The Chinese called it Yin and Yang. The central balance of white and dark, of emotions and logic. Of the contrasts of life and achieving that center fold between the 2.
Dark is after all the absence of light. Yet darkness is needed to appreciate the light.
This is basically the problem most managers of a product face. How do you balance the design of a product at both it’s front and back? Design of the eye vs Design of the system.
I have often had discussions around the meaning of the word Design. Most people are happy getting things to work but looking like a garbage truck. They think Design lies in laying out the system with the focus being on functional. That often, in their opinion, overrules out the importance of the UI of the product. The way it looks, feels and smells (sometimes..). This in my opinion is one side of the coin and downplaying the importance of a visual appeal.
The Creative Nomad.
Released in the year 2000, this was the most popular mp3 player that many people used. It was called the The Creative JukeBox. This was one of the most popular Mp3 players that was in the market along with the Sony Walkman at it’s time. The purpose of the product was to play mp3 songs. Simple enough. The operating system was actually developed in India for this and it had a fair share of success.
These products were developed solely to achieve one purpose.
In 2001. Apple Computers released a product and entered a market. History has shown us that they not only revolutionized the way we listen to songs, but also the industry has tried hard to play catch up to them ever since.
What changed?
The difference in thinking of Design. To Apple, Design is not just the functionality of the product. To them it’s the experience. This is primarily the focus I have on Design where the first appeal to the consumer is not the functionality of the product alone but the first touch experience. If the iPod looked like any of the others with a better sexier software, do you think it would have sold as many units?
Most definitely not. But the greatness lies in achieving the balance between the experience (and the visual design) while making it super functional. Apple revolutionized Design with this product by not only making the iPod a fashion accessory but achieving and overshadowing the purpose the products prior to it had achieved. Playing Music AND enjoying it.
So the next time you think the visual appeal is not good or not something you are interested in, remember the website that is super functional – www.irctc.org and compare it to the one that does both far better – www.cleartrip.com and tell me what would you rather prefer using?
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If there is but one passionate evangelist of the Microsoft company, it’s GOT to be Steve Ballmer. Current CEO of perhaps the largest company in technology.
An interesting thing is Steve Ballmer was employee number 24 for Microsoft. And his birthdate? March 24th. Seems like an astrological connection there. In 2009 he took over the reigns as CEO from Bill Gates.
The most visible thing about Steve Ballmer is his spirited energy. He’s not a quiet guy. He’s not a small guy either at 6′ 4″. Thus makes for fascinating stuff. If you haven’t seen his developers talk or the interview with Guy Kawasaki I’d urge you to have a look.
This post however talks about the wisdom he imparts to the students of Stanford, a school which he dropped out of in the 2nd year, on the stages of Business a company goes through. He began with saying that Microsoft is a two trick pony. They have mastered Desktops and Servers. Google, on the other hand, is a one trick pony -Search and Advertising. What most companies do is to get that one trick right and then have development areas around that. Ballmer calls these “cute things” that businesses do.
1st is the Idea and its implementation Get an idea, implement and execute it. Get it to ship-it ready.
2nd is is the scaling of the idea (getting it to critical mass) Taking the business from 0 to 100 (million dollars). That’s the sort of idea you start with.
3rd is milking the idea for all it’s worth (cashing in on the idea). This is where you cash in on the idea which is at the stage Google is at according to Ballmer.
4th is fostering a culture to get new ideas (exploration) Build on other ideas. Which to Microsoft was Server Enterprise after Desktop.
I thought those were great insights. Watch the full talk here.
Anyone who has held a comic book of the DC universe has come across Alan Moore. A writer extraordinaire and an artist too, he has worked with titles such as Swamp Thing, Batman, Superman and many many others. His comic works like V for Vendetta, Watchmen and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen have been converted to movies and blockbusters at that.
Alan Moore brings a profound realism to his writing and he is one of the writers responsible for taking the comics we know to a different level – Adult Graphic Novels. A lot of the dark imagery and moods set have often been an industry first initiated by Alan Moore.
But that’s not what this post is about, this post is about his advice to people who are starting out on writing and reading. In this gem of a youtube video he shares his thoughts. Now he’s british so it made it quite hard to understand him but for anyone not able to understand what he says, I have taken the trouble of transcripting the interview for you here. I think it’s a fantastic read. Let me know what you think in the comments section.
Importance of Focus.
The first thing you really want to focus on is why you want to do this. If you want to be famous or you want to be rich, then it ain’t going to work. The only thing you can do is if you want to become a success focus upon the thing that you do purely for its own sake. If you like drawing comics, writing comics, making music or whatever and you are not doing it to become famous or get money and you are focusing on it because you love it and you only want to get better and better and better. Then you probably will do it right.
Focus on the right things. Do not focus on the fame and wealth, that’s what everyone wants. You can become famous and get money purely by going on Big Brother. What does that prove? Those things can be got easily. Focus purely on what it is you like to do. If you got a talent you got a talent even if its not that much.
On Talent and continual improvement.
That’s how we all start out. I couldn’t write when I started out I couldn’t draw either. But I liked writing. I liked writing compositions at that phase in school as a phase in school. And I liked reading. And I liked thinking, ok how good am i as a writer compared to these guys I liked reading. And you think, actually I am rubbish. So you try to make yourself a little better and if you are honest with yourself. Not over critical, theres no point in looking at everything and and saying it’s rubbish and tearing it up. If you can atleast be honest and say ya this has got some bits in it that are good, I could have done better with these bits. This is not good as so and so, who I admire would have done it. Next time this is going to be better. And you try and make each thing you do a little bit smarter, a little bit more sophisticated than the thing you did before. Eventually people will notice.
