January 2012
24 posts
1 tag
One Done at a Time
Check out the beautiful infographic below on our how brains adapt to multi-tasking.
New reports find that high-multi-taskers are “lousy at everything required for multi-tasking.”
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Work or Creative Labor?
Work is what we do by the hour. It begins and, if possible, we do it for money. Welding car bodies on an assembly line is work; washing dishes, computing taxes, walking the rounds in a psychiatric ward, picking asparagus—these are work. Labor, on the other hand, sets its own pace. We may get paid for it, but it’s harder to quantify… Writing a poem, raising a child, developing a...
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Silicon Valley's Productivity Secret
The wonder of Silicon Valley has been its rich history of producing incredibly capital efficient companies operating at massive scale. No doubt part of that achievement lies in the capital efficiency of software engineering itself where technology gives incredible leverage to create and disrupt established industries. Nevertheless, as a company scales, individual engineers need to work together...
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On Living the Dream
I’m often surprised by how often I meet VCs/investors who seem to express interest in hearing my personal story of how I ended up going from being a math nerd to working as a big firm corporate lawyer to running a startup. I remember telling Brad Burnham at Union Square Ventures something self-deprecating — like, “Oh it’s boring” — in an attempt to move the...
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Report Your Dones
Wanting to report what you’ve gotten done is a perfectly natural inclination. Before today, we had a rudimentary CSV export file and the option to copy and paste, but no doubt, iDoneThis users deserve better.
Click and drag on the calendar to highlight multiple days’ worth of accomplishments. Where the yellow circle is in the image above, you’ll see 3 icons. Plain text,...
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Rashik Parmar, President of IBM's Academy of Tech,...
Every company needs to re-invent it self regularly. Without guiding principles that are more than financially motivated, they will struggle with the transformation to capture new value.
- Rashik Parmar
We took time to catch up with Rashik Parmar, the President of IBM’s Academy of Technology. From across the pond, he shares with us his greatest Done from 2011, his work...
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The New Groupthink - Should Creatives Work Alone? →
Looking to up your productivity? Research suggests that the best creativity comes from alone-time.
Here are some of our favorite quotes pulled from the NYTimes article:
“Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.”
- Picasso
“Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me … they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are...
4 Tips for Tackling Time from Famous Folk
“Getting up every morning and looking into the mirror, asking myself: ‘Do I like what I am doing?” After every full day, I do the same in the evening. Whilst I write my next day’s to do list, I reflect on my achievements. And by doing this, I also try to listen as good as I can how much fun and fulfillment I have gotten. If there are too many days in a row that I can’t answer with a...
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Lexicographer Extraordinaire & Wordnik Founder -...
Dictionary Evangelist and founder of Wordnik.com, Erin McKean spreads the good word about words. Former editor in chief for American Dictionaries at Oxford University Press and editor of the New Oxford American Dictionary, 2E, Erin also shared her quest to redefine the dictionary itself in a 2007 TED talk.
That redefined dictionary is Wordnik.com. Erin explains, “What we’re really trying...
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Startups: Host a Tumblelog on Tumblr
We host our blog on Tumblr, and it’s our third-largest source of social media traffic after Twitter and Facebook. I asked my friends at Fitocracy for their stats (their blog is on Tumblr, too) and they reported that Tumblr was fourth after Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit, and it’s high-volume traffic as Fitocracy is doing several million pageviews monthly. For both of us, it’s in...
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Show Your Work
In elementary school, I never showed my work on homework. I tried to impress the teacher by going straight to the right answer. On occasion — it’s embarrassing — I’d even erase my work and write the answer on top.
When I got to college, the math problems were harder. I showed my work for my own benefit, because it helped me organize and analyze my thoughts. I...
“Getting up every morning and looking into the mirror, asking myself: ‘Do I like...”
– Steve Jobs via leostartsup (h/t to our blog reader, M. Kelley, who shared this excellent quote with us!)
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Power Ranger to Beauty Entrepreneur: Our Interview...
We recently were lucky enough to Skype with Jennifer Yen, Founder of pūr~lisse, a line of skin products for sensitive skin. We love Jennifer for her feisty spirit. Not only is she a female entrepreneur, but she also used to be a Power Ranger! Check out our interview of her below as she shares her story and stress tips.
Jennifer, you have such an amazing story! You followed your...
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Write Your Own Story
Every milestone is an opportunity to attract attention to your startup because you have a piece of “news” — a new piece of noteworthy information that no one else but you has.
When you have something to announce, conventional wisdom says to go to the press and blogs with your story because they (1) have distribution and (2) are expert in crafting a story. In the past, we’ve...
"List Making is an Essential Human Activity" - and... →
Ever wondered whether or not list-making is for you? Well, The Morgan Library and Museum’s current exhibit features lists - “lists of bills to pay, things undone, failings in oneself and others; lists of people to call, stuff to buy, errands to be accomplished” - from the most ordinary of business owners to the artistic and crazy Picasso.
According to the New York Times...
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8 Bad Habits that Crush Your Creativity And Stifle... →
(via copyblogger)
What’s your favorite creativity tip?
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"iDoneThis keeps me honest." - Our Interview of...
Here at iDoneThis, we are huge fans of Daniel Pink, author of #1 New York Times bestseller, Drive. We admire his thought leadership on the changing world of work and are so excited that he records his daily accomplishments with iDoneThis. Below, we interviewed Dan on the important stuff - why he does what he does and how he gets stuff done.
Dan, we know that you...
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New Year's Habits
We probably didn’t need scientists to actually come up with a figure (80% failure rate!) to know that New Year’s resolutions don’t stick around. The key to change is not making some grand declaration of an ideal, that this is the year you’re going to lose x number of pounds, stop procrastinating, find Princess Charming, or any of these popular resolutions. Resolutions are often too abstract or...
