I just came across an article by Scott Stevenson (an Apple developer) where he talks about the strategy behind developing the Cocoa framework, the current Objective-C framework that Apple is pushing as the standard for all Mac and iPhone programming. While it is specific to programming, I believe the concepts are applicable in every day life and decision-making.

The most important thing you will ever learn as a developer is this: start with the simplest thing that works correctly, and see where it takes you. This always leads you in the right direction because you’re not trying to solve problems that you don’t understand yet.

Instead of trying to guess at what you’ll need ahead of time, just leave yourself room to make changes as necessary. Cocoa’s dynamic design is ideal for this model. Not only is it less stress and more fun, but it leaves you with a much better final product.

As a novice, it’s tempting to try to take on a larger challenge by designing something more sophisticated. I think there’s some concern about embarrassment from showing off code that’s too simple. Tune that out. Good code is simple code that works correctly.

It’s so refreshing to know that in all we do, the simple answer is always the best one. This is true in so many facets of life, not just in programming or graphic design. Don’t worry or fuss with the complex unknowns; focus on what matters right now. The future will always take care of itself. With regards to your experiences (programming or not), does this philosophy hold up? What are your thoughts?

I am still laughing ridiculously over this. This morning I was working on a feature in our internal CRM to apply given supplier subscriptions (clients) to reps (our sales guys) so they can get the commission. The feature would allow any rep to override another rep’s link to a supplier, but it first will notify you that a link already exists to another rep. In my testing this morning, this is the message my feature gave me while trying to add an already linked supplier (and no, I did not doctor this):

I will be laughing about this one for years.

via xkcd.com

Yesterday I found a link to the text version of Steve Jobs’ commencement address to the Stanford class of 2005. I highly recommend reading the full address, it has some really great insights to life and why we live it. I thought I’d share some of the more notable pieces from the address.

1. Connecting the Dots

Jobs describes the process of dropping-out of college, then dropping-in to take the classes he was interested in. He took a Calligraphy class on a whim, which taught him all about the beauty of Typography, which he later used to incorporate into the world’s first PC, the Macintosh.

But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

I find Steve’s advice brilliant here. This is a style of living that I have tried very hard to follow for the majority of my life, especially over the last 4 or 5 years. Do your homework, trust in God, and ultimately, follow your heart. I have been amazed time and again how the dots connect in a phenomenal way as I look back on the decisions I have made throughout my life.

2. Love and Loss

After building Apple into a successful $2 Billion company, Jobs was forced to leave due to conflicts within the company. At first he was stricken with the loss of completing his dreams, but soon came to realize that he still was passionate about the computer industry. During this time he met and married the love of his life, went on to found NeXT and Pixar, and was eventually brought back to run Apple when they acquired NeXT. Since then, he has been regarded as a business and technology icon to look toward for inspiration.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

3. Death

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

[…] Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Brother Steve, Amen.

Readers Caveat: This post will likely seem like a heretical rant to most readers, as the content is mainly focused on showing the flaws inherent in the corporate 8-5 model. That’s okay, it is meant to make you feel uncomfortable. It also is 100% my beliefs, and you don’t really have to agree with me if you don’t want to. All the same, give it a read and let me know what you think at the bottom.

I’ve never really felt like I fit into the corporate mold of an 8-to-5er. I just don’t like being told what I’m going to do all day long. I feel like I have more things that I can do with my life than be subservient to the whims of a boss or CEO. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked under some good (but some bad also) boss’s and CEO’s. For me, the problem isn’t the people, it’s the system. I loathe the system. I know that there are things to learn and gain from being an 8-2-5er, such as task responsibility, depending on others, learning to work closely with others for potentially greater gains, etc. In spite of that, I feel like it’s such a hinderance that people (read: me, myself, or I) use as a way to coast through life. Wake up (usually later than you’re supposed to), normal morning routine, drive the commute, punch-in a few minutes late, check emails, check youtube, do your best to get into the flow*, have a melt-down or two based on current project, check emails, punch-out, drive commute, etc. Due to this routine, family members generally do not get to see or interact with each other until around 5:38 pm. But what if my daughter is having her pre-school graduation today at 1? Or what if I need to be there when the internet guy comes to set stuff up at the house?