Importance of Identity. Eventually, you’ll start to move beyond what everybody else is doing. And with out ever having a master plan to it but you’ll find suddenly without having to compromise anything, without having to sell out your vision and it’s important that you do that, because that’s the only thing you have really got that seperates you from everybody else. There are probably loads of people that can sing or do music or write or draw the way that you can. The only thing that makes you unique, is that you are you. You have your experience, you have had your life. You have got sort of your knowledge. So put all of that into what you do, make it individual, make it unique and make it your selling point. You have had this experience, so put it to use and I don’t think you’ll go far wrong.
It’s not easy. There’s a lot more to it than that of course and there’s a lot of boredom, grind and anxiety where there’s this ”Am I good as I think I am?”. “Am I ever going to really make it?”. But don’t worry about that, if you are doing what you love, even if you aren’t making any money out of it, you are still better off than 99 percent of the people in this world who are not doing what they love. They are doing something that gets their day by. Maybe they are entertaining dreams that one day they could be this and one day they could do that but often those deams just die in the cradle. Stay true to yourself. There is nothing you can’t be if you try hard enough.
Azim Premji. Wipro Founder. Billionaire. Great guy. Wise man. A little old. Very conservative. Very sharp. Often Brilliant.
As chairman of Wipro he has served for a long time in leading and establishing the IT revolution. His name is served in the same respect Narayana Murthys is. Recently at IIT Delhi he was there to address the students and give them advice on graduation. It’s a tough world out there. Ratan Tata had given the speech at my brothers convocation. 2 great men with very similar messages. I’m posting what Azim Premjis speech contained. Thanks to Rachana for the email!
Azim Premjis speech to IIT Delhi students.
The funny thing about life is that you realise the value of something only when it begins to leave you. As my hair turned from black, to salt and pepper and finally salt without the pepper, I have begun to realise the enthusiasm and excitement of youth. At the same time, I have begun to truly appreciate some of the lessons I have learnt along the way. As you embark on your careers, I would like to share them with you. I am hoping that you will find them as useful as I have.
The world you are entering is in many ways very different now from what it was when I began my career. It was the late sixties and India still depended on other countries for something as basic as food. We aroused sympathy, not admiration whenever we went overseas. Recently, someone told me, that when visitors came to India then, they came to see what they could do for India. Now, they come to see what India can do for them. As a hopeful Indian, I look at our country as one which is rich in ethnic and cultural diversity and one that has an effective, secular democracy which will help us build an enduring society.
Lesson 1: Take charge
This was the first thought that came to me, when over four decades ago, I stepped into Wipro factory at Amalner. I was 21 and had spent the last few years in Stanford University Engineering School at California. Many people advised me to take up a nice, cushy job rather than face the challenges of running a hydrogenated oil business. Looking back, I am glad I decided to take charge instead. Essentially, leadership begins from within. It is a small voice that tells you where to go when you feel lost. If you believe in that voice, you believe in yourself. When it comes to choosing your careers, you have to take charge of your own destiny.
Lesson 2: Earn your happiness
The second lesson I have learnt is that a rupee earned is of far more value than five found. In fact, what is gifted or inherited follows the old rule of come easy, go easy. I guess we only know the value of what we have if we have struggled to earn it.
Lesson 3: Nothing succeeds like failure
The third lesson I have learnt is no one bats a hundred every time. Life has many challenges. You win some and lose some. You must enjoy winning. But do not let it go to the head. The moment it does, you are already on your way to failure. And if you do encounter failure along the way, treat it as an equally natural phenomenon. The important thing is, when you lose, do not lose the lesson.
Lesson 4: Nothing fails like success
The fourth lesson I have learnt is the importance of humility. There is a thin line of difference between confidence and arrogance. Confident people are always open to learn. A recent survey of executives in Europe showed that the single most important quality needed for leadership success was the willingness to learn from any situation. Arrogance on the other hand stops learning. It comes with a feeling that one knows all that needs to be known and has done all that needs to be done.
Lesson 5: There has to be a better way
Partly as a corollary to what I have just said, we must remember that no matter how well we do something there has to be a better way! Excellence is not a destination but a journey. Creativity and innovation sometimes need inspiration from other disciplines. It is probably not a chance that Einstein’s interest in music was as much as his interest in Physics. Bertrand Russell was as much a mathematician as a philosopher. Excellence and creativity go hand in hand.
Lesson 6: Respond, not react
There is a world of difference between the two and in terms of success and failure. The difference is that the mind comes in between responding and reacting. When we respond, we evaluate with a calm mind and do whatever is most appropriate. We are in control of our actions. When we react, we are still doing what the other person wants us to do.
Lesson 7: Remain physically active
It is easy to take health for granted when you are young. I have found that exercise not only improves the quality of time but also reduces the time you need for sleep. The truth is that stress will only increase in a global world. You must have your own mechanism to deal with it.
Lesson 8: Never compromise on your core values
Mahatma Gandhiji often said that you must open the windows of your mind, but you must not be swept off your feet by the breeze. One must define what you stand for. This is not difficult. But values lie, not in the words used to describe them, as much as in the simple acts. And that is the hard part. Like someone said, “I could not hear what you said because what you did was coming out far too loud”.
Lesson 9: Play to win
Playing to win brings out the best in us and in our teams. It brings out the desire to stretch, to achieve that which seems beyond our grasp. However, it is not about winning at any cost. It is not about winning every time. It is not about winning at the expense of others. It is about innovating all the time. It is a continuous endeavour to do better than last time.
