Speaking as a student, I’m not entirely sure how I would have embraced the requirement. I mean, a weekly journal sounds like homework, and who wants to do that? Like all students, I too don’t really like doing what I’m told to do most of the time. However, I’ve always been a writer in some sense. In fact, I still have my project log from my 10th grade honors English class where I wrote a 2D game engine from scratch using the Win32 API. (If you click through the link, don’t laugh too hard at the grammar or the code. I was 15 and… well, it’s the Win32 API )

Speaking as an entrepreneur, I have to give a ‘wag of the finger’ to the students. Writing is powerful. Writing is useful. Writing is helpful. It may take some time for that to sink in; I know it did for me.

I think part of the problem is that students approach the use of a notebook and writing too formally. When students think of writing they think of papers, essays, sentence structure, proper grammar, proof reading, and spell checking. These are things we do for school, and we don’t do it for fun.

Writing in the real world is totally different. Maybe you need to write down a reminder to yourself. Maybe you need a todo list. Perhaps you need to make a small graph or write down some basic equation to understand something. Maybe you are bored and you have some paper and a pencil handy. Maybe you are like me and writing helps you think. When you step outside of academia and into the real world you see that writing is helpful, chaotic, and messy. It includes graphs, boxes, lines, random words, phrases, names, bubbles, stars, dots, circles, and anything else you throw into it. Nothing is drawn to scale, and there is no ‘works cited’ section. You may not even have a single complete sentence, and there are probably spelling errors everywhere. There is probably no beginning, middle, or end. You see, the notebook is there for you to record your ideas, your thoughts, your questions, your understanding. In practice, the notebook can be whatever you want it to be.

Before I began my entrepreneurial journey, I was pretty sure I had myself mostly figured out. I was sure I did my best work in front of a computer, and I was definitely the most linear of thinkers. Well, it doesn’t take long in entrepreneurship to discover things about yourself that you didn’t know. For me, that included figuring out my optimal process.

I’ve never been much of a note taker in school. I always felt like I didn’t bother to write things down because I preferred to keep it in my brain. But then, one day, I realized that I’m always within arms reach of a writing utensil. I have pens and pencils everywhere: on my nightstand, my desks, in my backpack, in my office, in my car, and generally anywhere I happen to spend time. My desk has six different types of scratch paper (ranging from sticky notes to full blank sheets), and there is a hefty pile of lists, messages, drawings, and… well… notes. I even have a giant eight foot by five foot whiteboard on the wall in my room.

Also, I’m not sure when it happened, but somewhere over the last two years I began carrying around two notebooks with me everywhere. One is labeled “Book Hatchery” and contains many todo lists, ideas, thoughts, and random scraps of paper relating to my company. The other is labeled “Thoughts, Ideas, and Other Random Things”. It contains ideas for web services and programs I’d like to make, business models I find interesting, thoughts I’d like to explore more, drawings of various systems, and, like the name says, other random things.

No one told me to start these notebooks. They merely evolved to fill a need in my life. You see, I don’t think best in front of a computer. I think best wherever I happen to be thinking a lot. Sometimes this is in my car, my office, my bed, my couch, or wherever. It is disruptive and damaging to have to find a medium capable of recording my thoughts in a way that I will (hopefully) understand at a later date. Paper is an incredibly capable resource, and I don’t like to forget things, so it follows me everywhere. Without knowing it, I started my own engineer’s notebooks, and they are important to my way of life.

Of course, I love sandbox/open world types of things. I’ve always viewed the world kind of like a child does: anything is possible until proven otherwise. When I see a blank piece of paper, a blank computer screen, a bag of Lego’s, or a map on Minecraft, I see endless possibilities. It is an opportunity for you to express yourself, your thoughts, your opinions, and your designs. It can be anything you want it to be. Few things are that maleable and useful to an entrepreneur.

I was already quite happy to be among the nine finalists given that the competition was open to the entire US and Canada. I really felt like I had a good shot at winning. I wasn’t worried. In fact, I wasn’t worried at all. Even as my presentation approached my nerves were much quieter than I expected. Somewhere in the past 14 months I had developed a joy for presenting, and I’m especially thrilled if I’m presenting on Book Hatchery. I went first, just like I wanted. I gave a good presentation, although some points were hurried. I had good questions from the judges, and I responded appropriately. As I sat down I felt like I did everything to the best of my ability, and everything else was now in the hands of the judges.

