symptic

Tim Ferriss is a good example of this.

They did give her that chance though, with a $150,000 initial advance. At least, more of a chance than most authors get.

She mentions doing freelance writing and ghostwriting, so she's not only doing her books for income.

That's not very sound basis for your bet. Though you'll be able to study this with the more letters you send. I just wanted to point out that you need to test this rather than assume.

If he changed the background color to a very dark shade of grey rather than straight black, it would lessen the contrast and ease the strain on your eyes. If you're feeling buzziness from reading inverted type, there is also a good chance your screen is at an unhealthy brightness. Great for picking out contrast, but painful on the eyes. One trick my friend taught me was to place a light source off in the distance to the side, to break up the focused source of light from the screen. It cured his computer-induced headaches immediately, along with lowering his brightness.

And this, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is a lesson in why establishing a brilliant culture in your company is of utmost important. It's amazing to me to see all the praises in this thread for JetBlue and would be interesting to see a case study comparing the differences in culture between the two brands.

This is VERY well designed. Many congrats on that regard.

Rather than critiquing it for not being a suitable replacement for parental story time, why not someone suggest it be used in libraries? Let the librarian record the stories and give the children access to them on the library's computers. For children who can't read, they still get a fun experience and it's more intimate than some tape recording.

This also has educational implications, in teaching children to read and maybe using the interface as a 2-way communication device for some sort of tutoring service where children learn to read by practicing with a teacher listening and watching them as they try. What about allowing them to do have real-time drawing capabilities, like you see on NFL games, circling words the child makes a mistake on, or underlining a sentence the teacher wants to emphasize for whatever purpose.

These iterations of this service are what make it a beautiful thing. I don't reckon it would be too difficult to add either of them as well. Would also provide it a more viable business model.

I think the question shouldn't be "do professors matter?" as much as it should be "do universities matter?"

IF you choose to pursue a university career, then YES, the professor makes a HUGE difference. One of my best professors this semester had to step out for a week to tend to personal issues, and the week he was gone feels like a void in my mind. The content we discussed in lecture went in one ear and out the other. He is what makes that class fun and engaging for me. The same applies to any great professor. Remove them from their classrooms and you'll probably see the students exiting the class at the end of the semester not knowing the material as well as that professor could have helped them to.

On the other hand, self-paced learners who choose to teach themselves and to learn form experience are learning in a different way, and you could argue still that this method benefits greatly from a mentor; someone who can guide them through their learning. In essence, what a professor does. Albeit in a different fashion.

Seconded, although that would take away from how straightforward the service is.

You are right, but keep in mind some organizations and processes still "trust" a time-stamped hard copy more than an email. We're fortunate enough to be very tech savvy, but this service, to me, is meant to be an accommodation to those who refuse to join us or are stuck in the past, or those who think it's a fun thing to try.

I can see this being very useful for businesses wanting statements and comments for the record.

Working with Noah was a great experience for me, and this interview is really great because it emphasizes a lot of the topics that came up during our burrito lunches together. It's great to see he's found some success and still loves to share his ideas and advice. Thanks Andrew for the interview!

As I said, there are means to overcome these maintenance problems; outsourcing the work being just one of them.

There seems to be a fair amount of cognitive dissonance going on here, and it seems to stem from the fact you feel overwhelmed and I am suggesting that more can be done. This dissonance is probably part of why your response is as aggressive as it is.

Get off HN and do the customer support. Skip that trip to the bar and get that next bug fixed. I know and am surprised from my own personal experiences at how much time we spend on small unproductive things. Personally, I think they are essential to being happy, but there can be stints where neglecting happiness and relaxation has a greater payoff; where doing the work and getting the customer support done will give you enough cash flow to hire someone to do it for you.

There is this little voice in everyone's head, saying that the extra work is too hard, that it'll be better not to stick it through. It's like there is a constant battle with yourself on what level of self-dominion you can achieve; meaning, your ability to actually get yourself to do what you want to do. It's running that 5th mile when you've run 4 and want to call it a day. It's coming home from work and putting in 2-3 hours into your side project when you just want to lay down and watch TV. How hard is it really to dig in and get it done?

