For 2012

Dec 31, ’11 3:14 PM

Although I find it hypocrite, meaning that the other 364 days in a year are just as important as 31 december, here are my goals for 2012.

Please, keep me to it.

  • Worrying less about worrying. It’ll be fine, even if I don’t worry. If things won’t be fine, it probably isn’t that bad and if it is, I’ll manage. Things will be great and I’ll get my chances.
  • Grow further, develop myself further.
  • Expand my venture, Sporous, to an annual volume of 50 grand.
  • Visit New York (again) and Tokio.
  • Stay happy.

All the best for 2012. It’ll be great.

(I forgot: graduate!)

Sporous features layered ideation

Dec 4, ’11 6:28 PM

What use is there to an app for ideation, if it doesn’t allow filtering?

Be a smart follower

Nov 29, ’11 3:56 PM

Because I signed up for a mailing about “working smarter”, I received an e-mail from a sponsor with 7 tips about being a more effective leader. I normally don’t take action on these mailings, but this one seemed interesting. The including page is right here: Turbocursus Slim Leiderschap, door Jeroen Busscher. It’s in Dutch, but I’ll share it anyway.

7 key aspects of leadership
Busscher emphasizes the following. In order to be a smart and effective leader: make others responsible (don’t instruct), facilitate their needs (don’t motivate), ask questions (don’t give answers), show interest (don’t be an example), trust (don’t coach), inspire (don’t think) and be lazy (don’t work too hard).

What if you’re not a leader
Not to worry. You’re the leader-type but not always in the position to lead. So what do you do? Depend on others to be the leader? No, of course not. Take leadership by being a follower.

Be a smart follower

  • Take responsibility, don’t follow instructions. You’re here to think yourself, don’t let others think for you.
  • Find your needs. What do you need to perform better? Ask for it. Not granted? Ask again.
  • Question. Do not ask questions, just question everything. Don’t follow the path that others laid out – question what others find normal.
  • Be interesting. Love what you do. If you don’t, stop and go looking for something else. Be in pursuit of your interests, surprise yourself.
  • Trust yourself. You’re the one who’s capable of doing this, not somebody else. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.
  • Be inspired. Did the greater things come to you when you’ve asked for it? Brilliance is just around the corner.
  • Don’t be productive. Be effective. Working 60 hours a week will get you somewhere, but doing the same in 30 gets you further.

Now, be a dear and kick ass.

#drawmyfollowers by Greg Burney

Nov 27, ’11 8:35 PM

A few months ago I stumbled upon the profile of @gregburney on Twitter, who apparently would draw those who’d follow him. Today I got a reply from him, keeping his word, with the following astonishing result.

Thanks Greg!

Sporous app icon

Nov 22, ’11 5:48 PM

What do you think of the new Sporous app icon?

Getting things done #2

Nov 8, ’11 10:13 AM

Okay, I’m on a spree here. Just deleted the Facebook and Twitter app from my phone. For several reasons:

  1. Facebook/Twitter is a medium and not a goal in itself. Seeing how friends are doing for the sake of seeing how friends are doing, doesn’t make sense.
  2. Both Facebook and Twitter are mass media, which means that the information on it is high quantity but low quality. Even during work breaks, I prefer high quality information, such as HN.
  3. Twitter should be used with a purpose, such as finding a contact or building a network. I figured nobody reads my “Do a barrel roll.” and “I’m on a boat!” tweets anyway.
  4. I usually grab my phone when there is alone-time at hand, or just nothing, killing time by staring at pointless “I’m going to sleep and my day was nice” status update by a friend I haven’t spoken to in a long time. Most stupidest and attention-consuming thing I’ve been doing so far.
  5. Noted in this wonderful animation by Amitay Tweeto: you won’t die when not checking Facebook.
  6. Adding to #5: I might die checking Facebook. The probability of such a single occurrence is very small, but if you accumulate all the time I spent wandering around on Facebook and Twitter, how much of me died there when I really go?

Also, I deleted the bookmark bar of Chome. You know, the thingy that makes your e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and Google Analytics stats one click away. Don’t do it.

Be disciplined, save time, achieve more.