As you can tell from the title of this post, I didn’t win. I didn’t even place in the top three. We were judged on our presentation, business plan, and overall feasibility of our business concept. Interestingly, I was given positive feedback on everything, so I’m not sure what exactly I could have done better. However, my competition was very impressive. I myself would have voted for Luminex, the winning company from Vancouver, and their sun-sensing, self-adjusting, day-lighting blinds. If they work then that will be some very nifty technology.

As I drove home I felt strangely unaffected. Truth be told, I felt fine. Maybe even better than fine. I was out on the open road with only my thoughts and Pandora (on unlimited 3G bandwidth) for company. I had nothing scheduled, so I was free to travel at my leisure. I was happy to have some large blocks of time to just chill out and think, as that is something that has been rare in the last few months of running my startup. Eventually I thought to myself: I just lost a competition. I lost something that would have been a huge help to my company. Shouldn’t I at least feel a little down and defeated?

I decided the answer was no. Why? We hadn’t actually lost anything. Nothing has changed. Winning was a want, not a need. We did not lose ground; we simply didn’t gain any. We weren’t on the edge of shutting down or anything. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Things have never been better, and we are gaining traction and moving full steam ahead. Book Hatchery has had a good number of victories, and this competition doesn’t change that.

With this little insight I would offer some advice to the students here at UNI who are stressing about the Pappajohn New Venture Business Plan Competition. Don’t worry about winning or losing, because the outcome of the competition does not dictate your course of action. If you are an entrepreneur then you will find a way to move forward even if you lose. In fact, losing may reveal and solidify your dedication and focus in a way that winning never could.

It wasn’t long before I came across an article by Anson MacKeracher posted on Hacker News which talked about avoiding burnout in a software startup. I read with interest as it was a fellow hackers account of grappling with this burnout problem. The article had me analyzing the last few years, and brought me to some conclusions I hadn’t paid much attention to until recently.

Burnout is not new to me. In fact, I’d say its been part of my modus operandi for at least six years. Until now I’ve always considered it part of the process. Step one: work really hard. Step two: keep working. Step three: if mission accomplished then burnout, else goto step two. Utilizing this method generally meant that whatever had my attention was done well. The consequence was that everything else was neglected in the mean time, so if I was not carefully managing my tasks then I could screw things up quite easily. This meant life was typically proceeding in a seesaw fashion. I was either working hard as hell or hardly working at all. The longer I worked my hardest the greater the burnout tended to be. This is rarely efficient. It can be helpful when working on projects, but for most things in life you really need to spread your processing power around.

Part of my issue stems from my upbringing. Somewhere along the way the idea that I should always be doing something productive became firmly ingrained into my brain. While awake I should always be pursuing whatever my primary goal is. Recently I always feel like I should be hacking. If I’m not hacking then I should be doing business things. If I’m not doing that then I should be reading or watching talks about topics related to startups. If I’m not doing that then I should be thinking about what needs to be done and the direction we are heading. If I don’t let up then I eventually paralyze myself.

After years of this cycle it had become pretty clear that I had a burnout problem. Eventually I stepped back and looked around to see if there was a better way, and it all boiled down to this: you simply cannot have one thing be your entire life. Even if you enjoy what you are doing you can’t give it everything you have. I’m not saying you shouldn’t. I’m saying you can’t. Why? Sustainability. If you work at your hardest level, giving 110% to your task, eventually life catches up with you. Working your hardest makes your life unstable, just as overclocking a processor can make your computer unstable.

So, how do we avoid burnout? Well, as MacKeracher points out in the article:

The best way to stop burnout is to avoid it entirely through balanced behavior and thinking. Work effective hours, not necessarily long hours, and spend your free time pursuing rewarding hobbies and activities.

He is absolutely right. There is a difference between working long hours and effective hours. You do not need to work all the time. If you work at 110% of your capacity, pulling all nighters and tackling tasks one after another, you will be extraordinarily productive in the short run. However, you’ll need a significant amount of time to recover. On the other hand, if you work at about 80% of your capacity you will be able to work almost indefinitely and have time for other things in life. That is good for the long run.

