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Thoughts and things I care to shareBurning the midnight oil
So I’m again sitting up writing at midnight, wondering why it is that I find inspiration to work when it gets dark. While I don’t have the exact answer, I do think that having some quite time at night has something to do with it. There are fewer distractions, it’s quieter (except for the headphones blasting vintage Billy Idol 
), and everyone is resting or asleep.
At any rate, I thought I’d just mention working into the night, wondering who else finds that some of their best work occurs after 10pm?
links for 2007-08-20
- Well, I would hope that Michael Dell isn’t involved in unscrupulous activities in his company, but one never nows.
- Saving on printing costs is great, WWD talks about remedial printer 101 ideas. Using draft mode for regular printing tasks and saving “normal” or “best” modes for more important jobs. Simple, obvious, and easy to forget to do sometimes!
- Joe Wilcox at Microsoft Watch talks about brand loyalty and how Microsoft is changing – at least it’s marketing strategies. I still don’t think MS gets it, and Joe is barking up the wrong tree. It’s partly the products – look at the iPod, then look at t
- Brian Solis captured a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to tour the HP Garage in pictures. Check it out! Thanks to Robert Scoble for getting HP to invite the group to a tour, should be interesting. Look for video on Scoble Show on Monday (or so).
- Calling all bloggers – Oct. 15th, 2007 is Blog Action Day 2007. The issue is the environment. I’ll be participating, but my message will be from the conservative side of the isle rather than the “the sky is falling” group that gets all the 2second sound
links for 2007-08-19
- Some interesting, if not original, suggestions for Twitter improvements. Personally all I really want in Twitter is IM reliability and a more accurate reply mechanism.
- One of my favorite bloggers, Chris Brogan lists five things that you should be doing on LinkedIn. I guess I’m doing 4, but I’ll work on the 5th this week (answering questions). So if you’re wondering what to do next – this will answer your questions.
Plot your course – you’re at the helm
You know, I’ve found that being too focused on your employer’s goals can distract you from you own. That’s not to say that your goals and your employer’s can’t be similar or overlap. Nor am I suggesting that your employer (large or small) is controlling your future, however, you do need to make sure that you are attending to your own agenda to ensure your own growth.
Too Involved
Being deeply involved in your job can be very rewarding to many. I for one really liked being an important team member in my department – I was able to recommend or bring solutions to the table for difficult problems. The more successful you are at your job, it sometimes leads to overworking yourself and keeping you away from family, friends and, generally, life itself.
Time Out!
This is where I want to suggest that you take a minute (hour?) and think about what your goals are in your life. Go ahead, I’ll wait…
Ok, now that you’ve thought a bit – have you ever written these ideas down? Have you ever sat down with a notepad or journal and created even an abbreviated overview of your life & career goals? If you’re married, have you and your spouse sat down and outlined a plan? While not a requirement, it can help alleviate some unknowns or uncertainties and can foster conversations on finding those dreams and wishes for the future.
Planning
Every successful business, organization, or project starts with a planning session. The more intricate, expensive, or critical, the more a plan is important in it’s success. The same is true of your life & career, without some kind of plan you’re likely going to wander through life without as much enjoyment as might be possible.
Having an overall plan can help keep focus of what your next step should or might be. There are so many things that come up in life that you can’t plan for, but you should always be able to see that you’re off track, or that your views and goals are changing. Being able to refer back to a plan from time to time can help in motivating oneself as well.
Map It Out
One way to start could be to simply draw a map. Think about how you plan a road trip with start/end points, rest stops, points of interest, etc… Starting with today as your starting point and pick something that you wish or dream for as an end point. Next you could start identifying points along way that you need to get to your dream, roadblocks that could keep it from happening, and detours to get around them.
Change Is Good
Don’t be afraid to change those goals either. It’s important to really allow for growth and maturity that changes one’s opinions and possibly one’s goals. You may be satisfied as a single professional, but what if that one special person turns up next week? Life is a never ending series of events to be experienced. Plan that things will change. Hey, the best part here is that you don’t have to negotiate a “Change Request” for your project – regardless of the budget.
All this is just an exercise in planning and contingency management. My whole point is to get you thinking of your agenda (family, kids, college, retirement, recreation, etc…), as much as you think about your employer’s agenda. It’s great to be the go-to person for an organization, but remember that it’s your future that you’re really working for. Enjoy the trip, don’t let it sneak up on you!
Real Desktop for Windows
So I’m kickin’ back relaxing with a beverage this evening and see a tweet from Twitter friend Chris Pirillo pointing to an interesting app that I hadn’t seen before. Click.
Kinda cool, called Real Desktop from a Schillergames in Germany. Interesting deal, puts a 3D desktop on the Windows desktop. Very cool if you’re really interested in a great looking “glassy” 3D environment that can resemble your messy desk!
Be sure to check out the demo video on the main page.
Where you work matters
At least that’s something that I have learned in the last 4 months since leaving corporate life. No, I don’t miss the cube farms, the burnt popcorn smell emanating from the break room, or the overly boisterous cube neighbor.
The most important thing I’ve figured out is that no matter where you work, you do need people. It’s not so much to even talk to. It’s the social aspect of having others around you, that you interact in some way – even if it’s just to order coffee and sit down again.
Without some kind of social interaction, you tend to get caught up in the minutia that can distract you from your work. Just being around people helps you focus and forces you to come up for air from time to time. The ambient noise is somehow comforting, allowing your thoughts to remain on your task rather than wondering and daydreaming.
That’s what I think anyway. What are your thoughts?
Why professionals should not ignore social media
Are you positioning yourself for growth? How much buzz surrounds your personal brand? Wonder what you could do to change that?
