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No. 4

30-Aug-10

We have a new baby in the house. No.4 is very special just like all the others. I’ve noticed he smiles while he is dreaming but new babies don’t smile while they are awake until older. I wonder what he is seeing and dreaming in his sleep that has him smile given how newly born he is. More to the point why is there any content at all given it’s only a few days?

Me Time

13-May-10

Quick Me TimeI have a very hectic 2 weeks ahead of me. So I scheduled 20 minutes of me time at the park over the road from my office. This is the view from just below my chin watching the early bird autonomous robots on their way to work.

Inevitable Future (an IF)

11-May-10

Stockland Beach Decent in the PathfinderIn a world full of variety, knowledge and potential it’s so easy to operate tomorrow how you did today, yesterday and many days before that. For most of us less than 1% of our lives is truly spontaneous or new. Life can become an inevitable future, what I call an IF. So I try to break my IF by making changes, self expressing and exploring a different way of living and working.

The picture left is one of my attempts to break my IF last year. Something a little crazy. I don’t normally go four wheel driving because I don’t like the environmental impact it has despite owning a 4WD vehicle. It was something spontaneous, a tangent from my normal life and I never regretted it. It was actually brilliant experience with some great people that asked me along (Thanks Mike and Doug).

Being efficient at efficiency

29-Apr-10

P1130503

  • Automation is more than machines doing work for you. It’s about MACHINES and HUMANS following RULES religiously.
  • Keeping multiple todo lists is very bad. That would then be a list of lists = FAIL. One work list and one personal list is plenty.
  • Coincidental results are when you shift your approach to a task in such a way that it causes other tasks to be completed or progressed.
  • Relying on memory = FAIL. Write down enough that you can act on. Do you write down phone numbers and later look at them in mystery?
  • A few big theme based spreadsheets with more tabs trumps lots of single tab spreadsheets.
  • Search your email to find emails don’t file them. Mind shift » Search is in effect treating every piece of text in an email as a folder/label.
  • I need one many of these (pictured)

Link Mezza Plate #10

13-Apr-10

Silicon Fish and no chips

The State of Flow

07-Apr-10


Wikipedia describes Flow as,

the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.

It’s difficult to achieve this state but if you can it is an amazing feeling. I find flow requires comfort, awakeness, music, enjoyment of the task at hand. It can also come of the back of a series of epiphanies that lead into excited state of flow for extended periods of time.

Personally I’ve found myself in that state just by laying in bed and brainstorming to music, also in sporting situations when I have been surfing or sailing. Even working (if you like your job like me) it happens but is usually cut short by an environment that tends to destroy the state.

What breaks flow is distraction or fatigue. People also break flow, particularly those that suck energy from an environment with negative speech, behaviour and presence. I also think age can play a part if you let age dull your self expression, learning, health and creativity.

The state of flow probably isn’t very observable because it’s so internalized but a few classic representations of it by the movie industry are the character Neo in the Matrix, Bud fox at the height of his career in the Wall Street and more recently when Sam Worthington masters the skills of natural law of the Na’vi people in Avatar.

I think it’s worth the effort pushing for the state of flow if you can. It takes effort but it is possible with mental training and setting the right conditions for it to occur.

Photo by alaskaent

Blade Runner Cityscapes

18-Mar-10

I love urban photography almost as much as I love nature photography. Here’s some shots from various Flickr photographers I follow:

  • Sydney Industrial – clearly it doesn’t have to be about skyscrapers. By Mugley
  • Manhattan – so strange without the twins but now balanced with buildings in scale. By paulobar
  • Shinagawa Hilton Tokyo – a super city that transports you 10 years into the future. By PSD

Hypnotically bootyful video track

17-Mar-10

The post title is just some snippets from the comment stream that I thought summed it up nicely. Mesmerizing to watch.

Great job by Creative Apps and hat tip to Jake Lodwick.

Record Makers Promo from CreativeApplications.Net on Vimeo.

South Coast Track Tasmania

01-Feb-10

Recently I walked the South Coast Track in Tasmania’s Southwest National Park wilderness with a friend and neighbour, Michael Sainsbury. It is regarded as one of the top bushwalks of the world because of it’s pristine, remote and wildlife rich nature. Having done it I completely agree.

P1010014

In summary the trip is a flight into Melaleuca via TasAir and a walk 83km east coming out at Cockle Creek. The trip took us 6 days but you do need to allow 8 days. Bad weather can prevent you crossing the Ironbound Range and river crossings may not be possible if in flood.

