“Here’s a rundown on the weekly calendar Dorsey keeps as CEO of payments platform Square and chairman of Twitter.
Monday: Management meetings and “running the company” work
Tuesday: Product development
Wednesday: Marketing, communications and growth
Thursday: Developers and partnerships
Friday: The company and its culture
Weekends are a bit slower: Saturdays are for hiking and Sundays are for “reflection, feedback and strategy,” Dorsey said.”
A good outline for how to structure your interview questions. When you know this is the information you’re trying to learn, it’s easier to know what to ask to learn it.
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
“
| — | Ira Glass |
“Expectation, as it turns out, is just as important as raw sensation. The build up to an experience can completely change how you interpret the information reaching your brain from your otherwise objective senses.”
“And it’s not the easy problems that make it your way. Those already got solved. Rather, they’re the hardest problems that people bring to your attention. Day after day. That, my friends, can be tiring.”
“…it led to two pretty interesting discoveries: a) people often don’t realize they’re facing a problem. Rather, they just feel frustration. b) problem solving, and particularly the ability to shepherd a problem through the four stages listed above, is highly correlated with seniority.”
Close your eyes.
Imagine, if you will, a startup that meets the following criteria:
- Their recruiting process is fundamentally flawed
- Their operations are a mess
- They make engineers pretty much do everything, which leaves almost no time for coding
- They don’t (care) about charity or…
A fantastic post by my friend Avand Amiri from Sqoot, an API for daily deals
“How to Measure the Metrics that Determine Real Progress” By Trevor Owens on Oct 3, 2011
