Friday, July 06, 2007

where have I been!?!?

I really do not have a good excuse for not posting anything for over a month. Needless to say, I have been wrapped up in a number of projects, too many in fact. About 4 weeks ago I hit a wall and decided there was absolutely no need to be multi-threading at that rate, and a more balanced approach made sense. So.... I made a plan.

My plan is very straight forward:

RULE #1: Family First. I am at a point now where I am truly in control of my schedule. Blocking out as much time as possible to be with my wife and boys has been really fun this summer.

RULE #2: Do not take on a new project, unless I can bump a project (or two). Being at max capacity, I need to be more disciplined about taking on new projects, whether they be my own, or a consulting gig, or whatever.

RULE #3: Evaluate some of my longer term projects to see if it makes sense to keep investing in them. These past weeks I am divesting away from things that are taking me away from more important things.

RULE #4: Simplify. Less is more. This one is the hardest but the most important. I learned this truth as a Product Manager at Microsoft years ago- you can either do 25 things at once of mediocre quality, or you can do 5-7 things at your best. Hmmm, that pretty much translates to life in general.

For those keeping score, I still owe some explanation about the project I was planning to launch in May. Our team hit some barriers in the market that forced us to re-evaluate whether we wanted to play in the space. We chose to put it on hold, which was absolutely the right thing to do.

More later.