Last week I was lucky enough to see Chuck Geschke, a co-founder of Adobe Systems, speak at Loyola College in Maryland. Not only was he passionate and insightful, but he offered some lessons that I found particularly valuable. His main message was that if you treat your customers, vendors, and employees with respect and kindness then they won’t come back to bite you when you need them. However, one of his specific analogies I found to be particularly helpful immediately afterwards. I’m likely going to butcher its explanation, but please don’t let it reflect poorly on him. He explained that

Engineers can often be classified as Arrow Shooters, Scouts, and Road Pavers

Arrow Shooters are the ones who see an idea in the distance as a worthy target. They’re the visionaries who recognize a possibility for a new product but aren’t necessarily the best suited to determine how to get there or whether there will be financial rewards in the end.

Scouts are the people capable of surveying the market, considering what resources need to be assembled, and determining if there’s a viable path to the target. They wouldn’t know where to look if it weren’t for the arrow shooters, and they’re not necessarily the folks who can dig in and make the product happen.

Road Pavers are those who get their hands dirty with the real development. With a little bit of the overall vision and some general landscape of the situation, they’ll get you from point A to the target. And if they’re a great road paver they’ll be able to step one foot in front of another until they get things done, on schedule and on budget.

Mr. Geschke used this analogy to explain one of the ways that (more…)

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Here from Lifehacker? This week in April 2008 I’ll be writing numerous related posts on topics like productivity on the phone, online purchases that will save you time, and hacks for finishing your projects.  I’d love if you’d check them out by subscribing via RSS or email.  You won’t be disappointed!

So many threads have been rounding up the slimmest and coolest lately that I thought I’d take a stab at what I consider to be an efficient wallet. To me, intelligent use of a wallet is a combination of the following:

• Quick access to the things you need
• Professional appearance (”you’re gonna cover the bill with that worn out thing?”)
• Convenience for it fitting with any outfit or occasion

Let me say right off the bat that I’m a geek, entrepreneur, and efficiency-nut. As such my idea of the intelligent wallet fits within these paradigms. In line with the company whose article inspired this post, I’m going to offer insight through what’s worked for me.

The wallet you use all the time, and storage for the rest of the junk

Being a spendthrift I have one of those frequent shopper cards at every store from my bagel place to my hair salon. As someone who travels a lot for work, I have a frequent-use card for every major hotel and airline. But I don’t hold onto any of them, not really. This leads me to two tricks I’ve picked up.

Tip 1. Store the frequent flier and frequent guest numbers in your cellphone or PDA.

When I show up at the Hilton I click the Find feature on my Samsung Palm phone, enter “Hilton” and ouila, there’s my membership number. Same thing for

(more…)

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A little while back I wrote about a different approach to an iPod car stereo.  I just read a rather informative article in the Post offering a series of suggestions for iPod integration.  I should give Apple some more credit–offering integration in 40 percent of 2006 cars is quite a testament to their ubiquity.

The article makes reference to the “gold standard” in iPod connectivity:

A single, tangle-free dashboard jack simultaneously pumps high-quality audio out of the iPod and keeps it juiced up while allowing tracks to be selected directly from the car stereo or controls on the steering wheel. The iPod, itself, can hide in the glove compartment or nestle into a convenient holster on the dashboard.

I am genuinely curious if this is the level of connectivity that is included in that 40 percent, or whether it’s merely a 1/8″ headphone jack to allow plugging any mp3 player into the car stereo.  The article suggests going to this Apple page to see the list of cars offering iPod integration.  It also points to this Crutchfield tool that narrows the iPod configurations available for your specific vehicle.  In a few quick look-ups I had difficulty figuring out exactly what was available.  For instance, I was looking at the 2006 Jetta, a car listed on the Apple site as iPod-ready, and it sounded to me like one would need an aftermarket iPod controller installed to offer connectivity. (more…)

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Running a business is about making decisions. One of the choices I’ve been grappling with is in which areas of my business to increase staff size as our workload increases. Frequently I have to decide which initiatives to focus on in a given week, month, or quarter. In the shower I realized another way to think about my quandary: less cold water.

In my shower I have the most basic sort of faucet handles: one knob for hot and one knob for cold. The more you turn each of them, the more pressure you get of the hot or cold–pretty simple. While I can’t speak from experience, I’m guessing that most people adjust their faucet to a familiar position, make sure the temperature and pressure are all right, and then hop in.

What happens next demonstrates to me that the most intuitive application is not always the best use of the faucets. At this point it’s not usually about the pressure, it’s about getting just the right temperature as fluctuations arise. If it’s too cold the most logical thing is to turn the hot knob to make it hotter. But that’s not always the best approach; after all, turning up the hot means you’re going to run out of hot water sooner than before.

Back to the business scenario, (more…)

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You never know what it will be that captures the public eye, as pointed out in this Washington Post article about Chris Bliss’ juggling act. A video of Bliss’ juggling caught on through email and blogs, bringing him an insane amount of attention and potential gigs. The only problem was that he was no longer interested in juggling.

Perhaps many of us writers and businessmen are hoping for the one thing that will (favorably) capture the public’s eye and send us to quick fame. Things like the Million Dollar Homepage and the forehead guy have taken on a bizarre media following. However, the question, as addressed in the article, is whether the thing that garners attention is what we want attention for? We don’t want to be pegged forever as one-hit wonders (like a certain actor in Home Alone…).

As such I’m trying to temper my urge to write about every exciting thought that comes to my mind here. One of the articles will one-day spread, but I hope to leave thought-out posts here, rather than techno-rants. I could repeat what’s spreading around, but I’d rather not continue the tradition of the blog-as-echo-chamber effect.

Soon you’ll find some more articles, in particular on personal privacy and email management. In the mean time, I highly recommend 43folders Inbox Zero series and Inside the Marketing Mind’s advice on creating a proposal.

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