I say what I do not to be critical of you--I don't know who you are, and I have no conflict with you personally--but because I know how sticky that emotion is. Feeling like that extra work isn't worth my time; I've been there. What it takes is doing small tasks, one at a time, to build momentum. Taking the trash out leads to cleaning your desk, which leads to writing up a short brief about things, and eventually, you're flying through and getting task after task done (not just work-related things) and you are 100% confident in your ability to say, "okay, so today I'm going to do X, Y, and Z," and at the end of the day you will have done those things.

Less a theory and more an observation.

It would seem to me this young man has already set the gears into motion by knowing he doesn't have the answers and by making an effort to question his life. Many of the responses in here speak so matter-of-fact-ly that one person's opinion is right or wrong, but the truth is, no one knows the secrets behind what makes for a good life.

Life happens and it's all about how to take it in. Be it thrusting yourself into hard, difficult situations or taking it easy to learn and enjoy the subtle nuances of life. There is a particular equifinality in life where the same solution can be derived through different approaches. No one here is in the right or the wrong.

My personal opinion is that "getting lost" is less the solution, but rather the gentleman should "stay open," if you will. Wandering is merely one action that tends to incur openness, but it may or may not be the correct approach for any one person in particular. Learning to appreciate life is what he's learning "the hard way" currently and I would venture to say he'll experience that 'click' in his head sooner than his doomsday-ridden mind is anticipating.

Realizing how fortunate we all are to be here in this cultivated "world" of intellectualism--of the attitude we all have developed through our own stories similar to this boy's--discussing the merits of self-realization (who I am) the requisites of self-actualization (what I can do) is what is important here. It's quite the privilege.

These still exist in the "VC world," and then there are added constraints as well, such as expectations and pressure on yourself not to let other people down. Bootstrapping is simple; just get the fucking work done. Pardon my french, but that's what it comes down to. People find it easy to let themselves down, so when they do it's not a big deal, but letting a guy (or gal) down who took the time, effort, and money to put into your company will make you try that little bit more.

Find the motivation to get these small un-sexy tasks out of the way and then focus on growth. it doesn't matter how or where you find the motivation, just get your work done. Now I don't mean work 15 hours a day. Just stop wasting time when you are working. Come up with systems that optimize your time. And feel free to outsource. If you're familiar with economics, there is an opportunity cost to everything; odds are it costs you less in the long run to pay someone to keep up with your servers' status or to fulfill customer support so you can focus on what you are truly skilled at.

School for me.

There seem to be a lot of mentions of 'design' though. Honestly, it doesn't matter how good or bad your product is. Get -something- out there for other people to use. Run a private beta of just 5-10 people at first who are willing to critique everything to the ground. Then your design will fall into place rather than trying to be "smart" about it initially.

There is a difference between pretty design and converting design, and then there is a small group of designers capable of providing converting designs that are pretty. Your website need not be pretty to convert well though.

My $.02.

PS: No offense to PG and this wonderful community, but getting off the internet would probably help a lot of us more than it would hurt.

I clean.

First, I clean my room, so my atmosphere feels less cluttered and my mind is less likely to wander of to thinking "I should get around to this."

Then, I'll clean my desk, which usually means throwing everything away that is not 100% absolutely necessary (old notes, ideas, drawings, cups, etc.) These all make you feel crowded mentally and literally. A clean desk lets you focus on the screen without any distractions.

Finally, the desktop. I make a point to zero out my icons when I do this, only leaving My Computer and the Recycle Bin on the desktop, with a wallpaper that reminds me of what my current goal is.

This usually has me inspired to take advantage of the completely fresh atmosphere I've created and tends to be when I create my simplest and most effective work. It also works wonders for coming up with ideas, both creatively and on the business end. Basically, cleanliness helps me solve problems more easily.

