Link to his brief blog article
Success is now the domain of people who lead. That doesn’t mean they’re in charge, it doesn’t mean they are the CEO, it merely means that for a group, even a small group, they show the way, they spread ideas, they make change. Those people are the only successful people we’ve got.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Excellent quotes
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
- Sir Richard Steele
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
- Samuel Johnson
The modern form of Samuel Johnson's quote is "The Waiter Rule"
"Watch out for people who have a situational value system, who can turn the charm on and off depending on the status of the person they are interacting with. Be especially wary of those who are rude to people perceived to be in subordinate roles."
Nearly all men can stand adversity - but give him power, and the extent of his character will be revealed.
- Anonymous
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
- Carl Jung
“Be Content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”
- Lao Tzu
From a post titled "The Lazy Manifesto" at ZenHabits.net
My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared.
- PJ Plauger
"Wisdom begins in wonder."
- Socrates
Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.
- John Ruskin
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
- Robert Frost
From a post about Socratic living at Zenhabits.net
The way to find out about happiness is to keep your mind on those moments when you feel most happy, when you are really happy — not excited, not just thrilled, but deeply happy. This requires a little bit of self-analysis. What is it that makes you happy? Stay with it, no matter what people tell you. This is what is called following your bliss.
- Joseph Campbell
We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.
- Joseph Campbell
- Sir Richard Steele
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
- Samuel Johnson
The modern form of Samuel Johnson's quote is "The Waiter Rule"
"Watch out for people who have a situational value system, who can turn the charm on and off depending on the status of the person they are interacting with. Be especially wary of those who are rude to people perceived to be in subordinate roles."
Nearly all men can stand adversity - but give him power, and the extent of his character will be revealed.
- Anonymous
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
- Carl Jung
“Be Content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”
- Lao Tzu
From a post titled "The Lazy Manifesto" at ZenHabits.net
My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared.
- PJ Plauger
"Wisdom begins in wonder."
- Socrates
Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.
- John Ruskin
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
- Robert Frost
From a post about Socratic living at Zenhabits.net
The way to find out about happiness is to keep your mind on those moments when you feel most happy, when you are really happy — not excited, not just thrilled, but deeply happy. This requires a little bit of self-analysis. What is it that makes you happy? Stay with it, no matter what people tell you. This is what is called following your bliss.
- Joseph Campbell
We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.
- Joseph Campbell
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
- Aristotle
If you can’t solve a problem, it’s because you’re playing by the rules.
- Paul Arden
The truth is, creativity isn’t about wild talent as much as it’s about productivity. To find a few ideas that work, you need to try a lot that don’t. It’s a pure numbers game.
- Robert Sutton, a professor of management science and engineering at Stanford Engineering School.
The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data.
- John Tukey
The truth is, creativity isn’t about wild talent as much as it’s about productivity. To find a few ideas that work, you need to try a lot that don’t. It’s a pure numbers game.
- Robert Sutton, a professor of management science and engineering at Stanford Engineering School.
The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data.
- John Tukey
Monday, October 6, 2008
A Subtle (But Important) Distinction
Link to Erik Rasmussen's blog article
Agnosticism versus Atheism
Excerpt:
Let’s examine the subtle difference in meaning between the following two sentences.
Agnosticism versus Atheism
Excerpt:
Let’s examine the subtle difference in meaning between the following two sentences.
- An atheist believes that God does not exist.
- An atheist does not believe that God exists.
not believe is true != believe is false
Friday, October 3, 2008
The Role of Management - Joel Spolsky
Joel Spolsky's article at Inc.com
Three stories: Juno, Microsoft, and Fog Creek
Bonus: GE Durham Engine Plant
For a company of Juno's size -- it had about 150 employees at the time - there seemed to be a disproportional number of managers.
I noticed too many situations in which members of top management happily issued an executive fiat even though they were the least qualified to make a decision. I'm not saying that they were stupid, mind you. Most of the managers at Juno were quite smart. But they had hired even smarter people to work for them: people with advanced degrees, raw intellectual firepower, and years of experience. And these people would work on a problem for a long time, come up with a pretty good solution, and then watch in surprise as their bosses overruled them. Executives who did not have specific technical knowledge and who had not studied a problem in depth would swoop down and issue some random, uninformed decree, and it would be implemented - often with farcical results.
