nehrlich

06:41 pm: Encouraging useful failure
Some rambling disconnected thoughts on the topic of how we can encourage more people to risk failure so that they can achieve bigger successes, building off of my previous post on startup vs. big company culture.

07:33 am: Startup vs. big company culture
My thoughts on startup vs. big company culture, with particular reference to Larry Page's experiment at Google where he's trying to imbue his big company with the feel of a startup.

06:17 pm: More boring updates
After my last update, I felt like providing another update. So here we go.( Ramblings about goings-on in my life )So, in general, life is feeling good.  And there's snow in Tahoe (6 inches at Squaw), so my dream of working from Tahoe for a few days in December lives :)

08:10 am: Griftopia, by Matt Taibbi
My review of Griftopia, by Matt Taibbi

07:18 am: What's been going on?
I was going to put this on Twitter, but couldn't be bothered to fit it into 140 characters. For some reason, I woke up this morning and wanted to write a few placeholders about what's been going on in my life.

• I screwed up my back playing frisbee in June, kept on playing for a month despite pain so bad I would be limping after playing for an hour, and eventually went to a doctor in August who put me in a physical therapy program.  I've been doing my daily exercises fairly diligently, and last night played frisbee for the first time since the beginning of August.  I lasted most of two hours and my back feels strained and tired this morning, but I wasn't incapacitated.  So that's progress.  And it felt so good to get out there and run around for a couple hours. 
• Part of the reason it felt so good is that I've been on a death march at work.  Last week, I worked 80 hours in 6 days, which is an average day of 8am to 11pm.  Previous weeks haven't been quite so bad, but I've been in the 60-70 hour range since Labor Day as we are finalizing 2012 plans for my product area and I'm cross-checking to make sure all of its cross-functional needs (various sales teams, marketing, customer support, etc) are being met.  We were here until 11:30pm on Monday evening getting our final numbers in, but yesterday it felt so good to come in and not have something that was absolutely urgent to get done, which is why I finally felt I had time to go play frisbee at 6pm.
• Alas, after playing frisbee, I came back to three missed calls and a voicemail from my director, as one of my business partners had discovered an inconsistency in my numbers, so I spent two hours fixing that from 8-10pm before I got dinner or a shower.  Yuck.
• On the plus side, even while being on a death march, I've been biking to work almost every day - I think the only days I haven't biked since July were when I was on vacation in August, and a couple days where I needed my car to get to physical therapy.  It's only 15 minutes each way, but it's still good having that baseline level of exercise in my life.
• Also, getting last weekend off from work (well, except for working late Friday night, and for three hours finalizing our deck on Saturday morning) felt very good.  On Saturday, I took a nap, had a beer with a friend, and went to a coworker's birthday party.  On Sunday, I ran some errands, had pie with another friend, and then went to my sister's to play with my niece, watch the Bears on Sunday Night Football, and eat Patxi's Chicago-style pizza. 
• And I think things are turning around at work. My internal transfer finally started on my team this week on Monday, so she doubles the size of my team, and I just got approved to hire two more people, so increasing my team from 1 to 4 should make a big difference in my workload.
• I heard "Dog Days Are Over" by Florence and the Machine on Saturday evening, and bought the album, and have been listening to it.  It's not great music, but for some reason, it appeals to me at this point in time. It's weird how that works - I wish I understood how my brain made aesthetic decisions.
• I did read "Uglies" by Scott Westerbrook this week after getting it from the library (I recently read "Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins, as I'm on an escapism kick from work for obvious reasons).
• Anyway, I haven't really seen any friends since Labor Day because of my work schedule - when I'm not working, I've been too tired to go out. But as work hopefully eases up, I will start reaching out to folks again.

So, yeah, that's what's been going on.  Now back to work :)

08:42 am: Understanders vs. Fixers
My take on two personality traits (understanders and fixers)and how they can work together effectively.

08:11 am: I was reflecting this morning on the value a finance team can provide and decided to share my thoughts. Two posts in two days - woo!

06:57 am: Action despite uncertainty
Just posted this to the blog but reproducing here for your convenience.

Scott Berkun just posted about situations in life where good data is impossible, which reminded me of a quote I've been meaning to share.

I once went to a talk by Bob Sutton where he cited a quote by Andy Grove, CEO of Intel:

“I think it is very important for you to do two things: act on your temporary conviction as if it was a real conviction; and when you realize that you are wrong, correct course very quickly.

Investment decisions or personnel decisions and prioritization don’t wait for the picture to be clarified. You have to make them when you have to make them. You take your shots and clean up the bad ones later.

(So you have to keep your own spirits up even though you well understand that you don’t know what you’re doing)”

I think this is one of the hardest things to learn as I progress in the business world – many situations I’m asked to handle are novel, because routine decisions are handled by bureaucracy in the form of established processes or at a more junior level. Taking action when I know I don’t have enough data requires a leap of faith that I'm best positioned to make a decision anyway.

05:13 pm: The Master Switch, by Tim Wu
My review of Tim Wu's The Master Switch, subtitled "The Rise and Fall of Information Empires"

08:55 am: Call your shot
Why it's important to call your shot at work