But spending an insane amount of time upfront without ever having tested or planning said feature doesn’t make sense at all.
If you are going to spend time working on new features, don’t spend time on planning what you think might work. Build something quickly and let your users decide on how it should work.
You might think you know how it should work, but chances are you don’t.
Make it so it’s good enough, release it, get feedback and repeat.
I use remember the milk for managing my day to day tasks, it’s a great service and I’ve gone through just about every to-do list app on the web.
One of the really cool things about the service is that you can sign up to test features before they are released to the entire user base. Right now I’m testing the new smart add feature, it’s awesome and i just noticed a really cool touch that I thought deserved sharing.
See the small window with the ? in the top left, it lists the shortcuts that you can use in the smart add box. Seems pretty simple right? The little window actually stays open after you click the question mark until you explicitly close it using the x. Why do I think this is interesting? Because it allows me to see those shortcuts as I’m using the tool, it doesn’t force me to go to another window or stop and hover over a link to get the info, it makes learning the app a lot easier, it removes the friction between becoming and advanced user.
There’s all these ppl around me in my life who can’t understand what I’m going through, thet all think its so easy.. Hell I used to think the same thing all the time when. I saw single fathers in my siuation who were maybe just a bit not there, who didn’t have it all together.. Come on, how hard can it be, you only see them a few days out of the month, how can you not call them on days when you don’t have them, how can you not take them for a few extra days…
I don’t ask those questions anymore, because now that people are asking me those same questions I realize that it isn’t that easy to come up with the answers, and sometimes when you do come up with the answers it hurts to much too talk about, it hurts to realize that you don’t have it all together.
So next time you think something is simpleand has an easy answer try putting yourself in that persons shoes, try thinking about those problems from a different point of view, you might just learn something.
Not that many people would have noticed, but I haven’t posted here in a really long time. Not seriously anyways.
Over the last year or so my entire life has been turned upside down, right side up and every other way imaginable.
I’m finally coming out of it and I feel the need to write about it. So that’s what I am going to start doing.
I will probably still write about work related stuff, but I have an overwhelming urge to write about some of the things that I’ve gone through over the last little while, if you don’t like it that’s cool… you don’t have to stay and read.
If ya want all the dirt, the good and the bad then stay tuned.
Just downloaded and installed the wordpress app for the blackberry, set up on no time and seems to be really easy to use! Will write a more detailed review after I’ve used it for a while
I couldn’t have said it better myself
Hey you….you ignorant, self-indulgent, ill-advised unionized worker….listen up.
This is simply awesome, the awesome people at my favourite lost blog Lostpedia are rewatching and reviewing the entire first season of the show over the summer, check it out and take a trip back to where it all started!!!!
Hint to anyone that buys me presents and might be reading this blog, you should probably consider buying me all the lost season box sets, kthxbye!!1
One of the greatest feelings in the world is finishing up a project, getting that laundry all done and put away, finally fixing that leaky faucet or you know launching that side project that you’ve been working on for the last 6 months. Conversely, one of the worst feelings in the world is looking at some task or project and feeling so overwhelmed by it that you don’t even know where to start never mind how to start.
I suffer a great deal from the second part of that last paragraph. I can easily be overcome by the fear of failure that it will prevent me from even starting, from making even the smallest amount of progress on a project. It’s a funny thing, because that fear can be completely replaced with amazing focus, long nights and constant thoughts about the next task you can knock off that list as soon as you make even the smallest amount of progress. Just seeing a small amount of progress being made can swing your attitude from one end of the spectrum to the other. Gary Vaynerchuk has a great video that really put this concept into words for me, Better Than Zero. it doesn’t always have to be about the big win right?
One of my own personal tricks when working on a project that i’m having trouble getting motivated on is to re factor some of the code I’ve already written, it’s a small amount of effort that has a big impact on boosting my motivation. Refactoring cleans things up, get’s your head into writing code and generally in my case motivates me to write a whole bunch of new code using some of the patterns I may have re factored to while getting myself in the mood as it were 
So how do you get yourself out of these types of ruts? Got any tips or tricks for getting yourself into the zone?
Some changes
I think i’m going to take down all the personal posts from my blog here and move them over to posterous. Posterous seems to fit the life blogging model much better than wordpress. You can send in posts via email and get stuff up quickly with little friction.
I’m going to keep all my work and development related stuff here. It makes sense because blogging about that stuff takes a bit more time, so I don’t mind sitting down in front of the computer to write a long post regarding that stuff.