Lesson 10: Give back to society
All of us have a collective social responsibility towards doing our bit to address them. Of all the challenges, the key to me is education. We have a paradoxical situation, where on the one hand we have jobs chasing scarce talent and on the other, rampant unemployment and poverty. The only way to bridge these two ends of the pole is by providing quality education that is accessible by all.
Today I bring to you a life changing read. This is a story about a little guy with big dreams.
A guy who didn’t give up. These anecdotes are followed by key lessons this chap can teach us. I’ll give you a free book if you can guess who this guy is before you reach the end. Remember don’t cheat, fill in your name at the comments if you really did get who it was and I’ll enter your name in a draw for a free book.
The story.
Early back in the late 90s. This young youth -drop out of college because he didn’t want to get a job anywhere, decided to leave his hometown of Nebraska and move on to California. He had no education.No degree either. What he did have was tons and tons of self confident attitude.
Lesson no 1: Be confident.
He always believed himself to be entrepreneurial. Not like the idiots today branding a tag, this kid
wanted to do things, change things, make a dent in the universe (steve).
He started his career by working for HP where he learnt web development on his own and went on board for about 7 months as a consultant to work his way up. He had no idea about the trends, but picked it up quickly.
Lesson no 2: If it’s required to be learned. Learn.
Shortly thereafter, he started raking in some money and met a consultant. She had an MBA and he decided that she could help each other put together a company that made a product for project management. Something like basecamp, but very early alpha. They worked on it on their own and this lad taught himself all the necessary coding required to build it. They named this product, “Stuff”.
While Stuff was picking up and they had a good thing going on. They brought in another guy to help them build this little tool that could help them exchange notes. It was a web log of data, notes and other interesting stuff. Quickly becoming the nervous system of the company, this product started showing signs of maturing and overtaking “Stuff”. He was excited to get it rolling and so were his partners, so they split their attention in developing this web log and simultaneously working on Stuff.
Lesson no 3: If an opportunity presents itself, grab it.
They started scaling themselves pretty well, put together some funding and decided that this was what they wanted to do. This weblog, by then acquiring it’s fancy name we know of today, called Blog was rapidly picking up among geeks. This was close to the bubble burst time and this lad decided it was good enough to launch publicly. This company decided that they would halt the Stuff product and work, instead, on this Blog thing. They generated no revenue. But they wrote their business plan the day before they sought funding.
Lesson no 4: You don’t need funding or a business plan till you have something to show in hand.
While they rose, their lack of revenues and monthly churn out rate put them in great danger. This little team of 2 had grown to a family of 7 only to make ends meet a veritable task by itself. This guy went frankly to his team and told him there was no money. He told them, “You can work with me on your tomorrow or you can leave”. They decided to leave. Even the woman with the MBA who had poured 2 years into this.
It was only him and dark times. It was a scary scary thing for a guy growing up to be feeling. But he decided to stay on. He was alone. He learnt Linux and java and decoded bugs as and when they came along. He shared his story to the readers and asked for help along the way, all the while never stopping to fix what was needed. The technology kept growing and he didn’t want to quit just yet.
Lesson no 5: Believe in yourself and know if you are on to a good thing.
Lesson no 5b: Do whatever it takes to stay afloat.
His girlfriend broke up with him. His rents piled up. He was living skin to teeth. He was sued by his team mates. He wasn’t going to quit just yet though. This blog thing, now named Blogger, was growing big. He had 50,000 users, his determination and most important, vision to take this forward. It was crude, but he was on it. He was being abused, tarnished and pointed fingers at. He went underground and worked full time on Blogger.
Lesson no 6: Trust in the most important person to you. You.
He put in ads in the start. And charged people money to remove the ads on their pages for $12 a year. Slowly money trickled in. He slowly started making money to pay his hosting bills. He had given up his office and was lent a desk for free in a company. He then wrote the blogger APi, which became very important later on by hiring a programmer and redesigning it around a bit. Then they released Blogger Pro, a vision he had, and got back staff on board to take this product full time.
Remember how a favourite productivity guru of mine, Steve Rubel, had previously shared his thoughts on how to be more productive with tools like Twitter and the iPhone? Well here’s another awesome interview from one of my favourite authors of all time at Techcrunch, MG Siegler. For reference sake i’ll call him MG. MG’s been writing at Techcrunch for quite some time and most of his works are sharp, witty and opinionated. He started with timely posts on technology and quickly became one of the productivity experts that caught the attention of TechCrunch. The rest they say is history.
It tickles my pickles (just saying..) to have his thoughts on how he works throughout the day and give insights into his tech-journalism gig at Techcrunch. I haven’t kept this too long and he was gracious enough to be super fast in his responses too, but knowing about stuff like Yammer at Techcrunch and how to follow up on leads is indeed a cool thing. Everyone know whats to know what Batman’s gadgets are. Without further ado.
What is a typical day for you like? The first thing I do when I wake up is check my iPhone at my bedside. I usually scan Twitter and Techmeme first to see what, if any, news is going on. I also check my email. If there is something I need to respond to right away, I’ll go over to my computer to do that. Otherwise I try to take a shower and get some coffee.
How do you compose a blog posts. I typically find something to write about in the new in the mornings and afternoons and work on thought pieces later at night. For the news items I usually compose them in WordPress. For longest pieces I may use a word processor.
Do you write and link simultaneously? Do you write something first and insert link later? I usually write first and then link later.