For the record, burnout is not bad. On the contrary, it is absolutely necessary. It is mental feedback. If you burnout frequently then that is a sign that you could be working better. Take it as a sign to take breaks more frequently.

Also, I don’t mean to say that you should never work your hardest. There are times when you need to give 110%, or more if you have it. The idea is to recognize these times, put in the work, and then give yourself a break. Don’t expect yourself to operate at that level long-term without some consequences.

Changes

I think some of my difficulty is that entrepreneurship used to be part of my fun time activities I did outside of work. When I jumped into entrepreneurship full time it immediately monopolized my entire life. Now I’m in an interesting situation where I need to force myself to stop doing something I enjoy to simply live life. In the name of sustainability and long term prosperity I will be playing with the idea of ‘close of business’. This won’t occur at any particular time, but is instead supposed to be a floating reminder to put things away and save work for another day. Related to this will likely be some sort of work limit. I find 10-12 hours of work per day to be sustainable as long as I can stop myself from getting too wrapped up in things. Putting in that many hours is easy when you can break your day into various 3-6 hour chunks.

With the additional time I have I need to pursue things that interest me, and not just business stuff. Until a week ago one of my favorite side projects had laid dormant for almost five months and I had not written any C/C++/Lua in just as long. Part of my new regimen should include time (maybe one day a week, like Google does it) to just play with things I’m interested in.

Another thing that has often contributed to burnout is simply not pursuing ideas that come to mind. They often linger in my brain and feel like mental dead weight that degrades my capabilities. When I finally give into an idea it generally turns into a blog post (like this one). I’ve already taken a step by archiving links and ideas into drafts, but I have 20+ drafts waiting to be worked on. I think in order to quiet the mind I should spend some more time writing instead of ignoring my natural curiosity.

Tom has had an amazing career working at a large variety of technology companies, including Apple, the infamous Pets.com, and Pandora. In the video he shares fantastic stories to illustrate the following lessons:

1. Be passionate
2. Be great
3. Be focused
4. Be agile
5. Be decisive
6. Be genuine
7. Be humble

Most talks are given by founders and CEOs, so hearing his insights as an early employee was refreshing. I’m also an avid Pandora listener (40+ hours a week) and subscriber, so I was interested to hear more about the company. Pandora has such a great ethos, and I’ve felt it as one of their customers. They stick to their mission — helping people discover new music they like — despite drawing some flak for various aspects of the service (like not letting you play specific songs). I’m the type of person who listens only to music I know that I like, and without a service to find music similar to that I would never bother listening to new bands. Pandora has been responsible for almost all of the new bands and songs that I have discovered over the past few years, and I often feel like $36 a year is a bargain for everything I get in return.

Although there are many good stories to share, I’ll just list some major high points in 2010:

1. Was one of three winners in the New Venture Business Plan Competition in January, prompting me to quit my job in March and work on Book Hatchery full time.
2. Part of ‘Team 1 For a Reason” with Danny Lockard, Dan Cash, and Dan Boeding — Winners of ISU’s National Cyber Defense Competition in February
3. Named one of five finalists for Entrepreneur Magazine’s College Entrepreneur of 2010 contest
4. Dozens of interviews for blogs, newspapers, and two for short TV segments
5. Radio interview on IPR following Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos)
6. Several speaking events, including a speech to 400+ people at UNI’s Annual Scholarship Luncheon.
7. Attended the Okoboji Entrepreneurial Institute (OEI). This was easily the best thing I’ve done in college.
8. Led a great team to victory as CEO during the comprehensive business simulation at OEI.
9. Launched Book Hatchery‘s MVP on October 18th.
10. Got excited when BH made a small amount of money
11. Hired an intern (Taylor), did some contract work with a programmer friend (Brian), and got Dan to do some cool stuff with Amazon EC2
12. Took an epic road trip (3500+ miles) to Seattle with Dan Boeding and Dan Cash.
13. Visited Boeing’s Future of Flight museum and toured their Everett plant. It was nerd heaven.
14. Attended several conferences, including TEDxOmaha and the National College Entrepreneurs Organization (CEO) Conference
15. At the CEO conference I heard from Jason Fried (37Signals), Jimmy John Liautaud (Jimmy John’s), Jeff Hoffman (Priceline.com), Arel Moodie (Extreme Entrepreneurship), Michael DeLazzer (Redbox), and many more great entrepreneurs
16. One of my posts was submitted to Reddit and drew some positive comments and about 16,000 readers in 24 hours. It was also retweeted 23 times. (Thanks to Eugene Wallingford, as I piggybacked on his success to some degree)
17. Became enthralled with business books. Read Good to Great, Tribal Leadership, Outliers, The Tipping Point, Blink, Drive, Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It, The Millionaire Mind, Delivering Happiness
18. Spent A LOT of time reading Hacker News, CNN, CNNMoney, and watching talks at TED and elsewhere

