For those asking about the blog’s title; “Now, Do It” has subtle differences from “Do It Now” (Steve Pavlina) and “Just Do It” (Nike). “Now, Do It” is personal for me because I have studied and been active in business and technology for over 15 years. I have four years of undergraduate business and computer science study and five years of part-time graduate business and computer science study behind me (I expect to complete my masters this fall). I have been a developer, team lead, and Sr. Manager on projects big (over $4 million) and small (get it done in a week). I have all the experience, training, tools, support, and desire to create this new software company. The only thing left now is to do it.
Category Archives: Productivity
How to Avoid Distraction
To avoid distraction – schedule it. To avoid being distracted by something during your workday, make the distraction itself a task to be completed that day. Do this regularly and your mind will stay “on task” because you know there will be time later to spend on whatever is distracting you.
For me, the major distraction is web browsing. With the wild world web at our fingertips, it is too easy to get distracted by an interesting tidbit that you find when looking up what version of mySQL is currently recommended by and for the RoR crowd. Browsing is not bad – in fact you need to feed your intelligence and creativity and most of the links that spawn from your initial source of needed information provide a good diet of technical, creative, humorous, and business information. What is bad is the loss of productivity that results from the urge to continue to follow links of interest. It is not that browsing is junk food. The problem is that when you are trying to complete a task is not the time to eat any type of “food”.
Before you stop reading and write this off as the former Fortune 25 manager in me talking like a productivity zealot let me clarify that this is not a managers’ call to “stop goofing off and work harder”. This is relevant to you for two reasons.
The first advantage is better estimation. When you are estimating how long a development phase or other task will take to complete, you are likely doing so with the assumption that that task is receiving continued and unbroken focus. Do not modify your estimation approach. Instead, make that assumption reality and gain both the productivity benefits of getting and staying in the zone and the scheduling benefits of more accurate estimation.
The second advantage is that it keeps your mind focussed on a single task and avoids the need to switch gears. Volumes of research have shown how much time it takes to get your mind into optimal focus on a given task. Task switching prevents you from getting into the optimal focus. Task switching also breaks that focus.
Most of us have a combination of intelligence and creativity that makes it difficult not to follow the juicy links to more and more information that lead us away from our initial reason for hopping into cyberspace in the first place. Do not fight this. Instead, set aside time during the day when that is your primary task.
Try it for one week. Start each day reviewing your schedule and tasks to be completed. If whatever you find to be one of your biggest distractors is not on your schedule or to-do list then add it. Don’t avoid it – add it to the list, prioritize it appropriately, and then start your day!
Why Write and Why Write Here?
Family and friends continue to ask what we are up to and we find it difficult to explain. We expect to work more hours than ever before yet also expect to enjoy more time to do what we want. We expect to produce quality software yet also expect to do so more quickly than at companies with many more employees. We are providing web-based products yet are not maintaining any equipment (except my MacBook Pro laptop). We are selling product yet have no physical store or sales force.
These apparent contradictions make it difficult to provide a simple answer the ‘what are we up to’ question. Because there is no simple answer, and because folks seek slightly different angles, I am posting my experiences here for those that are interested. I write for other reasons as well.
Why I Write
1. To capture the experience of starting a software company and creating a software product first hand and live while it happens.
2. To maintain a record of Synap Software to look back on 1, 5, 10 years from now.
3. To organize my thoughts
Why in a blog
Most of these reasons for writing would be satisfied by maintaining a document on my desktop. That said, there are reasons I am putting this out in public blogosphere.
1. To participate in the micro-ISV (Independent Software Vendor) community. Micro-ISVs:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_ISV (The term was coined by Erik Sink:http://www.ericsink.com) are a very fast growing group of very-small (usually less than 5 core people) companies producing software. More accurately – micro-ISVs not only produce software, micro-ISVs do market research on ideas, design, develop, market, sell, and support software products. I will write much more about micro-ISVs in this blog.
2. To provide helpful information to others. The ISV business is the stomping grounds for very opinionated, skilled, and competitive professionals. It is also one of the most open and helpful communities out there. This blog is where I will do my part to help out others with how tos, tips and tricks, and pointers to helpful articles.
3. Self-motivation. There is no better motivation than to know people might be watching you.
4. To solicit input from readers. Let us know what you think of where we are headed and what we are doing. I would love your input and shared experiences. Let us know what we are doing right, doing wrong, or just drop us a line to say good luck!.
What I Write
This blog is about the experience of transitioning from managing a multi-million dollar budget and dozens of people at one of the country’s largest corporations to starting a two person company. I will often compare the two experiences and environment yet those of you anxious for some dirt on the evils of corporate life will have to look elsewhere.
While there are frustrations being part of any organization the size of my former employer, our new business (and this log) is not about escaping that world. Though I do refer to myself as a corporate refuge, I do so as a way to frame discussions about this new small-business life.
Corporate America has its troubles, but it is not all bad. The company paid for my graduate courses, paid great benefits, gave me experiences against which to juxtapose small-business life, and best of all gave me great contacts and friends in the IT business.
Besides the switch from Corporate America to small business America, I am also making a switch from manager to developer, designer, manager, brand manager, salesman, production support, and chief bottle-washer so I will write about that as well. I predict many of the entries will expose a realization that while at the Company, my development staff was working much harder than it appeared from the perspective of managers pressuring them to work faster.
A lot of my entries will be in the form of How to. I am only going to say it here and once so listen up: the How Tos here are what works for me, in this situation. I do not claim that the how tos are relevant to everyone. Read them and determine if they are relevant or not to your situation.
Here it goes.
First Post
We have started a software company. If you would like to follow along with us as we go through the process of launching a new company and a new product, then you are in the right place. Join us here for daily insights into what it is like to leave corporate America and launch a new independent software company.
On April 28, 2006, I left a large corporation where I had worked for 7 years on corporate IT development efforts. With a total of over 15 years IT development and management experience, I headed out for the first time in my life to be self-employed.
I am combining lessons learned from the Micro ISV community, 15 years of big-business IT development work, graduate level management and IT coursework, technical skills and management skills in order to start this company and to give back to the ISV community.
Our company will be small and will purposefully avoid complexity. We aim to compete on simplicity that comes from focus. Our products will not attempt to be everything to everyone. Instead, each product will have a very narrow niche. Much more about this approach later on. We will share lessons learned on how this approach works out.
For now, welcome and drop me a line or make a comment anytime.
