Spoke with a very bright designer / developer today and he said something that made me raise an eyebrow.

He told me that he Regularly does Spec Work for clients.

This is wrong on so many levels. No one should ever work for free. It cheapens you and the other person.

There is nothing wrong with donating your time, but people should still understand that this time costs something. This isn’t about being mean, a dick or anything like that. It’s about being fair to yourself and to the world at large.

Payment doesn’t have to mean a cheque every two weeks. There are lots of ways to do it. Come up with a way that works for you, but for God sake’s do not do it for free. You will start to be grudge the work, and you won’t have all of your creative juices following when you work on said project.

Here is a funny and direct take on what I just said.

2011/03 Mike Monteiro | F*ck You. Pay Me. from San Francisco Creative Mornings on Vimeo.

Starting is easy… finishing is hard.

I started and stopped this blog post twice before finishing it. Really I did.

Why do you think that is? Why are we so afraid to finish things that we start?

I think we are afraid of what it will mean to be finished. If we are done, then we have to start something else. If we are done then it better be pretty good. If we are done, then we are accountable.

If we never finish things we really aren’t accountable. There is no risk. Sure we might waste some time, but we never put our name on it. We never publish it. We never finish it.

So we have directories full of half finished side projects. Half baked mockups for half baked ideas.

The next time I start something I am going to finish it.

Do we really need to kill Hollywood?

Of course not!

And I understand we are just being dramatic for effect, but common people. Attitudes and movements that are born with malice and bad intentions are doomed to fail. It becomes a war and wars can’t be won. Both sides end up loosing.

Gandhi didn’t declare war on Britain and if he had he likely would have failed. We should not be declaring war on Hollywood, or War on Music. We should be doing what we do best. Finding creative ways to solve hard problems.

We don’t need to start a war. We need to change hearts and minds.

So please, let’s stop talking about War and start making meaningful changes to the companies we run, the companies we fund and the places we spend our money.

Thanks for reading,

Kent

Well the flap is starting to buckle, the book is nearing the end. We don’t even know he has cancer yet, but I know it’s close. I wanted to write this post because there was a lot of black lash from respected Apple Fans about the book when it came out. They thought that Walter Isaacson did a poor job.

I really disagree. I think the book is very well written, has great pacing and does justice to one of the most loved and hated CEOs of history.

John Siracusa’s major complaint was that there was a lack of technical knowledge or appreciation on Isaacson’s part. He believed that Isaacson should have spent more time learning about the impact of the technologies that Jobs help create and explained these meaningful technologies to the reader.

This book wasn’t written for me, or John Siracusa. It was written as an introduction and as farewell to Steve Jobs. There will be other books to tout the tech stuff. This was about the intangibles of Steve Jobs, and Isaacson nailed it.

So far I have loved it, and can’t wait to see how it ends.

As a Canadian and avid Hacker News follower, I have been watching the SOPA, PIPA debate and protest from the sidelines.

Like most software developers, I am against SOPA for all these reasons however most of the petitions and protests are American based so I have felt helpless to make a difference all the way up in Mississauga, Ontario.

On Friday, I called my Representative, Stella Ambler in Ottawa and also called a whole bunch of US Representatives. I didn’t get much traction at all, but I think every able Canadian should do the same thing. There is nothing wrong with more people getting informed.

Big thanks to Alexis Ohanian who is doing a great job as the “face” of the resistance.

Let’s hope we can use our amazing tools that SOPA aims to control, to defat the bill from being passed.

Click here for the audio version of this post (Evernote link)

why don’t we wait?

There are so many times during a day when we should just wait for something but we don’t. We don’t have the patience to wait five or ten seconds for something and we quickly get distracted and move into something else. I’m a software developer, sometimes my server has to restart. Sometimes my changes need to be downloaded. Sometimes my code needs to be compiled. All of these take about ten to thirty seconds. Yet, for some reason I can’t wait for them to finish.

I’ll run them, quickly open up the browser, pull up hacker news and read about what’s new and shiny in the world of start-ups. Imagine if we took the time and waited for these little things. What if the next time you run a script server or rails server or build and analyze or take your small task that really doesn’t take a long time; maybe even just a webpage to load, maybe it’s just software to download.

Imagine if we just waited?

