Author: vlad

I take myself too seriously sometimes. Listening to Shaun White interviewed by Tim Ferriss, he mentioned the need to set real goals, and funny goals. I need more funny goals.

An idea is exciting when it’s new. But so often behind that excitement is a mediocre time sink. My struggle is to not jump straight into it, and take a few days to sleep on the idea before trying to execute.

This is why this project is so great.
Step 1 – diagnose 99 real problems.
Step 2 – find as many solutions as possible for them.
Step 3 – eliminate solutions until you land on the few gems in the group.

Rinse, repeat.

This way, by the time the idea becomes a time commitment, it has been vetted repeatedly and exists outside of the honey moon phase of excitement.

There needs to be a resource that teaches stoicism to young children, and a resource that teaches parents that it’s a good thing to have a stoic child.

A point from Rework – think of the last meeting you were in. Let’s assume that it had ten people, and lasted one hour. And like most corporate meetings, was a complete waste of time.

It didn’t waste one hour… It wasted ten hours of company time.

Just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to meeting issues…

Almost three years ago, my friends and I had a long look at each other, and decided that we were all becoming shapeless blogs. A 30 day fitness challenge was born, and it launched a complete lifestyle change for me.

Doing this blogging challenge has reminded me how exciting and transformative a fun challenge can be. Need a way to curate the best ones for my needs, and consistently be doing them.

The convenience of going wireless, especially when working out, is so often negated by the thousand other issues related to Bluetooth.

I think that part of this exercise is to reframe how we approach the world. There are so many problems around us that we don’t even consider, but many can make a tangibly better world if we solve them (ie – creating a better umbrella).

But creating a mindset of seeing the world as an oyster of opportunities, versus fabricating problems to win a challenge are two different things. There is no competition, just a collaboration to find 99 Problems, and hopefully solve at least one.

Edit – there’s a deeper mindfulness lesson here. The challenge is about living in the moment, looking at the problems immediately around you. Not trying to solve obscure, hypothetical problems. This is what ruins too many businesses before they even begin.

Be in the moment, look for problems in the world around you.

Since so many people graduate from school (HS, College, even Grad School) not knowing what they want to do, then what is the point of school? Isn’t it failing students on a most fundamental level?

I’m still living in the fallout of that failure.

Too often you find partners that Share early enthusiasm, but when one’s interest wanes, it drags down the other (you).

Idea – An app that detects a lull in a good conversation and interrupts them with a well timed fart.

Is it a real problem? Is there such a thing? Should anyone work towards that goal? And if more people do, will the world be a better place? (do we want the world to be a better place?)

Idea – If it is a goal, how cool would it be to create a game that teaches you to become an ubermensch?

Yesterday I was trying to mount a TV, and learned the hard way that the walls have metal studs. Heavy TV + full motion TV arm + metal studs = no bueno. Long story short, I failed, and to add insult to injury, my girlfriend used the H word (“let’s hire a handyman”).

This morning I woke up to a burst of creativity. Getting my butt kicked last night triggered phenomenal creative thought.

I think that embedded deep in that is a concept – failure doesn’t just teach you from your mistakes, but on an evolutionary level, failure triggers a creative burst.

Problem – if the above is true, how do we force a very real but low consequence failure, and then refocus the creative energy on solving more urgent problem in our lives?

Idea – when you can’t solve a problem, pick a video game that you can’t beat. Play it on the hardest mode, so you really feel the failure and frustration. End your day on that. Return to your problem the following day.

I can never get the timing right…

People are saying that sitting is the new smoking. I need a sit Timer that automatically knows when I’m sitting and quantifies it.

People that block doors on the train need to face capital punishment. Not really, but this is a problem that really plagues the MTA, and the innocent bystanders of that hateful crime.

Idea – create a set of door blocker cards and hand them out to people blocking doors. On the back have it link back to a train etiquette site. And a place for people to order their own door blocker cards.

I don’t want to touch a book or device with my meat hands.

Why do they exist? And why did I have no idea that they’re in this building? A 30 minute mounting project turned into a day-long escapade, dealing with seedy hardware store guys, missed studs, and possibly a dead mouse in the wall.

After death, my brain is worthless.

A perfect analogy is having company information in one person’s email inbox. What happens when that person leaves, and no one else has access to it?

Your brain is a secluded inbox of information. You can spend all of the time building that database, but until it’s searchable and lives outside of your body, it’s useless. Because when you die, the decades of hard work disappear with you.

Will we create a daddy.api, that the kids can just plug into for your advice, or a bad dad joke here and there?

And I don’t have a good way to find it. I tried the Misfit Bluetooth Button, but it was terribly inconsistent. Is it be because Bluetooth is inconsistent, or because that button was cheap? Is there another brand to try?

Losing my phone and looking for it in the apartment nets a huge time sink through the year.

We are not immortal, even though we waste time like we are. Only in the tragic moments, and in our last moments, do we realize how fleeting our lives are. There needs to be some potent reminder of our mortality, that doesn’t scare us or cause discomfort, but also serves the purpose of reminding us to make every single day count.