I’ve always told people that my design skills aren’t rooted in illustration or complex elements, but in typography and layout. This probably stems from the fact that I’m pretty much a terrible illustrator (and that I don’t have a Wacom Tablet or a scanner). Go figure. So it is that when designing logos or websites I prefer using carefully chosen typefaces and lots of negative space. It hasn’t always been this way for projects I’ve worked on, but I’m learning more and more that my best work has been when I (seemingly) put the least amount of effort into it.

OneSimpleGoal.com · A Daily Goal to Get Things Done!

This has certainly translated to the way I design and build web applications. My pet project One Simple Goal and this blog both show how much I love to leave the fancy colors and gradients out of it. Now, I’m definitely not saying that fancy colors and gradients are a thing of the past, or should be shunned. Matt Mullenweg’s blog (screenshot below) is a perfect example of beautiful complexity, and proves that complex designs can be very attractive and still usable. I’m merely stating that I feel like I can provide my best service when I design for a minimalistic user experience.

Matt Mullenweg’s blog is complex AND awesome (and not designed by me, I might add)

A few weeks ago I stumbled across a good post from SingleFunction.com on examples of extreme minimalism in web design. The post detailed a longish list of sites who they felt provided a service in a powerful way: through minimalism. Some of these were even over the top for me, but I could definitely relate with the idea or passion behind some of these sites.

I believe the most important thing you can do while building a web app, or designing your site mockup in Photoshop, is to ask one question: “Does everything on the page have a purpose?” Do all of the menus, toolbars, widgets, and design flourishes do well to accentuate the message you are trying to convey, or the action you are trying to invoke? Do they hinder your message in any way? Being too minimalistic can be just as bad as too complex: your users won’t know what to do, they’ll be confused, and will likely become another home page exit statistic in google analytics. Striking that balance is truly an art, one which I’m still striving to achieve with each new interface I build.

Are you a minimalist?

In a world of tech blogs… why do we need yet another? We don’t. So don’t read this post. No, seriously, you don’t want to.

Ok ok ok, please do. Wait, you’re already here. Great, read on then!

“Are you ready to rock?” » Alive and well by Rise Against from The Unraveling (before they sucked)

Once upon a time, I had a dream. That dream was to roll my own blog in Rails and show the world the awesomeness that was me. And so I bought rand9.com with full intentions of launching my blog in a few days. Well, days turned into a week, a week into several weeks, several weeks into several months, etc.

At some point in the early going I realized I wasn’t super close to deploying the blog, so I ended up building a simple static “Coming Soon” page (that did not have an “Under Construction” animated gif), stating some important things about me, including the tagline which read: “Coming Soon-ish”. Needless to say, that “soon-ish” has been much more “later-ish” than I anticipated, to the tune of 9 months-ish. At least, I think it’s been that long, maybe longer.

I won’t go into details about the platform I’m now using, only that it’s called Marley and it’s super rad. I didn’t roll it myself, but went with someone else’s great idea and did a few mods here and there to suit my needs. I plan on following this post with a comprehensive look at Marley, and when I do I’ll update this post with a link to that post. Whew.

I just want you all to know (you know who you are) that I am once again blogging, and this is my tech blog where I’ll be adding programming/tech related content and keeping ya’ll updated on the great projects I’m working on (yes, I do have a non-tech personal blog). Till then, I bid you adieu.

Oh, one more thing. If you’d like to subscribe to this blog (highly recommended), please click the “RSS” link in your browser address bar, or by choosing RSS or Email updates.

Cheers!

As you may (or may not) have noticed, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. Life has been life-ing and I’ve had a plethora of things to write about, just not a lot of time, since most of the things I want to write about require tact and skill so as not to offend one or more parties who read (or more likely don’t read) this blog. Ugh, that was a mouthful. So why the post tonight? Well, mostly because I forced myself to.

Some of you may have read the post a few months back where I detailed the new service I’ve been developing and had just deployed: One Simple Goal (OSG). Today I decided that I was going to write a post, and decided to set it as my one goal that I would like to accomplish today. At the time, I was very much “in the mood” to write, and had a few things on my mind. But, the time being at work, I didn’t really get a change to sit down and brain dump. So, instead I set the goal, and have been nagged by it for the remainder of the day.

The best part about OSG is that it gives you a really good excuse to actually get your goals done: there’s only one per day. One. Uno. Un. Eins. That means that you only have to focus on getting one goal accomplished for the day. Simple as that. As I finished pushing a few fixes and features to OSG a few minutes ago, I was ready to close the computer and hit the sack. Then I realized I could fulfill my goal by ranting for just a minute or two on the old blog. And hey, it just might get me in the writing mode again. You have been warned.

