Change MOOC: Sets a Great Example for How to Have an Internet-Wide Conversation on Multiple Platforms

September 15th, 2011

I signed up for the Change MOOC. I’d never heard of a MOOC before. But as I learn more, I’m really excited.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to engage with people in conversation on a variety of topics. I’d like to blog more often. But I want to blog about a variety of topics: hockey, running, startups, leadership, knowledge management, change management, problem-solving, what makes a good product, and so on. But there’s probably no single other person in the universe who is interested in all those same subjects. And so I don’t blog that much, as I can’t figure out how to blog in a way that fits my interests but also allows me to have an audience greater than myself. I talk to myself plenty. I don’t need to blog for that.

So what I’ve been thinking about lately is, why can’t I blog about whatever I want on my blog and push various content to the appropriate places relevant to the conversation? If I blog about how great my long run was, I could push that article to my running friends on Facebook. If I blog about a great knowledge management article on HBR, I could push that post to my grad school friends on Google Plus. Okay, nothing is keeping me from doing that today. But it doesn’t really encourage conversation. If my running friends read the running post and then come to my blog to find more, they probably won’t be interested in the knowledge management post and vise versa. But the Change MOOC introduced me to an idea that might fix all this.

Here’s what they do. They defined the #change11 as the hashtag for their event. People are tagging their bookmarks, blog posts, tweets and so on with this tag. Then the organizers are aggregating content across all platforms and highlighting it in a daily email. I don’t have to subscribe to individual blogs or follow individuals on Twitter. I just have to “subscribe” to the topic by getting the daily emails. It’s a great idea. It kind of works. It could work so much better and for many topics.

Suppose there was a place where people could say I’m interested in running content, or knowledge management content or startup content. And I could subscribe to a category. That site then aggregated content across all platforms: Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, and so on. So that no matter where the conversation was happening I could follow along. And no matter what I wrote, I could push it to a relevant category with an audience. Now instead of bloggers spamming the crap out of others’ comments just to get an audience, there would be an audience waiting for them. Sure your content would have to be good, as I imagine readers who subscribe to a category could rate content (see Digg) so that the best content is viewed by the most people. But I’m not afraid of having to write good content.

And yes, as a reader I can cobble this together myself by manually searching Twitter and blogs for topics. But I can’t search Google Plus posts and I can’t search my friends shared links on Facebook. And really none of this is easy to do. And as a writer, this would be a dream come true, an easy audience, as long as your writing would be worthy.

More importantly, people can respond and participate on whatever platform they choose. Some people may tweet, others may blog and others yet may post a photo on Flickr. The platform dosen’t matter. But the conversation does.

Why doesn’t this exist? I want to build it.

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20 Goals in 2011: How I Plan to Hit Them All

January 5th, 2011

I don’t bother with New Year’s Resolutions. Instead, I set goals. You might think they are the same, but let me tell you about my goal process. Then we’ll talk.

I set goals in the following areas:

  • Professional
  • Health & Fitness
  • Travel
  • Friends & Family
  • Service
  • Finance
  • Education

In total, I set 20 goals for 2011. They range from running a full marathon, to getting “A”s in my graduate program, to visiting my niece on her birthday, and so much more.

So, how do I pick these goals?

For each category, I keep a running list of things I’d like to accomplish. Think of it like a bucket list. But it doesn’t include just big adventure type stuff. It also includes volunteer ideas, career aspirations and people I want to get to know better. I add things to the list all the time. If someone tells me about a great place they’ve been, I add it to the travel list. If I come across a great list of books to read, I add it to the education list. And so on.

At the end of each year, I look at the list, and pick a few from each category that I want to accomplish during the upcoming year. Then I put together a plan to make that happen. That’s it.

Here are a few awesome things I’ve been able to do as the result of this process.

  • I spent five weeks wandering around Italy (2008)
  • I went to the Vancouver Winter Olympics (2010)
  • I ran two half-marathons (2010)
  • I went to snow boarding camp (twice, early 2000s)
  • I took a summer off work and explored San Francisco (2000)
  • I got accepted to a great graduate program (2010)
  • I became CEO of my company (2009)
  • I started playing ice hockey again (2001)
  • I joined a startup 3 weeks after they were founded (2003)

All of these (with the exception of becoming CEO of my company) were goals that I had set at the end of the prior year and made them happen. Becoming CEO of my company was the direct result of other professional goals I had set and made happen. However, I never could have predicted the outcome.

Here’s the key: I don’t just make a list of goals and hope they happen.