There were also many down moments (especially towards the end of the year), but that is the nature of running your own business. There are many highs and many lows. Dealing with burnout has been an issue, and it is something I plan to write more on in the future.

I sit here now wondering about 2011. I don’t really know what it has in store for me. There are so many variables that I can’t even begin to plot a course, so I’m just taking it one day at a time. I have a feeling there will be some big surprises (maybe even as soon as next week) and perhaps some big life changes. However, I doubt it will match 2010 in sheer intensity, and I’m okay with that… I have a lot of work to do!

It was a fun read, especially since I know exactly where he is coming from. As a student involved with entrepreneurship, I meet and encourage many of the entrepreneurs he talks about. When I first started working with other students I tried to give them a glimpse of the tech world, but I quickly stopped that.

I stopped primarily because they were not interested. Most of them don’t think they’ll have to work on the software at all — that’s what programmers are for! However, the lack of even basic software knowledge is a show stopper for many most and a serious limitation for some. It is hard to innovate when you work with the cheapest programmer possible and you don’t know how to update your own web site for simple text changes. Many of them say they’ll learn if they absolutely have to, but even when it is immediately apparent that that is required most of them take no steps towards learning.

This lack of technical understanding tends to be very important. To many software engineers, programming is art; it is creation, in a pure sense, like painting or making music. Without that knowledge and understanding the programming seems like an inconvenient to-do list item.

Even more critical is the fact that these entrepreneurs aren’t aware of what is or isn’t technically feasible, nor are they aware of how much effort or money things may require. More often then not I see this limiting them to small ideas instead of ideas that are too ambitious. It is hard to be ahead of the curve if you don’t know where the edge of the curve is. For example, the unknowing look at our software and think it is cutting edge. Truly our service is, but the software behind it is not. I, like many tech entrepreneurs, sometimes walk around with a goofy grin because I can’t hardly believe what I’m getting away with. If other programmers saw our backend we would all have a hearty, joyous laugh.

As a techie, observing these entrepreneurs can be frustrating and amusing. Open source software has made so many things possible, including a surprising amount of flexibility in designing web sites without the need for programming. All of these entrepreneurs I work with are smart and could learn some of these simple things, but, as Wallingford says, they are “idea people”. There seems to be a disconnect between the thinking and the doing. They do indeed act like the idea is the important part and execution is just an expensive step towards success.

Now days I try to act more as a sounding board. I like to talk out ideas with people, and offer suggestions. I never set out to be a dream killer, so I (usually) keep my doubts to myself. This is important for a number of reasons. In the beginning, it is all about passion. If you lose it, your startup dies overnight. Also, most of them don’t yet know how inherently worthless their idea probably is in its current form, and informing them at the earliest of stages is a disservice. This may sound overly critical, but I was (and probably still am) part of the same disillusioned crowd. Book Hatchery evolved over the better part of a year, and my original ideas and software are all but scrapped by this point. I think Paul Graham sums up ideas nicely in his essay How To Start A Startup:

Ideas for startups are worth something, certainly, but the trouble is, they’re not transferable. They’re not something you could hand to someone else to execute. Their value is mainly as starting points: as questions for the people who had them to continue thinking about.

What matters is not ideas, but the people who have them. Good people can fix bad ideas, but good ideas can’t save bad people.