Getting things done #1

Nov 7, ’11 6:35 PM

Being productive is all about limiting distraction and being disciplined. For several months now I’ve had the “I only check e-mail twice a day at 12:00 and 16:00″ line as an email signature. It turned out to be more of a reminder to myself than a warning to others, but once you get the hang of it, it’s not too hard to be disciplined. And: I got a bunch of “Whoah! That’s neat GTD man!” responds to it.

Now, here comes the automation part. Use this neat little AppleScript thing to boot up all your favourite Mac programs 15 seconds after launch.

delay 15
tell application "Mail" to activate
tell application "iCal" to activate
tell application "Billings" to activate
tell application "Things" to activate
tell application "Mail" to check for new mail
delay 2
tell application "Finder"
set visible of process "Mail" to false
set visible of process "iCal" to false
set visible of process "Billings" to false
set visible of process "Things" to false
end tell

Then, download Cronnix and put these two lines in your cronjobs file.

0 12 * * * osascript -e 'tell application "Mail.app" to check for new mail'
0 16 * * * osascript -e 'tell application "Mail.app" to check for new mail'

You’ve just automated your Mail.app to check for new e-mail at 12:00 and 16:00 (and when you boot up). Don’t forget to set it to manual. It’s not hard to be disciplined.

Happy GTD-ing.

Bacon

Oct 19, ’11 6:18 PM

Attending TEDx Rotterdam was inspiring

Oct 13, ’11 8:08 PM

My mind is still buzzing. This was inspiring.

Today I attended TEDx Rotterdam, an independently organized TED event featuring talks of several remarkable individuals, leading in their fields. The main theme of the day was “Future Leadership”, embodied by hundreds of attending near-graduate students. As many of the speakers said, these students will lead the future using information, mobile, technology, imagination, ideas and so on – perhaps even on a global scale.

The last speaker, Sander Veeneman (right here), concluded his talk with the following: “I know a person, right now in the audience, who can be and will be a future leader. And you know what the most funny thing is? That very person – is you.” In my opinion, the most inspiring talk.

Kees Moeliker (talk) managed to make me laugh my butt off. As a winner of the “Ig Nobel” prize, he researched homosexual necrofilia by ducks. As a surplus, he’s recently researched the reason for public lice to become an endangered species: shaving (and he has managed to show a landingstrip on screen). Didn’t know all this, really had a laugh.

Mikko Hypponen performed a very solid talk about cybercrime and security. I complimented him via Twitter on his strong appearance, and actually got a response back (very surprising, he even retweeted to 20k followers).

Joost Conijn amazed everyone with his self-made airplane, which he flew over the Sahara desert. Marijn Berk inspired (me, personally) with his vision on wireless power and communication. And several top performing artists energized the audience with their dances, music and creations.

It has been a blast to attend TEDx Rotterdam, and I’m pretty sure several of these talks will make it to the TED Worldwide event. For me, TEDx has been about inspiration. I’ve found it inspiring to see the ambition, passion, expertise and willpower of all these people, creating vision and change on a global scale.

I’m not sure what my world will look like, ten years from now. During the day it became clear to me: this is who I want to be. I don’t know how, or why, or what exactly – all I know, is that I want to embrace change and opportunity. Being a leader in my own life, exploring my own vision, in time creating sustained value and benefit – I’m inspired to be a “future leader”.

(PS. We got a goodiebag. I like goodiebags.)

Sporous.com

Sep 30, ’11 8:43 AM

I just bought sporous.com via Stylate! Stylate is a branded domain name service, which sells domains with a branded logo for just $ 250. Terrific service! And now I have a non-word single-word double-syllable domain name, which relates to “spores” and “routes of thinking”, for my graduation startup app.

I can highly recommend Stylate. They have a varied number of cool domain names, perfectly suitable for any startup or project. Just for $ 250 – a good domain name somewhere else can cost you thousands of dollars. The process is very easy: buy the domain, wait a few hours, transfer it through GoDaddy and receive the logo (vector) via e-mail.

There’s one tiny catch though. Stylate insists on tranferring via GoDaddy, which means GoDaddy freezes the domain for 60 days upon accepting the transfer from Stylates account to yours. Clever GoDaddy, because they get to bill for parking or forwarding – but you can always change the nameservers into something more of your liking.