Archive for 2008

Your strongest characteristic that will see you through the toughest of times is your ability to not care about a person’s opinions of you.

Give five minutes of your time. Give five minutes of your time for free to anyone and everyone you meet. Literally just five minutes. That five minutes of advice, or talking about a problem, about just listening to a problem, provides incalculable value to people. If in that five minutes you have not had a…

I am frequently asked “How did you get good at X?” where you can substitute cooking, coding, project management, marketing, business development or a couple of other subjects. Unfortunately the question is easily answered but the answer is not easily heard. “Lots and lots of deliberate practice.” Pick a problem to solve, then solve it.…

I measure everything. Everything… Yes, even that. And that. Yes, and that too. But what I measure most is myself of today against myself of yesterday. I quantify my output and productivity regularly: How many words did I write today? How many emails did I respond too? How many emails did I delete without responding?…

Those who would give up integrity to purchase a little job security, deserve neither integrity nor job security. I’m paraphrasing here.

The mark of the true teacher isn’t in teaching you the how, but in teaching you the why.

It is what we do, with what we have, rather than what we have, that really matters.

I leave Skype on all the time. When someone attempts to engage in conversation that I don’t have time for or I just don’t want to talk to, I politely state “Sorry, I don’t have time to chat with you right now and I have no ETA on when I will have the bandwidth to…

Pick one random person in your organisation you’ve never had a one-on-one lunch with and ask them to lunch with you. Socially awkward? Yes. Get over it. If you can do it, you’re on the path to being a sales person, but more importantly, you’re on the path to having a great career. Two tips…

“Man up.” “Grow a pair.” “That’s juvenile.” “That’s unprofessional.” Trite phrases we throw out there when we have run out of valid points in our argument and hope to shame the other person in to submission. It only works on you if you allow it to.

I would have to say that oDesk and eLance and its ilk are poor sources to mine for well paying, serious mobile development projects. Because these websites permit a lowest common denominator approach to both proposing projects and bidding on projects, you are dealing with many potential clients who want to try and launch an…