It is a remote walk and there is a wide variety of terrain experience. The walk has three superb climbs. The first easy climb is into the Red Point Hills and the second was a difficult, windy, cold one over the Ironbound Range. The final climb is up to the top of the South Cape Range. I created the following elevation chart to highlight the climbs.

There are no roads, fire trails, huts or human infrastructure other than timbered sections of the track and the odd pit toilet to protect the ecosystem. So you are on your own other than the odd bush walker. There’s plenty of drinking water in creeks and streams. All seem to contain frogs, yabbies and fish. Some creeks flow red due to tea tree.

P1010117

If you plan to do the walk then permits from TasAir flight departure or from Cockle Creek National Parks Office are $30. Take a map, compass, fuel stove (no fires allowed), first aid, an EPIRB and cold/wet gear.

The fauna is evident everywhere. You are certain to see at a minimum yabbies, freshwater fish, frogs, wallabies and many bird species. If you are lucky you may see the very rare Orange Bellied Parrot. There’s an incredible diversity of flora such as the Isophysis tasmanica orchid which we saw when crossing the Ironbound Range. If you like those strange looking plants in Dr Zeus books then you’ll love the Pandani and Scoparia up in the ranges.

I highly recommend reading King of the Wilderness the Deny King biography by Christobel Mattingley. Launceston Field Naturalists Club’s Guide to Flowers & Plants of Tasmania is also an excellent resource if you want to get the most out of the flora experience. Matt Downunder wrote a good post about preparing for a 10 day hike in south west Tasmania.

I’ve posted our Tasmania South Coast Track photo set at my flickr account

Caleb Playing Clocks by Coldplay

24-Jan-10

One of the joys of being a parent is seeing your kids learn something themselves through the discovery process rather than training. Our son Caleb hasn’t ever had a Piano lesson. Emma and I don’t play the Piano either so he has had to find out for himself how to use it.

He generally finds songs he likes on YouTube or on the back of our CD’s. Once he knows the songs name he searches YouTube for people who play that song using a Piano and learns their keystrokes. It might not be finger choice or timing perfect but I think he is getting the notes right. On the weekend he wanted to get his efforts up on YouTube like the other “Piano People”. Being a parent who wants to encourage kids to create content I helped him upload a video taken from an iPhone into my YouTube account. So here’s Caleb playing Clocks by Coldplay…

No News(corp) at Google

02-Dec-09

Newscorp to Google market capIf you want to know why Newscorp isn’t happy with Google crawling it’s content then here’s a quick graphic to explain. Search engines unlike most other business models have a right to use your content by the permission you give them to allow their robots to crawl your web content. To date News has allowed this but switching off this right will remove Newscorp content from Google.

Consumers buy an experience

12-Nov-09

Apple Shop SydneyPeople nearly always buy an experience. This could be as simple as a brand, a service experience, a trend. There are many examples of this. One point which indicates this is that people pay different prices for the same object and are happy to do so. People will also transact because they feel loved by a Salesperson. They also buy to satiate a desire.

Apple shops are a good example. They sell coolness. The stuff they sell implies you’re not cool if you don’t have it. You almost feel guilty if you don’t have their cool stuff. Maybe that’s just me?

Humanity Video Stress Relief

15-Oct-09

I had quite a stressful day at work yesterday and sometimes the best thing to do when that happens is watch a few videos to help pull me back to the big picture rather than the single moment I’m currently in. Observing humanity is one way to do that.

A few years ago I worked in Tokyo on some transactions with the investment bank I was working for. I desperately want to go back there to live for at least a month or more to soak it all up again with my family.

This video really captures the feeling of Tokyo. It is an amazing place, you must go there.

Mars? Blade Runner? No it’s a Sydney dust storm

23-Sep-09

Hornsby Station Dust StormA surreal start to the day with a massive dust storm.

The picture left is one of my snaps on the way to Hornsby Station in Sydney.

There’s been some great photo’s of the event on Flickr.

MIT Media Lab’s Personas

23-Sep-09

Personas is an interesting project by MIT Media Labs that provides you with a visual representation of the use of your full name online. It really is an aggregate of all people by that name so it’s more interesting in an artistic and an infographical sense. I created one for " Marc Lehmann " as an example. MIT’s detailed explanation is as follows:

Personas is a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, recently on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab (Please contact us if you want to show it next!). It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one’s aggregated online identity. In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you.