First, I make sure every goal is clearly defined in such a way that at the end of the year it’s black and white whether or not I achieved it.

Let’s look at some examples:

Apply for scholarships – not a good goal
How many? Of what amount? Also, this is a task, not a goal.

Win scholarships – slightly better
Okay, this gets at a black and white result. But if I win 1 $100 scholarship, did I hit my goal? Was that the intent?

Win $15,000 in Scholarships – great goal
At the end of the year, it’s easy to look back and say yes or no, when asked did I achieve this goal? And there’s no question about the intent.

Second, for each goal, I put together a detailed plan for how I’m going to achieve the goal.

How might I win $15,000 in scholarships. Here’s what the project might look like:

  • Create a scholarship deadlines calendar
  • Research scholarships for women in business and update calendar
  • Research scholarships for hispanics in business and update calendar
  • Research scholarships for working professionals and update calendar
  • Research scholarships for part-time students and update calendar
  • Research scholarships in organizational development and update calendar
  • Research regional scholarships and update calendar
  • Across all scholarships, identify five or six essays that will work for most
  • Write essays
  • Have smart people give feedback on essays
  • Identify which scholarships require letters of recommendations
  • Identify best candidates for letters of recommendation
  • Prepare materials for candidates, making it super easy for them to write a great letter.
  • Talk to each candidate and figure out if it’s going to work out.
  • Request transcripts for each scholarship that requires them.
  • Setup reminders to submit applications as they become available.
  • After getting response to earliest set of applications, adjust activities based on results.

This list might make you exhausted. But the benefit of doing this, is now each time I want to work toward my goal, I don’t have to stop and think about what to do. I just look at the next item on the list and keep going.

I always separate planning from doing. I find that I get way more done and move much more quickly, if the process is scripted out before I start. Of course, this can be overdone and not all goals need to be this complex.

For example, one of my fitness goals this year is to run a full marathon. I know exactly what I need to do to make that happen. It’s this simple.

  • Sign up for the Alaska Full Marathon through Team in Training
  • Stick to the Team in Training schedule.
  • Run the Race

If I do those three things, I know I’ll hit my goal.

Also, not all goals can be scripted from beginning to end. For example, note the last item on the “Win $15,000 in scholarships” plan. It reads, “Adjust activities based on results”. I might not win any scholarships in that first round, which means I’d have to change things up a lot. I might win 10% that I apply for, that means that I’ll have to make sure that I apply for 10x as many as I need, so I’m sure to hit my goal. Or I might get them all (yeah, right) and be able to check off the goal. The idea here is to periodically review progress and adapt the plan as needed.

In fact, I build a review process in to my planning throughout the year. At the end of each month, I review each goal and the progress being made toward it. If a goal is in danger, I readjust the plan.

I know what you are thinking. This sounds like a lot of work. It can be. I spend 10-20 hours a week at the end of the year evaluating what goals I want to focus on and creating project plans for each. I also spend about 1 hour each month reviewing progress and adjusting plans for various goals. In total, I spend about 22-32 hours a year maintaing this process.

What do I get in return?

  • I’m always making progress on the big life goals that are most important to me.
  • I never look back and feel like another year went by without accomplishing anything or experiencing anything.
  • I don’t waste time trying to figure out what to do next to accomplish a goal, that’s already worked out in the plan.
  • I accomplish a lot more than if I spent those 22-32 hours doing.

Really, what I get in return is the opportunity to keep knocking things off my list, so I can get to the next things. Again, that might sound exhausting, but look at the list of fun things I’ve done: snowboarding camp, the Olympics, five weeks in Italy, etc. I never would have done any of those things, if I hadn’t set a goal in the first place.

How many things have you said you’ll do one day? Pick a few. Make a plan and get started.

P.S. It took me years of doing this, before I ever considered 20 goals in one year. It sounds like a lot. But based on past experience, I know I can do it. If you are just getting started, pick a few and go from there.

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Why Can’t I Share My Kindle Books?

July 19th, 2010

First, I love my Kindle. I read a ton. Growing up, I read fiction as fast as I could get my hands on it. After college, I got into non-fiction. I love to read about other people’s ideas. I tear through biographies, books on management, leadership, or personal growth. I love to read about unfamiliar disciplines. With non-fiction, I feel like I can read a book, or even better a series of books on a topic, and learn from other people’s experiences. But I also love to share good books with my friends and colleagues.

Ever since I switched to the Kindle this has been my one big hang-up. Why can’t I share a Kindle book with a friend?