Imagine if we just took a deep breath while we waited? Use that time to reconnect with our body. Take three deep breathes. Melt into our chairs or melt into our heels if we’re standing up.

Try this for a week. It’s not easy. But wait, wait and breathe.

We breathe all the time but we never really take a good breath. Most of us, never really breathe. So the next time you’re waiting for your code to compile, the next time you’re waiting for your server to start watch it, take some breathes. See how you’re feeling. Don’t rush, go slow, wait.

Thanks for reading.

Kent

for more on waiting

If you haven’t seen this yet, it’s a collabortation between Google and Arcade Fire, to the music of We Used to Wait.

Very 2010 http://thewildernessdowntown.com/

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Why do we procrastinate all the time?

Why do we put off until tomorrow what we can do today?

I don’t know why. I struggle with this concept a lot. I consider myself to be pretty organized but I always find myself in a pinch when I need to prepare a presentation, a pitch, a client proposal, a budget, and I realize that we do tend to procrastinate what’s hard. We don’t procrastinate checking our email; in fact, we over check our email.

Why is that?

Because checking your email is easy. It’s easy to click on your inbox and blast through some of your un-reads. That’s easy, so we do it; in fact, we overdo it. We tend to not do what’s hard. Coming up with a presentation is hard. Coming up with a budget or a quote is hard. Following up with clients is hard. Being proactive is hard. Therefore, we procrastinate and we don’t do it until we absolutely have to.

Like most things, I think a lot of this is rooted in fear. We’re afraid to do the stuff that’s hard because, well, it’s hard and it’s scary. So we hold off doing it until we get that adrenaline rush that pushes us through the edge when a deadline is approaching.

So here’s my challenge to you and myself: Write down something every day that is really hard to do and try to get it done that day. You might have a system like “getting things done” or GTD - I know that I do - and I’ve tried this for the past few weeks and it works really well. Just pick one thing that you’re procrastinating on – one thing that’s hard – and here’s what you do:

Don’t try to finish the whole thing – that’s never going to work. In fact, you’re setting yourself up to fail. Instead, just work on it for half an hour. That’s it. Take out your iPhone or your phone of choice, put it on airplane mode, turn off your email, set your timer for 30 minutes, and work on it. As soon as that buzzer rings, stop. Move on to something else. Just try to push the boulder. Try to spin the plate. Keep the plates spinning. That’s all you can do. A project without momentum is a dead project. Pick something that’s hard and push it just a little. I think you’ll find that before long, it’s done…Give it a shot and let me know how it goes.

Click here for the audio version of this post (Evernote link)

Why don’t we do what we know is good for us?

Why is it we always want to start things but we never seem to want to finish them?

How many times have you started a new diet? How many times have you decided to change a habit? How many times have you set a New Year’s resolution?… How many of those were successful? Chances are, not very many.

Why is that?

At first, I thought it was because we just don’t have a lot of will power. Try as hard as we do, we simply don’t have the mental and physical capacity to carry on and see something through. For example, I have listened to countless books, self-help programs, and a variety of other things that have all basically said the same thing: If you write it down, it happens. If you write down your goals, they happen. Yet, I don’t write down my goals. Well, I do, but not consistently. And you know what’s funny? When I do write them down, guess what? I complete them!

So why don’t I write them down all the time? I think there’s two things at work. The first is that we are worried that our goals might actually succeed. We are worried that we might have to do what we have set out to do. Isn’t this the point? Isn’t that why we wrote down the goal in the first place? I would like to say that it is, but I really don’t think that’s true. I think a lot of times we are scared to actually follow through on the things that we commit to.

We’re scared of success.

Why would we be scared of success? It all comes down to change. If you succeed, chances are, things are going to change. Let’s say your goal is to double the profits of your business. That, for example, is one of Ewakened goals; hence, one of my goals. Doubling Ewakened’s profits would be incredibly beneficial to me, my family, and my business. So why wouldn’t I want it to happen? Well, one of the reasons why I might not want it to happen is it will likely mean that a lot of things will have to change. For example, to double my business will mean that I will need to double the amount of money coming in to Ewakened. This will mean getting more clients. More clients mean more deadlines. More deadlines means more pressure… Do I want that pressure? Of course I know that I do want it, but do I want it enough? Things are good right now. Do I want to risk that for the sake of some more money? Do I want to work later? Do I want to work harder? These are all questions that could be floating around my subconscious, stopping me from actually achieving my goal.