One thing I’ve realized over and over for the past 4 years: Corporate Cruise-Control (aka Coasting) is so easy, but it’s also brain numbing, and it robs you of your family and/or dreams.

I don’t want to be a Coaster.

You don’t either? GREAT! Now that you know you’re a sheep of a different color (like me), what are you supposed to do about it? How do we turn off the cruise-control? I have a secret formula that I’m not supposed to tell you: A Burning desire + Committed Action = Success. Step 1 is knowing that you don’t want to play by their rules, and also that you have to forge your own way. The Desire you create is to know that you can create a successful income for yourself (and family) without having to fit the corporate mold. There are other alternatives. This is the land of the free, the home of the brave. The committed action you take is to become a Learning Entrepreneur. I emphasize the word learning because you have got to be able to take your “failures” and learn from them. In speaking to my friend Tyler about this last night, he said something that I’ll never forget. In life (not just business), the word “Failure” and other derivatives is simply a synonym for “Learning Experience”. Failure isn’t the end of the road, it’s simply another bend in the S-curve of life. It can only ever be another step towards success, or simply termed “Incremental Success”, if you learn from the experience. If you choose to ignore the learning experience, 1) I feel sorry for you, 2) you will likely develop mental or emotional walls to convince yourself that you don’t have what it takes. 

So what’s the best part about breaking free, you ask? IT’S EASY. Oh ya, and it’s fun. Now don’t get all twisted up on this one. You’ve made it this far with me, just go a bit further. The National Wage Index reports that in 2007, the Average annual household wage in the US was $40,405.48. I’ll round that off to a nice even $40,400. So, you being the average Joe/Jane, it seems natural to suppose that in order to break free you would need to replace your annual income of $40,400 in order to break the mold. So, let’s break that down.

$40,400 yearly =

• $20,200 bi-annually
• $10,100 quarterly
• $3,366.67 monthly
• $1683.33 bi-monthly
• $776.92 weekly

So far, that’s pretty impressive, but it’s also generic. As an employee or an entrepreneur, I know I need to accumulate appx. $777 a week in order to maintain an income of $40,400. Not bad when you break it down, but let’s get even more granular. Suppose that you are currently an employee of a large corporation that pays holidays and allows PTO and Sick Days. So, taking out weekends, but leaving all the holidays as paid, and assuming that you work an 8 hour shift, we arrive at income generating days per year = 261 (365 -2(52)), or 2088 hours of work. Given these numbers, working at an 8-5 job, in order to sustain $40,400 per year you need to make:

• $154.79 daily
• $19.35 hourly
• $0.32 minute

Wow. Every minute you sit at your desk you are generating 32 cents. Which means that you probably made around $1.00 simply reading this article. Good Job! Okay but seriously, those numbers are pretty neat when you break them down. But what happened to the other 3752 waking hours in that year (an average 8-hour per night sleeper sleeps 2920 hours in a year)? It was likely spent with friends or family, doing what you would rather be doing when you’re at work. You’re forming new relationships, growing existing relationships, and learning a lot about life and yourself. Unfortunately, over half of the hours in a given year you are either working or asleep (57.2%). What’s worse, of all the amount of time that’s available each year including sleep hours (8760 hours), 76% of your time is spent during non-income generating hours. So you work a quarter of the year in order to live for the rest of it.