This brings up the most fundamental point is business, and probably life itself: its all about the people. I’d elaborate, but that’s a topic for another day.

I absolutely agree with Eugene when he says:

..the value of a product comes from the combination of having an idea and executing the idea. Doing the former or having the ability to do the latter aren’t worth much by themselves. You have to put the two together.

I’m a bit more spartan. The fact is, if you can’t execute, you can’t be an entrepreneur. You are just one of billions of people who have ideas. On the other hand, if you can get access to good ideas, you can change the world and make a lot of money doing it. Thus, I think execution matters far more than the idea itself. Execution is what sets you apart from everyone else.

I ran across an article where Dennis Crowley, one of the founders of foursquare, listed his top 5 pieces of advice for entrepreneurs. First and most important:

#1.  Stop sketching and start building.  Pre-dodgeball I went thru 3-4 years thinking I was going to meet some magical engineer who would build all the stuff I was thinking about.  But I never met that person, so I taught myself ASP and MS Access (yikes! eventually PHP an MySQL) out of a book and got to work just hacking stuff together.  I’m still a really shitty programmer (ask Harry Heymann) but I know enough to hack a prototype together (which is what you need to get other people / investors on board).

Stop planning and start doing. It is hard for most people to do. When I talk to would-be tech entrepreneurs, I’m always thinking about how far they could get without any funding if they’d just work at it. Dennis spent 3-4 years meandering before he finally got his shit together and started building.

Our “idea people” don’t have to be a good programmers. What is important is that they understand programming, and that they can prototype something that gains enough traction to actually warrant building it the right way.

Introspection

I learned about programming when I was young. I built my first web site in 6th grade and started learning C/C++ in 8th grade so I could make text-based multi-player games (MUDs). I was overjoyed with having the ability to create whatever I pleased. I’ve also been fortunate to have always been an “ideas person”, at least in the sense that I like to operate on the fringes of possibility, try new things, and explore new ideas. Mostly, I just like to builds things. StrengthsFinder lists Activator as one of my top 5 strengths, along with Learner, Analytical, Input, and Command.

So I lucked into blending the roles of idea generation and execution. Once it became apparent that I needed more business expertise to flesh out my software ideas, the next step seemed pretty obvious: start learning about business. This was also new, fun, and exciting, similar to the way software was when I first got into it.

Learning more about business also resulted in the realization of an important fact. Business people like business because that is what they understand. Coders like coding because that is what they understand. They each tend to view the other as an equally arcane practice that will be completely impossible for them to learn. Of course this usually isn’t the case; it is far more likely they are too lazy to learn something they don’t think they’ll enjoy. Most people just aren’t willing to jump into what they don’t know. For the rest of us, that’s the fun part.

Regarding Dennis’ quote above, I think I fit into the same mold of simply knowing enough. I’m primarily a systems programmer, and even though I had worked with PHP a fair amount, I’d never built a complete product from scratch. However, I was able to to cobble together the Book Hatchery beta. I did a lot of it without programming or in-depth knowledge of the technologies that I was using. And, more or less, it worked. With that out of the way we get to progress to the fun stages where people far more talented than me can flesh it out while I work on other things.

Bored in school, failing classes, at odds with peers: This child might be an entrepreneur, says Cameron Herold. At TEDxEdmonton, he makes the case for parenting and education that helps would-be entrepreneurs flourish — as kids and as adults. (Recorded at TEDxEdmonton, March 2010 in Edmonton, Canada. Duration: 19:36)

This talk was important to me on many levels. Personally I always try to rally behind the causes I find important and worthwhile. This talk is a good example of how to inspire and recruit others to those causes. From an entrepreneurship perspective, this is important information for both attracting customers and quality employees.

Recently I have been reading about and giving a lot of thought to the last statement — attracting customers and quality employees. Both are vital for any company. I realized that while I want employees with skill, their skill will matter very little if they have no drive. Startups like mine are absolutely dependent on the passion of the individuals bringing it to life. It is a way of life, not a job. I need people who will treat it as such.

