a-hard-nosed-negotiation/
Expose Yourself to Bulk, Positive Randomness
http://casnocha.com/2007/05/expose_yourself.html
Derek Sivers notes on Anti-Fragile
http://sivers.org/book/Antifragile
“Fake it until you make it”
http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are.html
TurboScan
(http://www.appstore.turboscanapp.com) is an iPhone app that converts your iPhone into a scanner! (It takes 1 to 3 pictures, flattens the image, trims the edges, and allows you to e-mail the image as a PDF.) Great for scanning reports, contracts, and receipts.
Mint.com
(http://mint.com) tracks personal budgets, capital expenditures (ie. goals), and transactions. You can also set up "rules" to automatically categorize transactions [while hovering over a transaction, click "edit details," then "rules."] It also integrates with your bank, credit card, and investment accounts. This product has become a necessity post-baby.
Internet Trends
(http://www.kpcb.com/insights/2012-internet-trends-update) Great slides from Kleiner Perkins. I liked slides 22 to 57 on re-imagining computing, UI, knowledge, etc.
Rare Video of Woz from 1984 talking about computing
http://www.tuaw.com/2012/06/24/rare-video-of-woz-talking-mac-from-1984/
Fantastic Articles on Political Technology
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-the-nerds-go-marching-in/265325/
When to Obsessively Focus and when to Court Serendipity
http://casnocha.com/2012/10/when-to-obsessively-focus-and-when-to-court-serendipity.html
Be Around People who Give You More Energy
Bob Sutton wrote a book, Good Boss, Bad Boss (http://www.amazon.com/Good-Boss-Bad-Best-Learn/dp/0446556076) and cited Rob Cross (http://www.robcross.org/). He mentioned this great paper to me (
http://www.robcross.org/pdf/roundtable/energy_and_innovation.pdf). Here is an excerpt from this book:
Bring on the Energizers
...They wanted to identify what kinds of employees were top performers and brought out the best in others. They hypothesized that people who were renowned for having expertise, spreading technical knowledge, and best positioned to gather and weave together information from others would be seen as top performers. At a professional services firm they were studying, an executive argued they were missing something:
“We have some of the brightest consultants in the world here. But some are more successful than others, and it has much more to do with what I call buzz than slight differences in IQ. Our high performers create enthusiasm for things….. They generate energy, and even though this is intangible it generates client sales and follow-on work as well as gets other people here engaged in and supportive of what they are doing.”
Inspired by this insight, they added a simple question to their survey: “People can affect the energy and enthusiasm we have at work in various ways. Interactions with some people can leave you feeling drained while others can leave you feeling enthused about possibilities. When you interact with each person below, how does it typically affect your energy level?” The possible answers were: 1 = de-energizing; 2 = no effect/neutral; or 3 = energizing. The colleagues in their team or business were then listed, and each was rated by every coworker.
Rob and his fellow researchers were stunned by how strongly this “energy” question predicted performance evaluations and promotions, and whether people stayed with or left an organization. They also found that the most successful groups, projects, and organizations had networks filled with interconnected energizers. Cross and his colleagues have since dug into the kinds of people who are energizers and why they succeed. “Energizers” aren’t necessarily charismatic and bubbly; on the surface, many are understated and rather shy. But all create energy via optimism about the possibilities ahead, fully engaging the person right in front of them right now, valuing others’ ideas, and helping people feel as if they are making progress.
...Huggy, an astute observer, pointed out how closely Lenny listened, how he saw possible value in every person and every idea and – unlike the two of us – rarely interrupted. Huggy and I are just two of Lenny’s fans; he has the same energizing effect on everyone who knows him.
On Parenthood
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/10/on-parenthood.html
Startup of You
Learn Coding
“The way people copy each other's linguistic style reveals their pecking order”
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27437/#.TwCoUmRdUnU.twitter
TFA
http://jacobinmag.com/winter-2012/teach-for-america/
Fantastic post about Amazon, Google, Products, and Platforms
https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesvaVX
What's the Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing your own psychology.
The New Humanism
Those are all important, obviously, but this research illuminates a range of deeper talents, which span reason and emotion and make a hash of both categories:
Attunement: the ability to enter other minds and learn what they have to offer.
Equipoise: the ability to serenely monitor the movements of one’s own mind and correct for biases and shortcomings.
Metis: the ability to see patterns in the world and derive a gist from complex situations.
Sympathy: the ability to fall into a rhythm with those around you and thrive in groups.
