Tag Archives: Organization

I'm taking the '100 things' challenge

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I’m sure you’ve heard of it already. If not, a bunch of people have vowed to give up everything in their life except for 100 “things” (loosely defined). This isn’t a new idea, Leo from Zen Habits talked about it almost a year ago and it’s been circulating around the web in blogs and forums before that (but thank goodness we have TIME around to popularize it).

I started cataloging all the items I have around the house and was quite surprised; I think you would be, too. But first, here are some of my initial thoughts:

  • You should define a “thing” at first. I did consider a collection as one “thing.”
  • Pay attention to all the things on all your shelves, in the closet, etc. You forget about things.
  • List your things in the room or area they belong, this helps recognize where stuff clutters.
  • That box sitting there that you haven’t touched since you last moved? Go ahead and get rid of it. No! Don’t even open it.
  • Make sure you’ve considered every part of the house. Food didn’t make it on my list.
  • I have nearly as many “things” in my office as my bedroom. But I only spend a few hours a week in the office!
  • As I went through and cataloged things I made a pile of stuff I don’t want on the list (and will get rid of immediately), this is immediate gratification!

Now the point isn’t to simply remove things from your life (even though that’s a big part of it). The point of the (arbitrary) number, 100, is to keep a sense of value in mind. What is it that makes it into my top 100? What can I limit myself to? How do I prioritize the “stuff” that is tied to my name?

After a couple hours of rummaging around this morning I easily dropped my list down to 108 items. Thaaats right. There are only 108 things in my house. These things include:

  • Bed
  • iPhone
  • Lint roller
  • Umbrella
  • Golf clubs
  • Big green fern
  • Spindle of CDs
  • 24″ LCD monitor

Once you get into it, 100 is a very reasonable number. What are some of the things I’ve done to minimize my “thing footprint”?

  • Digitize things! Documents, photographs, important receipts. Paper does not need to add to your list.
  • Keep the digital needs simple! One thing I’ve tried to do is decrease the number of gadgets / chargers / toys I own. The iPhone is awesome, it’s my phone, calendar, mobile internet device, etc. The Sonos is great, its my house-wide sound system (no need for PC speakers, for example).
  • Minimize the knick-knacks. I try to be very intentional about the things I put on ‘horizontal surfaces’. A lamp here, a fountain there. I had clutter and ‘simple’ is so much more pleasing. Some cool knick-knacks I’ve kept are from around the world (India, New Zealand, Mexico)
  • Clean out the desk. I found a lot of junk I don’t use (I don’t have a tack board, why do I have tacks!?) in the many drawers around my house. Don’t think, just toss. If you feel bad about it, throw it all in a box and check back in 6 months. Didn’t open it? Nuff said.
  • Turn your hangers around. To minimize the amount of clothing in your closet you don’t wear simply put all your hangers in backwards. Then when you wear something for the first time, turn it around (thanks Peter). Every few months I take the unworn to Goodwill. Easy.

Now its nice becuase, no, I don’t own my own place. My roommate is the owner of the plates, knives, forks, etc. But that’s fine, if you use the ‘collection rule’ you’ll see you’ve only got a dozen more things than I do.

I’m staring at my list. These eight things aren’t going to go without a fight.

Have you tried minimizing the ‘stuff’ in your life? How do you declutter?

Top three lessons from online communities

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map of online communities by xkcd

I’ve seen, first hand, the challenges faced when trying to get a group of people together on the internet. I’m a member of a of a number of online communities. I’ve also helped found a few communities. They include:

  • 9rules – a group I really wanted to become a part of, the best of the best content
  • yopos – something noah and I tried to start (coming again soon!): young professionals
  • Twenty Somethings – a group of attractive, witty, smart bloggers all in their twenties
  • Employee Evolution – smart professionals guest blogging about work, life, entrepreneurship
  • Brazen Careerist – the natural extension of EE, network of existing and new bloggers about the above
  • BarCamp/New Tech – online and offline, meetup with some local nerds
  • SXSW/CommunityNext – organized events/conferences around a community
  • AKPsi – offline, but 50+ college students with an interest in business (VP/President)
  • Two other college clubs – again, offline but a good look at how people interact

And I’ve done tons of observation of popular online groups (FlyerTalk, Zen Habits, Get Rich Slowly, I Will Teach You To Be Rich). Here are my top three lessons learned.

Existing community must already be strong

When I say strong you need to have an extreme amount of quality or quantity. A little of each will not be sufficient.

Employee Evolution and 9rules attracted people because of the high quality–they both grew very quickly. On the other hand, yopos sought out to do the same and, I admit, consistent quality wasn’t there (and we didn’t have the numbers either).

