Insights

Gotta keep doing it

All of us have habits of some sort. Some like to jog every morning while some can't sleep till it's passed midnight. And we are all aware that there are good and bad habits. When I decided to start blogging, it felt like a part time job. My goal was 3 to 5 posts a week and I was struggling to meet the quota.

But after a month or so, blogging became part of my daily routine and I'm now starting to be able to schedule posts into the future. Blogging is now a habit and doesn't seem as hard.

If there is something you want to do often, turn it into a habit. Once it's a habit, it takes a lot less effort to do it. You will feel as if you've been doing it all along. Just make sure to get rid of the bad ones.

Importance of price

Ever wondered what if there's no price tag on things we buy. How will it affect our buying decisions? Will we end up just getting the best or will the removal of price also removes the need to have different choices and we all end up buying the same thing? Some things are free, which means by definition they don't have a price. If you were to choose between a bunch of freebies what would you do? If price is no longer the differentiating factor or guide, will we be able to make better decision?

Price is important because our notion of value is based upon it. Without a price, we will have to judge products solely based on their specifications. Something we are supposed to do but apparently not many can due to the lack of domain knowledge.

So if the target of your product is the mainstream (e.g. clueless), should you use price as the guide to educate users on the value of your product in relation to your competitors? And if you are aiming for the early adopters, will being free makes it easier for them to see the true value of your product?

Not just how but why

What if you need to do something that you don't know how to do? Most of us will only ask how do I do it but there's a small number who will also question the reason why they need to do it. They ask why and the rest of us should be like them. It seems that we are taught, trained and conditioned to ask how but never to ask why. Knowing the reason we do something gives us a sense of purpose and you tend to perform better when you know exactly why you are doing something.

Asking why also encourages creativity and curiosity. Why can't I do it this way? Why must I do it in this order? Can I not do this and just do that? It lets you come up with unorthodox solutions to problems.

We should never be afraid to ask why. Why? Because if you don't, you are just a sheep like everyone else. And sheep are unremarkable.

It is never done

If you have been using the Internet for a while, you'll notice there are some web sites and applications that are labeled beta. It basically means the software is still under development and things can or rather will break-down but the developer can choose not to give any support. Obviously, I don't encourage you to release beta products so you can refuse to support it but it does help you to release something early and fast. It's a license to dump your idea to the public and find out for real if it works or not.

The beta label can also serve as a reminder that your product is not finished and might never be but that's a good thing. It means there's always room for improvement.

By revealing your product to others, you get to collect feedbacks, suggestions and if you're lucky some will even contribute and collaborate with you to make it better. This is basically how open-source software development is done.

If you are working an idea, start early and remind yourself that it is never done but that's alright.

The simplest solution

In software development, over-engineering is a huge problem because it is so easy to manipulate bits and bytes compared to atoms and molecules. It is very common to fall into the trap of building more and more features to cater for scenarios and problems that might happen in the future. George Whitesides showed us with his paper-made postage-sized diagnostic tool that the solution to a problem can be simple and cheap at the same time. In order to provide healthcare to regions of the world that can't afford them, instead of lowering the cost of existing tools, he approached the problem from the opposite angle. He used the cheapest thing he can find to create those tools.

He also came up with a way to build a centrifuge to separate blood plasma with an egg-beater. Simplicity is his strategy in tackling problems. A student from MIT when asked by him, came up with a way to best describe what exactly is simplicity.

What is simplicity?

It's impossible to f*ck it up

The next time you are trying to solve a problem, try solving it from different perspectives and remember that most of the time, the simplest solution is also the best. I'll leave you with a video of George's talk at TED.

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All about winning

I'm quite a competitive person. I don't only like to win arguments, I like to win in just about anything. The only reason I play a game is to beat it. Obviously, I don't get to win all the time but the urge to win keeps me motivated.

Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing - Henry Russell Sanders

Turns out there are quite a few advantages with this must-win philosophy. The most obvious would be the motivation you get if you are hell-bent on winning. Before jumping into a new game, I prefer to do some research and read strategy guides. Every exploit in the game will be utilized as long as it's not considered cheating.

As many of you know, to get really good at something, you need to focus and invest lots of time in it. What this means is that, in order to win, you need to focus on only the things that matters and ignore everything else. This automatically makes you a minimalist.

Arguably the most important aspect of this, is the confidence you gained from winning. This allows you to build success on top of your previous successes and let's you tackle bigger and bigger things from the momentum.

I guess it's time to start winning?

