fbpx

I Done This Support

The Boring Trait Google Looks For in Its Leaders

by

Google-Executives-Larry-Page-Eric-Schmidt-Sergey-Brin

The prototypical leader is a hero: gives the rousing speech, inspires the troops, and shows up at the last minute to save the day. At least that’s how leaders are portrayed. but that’s not at all what Google discovered as their most important qualities.

At Google, they’re obsessive about looking at data to determine what makes employees successful and what they found in the numbers was surprising.

The most important character trait of a leader is one that you’re more likely to associate with a dull person than a dynamic leader: predictability. The more predictable you are, day after day, the better.

Read more

What Will Fast Company Write about Your Startup’s Culture?

by

zappos startup culture values

Successful entrepreneurs like Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, exhort startups to write down their core values on Day 1 and make company culture a first-order concern from the very beginning.

Have you tried it? The problem is that after you look at what you wrote, you’ll probably see a bunch of boring clichés. Many of your company values might sound suspiciously similar to Zappos’s and Netflix’s. Your company couldn’t sound less exciting.

Molly Graham, former Head of Mobile at Facebook, who worked with Mark Zuckerberg to define Facebook’s company culture in 2008, recognized this common pitfall. She came up with an ingenious solution to the problem, rooted in a simple trick that Amazon uses to build its products, that helped Facebook own the Hacker brand that defined the company through its IPO.

Read more

Open SSL Heartbleed Bug Security Update

by

At this time, we have no evidence that iDoneThis has been attacked or that there has been any compromise of user data. All our measures have been precautionary. We recommend that iDoneThis users change their passwords. Heartbleed for the Less Tech-Savvy Heartbleed is a recently uncovered security vulnerability in OpenSSL, which is used to secure highly … Read more

How to Attract the Right Audience and Subvert the Funnel

by

We were lucky enough to have Chris Savage, co-founder and CEO of Wistia, deliver a great talk to the Vegas tech community on why video marketing is so powerful when building audiences and how to make video production easier.

The good folks at Wistia often recommend to video newbies that they work with whatever camera they have handy — so we MacGyver’d something with Walter’s iPhone, some tape, a picture frame, and a bar stool to capture Chris’s words of wisdom.

http://idonethis.wistia.com/medias/yap5mszx0l?embedType=iframe&videoWidth=640

Read more

A Non-Developer’s Guide to Understanding Software Developers: On Coders and Climbers

by

I am not a developer, and until I started with iDoneThis as its Chief Happiness Officer, I’m pretty sure I didn’t know any.

It’s taken me some time to understand how to relate to developers. It’s part of my job — I work with them, I’m immersed in the tech world, and many iDoneThis teams are developers. I need to be able to relate in order to understand their pain points, what makes them happy in their work, and what they need from a tool like iDoneThis.

image
Trying to relate to startup developers through the prism of my earlier profession as a former lawyer didn’t really work. The startup world couldn’t be further from Wall Street law firms and junior attorneys.

So here’s what finally did work. I found the connection through my greatest love, a hobby-turned-obsession: climbing. And coding, I’ve realized, is a lot like climbing.

Read more

Don’t Copy and Paste Your Customer Support

by

don't copy and paste your customer support

Have you ever had no idea what you were doing, so you just copied people around you?  It’s how I learned a lot of things — how to ski, fill out important government forms, drink tequila. On the other hand, it’s a terrible way to learn to drive, manage your health, date other human beings — and learn customer support.

Like many people at startups, I felt like I was new at everything. So I’d let my past experiences at the receiving end of customer support inform the way I did my job. I took cues from all the interactions I’ve had with call center operators, bank tellers, airline employees, cable company employees, and insurance people — pretty much everyone’s least favorite human interactions of all time. It was like copying all the answers from the kid next to you in class, even though you know he’s getting them all wrong.

So why did I do this? With no prior experience in customer support, I felt safer copying others and sometimes found myself slipping into a weird robotic customer support mode without even realizing it.

Read more

2013 iDoneThis List of Awesome

by

image

At iDoneThis, we aim to help people get more of the stuff that’s important to them done.  In 2013, individuals and teams who use iDoneThis accomplished some amazing things, so we thought we’d ask some of them to tell us about what they accomplished in 2013 that they’re proud of.

Their inspiring answers:

Read more

The Best 20 iDoneThis Blog Posts of 2013

by

The Best 20 iDoneThis Blog Posts of 2013

‘Tis the season of end-of-the-year lists!

We dug into the iDoneThis blog archives to bring you a collection of our most popular and favorite pieces from 2013 to enjoy amidst the hustle of holiday festivities and some much deserved, hot cocoa-fueled relaxation.

There are also handy save-to-read-later options to jumpstart your reading in 2014. Here are the best 20 iDoneThis blog posts of 2013, broken down by category.

Read more

The Win-Win Secret to Earning Recurring Revenue with Your Side Project

by

When his post on how iDoneThis reached $1,000 in recurring revenue struck a chord with readers, Walter thought it would be enlightening to talk with other entrepreneurs about their own such journeys. One of the most interesting stories he heard was from Adam Rotman, creator of Share As Image. You can watch Walter’s full interview with Adam here, and today we offer some key takeaways from their conversation.

image

 

Read more

Understanding How to Function at Your Best: Defining Positive Psychology

by

Here at iDoneThis, we often talk about how principles of positive psychology can be used to improve our well-being and happiness at work. We wanted to go back to basics and get an expert to explain what positive psychology is and how it can help you live your life better. So we spoke with Dr. Stephen Schueller about defining positive psychology and what progress and timing have to do with living a good life.

Dr. Stephen Schueller on positive psychologyDr. Schueller is a professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and member of the Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies, where he works on developing internet and mobile interventions in behavioral and mental health service delivery. (This is the first installment of our interview. Head here for the second, 5 Reasons You Don’t Do What Really Makes You Happy).

Here’s our interview with Dr.Schueller on positive psychology and how it can improve our lives.

Initially I think I misunderstood positive psychology as being all about positive thinking and positive emotions — and that’s really not what it’s about.

That’s definitely true. One of the things I really try to differentiate positive psychology from is this positive thinking movement, things like reading The Secret — where you think it, you’ll get it, or think positively and your life will be better. That’s not what positive psychology is about at all.

Lots of research shows that experiencing positive emotions is very beneficial, but that’s not really the point in positive psychology. Positive psychology is a movement focusing on trying to understand what optimal functioning means.

Read more