Yes, I realize this could open a can of worms when it comes to DRM or pirating books. Amazon is in the business of selling books and they aren’t likely to make a move that interferes with that. But I often buy books that others have lent me. More importantly, I think Amazon is missing an opportunity to jump into an easy social strategy. Let me explain.

If Amazon allowed me to lend a book to one friend at a time, just like with real books, odds are they aren’t going to compromise book sales. After all, I live 6 blocks from a great public library, but I still buy books. I borrow books, but I still buy books. But if they allow me to lend a Kindle book to one friend at a time, they can start to learn who my friends are and which of my friends like similar books. This leads to all kinds of opportunities. Here are just a few ideas:

Book Waiting List
I recently read, Why Works Sucks (and How To Fix It) and wanted my whole team to read it. I bought a couple of print copies for people to pass around. But if was allowed to share my Kindle copy, Amazon could let me manage a queue. Jason gets it first, Ping gets it next, etc. Now Amazon knows, I know all these people, and more importantly they know that they are all interested in reading the book. Why not offer them a group discount to encourage them to buy their own copy?

Book Recommendations
If Amazon knows who I like to share books with and who shares books with me, now they can recommend books to me based on what they read, not just based on what I read. This would definitely kick up my reading and book-buying.

Book Clubs
I don’t like book clubs. I like to have real conversations with people I know and like. The last thing I want to do is sit around with a bunch of strangers to discuss a book. But I love discussing what I’m reading or recently read. If Amazon knows who I’m sharing books with, based on our mutual tastes, it could recommend which of my friends would be good book club members.

Since Kindle books are digital, it doesn’t cost Amazon anything to share a copy with 1 person at a time. But the data they’d collect and the features they could build on top of that data, would more than make up for the small amount of sales lost from lent books. After all, public libraries aren’t going anywhere. People will always borrow books.

Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and a million apps have shown the power of layering the social graph on top of just about every function in life. Amazon has an easy way to get in the game. All they have to do is facilitate book-sharing.

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The Potential of Foursquare

June 30th, 2010

On more than one occasion, I’ve described Foursquare as “friend spam”. To be fair, this was mostly in response to check-ins being broadcast to Facebook and Twitter. Admittedly, I didn’t really get Foursquare. Earning badges didn’t seem too appealing to me and it seemed to be far too much effort to “win” a reward from an establishment for becoming its mayor.

However, I do have a lot of thoughts and ideas on location-based services and I figured I’d give Foursquare a fair shake before continuing to criticize them. So I started to trial Foursquare. Here’s what I’ve accomplished over the past 13 days:

  • 23 venues
  • 34 check-ins
  • 5 different cities
  • 5 badges
  • 1 mayorship (my office)

And here’s the thing, my response to Foursquare is still, so what?

But something has changed over the past 13 days. While I don’t find much use in Foursquare today, I have a ton of ideas on how it could become useful in the future. Here’s a few of them:

  • Customer Loyalty Cards – How many different cards do you have in your wallet? You know the type: buy 10 ten sandwiches get 1 free, the grocery store club card, the coffee shop card, etc. Either you have too many or you avoid them altogether. I’m always tempted by them, but I never keep them. Foursquare is starting to go down this road with venues getting involved with Mayor rewards, but I think there is real potential here. I love it when the barista remembers my drink, or the owner of my local bar remembers my favorite beer. Everyone wants to be recognized and have the venue remember their “usual”. Foursquare could and should make it super easy for the venue to do this. They should move beyond Mayor rewards and create a great loyalty program.
  • Venue Recommendations – How many times have you been in a new city or neighborhood looking for a bite to eat? Or maybe you are on the road and you need to find a place to watch the game back home. This is Yelp’s domain and I think Foursquare has the potential to disrupt it. I’d love it if Foursquare would suggest venues to me based on where my friends have checked-in. If I’m in the Haight, instead of just showing me my favorite places or nearby places, show me where my friends go. That would be awesome!
  • Tips from My Friends – Okay, I don’t have many friends who use Foursquare and that could be why I don’t currently see a lot of value in it. But if they did, I’d probably find more value in their venue tips than in the general masses’ tips. Again, this is where Foursquare could take Yelp to town. If tips were presented as “Tips for your friends” maybe more people would write them and they’d be of higher quality. Yes, I realize there are a lot of maybes in that sentence, but I think it’s worth a try.
  • Serendipitous Run-Ins – This one Foursquare already supports, but more of my friends need to use it in order for it to really work out. But I love the idea of checking in at say SFO with an hour or so delay only to find that a friend is in the same situation.