How much of your stuff is split between reporting and ideation? Depends on the story. If it’s a breaking news item I’ll usually reach out to the company to try and get confirmation/comment. If it’s a story from a source, I’ll work on that with the source and the company. If it’s a thought piece, I’ll usually just sit quietly or go for a walk and think about what I want to write before I write it.
How do you track conversations and what is being said about you (or something interesting) FriendFeed used to be one of my best sources, but since usage has been declining on it, I find it less useful. I stick with Twitter and Google Reader now for most items. And check Techmeme to see if there is something interesting I’m missing. In terms of what is being said about me, that’s almost all Twitter.
How important is twitter to you and your business? What tools do you use? It’s pretty important from both an information gathering and sending perspective. I typically use both Twitter.com and Brizzly. Sometimes I use Tweetie for Mac. On the iPhone I use Tweetie and Birdfeed.
If not twitter what is your most important social “outpost”? Mainly Twitter, but I use Facebook a bit too. And have my own personal blog to post things on.
Do you maintain a To Do device? What is it? The iPhone.
How do you keep track of your duties and things you need to finish? Usually in my head, but also Google Tasks.
Do you have any tips/advice you can give based on what you think are best practices to stay on top of everything? I wish I did! I try to tell people to attempt to get in touch with me different ways. I get too many emails to be able to respond to them all.
When you delegate something to someone? How often do you followup? How/What tool do you follow up? We usually do that over Yammer, internally within TechCrunch. I also follow-up on Yammer or Skype.
When you started blogging (and now lifestreaming!), what was your intent? I suppose just to get my thoughts on topics out there.
You break a lot of news, do you have someone writing a particular topic and assign tracking to them? or do you keep track of the topics and developments? Writers tend to have their own things that they follow, but if something is breaking, anyone who is around can jump on it.
Do you get news from other websites? Personal contacts in companies you write to? or readership submission? Usually contacts and tips sent to TechCrunch. Sometimes we write on bigger issues that are already being talked about too.
How do you cherry pick from the stuff you have to write? Whatever I find most interesting or most important.
What do you think good writing includes? Any tips on what you should focus on as a writer? I’m a big fan of good headlines. But in terms of the writing itself, it’s important to have a strong opening, and not bury the lede. I tend to have a more personal style of writing which some people like, but some people hate.
How did you grow your readership? TechCrunch was big long before me. I think we continue to grow by breaking news, and being fast on news items.
Your lesson to yourself 5 years back on things to focus on? I’d like to be better at getting back to some emails, but I can be overwhelming.
Top people you recommend reading up on? All the big blogs are good. VentureBeat, SiliconAlleyInsider, ReadWriteWeb, etc. Some of my favorite blogging though is done on more personal sites like Fake Steve and Daring Fireball.
If you had one line (or 140 characters) to describe yourself, what would it be? Sleep is a huge waste of time. It gets in the way of blogging.– I’d like to be better at getting back to some emails, but I can be overwhelming.
Here’s a man who made the quote popular, “I knew that if I failed i wouldn’t regret that but I knew one thing that I would regret is not trying.” He was rencently inducted into the Academy of Achievement hall of fame. This is a fantastic series of interviews and I have put down the highlights of the interview.
A quick word about Jeff Bezos.
He has taken the World’s largest online bookstore through many breakthrough innovations and recently bought the worlds most customer friendly website in the world, Zappos.com. But what really makes this man amazing is he’s honest about hardwork. He accepts luck as a factor and most important drives culture to newer heights.
In a recent interview he shares some insights into the famous question, “Who is Jeff Bezos?”.
On choosing a path.
Jeff Bezos: There’s a little bit of that in me, I think. I remember the very first occupation I wanted to be — when, I think, I was about six years old — was an archeologist. I would like to point out this was before Indiana Jones. It’s a point of pride. Then I wanted to be an astronaut. By the time I was in my high school years, I wanted to be a physicist and then by the time I got to college I wanted to be a computer programmer. That’s actually what I studied in school and that’s what has led me along the path I’m on.
On who his heros were.
Two people I always would read about were Thomas Edison and Walt Disney. Those were sort of my two biographical heroes.
I’ve always been interested in inventors and invention. Edison, of course, for a little kid and probably for adults, too, is not only the symbol of that but the actual fact of that — the incredible inventor. I’ve always felt that there’s a certain kind of important pioneering that goes on from an inventor like Thomas Edison. Disney was a different sort of thing. He was also a real pioneer and an inventor, doing new things. It seemed to me that he had this incredible capability to create a vision that he could get a large number of people to share. Things that Disney invented, like Disneyland, the theme parks, they were such big visions that no single individual could ever pull them off, unlike a lot of the things that Edison worked on. Walt Disney really was able to get a big team of people working in a concerted direction.
On princeton shaping up his needs.
Yeah. So, I went to Princeton primarily because I wanted to study physics, and it’s such a fantastic place to study physics. Things went fairly well until I got to quantum mechanics and there were about 30 people in the class by that point and it was so hard for me. I just remember there was a point in this where I realized I’m never going to be a great physicist. There were three or four people in the class whose brains were so clearly wired differently to process these highly abstract concepts, so much more. I was doing well in terms of the grades I was getting, but for me it was laborious, hard work. And, for some of these truly gifted folks — it was awe-inspiring for me to watch them because in a very easy, almost casual way, they could absorb concepts and solve problems that I would work 12 hours on, and it was a wonderful thing to behold. At the same time, I had been studying computer science, and was really finding that that was something I was drawn toward. I was drawn to that more and more and that turned out to be a great thing. So I found — one of the great things Princeton taught me is that I’m not smart enough to be a physicist.
