You know that list of projects you’ve been dying to work on? The ones that are lowest on your list of priorities, but have personal meaning to you? They’re also probably the ones you continually put off, saying “someday.”

In my opinion (and experience), if you have a personal project you’re working on, you’ll be more motivated, stimulated, and fulfilled in other areas of your life. How, then, do you decide when the time is right to jump in head first?

I think three key words say it all: just jump in. Keep Reading

I have a problem.

I need to learn more about “x” so I can write a solid article about “y.” There’s lots of info online about “x,” plus there’s this really interesting book sitting on my desk that I’m sure I could get a lot out of. The book is calling my name, and I really want to read it. But here’s my problem.

I know it’s weird, but it feels like I’m breaking the rules if I’m away from my computer much during normal work hours. Reading Boagworld, Bobulate, Kottke, or Daring Fireball in the middle of the afternoon feels fine- but the second I pick up a physical book, in my mind, I’m suddenly indulging a guilty pleasure. Keep Reading

You’re never ready till you’re ready.

Even then, you might not be ready. Decisions need to be made, though, and the world won’t wait for you to waffle indefinitely.

Scott Belsky tweeted something today I found really relevant to not only business, but to life in general.

“I find the cost of indecision is often greater than the consequence of any decision you might make. Prototype and iterate.” Keep Reading

What it’s like to work for Steve Jobs:

“We had about three weeks to prepare,” Evangelist says. He and another employee went to work creating beautiful mock-ups depicting the perfect interface for the new program. On the appointed day, Evangelist and the rest of the team gathered in the boardroom. They’d brought page after page of prototype screen shots showing the new program’s various windows and menu options, along with paragraphs of documentation describing how the app would work.

“Then Steve comes in,” Evangelist recalls. “He doesn’t look at any of our work. He picks up a marker and goes over to the whiteboard. He draws a rectangle. ‘Here’s the new application,’ he says. ‘It’s got one window. You drag your video into the window. Then you click the button that says burn. That’s it. That’s what we’re going to make.’ “

The whole article is worth a read http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/147/apple-nation.html

By far our most requested feature on Staction has been an iPhone optimized version. I think a lot of users may have just considered us obstinate for not having one sooner. It seems like such a small thing to do… Shrink the interface, and call it good.

Unfortunately, we had a big problem. The Staction website is designed to be used with a keyboard. The whole application is built around using the mouse as little as possible. But on the iPhone the keyboard is, well, small. Using a tiny keyboard to bang out tags, and a clunky half-visible auto-completer just wasn’t the experience we wanted to give our users. It wasn’t the experience we wanted for ourselves… It just wasn’t great, – believe us, we tried it.

After lots of experimenting, eventually we realized we had to rely on touching and scrolling for tag input. Like with lots of ideas, -it seems quite obvious looking back.

As of Today

As of today, all of our paid accounts have access to the Staction web app. Simply visit your normal account URL, and you’ll be directed to the optimized site. (You can still access the regular site if you like.)

Once logged in, you’ll have access to all the most commonly used features of Staction. Creating todos, logging time, and keeping up with your teammates.

Make sure to tap “+” and add Staction to your home screen, – it works really well that way.

If you want to see the web app, but don’t have an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad you can visit your normal account URL and add a /m at the end like this:

http://accountname.staction.com/m

We think you’re really going to like the web app experience. In some ways it’s the best Staction experience yet.

Why Not the Free Account?

We’re going to be honest in a way that I don’t think most companies would. We really hope that the web app drives upgrades for us. By far the biggest portion of Staction users are on the free account. It seems that when we created our plans for Staction, we gave away too much on the low end.

It’s no problem, -we’re happy to have our users, on any account that fits their needs. But we do have to make money to keep our jobs!

Talking over the problem, we came up with a plan that we hope will make sense to you. As we add new features to our apps, you’ll probably see most of them added only to the paid accounts at first. As we recoup the cost of our development time through the upgrades that the features drive, we hope to trickle the features down to the free accounts as well.

We’re hoping this is a sustainable system that can keep everyone happy. Paid accounts just get the features a bit sooner than everyone else. We hope you’ll think it makes as much sense as we do.

“And that, for me, is the key. Anyone can make something. But to make something great, you have to find the courage to ditch the things dribbling along at half-past average. I’ve spent the last few years juggling projects and hobbies, abandoning a few to let others shine. It hurts to give up, but I know that my small successes wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Sometimes, the right thing to do is to move on and not hang on.
Abandon your crap. You’ll be amazed at what thrives in its place.”

- http://modernerd.com/post/328572255/the-importance-of-abandoning-crap

I wrote a bit about the same thing here a while back.

From a support email:

“Fellow startup person here. Neat concept for Paprika. As a fellow startup-er (website to launch in 2 months) I was wondering how you guys plan to monetize?”

Here’s our response:

I’m going through a move right now, and it’s been a good excuse to get lots of my old electronics sold, or organized. Looking at this box I feel a strange mix of nostalgia, and sadness. Little semi-functional monuments to joys past.

Did you ever wonder what kids and people played with 500 years ago? Those little car noises, and button pushes that come so instinctively today weren’t even possible. Not even a board game or cards? A slower time seems so infinitely boring, -but sometimes like a welcome change.

Anyway, yeah, I had an Atari Lynx. It was awesome.

There is a place, and this place is great. This place is as serene as they come. In this place, you’re focused, motivated, intuitive… you’re on one hell of a roll. You can’t be stopped. You think you won’t be able to get the ideas down before they flee your mind like they usually do, but no worries- in this place you’re in control. Nearly everything that comes from you during this time is pure genius. You’ll look at your work later and wonder what the hell happened, and be very, very satisfied.

It’s not easy to get here, though. This place is heavily guarded. Keep Reading

“Your customer doesn’t care about any of the other crap that you want to throw onto the product page. Get rid of it; put it elsewhere. “

http://mattgemmell.com/2010/06/20/your-apps-website-sucks

Great article. And a really nice addition to the Fusion Network where we advertise often.