People first.

Awhile back I read that book by Jim Collins and his research group called Good to Great. I really enjoyed it. It wasn't a physics text and couldn't be because it was about something human. But there were a lot of principles taught that I thought might be worth taking to heart when trying to start a company.

Anyway, the very first principles surprised me though they shouldn't have. They were this: the people in the company are the most critical part of the company. Not assets, direction, ideas etc. Focus on getting the right people and the others follow. So I'm trying it out. I am now working with two of the best guys I know trying to start our little company. So far it has been a pleasure. Both of these guys are as green as I am. Just like I don't know programming, Denis doesn't know web design. Ryan doesn't know marketing. But I am confident that we can learn. And these past couple of weeks when we have been working together have been really neat. I feel like something is really coming together.

Anyway, it's fun. Have a great week.

Doug

Last night I started learning lisp. So far it seems a lot like Matlab though I haven't gotten to the real stuff yet. But the author of the book that I am going through said something interesting about the language and the programming environment surrounding it that I found interesting: he said "So, one way to look at Lisp is as a language designed to keep you in a state of flow." Anyway, that reminded me of the lesson that I learned from the Portuguese woman that I wrote about last week. It will be interesting to see how it goes.


Ryan came up with several neat games designed to help people learn specific musical skills. Denis started messing with our website. I figured out how to use Jsmooth to wrap a JAR executable with a windows executable so our first version should be downloadable from the website in the next few days.

Anyway, it's a great time to be alive. Will someone gather a complete and extendable list of US doctors? We need tools to help us find and choose our MDs.

Doug

Current Status, building trust, and lesson from a Portuguese mother.

Current Status:

Los Alamos is a go. Cool project and our family will be well provided for. I can't think of a neater way to finish off this PhD.

Our home is clean and nice and we are all together.

Our oldest daughter started 1st grade and likes her new class and teacher a lot.

Our second daughter starts kindergarten tomorrow. She is excited.

Our garden is thriving with all this unexpected rain.

And we (Denis, Ryan, and I) began weekly teleconference meetings for SongPiper. It should be great. My main projects this week will be to improve distribution methods and to add a little color to the exisiting Java program. I plan on getting those things done.

Building Trust:

In fact I believe that it is vital that I do get them done. Because to a certain extent this whole endeavor will be a matter of coming to trust ourselves and each other to produce results. That trust can only be built if we actually produce those results. And I think that this whole thing will be fun, rewarding, sustainable, etc. only if that trust can be earned and maintained.

Lesson from a Portuguese woman:

I served an LDS mission in Paris France from July of 1996 to August of 1998. I say Paris but that was just the general area. In the suburbs of France was a town called Mantes-la-Jolie. It means Mantes the beautiful or Mantes the pleasant, and I'm sure that at one time it was pleasant and beautiful. Monet settled not far from there at Giverny to paint his own garden over and over. But it turned out in 1996 and 1997 to be a scary area because of a huge housing project called Val Foree that was there.

Anyway, our congregation actually met in a nearby bedroom community called Mantes-la-Ville. The congregation was small and close and consisted of a group of really dedicated, stellar families. Mostly young with children and mostly middle class. One of the families was from Portugal. The mother and father spoke French only moderately well and they didn't seem particularly well educated. When you went to their home, though, it was really neat. The home was well-crafted with an ample yard. There were birds and home-produced eggs and meat and there was great cooking. The husband was a mason and the wife was like a woman out of the 1800s with a million domestic skills. They both worked and worked and seemed to enjoy it and they made beauty around them.

Anyway as the woman was going through some of the many motions of keeping her home in order I asked her if she enjoyed all the work. She paused and gave me an answer that I remembered. "Mmm, I like the work so long as I am not thinking about other things that I have to do while I am doing it."

If she was cleaning the chicken she didn't want to be concerned about doing the laundry. The answer surprised me because I was expecting a no or a yes rather than a conditional. But I came to really like it.

If I am doing one thing but worried about another I can't enjoy it. If I am doing one thing but want to be doing something else then I can't enjoy it. But when I can forget other things and lose myself in the task at hand, almost any task becomes intrinsically interesting.

If I can manage that there are still two possibilities left. The first is that at the end I am completely happy with what I have spent my time doing. The second is that at the end I feel like I have tricked myself or betrayed myself. I get the first when I have managed to lose myself in something that is aligned with what I need to be doing. The second comes when I have managed to lose myself in a mere distraction to the neglect of more important things.

So that is a trick I think about fairly often. How do I combine Apollo and Dionysis? How do I align my actions with the most important things and yet, at the same time, allow myself to get lost in the moment? How to I keep moving toward the destination and at the same time fully partake of the journey?

Anyway, have a great week.

Doug

Getting to work part II.

Lake Powell is done (it was a blast!). Vacations are over (only wish there could be more). The semester is starting and two kids are starting school. I expect some semblance of equilibrium now, which means opportunity. Opportunity to build the routines and the habits that will get things done. I read a nice article on getting things done. Pavlina lists a whole bunch of practices designed help you perform at maximum efficiency.

The very first one is clarity. So I thought it might be worth becoming very clear about what I am trying to do with my limited time. Basically I have three short term goals.

1. Graduate with PhD by Dec 2007
2. Develop independent income stream of at least 4k per month by Dec 2007
   
3. Live a rich family life on the way.

The first two objectives listed here are very concrete pass-fail goals. The third will take a little fleshing out. But it is important enough that it needs to be up there anyway.

The second practice is flexibility. Here he explains that there is a difference between end goals and the paths that you take to get there. He suggests that you keep your end goals fixed but that you be flexible with the paths that you will take to get there. I like that balance because it makes sense. You just can't know all the details of the paths that lie ahead. But you can know where you want to go and plan the path as you go.

My plan for working toward these goals on a daily basis is this:

1. Take time. If it is important, take time for it. Scripture study is important to me. So I make time for it even if I wake up late. Exercise is important to me. Cleaning our home and working to make Gina's life pleasant is important. Getting something concrete done to move toward the completion of a PhD is very important. My time is flexible. For that reason I can and am taking time to do the most important things each day.
2. Take it in steps. Each day I have concrete objectives and to focus on them until they are completed. Those objectives are chosen with the goal of moving toward the three large goals. That way at the end of a day I can know that my time has not gone for nothing.
3. Celebrate the small. Each micro-objective accomplished is a time to celebrate and express gratitude. I don't know quite why this feels important but I believe that it is important.

That's about all that I have fleshed out right now. But it is enough to feel good about things. Now to work.