(That’s kinda funny, once I become a millionaire, this is the exact sort of thing I would say about my education in IITK. How what it taught me was not about Mechanical engineering, but rather being a survivor and opportunity seeker).
On starting a company immediately after school.
I toyed with the idea of starting a company and even talked to a couple of friends about starting a company, and ultimately decided that it would be smarter to wait and learn a little bit more about business and the way the world works. You know, one of the things that it’s very hard to believe when you’re 22 or 23 years old is that you don’t already know everything. It turns out — people learn more and more as they get older — that you seem to learn, you seem to realize that you know less and less every year that goes by. I can only imagine that by the time I’m 70 I will realize I know nothing.
The moment of Flash
The wake up call was finding this startling statistic that web usage in the spring of 1994 was growing at 2,300 percent a year. You know, things just don’t grow that fast. It’s highly unusual, and that started me about thinking, “What kind of business plan might make sense in the context of that growth?”
On what makes startups successful.
I think there are a couple of things. One of the things everybody should realize is that any time a start-up company turns into a substantial company over the years, there was a lot of luck involved. There are a lot of entrepreneurs. There are a lot of people who are very smart, very hardworking, very few ever have the planetary alignment that leads to a tiny little company growing into something substantial. So that requires not only a lot of planning, a lot of hard work, a big team of people who are all dedicated, but it also requires that not only the planets align, but that you get a few galaxies in there aligning, too. That’s certainly what happened to us.
Our timing was good, our choice of product categories — books — was a very good choice. And we did a lot of analysis on that to pick that category as the first best category for E-commerce online, but there were no guarantees that that was a good category. At the time we launched this business it wasn’t even crystal clear that the technology would improve fast enough that ordinary people — non-computer people — would even want to bother with this technology. So, that was good luck.
The Regret Minimization framework.
So, it really was a decision that I had to make for myself, and the framework I found which made the decision incredibly easy was what I called — which only a nerd would call — a “regret minimization framework.” So, I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, “Okay, now I’m looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have.” I knew that when I was 80 I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day, and so, when I thought about it that way it was an incredibly easy decision. And, I think that’s very good. If you can project yourself out to age 80 and sort of think, “What will I think at that time?” it gets you away from some of the daily pieces of confusion. You know, I left this Wall Street firm in the middle of the year. When you do that, you walk away from your annual bonus. That’s the kind of thing that in the short-term can confuse you, but if you think about the long-term then you can really make good life decisions that you won’t regret later.
His thoughts on a business plan
So, you want to start a company. Well, the first thing you do is you should write a business plan, and so I did that. I wrote about a 30-page business plan. I wrote a first draft. In fact, I wrote the first draft on the car trip from the East Coast to the West Coast. And, that is very helpful. You know the business plan won’t survive its first encounters with reality. It will always be different. The reality will never be the plan, but the discipline of writing the plan forces you to think through some of the issues and to get sort of mentally comfortable in the space. Then you start to understand, if you push on this knob this will move over here and so on. So, that’s the first step.
On Taking Risk with his parents and their money.
The first initial start-up capital for Amazon.com came primarily from my parents, and they invested a large fraction of their life savings in what became Amazon.com. And you know, that was a very bold and trusting thing for them to do because they didn’t know. My dad’s first question was, “What’s the Internet?” Okay. So he wasn’t making a bet on this company or this concept. He was making a bet on his son, as was my mother. So, I told them that I thought there was a 70 percent chance that they would lose their whole investment, which was a few hundred thousand dollars, and they did it anyway. And, you know, I thought I was giving myself triple the normal odds, because really, if you look at the odds of a start-up company succeeding at all, it’s only about ten percent. Here I was, giving myself a 30 percent chance.
On customer feedback.
I think, in any business. It certainly matters online, where word of mouth is so very, very powerful. You know, if you make a customer unhappy they won’t tell five friends, they’ll tell 5,000 friends. So, we are at a point now where we have all of the things we need to build an important and lasting company, and if we don’t, it will be shame on us.
On Dealing with Stress
Stress primarily comes from not taking action over something that you can have some control over. So, if I find that some particular thing is causing me to have stress, that’s a warning flag for me. What it means is there’s something that I haven’t completely identified perhaps in my conscious mind that is bothering me, and I haven’t yet taken any action on it. I find as soon as I identify it, and make the first phone call, or send off the first e-mail message, or whatever it is that we’re going to do to start to address that situation — even if it’s not solved — the mere fact that we’re addressing it dramatically reduces any stress that might come from it. So, stress comes from ignoring things that you shouldn’t be ignoring, I think, in large part. So, stress doesn’t come — people get stress wrong all the time in my opinion. Stress doesn’t come from hard work, for example. You know, you can be working incredibly hard and loving it, and, likewise, you can be out of work and incredibly stressed over that.
Final words of advice.
Do something you’re very passionate about, and don’t try to chase what is kind of the ‘hot passion’ of the day. if you go back and study the history of the 1949 Gold Rush you find that, at that time, everybody who was within shouting distance of California was — you know, they might have been a doctor, but they quit being a doctor and they started panning for gold, and that almost never works. And, even if it does work, according to some metric, financial success, or whatever it might be, I suspect it leaves you ultimately unsatisfied. So, you really need to be very clear with yourself. And I think one of the best ways to do that is this notion of projecting yourself forward to age 80, looking back on your life, and trying to make sure you’ve minimized the number of regrets you have. That works for career decisions. It works for family decisions. I have a 14-month old son, and it’s very easy for me to — if I think about myself when I’m 80, I know I want to watch that little guy grow up, and so it’s — I don’t want to be 80 and think, “Shoot! You know, I missed that whole thing, and I don’t have the kind of relationship with my son that I wished I had,” and so on and so on.
