Archive for 2009

Beyond building something worthwhile, raising capital and getting to product-market fit, there is a trait that many entrepreneurs ignore at their peril, and I can sum it up as: Always be aggressively recruiting. Your product success is as much about the people you have on your team, from the first day to the last day,…

You do not have to be available 24/7. Life carried on just fine without you, before you showed up, and it will carry on just fine long after you are gone. Less e-mail, less contact, less messaging, less calling, less technology, all of it pulling you this way and that to see if you are…

It seems I am on a bit of an “outsourcing” drive at the moment, advocating that people find other ways of boosting productivity rather than doing the work themselves. It might feel that way to some, but I think my stance is that freeing up time for other activities, other far more important activities, is…

I attended Westwood College on Saturday, June 11th, to give a short talk about "becoming a success in the games industry" and also judge the Westwood College 3rd Annual 2D Game Competition, and I now have the details about the various category winners. And the winners are: Best Cross-Platform: Stupid Robot 3rd Place: Stupid Robot…

Many industries, many companies, are geared to one-upmanship, and the workforce is indoctrinated in to the belief that this is the only way to get ahead. "Hard work is rewarded!" you will hear in corporate offices across the land. "Our office is a meritocracy!" you will be told. It’s a trap! I have had those…

A quick news update to let you know I will be speaking at Westwood College Anaheim campus on Saturday, July 11th, on the subject of "becoming a success in the games industry." I will also be judging the Westwood College Annual 2D Game Development Competition. This is the third year that the competition has been…

Welcome to the new Tuesday Time-Wasting Tip-Off, several hours late because I spent my entire day designing and building cabinets and bookcases as part of my “enforced vacation time” away from the office. This week, delegation of your crap to someone else. Perhaps I should take my own advice someday and delegate the building of…

“We have aggressive schedule and we’re out of funding.” “I see you have both kinds of shit show here.”

Where do the little lies you tell yourself end, and your real world, not the real world, but your world, begin? If you are one of the lucky few, you are working hard on, in or at your business. Every waking hour is spent focusing on nothing but that and not once have you ever…

When I was young I came up with one of my many life theories with regard to putting on weight. The theory was to do with the consumption of doughnuts, because I believed in some weird logical way that they were mostly responsible for a person’s weight gain. I had a very limited view of…

Welcome to the next article in my Tuesday Time-Wasting Tip-Off series. This week, how to procrastinate properly. Procrastinate Smarter Not Harder I believe the reason that many people procrastinate so much is that they take too much time to "do nothing," but the time taken is in an unstructured, haphazard way and afterwards they permit…

The genius of the iPod was not the iPod itself. Technically the iPod was a svelte version of devices that had come out yearlier (years earlier). The genius of the iPod was in the message. I don’t need an iPod. My parents don’t need an iPod. My friends don’t need an iPod. Anybody who drives…

I write because I am afraid my head will explode if I do not. I write because the discipline to write is easier to acquire than the discipline to stop myself from writing. I write because I am driven to create. Why do you write?

Welcome to this week’s instalment of Tuesday’s Time-Wasting Tip-Off, each week, techniques and tips that can optimise your life and make you more productive. This week, the bane of corporate networks and productivity everywhere, instant messaging. Kill Your Instant Messenger I used to be a huge instant messaging junkie, and have gone through periods of…

There is no "system" for personal productivity, and anyone who attempts to sell you on one is trying to get you to buy in to the “self-help snake-oil.” There are tools, techniques, skills, tips, and possibilities, but any one all-encompassing, fixed and unbending system is doomed to eventual failure. No system exists that can handle…

I have written a little about the SenseCam and my experiences with it, but there are still many questions people ask, so I thought I would attempt to answer some of the more common ones here. What is a SenseCam? A SenseCam is a gadget that, at the very least, captures images of people and…

Welcome to the eighth instalment of the Tuesday Time-Wasting Tip-Off, a collection of hints and tips that can show you how to shave hours off your workday, shut out unneeded interruptions and increase your productivity by applying simple skills, tools and techniques that you already know. This time wasting tip-off applies to you if you…

Put more pauses in your speech. Especially long pauses. It does one of two things. It gives what you want to say have more impact – you are no longer a torrent of information but instead thoughtful discourse. It also lets you know who in the room isn’t listening and just waiting to take their…

A quick round up of various SenseCam videos found on YouTube and also a good overview of what a SenseCam is and what it can do. Just in case you are wondering why I am so interested in the Microsoft SenseCam, it is because I developed my own over two years ago and have been…

We have all heard a lot about multi-tasking in the press, about how it helps companies to be agile, or how it kills productivity. We have been bombarded with endless discourse on how women are better at multitasking than men. There are countless nonsense articles covering how the new generation of young workers today are…