Nels Wadycki » Lifehacker

Hustle

Nels — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:55:04 +0000

Two hits from Lifehacker today: Hustle When You Want to Learn New Things and Ira Glass on Getting Creative Work Done.

The first is the key to the door, and it’s easy to insert and unlock: Hustle. Simple as that.

If you want to do something: do something. If want want to make progress towards a goal: do something. If you want to learn something (like Matt Nowack in the post): do something. Just keep doing something (hustling) and you will get things done.

So that pretty much covers that. Except, it also leads into the second post, which is: the reason you have to keep hustling.

That reason is, as Glass says, when you start out, what you’re making isn’t all the great. But you know that, and if you keep at it (keep hustling) you will get better, and the quality of whatever you’re doing will improve, and eventually (if you hustle long enough) it will rise to the level that you’d imagined in the first place. This is a good reason to follow the popular entrepreneur’s slogan Fail Early, Fail Often. You can replace Fail with Hustle and you have essentially the same meaning as long as you recognize that your first (and probably several subsequent) efforts at hustling will not be as good as you intend them to be.

For a more concrete example: I read a few blogs on writing (creative writing) and the idea is the same when writing a novel (or short story). The first draft of a novel is almost never the final draft. Most writers (who give advice) encourage others (“aspiring” writers) to write the first draft as quickly as possible and not to even worry if it’s total garbage that no one would ever actually read. Because, as Mr. Glass says, you know it’s not all that great. (I like how he avoids saying “It’s total crap.”) But if you know it’s not that great, then you can go back through it and revise and polish, and it will get better every time. If you fail on the first draft, at least you have a first draft. You can take that ~~crappy~~ not so great first draft, and you can edit it, fail again, and then edit it again.

At some point you have to release it into the wild, but that is actually another chance to fail (and improve). In this example, you release your book into the wild (say, to a publisher who then edits it further). You observe what they have done, and then you hustle to fix it, and send it back. You may fail again. And again. But eventually, they’ll put it out into the hands of readers where you will get a whole new set of complaints. Once again, observe, hustle, and continue hustling – in this example, on to the next book.

Or in the case of blogging: on to the next post.

Other Stuff Like This

Nels’ Top 1 Lifehacker Tip

Nels — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:54:01 +0000

No, that’s not a typo. This tip has seriously saved me hours since I started using it.

Choose (and Remember) Great Passwords.

You don’t need to remember 100 passwords if you have 1 rule set for generating them. One way to generate unique passwords is to choose a base password and then apply a rule that mashes in some form of the service name with it. For example, … [choose] your initials and a favorite number plus the first 3 letters of a service name. In that case, my password for Amazon would be GMLT10AMA and for Lifehacker.com GMLT10LIF. (Include obscure middle initials – like your mother’s maiden name or a childhood nickname – that not many people know about for extra security.)

I feel I can safely tell you that I have successfully implemented this system because I doubt that anyone will be able to come up with my base password. Not even my wife, who knows all my “traditional” passwords. And even then, I’m not using the first three letters of the service name, but something that is not as obvious but equally easy to remember if you’re me and need to type in my passwords.

Yes, if someone does figure out your base password, and your follow up “hash”, then they can break into all your accounts. This is why, for important stuff like some banks, mortgage, and email, I still use different passwords. But it’s pretty easy to remember a few passwords for the most important sites when you don’t have to clutter your brain with passwords for the sites that won’t affect your credit or reputation if someone gets access to them.

I am about 99.9% certain that the risk/reward benefit is in my favor here. I used to store passwords with user names and site names in a password-protected Excel spreadsheet. Super Secure! .. {wait for it} … NOT! Not only do I gain security of not having that sitting on my hard drive, but I also save time by not having to open it up and type in the password for the spreadsheet just to get access to a one of the millions of passwords for sites that I only visit infrequently.

Other Stuff Like This

[GTD] What is your silliest Lifehack?

Nels — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:04:01 +0000

There are two things that will probably make me seem borderline obsessive-compulsive, but really, I just count them as a couple of those things that, once they become habit, save you from having to actually think about them.

1. I always put my wife’s food on the right (because I’m left handed, so I get the one on the left, see? ). E.g., when I’m preparing breakfasts or lunches (or more rarely dinners, I put her stuff on the right. Since we usually eat the same things, but in different quantities, this is actually pretty useful. I know that the bowl on the left should have more cereal in it, and that the spaghetti on the right should get the extra sauce (she loves the sauce).

2. I always put my iPhone in my pocket with the Home button up. This way, when I reach in, I know I can press the Home button while pulling the phone out of my pocket and be ready to enter my pin number as soon as I have it out. It also makes it a lot easier to answer when someone calls because I know where the slider will be to pick up. I’m sure this saves me precious seconds every day.

Anyone else have silly or mundane “hacks” to share?

Other Stuff Like This

More Google Voice

Nels — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 02:19:20 +0000

Gina “Lifehacker” Trapani wrote a post about Google Voice on SmarterWare in which she says:

Now that Google Voice supports SMS, you can send and receive text messages from your GV number as well, which is the last piece I needed to finally tell all my friends and family, “Here’s my new phone number.”

She’s been using GrandCentral since it came out, and only decided to switch completely with the addition of SMS. I’m pretty sure that when I get my iPhone (cross your fingers – any day now) I’ll just tell all my friends to send their text messages to my email address. Of course, then I’ll have to make sure to keep it less than 140 characters when I write them back, but at least I won’t have to give AT&T my wife’s arm and leg to pay for a text messaging plan.