Who updates a post in a few hours of writing it? Hi.
When I started out writing about How to bring about some sanity into your google feed reading, I never thought that the process in itself was flawed and required much more thinking. That’s why I then wrote how to grab Google reader by the neck. And I have finally (after spending an hour) managed to put all of my feeds together. Here’s a gist of how it looks. Please do read the previous post to get the ideology behind this system.
Quick tips to follow
1. Start afresh: – Delete all the tags you have. This is the best way. The most cumbersome, but also the most thorough. I deleted every folder out there and started renaming them again.
2. Organise according to priority:- I chose the following, First/Second/Third and Fourth. In decreasing order of importance. The first contains world news and vital stuff to my industry. Second contains all technology and other things, important but not issues I should know instantly. Third contains stuff that’s important to marketing and other news alerts but aren’t REALLY that big a deal if missed for the entire day (think Seth Godin here). Fourth is everything that I should see that day, but again, not a huge thing if I don’t.
3. Have multiple folders assigned to a blog according to content: Subtraction.com, which is a great blog btw, falls under Design/Webdesign/Writing/Famous Bloggers and Fourth. So I know if i read it one of them, I have read it in all.
4. Keep one leisure folder : Occasionally you need a break. Read some fiction, light hearted stuff. When you want to share a laugh with a friend.
5. Keep incoming searches alone:- I use many searches through twitter integrated as RSS into my blog reader. I have a seperate folder that I have NOT yet mashed into other folders. The reason is these just get to be WAY too overwhelming even for me.
6. What are bundles?: You can use bundles to create a bundle of your news and share it with someone. Like there are things that I would like in a bundle to share with my brother on web design and other stuff,so I make a bundle of web design or coding and then share it in private with him so that only the 2 of us see the links. That was just an example, I don’t have any thing I wouldn’t share with anyone for that matter.
So what does it look like put together for me?
If you want my OPML file, just email me or holler in the comments and I’ll send it to you.
You know what is worse than bowel syndrome disorder (Completely made up btw)? Struggling with your RSS Feeds Overflow syndrome (again completely made up). I had recently posted on how to get some Sanity into your google feed reading and I tried to follow this system for a week and found myself still being unable to efficiently manage all my Google reader feeds. The tons of links that friends posted, that I came across and that I saw great bloggers follow kept snowballing into a huge mountain of content.
I spent 5 days away from reader and had about 4500 unread links in just the technology section alone. #fail.
Complete Fail System?
Was my system a complete fail? No I don’t think so, but it was very basic at best. It was scratching at the surface and ok for someone with 40-50 feeds at the most to worry about. But here I have close to 300 blogs I have subscribed to and the system that I had detailed was splitting up the folders into content that mainly spanned around
a) News/Important
b) Thought Leaders/Interesting People
c) Current Interests
d) Fun Stuff.
The immediate problem with that is how to break it down into each category? Guy Kawasaki, is he a thought leader or does he fit into news/important? Where does Techcrunch go? Breaking news? Techonology? Startups?
You see the problem there? There was no clear segmentation and I had followed the wrong principle of thinking every feed of mine should go ONLY into one category or tagging.
Faceted Classification
I realised that I needed a better system to handle this. So I did some brainstorming and since some of my interests lie under UI and UX Design, I found out that there is a term for Organising Information this way called “Faceted Classification“. There is a subsection under this called “Colon Classification” and brought to the world by , lo and behold, an Indian Dr.S.Ranganathan (that’s my Grand dads name, not the same person though).
Unlike a simple hierarchical scheme, faceted classification gives the users the ability to find items based on more than one dimension. For example, some users shopping for jewelry may be most interested in browsing by particular type of jewelry (earrings, necklaces), while others are more interested in browsing by a particular material (gold, silver). “Material” and “type” are examples of facets; earrings, necklaces, gold, silver are examples of facet values.
That got me thinking, how can I classify this information better and has anyone already put together a system? Little did I realise what the GTD Google Reader ninjas had in mind for the young padawan. Introducing Sensei’s Daniel Miessler and the ever favourite Steve Rubel. Here is the system they follow and something I plan to test out for the next couple of weeks to see if I can get together a good system.
The GTD method of segregating your RSS feeds.
They use a segregation technique based on three main things. Importance, Location and Subject.
Listed below.
a) Importance (how important are these feeds to you?) – Split up into Primary, Secondary and Tertiary.
b) Location (World events, important news etc)- World news, latest technology development, gadget developments, News and Media.
c) Subject (classical organisation)- Currently exploring, but largely UI/UX/Design/Social Media/Writing/Cartooning
This breakdown gives us three choices for how to attack feeds. You can go by a general ranking of importance of the feed (priority), by the specific type of content that you want to read at a given moment (subject), or based on where you are (location). So if you’re at work during regular hours you can read your “work” feeds, which include important information pertaining to your profession, key world events, and perhaps some other tidbits that may be useful during work-related conversation. And during lunch you can read your “lunch” feeds, which include your feeds that are still work appropriate during lunch but perhaps aren’t completely work related, e.g. Dilbert, XKCD, Reddit, etc.
Steve Rubel focuses on Tagging your posts. This is especially important in an industry like PR where news by the minute has to be read. Luckily, I don’t have to face that torrential overflow of information. But here’s what he has to say.