Limerence: This isn’t a talent as much as a motivation. The conscious mind hungers for money and success, but the unconscious mind hungers for those moments of transcendence when the skull line falls away and we are lost in love for another, the challenge of a task or the love of God. Some people seem to experience this drive more powerfully than others.
Those are all important, obviously, but this research illuminates a range of deeper talents, which span reason and emotion and make a hash of both categories:
Passion Circle by Nitin Julka
https://sites.google.com/site/njulka02/home/passion-circle
The Best Ways to Learn Things: A Tutor
http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2010/11/best-way-to-learn-most-things-tutor.html
DIY Marriage Counseling
http://artofmanliness.com/2009/07/08/diy-marriage-counseling/
How To Be A High School Superstar.
http://www.amazon.com/How-High-School-Superstar-Revolutionary/dp/0767932587 .
Myth of the "Passion Trap:"
The meaning of Wisdom...And Technology
http://wehrintheworld.blogspot.com/2010/10/meaning-of-wisdom.html
This pause, this form of framing, is harder than ever to achieve nowadays, because so many of our modern technologies produce "personal" devices that collapse time and manufacture urgency -- faster computers, phones that make us perpetually reachable, twitters of constant thoughts, webs of interaction that vastly increase common knowledge, yet somehow deprive us of that apprenticed learning that leads to wisdom; this digital haze obscures our view of the future and keeps our focus ever more relentlessly on the present, with ever more insistence on speed as a virtue in and of itself.
how to express concerns in a relationship by Nitin Julka
http://sites.google.com/site/njulka02/expressing-concerns
How to improve education in America
http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/67966
how will you measure your life?
http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/pr
Treat your mind as a private garden
the harm of incentives, creativity, and people
This video does an excellent job of showing the pitfalls of incentive programs and what really motivates people - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=player_embedded .
1993 book, Punished by Rewards, on the harm of praise - http://www.amazon.com/Punished-Rewards-Trouble-Incentive-Praise/dp/0618001816
myers-briggs and personality differences - useful guideline understanding people. This book is a MUST READ - http://www.amazon.com/Please-Understand-Me-Character-Temperament/dp/0960695400
Personality differences - quick summary
I (introverted) - you gain energy by being alone ; think by being alone
vs. E (extroverted) - you gain energy by being around people ; think by talking issues through
N (intuitive) - you are forward looking ; can make assumptions and see the future
vs. S (sensing) - you like to gather all the data prior to making a decision
T (thinking) - you are logical ; use logic to draw conclusions and make judgments
vs. F (feeling) - you make decisions based on how it may affect the people around you
J (judging) - you like to have a check list ; a plan ; a schedule
vs. P (perceiving) - plans are flexible ; if you are in the moment and feeling the flow, you're going with your gut
Khan Academy - Learn about everything
Great Podcast on Managing Energy and Productivity
http://blogs.hbr.org/ideacast/2010/05/managing-the-productivity-para.html
The lazy CEO’s 10-step guide to crowdsourcing every business task
Phenomenal article on the future + psychology
http://www.singinst.org/upload/cognitive-biases.pdf
how to have better dinner conversations
Video on personal branding/career/passion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhqZ0RU95d4&feature=player_embedded
Leadership
Centered leadership, a leadership model developed by McKinsey over the past five years, comprises five broad dimensions: meaning, or finding your strengths and putting them to work in the service of a purpose that inspires you; positive framing, or adopting a more constructive way to view your world and handle situations, even very difficult ones; connecting, or building stronger support networks and increasing your sense of belonging; engaging, or crossing the line to pursue opportunities you might avoid because of inherent risks or personal fears; and managing energy, or practicing ways to sustain and renew your energy.
Chile is the next tech entrepreneur destination!
3 minute personality test
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp
Incompetent people don't have a clue
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/01/18/MN73840.DTL
There are many incompetent people in the world. Dr. David A. Dunning is haunted by the fear that he might be one of them.
Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, worries about this because, according to his research, most incompetent people do not know that they are incompetent.
On the contrary. People who do things badly, Dunning has found in studies conducted with a graduate student, Justin Kruger, are usually supremely confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.
``I began to think that there were probably lots of things that I was bad at, and I didn't know it,'' Dunning said.
One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured, the researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence.
Charter Cities - excellent article
Romer, an economist, is a leading expert on the dynamics of economic growth, and he sees the tale of Hong Kong not merely as a historical irony, but the answer to one of the knottier problems of our time: the great global chasm between rich and poor. And to close that gap, he argues that the world needs not one but a hundred Hong Kongs, what he calls “charter cities.” In his vision these would comprise a global archipelago of economic powerhouse city-states, located in the world’s poor nations but built and run by wealthy ones.
