In the last decade, I’ve performed most of the roles involved in software development — coding, testing, functional analysis, project management, delivery management, sysadmin, product management & marketing, business development, startups, investor relations. I proved my technical skills at Travelocity and showcased my soft skills at ideeli and RingCaptcha. Without a real understanding of why I *needed* to do each of these things, it now makes sense to me why I did it.
I can do anything as long as I make up my mind of doing it, I will keep trying to improve — it’s in my nature as well as yours, but too many people quit the quest too early. But I didn’t want to excel at one particular thing until I got a feeling of what everything was about. Only after trying I would be uniquely positioned to become an expert and shine at that that I chose to do. How can I be so sure that whatever I did good and enjoy was MY thing? I needed to try each of them, and someone else telling me about it would not make me feel them unless I tried them for myself. That’s when I figured that thinking about my future will not help me determine if I will enjoy it. My future is made today and I have to do it to feel it and understand it. So doing as many things as possible certainly made me experiment too many emotions from the loneliness of coding to the stress of project management and as Marc Andreessen puts it, euphoria and terror from the startup world. …
Seems these days people are enamored with productivity posts, apps, tools, websites, businesses, etc. Every one of them selling the chance of getting those 5 glamorous minutes back from your life so you can spend them on something that matters to you, like watching the new House of Cards season.
Everyone keeps complaining that they don’t have time. I want to build a startup, run these marketing campaigns, hire a new dev, fundraise, have a kid, buy a house, blah blah blah. I’m sure your list is full of productivity wasters. Even bet you have some items in your list stinking there for years, waiting for that perfect time to do them. Truth is you will never do them. …
For a few years now, I’ve been wanting to get a tattoo but haven’t decided what to do. My preferred spots are forearms, navel zone and ankles, in that order. The reason I haven’t got one yet is because I couldn’t make up my mind what the heck to tattoo.
My twin brother got a rowing boat tattoo on his back below the neck, pretty slick. …
F**k! @dtrinh’s new app: Free takes me straight to my iTunes on my Mac. That’s useless since I don’t sync my iPhone with my Mac at all.
Free is a vague name and it matches almost 70k apps in the store. It wasn’t until I tried “free spend time” that I was able to get it.
If you hate searching in the App Store as much as I do, just have any latest Product Hunt app texted to your phone.
There’s a common belief in people that suggests skills are innate to us and cannot be changed. Either you were born as an olympic swimmer or you were not. Those who believe in this are setting constraints to themselves.
After a lot of research, psychologists have found that skills can be learned. What is even more fascinating is that those “innate” skills were taught during childhood by our environment. Actions slowly becoming habits, moving off to our “adaptive unconscious” — that place in the brain that does things without us even having to think on doing them (e.g.: breathing, watching, etc). Imagine for one minute what would do to our lives if we had to be constantly thinking on everything we do. …
Migrating off Wordpress into Medium
I’ve decided to migrate off my Wordpress blog and my countless posts :D to Medium. Hopefully, now that medium has become a short-blogging medium also on iOS, I’ll post more stuff frequently.
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