Oh, and if you feel like your life is out of control, give OSG a try and let me know what you think. It’s pretty powerful stuff.

Let’s just say, when I clicked the button to pay for the triathlon, I got a mini panic attack well up inside me. If you want to tie yourself in to doing something that will be hard or uncomfortable, put money on it. Such was the case for me in signing up for my first ever Sprint Triathlon in which I’ll be competing tomorrow morning. The funny thing is that I only signed up for it 3 and a half weeks ago, and really haven’t done much training to get ready for it.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Triathlon format, I’ll give you a short rundown. The normal Triathlon disciplines are Swim, Bike, and Run, in that order. From the time you enter the water on the swim till you cross the finish line running, there is really no stopping. Racers are given a transition area where they can place essentials for transitioning from one discipline to the other: T1 is the first transition (swim to bike), and T2 is the second transition (bike to run). There are four major distances that are used for Triathlon races: Sprint, Olympic, Half (or 70.3), and Ironman. As mentioned before, I’ll be doing a Sprint Traithlon: 300 meter swim (usually 750 or 800 for the Sprint distance), 11.6 mile bike, 5k run (3.1 miles).

I really can’t describe how excited I am to test my physical fitness and endurance in this race. I’m definitely not in the race to compete, but would be satisfied with a sub-2 hour completion time. If you are interested in coming out to cheer me (and 349 others) on, come on down! It’s in Riverton, and the swim starts at 7 am (Directions). Wish me luck!

PS, I should give credit to Joel who has inspired me to do this race (and is doing it with me). He’s gonna smoke me… :)

Last saturday Tyler, Tyson, and myself took a short motorcycle ride behind Squaw Peak. We were expecting some fairly easy riding since the dirt road is quite broad and well-travelled. Adventure ensued due to large snowbanks and general gooniness. Below are some videos we snuck in of riding and pre/post ride interviews. Enjoy!

Pre-ride Commentary

Tyson tackling the Monster Snowbank

BJ trying the snow… again

The end of the road

Snow rally

The Long Way Round shot

Tyler destroys the Snowbank

Post-ride Interview & Commentary

This puts a great perspective on how to bill your clients (and if you’re a client why you probably sound ridiculous).

Dustin sent this along today, and I have to say it is one of the coolest music projects I have ever heard of. The producers travel around the world recording tracks with various musicians, then mix it all into a great video/musical journey. SO COOL. The project/documentary can be found at playingforchange.com where their tagline is “Peace through music”. Apparently you can buy their songs on iTunes as well. Absolutely fantastic idea.

In my recent post In a rut and tired of it, I mentioned a possible solution to some nagging issues that continue to be difficult for me to overcome. May I quote:

So, here’s what I’m going to do. Set One simple goal each night before going to bed, to be completed the following day. The goal can range anywhere from spiritual to entrepreneurial. Simplicity will be favored over complexity, but I won’t be shying away from possible complex issues. The point is to do SOMETHING. It is my desire that each day I will produce a favorable gain in removing some obstacle that has stood in my way recently.

That was four days ago, and I have already been getting amazing results out of accomplishing a simple daily goal. My first four goals were: Tuesday) wake up at 8 am; Wednesday) Begin building a website to track goals, pushing it to the server; Thursday) Finalize the beta features of the website and start getting feedback from people; Friday) Contact a friend I’ve lost contact with. I have accomplished all four goals. The first and last goals were fairly simple, though still required determination to complete. The middle two goals were much more complex and time-sensitive, requiring even more determination and willpower to complete within one day. It was a good test to see how simplicity vs. complexity affects the decisions you make while accomplishing the goal.

By setting the goal to work hard on the website to get it out, I incentivized myself to put away distractions (like email, facebook, twitter) and focus more. I continually was assessing the amount of time I had to accomplish the goal, making value judgements based on the end goal I was desiring. Several times last night I had to abandon the feature I wanted to build because it was taking too long. This was a fabulous way to learn about the power of constraints that Jason Fried was talking about.

OneSimpleGoal.com

The purpose of OneSimpleGoal.com is to provide you with an opportunity to simply set and complete daily goals. There are (and will be) very few bells and whistles to the app, I want the simplicity of the concept to shine through. As such, there isn’t much color, imagery, or content. All things are focused on you setting a goal for that day (or the next), and then empowering you to get it done. Upcoming revisions to the site will address some of your initial ideas about how to improve the site. I am so excited to have this app out early and having people using it, even in an infantile or beta state.