Tron Legacy

25-Aug-09

I remember as a child walking out of the movie Tron and thinking "I love anything to do with the future". Movies like Tron, War Games and Star Wars were the seeding inspiration around my life as a product builder in financial markets and more recently in web applications.

What’s really interesting is how Apple is promoting these pre-release HD trailers. The content is rich and attracts traffic. Very smart Apple. Is the strategy is to get conversion to Quicktime format? Or, is to get high end CGI work to be associated with their brand which is also very strong in device and web design.

They are also pushing the new fantasy scifi called Avatar which is definitely worth a look even just for the pure CGI talent.

Goyte – Mesmerising

20-Aug-09

Goyte is mesmerising.

Animator and film clip director extraordinaire Brendan Cook emerged from his studio with this amazing film clip for Gotye’s Heart’s A Mess (radio edit).

Hat tip: Portable Film Festival

Systemic Monopolies

08-Jul-09

Systemic Monopolies are a problem I have long thought exists in our less than ideal form of capitalism.

We think of traditional monopolies as being about a business having some unique advantage or forming some sort of cartel to dominate a market. While most economies have mechanisms to prevent this they equally create what I call systemic monopolies through their solutions and also by the academically simplistic view on what sets prices of products and services in a capitalist system.

I believe Systemic Monopolies tend to exist where there are only a few key players and many very small players (the residual having near zero influence). They also exist where it seems they have competition but when you look at barriers consumers face to buying products from their competitors they are actually in a situational or localised monopoly.

So what are some examples and what trait(s) lead to the effect of a monopoly even though in the strict sense of the definition there isn’t one. Let’s call them Systemic Monopolies:

Mega Shopping Centres

Suburban locations can’t usually support multiple large shopping centers for consumers to choose between. You can only have one large Westfield or Centro shopping center as an example. Accordingly you get a localized monopoly situation where the time and financial cost of travel introduces a barrier sufficient to cause only shopping at one major location or center to be viable. As you get lower down the socioeconomic curve this barrier gets even larger on a relative basis.

Local councils enhance this effect, possibly not intentionally, by dis-allowing the development of alternatives due to their ability to deny projects and business ideas on the grounds of ensuring local economic stability. An example might be disallowing approval to build too many child care centres in a suburb.

Banks

Pre-agreed or regulated transfer pricing fees between banks exist to compensate banks when customers use services such as ATM’s that belong to the other bank. When you use another banks ATM, your bank gets charged a fee. They then charge you. The result is the system tends toward a price equilibrium for the product. Quite standard ATM fees in this case. So the effect is you have no choice, just one choice in fact, "the fee system". Each banks prices tend to replicate each other over time or the differences are so small that the cost of changing bank doesn’t allow for any choice or opportunistic consumer behavior around price.

There is also tendency for new bank entrants not to compete on price because equity markets will punish their stock price accordingly. This syndrome is about conformity to peer group pricing levels. Not in a cartel manner, but more in a "I don’t dare to be different" kind of way. Much like how a school girl won’t wear anything to different to her friends at a party. Consistent bank pricing and product behavior relative to their competitors equates to a stable stock price. As a bank you are encouraged by the market not to compete aggressively on price.

None of this is good for consumers

I think the systems of government, regulation and markets cause these Systemic Monopolies to occur. Governments at all levels need to pull themselves out of the monopoly dark ages and look more closely at Systemic Monopoly situations and attempt to prevent them. Councils should reinvigorate the "High Street" shopping strip, farmers markets and other choices to compete with the Westfields, AMP’s and Centro’s of the world.

There just doesn’t seem to be enough choice in some situations.