He sees charter cities as beachheads where laws and institutions and habits that have worked in the wealthy world can take root, and as civic laboratories where new ways of doing business and hybrids of local and imported customs can emerge. Unemployed workers and frustrated entrepreneurs from the host country would flock there for the opportunities; international firms would be drawn by the combination of First World stability and cheap labor. And from these nodes, money and expertise, laws and norms would spread throughout the rest of the country and, potentially, the developing world. Ultimately, their work done, the cities would revert to local control.
13 skills every IT pro should know
http://www.globalknowledge.com/articles/generic.asp?pageid=2475&country=United+States
If you have any IT people or colleagues in your organization, you should definitely send them this article. It is brilliant.
I also recently read the book, "Adventures of an IT Leader."
Again, IT is such a critical resource in every organization and I believe every manager can deepen their IT understanding to better manage their organization. http://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Leader-Robert-D-Austin/dp/142214660X
awesome slide show on netflix culture/values
IT IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664
slide 28 is awesome.
slide 53 is awesome
slide 94 if fascinating
slide 115 is great
awesome article on memory and learning
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wozniak?currentPage=all
Excerpts:
However, this technique never caught on. The spacing effect is "one of the most remarkable phenomena to emerge from laboratory research on learning," the psychologist Frank Dempster wrote in 1988, at the beginning of a typically sad encomium published in American Psychologist under the title "The Spacing Effect: A Case Study in the Failure to Apply the Results of Psychological Research."
...
Instead, Wozniak has ridden SuperMemo into uncharted regions of self-experimentation. In 1999, he started making a detailed record of his hours of sleep, and now he's working to correlate that data with his daily performance on study repetitions. Psychologists have long believed there's a correlation between sleep and memory, but no mathematical law has been discovered. Wozniak has also invented a way to apply his learning system to his intake of unstructured information from books and articles, winnowing written material down to the type of discrete chunks that can be memorized, and then scheduling them for efficient learning. He selects a short section of what he's reading and copies it into the SuperMemo application, which predicts when he'll want to read it again so it sticks in his mind. He cuts and pastes completely unread material into the system, assigning it a priority. SuperMemo shuffles all his potential knowledge into a queue and presents it to him on a study screen when the time is right. Wozniak can look at a graph of what he's got lined up to learn and adjust the priority rankings if his goals change.
These techniques are designed to overcome steep learning curves through automated steps, like stairs on a hill. He calls it incremental reading, and it has come to dominate his intellectual life. Wozniak no longer wastes time worrying that he hasn't gotten to some article he wants to read; once it's loaded into the system, he trusts his algorithm to apportion it to his consciousness at the appropriate time.
The appropriate time, that is, for him. Having turned over his mental life to a computerized system, he refuses to be pushed around by random inputs and requests. Naturally, this can be annoying to people whose messages tend to sift to the bottom. "After four months," Biedalak says sadly, "you sometimes get a reply to some sentence in an email that has been scrambled in his incremental reading process."
...
His advice was straightforward yet strangely terrible: You must clarify your goals, gain knowledge through spaced repetition, preserve health, work steadily, minimize stress, refuse interruption, and never resist sleep when tired. This should lead to radically improved intelligence and creativity. The only cost: turning your back on every convention of social life.
Productivity Habits by Nitin Julka
https://sites.google.com/site/njulka02/home/drivechangeinpersonallife
Link References:
New York Times on Multitasking
Brazen Careerist on Consistency and Follow Through
Best Video Ever on Client Vendor Relationships
http://www.swiss-miss.com/2009/05/the-vendor-client-relationship-in-real-world-situations.html
In Praise of Primitive Finance and... Making Banking Boring
My finance friends may not agree with these views...but FYI
"In Praise of Primitive Finance" by Amar Bhide
http://www.bhide.net/financial_crisis_2008/bhide_praise_of_primitive_finance.pdf
"Making Banking Boring" by Paul Krugman
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/opinion/10krugman.html
Greatest Product Demo Ever
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/berkun/2009/01/draft-lessons-from-the-mother.html
Innovate or Die
http://www.tompeters.com/entries.php?rss=1¬e=http://www.tompeters.com/blogs/main/010802.php
76. Projects "emerge." Recall "spontaneous discovery process," our item #3. Most projects invent themselves, rather than being the product of a formal planning process; and their growth into something big is also mostly organic. An effective culture of innovation is largely ad hoc—which drives many senior managers crazy. If they can't "get it," then they don't belong.
