March 2009
19 posts
ChangeThis.com →
“We’re on a mission to spread important ideas and change minds.”
My two suggestions: start with the Most Downloaded and Most E-Mailed manifestos. Prepare to have your mind blown.
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To Avoid Procrastination: Think Concrete
New study finds procrastination is warded off by considering tasks in concrete terms.
Here’s a summary of the main conclusions from all the studies discussed:
To avoid procrastinating on a task, focus on its details and use self-imposed deadlines.
To stick to a task, while actually carrying it out, now it is beneficial to keep the ultimate, abstract goal in mind.
When evaluating progress...
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Have a Purpose
Simply put — companies are so focused on what they make (the features and benefits of their products) — that they lose the underlying reason for why they are making those products in the first place.
According to Sinek, so many companies “innovate” by adding more products to their offering, or new features to their products. They are so focussed on the “what.”...
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TechStars Model Seed Funding Documents →
There are five primary documents in the set:
Term Sheet
Articles of Incorporation
Bylaws
Subscription Agreement
Election Consent
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Pattern Recognition
High functioning people tend to be very good at pattern recognition: they accumulate lots of experiences (pieces of pattern) and then synthesize them (whole pattern) into something meaningful or actionable.
Some people are particularly good at seeing patterns in lines of code. Others are good at seeing patterns in human behavior, or in architecture, or in the way tennis balls fly over the net.
...
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Smaller Goals
What do you dread at work? Maybe it’s filling out expense reports. Making a cold call to a sales lead. Giving a long-delayed performance review to T.J. (aka “the Crier”). You dread it, you avoid it, you procrastinate. You check out Google News instead.
There’s a way out of this cycle, and it comes from self-help books. \ Start by thinking about housecleaning, the most...
“Don’t read newspapers for the news. The best filter(s) to know if the news...”
– Nassim Taleb, author of the Black Swan
10 Points on Management
A great post on Management taken from the blog Raw Thought by Aaron Scwartz
You want to get something done. But it’s too big to do it by yourself, so you bring in some friends to help out. In your dreams, all your friends just “click”, understand exactly what it is they’re all supposed to do, and do it quickly and effective. In reality, this almost never happens.
In order for any team to...
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Your Anchor Tenant
In real estate, before a shopping center is built, they establish the anchor tenants. These are the stores that will be the big draw to bring consumers and more importantly, attract smaller stores to the shopping center. The anchor tenants are often enticed to the shopping center with discounted cost per square foot and other benefits. The theory is the anchor store will bring in millions of...
I'll Write a Book Someday
Joseph Epstein writes in his book Ambition that:
There is a fantasy commonly held by many who have been given a liberal arts education but who lack either the talent or the opportunity to practice any of these arts. It runs something like this: Very well. I will spend the first fifteen or twenty years of my life striving in the canyons of Wall or La Salle streets, or in the law courts, or in the...
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How to Change The World
“When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world.
I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation.
When I found I couldn’t change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn’t change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family.
Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had...
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Three Things You Need if You Want New Customers
If you want to grow, you need new customers. And if you want new customers, you need three things:
1. A group of possible customers you can identify and reach. 2. A group with a problem they want to solve using your solution. 3. A group with the desire and ability to spend money to solve that problem.
Unfortunately, most of the businesses I am interested in (i.e. music, art, culture,...
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Shaping Ideas to Become Disruptive
Is there a large population of people who historically have not had the money, equipment, or skill to do this for themselves and as a result have gone without it altogether or needed to may someone with more expertise to do it for them?
Are there customers at the low end of the market who would be happy to purchase a product with less (but good enough) performance if they...