Photo: NatalieMaynor

You know you’re a geek when…

11-Jun-09

  • You try and pass off your less than 1 year old iPhone to your non geek partner so you can get the new 32GB video enabled one.
  • Life looks like a big content opportunity or a chance to have a say on the very obscure but mildly intriguing (that probably will be of zero interest to anyone non-geek). Unless (a) you make a fool of yourself or (b) you said something cutting edge, controversial or offensive in which case you hit a retweet gold mine.
  • Writing a blog post has become a chore and an anomaly amongst a plethora of tweets which we all know is “time saving blogging” or otherwise know as 160 character rants.
  • Facebook feels childish now and a “zombie chomp” from a friend is just damn irritating. How about you send me a frigging beer instead!
  • You start referring to Facebook as FB. If so it’s time to stop using Facebook.
  • The word SEO stops meaning opportunity and instead references all those people trying to infiltrate your LinkedIn and Twitter networks.
  • When every pixel of white space means something special to you in the sense of design, screen real estate or most commonly an IE6 wireframe implementation headache.
  • You stop opening PPT funny files sent to you from friends because generally there is an “I’m not evil please send me to all your friends and create good karma” message on the last slide. OR, when received from a fellow geek your anti-rick-roll defenses kick in.
  • You don’t pay for virus software because you know that while AVG exists it’s like dropping a $50 notes through the grill of a street drain.
  • You wonder how banks and telco companies with so much IT muscle can build such bad websites.
  • You stop trying to fix problems with large companies and instead adopt a cancel service and move on approach.
  • You know the font on a document just by looking at it from 100ft away.
  • You know what would be a better font choice for that same document.
  • You also know that font will look crap on a PC when compared to an Apple.
  • You know PC could do better and can’t understand why PC doesn’t fight back with some “[long pause] Hi I’m Apple [long pause] I’m a bit slooooow” adverts.
  • You think gradient shades of blue or grey in Web2.0 websites are pretty but will undoubtedly date at some point.
  • You catch the train/bus to work so you can tweet and read blogs instead of lame bumper stickers and lower your carbon footprint.
  • You get a call at least once a week from a non-geek relative asking you to fix their circa windows98 PC and being a true geek you are happy to help despite telling them every Christmas to switch to Mac next time as PC’s are really best left to the geeks who need power and like to get under the hood.
  • You write a blog post about being a Geek and close it with…KTHXBAI

5 Twitter Indicators

23-Apr-09

Making a followback decision is a little easier keeping these indicators in mind…

  1. Gaming = Followers / Following
  2. Snub = Following / Followers
  3. Newbie Status = o_0
  4. Groupie Ratio = Ave # followers of those you follow / Ave # followers of your followers
  5. Bankwagon Status = joined Twitter more recently that Ashley Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey

Humboldt Squid

15-Apr-09

A friend was telling me about the Humboldt Squid which are a large aggressive squid (up to 6ft long) that are thriving of the west coast of USA. I was after video footage and discovered this high quality science website by Northern California Public Broadcasting that has an excellent video on Humboldt Squid.


QUEST on KQED Public Media.

Pure Waters

15-Apr-09

The real James Boag ad is fantastic (1st video) and the followup by Guinness spoofing the success of the “Pure Waters” concept is equally clever (2nd video).

Link Mezza Plate #9

10-Mar-09


Some tasty link morsels:

Online Video AKA Lap TV

03-Mar-09

Often I find myself sitting next to Emma on the couch working on watching my laptop while she watches the TV. I realised I am only about three TV shows from zero dependence on traditional TV content (House, Boston Legal and NCIS are the TV shows if you are interested to know). If they were available on my Lap TV I would watch them on that device.

The key point is “device”. If all my on-demand web based video content were available through HDTV and it had a keyboard and internet access then I’d be happy to switch to the plasma TV from my laptop. The TV is just too restricted in it’s content control and in a user experience sense despite me having disk/dvd/cable content recall at my finger tips. I feel it has a chasm to cross while the internet is only as short “device” leap away from winning the battle. It would remove my need for any Cable or Commercial TV access.

What I Watch

ABC’s iView
This is world class TV on demand produced by Australian’s own ABC network. Being with iiNet as my ISP it’s also completely free bandwidth usage. iiNet have high quality customer support for the record.

TED
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader as it provides a wider content set and provides video’s online through it’s website for free. A customer of Saasu’s, Stephen Collins from Acid Labs, is also passionate about this video content source and he actually got the honor of an invite to TED and went recently to the 2009 event.

Stilgherrian Live
Stil Gherrian’s regular chat show and the odd road trip or special broadcasting via ustream.tv. Covers news, journalism, politics and technology. I have suffered a bit of a laughing fit disease reading the chat streams and watching the video I have to say. The whole audience participation through conversation direction is where I see my consumer attention heading in the future. It simply adds a richness through consumer participation that TV will struggle to compete against if it’s best effort are those stupid red and yellow buttons on your cable remote control.

iJump TV
iJump is about how marketers and communicators are using social media to connect with their customers and audiences. This is what I call Reality Net. Reality TV is scripted, while Reality Net tends to be very adhoc and ultra-candid. Simon Young is a bit of a mad young thing so the interviews are very engaging because the perspective you get just isn’t something you would get in a TV style interview process.