As for customers, it is surprisingly hard to find information on how good companies attract good customers and maintain loyalty. Everyone seems to have their own methods. However, many web companies are quite dubious and will do anything to make a buck. While generating revenue is important, I think any venture that sets out specifically to do that will not succeed to the degree of one that does not. I don’t mean that they will fail per se, but they probably won’t have the explosive growth of a company that does it right. Customers should be the priority, not profit. If you put customers first, profit will follow.

This boils down to one great piece of advice; something Sinek repeatedly says in the talk:

People don’t buy what you do; people buy why you do it.

I believe this to be quite true. Anyone can rattle off what a product do, and that fails to make me want it. But if you can tell me why you made it, and why I would want it then you have a much better chance at convincing me to overcome my frugality.

Outside of the market, I find that I always am attracted to those with passion. In fact, that is how I came by the entrepreneurship program here at UNI. While I was interested in starting a business and could see a future in it, it certainly wasn’t my current plan. However, everything changed. I got involved, and the more involved I got the more I saw that for the people at the JPEC, this was a way of life. They believed in their cause. And so, in a short time, I changed all of my plans. I took on their cause as my own, and embraced this way of life. I believe so strongly in entrepreneurship that I have spread the word of our cause to almost everyone I know, and I find they are all willing to listen because I’m not doing it out of self-interest.

This is similar to how I got into economics. I was merely interested in the subject matter, but I had no real plans of a major or minor. I took one class with Professor Hakes and was immediately sold. I was convinced that if he wasn’t being paid to teach this to us, he’d probably be out on the street corner telling this information to anyone who listened. As I took more classes I found that this wasn’t exclusive to him, but was, in fact, a strongly held belief among most of our Economics faculty. After learning much of the information, I have found that the professors were right. The information is almost universally applicable, and holds special meaning to me as an entrepreneur.

After watching the talk I went and looked up more information on Simon Sinek, and found he had a book called Start With Why. It is now the top of my “To Read” list, even above the Malcolm Gladwell books I’ve been pining to get to (though I did finish Outliers, but I’ll save that for another post).

The name stood out to me, and reminded me of a post I’ve wanted to write forever about my three lifelong beliefs:

1. Why is the best question of all time. Ask it often.
2. Time is precious and invaluable.
3. Excellence in all things.

I have often wondered what I would say if I was to give a talk to others about wisdom I have gained. Obviously this should be tailored to the specific topic at hand, but if I could pick something general and universally applicable, then those three items would be it. They are the rules I live by, often without knowing it. Let me break it down.

Why is the best question of all time. Ask it often. Along those lines, knowledge is power.

There are two primary groups in relation to observation of the world. First, there are those who are content with the world and accept it for what it is. Second, there are those who see what the world could be and challenge the status quo. People who are content often do not question the world around them, whereas people who see the possibilities never stop asking why.

Why is an important question. It helps you get to the bottom of things. It helps you understand. You asking why even helps other people understand. Asking why helps spur change. Plus, the question never gets more complex; you simply have to ask it repeatedly until you obtain the answers you need.

Asking why is often a trait of the young, especially small children. Children don’t have any performed views of the world. They don’t have a base of knowledge upon which they can make assumptions, so when they don’t know the simply ask. Their curiosity knows no bounds. Why is the sky blue? Why is the world round? Unfortunately, most parents kill this curiosity. I was fortunate that my parents indulged my early nerdiness and urged me to continue on my quest for knowledge. I have since realized that you should never stop asking questions. Curiosity should be a lifelong trait.

Now is a great time for why-askers. With the advent of broadband internet and the world wide web, the knowledge of our race is literally at your fingertips. These days, if you have a question, you can now know the answer within seconds or minutes. You can get a good, detailed summary of some topic you have never heard of before. And you can do all of this for free! Take advantage.

In an age like this where information is so readily accessible, you should obtain as much as humanly possible because when I say knowledge is power, I mean that in a literal sense. Knowledge gives you an edge in anything you do, if only because you avoid the mistakes you would make otherwise. Also, knowledge is the only thing that someone cannot take away from you. You could lose your freedom, your money, the clothes on your back, and even your life. But knowledge, it sticks with you through thick and thin. No one can steal your education, and that education may help you mend a broken life.

Time is precious and invaluable.

