nehrlich

08:30 am: Recursive solipsism
Reading Chuck Klosterman's book Eating the Dinosaur and particularly liked this quote from his "T is for True" essay:

There is almost certainly a constructed schism between (a) how I feel, and (b) how I think I feel. There's probably a third level, too - how I want to think I feel.

I think that pretty much sums it up.

02:34 pm: AYE notes
Brief notes on my AYE conference experience. More possibly coming later as I review my thoughts and notes.

07:14 am: Jerry Weinberg
Meeting Jerry Weinberg

10:31 pm: Planning for surprise
Inspired by lunching with Grant McCracken today, I posted about planning for surprise, which includes links to old but still relevant posts to make up for the lack of new content.

11:21 pm: The world is small. Except when it isn't.
After commenting on dpolicar's post and dr_tectonic's post today, I realized I might have some ability to string coherent thoughts together again, so I decided to test that with my first blog post in months, which contains some observations about small world and large world syndrome.

12:05 am: Geeky entertainment
I have come to depend on my iPhone for directions - before I leave for a new location, I put the address into the iPhone, and bring up directions so that I can consult it if I need to en route. Normally I type in my address as the start location. This evening, I was feeling lazy and just said "Current Location".

I looked at the directions, and they had me starting from a place two miles away from where I currently was.

In fact, it looked like it was my address from three months ago.

Oh.

Yup, the Skyhook Wireless people had come by the old place at some point and associated my WiFi network with that address.

What an odd technology world we live in.

09:50 pm: Thinking about easy
Following up on my last post about making things easy, I talk more about the concept of easy and when things actually should be hard.

08:24 am: Big Five test scores
I posted this as a comment on Rif's LJ, but figured I'd repost over here to get feedback from others. These are my results from the Big Five personality test.

I pretty much bottomed out in every category (O12-C10-E9-A38-N18). It's interesting because this is self-perception so it may not line up with what others think of me.

• Low E score doesn't surprise me, as I consider myself an introvert even when others tell me I'm not.
  
• I've calmed down so a low N score works.
  
• I don't think of myself as being creative or innovative, so a low O score makes sense.
  
• I may have graded myself too harshly on the C questions, as I'm not wholly disorganized but I'm more of an improviser than a planner.
  
• The A questions were a bit too vague - my tendency is to be agreeable with those that have earned my respect, and ignore or be rude to those who haven't, and the questions don't capture that behavior.

I'll have to think more about what my test responses indicate about what's going on in my brain.

10:41 pm: Making things easy
A post about how making things easy can be a good business model. Now if I could only get it in my brain that posting is easy so I'd do it more often...

10:46 pm: Leadership
Brief musings on what leadership means. Plus, hey, first official blog post in 2.5 months - it's not great, but getting that first one out of the way lowers the activation energy for the rest. Or something like that.

11:48 am: Becoming a leader
Owning a comment from Charlie O'Donnell's blog post about why everybody doesn't just decide to be a leader.

Interesting question (catching up on RSS on the weekend). I'm one of those that hasn't become a leader, despite knowing lots of "leaders" in your sense (you, @canida, @kiwitobes, @chrisheuer, etc) and despite being a "leader" in high school. In my case, it's partially that I haven't quite figured out what I want to be a leader in, when I should probably just pick something and commit to it. I have several friends who chose a slightly non-mainstream area (e.g. DIY, vocal percussion or computerized smell) and became "The Guy" in that area. I still haven't found something that interests me enough to invest the time and effort to become the leader in that field, and that may just be me being fearful that I will be defined by my interests when I'd rather learn bits about lots of things. I'll have to think about this some more.

12:43 pm: Why am I doing this?
Some thoughts on why knowing the answer to "Why am I doing this?" goes a long way to making any job bearable, even when working way too hard.

11:44 pm: Right vs. Effective
I've mentioned this concept of Right vs. Effective in a couple conversations recently, so I'm sharing it with the world at large. It's a useful distinction to me, but we'll see what y'all think.

10:21 pm: Super Bowl Sunday
I took time off from working on Sunday (yuck) to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday, and I delve into analyzing one awesome football play, and one awesome ad.

09:33 pm: Tracking
Some thoughts about the benefits of daily tracking towards achieving one's goals. Not particularly thought-provoking, but it's all I got after too many meetings today.

10:28 am: What is the story?
I recount a few incidents recently where I asked what is the story, and try to tie that together into a larger story of personal marketing. I didn't quite make it work, but I'm posting anyway, because I wanted to get something up this morning.

09:47 am: TV character resolution meme
Inspired by a friend who said her resolution this year was to be more like Jaye Tyler from Wonderfalls, I ask you: what TV character represents your aspirational goals for the year?

For me, I'm inclined to say Barney, from How I Met Your Mother - not so much the womanizing aspects (although, sure, why not), but more the willingness to try anything and the awesome enthusiasm with which he attacks life. Plus, as my friend pointed out, he dresses well too!

02:19 pm: Mapping out Organizational Space
Thoughts on mapping out organizational space, in particular the new organizational configurations made possible by technology, building off of a post by Tim O'Reilly.

09:24 am: Personization
A post on "personization" or the importance of treating people as real individual people rather than as foils on which we project our own hopes and fears.

07:24 pm: Buying Pants
In which I spend several paragraphs working out my clothing issues in public.