Archive for Productivity

    Do It Well, Do What You Want, and Get Paid!

    Posted by: patrick | Comments (0)
    Thursday, February 4th, 2010

    Earlier this week I discovered this chart below – and I have been obsessed with it ever since. I made it the backdrop for my dual screen system, and I need to make it the backdrop for my laptop soon. It represents something that I, you, and most of the people in the world fail to keep in focus. We get so hung up in getting that check on the 1st and 15th. We get so hung up in meetings. We get so hung up chasing after business opportunities that seem like they will make a lot of money when in reality a lot of money is not your true motivator. The chart is probably the picture that best represents my mindset for having this blog. I consider the man who created it brilliant. He may not have come up with the concept, but he made it very easy for us to ‘get it’ in about 15 seconds.

    Please spread this around to as many people as possible. I am not the originator of this chart – his name is on the chart. But if I could I’d climb up to the highest room of the tallest tower (Love my Shrek) and hang a banner with this on it. It is just that powerful to me.

    Categories : Attitude, Getting Personal, Goals, Productivity
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    Let’s go get high together

    Posted by: patrick | Comments (3)
    Saturday, January 24th, 2009

    I believe that one of the reasons that you and I get frustrated with life is that we are spending too much time thinking about and focusing on the details of our lives.

    I would like to offer you a simple solution for you to consider the next time you feel any stress or tension creeping into your life.

    Do you drive a car ? Do you shop in a crowded grocery store ? Do you ever eat in a restaurant ? These are very common activities that force us to interact with a lot of other people. And if we are going to interact with other people they are not always going to the things we want, how we want them, and when we want them then done. They are going to drive too slow. They are going to take too long in the checkout lane. And they are going to take a lot longer than we would like to bring out our order sometimes.

    But if you stop, take a breath, and look at our way of life from a higher perspective – you’ve heard of looking at things from 5000 or 10000 foot view before. When you look at thing from that perspectiveyou see and realize that overall we have it pretty good in this country. Things move relatively smooth for us. And some of the things that cause us frustration or to get riled up in our lives are issues that other people in other countries would love to have as their problems.

    One the hobbies that I have that I really get a kick out of is flying. I literally can take a break from details every now and then of life and literally look at our city and our way of life from 10000 feet up. And when I do look at our life from that perspective I feel a a lot better and I realize that my issues and your issues really are not that bad.

    So the next time someone cuts you off on the freeway take a deep breath and think about how lucky you are to have a car and a well paved countrywide highway system to drive it on. Then call me and I’ll take you up and we’ll look at the world from 10000 feet together.

    Categories : Attitude, Customer Service, Productivity
    Comments (3)

    Did you write them down… yeah… those goal thingys?

    Posted by: patrick | Comments (6)
    Thursday, January 1st, 2009

    Happy New Year my fellow earth dwellers (shout out to those from off the planet that may be reading via RSS). Here it is January 1, 2009 8:32 Central Time. I am catching up on my RSS feeds, Twitter Feeds, etc. and sitting here wondering what the New Year will bring me. I am also thinking about what I will accomplish in the coming 365 days.

    Have you thought about that? Yep… those trendy New Year’s resolutions that are so popular to talk about. You made them yesterday. Now it is time to ‘Cowboy Up’ and dig in and do them.

    Don’t even bother.

    Because you did not write them down. In the past 30 days if you verbally or mentally built a list of items that you want to accomplish in 2009 and you did not write them down you wasted your vocal cords and burned some brain cells that could have better been used elsewhere.

    Don’t get me wrong. I love New Year’s resolutions. As human beings we love to set goals that start on a major time period. Every morning when we wake up it is a new day and most of us feel it is a new time to start over and do something with our life. The same goes with Sunday morning  and the 1st of every month.  The New Year is a very large milestone in each of our lives (we usually get less than 100 of them) and therefore it is natural that we want to set very lofty goals for the next 12 months. It is also a great time to measure what we have accomplished in the past 12 months.

    But if you did not write them down so you can see them then they might as well not exist. Writing them down is the equivalent of making a personal contract with yourself. Thinking about it (the gentleman’s handshake) is one thing. But we all know that handshake contracts can be  dangerous.  Actually writing it down make you legally bound with yourself to actually perform said services. Plus you don’t ever want to break a contract that you can see taped to the bathroom mirror every morning so you?

    So the question to you is: Did you write them down? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

    Happy 2009 !