A bit of Redmond lore: Two software designers got into a debate over how something should be implemented. The question was highly technical. They couldn't reach agreement, so they went to their boss, a guy named Mike Maples, who was the vice president in charge of the applications division.
"What do I know about this?" he yelled at them. "Of the three people in this room, I'm the one who knows the least. You guys have been hashing this out for hours. I'm the last person who should be deciding. Work it out."
And frankly, people here seem to be happier with a little bit of middle management. Not middle management that's going to overrule the decisions they make on their own. Not symbolic middle management that only makes people feel important. But middle management that creates useful channels of communication. If my job is getting obstacles out of the way so my employees can get their work done, these managers exist so that, when an employee has a local problem, there's someone there, in the office next door, whom they can talk to.
Three stories: Juno, Microsoft, and Fog Creek
Bonus: GE Durham Engine Plant
For a company of Juno's size -- it had about 150 employees at the time - there seemed to be a disproportional number of managers.
I noticed too many situations in which members of top management happily issued an executive fiat even though they were the least qualified to make a decision. I'm not saying that they were stupid, mind you. Most of the managers at Juno were quite smart. But they had hired even smarter people to work for them: people with advanced degrees, raw intellectual firepower, and years of experience. And these people would work on a problem for a long time, come up with a pretty good solution, and then watch in surprise as their bosses overruled them. Executives who did not have specific technical knowledge and who had not studied a problem in depth would swoop down and issue some random, uninformed decree, and it would be implemented - often with farcical results.
A bit of Redmond lore: Two software designers got into a debate over how something should be implemented. The question was highly technical. They couldn't reach agreement, so they went to their boss, a guy named Mike Maples, who was the vice president in charge of the applications division.
"What do I know about this?" he yelled at them. "Of the three people in this room, I'm the one who knows the least. You guys have been hashing this out for hours. I'm the last person who should be deciding. Work it out."
And frankly, people here seem to be happier with a little bit of middle management. Not middle management that's going to overrule the decisions they make on their own. Not symbolic middle management that only makes people feel important. But middle management that creates useful channels of communication. If my job is getting obstacles out of the way so my employees can get their work done, these managers exist so that, when an employee has a local problem, there's someone there, in the office next door, whom they can talk to.
Ah.....Lego =)
Post at Dan's Blog (of DansData.com fame)
The set mentioned in the post is very cool-looking Lego Technic Excavator. The picture is a little disappointing, so here's the Amazon link. I just think it's awesome because the idea of a Lego gearbox is just so cool. I don't think it beats the gearbox in the Lego Technic Super Street Sensation, which actually has multiple speeds, in addition to reverse. In Lego!
I remember my summer of Lego, during grad school, with the huge Etoys order for an excessive number of mostly Star Wars sets (darn you, Ultimate Collector's Series, for being so tempting)
Favorite sets
Super Street Sensation
UCS X-Wing
Honorary mention
Silver Champion
Sets I wish I was foolish enough to own
Imperial Star Destroyer
Millenium Falcon
Top-ranked set on Lugnet
Green Grocer
Seems technically cool (3 floors, lots of detail), but not sexy like the Super Street Sensation
The set mentioned in the post is very cool-looking Lego Technic Excavator. The picture is a little disappointing, so here's the Amazon link. I just think it's awesome because the idea of a Lego gearbox is just so cool. I don't think it beats the gearbox in the Lego Technic Super Street Sensation, which actually has multiple speeds, in addition to reverse. In Lego!
I remember my summer of Lego, during grad school, with the huge Etoys order for an excessive number of mostly Star Wars sets (darn you, Ultimate Collector's Series, for being so tempting)
Favorite sets
Super Street Sensation
UCS X-Wing
Honorary mention
Silver Champion
Sets I wish I was foolish enough to own
Imperial Star Destroyer
Millenium Falcon
Top-ranked set on Lugnet
Green Grocer
Seems technically cool (3 floors, lots of detail), but not sexy like the Super Street Sensation
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Hulu.com
Link to Wired.com article
He [Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu] and his crew would emerge from their dismal cave with the sleekest, easiest-to-use, most professional video site on the Internet. Not only would it deliver shows and movies from Fox and NBC Universal, it would take you to programs from every other major network and studio. Full-length episodes. Entire seasons. For free. Within months of that late-August announcement, Hulu would be among the top 10 US video sites in number of clips streamed. Om Malik, one of the bloggers who had ridiculed it from the start, would pronounce it "brilliant." TechCrunch readers would vote it best video startup of 2007. "Game Over. Hulu Wins," Arrington would declare in a conciliatory post. How did that happen?