Tagging is an incredibly powerful tool for becoming a knowledge management ninja – especially in PR. As you’re reading feeds you can tag them for sharing with a select group or for easy retrieval in the future.
For example, let’s say your job is to compile a report to your boss at the end of the week. As you scan, simply tag all of the potential items you want to include with “report.” Now you can easily retrieve these posts. However, there’s more. You can search them too! This is powerful because you are adding a layer of structure to what is basically a giant pile of information that someone else decided to organize for you when the feed was established.
My Basic Folders and Breakdown of Labels.
This section is to tell you how I have started organising my feeds and perhaps show you a tip or two. Feel free to ignore and move on to the next section. What do my folders contain at the moment?
Primary.
– World news.
– Social Media monitor.
– Techmeme and news from there.
– Techcrunch
– Selected Thought leaders who break news (PR/Social Media) (think scoble/brogan etc).
– Digg Technology and News (And reddit and etc)
Secondary.
– UI/UX design
– Engadget
– Thought leaders that are important to read (Kawasaki, Seth etc)
– Digg Gadgets
– Hacker News
Tertiary.
– Cartooning (XKCD etc)
– All Humour
– Friends Blogs
– Various Posterous reads and other interesting people.
– Digg Humour
Design
– Smashing magazine
– Top Designers and bloggers
– Top Design Blogs
Blogs-India
– All bloggers from India duh.
– Friends families and must read people.
– Also people I keep track of like Labnol.
Interesting People.
– contains everyone who has a nice style of writing, this would overlap with someone already put in primary.
Leisure
– Currently everything else.
I personally don’t bring my Humour and other fun links into my news feed. I do however subscribe to Digg/Reddit’s front pages so that I’m not left behind on some of the most interesting conversations.
Putting it all together
All of the above was for you to get the idea of where I come (no pun intended) from. To put it quickly.
Organise your feeds into areas of importance. This is easier said than done, but try and it will get easier later on. What is most important to your job and your personal interest should be read within the primary and secondary folders. What you read at work should strictly be only the news. Worldwide and in your industry.
For everything else put a label: Design, entrepreneur, leadership, productivity. Have tons of them doesn’t matter make sure you have one feed in multiple categories if you so desire.
Tag everything that you have with smart tags : GReader has a great search and tagging system that you can liberally use. At the same time you can also use fun stuff like Sort by Magic that lets you play around with your feeds.
Observe Trends : This is really important, if you see feeds that you are reading and don’t see them in the active section, eliminate them. My good friend Dash puts in this helpful tip, “I just have 2 categories – daily and weekly … each starts with all posts read at the end of the day or the week. Plus I don’t do any reading in the reader. everything opens up in a new tab. just that one additional click will force you to ask the question, “is it worth it?” And any feed that I haven’t read for 4 weeks goes out of the OPML”.
Share everything on KarthickGopal.com: Really important tip. Self explanatory.
Steve Rubel has been my favourite online productivity Geek for a long time now. He is the senior vice president for Edelman Digital (PR agency) and has often been considered a thought leader on PR, Social media and productivity.
Some of his fantastic reads are on how to make Gmail your nerve center and organising feeds on Google Reader, a topic I love spending time thinking about, you’ll know that he’s someone who is a firehose of information by himself.
I decided to interview him in a series I call the Tao of Productivity. These are a series of interviews with top bloggers who write, blog, speak at conferences, email and still have time to come home to their kids and kiss them good night. Given that we have so much information these days, how is it possible to do all of this without killing the time for blogging and writing? Here’s Steve’s take. I’d like to thank Steve for not only being the quickest to reply but also the only one who spent a lot of time detailing his answers in.
Questions on Routine What is a typical day for you like? What are the first things you do? Do you have any rituals you follow?
I am fairly fortunate that no two days are typical for me. I travel about seven to 15 days a month (almost all domestic) and attend lots of meetings with our teams, clients, and emerging and established technology companies who can help us advance the art and science of public relations.
My day starts with my iPhone each day around 4:30 or 5 am – weekends too. The alarm wakes me up in the morning. I go through my email first, then Twitter, Facebook and some feeds – all before I get out of bed. It’s a terrible habit I am trying to shake since a few times it has caused me to miss my train. I am trying now to get dressed first then check the Net!
Once I am ready to go I look at my calendar and my to-do list to see what I need to get done today and – ideally – when I am going to manage to squeeze it in. I am trying to master the art of doing everything on my mobile device (short of PowerPoint). In fact, some trips I leave my computer at home.
I hate carrying more stuff than I need. I would like to get to a point where I can ditch my laptop entirely. I just took a four-day trip without a computer and did fine. I have another coming up that’s seven to nine days. That’s probably pushing it, but I am tempted to go laptopless.
My days are filled with lots of meetings. Sometimes I get blocks where I can write or check in on Twitter – it depends on the day. At night I catch up on email and usually read feeds for at least two hours/day to stay current. I also try to do something new with technology everyday. My life is centered around my extended family and friends, my work and technology and I love it.
How do you compose a blog post of yours? Do you write it all down in one shot. Do you write some thoughts and then re-visit it at a later point? Do you use a notebook or a digital device?
It really varies. Sometimes, I will read something, get a whim and just go. Other times, I look down a list I keep of ideas that’s always long and pluck items off. These days I an trying to get more creative in what I do too – trying things like diagrams for example and videos.
Generally speaking I am almost entirely paperless. The only paper I have is a small Moleskine notebook, which I use only for meetings since it’s not good etiquette (yet) to type on my iPhone in a meeting. All of my other notes and ideas are in Gmail, Evernote or text files which sync across devices. I usually will fire these off as emails to myself or to Evernote.