Always right

Using the scientific method, we can prove a hypothesis by testing and collecting evidence from observation and experimentation. This is probably the same process you apply when deciding if something is right or wrong as long as you are logical. This is especially useful when you're in an argument. By arming yourself with an arsenal of armor-piercing evidences and heat-seeking proofs, you can annihilate their counter-arguments with ease. In time, you'll get the illusion that you are always right.

I admit that I like to argue on everything and anything or rather I like winning them. If you try hard enough, almost any piece of information can be used to your advantage. This sadly, isn't that I'm particularly smart or anything but rather it's just confirmation bias at work.

We have a tendency to prefer information that support our views. This led us to prove our hypotheses in a one-sided way, ignoring other alternatives. It is especially common if you have an emotional attachment to the issue. Now you know why it's so hard to convince someone that's passionate about something that he/she is wrong.

I do not know of a solution to this except to be aware of it and try very hard to not let it bite you in the ass. Just remember that you are not always right.

How much will you pay?

If you run a business or do some gigs on the side, this is probably a question that you wish you could ask your client and get a honest response. Your customer will perceive the quality, value, demand, speed and other attributes of your product or service from the amount you charge them. Airlines charges a business traveler that needs to travel on the same day higher than a leisure traveler who booked his ticket 6 months ahead in time. Book publishers provide hardcovers and paperbacks to target different readers. Offering different pricing to different customers allows you to profit from those who are willing to pay more.

Restaurants will often list some high margin items on their menu to take advantage of anchoring. Not only will this convey the quality of the meal but also help make other items on menu look cheaper in comparison.

Freemium is another way to price your product. Web services like Flickr provide a free plan for the majority of users and a premium plan for those who need more features and disk space for their photos. You make money as long as the cost of each user is small enough that your paying customers is able to absorb it.

New companies and freelancers tend to charge less than the competition in order to strike the deal. This is not a long term strategy because if your only advantage over the competition is price, eventually someone will undercut you. You should strive to be the Apple of your industry, not the next Walmart.

If you are interested in knowing more about cost, price, margin and options you have in managing them, you should check out this free ebook, Fixed to Flexible from Todd Sattersen.

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Evolution of spam

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What happens when you can broadcast to thousands and thousands of people at virtually zero cost? Some use it to organize flash mob, while some decide to spam us indiscriminately to sell us products we don't need. The most familiar form of spam would be the email-spam. However, the recent rise of social networking sites gave spammers a whole new playground to harvest contact information and a new way to grab our attention.

Facebook (largest social networking site on the planet) has a really convenient feature that allows you to tag faces in your photos. If you have a hard time remembering faces like me, this is god-send. Surprisingly, some really creative people found it to be the easiest and most effective way to start a conversation on a photo.

Because you can tag anyone on any photo, you can if you are motivated enough, tag every single one of your friends on a picture of a tree. Your friends will then be notified while the photo shows up on their news-feed. This is great for greeting cards, group photos and of course, spam.

Luckily, there's a bunch of ways to block your spammer friends and Facebook being a closed platform helps reduce the amount of tag-spam. Anyway, I now have a valid excuse to be anti-social as less friends means less spam.

How do you define success?

When we were a baby, success was the moment you took your first step by yourself. Then in school, kids that scored higher and ran faster were the successful ones. And if you somehow made it through all that, you enter a world where you are judged by the position written on your card and how much money you make. As we get older and older, the bar we set for success goes higher and higher. This is only natural because as we age, we are able to perform task that are more sophisticated and complex.

The result is that some of us are paralyzed by the high expectations required to succeed. Compounded with the fact that it is harder to get noticed in this era of social media, many unsurprisingly decided that success is reserved to the talented and elite.

The solution to this, I believe is to redefine what success means. Success isn't just those life-changing breakthroughs or grand accomplishments. Those baby steps you take towards your goal are successes too.

You have to envision that the path to success is like a staircase and each step you climb is in itself a victory. Success is built-on other smaller successes. This means that you can accumulate these victories and slowly make your way up towards your goal.

The reason we do this is to harness the momentum and feedback we get from each step. We are hard-wired to expect results from our actions. So by breaking down your goal into smaller more achievable bits, you get constant feedback that you are heading the right way.

Success is something you want to do again. Failure is something you don't. - Jason Fried (37signals)

So as a reponse to John's post, my eureka moment was when I realized success also comes in bite-sized form. Remember to celebrate every small victory and let the momentum of succeeding get you up the stairs.