77. Leadership is on the fly. Things change rapidly. Teams are born and teams die. Yesterday's leader is today's follower—and vice versa. Developing "on the fly" leadership skills is no walk in the park. First, it must be perceived as a describable and learnable skill. (Hint: Women are better at this than men. Arguably, much better.)
78. Plan-less-ness. If your organization chart "makes sense," then you probably don't have an innovative enterprise. Adhocracy requires letting go of linearity assumptions.
Carnival on Leadership Development
This post packs in a huge amount of info about leadership development into a wonderful, concise blog post - with many links.
http://www.greatleadershipbydan.com/2008/12/leadership-development-carnival.html
Hilarious Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mP3FqUUAAw
I Take Notes like some people take drugs
I take notes like some people take drugs.
There is an eight-foot stretch of shelves in my house containing nothing but full notebooks.
Some would call this hypergraphia (Dostoevsky was a member of this club), but I trust the weakest pen more than the strongest memory, and note taking is—in my experience—one of the most important skills for converting excessive information into precise action and follow-up.
Simple but effective note taking enables me to:
-Review book highlights in less than 10 minutes
-Connect scattered notes on a single theme in 10 minutes that would otherwise require dozens of hours
-Contact and connect mentors with relevant questions and help I can offer
-Impose structure on information for increased retention and recall
I fashion myself a note-taking geek of the first class. How dare I self-appoint myself into this priesthood? Relax, script kiddies. I'm using a much broader definition of "geek," this one borrowed from "Understanding Geeks" in the current issue of Inc. Magazine (that said, I was recently on Geekbrief.tv, birthplace of the ubercool iYule.tv):
"Someone with an intense curiosity about a specific subject. Not limited to tech–there are also gaming geeks, music geeks, etc."
Here are a few recommendations from inside the world of a compulsive note taker, including both the macro (books and notepad principles) and micro (page features and formatting):
Very interesting background of the person behind the Google Phone:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/technology/04google.html?pagewanted=1&hp
There was also this valuable tid bit:
"Today Silicon Valley is full of 'network-effect entrepreneurs,' but Andy represents a generation that is equally comfortable with a soldering gun, writing software programs or designing a business," said Steve Perlman, another former Apple engineer who was a co-founder of WebTV and a handful of other technology-oriented companies.
The tech industry needs more of these people who are willing to bridge the divide between technology and business
Semantic Web as next wave of search
I have been talking about the semantic web for at least a year now...
It is nice to see that it is getting some attention in the mainstream press:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/19/what-i-meant-to-say-was-semantic-web/
My google friend does not think it will ever happen. He thinks the next wave of search will be based on natural language processing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language_processing
For more info on the semantic web: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_web
E-mail Management
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=973149761529535925&hl=en
8:00 - "It's good to think about all your available time and effort representing a box. Every kind of task that you add to that is like a block. Big tasks are big blocks and little tasks are little blocks. No matter how you cut them up, there are only so many cubic inches. It is all about opportunity cost. Every time you put a crap block in your box…that means a really cool block doesn't get in there."
Management Links
http://cultivategreatness.com/2007/06/03/five-proven-principles-for-effective-goals#more-552
5. Positive
Success comes when we focus on striving toward positive outcomes, rather than avoiding negative outcomes. Fortunately, most people understand this intuitively, and only about 10-15% of the goals set by most people are avoidance goals such giving up smoking or avoiding alcohol. And that's a good thing, because those with many avoidance goals tend to less happy, less satisfied with life, and more anxious than others. Positive goals put us in a positive state of mind, and are mentally associated with positive memories and experiences, whereas avoidance goals are typically associated with memories of failures and accidents.
http://www.dumblittleman.com/2007/06/39-ways-to-live-and-not-merely-exist.html
#15. Be positive. Learn to recognize the negative thoughts you have. These are the self-doubts, the criticisms of others, the complaints, the reasons you can't do something. Then stop yourself when you have these thoughts, and replace them with positive thoughts. Solutions. You can do this!
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/06/13/the-power-of-yes-a-simple-way-to-get-more-out-of-life/
For much of my adult life I've been shackled by fear. I've been afraid to try new things, afraid to meet new people, afraid of doing anything that might lead to failure. This fear confined me to a narrow comfort zone. Recently, however, I made a single small change that has helped me to overcome my fear, and allowed me to get more out of life...