In college, AKPsi was one of the largest groups in the business school (100+) and because of that it kept attracting more and more people (network effect). Once our numbers started to drop off we had to quickly focus on quality or else we’d get stuck in mediocrity. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened. We had generations of mediocrity in the group, as the numbers diminished even they left. By the end of my college career the group dropped to a quarter of it’s original size. The same happened with two other groups–when the strength dwindled, the community failed.

Without the quality or quantity it’s very hard to do anything. You could take five very talented people and create something amazing. If you have 100 people, odds are you will find some great, active, and interesting people worth sticking around for.

People always talk about meeting up, rarely do

It must be how we are hard-wired as humans, but no matter what your group is–people will want to meet in person. People will try to organize and coordinate these events but they rarely happen. Even in college, where we met as a group every week, it was challenging to have people commit to anything outside of something we’ve already structured for them.

Lucky for the internet there are groups like the SXSW coordinators who will put on an event for everyone to go to. But even with 9rules we never saw any official “get togethers” no matter how often it was brought up. I’ve seen the same start over at Brazen Careerist and I question what will come from the discussions (I have a good idea, though: nothing).

Some obvious exceptions to the rule are groups like BarCamp. These still usually require a big investment from one or two people (and that’s it). If you want something to happen you have to take the initiative yourself at first. Then, make sure you have the strong community to help in the future (see previous point). People usually need to see value first.

Now, the inverse of this is also true: people love to participate a lot in the beginning. Say you open up a forum: people will chat about anything and everything they think of on day one. By day ten they have less to talk about, less to reply to. The challenge here, depending on your group, is maintaining participation and having people come back (quality and quantity help).

There are key participants, focus on them

No matter where you go, one will notice the “key” players. Especially in a discussion environment like a forum. Within five minutes of surfing FlyerTalk it was clear who knew what they were talking about and was respected by the group. When I started yopos there were a few guys who were very eager and I didn’t have them time to focus on them and empower them to help with the community. Lesson learned.

CommunityNext had a ton of people show up and a lot of it was due to key figures. Get them involved, get them in your group and make sure people know about them. One of my favorite stories was watching Hiten Shah try to fix the wireless network at Stanford. People noticed him working on it and one or two people stopped and offered to help.

What about you? Do you agree or disagree? Have you learned anything worth sharing?

PS: I’ve been working on updating and consistent-ifying my look. Click through to devin reams and let me know what you think. Oh, and be sure to tell your friends about my services.

Setting the Pace on Day One

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I think day one at a new job is the most important. It is going to set the pace for the rest of the job. I’m always conscious of first impressions and nothing is more important than a job’s first impression. There are only a few ways a first day can go though:

  • Hit the ground running: You get in, login, are handed a task and you get to it. You meet the people you need to get things done, you get the information you need quickly, and you start solving hard problems. This is a challenge and it pushes you out of your comfort zone but you love it because you know there won’t be a dull day at work. You’ll be working with smart, capable and interesting people. Yay for work!
  • Busy, busy work: You sit down, get on the computer and you’re given tons of information to read. Background, client information, goals, visions, timelines. You need to understand it all by yesterday. But, you’re not really doing anything. You’re becoming acclimated but it’s not the most effective way–it’s a cheap way.
  • Orientation: Go to a day in the office, have policies and procedures read to you, walk around and find the bathroom (as if you couldn’t find it when the issue presented itself), learn how to change your voicemail (as if people are going to call you in the next few weeks).
  • Paperwork: Sign this, put your SSN here, sign here, initial here, read the NDA and date it. You’ll need to do this all morning. This afternoon you have a sexual harassment seminar and then you can catch a flight to go to orientation. You’ll see some work when your boss gets back in town.

I’ve experienced a mixture of all these and I know there are plenty more. I’ve walked into a small business (4 people) and had to find out why the router isn’t working anymore, contact the ISP and put together a proposal as to which provider we should switch to (JIC).

I’ve walked into a cubicle farm and been handed boring, menial tasks because nobody was there to supervise me yet and help me get to work on a project. I’ve gone to three consecutive weeks of training worth absolutely nothing.

I think companies should start to see the value of the first scenario. It’s like a First Class Interview because your new hire will either sink or swim. Why waste 16-40 hours of salaried time getting them acclimated, trained and filling out papers that might not be relevant in a few weeks? What if they fail in a month and you had already wasted a few days paying them. (Yes, I’m suggesting that interviewing is imperfect and some folks will slip through the cracks, but that’s another discussion.)

Have you ever had a spectacular first day? One that set the pace for the rest of your time with the company?

Do you need a personal assistant?

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There’s a new lifestyle experiment circling the world right now: personal assistants (on the other side of the world). Tim Ferriss definitely popularized this concept with his book The 4-Hour Workweek.

As I sat and read the book I was in the mindset that “I’m a simple guy, I will never need an assistant.” In hindsight, I realize that was the wrong way to consider the idea. For some reason we’re of the thought that a lot of tasks we do are essentially “ours” that no one else could take over. That’s ultimately wrong.