I think you could benefit greatly from Gary Vaynerchuk's ideas in this keynote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhqZ0RU95d4&feature=playe...

The general overview of what he says: it's never too late, you don't have to jump neck deep into it at first (i.e.: quit a job and take funding), you need more passion than Gandhi, and just fucking do it.

Nothing terribly exciting, but it's a big step in the research and preparations towards building a station on the moon itself.

We don't know the conversion rates of each site, so the traffic metrics are useless. One could convert at 15% and the other only at 2% and be comparable in terms of revenue.

Metrics are good, but they can be blinding.

Amazing. This is one of those 'where was this when I needed it!?' sites.

Your video is long and boring. Make it quick and simple; to the point.

I do a lot of landing page designs for clients. Here are some successful pages I can show:

http://www.codedpreview.com/previews/68ce03ad/

http://www.codedpreview.com/previews/78709ad6/

http://www.codedpreview.com/previews/f2658514/

http://www.codedpreview.com/previews/96728435/

It's important to keep in mind that the most important thing about your landing page is that you send qualified leads to them. Some of the requests I get seem very silly or odd, but my clients are AdWords magicians and can get the right people to go to them and convert very well.

Many clients optimize the pages I deliver to bring in $500 a day, net. I've been in the affiliate marketing service industry for long enough to have some insights for anyone just starting with online marketing.

If you have any questions, feel free to reply and ask!

Seems a bit ironic.

Dustin's research has applications in areas where every word makes a difference in your marketing efforts, or in guiding users more effortlessly through a process. That's why it's important.

I have several friends who have successfully gone on and off of the polyphasic sleep cycle. Just as with most things in life, you need to be open and willing and dedicated to make it work. This relates to forging your way with a startup, gaining muscle, adjusting sleep patterns, dating... everything.

It's fair to go from your own experiences, but I know polyphasic sleep is doable, reasonable, and even better for some people. My cup of tea? Definitely not.

I can appreciate how effective these methods are, but I personally don't like the idea of stripping one of the enjoyable things in my schedule down to how efficient it is. Working hard is great, but I think there is such thing as too much of it at the cost of an enjoyable life (for me).

Watching this movie makes me proud of my new business, whose focus is reforestation and funding education in underprivileged areas via philanthropic consumerism.

Thanks for so many comments guys. Really proves to me how great a community HN really is, especially seeing someone link my post up.

That said, let's get to discussion. The purpose of the post was for my own benefit, but I felt like many people are in the same condition I am, so it was worth telling myself out loud, if you will. I have a tendency to have so many things on my mind that I get bogged down with potential scenarios, both good and bad, and let them overwhelm my actual productivity, and I suspect many people do as well.

Also, the post is assuming a particular level of expertise in your chosen project, profession, or challenge. That said, it still stands true to newbies--maybe even more so. When you are new, experience provides entrenched knowledge which is much better than what you get out of reading an article. Just as well, when you are (finally) an expert, you have a general feel for what is right and what is wrong, and the mistakes you make have lower margins of effect. So yes, it IS important to rule data and details into your decision making, but just like my experience in freelancing, I've found that most people are actually capable of working QUICKLY and at unparalleled QUALITY if they put down their email and just dig in to the work until it's done. What takes most designers in my niche two days takes me 1-3 hours, and it pays off massively for me. Similarly, people are exceptionally capable of digesting data QUICKLY and EFFECTIVELY and can make sound decisions in haste. Of course, some should take some more time to weigh, but in general, I think people discredit themselves on their potential rapidity.

What I was hoping to accomplish was that were are all very dynamic and capable of beyond what we think we are, both in quality and in speed, and this is most important in influencing changes with your life, or your project, or your business. Everything changes, and those who are able to get through the decision making process and get to action, through more iterations of decisions, have a tendency to succeed more.

Hopefully that clarifies a few points of confusion. If not, feel free to ask more specifically what you wanted to know. :)