Scott Porad

I had the pleasure today of presenting on Product Development and Functional Specs Notes to students at the Arizona State University “Digital Media Entrepreneurship” program.

If you’re interested, here are my notes.

Kara Swisher is a technology reporter for AllThingsD.com, a technology “paper” associated with the Wall Street Journal.  I do not know Kara, I have never met her, and I only read her column when a link is forwarded to me.

However, today one of her articles was forwarded to me, and while reading it I stumbled across this link:

http://allthingsd.com/about/#kara-ethics

Wow!

I was blown away by her openness and honesty.  Most newspapers (or the online versions of such that we experience these days) are not so transparent.  I must say that I was completely, 100% impressed.

Way to go, Kara!

I was just thinking about the post I wrote on design by removal.  It occurred to me that this lesson may apply to life as well.

That is, if we want to improve our design, i.e. life, then we should be asking “what can be removed?” not “what can be added?”

This reminds me of a chat with James the other day:

me: Erin, who we work with…she has a great screensaver…have you seen it?
James: No I have not
me: It says…”Do more of what you love”
James: I like that.
me: Me too
James: I decided to quit my last job because of a guy’s Skype mood message. It was “Happiness is a choice”
me: Exactly!

In both examples, the amount of enjoyment is the same, but the proportion of enjoyment is larger in the second, so overall it feels like we have more enjoyment in our lives.

What we’re talking about here is changing the proportion of enjoyable vs. not enjoyable.  We want to get as close to 100% enjoyable as possible.

All too common, we try to maximize enjoyment by just getting more of it.  We fill our cups and fill our cups and fill our cups with more and more, trying to make it so that the enjoyable overcomes the not so enjoyable.  But, then we become over-worked, over-scheduled, over-committed and over-everything.

That approach has it it all wrong.  We don’t need more enjoyment…we need less not enjoyment.

So, there is another approach: remove the not enjoyable.  And, let the enjoyable, however much or little of it you may have, fill whatever time you have.

As you may know, I am not fond of redesigns.

Today, I was talking to a designer about—I’m loathe to say—a redesign of one of the pages on our site.  As we were discussing all the things that were changing on the page, I asked:

What are we taking away?  If we had to take away 10% of the stuff on the page, what would we remove?

And, to the extent that we must redesign things, I think it’s important to consider what will be removed.  It is equally as important as what will be added…

…no, wait…what we’re taking away is more important than what will be added! If we keep on adding stuff to our apps, then our apps just become noisy, cluttered and unusable.

If simplicity is a goal (in my view, it is the only goal) of every design, then the focus on removing excess should be superior to the focus on adding new.  The excess is just weight, and having to carry that weight is wasted effort.

What did I mean when I made this comment to Thiggy?

I made this comment after someone I work with (not Thiggy) said:

“Those reports are useless.”

Now, that might be true…the reports could be useless.  It’s possible that there is nobody on Earth who finds the reports valuable or useful.  Truthfully, I don’t know.

But, if you’re the type of person who goes around saying things in extremes—totally useless, completely sucks, the worst, and so on—then it becomes a syndrome of The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf.  That is, there is no trust in those statements, even if they are true.

This is because statement doesn’t explain why it’s useless; it doesn’t convey any information about what’s wrong and how it could be better.  Here’s a way of phrasing that statement that would engender more trust:

“These reports are useless to me because they show X, Y and Z, but what I need is P, D and Q.”

“These reports are useless to our customers because they don’t sort by date.”

So, what we have here is a basic little framework for explaining why things are useless/sucky/awful/etc…and doing it with trust:

• What it is (“These reports”)
• How it’s the opposite of awesome (“useless”)
• To whom it is not great (“to me”, “to our customers”)
• And why—what it does (“show X, Y and Z” and what the person who doesn’t like it wants it to do (“P, D and Q”).

Ultimately, it’s the “to whom” and the “why” that make the world of difference.

At Sandra’s creamic studio in Fremont, Seattle.

Cleaning out my home office this morning…came across a cup of coins and bills from travels. Bermuda (2000), Australia (1999), Spain (1998), Israel (1990) and Peru (I’ve never been to Peru!)

I’m wondering what to do with this money? Summed up, I bet it’s not even two bucks. It’s just clutter, but it feels weird to throw it away. And, it doesn’t seem worth the time to figure out where to trade it in.

Thoughts?

Brazil from Herkimer Coffee. (French pressed, and served in my New York City mug from Starbucks that Wendy gave me for my birthday years ago.)

A quick note…here are three things that have changed my life for the better in the last few years:

1. Amazon Prime
2. Rhapsody
3. An “insta-hot” in my kitchen.

What do all these have in common?  What I want, when I want it, for less money, less hassle, and less effort.

Amazon Prime saves me so much time and hassle with shopping.  There are so many things I used to go to the store for, but now I can get them shipped to my home in just a day or two.

Rhapsody…holy cow!…it pays for itself every month with an album that I enjoy, but that I would never have actually bought at the store.  (Recently, they introduced social features, and I’m totally psyched about that too!)

And, while the ascetic of waiting for water to boil on the stove in a kettle is nice, I have to tell you…after awhile, the convenience totally makes up for it.

So, there you go…these things have made my life better.  I mean, what did you expect?  I am an American, after all, right?

Recently, I was engaged in a discussion over e-mail with a group of friends.  The instigator of the discussion was presented a business opportunity at a good value, but was having a difficult time deciding whether or not to get involved because it wasn’t passive, that is, it would take some of his time.

I understand my friend’s conundrum: it was good opportunity, but time is so precious because in the busy rat race of America we’re all so overbooked, overscheduled, overextended and overcommitted.

Then, I was reminded of this post by Derek Sivers:

Those of you who often over-commit or feel too scattered may appreciate a new philosophy I’m trying:

If I’m not saying “HELL YEAH!” about something, then say no.

Meaning: When deciding whether to commit to something, if I feel anything less than, “Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!” – then my answer is no.

When you say no to most things, you leave room in your life to really throw yourself completely into that rare thing that makes you say “HELL YEAH!”

We’re all busy. We’ve all taken on too much. Saying yes to less is the way out.

…

In other words: No more “yes”. It’s either “HELL YEAH!” or “no”.

And, another friend made this wise comment:

Close the door on small opportunities in order to focus on the big ones.