I made a resolution. I decided that instead of saying "no" to things because I was afraid of them, I would "just say yes". That became my working motto: "Just say yes". Any time anyone asked me to do something, I agreed to do it (as long as it wasn't illegal and didn't violate my own personal code of conduct). In the past six months, I've put this philosophy into practice in scores of little ways. But the power of "yes" has made larger changes to my life, too, has exposed me to things I never would have done before.
http://www.wikihow.com/Be-a-Good-Boss
#2 Delegate responsibility and then trust your people. Micro-managers are never appreciated. Once you've trained someone to handle a task, allow them to handle it without interference. Different people have different approaches, and their way of doing something may be just as efficient as the way you would do it, so before you step in and force your way on them, give an honest evaluation to their method, and if you find theirs works just as well, even if it's different from yours, let them be. Constantly correcting them undercuts their confidence and does not allow them to exercise their own style.
#4 Clone yourself - many times. Once you've identified the best of the best, teach them your job. That's right. Teach them to be you. Most bad bosses are under the (mistaken) impression that there is something unique that makes them indispensable. The truth is, the best boss trusts his or her staff and re-creates himself many times over so that in case of emergencies in his absence the Good Boss has excellent help that can be utterly relied upon. If you happen to be an entrepreneur/owner, cloning yourself means that you don't need to go to work as much, freeing you to do as you please and knowing your business is earning as much today without you there as it would if you had to go there and slave away. And remember, too, that you're creating another good boss!
#11 Share your goals with your employees. Tell them what makes you happy and ask them directly to help you reach your goals. "Hidden agendas" in a leader are damaging to morale because they create confusion in those who work for you. Tell them things like "I like to hear praises from our customers about you", "I do not like to hear complaints from other teams about us", "My goal is to win the [best team award] next year", etc. etc.. Trust that your employees are very much like you: They love to feel helpful and accomplished. Your job is tell them how to achieve those feelings.
http://www.design.caltech.edu/erik/Misc/Drucker.html
Make meetings productive. Every study of the executive workday has found that even junior executives and professionals are with other people -- that is, in a meeting of some sort -- more than half of every business day. Making a meeting productive takes a good deal of self-discipline. It requires that executives determine what kind of meeting is appropriate and then stick to that format. It's also necessary to terminate the meeting as soon as its specific purpose has been accomplished. Good executives don't raise another matter for discussion. They sum up and adjourn.
I'm going to throw in one final, bonus practice. This one's so important that I'll elevate it to a rule:
http://www.tompeters.com/blogs/main/PDFs/41Quotes010306_2.pdf
My faves:
"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."—Charles Darwin
"We have a 'strategic' plan. It's called doing things."—Herb Kelleher, founder, Southwest Airlines
Awesome, awesome article on leadership
http://www.changethis.com/35.02.NewAge
Click on "Download this!"
Daily Routines
http://lifehacker.com/software/motivation/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret-281626.php
"Years ago when Seinfeld was a new television show, Jerry Seinfeld was still a touring comic. At the time, I was hanging around clubs doing open mic nights and trying to learn the ropes. One night I was in the club where Seinfeld was working, and before he went on stage, I saw my chance. I had to ask Seinfeld if he had any tips for a young comic. What he told me was something that would benefit me a lifetime...
He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day. But his advice was better than that. He had a gem of a leverage technique he used on himself and you can use it to motivate yourself - even when you don't feel like it.
He then revealed a unique calendar system he was using pressure himself to write.
Here's how it worked.
He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.
He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. "After a few days you'll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain."
"Don't break the chain." He said again for emphasis.
Over the years I've used his technique in many different areas. I've used it for exercise, to learn programming, to learn network administration, to build successful websites and build successful businesses.
It works because it isn't the one-shot pushes that get us where we want to go, it is the consistent daily action that builds extraordinary outcomes. You may have heard "inch by inch anything's a cinch." Inch by inch does work if you can move an inch every day.
Daily action builds habits. It gives you practice and will make you an expert in a short time. If you don't break the chain, you'll start to spot opportunities you otherwise wouldn't. Small improvements accumulate into large improvements rapidly because daily action provides "compounding interest."
Skipping one day makes it easier to skip the next.
I've often said I'd rather have someone who will take action - even if small - every day as opposed to someone who swings hard once or twice a week. Seinfeld understands that daily action yields greater benefits than sitting down and trying to knock out 1000 jokes in one day.
Think for a moment about what action would make the most profound impact on your life if you worked it every day. That is the action I recommend you put on your Seinfeld calendar. Start today and earn your big red X. And from here on out...