One paragraph, "As Dobron describes it, the initial business plan was all too predictable...", describes how Hulu was originally going to be "business as usual" - with the media company limiting the content in order to protect its existing business lines (syndication and DVD sales). However, this most likely would have failed, as previous ventures had in the past. Instead, they brought in an "outsider" to develop Hulu, underscoring the importance of occasionally questioning the assumptions and limits that people (and/or businesses) place on themselves.
The plan was to outsource both the site design and the underlying computer code. Kilar was aghast. "Technology is the source of our competitive advantage," he explains—the key to a service that would provide a high-quality videostream and support an ever-growing number of users and shows. "For us to design the company to last, we had to write every line of code ourselves." He sent the network people back to their old jobs and told the consultants they were out.
Chernin says. "You can't protect old business models artificially." This is a truth the tech community knows well, but it's not what you expect to hear from a media baron like Chernin. What he and Zucker have come to understand is that the media companies no longer have a choice: If they don't put their shows online, someone else will. "The best way to combat piracy is to make your content available," Zucker says. "We don't know for sure what the impact is going to be on our established businesses. But we want to make sure consumers know they don't need to steal our content. That's really what Hulu is about."
Finally, after decades of dictating what we can watch and when, the networks would be reduced to a Web widget, functioning at the user's whim. Just as it should be.
He [Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu] and his crew would emerge from their dismal cave with the sleekest, easiest-to-use, most professional video site on the Internet. Not only would it deliver shows and movies from Fox and NBC Universal, it would take you to programs from every other major network and studio. Full-length episodes. Entire seasons. For free. Within months of that late-August announcement, Hulu would be among the top 10 US video sites in number of clips streamed. Om Malik, one of the bloggers who had ridiculed it from the start, would pronounce it "brilliant." TechCrunch readers would vote it best video startup of 2007. "Game Over. Hulu Wins," Arrington would declare in a conciliatory post. How did that happen?
One paragraph, "As Dobron describes it, the initial business plan was all too predictable...", describes how Hulu was originally going to be "business as usual" - with the media company limiting the content in order to protect its existing business lines (syndication and DVD sales). However, this most likely would have failed, as previous ventures had in the past. Instead, they brought in an "outsider" to develop Hulu, underscoring the importance of occasionally questioning the assumptions and limits that people (and/or businesses) place on themselves.
The plan was to outsource both the site design and the underlying computer code. Kilar was aghast. "Technology is the source of our competitive advantage," he explains—the key to a service that would provide a high-quality videostream and support an ever-growing number of users and shows. "For us to design the company to last, we had to write every line of code ourselves." He sent the network people back to their old jobs and told the consultants they were out.
Chernin says. "You can't protect old business models artificially." This is a truth the tech community knows well, but it's not what you expect to hear from a media baron like Chernin. What he and Zucker have come to understand is that the media companies no longer have a choice: If they don't put their shows online, someone else will. "The best way to combat piracy is to make your content available," Zucker says. "We don't know for sure what the impact is going to be on our established businesses. But we want to make sure consumers know they don't need to steal our content. That's really what Hulu is about."
Finally, after decades of dictating what we can watch and when, the networks would be reduced to a Web widget, functioning at the user's whim. Just as it should be.
Monday, September 1, 2008
6 Questions to Ask Yourself to Get the Most Out of Life
Article at ZenHabits
1. Who do I love, and what am I doing about it?
2. Am I pursuing my dream, or is fear stopping me?
3. Am I doing something that matters?
4. What am I doing to help others?
5. Am I as good a person as I want to be?
6. What am I doing to live life with passion, health and energy?
For #2, it is well worth watching Randy Pausch's "last lecture" - Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
The accompanying text to #3 is worth excerpting in full.
There's a difference between doing work, and doing work that really
matters. Much of the time, we use up the few days we have on this
earth with busy-work, stuff that doesn't make much difference, and
that's sadly a waste of our lives.
Recently on Dumb Little Man, writer Ali Hale suggested you ask
yourself, "Will this matter in five years?" I think this is a great
question. It helps you distinguish between trivial busy-work that will
take up all of your time but not matter in a few years, and tasks and
projects and goals with high impact that will make a difference, in
your career, in your life, in the lives of others.
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