The funny thing is, even though doubling my business is one of my goals, I haven’t written it down yet. Why?… Why haven’t I written down one of my goals – one of the most important goals? I believe that it’s partially because of fear. Deep down I’m scared of what it will mean to double my business. I don’t know what doubling my business looks like. And that’s scary. Right now I’m able to scale up and scale down my company as I need. However, what happens if I get so busy that I need to hire a full time staff? Of course on the surface I would love to hire a full time staff. I would love to be busy enough to warrant having a full-time staff of people. But again, I have not come to grips with that. I haven’t come to grips with the fact that this might be where my business is going. And I think, on some level, that could be holding me back. I do believe that a lot of it has to do with fear. On some level, I am afraid of what myself and my business will look like if it doubles. Therefore, I find it hard writing it down.

Speaking of writing down goals, I recently bought one of Seth Godin’s books called Pick Four. The idea is based on Seth Godin’s mentor, Zig Ziglar’s, program of setting goals. The idea is you pick four goals that you want to accomplish. You give yourself twelve weeks. You write down the name of the goal, what skills are required to get that goal, what skills you need, what other people you might need, what the benefits are to you, what the benefits are to others, and then you basically write a story of how you are going to complete this goal. And then every day you check in. You write down your progress. If you didn’t do anything to further that goal, you don’t write it down. At the end of the week you do a kind of retrospective of how well you did. Did you make progress?

The idea is that little bits of progress go a long way… In my head and heart I know that this is a phenomenal program – because of its simplicity. Whether you believe in the magic of writing things down, the magic of positive thinking, the magic of creative visualization, it doesn’t matter. What matters is you’re getting clear about what you want, you are writing it down, and you are holding yourself accountable every day… I started this program a month ago. I have officially written down none of my daily journals. In fact, I even had a little intervention with myself where I sat down last Sunday and said, “This week is going to be different. This week I am going to start this program.” My four goals have been set, all my work has been done, it’s just a matter now for me to go throughout the day and at the end of the day write down what worked and what didn’t work. I haven’t done it… This week, i.e. tomorrow, being Monday, I will do it. But why has it taken me so long?

Why does it take you so long?

Why don’t we do what we know is good for us?… Why don’t we do what we know is good for us?…

That’s a very good question and something we should all think about and meditate on and find the answer for ourselves… So my challenge to you is to pick something that you’ve been meaning to do. Pick something that feels a little scary, write it down, and just do it. Get it done. If you’re not feeling a little bit uncomfortable while writing it down, or if you’re not feeling a little bit uncomfortable while doing it, I don’t think you’re aiming high enough. Pick something that really challenges you and try it… That’s what I’m doing and I’ll let you know how it goes next week.

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A little big or a lot of small

So what’s better? Is it better to do a lot of little things or a couple of big things? I guess it depends on what you’re talking about. Let’s talk about projects. I’m a consultant so naturally I quote and bid on projects. Some projects are big, and some projects are small. There are also medium-sized projects, but those are harder to find from my experience. Projects tend to either be pretty big or relatively small. So the question is… Which is better?

If you’re a consultant or if you’re a craftsman, if you’re building websites or building apps, what do you want to do? Do you want to build 50 small decent apps or do you want to build a couple really nice polished apps? The truth is I don’t know. I go back and forth all the time trying to figure out where the sweet spot is.

The advantage of doing a lot of little apps is that you can get quite good at them. Not to say there is more profit in them, but you can get really good at building a certain kind of constrained application. WordPress and Drupal are great examples of this. There are businesses and shops that solely specialize in WordPress customization. You pick a theme they customize and $5,000 to $7,000 later you’ve got yourself a website.

You can argue back and forth about whether or not you should use WordPress or Drupal. Whether being a good talented web developer means that you code everything from scratch. But there is something to be said about that kind of model. You are providing value. You are providing the client with a very good robust product. And you are able to turn it out in a reasonable amount of time with little to no headaches on the technical side. And you are able to make a decent amount of money by having a lot of projects on the go at once or cuing up projects so that you can always be busy.