Overall, I think the folks at Foursquare are collecting a lot of really valuable information. Badges may be enough incentive to keep people checking-in, but I can’t imagine that will last. I think the real potential of Foursquare is for them to think about what information should be surfaced when. Whether it’s venue recommendations, letting me know when I’m in the same place as a friend, or tips for where I’m currently at, Foursquare has the data to become an awesome Augmented Reality app, especially with more phones supporting push technologies.

if badges get enough people to enter information to create value for the rest of us, then more power to them. But I sure hope the Foursquare interface evolves to be more of a just-in-time kind of interface that lets me know when it knows something useful, as opposed to me always having to go to it.

Final caveat, I’ve worked on enough products to know that everything is harder than it seems and there may be a million reasons why these are hard to implement or even not the right things to implement. I also know that the folks at Foursquare think about this all day, every day. So all of this is dumped here to be taken with a grain of salt. Sometimes it’s just good to get stuff out of the head.

Here’s to hoping that Foursquare grows into something awesome that we all want to use. Also, congrats on the big money round!

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OmniFocus: Getting Better at Projects

December 27th, 2009

I’ve noticed over the past couple of months that my usage of OmniFocus has trended back toward a cluttered to do list. Sure my actions are sorted into projects and contexts, but I never seem to complete a project. What’s going on?

During a recent review session, I realized I had way too many projects. I was using projects as categories of single actions. I had projects at work for each department (Sales, Account Management, Engineering, etc) and for each product. Every thing that went into OmniFocus was a single action within one of these “folders”, even if a set of single actions were actually related to each other. So even though I happily ticked off actions, I never completed projects. After all, when will the Sales or Engineering projects be done?

I was making the same mistake for personal things as well. I had a project called Chores, another project called Of Interest to collect things I wanted to check out later. Again, I’m not sure I’ve ever completed a project.

So what’s the big deal? I was still getting stuff done.

I realized that I wasn’t very focused. I had no way of knowing which actions or projects were important. There was no priority, I was using OmniFocus to store everything (a good thing), but wasn’t using it to tell me what was my priority (a bad thing).

So I’ve changed the way I use OmniFocus yet again.

I have a new rule. When creating a project, I now force myself to think through when will this project be done. What am I trying to accomplish? So each project has a clear goal with an end in sight. I’m also limiting myself to having only a handful of active projects for work and a handful for personal stuff, so I can really focus on the priorities.

So for work, I switched from having projects that reflected departments to these projects: 2010 Planning, Finalize Partnership Agreement, Get Company Y Using our Product. That’s it. Only 3 active projects. I won’t activate another project until one of these is complete. If something comes up, I’ll activate it at the cost of deactivating one of these.

For personal stuff, i went from having projects like Chores, Of Interest and Hockey to Move Downtown, Launch Sharks App and Apply to MBA Programs. Again, those are the top 3. If something else wants to squeeze in there, one of those three have to move out.

No more committing to too much. No more thinking I can do it all. 3 priorities at work, 3 priorities at home. It seems so simple.

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There are all kinds of leaders …

October 30th, 2009

I’ve read a lot of management books about leadership. It’s a topic that fascinates me. Personally, I’ve found confidence as a leader on the ice, looking out for other players or making sure everyone gets a fair shake. So it’s not surprising that I found myself at a Sharks game tonight thinking about leadership.

The Sharks finished the season last year with the best record in the league, but they flopped in the playoffs for the third year in a row. Over the summer, the GM said they needed to make some pretty dramatic changes. Among them, was a Captain change.

Patrick Marleau, the captain for the past several years, was stripped of the captaincy and had to endure trade rumors all summer. But come the beginning of the season, he was still with the team.

You might think that a player who was just stripped of a leadership position might struggle. But Patrick Marleau has been the best player on the ice for the Sharks in every single game this season. He’s scored 10 goals in 13 games, faster than any other player in Sharks history. He looks faster. He looks hungry. He looks like he’s enjoying the game.

It’s as if the C on his jersey weighed him down last season. He looks care-free like the kid who doesn’t want to come off the ice even though it’s way past dinner time.

It got me thinking. We can’t all be rah-rah leaders. We can’t all take charge and be the vocal leader. We’ve all been in situations where too many people try to do this. But we can all be like Patrick Marleau. We can all lead by example, face adversity with true character and push ourselves to be our very best.

San Jose has a great gift in Patrick Marleau, both on and off the ice.

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Great Tip: Use Text Expanding Software to Save Time

July 16th, 2009

I love this blog post.

It discusses techniques for using text expanding software. Makes perfect sense. I didn’t even know something like this existed, even thought it’s right up my alley.