Take e-mail for example: Tim has even outsourced (through a series of rules) his own email. You and I aren’t in the same position as Tim but think about other mundane tasks that can easily be translated to an assistant:

  • Booking travel (15 minutes)
  • Researching the iPhone and how to jailbreak it for T-Mobile usage (15 minutes)
  • Researching the pro/cons of upgrading to a Macbook Pro (15 minutes)
  • Researching the pros/cons of trying FireFox Beta 4 and if my addons will work with it (10 minutes)
  • Monitor my financial accounts weekly and pay credit cards monthly (15 minutes)
  • Write a nice thank you/nice to meet you note for people met at SXSW (15 minutes)
  • Contact a company to get a refund (10 minutes)
  • Contact another company to get a new download/activation code (10 minutes)

I created that list during the first two hours of my Friday morning. I put myself in the mindset: if I had an assistant right now, what would I ask them to do for me? I’ve already come up with almost 2 hours worth of work… during my two hours of work. That seems like a compelling reason to consider it.

Twitter is about me and you and you

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When you sign up and join Twitter it’s about a lot of things. Some say it’s an ecosystem, it’s about the simplicity, it’s about the voyeurism, it’s communication porn and so on.

I think it’s also like walking into a chatroom with just the people you want. Any other chatroom (IRC, AOL, Yahoo Games!) has a bunch of folks that are ‘noise’ and you’re not always interested in. With Twitter you can tune them out (setting: only see @replies to people you mutually follow). This is important because my experience is tailored to me and different from everyone else’s. I follow different people so even though my social circles may overlap with hundreds of people I don’t have to be involuntarily involved in those conversations.

When my experience is just about me and the people I want to interact with then I find that valuable. Facebook, Plaxo and LinkedIn have screwed this up because they’re overwhelming me with information about people that don’t always matter to me. MySpace realized that we should be able to opt-in to our friends because, of many reasons, some people change their profile picture too much, or leave groups too much, or add applications too much, or… whatever reason you want.

Twitter means the updates I receive are from the people I want, the conversations are with the people I want, and even more importantly: the content is limited to what they want (to divulge). I believe this control is missing from sites like Facebook and is why so many people hide and remove all their feed activity. In some cases, those are the people I want to ‘follow’ the most.

Vacation ethics

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The dilemma is simple: I get next Tuesday off for Christmas (thanks, Christians) but I don’t get Christmas Eve off. I have a Monday gap. The same goes for New Years and New Years Eve. These floating days off in the middle of the week sound like “well you’d take those weeks off anyway.”

Wrong.

What if I don’t want to take the time off? What if I want to get lots done while everyone else is at home? What if I don’t celebrate Christ-related or late-night-binge-drinking holidays? I’m forced to shut down along with the rest of the country?

Okay, fine.

But I have no work to do on Monday. I have no clients to work with on Monday. Why don’t we just get Monday off, too? Hmm, I’m faced with the following:

  • Go to the office and sit there, alone, refreshing my email and trying to find something to do that will help develop my career.
  • Take the vacation day because I’m essentially forced to since everyone else is.
  • Work from home even though it’s not permitted and even though there will be nothing to do. Oh, and nobody would be around to notice.

What would you do in this situation?

Accomplish anything you want: pick 5 priorities

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I keep telling people that my generation (Gen-Y, Millenials) are going to be one where prioritization becomes more important than ever. With the internet alone we have unlimited resources to do, learn, and be interested by nearly everything the world has to offer. But, as I’ve always believed: just because you’re capable of doing anything, doesn’t mean you should want, nor attempt to do everything.

That’s why I’ve picked 5 things that I want to make sure I accomplish every day. Goals are important but only if they’re SMART. I’ve picked the following:

  • Have a morning routine: Wake up early, have time to go to the gym and eat breakfast with the paper.
  • Read a book for at least half an hour: I have a pile of books that I want to get to. Both fun and serious.
  • Contact at least 3 friends each day: As previously mentioned, keeping in touch isn’t easy. I want to make sure my close friends stay that way.
  • Enjoy 30 minutes of silence: When do we have quiet time to just think and collect thoughts? May it be while driving, the shower, before bed: I will have 30 minutes with myself.
  • Play on the web for 30 minutes: This is a gimme goal but I want to make sure I get around to other blogs and sites like 9rules and Facebook every day. Its fun and still productive to me.

All I have to do is make sure I align my schedule with my goals now. If I go to bed at midnight and get up at six I’ll add a daily item at 11:30 to have my silence. I’ll make sure I have an hour in the morning to do my routine. It’s quite easy to get things done once you realize you have the time and you commit to it…

The best part about goals is tracking them. Seinfeld would put a big ‘X’ on his calendar every day he accomplished his task. I intend to do the same. I hope I don’t break the chain!

What are your five daily priorities?

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