Let’s say you move into more of a custom application where you could squeeze it into WordPress or Drupal or Joomla or Express Engines or any of these CMS systems that are really popular these days. But you have this inkling, this feeling that it just quite doesn’t fit. That it’s going to be just enough customization to require you to go beyond the scope of WordPress. So then what do you do?

You’re faced with a bit of a dilemma. You can convince the client that a custom CMS is needed. So that your CMS or Content Management System (CMS) will work for just for that one client. Now, some clients see the value in that, and it becomes a no-brainer for them to spend sometimes quite a bit more money to create something that is uniquely theirs and suits their needs, specifically.

However, there is a very large group of clients, in my experience, who will not make that jump. Now, it could be that I’m a bad salesman. I don’t think I am. I don’t think I’m the best salesman. But I’m a very good salesman, and I’m not a snake-oil salesman. I’m not trying to sell them something that I truly don’t think they need. Nine times out of ten I believe that investing more money and more time, and more care into something customized for the business will in the long run.

Web standards change on a monthly basis, there’s always new things to take advantage of, and yes you could use WordPress, download a plug-in and in ten minutes be rolling with the latest this or that. But I like to know what the code is doing, I like to make sure the code is not calling home, sending any data that I don’t want to be sent. So, nine times out of ten we end up starting with WordPress and then if the client wants any kind of things built on top of that we end up, then convincing them to rewrite the application and build it normally using Rails or DJango into a custom CMS.

The other option is you buck-up, and you build the CMS yourself. You build a flexible tool chain so that you can handle certain kinds of clients with ease. For example, I thought about doing this with restaurants or with architecture firms or with portfolio firms. Where you basically create your own content management system that can be easily branded to a different company.

You use that as a starting point and you kind of roll it into your cost and see it more as an investment. Where then you can then offer something really that no other competitor could. You could offer a high-quality custom CMS that you have 100% control and ownership of. While at the same time ideally delivering it at a price that competition simple meet because they are in the camp of either using something more basic like WordPress or building up the application themselves.

I’m really throwing this out there. I want to get some feedback. I want to know what you guys do and how you handle this. I’d love to get a discussion going because it’s something that I think about on a monthly basis. I wonder if I’m doing things right, if I’m pricing things right. I’d love to know what you think. My instincts tell me that it’s actually the middle that’s the best.

You want to make things that are high quality and things ultimately that you’re proud of. If you’re not proud of what you’re putting out there, if you’re not proud of putting your name on the work, then clearly you’re not doing a very good job. So, you have to be proud of what you’re doing. Personally, I cannot honestly say that I’m proud to buy a template and simply add the person’s logo and pretend, as if I built them a website because to me that’s not the case. I’d love to know what you think.

Thank you very much for listening.

Why do we help people? I have spent a lot of my time trying to build websites and web applications designed to help people. The first one was called NakedGuru. It was designed to connect college professors with college students to give them advice while in college.

We pivoted that into something called ProspectLinker. The idea was to shift the focus away from professors which we found had very limited time to interact with students, and focus instead on companies and new hires at companies that would be able to share their experiences with candidates who were still in universities and colleges. To give them advice on how interview and how to get into companies they were at, etc. etc.

We then pivoted into a product called Viewpointer. Viewpointer was aimed at the mass market. The idea of Viewpointer was to essentially act like Twitter for questions. You could ask questions. You could follow people who were asking questions. You could then point those questions to people who you thought were better able to answer them than you.

We had a lot of competition Aardvark, later Quora, FormSpring. Eventually, we lost funding and the project failed. Yet every week I pull out my phone, or my iPad, or my laptop. I go to search.twitter.com, I type in, “I need help” and I find a bunch of people that need help, at that moment. I help people. I find people that need help and I help them.

I recently told this to a friend of mine and he told me that there must be some ulterior motive in my actions. Maybe I want them to follow me by helping them. Maybe I want them to complement the fact that I’m helping them. Maybe I want to write this blog post so that the world knows that this is what I do. I don’t think that is true at least not consciously. I do it because I love helping people. I always have. It’s a part of who I am. I always ask. How can I help here.

In fact, I wanted to be a doctor before I fell in love with computer science in third year university. However, I wonder why we do it? Am I really helping somebody by asking a question on Twitter? Am I really helping somebody by answering a question on Quora? Am I really helping somebody by answering a question on Stack Overflow? Yes! I think I am. But it’s not enough. How can we help with the BIG questions.