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OmniFocus: A Pie-in-the-Sky Wish List Idea

July 10th, 2009

I just sent this feedback to OmniGroup and thought I would share it here as well, since my last OF post got such a positive response.

I’m in the middle of an OF review session (on a Friday evening, I know!) and I had a few ideas. I recently switched from using due dates to start dates, because I was sick of constantly resetting due dates when I fell behind. Typically during my review, I set start dates on the things that I want to tackle during the upcoming week. But as I review project to project, it’s hard to keep track of how many things I have committed to starting. Now I haven’t really committed to anything, but that’s not the point. It would be nice to have some kind of visual indicator of what I have selected. Right now I jump back and forth between project and context view as I plan to make sure I don’t pick too many things to start. It would be great if OF had some basic graphical reporting (perhaps borrowed from OmniGraphSketcher). It would be great to see things like:

- how many tasks are set to be started by day in the next week / month / etc.
- how many tasks are due by day in the next week / month / etc.

I’ve never really seen the point of using the estimated time field, but I realize this may be because I just don’t get it yet. I used to feel that way about start dates, but now I live by them. But if I could see the following on a graph:

- time committed by day based on due activities
- time committed by day based on start activities

Well, I’d be all over using that time estimate column.

I guess the core problem I’m getting at is, I dump all kinds of things into OF. I mean everything from when to take my garbage cans to the curb to big life goals. When I plan and review, I really would like to have a sense of how much I’m committed to so that I can be a little more realistic in my planning.

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Leading Questions: When You Think You Know the Answer

May 20th, 2009

I’ve been noticing this a lot lately. Some one will ask a question that assumes the answer. In which case, why ask the question? And are you really listening when they give an answer or are you hearing what you expect?

For example, I heard an account manager ask a client, “do you have concerns with usage or budget?” Well, after hearing that, I’d have concerns about both. How about, “What are your concerns?” instead.

More often than not leading questions happen when the person is uncomfortable with the question they are about to ask and so they keep talking after they ask the question. See above.

My advice is twofold: 1) If you are afraid of the answer, get over it before you ask the question. 2) Stop talking. Say as little as possible and just listen. Otherwise you are going to get the answer that is making you afraid to ask the question.

Also, it’s never as bad as you think, until you make it so. Often when it seems as bad as you think, if just truly listen, you usually uncover that there is a very solvable problem underneath.

Posted in Doesn't Hurt To Ask, Motivation | Comments Off

OmniFocus: Changing My Strategy

May 19th, 2009

First some background, I always have way more to do than I can possibly get done. I’ve been using OmniFocus for a couple years now (since May 2007) to track everyting and really can’t imagine how I would get things done without it. Today, I just made a pretty significant change in how I use it.

Here’s what I was doing before. During my weekly review, I would assign due dates to the things I wanted to get done during the upcoming week. I would assign dates such that my projects were spread evenly across the week. But I was always too optimistic. I rarely got done everything I planned to.

As a result, I ended up with a bunch of red tasks that really weren’t overdue. I in turn stopped paying attention to color (one of the very useful feedback cues that OmniFocus provides). I also spent a lot of time scanning through my overdue items, cherry picking the most important ones. It was a GTD nightmare.

So here’s what I just did to fix it.

First, I set up review schedules for each of my projects. I wasn’t using this at all before. Then I set up my “Planning” perspective (my default Project view) to be grouped by “Next Review” so my most neglected projects appeared first. In my weekly planning, I’ll start here.

Then I got rid of the due dates for things that really weren’t due at any time but I had added a due date to force me to get them done. Instead, I now plan to during my weekly review, identify a couple of projects that I want to tackle that week and set Start dates for each of them, much like how I set Due dates before, spreading them out across the week.

But here’s the key difference. I changed my “To Do” perspective (my default for context view) to group by start date. I collapsed the start any time category because those are the things I want to ignore and can now see just the tasks that I set out to do this week sorted by when. The best part is if I fall behind nothing turns red, except for the things that are truly past due because most things (that don’t really have due dates) don’t have due dates.

If things slip, then the next week I’ll just add start dates to fewer items to allow me to catch up. Or I might decide something else is more important and remove start dates from some projects and add them to others.

The benefit of this change are the following:

  • No more screens full of red tasks that aren’t really past due.
  • I’ll now pay attention to the things that are truly past due.
  • Start dates are way more pleasant than due dates
  • I like change.

We’ll see how it goes after a few weeks, but for now I’m excited.

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Posted in Digital Information, GTD | 3 Comments »

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