Don't break the chain!"
Power of Yes
I love the section about just saying "yes" to anything anyone asks you.
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/06/13/the-power-of-yes-a-simple-way-to-get-more-out-of-life/
I like making myself do things every day
http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2007/04/this_wednesday__2.html
2. If you find yourself putting off a task that you try to do several times a week, try doing it EVERY day, instead. When I was planning my blog, I envisioned posting two or three times a week. Then Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy convinced me that no, I needed to post every day. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, I think it's easier to do it every day (well, except Sundays) than fewer times each week. There's no dithering, there's no juggling. I know I have to post, so I do. If you're finding it hard to go for a walk four times a week, try going every day.
Being ranked 37th in the world in warcraft may have had its upsides
http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1028652007
CHILDREN who spend hours playing computer games may actually be doing themselves some good, according to a controversial three-year university study published yesterday.
Online role-playing games - where players compete against other, unseen players - may give young people vital lessons in learning about other races, the opposite sex and those with disabilities.
Researchers from Brunel University spent three years studying 13-16-year-olds who play a leading web-based game.
And far from becoming pale prisoners of their own bedrooms, regular players were found to enhance rather than restrict their imagination, the study found.
Time
http://www.lifeoptimizer.org/2007/03/08/66-best-quotes-on-time-management/
The common man is not concerned about the passage of time, the man of talent is driven by it.
Shoppenhauer
Time = life; therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time and master your life.
Alan Lakein
Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much can be done if we are always doing.
Thomas Jefferson
If you want to make good use of your time, you've got to know what's most important and then give it all you've got.
Lee Iacocca
Never let yesterday use up today.
Richard H. Nelson
You will never "find" time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.
Charles Bruxton
Phenomenal speech by buffet disciple, Charlie Munger
http://valueinvestingworld.blogspot.com/2007/05/charlie-munger-usc-law-school.html
Excerpts:
Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty. It's not something you do just to advance in life. As a corollary to that proposition which is very important, it means that you are hooked for lifetime learning. And without lifetime learning, you people are not going to do very well. You are not going to get very far in life based on what you already know. You're going to advance in life by what you learn after you leave here.
I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you...
Another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology because it cabbages up one's mind. You see it a lot with T.V. preachers, but it can also happen with political ideology. When you're young it's easy to drift into loyalties and when you announce that you're a loyal member and you start shouting the orthodox ideology out, what you're doing is pounding it in, pounding it in, and you're gradually ruining your mind. So you want to be very, very careful of this ideology...
Generally speaking, envy, resentment, revenge and self-pity are disastrous modes of thoughts. Self-pity gets fairly close to paranoia, and paranoia is one of the very hardest things to reverse. You do not want to drift into self-pity. It's a ridiculous way to behave and when you avoid it, you get a great advantage over everybody else or almost everybody else because self-pity is a standard condition, and yet you can train yourself out of it.
You do not want to be in a perverse incentive system that's causing you to behave more and more foolishly or worse and worse - incentives are too powerful a control over human cognition or human behavior...
You particularly want to avoid working under somebody you really don't admire and don't want to be like. We're all subject to control to some extent by authority figures, particularly authority figures that are rewarding us.
You can say, who wants to go through life anticipating trouble? Well I did. All my life I've gone through life anticipating trouble. And here I am, going along in my 84th year and like Epectitus, I've had a favored life. It didn't make me unhappy to anticipate trouble all the time and be ready to perform adequately if trouble came. It didn't hurt me at all. In fact it helped me.
Excellent speech by Fiorina
This lecture covers everything.
1) Leadership
2) The importance of stakeholders besides investors in the business community
3) The reasons why business leaders move to the non-profit sector (but not much the other way around)
4) Change management for all types of institutions - government; private; non-profit
5) The lack of customer focus for most technology companies.
I highly recommend listening to all of this. The opening remarks are a bit over the top, and the first question is long-winded and silly, but other than that, the podcast is excellent.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/edcorner/uploads/podcast/fiorina070502.mp3
Geeks and nerds
http://hartford.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/66795671.html
Importance of connecting, not networking
http://summation.typepad.com/summation/files/connections_and_knowledge_sd_forum_070416.pdf
Treadmill under desks
For those of you who have seen me talk on the phone, you know that I furiously walk back and forth while talking. According to this article that Samir sent me,
"Activity helps increase energy and can improve concentration and focus -- important attributes for the office.
In theory, NEAT could also help reduce office stress, since numerous studies show the stress-reduction benefits of walking."