How much of your blog posts are split between reporting and ideation? Do you have a specific number you target like Jim Collins? Or do you write whatever strikes you at that point of time?
Since I am not really writing a news blog, I don’t do a lot of reporting. Instead, I gather a tremendous amount of information – from both primary and third-parties and not always from people I agree with. I then try to pull together a POV of what I think is happening based on what I am hearing from lots of different divergent views. This leads to lists of content ideas for not only Edelman and Edelman Digital clients, but also my own presence.
I don’t have hard targets. Rather, just a general feel for if I am relevant. I ask myself this same question every morning: am I closer to extinction today than I was yesterday. The answer better be “no.”
You seem to keep great tabs on what’s going on around you, how do you track conversations? What tools do you use?
I am using RSS feeds for blogs and news and Twitter replies (although I track the latter more quickly through Twitter clients)
How important is twitter to you? What tools do you use?
It’s extremely important for us and some of our clients – today. Tomorrow we shall see. I am using Seesmic Web at home and in the office and Tweetie on the go. I like to unify all of my tools across my work PC (a desktop), my home/travel computer (a MacBook Air) and my iPhone. For the most part I am there (e.g. I use Evernote on all three) but once Loic launches Seesmic for the iPhone I will be set.
Do you maintain To-Do lists? What do they have on them?
I am a junkie for to do apps. I have tried them all, several times. My latest approach is to keep it simple. I use TaskPaper on the Mac. I have become a huge fan of Hog Bay Software’s products, especially WriteRoom. I sync this list to the cloud, where I access it from work using TodoPaper (a comparable app) and on my iPhone as a text file. I hope to make this one stick!
I use text expansion software (Textexpander on the Mac and iPhone, Texter on the PC) to speed this up and flag items that need to go on my to-do list. I flow in text and then at the end of each archive the notes with images I shot as well as business card photos for safe keeping in Evernote.
My goal is to make this a daily habit by the time I turn 40 later this year so I have the next 40+ years captured for my recollection and maybe others. If Thomas Edison could do so in long hand and – oh yeah, invent the light bulb and the phonograph – then I am sure I can too.
Even in this questionnaire set you are the first one to respond to, do you have any tips or advice you can give us to stay on stop of everything and manage email?
I pride myself on being one of the most responsive people in the business. This isn’t easy and not without risk since, as my good friend Jeremiah Owyang and I have discussed, you don’t “pay yourself first.” However, given my PR training its how I have always operated.
As a rule of thumb I clear out both my inboxes every day by following Inbox Zero. I have been doing this a few years now. I know what requires a longer response. I need to get better at checking my email at set times of day. I still operate too reactionary. I will get better at dictating my day so that I get more done. I am a work in progress.
Another tip I got from my boss is to everyday do at least one thing I don’t want to do – that’s not so easy!
Finally, I have become a huge fan of mindmapping. I use MindManager on my PC, Mac and iPhone to brainstorm ideas and solutions to problems. I like to mindmap when I am in the air and use the time for ideation and to catch up on correspondence.kpaper list under the heading of “waiting” and check this list at least daily.
You were a prolific blogger, but now you have taken to a new sort of writing – Lifestream. Can you tell us more about this and why?
Back in 2004 to make a name for myself(!) and to engage in conversations with like minded individuals with topics I share a passion for. Today it’s really the latter – though I would like to maintain some level of brand since it helps Edelman.
These days I am breaking less news and instead stringing together insights on trends and new technologies. These come from the meetings I have (clients, staff, technology companies, etc), my reading and occasionally reader input.
How do you cherry pick the stuff you have to write?
Totally random – whatever I am in the mood to do. I am trying to get more creative with it, but some days I get home too exhausted to do what I want to do. I have a great life. I am always “working” and having a blast doing so – so it doesn’t feel like work. This is my life focus (I don’t have a family). Still, even so, sometimes my content falls by the wayside more than I would like it to.
Do you have any tips for newbie writers?
Good writers need to really focus on brevity, especially online. People read 20% of a web page before they move on. You need to show the reader why there’s something in it for them up top.
Quick fire questionsHow did you grow your readership?
Decent content. Social connections. Daily practice.
Your lesson to yourself 5 years back ?
As I look back five years ago, I see how i have changed. I used to be more fast and loose and all about shiny objects. Now I am more measured, thoughtful and a little less geeky and more about the trends. This is my journey as a professional. However, when you’re surrounded by people like our CEO Richard Edelman you become more worldly. He’s someone I look up to immensely and strive to be like. I have a long way to go. I am so grateful to be part of Edelman. It’s like playing for the Yankees.
What streams do you follow? And who are the people you recommend reading up on?
1500 people on Twitter
1500 people on Facebook (some overlap)
1000 RSS feeds
150 iPhone Apps (but I don’t use them all regularly)
Gmail, Edelman email
I’d recommend reading
Tech trendsetters – Robert Scoble, Jeremiah Owyang, Mike Arrington, Jeff Jarvis, Gina Trapani, Leo Laporte
Young turks – Amanda Mooney, Daniel Brusilovsky
Leaders and Pioneers – Richard Edelman, Bob Iger, Steve Jobs, Barack Obama
Creatives – Jared Hendler, Rick Murray, Lars Bastholm, David Brain
Workaholics – Jerry Rice, Jay Leno
And finally, if you had 140 characters to describe yourself as. What would it be?
Forever under construction but ahead of the curve.