This model is very inefficient in my opinion. Why not create an automated business model that allows you to generate money at all times. No matter what hour of the day, people can give you their money through this new-fangled thing we call the interwebs. Let’s crunch those number one more time, but let’s assume that every hour, nay, every minute of the day is an income-generating moment in time. All of a sudden our granular numbers drop significantly:

• $110.68 daily
• $4.61 hourly
• $0.08 / minute

Wait a minute. You mean to tell me that I cut my income per minute by 400%? No silly, I was telling YOU that. Anyways, it’s true. In order to generate the same income of $40,400 in a year through a normal 8-5 job, you need to make an average of 4 times more per minute than an entrepreneur who wants the same salary. The hourly and daily numbers aren’t at such a high factor simply because the amount of time you have to work with is different. An even crazier number is this: if the Entrepreneur in our example makes the same per-minute wage as the salary worker (32 cents per minute), his/her annual salary would be $168,192! If by the same token the Salary worker only earned the Entrepreneur’s per-minute wage, their annual salary would be $10,022.40! Time = Money.

Now most detractors at this point will say how hard it is to setup a business to deliver a consistent flow of income. “It takes some companies months or even years to get a positive cash flow, and some never even achieve that!”, or, “4 out of 5 startups fail within the first year”, etc. etc. (ad nauseam). I don’t really know what makes these people tick, that they feel it is their sworn duty to make sure no sane person enters the world of entrepreneurialism. By all means, use your brain, be smart with your decisions (and startup capital if any), learn how to adapt. But please, don’t lose sight of the pursuit of a path that excites you because you’re afraid of what may (or more likely, may not) happen to you if you do. You never know, you might end up getting it right the first time. 

I plan to follow this post in a day or two with another on ways to form business ideas, how to get a website going, and the #1 rule of Business. Stay tuned.

PS: I’ve built a quick javascript calculator to run the numbers on an annual wage, comparing entrepreneurial wages to salary worker wages. It is astounding how easy it is on a per-minute basis to make 100k a year. Go on, try it out.

I’ve heard of studies that say most employees waste 60-80% of their work day performing trivial or non-work related tasks, such as checking email, surfing the internet, making phone calls, taking long breaks, etc. Not you? I applaud you then. But take a look at most of your co-workers: I’d bet a nickel that most have found ways to appear fairly productive while accomplishing virtually nothing at all in an 8-hour span. The best part is that most of them don’t even realize it, which is another byproduct of the Corporate Cruise-Control.

Driving to work this morning I saw the above image displayed prominently on the back of the van ahead of me. The image is blurry, so I’ll translate:

NOW HIRING

Satellite TV Installers

A career where the only limit is your imagination.

dishnetwork.com/careers

Apparently, imagination solves all problems, including the fact that your career might be a dead end and boring as all-get-out. If the above is true, I wonder what it is that Satellite TV Installers do think about while at work to increase their job satisfaction. I suppose I may never know.

A while back I was googling around for some ideas on how to form better sleeping habits and I came across Steve Pavlina. He’s a self-help guru who runs a Blog that generates him a cool 40k/month just off of donations. The content of the blog is all related to self mastery and such, things that are very interesting to me because I’m always looking for ways to better myself. Most of you reading this article who know me are probably rolling your eyes because you’ve seen my many many flaws, but just know that I’m aware of the faults and am actively changing many of them. But I digress, back to Steve…

This afternoon his latest blog post, Overcoming Indecision, came across my RSS reader. I was very impressed by the content of the post, so I thought I’d mirror some of this thoughts here. At the beginning of the article he defines two ways that we grow: Linear Growth and Growth Forks. I wont’ go into detail, because I don’t want to plagiarize his content; Needless to say, I agree with him on both of these concepts. The most prominent part of the article (for me) is in the section entitled An Alternative Decision-Making Process, where he talks about the concept of the present moment, and how we make decisions based on consequences that are only felt in the present moment. An excerpt is as follows:

Instead of trying to predict the future to determine the long-term implications of each possible path, drop the whole branching timeline model. Instead of regarding time as a line, consider time as a single fixed point. In other words, assume that only the present moment is real, and nothing beyond that exists.

Your decision point no longer involves the selection of a long-term path. Now it’s merely a state change to your present moment.