You can get daily updates on the status of development on the app through twitter.com/onesimplegoal and the One Simple Goal group on facebook. If you have any ideas, concerns, bug reports, testimonials, or any other feedback about the app, please let me know by commenting on this post, replying @onesimplegoal on twitter, posting to the wall on the facebook group, or emailing me at bj [dot] neilsen [at] gmail [dot] com.

Now go out and start changing your life by accomplishing your simple daily goals!

Saw two really great videos from the GEL conference aimed at understanding and implementing better experience for users and customers. 

Seth Godin talking about how and why things are broken (from an experience and interaction perspective).

Jason Fried of 37 Signals talking about using Less to propel your business to greater success. The beginning is a bit muddy, but it gets pretty good from the middle on. My favorite part of the talk is the very end, here’s a transcript of the last minute of the talk:

Less software has less mass, and mass is a very important point, because just like in the physical world, the more mass an object has, the more energy it takes to change it’s direction. The bigger a software project is and the more code it has, the harder it is to change it. And if you can’t change your software, you’re going to die. […]

My suggestion to people is to keep your software small, less software, less mass, make it easier to change, and think about opportunities to embrace constraints. That’s the only thing I’d recommend more of: constraints. Less money, less people, less time, less abstractions, less software. That’s where you’re actually truly creative, in the space where you have constraints. If you have nothing constraining you, you’re not going to be creative because you simply don’t have to deliver. But when you have constraints, and you have less money and less time, you have to get stuff done. And putting yourself in a position to get stuff done is the best possible thing you could ever do.

You may or may not know me very well. Truthfully, I doubt any of you really know me, except for Tyler maybe, and my wife of course. I’ll just fill you in a bit since you’re on the outs: I’ve been in a big time rut for the last few months. Any semi-regular readers of this blog will know that I have a passion for programming and design, and that I have the entrepreneurial spirit of an eagle (or mongoose?). I have an incredible desire to work on my own businesses (or with a few well qualified individuals) and to have the opportunity to do something more in my life than sit at a desk and perform the whims of an employer. 

The Problem

That being said, I have been at the bottom of an enormous rut, trenched largely due to my own inaction. I know, I know, here I sit on the interwebs posting things about how you can be a go-getter and build your own business, and here I am basically hypocritical in nearly every way imaginable. I’ve been up against a wall of sorts, and I’ve basically done the worst thing you can possibly do in that situation: stared up at the summit, knowing I needed to be there, knowing I could be there, but deciding to sit at the bottom for no better reason than that it seemed difficult to accomplish.

My mind is constantly restless, ever conjuring new and more grand schemes of how to achieve my lofty goals of owning several automated businesses, yet here I sit, no closer to actualizing those dreams than I was 6 months ago. There has certainly been no lack of idea generation with how to accomplish my goals, or at least, which avenue of business I should take to move forward. The dearth has been in my lacking motivation to overcome the obstacles that arise. Learning new programming languages, understanding the paradigms of business management, continuing to provide for my family (and pay the bills); all these are obstacles that have arisen which I have generally had no answering words for. 

A possible solution

I have always believed that we have the power in ourselves (given from God) to overcome all obstacles. At no time has this counsel been clearer to me in my mind than it is now. I have the ability to change my situation, and need only to make a conscious choice to change my state, and to then immediately take action towards the desired goal. The little engine expressed ”I think I can, I think I can [etc ad nauseam]”, but my mantra will be ”I Know I can, I Know I can!” So, here’s what I’m going to do. Set One simple goal each night before going to bed, to be completed the following day. The goal can range anywhere from spiritual to entrepreneurial. Simplicity will be favored over complexity, but I won’t be shying away from possible complex issues. The point is to do SOMETHING. It is my desire that each day I will produce a favorable gain in removing some obstacle that has stood in my way recently. Some of these obstacles I wish to work on incrementally (in no particular order):

• Develop better sleep habits (currently the worst they’ve ever been).
• Finally fix my blog comments form (has been giving me absolute hell).
• Actually releasing my rails blog to production (coming soon-ish just doesn’t cut it anymore).
• Figuring out the Objective-C nuances that I simply don’t understand currently.
• Introducing some level of Scripture Study and Prayer into my daily routine.
• Consistently working on projects that will allow me to one day break free.

Daily, consistent action. Simple, achievable goals (one per day). Happy, well-deserved success. These are the things I strive for, and thank you for allowing me to bare a portion of my soul. I feel a bit better now. :)

What are you doing to break out of (or stay out of) your Ruts?