Gifted Slacker

The rigor and candor and general sense of exploration I enjoy in other blogs is absent from what I post. I just don’t feel strongly enough about blogging, and I’m not willing to devote enough time to blogging to write posts at a level I’m proud of.

I originally intended this blog to house some of my craziest, most radical ideas. The failure is totally on me, but my big external discouragement is that I’ve tried posting some of my middle of the road ideas and received alarmed messages from those who don’t get what this blog is supposed to  be about.

So from now on this blog will be darker than it already is. I might occassionally post some drivel, or I might start posting anonymously elsewhere. Who knows.

This article on Fortune doesn’t have a printer-friendly option, so I’m distilling the wisdom (and non-wisdom) here.

• Michael Bloomberg: When the customer says yes, stop talking. Think before reacting.
• Larry Page: Pick a promising idea, stick with it and do it better than anyone else.
• Peter G. Peterson: Focus on the things you do better than others, regardless of whether it goes against prevailing opinion.
• General Petraeus: Pursue experiences outside of your comfort zone.
• Tina Fey: Stay in control of your money.
• Mark Hurd: A slick presentation doesn’t cover bad smells.
• Indra Nooyi: Always assume positive intent.
• Sam Palmisano: Be selfless. Focus on the needs of others.
• Eddie Lampert: Practice, prepare, anticipate.
• Thomas S. Murphy: Do the right thing. Spend time on things you can control.
• Bob Iger: Be true to yourself.
• Nelson Peltz: Increase sales and minimize expenses.
• Zhang Xin: Specialize. Work with people you have strong relationships with.
• Charlene Begley: Spend a lot of time with customers.
• Craig Newmark: Embrace humor. Laugh.
• Joanna Shields: Walk away from the table leaving everyone feeling like a winner.
• Elon Musk: Don’t panic. Don’t ignore bullies.
• U. Mark Schneider: Learn other languages. Be careful about showing independence and contrarianism.
• Tony Robbins: Nothing is sacrosanct: Pick your friends and advisers carefully.
• Eileen Collins: Follow your heart, despite what others say.
• Stewart Copeland: Be careful with your money.
• Andrea Guerra: Commit. Work with the best. Learn from the best.
• Leonard Lauder: Good things belong in writing. Unpleasantness should be conveyed face-to-face.
• Nell Minow: Change your schedule to fit the way you work.
• Alan Mulally: View the future with the customer in mind, and deliver to that end.

I’ve tried writing. I’ve tried drawing. I’ve tried singing.

I’ve never had much to say. Mostly because I haven’t lived enough of my life engaged with the real world. Over the last year or so, I’ve made great strides in living more in every moment but I still have little to say.

Along with working on all-around creativity, I need more rich experiences. More weird experiences. More scary experiences. More, more, more. Experiences!

Jimi Hendrix famously asked, “Are you experienced, have you ever been experienced?”

Now I ask: Have you?

Incentives, incentives, incentives. You must be aware of how they’re aligned (from here):

But here’s what’s really interesting. It’s a hard job, answering phones and talking to customers for hours at a time. So when Zappos hires new employees, it provides a four-week training period that immerses them in the company’s strategy, culture, and obsession with customers. People get paid their full salary during this period.

After a week or so in this immersive experience, though, it’s time for what Zappos calls “The Offer.” The fast-growing company, which works hard to recruit people to join, says to its newest employees: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.” Zappos actually bribes its new employees to quit!

Why? Because if you’re willing to take the company up on the offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment they are looking for.

I had Subway for lunch today, while I was out buying groceries. I rationalized it by thinking it would save me time slicing bread for a sandwich, after I got back to my place.

Wrong.

It was just laziness and, since the sandwich hit my stomach like a bowling ball, I’m even more sluggish than I was before.

Take a page from my book, kids: Don’t do Subway, because Subway always ends up doing you in the end.

I’ve finally been pushed over the line from my position that Tinderbox is neat, but I probably wouldn’t use enough of its features to justify purchasing it. Reading Mark Bernstein’s recent post about it completely changed my mind.

Go read that post.

Amazing isn’t it? I do that sort of thing all of the time, enduring much more pain than Mark went through.

My purchase will have to wait until I have the money, probably some not-so-insignificant time after I get out of graduate school in September. Unless, that is, I dip into my next financial aid check (No, I’m not really going to do that. Settle down, Mom.).

Note: Yes, I’m aware that there’s a trial version; however, I’m not a fan of becoming addicted to a piece of software to be thwarted when it comes to actually buying a license, so I’ll just wait.

The following quote is true of my programming skills to some extent. Definitely for my .NET skills and, to a lesser degree, my Lotus Notes skills.

Most people who perform a job over a number of years will become experienced non-experts, not experts.

The other programming languages I use are more well honed. And I’ve been applying more deliberate practice to my programming theory, though I wasn’t aware of the term.

It’s good to know that other people agree with my thinking on British (and USian, to a lesserish extent) drinking culture. Emphasis mine:

Gamers vote. Gamers buy newspapers. They won’t vote for you, or buy your newspapers, if you trash their entertainment with your ignorant ravings. Call them social inadequates if you like, but when they have more friends in World of Warcraft than you have in your entire sad little booze-oriented culture of a real life, the most you’ll get from them is pity.

From here.

Bill Hicks on Gays in the Military. (LA riots, hooligans, and poking fun at the English here.)

Bill Hicks is pretty funny, I can’t remember where I got the pointer but I first saw his marketing skit.