      Categories : Attitude, Goals, Productivity
      Comments (6)

      Come out and meet us this Thursday OKC

      Posted by: patrick | Comments (4)
      Tuesday, December 9th, 2008

      The Oklahoma Twitter Community is having a twitter meetup this Thursday morning in Downtown Oklahoma city. I’ll be there along with Derrick Parkhurst and other people in Oklahoma City trying to make the tech community grow and prosper. Every event that is put together is a great amount of fun, and really helps out in the networking department. Everybody is welcome and invited – not just the tech community (props out to all of the ad firms that are on twitter :)   )

      For more information and to sign up visit: http://okccoco.com/

      You can also connect to me on twitter and get the latest updates: http://twitter.com/stopdoingnothin

      And don’t forget to get Derrick’s twitter also for the latest info on the OKCCoCo project: http://twitter.com/ThirtySixthSpan

      Categories : Attitude, Business, Networking, OKC, Productivity
      Comments (4)

      Confession: I am cheating on Outlook with Google ToDo lists

      Posted by: patrick | Comments (1)
      Monday, December 8th, 2008

      As a big fan of time management and itemizing what I want to do in life I have always been a proponent of checklists. One of the reasons I have always loved Outlook (all versions) is that it has all of the essentials tools of organization: Email, contact lists, calendar and to do lists/checklists .

      Over the past 18 months I have strayed from my marriage with Outlook to snuggle under the covers with my mistress Google Apps. As much as I love my nice warm web-based mistress mistress and as much time as I spend with her I have still been hooked on Outlook for my support payments. Google Apps has just been missing a little something.

      And now it is here.

      Google Apps and Gmail FINALLY have todo lists. They are available AFTER you click the little beaker for Google Labs and enable todo lists. You should see the link show up over on the left hand side above your chat lists and below your contact link.

      More to follow in later posts. But this is something that really could break up a marriage.

      Categories : Goals, Productivity
      Comments (1)

      Leadership Series Part III: Why would you want to be a leader?

      Posted by: patrick | Comments (1)
      Thursday, November 20th, 2008

      3rd part in the series.

      You can see part I here and part II here:

      Part III
      It is incredibly rewarding. Your ideas get to be used and implemented. Leaders start things.  They get the ball rolling.

      Being a leader means that you are going to have to do things that MOST people do not want to do. You are going to have to stand up and say things that most people are afraid to say. And you are going to have to believe things that most people do not want to believe. And for the long term you are going to have to have the courage to stick to what you believe in and follow it through to completion.

      Sometimes you are going to have to embarrass yourself. [Bring up audience member for example]

      You are going to have to put yourself in front of your friends and your foes and tell them “I
      believe this is what we should be doing and this is where we should be going”. They might
      ridicule you and put you down. They might tell you that what you want to do cannot be done.
      People have tried it before and have failed. But you have to have faith in yourself and your
      ideas. Sometimes you may be the only one that does.

      Leadership is scary sometimes. Here is an example of family leadership: My wife and I had decided that we were going to take a different direction than all of our friends had taken: We were going to go into business for ourselves. I had to visit another business in Sacramento, California that I was going to be doing some work for. As I was laying on the bed in the hotel room thinking about what I was getting ready to do – to become a leader/entrepreneur this panic overwhelmed my body all of sudden. I remember that it came over me like a wave starting from the tips of my toes and consuming me all of the way to my head. I started having doubts about whether I could do it or not. What if I fail? What if I fail so badly that it hurts my family? What if we run out of money and we cannot eat? These are the things you have to look at and find a way around as a leader. You have to know that you might fail, but you have to believe in your soul that you will succeed.

      Related Blogs

      Categories : Attitude, Leadership, Productivity
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      Leadership Series Part II : Why is leadership so important?

      Posted by: patrick | Comments (0)
      Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

      Another part of my presentation in Oklahoma City on Leadership:

      –

      If you look around the world today you will see that most people are on auto pilot.

      - This means that most people wake up every day at the latest possible time that they can to get to school
      - They drive the same route to work as everybody else
      - They arrive at the same time as everybody else and go to the same desk that everybody else goes to
      - They work the minimum numbers of hours they have to to get done what needs to be done
      - They drive home the exact same way that they came
      - They go to bed so they can wake up and do it all over again in the morning

      Doing the same thing every day is very comfortable and very safe. It makes us feel good to know exactly where we are going and what is waiting for us once we get there. If something ever disrupts this comfort it scares us. For example : If something blocks our road on the way to work we don’t know what to do for awhile. It makes us squirm. We have to adjust.

