Notes from the work
An archive of product, engineering, startups, and the decisions behind building software. Older posts stay dated; they are here as a record, not a publishing schedule.
Why I’m a horrible software consultant I try to help entrepreneurs – I don’t just take their money I was talking to a potential client earlier today. It made me think about one of the hardest parts of consulting – charging money. It’s very easy to take a client’s money and build something. That’s not […]
The Vampire Test If, after having out with someone, you feel worn out and depleted, that person is a vampire. If, after hanging out with someone you still feel full of energy, that person is not a vampire. Of course, The Vampire Test works on many things in our lives, not just people – you can apply […]
Putting Yourself Out There Sharing things you create is always a little scary. Yesterday, I shared the rough draft of a podcast script. Luckily, I have great friends that read it and said great things to me about it. Shoutout to Jason and Dan. It’s been a goal of mine to share more things this […]
Starting small to show forward progress I’m dipping my toes into podcasts. First, I’m writing an intro for a podcast about John D. Rockefeller’s youth in the style of Ira Glass. Not a full podcast, just the intro. I’m also not going to do the full podcast unless I really start to love the process. […]
Things You Should Know I’ve been working on a podcast intro for the last few days. I gave myself the ultimatum to create a podcast about the youth of John D. Rockefeller using Ira Glass’s formula from This American Life. I’ve been thinking and saying this over the last few days. Each time I hear […]
Forward Progress Forward progress is important in business. Even the tiniest bit of forward progress can catapult you into further action. It has been weeks since I did any work on my cold email projects. Two days ago, I received a response to an email I sent a month ago. This response has me excited for the […]
Do You Need a Mentor? Someone asked “Where do you find mentors online?” on Hacker News last week. Perhaps a better question is, do you need a mentor? A lot of times you will find that you already know the answers to your questions. You just want reassurance. When John D. Rockefeller bought out the […]
Luncheons My wife liked something I said on twitter! Well, it was actually a retweet. “Never make fun of people for mispronouncing a word. It means they learned it by reading.” — Morgan Housel (@morganhousel) January 11, 2017 Why am I mentioning this? For one, I didn’t know my wife followed me closely on Twitter. […]
99 Ways to Tell a Story A new book arrived yesterday and it’s really interesting. It’s call 99 ways to tell a story by Matt Madden. The entire book is literally 99 different ways to tell a story about a man getting up from his work and walking to the refrigerator. That’s it. The entire book. […]
Day 4 – My discipline is getting better, but my titles are getting much, much worse! Practicing Extraction Jay Acunzo uses the term extraction to mean taking a formula used by a storyteller and attempt to tell your own stories using that formula. I plan on practicing that this weekend. I don’t know if this will […]