I’m not a big fan of New Year’s Resolutions, both because they’re cliche, and because they’re usually ineffective. People load up on goals and programs and life changes in the first two weeks of January and by February 1st, they’re back to their same old bad habits. In general, I think people try and take on too much at once, and they rely too much on the burst of motivation they get coming out of the holidays. Sadly, motivation usually wanes quickly and people’s enthusiasm for implementing tough changes goes with it. That being said, I do think that having a regular period of reflection to look back over the last year and look ahead to the next is a good idea. Many people do this on New Year’s, though your birthday is another popular option. Anyway, I was just curious as to what you accomplished in 2008 that they’re most proud of, and what you want to accomplish in 2009. It could be anything, large or small, one-time or regular habit, etc. Post in the comments!

Oh, and mine are:

Most proud of for 2008: traveled asia for 3 months and started working on BlueSwarm full-time (give or take

Most want to accomplish for 2009: start taking piano lessons, get BlueSwarm to Ramen Profitability, apply to business school, and buy my first commercial property.

Ok, I know, I know…my 2009 goals are lofty and numerous. However, I’m not starting them all at once. I hope to start the piano lessons in Jan / Feb, the bschool apps will take place in Aug - Oct, the commercial property towards the end of the year, and BlueSwarm throughout the entire year, hopefully. So I feel like I’ve got things spread out quite a bit.

Anyway, post your stuff below!

I had the unenviable task today of going to the post office to pick up two packages. There was a line about forty people long and several clerks behind the counters helping people with all the enthusiasm and speed of a drunken gorilla. One of the clerks was apparently only equipped to help people if they wanted to purchase money orders, which meant that one of the managers had to constantly prowl the line of patrons, yelling that they should go get in the special-line-for-purchasers-of-money-orders-only line, while another manager waddled around behind the counter chatting with the clerks and making them go even slower.

Why are we paying for this? Why don’t we just let private companies compete for this business? It seems like there would be two concerns:

• What about areas or customers that are unprofitable to serve?
• Will costs rise? (I hope so…see below)

I don’t really have a good answer for the first one, except to perhaps let companies bid on the right to run the mail for a particular region or something, with the requirement that they serve *all* customers in that area.

On the cost front, overall, I would expect costs to decline, as I’m sure that companies like UPS and FedEx are more efficient. However, they do have a profit motive, plus they wouldn’t have the subsidization that the USPS enjoys, so the price-per-mailing might rise. But isn’t this a good thing? Seriously, what percentage of your mail is actually useful stuff that you couldn’t replace with an email or downloadable PDF? 5%? 2%? Almost all of my mail is junk mail, bills (that I pay online), and statements that just get tossed in my records box. If the price of sending that stuff doubled or tripled, a lot of business models based on turning trees into physical spam would lose their viability overnight.

Think about it: how much money and energy is expended getting junk mail into our mailboxes?

Sigh…probably won’t happen anytime soon, though.

(Note: I didn’t have time for more than a cursory check to confirm that the USPS is funded by taxpayer dollars, and by how much, so please correct me if I’m wrong)

I’m going to start a new tradition where I create a small website, service, or other project. Here are the rules:

• It has to be launched in less than 25 pomodoros (12.5 hours), including brainstorming, design, development, launch, and initial marketing

That’s it.

Why am I doing this? Here’s why:

• Startups are getting cheaper and cheaper to launch. But how cheap can you go? How cheap should you go?
• I have a lot of little ideas that I’d like to experiment with.
• Gives me fun projects to learn new stuff with
• Keeps me grounded in the “less is more” mentality
• Why not?

I’d like to do it every month, but we’ll see how the first one goes. My first project will be launched in the next day or two, so stay tuned.

If you want to read more, here’s a few posts:

StartupWeekend.com

Ready, set, develop: how to create a six-hour startup

How to create and launch a startup in 10.5 hours

This post is not very well thought-out, nor am I qualified to write it, but it’s something I remember pondering while I was traveling in Asia, particularly in China. Many of the distinct cultures of the world today are the result of thousands of years of near isolation. Chinese culture is a good example, as China was mostly cut off from the rest of the world for thousands of years, and their culture is unique in many ways as a result. Regions that were more integrated and connected (Europe) show similarities in culture more than more isolated regions or countries.

So it almost seems as if the development of culture stems from isolation and the resulting asymmetries of information. For example, the technologies of warfare developed in parallel in different parts of the world , and often when those cultures collided in battle, one force had an overwhelming advantage because their technology had taken a different path and was far superior. Improvement to society of any kind, whether scientific, medical, military, political etc. might take centuries to reach another culture.

Contrast this with today: virtually any improvement or development can spread around the world in a matter of weeks or months. Fashion, art, and political changes now also reach a global audience, influencing cultures around the world. Driven by the Internet, globalization, increasing democratization, and increasing use of English worldwide, we now enjoy a global spread of information that takes hours instead of centuries. Over time, will this process result in the gradual homogenization of culture?

I discovered Getting Things Done back in the summer of 2006, just after I graduated from college and moved to San Francisco. Since then, I’ve used it on and off to manage my time and my tasks. I’ve learned a lot about myself and how I work in the process, which I’ll detail in a future post. But one of the biggest things I’ve learned is that GTD is not made for procrastinators. There’s this inherent assumption in GTD that you really WANT to get things done, but you just don’t have tasks organized or defined well enough. David Allen’s assertion that procrastination stems from a lack of definition in what needs to be done is probably true to some extent for some people, but it’s definitely not the whole story. For example, my sink is often full of dirty dishes that I’m putting off taking care of. It’s not that I need more definition in the task, it’s just that I don’t want to do it. Additionally, some tasks are so complicated that it takes almost as long to define them as do them. This is particularly true in web development, where you need to hunt down a bug or explore some kind of new technique. You could spend an hour defining exactly what you need to do (which would probably be wrong) or you could just jump in and do it.

The jumping in and doing is where I often get tripped up. As a result, stuff sits on my task lists for too long, the task lists get too cluttered, so I stop looking at them, which means that my system is no longer a trusted system, and I’ve lost the whole point of GTD. Lame.

Enter the Pomodoro Technique. The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method similar to timeboxing that was invented by Francesco Cirillo. You can read all about it in this paper (44 pages, but highly recommended) or in this condensed blog post version, but the gist of it is:

1. use a kitchen timer to track your time
2. work in iterations of 25 minutes with 5 minute breaks (one pomodoro)
3. every four pomodoros, take a 25-30 min break
4. once you start a pomodoro, you must finish it
5. plan out your day and what you want to accomplish
6. estimate how many pomodoros each task will take
7. minimize interruptions
8. change your plans as needed
9. record how many pomodoros each task takes
10. learn from your mistakes and do better next time

Pretty simple, right? So I’m giving it a try. I got a mechanical kitchen timer and it’s ticking away right now. I’ve noticed an immediate boost in my productivity…whether it lasts is another story.