go bold

Slick, slick, slickity slick.

Posted by christine - 08/11/09 at 01:08:30 am

For four years at college, and for the four years before that in high school, I loved carrying a small paper planner around with me. I scribbled down homework assignments, highlighted tests and important meetings, and would draw colored bars across the bottoms of vacation days.

There was a lot of satisfaction gotten in the ability to arbitrarily vary the size of my writing (and the number of times I wrote over the text) depending on how important things were, and having everything literally at my fingertips – I pulled the planner out, flipped it open, and everything I needed to know about the day was there. (I carried my computer around with me all the time, too, but it was typically a bit more of a hassle to open it and open the right application while talking to a friend in the middle of a crowded hallway.)

So I told myself that I’d never turn away from paper, that I’d be true to my roots (pretend that makes sense) and stick with the low-fi solution. Google Calendar never really appealed to me anyway (BIG SECRET: I really hate web apps sometimes), and I couldn’t handle having my calendar isolated inside a desktop application.

Then CalDAV support came to Google Calendar. And I got an iPhone (finally). And I graduated from school (double finally).

Can I just say – I used iCal to schedule seventy bazillion things in a six-week period during September and October last fall, and it was the easiest thing ever? And now that I can sync my calendar back to Google, and have it synced to my personal laptop, work laptop, and phone, and no longer spend lots of time with pen+paper… I think iCal has changed my life. [side note, if it wasn't already obvious: I'm a little OCD when it comes to evening / weekend plans / etc. But you all love me anyway.]

And the iCal interface is just so damn slick. None of this am-I-clicking-on-the-event-title-or-the-event-blob-to-move-the-time, no latency, no sorry-we-can’t-reach-the-server. I kind of wish double-clicking on an event would always allow me to edit right away, but in the same way I am lame enough to designate a taxi application my Favorite iPhone App Ever, I think iCal is coming very close to being one of my Favorite Mac Apps Ever. (But never the top – that honor will always be to Quicksilver.)

So in the end, that’s all this post is – an rhapsody over a Cocoa application. Yum.

You should be prepared to make this start-up the primary focus of your life.

Posted by christine - 08/07/09 at 05:08:00 pm

I saw this line recently in the middle of a job posting, and I had a strong reaction – two, actually, in opposite directions. First, one of amusement and being mildly taken aback. Sure, they’re honest, but that’s a bit of an aggressive and unrealistic requirement, isn’t it? I almost wanted to scoff, ‘Who are you to demand to rearrange my priorities?’

But of course, the other side had its say as well – why, after all, shouldn’t these founders (who were looking for their third) hold any new teammates to standards as high as those that they themselves adhere? At least they list their expectations out for everyone to see, and hopefully avoid problems further down the road.

I’m torn – what is the right way to handle your pet project? I came into this summer wanting a ‘real startup experience,’ one with late nights and young techies bonding over their mutual misery labor. I complained about most people in my office heading home by 7, despite the smaller and otherwise generally ’startup-y’ feel. But then, faced with an opportunity to interview with a company that would expect more of me – expect me to make it the primary (only) focus in my life. And I don’t know, after all, if that’s what I want anymore.

I do want to care a lot about my work, be heavily emotionally and professionally invested in my product, and I wouldn’t mind it if everyone stuck around until 9 or 10 most nights… but I also appreciate having good friends outside of the company, and coming home to a roommate who cares more about my personal and emotional health than necessarily the health of my professional career.

In any case, I think this is going to be something I’ll be revisiting over and over again in the coming years, and something that will be heavily dependent on my professional focus. We’ll see what happens… and I’ll leave with a quote from a serial entrepreneur’s thoughts* on “Rules for Web Startups”:

#10: Be Balanced

What is a startup without bleary-eyed, junk-food-fueled, balls-to-the-wall days and sleepless, caffeine-fueled, relationship-stressing nights? Answer?: A lot more enjoyable place to work. Yes, high levels of commitment are crucial. And yes, crunch times come and sometimes require an inordinate, painful, apologies-to-the-SO amount of work. But it can’t be all the time. Nature requires balance for health—as do the bodies and minds who work for you and, without which, your company will be worthless. There is no better way to maintain balance and lower your stress that I’ve found than David Allen’s GTD process. Learn it. Live it. Make it a part of your company, and you’ll have a secret weapon.

* I actually hate the term ’serial entrepreneur.’ But I suppose Evan Williams has done pretty damn well for himself, and while I want to resent him for trashing this style of working, some part of me supposes he can’t be entirely wrong about everything.

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