A couple of days ago Seth wrote a post called Treat different customers differently. It’s an very short post that can be summed up by the following phrase “… the only way you can treat different customers differently is if you understand that their values (and their value to you) vary. It’s easier than ever to discern and test these values, and you do everyone a service when you differentiate“.
At first an alarm went off in my head saying “Wait, what?”. This seems so counterintuitive, it seems that since… forever marketing books and the common practice preached to treat all costumers the same. Smile to everybody, be nice to your customers.
Yet, to differentiate does not mean to discriminate. It doesn’t mean to treat some good and be an ass to everybody else. If you think about it, one of the most used and abused models of monetisation for websites and online services nowadays is the freemium model. And what does that model do if not differentiate? You give great attention to all your costumers but give some extra to those that pay.
And if you think further about it, freemium is the perfect demonstration that the Pareto 80:20 principle works beyond doubt. There’s something for you to think about. Check who are the people that benefit from your services (your coworkers, friends, actual customers) and think if you should differentiate or not and who is part of those so precious 20%.
Posted on January 20, 2011 by Liviu Lică in Stories & Life
In Isaac Asimov’s famous Foundation series an central and intriguing role is played by the so-called science of Psychohistory. Quoting Wikipedia: “Psychohistory is a fictional science in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation universe which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make (nearly) exact predictions of the collective actions of very large groups of people, such as the Galactic Empire”.
As so many things from science fiction that seem to come to life, lately (see mobile phones, the Internet and tons of other gadgets), psychohistory doesn’t seem to be so far fetched anymore.
I’ve recently finished reading the brilliant Guns, Germs and Steel book by Jared Diamond and the thought that kept circling around my head was: “This is so psychohistory”. And in a sense is, Diamond argues at one point, same as Asimov in his books, that the actions of individuals are lost in the sea of actions by the masses.
If you ever wondered why Eurasia became the center of power on our planet, want to understand what influences the development of societies or you just are a geek that would like to see how psychohistory looks in real life, read Guns, Germs and Steel, it’s a fascinating book.
Posted on January 17, 2011 by Liviu Lică in Stories & Life
I love time-lapses, stop-motions or other forms of manipulation of time. I’ve already written a few posts about such clips here, here, here and here.
Now it’s time for a fresh crop of amazing videos. First up is an absolutely gorgeous time-lapse that makes everything, people, boats, cars, ships, look like toys. I can’t remember the name of the technique, I’ve something like this before and I’m not sure even the technique is the same, but the result is stunning in any case.
Next is this five year (FIVE year) project in which the author put an ant colony on his scanner and scanned it once every week.
These time-lapses I’ve found in this article. There are 8 more there so go take a look.
Posted on January 13, 2011 by Liviu Lică in Stories & Life
I strongly believe that in everything we do there must be a balance. In Romanian we say “Adevărul e pe la mijloc” which translates into the truth is in the middle. A person I greatly admire and respect told me, not long ago, that saying this is immature, and it’s easy to say it and just wish for a better, perfect world, instead of getting real and picking a side to an argument.
With all due respect, I disagree. Clinging to one side, or the other, of an argument, without accepting compromise is, in my opinion, the immature thing to do. I’ve read somewhere somebody saying that a compromise is a situation where nobody is happy with the outcome and everybody loses. Don’t agree with that either.
My believe is that the great art of making more correct decision in life, than catastrophic ones, is to be able to balance contradictions. To find a balance between the two sides of an argument, or, even better, to apply one side of the argument to one situation and the other to another. Cruising down the middle might be smooth sailing but it can also make everything flavorless, without the extremes that spice up our daily routine.
The whole point of this is to give the background story behind the greatest contradiction with which I fight daily and which I fail to overcome hourly.
Side A of the argument – Sticking with it
There is the common wisdom that ones you start something you better finish it. Seth talks about shipping, other call it the art of Doing, getting things done, setting your mind on doing something. Another popular wisdom that goes hand in hand with this is that the last mile, finishing sprint, the last 1% is very difficult to get right. The devil is in the details, do things right and so on. With other words, once you start doing something you better finish it and, in the end, make it good. Every book about finishing things I can think of talks about the wall, the dip at the middle. It’s that point where you are almost half through, when there is still enough to go but you’ve put in enough effort to be sorry do abandon the endeavour. The advice is – just focus and go on, it will get better. But will it?
Side B of the argument – Drop it and run the other way Tim Ferriss has in the 4 hour week a line that goes something like: if you go to a movie and don’t like it, leave, if you order a big bowl of salad and had your fill before you even got through half of it, don’t eat it anymore. And, of course there is the omnipresent advice – if you hate your job, just leave, life is too short to wake up every morning wishing you were not there.
So, what should you do: stick to something until you get it shipped or drop it and leave because you don’t like it anymore. I had one of these decisions to make after a few months into my PhD and being the overzealous masochist I am the decision was to ship. I’m still struggling toward shipping it and question the decision every time I sit down and loose yet another afternoon or weekend on it. But I’m close to the end and it would really make no sense to give up now. I’m in the last mile(s) and I’ve trained myself well enough not to give up at this stage.
But really, when enough really becomes enough? When should you drop the project and walk away? I can’t decide. Most decisions to drop something are made based on inconveniences of the moment. But the most efficient are those that have a goal in front of you. I want to get to X, therefore I need to drop Y and Z.
I’ve dropped watching news or TV in general, beyond a few movies or Discovery Channel / Nat Geo programs. It freed up time. I’ve dropped buying additional books until I finish the stack of absolutely great ones that await my attention on the bookshelf. But these are easy. The impact is small, relatively.
What about big ones? Keep the current job or it’s time to leave. Keep packing every second of my free time with project after project or give up on this practice and do something more enjoyable now, not in the future. After all, you can love coding and building website all you want but I refuse to believe there is even one sane person on this planet that will not prefer to have dinner with his friends instead of coding away late in the night, day after day, for the promise of a dream that might or might not come true.
Contradictions… it’s a struggle do make a decision, to find the balance. Following only one side of the argument will exhaust you, in the long run. You can’t commit to everything all the time because you will run out of time and you can’t drop everything because you will end up doing nothing.
My solution is to set a goal, to define what shipping project X or Y means. For my job it means that i had to keep me challenged, month after month and to be able to provide the means for having the lifestyle I want. For project X it might be to see it online, running, after which I’ll have to make another decision. For this blog shipping means either enjoying it or getting enough traffic to make it worth. For now the first one is the reason.
Contradictions are the reason for searching for balance with every decision. Challenge me if you disagree. I’ll make a project out of it to debate with you.
Posted on January 6, 2011 by Liviu Lică in Stories & Life
If you ever thought that you are having it rough and that you are the one working very hard, look again, there are many more people who, most likely work much more than you. And they are all around you, the only thing you have to do is notice. Last year I’ve noticed that the same guy from the chinese take-away was there at 10 in the morning, 23 at night, Monday, Sunday, Friday or any other day and hour. At first I thought that he might actually have so weird shift system and that I’m only going there when he is around, but soon that idea went away and I started thinking that this guy was actually working almost non-stop and his (presumably it was his) take-away. But that seemed hard to believe.
A couple of days ago I stumbled upon a movie about a Cambodian family that have a donut shop. Now that is hard work. I can’t even imagine myself working like that but I also lack the motivation of the guy in the movie. In his place I might sleep in the damn shop, who knows.
So, if you ever thought you worked long hours and had few days off, look around again, you might be surprised how well off you are.