      Occasionally you find someone who thinks that we can be doing something in a better way. That person believes that we can learn a better way in school. Or we can do something in our community or our neighborhood to help another group of people. That person sees a problem that has existed for a long time and has found a new way to solve.

      That kind of person is a leader.

      And good leaders are hard to find . They are rare because most people just want to do the same thing because it is safe. We need more people like you and you and you that are not happy with being comfortable and safe. We need young people such as yourselves to stand up and say “Hey… I think we should go to the mountain top. And I know a great way to get there. It may be hard. It may take longer than the other way. We may stub our toe every now and then or scrape our knees. It is not going to be the same way that all of the other people are going. But we will be much better people by the time that we get there.”

      Related Blogs

      Categories : Attitude, Goals, Productivity
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      A sincere thanks to the readership

      Posted by: patrick | Comments (0)
      Sunday, November 2nd, 2008

      I just checked my monthly stats and October of 2008 was the best month we’ve ever had in terms of traffic. A very high number of unique visitors, pages, and volume of data. This is very gratifying.

      I offer a sincere thank you to those who read and comment. We have some other things in the pipe as we continue to grow and offer more services to our readers. Stay tuned! And feel free to share the site with your friends if you ever feel it may help them in their life.

      Categories : Attitude, Goals, Productivity
      Comments (0)

      Books I Recommend: A new series on SDN.com.

      Posted by: patrick | Comments (0)
      Sunday, October 26th, 2008

      I saw a quote recently and I cannot remember the exact words or the author. But it went along the lines of “Bookstores/Libraries are one of the last remaining pieces of evidence that people are still thinking”. As trendy and “Starbuckish” as bookstores have become it is still great to go to B&N or Borders (our family favorites) and see people sitting down engrossed in a book. When you find a great book and the subject matter sucks you in to the point where you will skip everything to get to the next page you know you have found a gem. You should remember those, buy a copy or two, and give them out as Christmas gifts. Knowledge is one of the post important things that we can pass from one individual to another. You cannot beat the price, but the value is immeasurable.

      In my (160/4+56-24*6-392) years of life I’ve read a lot of books. I’ve read some real gems that have altered my view and perspective on life. I’ve also read quite a few that I could not get through without some serious caffeine. (You know… that may be the reason they have a coffee shop at the bookstore ; a lot of those books need coffee to get you from the front to the beginning.).

      I’ve decided to start creating a list of the books that I recommend on the right hand side of this site . As I review each one and what they have given me out of life I will add it to the list. I’ve started with the first three that I see as I look at my bookshelf. I’ll be getting out reviews of those shortly.

      I’d also be interested in any books that you would recommend to me and the other readers of StopDoingNothing. Please share your lists in the comment section below.

      Categories : Attitude, Business, Finance, Networking, Productivity
      Comments (0)

      What to do right as a new…

      Posted by: patrick | Comments (0)
      Sunday, September 28th, 2008

      Recently there was a question on /. about what to do right as a new programmer. After I posted my response I thought “This is just a good answer to any question that starts with ‘What to do right…’”. Read and enjoy!

      –

      Do not believe in finites, infinites, right or wrong.

      In regards to your business logic…

      If someone says this will always happen this way, be ready for it not to happen that way.

      If someone says says this will never happen, be ready for it to happen.

      Plan for bad data.

      Plan for a connection to another system, database, etc. to fail. Handle it gracefully.

      Nothing you do in application development is right or wrong so long as it accomplishes the business objectives.

      There may be better, more efficient ways to do things. But give 10 programmers one business problem and they will solve it 10 different ways.

      Programming is an art not a science. I would avoid anybody else that tells you otherwise.

      Do not get attached to a programming language or any code you’ve written. Don’t get pissed off if you burn away a week of your life code some amazing code and then find out it was all for not because of a requirements change. It can be frustrating. But it is just 1s and 0s and in the big scheme of life it is just unimportant.

      Schedule your life first, then schedule your coding around it. Doing it the other way is just unhealthy. Physically and mentally. When you do code do it with extreme passion. Don’t do anything halfass. Always strive to learn something every single day. Be the go to guy.

      Categories : Attitude, Productivity
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