Is it something you can do now? Something unblocked? Or is it something you intend to do. Like, I'm doing this, this week. If a next action is something you have intention behind, does that mean everything else automatically becomes a Someday/Maybe action? Everything starts as Someday, and once you have put intention into it (for the u...

The other day, I was reading DHH's post about how he reads, and while I also used Mailbrew to throttle Twitter (before I ditched Twitter entirely) and to create a daily digest of RSS feeds, I loved his idea to have an evening email that packaged up YouTube channels and included their new videos. It's essentially the same as subscribing...

…if only it had better devtools. Mac people don't want to use Chrome. Most Mac users I know will stick to Safari. The only times I see people jumping over to Chrome are web devs because Safari's dev tools aren't as good as Chrome's. If Safari had dev tools on par with Chrome's (and WebKit had parity with Chrome's JavaScript and CSS sup...

I deleted my Twitter account recently. I didn't say I was doing it before I deleted it and I wasn't going to say anything about it—just be gone. I deleted my account because I wanted to ensure I didn't wind up falling into Twitter Traps (rabbit holes filled with angry people arguing over nonsense that has no effect on them but fills th...

Just because you work in the same department doesn’t mean you’re a team. Teams work together towards a common goal. If your backend, frontend, and design teams are all moving independently of one another, how can they ever be able to move as one and deliver a feature on schedule? The key to solving this problem isn't more chat. The sol...

“The reality is that the trust battery is a summary of all interactions to date. If you want to recharge the battery, you have to do different things in the future. Only new actions and new attitudes count. — It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work” You can't expect people to trust you right off the bat and you can't expect them to trust y...

It's fine not to know everything. This applies to intellectuals pursuits and to social ones as well. You can quit all social media (or at least ignore it for the most part) and nothing bad will happen to you. You'll probably be happier for it. My boss pulled up Facebook today and my response was, "Is that what Facebook looks like? I ha...

“I’m trying to do my job, please respect my time and attention.” Let's start beating the leave me the fuck alone, I'm working drum. The constant flood of Slack messages, shoulder taps, and status meetings does not improve efficacy or output volume. Quite the opposite, in fact. So let's all set our Slack status to I’m trying to do my jo...

“Set out to do good work. Set out to be fair in your dealings with customers, employees, and reality. Leave a lasting impression with the people you touch and worry less (or not at all!) about changing the world. Chances are, you won’t, and if you do, it’s not going to be because you said you would. — It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Wor...

The more time I spend getting to know Basecamp and its processes, the more Stoicism I see in the company. They value calm over big moves. They focus on the current moment and what can be done now. They care about treating people justly. Stoicism doesn’t just have to apply to your personal life. It applies to your business as well. See ...

We often talk about the things we want to do or how we want to be. It's more constructive to decide that you want to be the kind of personwho does [insert action]. For example, I want to be the kind of person who trains jiu jitsu every week. This is actionable in a way that I wanna do jiu jitsu just isn't. So the next time you find you...

Snared by Marketing So you want to do agile? What does that entail? Read The Agile Manifesto? The website that contains it has that weird background that makes the people in it look like Jesus giving a sermon in some watercolor painting. Sign up for agile coaching? Get ready to spend a whole lot of money on a guy to tell you all about ...

I’ve gone fully analog for personal to-dos. I use Basecamp for work stuff, but for private task management, I’m just using Ugmonk’s Analog cards. Tracking tasks on paper has been easier than I thought it would be. Copying things over to the next Today card when you don’t do something and seeing tasks sit on a Next or Someday card for a...

Email is the great equalizer of Internet communication. Anyone can send one to anyone else. Nobody owns email. Sure, there are different services and apps, but fundamentally, it's an open form of communication. If you have your own domain, you can pick it up and move it to another service provider at any time. You're not locked in. The...

Humans need surprisingly little to survive. We convince ourselves that we need more, more, more—but we don’t. Instead of wanting more, try wanting what you already have. If you want what you have, you can call yourself wealthy this very moment.

We have a tendency to go for the bigger, better option in everything. This leads to overspending, overeating, and overdoing it. Whenever you’re making a choice, try asking “Is this essential?” or “What would less look like?” You’ll often find that you can get by with far less than you first imagined and you’ll thank yourself later when...