On my short list of professional competitive differentiators, I would list my inbox strategy. I have a zero tolerance policy for unread mails. Zero. Any mail, however big or small, which lands in my inbox, is instantly read. There is an industrial strength set of mail filters that move mailing list noise out of the… More
Tech Life
Hurry
Most interesting ideas come to me between 8am and 10am. This is sacred time. The day is young, I am rested, and the coffee is fresh. I spend most of this time in the car driving to work. The music is providing a creative, catalyzing ambiance to structure my thinking. I create two or three… More
The Crisis and the Creative
If you polled my team about my daily agenda, they’d say, “He’s either running to meetings or in meetings.” Glancing at my calendar confirms this: 14 meetings this coming Monday – double-booked for five of them. Sweet. Yes, I go to meetings all day, but it’s more than that. I’m also managing a constant distracting… More
Your People
In your career as a geek, there’s a list of essential career intangibles. These are the things you need to do in order to be successful, which are also maddeningly difficult to measure. There is no direct correlation between completing these activities and a raise. It’s unlikely that accomplishing these indefinite tasks will end up… More
The Book Stalker
This creepy incident involving Amazon remotely removing purchased content from the Kindle has me back on the fence regarding purchasing one. There are contradictory forces at work here. First, as a geek, I’m unable to sleep when I do not own the latest cool. The first Kindle’s industrial design was intriguing, but the second version nailed… More
The Words You Wear
In business, words are like fashion. You try a word on because important people around you are saying it and getting results, but you may not actually know what it means. Every group in the company has their own unique set of words and every group uses these words to verbally define who they are,… More
The Screw-Me Scenario
It had all the signs of a good meeting. And I hate meetings. We were: Talking about a product we loved In great shape from a feature, quality, and schedule standpoint A group that historically did not kick ass A group that was kicking ass. The slides looked great and the dry-run was flawless, so… More
An Aspirational Twitter
Big couple of weeks for Twitter. Biz was on Colbert. Ashton got a million followers and bought a bunch of mosquito nets. Oprah showed up sans shift key. Twitter seems to be on the front page of everything but, curiously, has done nothing functionally interesting. They’re just sitting there keeping the lights on. Not everyone… More
The Pond
“Can I work remote?” I cringe. It’s Ian and Ian is a senior engineer. He’s a rock. He gets it done. I never have to ask him twice and, after six years, Ian has every right to ask to work remote. But I’m still freaked because my first thought when anyone asks to work remote… More
The Makers of Things
In the late 1800s, the Brooklyn Bridge was built with no power tools, no heavy machinery, and only a basic, evolving understanding of how to make steel. It’s not these facts, but the stories surrounding the facts that inspire me when I take a good, long stare at a suspension bridge. But first… Stunning. In… More