Well, one way to start giving people another facet of you is to leverage Social Media. Social Media is made up of many types of tools that can help you not only work to enhance your brand, but also start connecting with people in new ways.
From Wikipedia:
Social media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share content, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives, and media themselves.
Social media can be more than the sum of its parts; blogs, wikis, social networks, presence applications, lifecasting and video are just tools and methods to enrich interactions with your connections. While broadcasting your every move (lifecasting) may not seem like a wise move to most of us, it’s one example of gaining exposure for your idea (i.e. justin.tv).
However, social media also includes ideas and things that have become common, even mainstream – take blogging for example. Blogs are becoming ubiquitous in communicating, sharing ideas, reporting, and personal branding. Blogs are really your own social network in their own right (but hey, that’s another post) because they allow you to do so much more.
From your personal blog, you can talk about your own ideas, topics, perspectives, and most importantly – set your own agenda. From your blog, you can launch into podcasting, video posts, host your own OpenID, host a PDF of your resume, and link to all your online resources.
Some of those resources should be a social network. For nearly any professional, a service like LinkedIn is a great place to start. Yes, it’s an online social network, but it is tailored to professionals connecting with professionals in a controlled environment. It’s really an organized, standardized way to host a copy of your resume, allow people to search resumes, gain authority (via recommendations which are like references), post & search jobs, and accept/deny invitations to “connect” with peers as you see fit.
Some more socially adept individuals will point out that LinkedIn is deficient in many interactive social aspects, such as being able to share pictures, status updates, funny icons, favorites lists (movies, music, etc), and the like. The good part is that none of this clouds the primary purpose of LinkedIn: to network with like-minded professionals.
Now for the more adventurous, there is Facebook where many professionals are starting to leverage the advanced features, using them to better understand their contacts and communicate with them around the world in real time.
Another quickly growing tool in social media is a micro-blogging/presence application such as Twitter. The speed with with you can communicate, share information, get updates, news, and the like is incredible. The important thing to remember about Twitter (and similar services) is to not judge it by it’s original purpose. The Twitter question “What are you doing?” was just a launchpad. In 140 characters or less, you can communicate a status, a thought, a question, a frustration, a plea, a thank you… Twitter is just another view of the online community that you build.
I guess the point of this is that online communities, be they blogs, social networks or IM are only as good as the effort you put into them. Just like in offline relationships, the effort to understand, learn and grow is crucial to succeeding and gaining benefit for you – and your network!
links for 2007-08-17
- While this took me by surprise, Mathew points out that Dave Sifry had indicated earlier this year that they were looking for someone to replace him. Google is taking most of Technorati’s thunder in blog search. Mathew has more on his blog.
- More on Dave Sifry’s exit from Technorati on Thursday.
links for 2007-08-15
- Liz Strauss highlights a little more of what it takes to be an “expert” blogger, and there are no shortcuts.
- Hmm, I think I like their approach. Google is onto something decent, what do you think?
- If you’re looking for a fantastic case study in Personal Branding, Copyblogger Brian Clark has compiled an excellent look at how David Lee Roth build his brand. Aw, come on, it’s Diamond Dave after all! 😉
- Chris asks a great question here, where is our home-country pride? Have we lost the ability to figure out how to produce things effectively here? It kinda pisses me off to no extent. The problem is unfortunately woven into the fabric of our 21st centur
Blogs: My top 10
Recently I’ve mentioned on Twitter about getting tired of the information overload. What it really is, is that I’ve jammed almost 200 feeds in Google Reader and am having trouble getting value out of all the information.
To rectify this, I started by identifying my Top 10 bloggers. Why? Because I get the most value out of their writing. I’m going “old-school” on them and actually visiting their blogs every day and reading their content in it’s “native environment” instead of the text in a feed reader. The reason for this is because I believe that greater understanding and enjoyment of their work is gained on their site. (btw – the position on the list is irrelevant, I just pasted them in as I decided on which ones I wanted.)
So here are my Top 10 Bloggers:
- Chris Brogan
- Kent Newsome
- Mathew Ingram
- Brian Solis
- Liz Strauss
- Doc Searls
- Brian Clark (CopyBlogger)
- Darren Rowse (ProBlogger)
- Dan Schawbel
- Chris Cree
- Jeff Pulver
Earlier I had Twittered that I was going to remove their feeds from Google Reader while I do this – not sure about that after I think about it. It’s easy to jump over them by hitting “j”, so I may just leave them there.
Also, I took a real hard look at some A-Listers and in the end decided to look at the value of the content. I believe that these 10 11 blogs are interesting enough to spend time there, reading, interacting and enjoying the experience.
@MAC_Arms Pay taxes when you make your money, pay taxes when you spend your money, pay taxes when you successfully invest your money, pay taxes when you save enough taxed money to afford a house, pay taxes to live in your house, pay taxes when you sell the house that you paid taxes on to
Yup, taxes are criminal and we need serious reforms. I've always said that if you want to see a tax revolt, make withholdings illegal and have Americans write a tax check every payday. They'll revolt for sure. You don't miss what you never had.
I think it’s safe to say that @GovEvers should stop blocking audits in Wisconsin and open the books…
“Only AMERICAN citizens should vote.”
Sen. @berniemoreno says voter ID and proof of citizenship are simply common sense.
“We’re talking about a very low threshold — identify who you are and prove you’re a U.S. citizen when you register to vote. I think we’re getting closer to
Wrong. Democrats are solely responsible for hours-long airport lines.
They voted to defund TSA three times and won’t even entertain a conversation about reopening it. Why?
They’re using it as leverage to stop enforcing immigration laws.