As you consider the alternative choices you might make, ask yourself this question: ”If I were to commit to this choice, how would it affect me right now? What immediate changes would I experience?”

Imagine each possible choice as real, as if you’ve already made it. Pay attention to how the choice makes you feel. Does it feel good, or does it feel wrong somehow?

This concept was a breath of fresh air for me. As most of you know I am in the process of closing on our first home purchase. Through the past 12 months there have been so many ups and downs, but I feel that through it all we’ve been able to make some pretty tough decisions with relative ease because we used the principles Pavlina talks about above. Whenever we are confronted with a decision to choose either A or B, the future consequences don’t really matter all that much. We just focus on what it means for us in the hear and now, in the present moment.

You may gasp in horror at this, but truly, I cannot even think of one instance where we have felt like the future consequences even mattered. Just take each challenge as it comes. Learn from the difficulties and move on. If they keep coming up, learn from them again, and move on. Remember, it’s the journey, not the destination, that matters most.

Note: Ironically, I wrote a song on my mission entitled “Indecision” that violates a lot of what I just wrote about. So either I was “right” then or “right” now, either way I am progressing (the direction of progression is determined by which “right” I was.) Come to think of it, pretty much every song I wrote back then violates the above stuff. ….Internal thought processing…. Awkward…

I sometimes ask people the question, “If you were to have a reasonable amount of money to maintain a collection, what would you collect and why?”. It’s kind of a random question, but you can sometimes get interesting answers out of people. If you ask me, collections are weird things on so many different levels. People collect everything from bugs to coins to cars, and many other random things in between. My collections were on the more nerdy end of the scale (surprise!).

Card Games

My guiltiest collection addiction I had while growing up was collecting and playing the Star Trek and Star Wars Playing Card Games (I also played Magic every now and again with the Erickson’s, but never indulged in purchasing my own cards). I had way more Star Trek cards than I did Star Wars, but both were fun to play. I think the Star Trek version was easier to play, I’m not sure I ever got the hang of Star Wars’ Attrition in “battles”. I think at last count (which was several years ago) I had over 900 Star Trek cards. And yes, I still have them somewhere around the house. I seem to remember that Kevin and I actually played a game a few years ago for good times remembrance.

We all customized our Star Trek deck’s according to the individual Race’s in the game: Federation, Klingon, Romulan, or Non-aligned. Tyler and Kris both had their decks customized towards Klingons, Kevin towards the Federation, and I had mine towards the Romulans (D’deridex! Devoras! Hahaha, sorry, just had to throw that out their for those guys). Oh the good times. I even remember getting in a fight with Kevin because he and Tyler had hidden my Romulan deck. You don’t get between me and Sela. :)

Shot Glasses

At one point I had a collection of shot glasses, which I think was largely inspired by my brother Scott. If I remember right, he brought me home a few shot glasses from his mission to Baltimore, and that sorta started the whole thing. I’d buy shot glasses in random places where I’d been. I don’t think my collection got more than 20 pieces in it, so not much to brag about. I did have one shot glass that was a Pirate’s shot glass. It was the size of a small cup (probably 3 shot glasses worth) and had lines up the side indicating your manliness as a pirate if you filled your rum to such height, something like Swashbuckler up to Full Pirate. 

POGs

I also had a large collection of POGs, a modernish version of Jacks where you have small cardboard circles with random images on them. You stacked the pogs up and used a slammer (a heavier and thicker POG made of plastic or metal) to smash the stack. All the pogs that stayed face up you get to keep, and you continue playing till there are no POGs left. You were supposed to be able to steal other player’s POGs, but I don’t think we ever played that way. As I remember, the game was very fun and addicting, but seems enormously boring now. I think we still have my POGs somewhere around the house, but I doubt I’ll go looking for them.

Future Collections

)”)

While all these things held my attention as an adolescent teenager, being an adolescent adult requires much more manly things to collect methinks. Unfortunately the more manly things require more cash than I currently have excess of, so for now I’ll have to just wish upon a star.

