Blog Posts
weekly review – week ending march 30, 2013
think of your business card as a doorway instead of a signpost
Quotes
the myth of waiting for inspiration
Platforms
Most of the platform work this week was on my own blog. I installed stats tracking and started paying attention to where my traffic is coming from and what is causing reactions to my content. I have a couple of tests running currently to see how I can more effectively reach people and provide them with meaningful content.
I also did some tweaking to the design to make headings within posts more prominent in blue.
Hard Edges
I finally declared ‘bankruptcy’ on my Evernote inbox and moved everything to a >>PROCESS notebook so I can chip at it gradually. I want my INBOX notebook to be meaningful and only contain notes for things I am actually working on, so that’s part of the clean up of hard edges this week.
Auto-transfers for the Quicken plan are all scheduled. Now to monitor the test and start tweaking where things don’t go as planned – in other words – “now the fun begins”.
Reflection
I did a lot of thinking about identity and what types of symbols we identify with in different areas of our lives. I was especially interested in flags and the kinds of emotions they evoke. Some good writing fodder here.
I am not reading enough long form non-fiction so this coming week, its back to books and less blogs.
This week is also my 11th wedding anniversary – lots to reminisce about and dream for the future about.
Mentorship
I had a good coffee meeting with a young man who is doing an internship this summer in the same industry as I’m in. I was very impressed by how proactive he has been to this point in his junior year. Most of the opportunities he has gotten have come from making himself ‘visible’ to leaders at companies or startups that he is interested in. His internship last summer came from him attending an event and talking to the heads of the company – and then following up and keeping the relationship going.
I recommended ‘The Start-up of You’ to him because I think he is exactly the kind of person that would take the advice in that book and use it very effectively.
Lean Methods
I could have done a better job using lean methods for my analysis at work last week but I allowed some temporary roadblocks to slow me down instead of attacking the problem from a different angle. This week, I will be more aggressive about getting to results.