Joost
A way to watch videos – music, TV and movies over the Internet. It’s a video and channel approach. Think of it as a hybrid YouTube/CableTV offering that is free.

Vimeo
Uploaded and shared videos that I find it easier to get higher quality content from than traditional YouTube and Google Video type channels.

Photo: Aaron Escobar

Change your perspective

18-Feb-09

Tired of the same old, same old, perspective of life. Here’s some alternative ways of seeing things that help snap you out of that automaton existence, that is the day to day.



Sub orbital flight around earth

When catching a plane at altitude turn you head to be horizontal and pretend you are in a context of looking at earth from space. It feels like you are looking at our planet not out of a plane. Photo:marclehmann


Losing your self importance – we are all just ants

Looking down from tall building, planes and mountains is a chance to change your perspective from the day to day macro perspective up to micro. The god like view of things. Photo:kelpenhagen



I’m a fish!

Get you underwater goggles and hop in a pool. Lay on the bottom of the pool. Look up and see the plane of water and sky above. Works best on sunny day and if you can hold you breath reasonably well. Photo:wili_hybrid


Startled

Very little visual information

This creates intrigue, assumption and a bunch of other feelings caused by your brain filling in the missing gaps. This shot is taken of my daughter and her friend through the slats of a chair. Photo:marclehmann


Umbrella Ferns

Bugs eye view

Get yourself (or your camera) on the ground looking up through the layers of jungle toward the canopy and sky above. Photo:marclehmann



The Blade Runner cityscape

I like this type of photo of Tokyo super city. It gives a feeling of future, excitement, life. Photo:masochismtango



Aura’s

HDR Photography techniques give back an auro to scenes which often the brain or the eye sees but which the camera just can’t capture. The colour intensity gives the world an aura. Photo:_neona_


Why Teens Don’t Twitter

04-Feb-09

Why no baby tweeps?

  1. Teens don’t want mum and dad to see their chat. Tracking = bad idea. No, very, very bad idea.
  2. Their personal brand is already promoted on Myspace and Facebook through status updates (also with photo content). Why risk leaving this party for one with less people who are also a lot older. Platform loyalty is strong.
  3. It’s not an SMS killer when it comes to communicating with their friends…yet. They tend to SMS in less than 50 characters in chatspeak (textese) and it is more efficient arguably.
  4. Voice is important to teens, more so than adults. In gaming, calls and self expressed conversation.
  5. Teens want certain people (or groups) to know certain bits of info, but not everyone. “Careful or Joe will find out about the party and turn up”.
  6. Immediacy is really important to teens. Arguably Twitter is immediate, but to send it is. Is everyone listening. Generally a mobile SMS gets attention instantly from another teen on the receiving end of a message
  7. Like news sites, forums and social networks in general. A demographic can get in there and through the content they generate it will cause a disinterest barrier to the other demographics. The barrier being “I’m different to these guys and that’s bad”.

What will change their minds…eventually

  1. It ain’t cool yet. Teens are cool hunters.
  2. One to many communication. Update lots of friends at once.
  3. Bragging – very easy on twitter, you just need to be subtle.
  4. The social tools they love are causing a convergence between “status updates” and “posting Tweets”
  5. Visual identity of avatars and photo’s are important to teens so the richness of Twitter over SMS gives it an advantage.
  6. Teens solve for easy. Laziness is well catered for when you can update all your friends on an event through twitter and get 2nd and 3rd degree promotion.
  7. As Teens grow up their older work/social contacts will influence them onto it.
  8. They don’t mind forums so Twitter could be an easy move once they understand it.
  9. Brands they love are moving into spaces like twitter and draw cards will pull more and more teen consumers across.
  10. When Twitter is cool (in their demographic) it will take off with them. Teens being cool hunters are now more likely to adopt Twitter because twitter now hangs out at the Facebook party.

Quick Tilt-Shift Hack

02-Feb-09

Tilt-shift is a very appealing technique to me. I love photography and when I first learned of the technique from Adrian Lynch on his Flickr.com account I had to learn more.