The main answer I give to the above question is that I would LOVE to collect Vintage and Modern Guitars. My Dad had a friend (recently passed away) who was a guitar nerd and every time I’d see him we’d always talk about his guitar/amp collections. At one point he actually procured one of the PA amplifiers used by The Beatles at one of their shows in some stadium in Houston, though I never dared ask how much he paid for it. I guess back then they didn’t have PA systems installed into the stadium, so they basically had to get these insanely loud amps to do the work for them. Way cool.

I also realized today that I would also really enjoy owning a bunch of old Macs. I am a self-proclaimed Mac-ist and a bit obsessed in some ways, okay in a lot of ways. I think it’d be pretty cool to have an Apple Lisa or an Apple II kicking around my office. I could even setup a fancy display for them. Part of what would be so neat about it would be to be able to use the older software on them, to see the evolution of GUI Operating Systems since their inception. I know, I know, pretty nerdy. But everyone reading this blog (at least those who know me) understand that it comes with the territory.

Other Collections of Note: Ryan Byrd has many thousands of books, several dozen swords of all types, and a “respectable coin collection”. Let’s all go on over and coax Ryan into giving us a post about those.

*UPDATE: **Incidentally, I just read that the Apple Lisa was released the day after I was born. Destiny? You decide. *

My friend Ben forwarded this link to me today that I thought was very funny: If Programming Languages were Religions. For the non-programmers among us… spare me this brief stint of nerdy-ness. This guy nails it on the head entirely. The applicable languages to my skills are listed below (though there are many more at the actual link):

Java would be Fundamentalist Christianity - it’s theoretically based on C, but it voids so many of the old laws that it doesn’t feel like the original at all. Instead, it adds its own set of rigid rules, which its followers believe to be far superior to the original. Not only are they certain that it’s the best language in the world, but they’re willing to burn those who disagree at the stake.

PHP would be Cafeteria Christianity - Fights with Java for the web market. It draws a few concepts from C and Java, but only those that it really likes. Maybe it’s not as coherent as other languages, but at least it leaves you with much more freedom and ostensibly keeps the core idea of the whole thing. Also, the whole concept of “goto hell” was abandoned.

C++ would be Islam - It takes C and not only keeps all its laws, but adds a very complex new set of laws on top of it. It’s so versatile that it can be used to be the foundation of anything, from great atrocities to beautiful works of art. Its followers are convinced that it is the ultimate universal language, and may be angered by those who disagree. Also, if you insult it or its founder, you’ll probably be threatened with death by more radical followers.

C# would be Mormonism - At first glance, it’s the same as Java, but at a closer look you realize that it’s controlled by a single corporation (which many Java followers believe to be evil), and that many theological concepts are quite different. You suspect that it’d probably be nice, if only all the followers of Java wouldn’t discriminate so much against you for following it.

Perl would be Voodoo - An incomprehensible series of arcane incantations that involve the blood of goats and permanently corrupt your soul. Often used when your boss requires you to do an urgent task at 21:00 on friday night.

Ruby would be Neo-Paganism - A mixture of different languages and ideas that was beaten together into something that might be identified as a language. Its adherents are growing fast, and although most people look at them suspiciously, they are mostly well-meaning people with no intention of harming anyone.

I thought I’d give a rundown on some various statistics about our family since we’ve been one.

• 4.5 - the number of years we’ve been married.
• 2 - the number of kids we have.
• 6 - the number of jobs I’ve had: The Quarry, Primerica, Wildcat Software, Heritage Web Solutions, MarketPartner, BidSync.
• 480% - the amount of annual pay increase I’ve received since we’ve been married (which is more staggering because of the low end than the high).
• 41,674 - the number of plausible business ideas I’ve had (and not implemented).
• Infinity - the number of years more we have to be together (and that’s a good thing :)).

This post is part 5 in a 5 part series. To see the other posts go to the main post entitled My Really Great Family (and our search for a home).