Archive for 2009

I attend several conferences and conventions a year where an abundance of writers and hopeful writers are present. At these conferences it is very easy to distinguish some of the wannabe writers from the actual writers by how they speak and specifically, by what they are carrying. Many would-be writers, and it is invariably the…

When I started my video game development company, Infinite Monkey Factory (IMF), back at the beginning of the century, I was determined that we would do things differently. Apart from just wanting to make good games, I wanted IMF to be an awesome company to work for. Rather than coming up with just a concrete…

A lot of people I’ve spoken to in the past few years that have blogs talk about the pressure to post. If they have a personal blog the pressure may be there at the beginning but slowly it tapers off and this is why many blogs die out. If the person writing the blog is…

Don’t expect overnight success to happen overnight. It never happens that way. Overnight success is always a decade of hard, diligent work, usually in obscurity where you are ridiculed, vilified, and ignored. Until eventually, they cannot ignore you any more. And it will look like, to all those people who ignored you and forgot about…

I suffer from not knowing when to call time on my day. I work late in to the night. I regularly pull all nighters. I regularly work around the clock, seven days a week. And if I believed that I could find an eighth day in the week or a 25th hour in the day,…

If I have a great game demo, is that enough to get me a job in the games industry? Yes, possibly. If I write a novel, is that enough to get me a publisher? Yes, possibly. If I get a degree at a college, is that enough to get me a job in the <insert…

I might be down. I might be feeling depressed. I might feel like the weight of my woes are crushing me. Paradoxically, I ain’t got time to feel sorry for myself. When life hands you lemons, pull on your lemon crushing boots and start stamping around like you own the place. If you want to…

Wake is the product of a vessel such as a boat moving through water but an aircraft moving the air does not generate wake but instead turbulence as it passes by. When you move through your life improving who you are, you generate personal development turbulence. The faster you move, the quicker you improve and…

“Associate with wise people and you too will slowly become wise but associate with fools and you are immediately foolish.” – Justin Lloyd. The non-genuine victim mindset makes victims of us all, either directly through our own attitude or indirectly through somebody else’s. Know of any non-genuine victims? Look around your neighbourhood, read the news…

A lot of what you will read in books, listen to on audio programmes, attend at seminars, and learn about from other people in the "self-help" industry is postulated on the fact that most people are seeking the quick fix. It is frustrating to watch self-professed, self-help experts peddling parlour tricks to a hopeful yet…

A week ago my girlfriend and I were discussing various periods of our lives and the discussion of growing up poor came about. My girlfriend grew up in rural America and I grew up in rural Wales (a childhood where monkeys were involved) and we both knew what it was like to be children in…

Last week I wrote about societal drag caused by other people and how it slows you down. Drag is the force generated by a solid object moving through a medium such as water or air, and you also get wake. You’ve seen the wake generated by a boat as it moves, that’s the v-shaped waves…

The country of our birth? An accident of pure chance. Choosing where we live? Luck that comes from planning and action. Winning the lottery? A happy accident of random numbers. Buying a lottery ticket week after week? Luck that comes from a small, repeated action. Wrecking our car? An unfortunate accident. Walking away from the…

There’s many different efficiencies we can examine, but two that are important for any start-up is “how efficiently can we serve our existing customers?” and “how efficiently can we make our existing customers delighted?” They aren’t mutually exclusive, but they often are treated as though they are. Big corporations attempt to maximize revenue by making…

“Good at selecting vendors” and “good at spending money on good tools” are two definitive skills you should learn to cultivate if you aspire to be a CTO. And if you suck at both, your engineers are going to question your ability in everything else.

Whatever you do in life, whatever you want to be, whatever goals you want to pursue, understand that you are competing against a vast sea of ordinary. If you are only trying to be ordinary you won’t stand out. If you offer ordinary service in the service sector, then someone somewhere can do it cheaper.…

I have two really simple tips that I’ve used for decades for catching errors in my articles and stories before sending them to my editors. Also as I don’t have an editor (yet) for my blog posts I have to do my own proofreading and editing to catch the most egregious of my writing errors.…

Your anonymity, like your virginity, can only be given away once. Once you lose your anonymity (virginity), you don’t get it back once you’ve lost it.

I am often approached and asked how I came up with the idea for something I’ve created; it may be an article or a piece of fiction, a computer games design or an organizing solution. There is a technique I use, and have used for the better part of three decades, that allows me to…

A successful competitor in the same vertical as you is evidence of demand. Your task, once you have found a successful competitor, is to determine the strategy they are using to be successful.