I used a de-focus feature to blur the top and bottom of this photo I took in Tokyo. You can see the miniaturization effect. Even though it’s not great quality you can get the idea that defocusing the fore and back ground areas around your subject makes it feel miniature. In many cases the top and bottom thirds of the shot is all that you need to de-focus in a gradient manner.

Essentially your brain thinks it’s a macro/miniature photo because there isn’t any depth of field in the photo. Brain Trickery at it’s best.

The Wikipedia page on tilt-shift has a good detailed explanation.

Getting into nature, gets you into nature.

01-Feb-09

The easiest way to become environmentally sensitive is to get amongst nature. I always come back from a bushwalk feeling more enthusiastic than ever about saving what I have just seen. This weekend we took the kids and did a walk from Cowan down to Jerusalem bay in the Hawkesbury river (Ku-ring-gai Chase). The valley is steap, dark and has a phrehistoric feeling.

Here’s some Umbrella Ferns (Sticherus flabellatus) we saw on the section where the creek is not quite at sea level.  We have this fern growing naturally in our backyard thus my interest in this one. 

If you live in Sydney and want to know what plants are called that you see on bushwalks then get Les Robinson’s Field Guide to the Native Plants of Sydney. It just makes the experience richer when you learn a little about what you are looking at.

On holidays? 7 Reasons to Stay Technology Connected:

06-Jan-09

I have had a few discussions with tech savvy customers about avoiding tech during your holiday break. This topic is clearly a divided camp.

Classica Umbrella

Personally I can switch off from tech for about a week but that is about as long as I can handle going dark (as Geeks call it).

Here’s 7 reasons supporting an argument for staying connected:

1. You’re the tech guy/gal
You can’t avoid tech anyway because someone is going to get a geeky present for Christmas and you are going to have to get it working for them on their outdated Windows Me PC.

2. You just love it, it’s like a hobby anyway.
If tech is your passion in life then taking a break from it may not be a great holiday for you. Be careful not to confuse Passion with addiction. Addiction is more of a love-hate relationship to something while passion is pure love-love. Passion makes people very happy.

3. Your customers might not like it.
I confess to have at least one unhappy customer (that I know off) this Christmas because they couldn’t personally reach me. I make myself far more available to customers than most people in my position. I make no excuse, I needed a break. It’s a personal choice and there is a personal brand cost attached.

4. You could break your flow (your work mojo).
Flow is that space you get in where you can operate really quickly and effectively almost without thought. Martial arts experts, artists, writers, coders are typical environments where flow can be achieved. Stopping breaks your flow and it can be hard to regain it without a lot of Red Bulls and caffeine (in my industry at least).

5. Avoiding the e-mail buildup.
When I take holidays I find that the buildup of e-mail is overwhelming on return. You could adopt an email bankruptcy method to deal with this (I don’t have the guts to do it). If the size of your email inbox generally matches the size of your peptic ulcer then maybe it’s a good thing to keep the inbox small.

6. Avoiding "behind anxiety" can keep you happy.
When I take holidays I find that the buildup of work-flow, thinking and decision making that needs to be done is huge. While you think about your work constantly then you aren’t really on holidays. You’re not present. Your little voice in your head is busy chatting to yourself about what you are really committed to mentally. Keeping digitally connected, if only for half an hour per day can release that mind energy into e-mail, your blog and the like.

7. Work and play are the same thing to you.
Why does your life need to be separated into groupings like work, play, tech, art, family etc. Can’t they just be collapsed into one if you can manage it. I personally love the web, blogging, digital photography and to me they all cross over to my personal life. My digital life enhances my personal life. I regard technology being a part of me and my existence, not separate to it.

Is Perfection Killing Your Execution?

15-Dec-08

Sometimes perfection can have a debilitating effect on execution. Almost disease like, it can arrest your progress.

Perfection is actually an unnatural state. Ironically natures imperfections seem to give it a feeling of perfection.

I’m as guilty as the next person for wanting all the ducks lined up but this is only in some areas. Other areas I don’t seem to care as much and will knowingly let perfection slip. A typical area I like to be meticulous in is Saasu.com application defects. While at the same time I am ok leaving the odd spelling mistake slip through editing on the Saasu website. I guess I adopt a triage mentality to things we work on.

Here are two quotes I think sum up the attitude worth adopting to get over this issue if you find yourself not completing things because they aren’t quite perfect:

“A good plan violently executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week.” General George S Patton

“Perfectionism is a dangerous state of mind in an imperfect world.” Robert Hillyer