Time is the only resource you can never obtain more of. It is finite, and you spend it constantly. Thus, it is important to not waste time. It is the most valuable asset you have. In fact, I would submit that your time is priceless, and thus should only be spent on the most worthy of tasks.

In a purely economical sense, what follows is about maximizing productivity and minimizing cost. I actually embrace this more than almost anyone I know, and it often frustrates some people who do not see eye to eye with this concept.

A great example of this, in my case, is cooking. While I enjoy cooking (though I don’t seem to posses much skill in the craft), it is not a feasible activity with respect to time. I will inevitably spend time buying the groceries, packing them in the car, unpacking them, preparing the food, eating, and doing dishes. Since you can buy groceries for a number of meals, I’ll throw that out of this particular equation. If I just prepare the food, eat it, and then do the dishes, I’m often looking at at least an hour. Now I can ask myself, how much is that hour worth? My time is priceless. If I paid for some food, I could save myself most of that hour, even if it cost twice as much as eating at home. I could then spend that hour (or whats left after buying the prepared food) doing what is important to me.

Another example is yard work (well, for those of you who own property). In my opinion, yard work is economically nonsensical. While it is nice to be outside, maybe get some exercise while improving the state of your property, you could be paying someone to do that for you. Would it cost you less money to do it yourself? Probably. But it would cost more of your time, which is invaluable. Since the person you hire is willing to give you their time for a certain dollar amount, you are effective getting a bargain by trading money for something that is priceless.

This is a strange concept for most people, and I know the reason why: most people value money more then they value their time. Or, more correctly, they value stuff more then they value time. This is wrong. Money and goods are not finite resources. In a simplistic view, you can always obtain more money and goods if you need to. This is not the case with time. Once it is spent, it is gone. You will never have more. Thus, time is worth far, far more than money ever will be.

Obviously this is a rather spartan view of the world, and we cannot always choose to spend our time where we like. Perhaps our financial resources are constrained in such a way that we must give up our time in order to reduce our financial expenditure. This is reasonable. However, it is not how the world should be. In order to maximize happiness and productivity, I suggest spending your time doing what you consider important. Then, when you are forced into other things, you will not feel as bad. If your work is not meaningful to you and you are forced to spend your time to conserve your money, you will not lead a happy life because you will not be spending your time on things your consider important.

I should note what is important to me determines where I spend my time, and that will be the case for others. Many people enjoy cooking, and many people enjoy doing yard work. I’m sure there are many people who absolutely hate reading or spending all of their time learning new things. That is fine. I don’t mean to condone anyone’s interests or put mine up on some kind of pedestal. I merely was trying to demonstrate that paying for things you do not like to do, even if they cost more then doing it yourself, is a huge advantage and benefit to you.

I guess my overall point is to do what you want to do. Wasting time is the absolute worst thing you could do.

I’ve had a few people ask me how I can say I adhere to this principle when I may spend an entire weekend watching Stargate SG-1, or playing a video game. While these are not common occurrences, they fit in line perfectly with this principle. The question merely demonstrates a lack of understanding of this principle. Watching Stargate all weekend is not a waste of my time if it is something I want to do and consider important. Everyone needs to relax, and you cannot uphold your main cause 24/7. There is downtime required; otherwise you risk burning out. Doing nothing can be just as important as doing something, depending on the context in which it occurs.

Excellence in all things.

These four words are the summation of a plethora of inspirational quotations. However, there is one in particular I still wish to share. When I was young, maybe 9 or 10, my parents let me pick out an inspirational poster when we went to the mall once. I picked Excellence, with a quote that read:

Do you see a man who excels in his work? He will stand before kings.

Proverbs 22:29

When I was younger, I figured this meant that excellence brought prestige. Now, when I look at this artifact of my past, I realize it has other meanings as well. Primarily it means that he who excels in his work will make a difference, be that in front of kings or other visionaries.

This principle, excellence in all things, has much to do with the one above. If you are spending your time, a priceless asset, on something, do it well for you have paid the highest price imaginable to do it. There is no reason to accept mediocrity. Do everything to the best of your ability, because you should only be doing what is important in the first place.

This can lead to some serious personal struggles. I believe that if you set the bar high enough, you will achieve the highest amount possible, even if you fall short of the bar. But what happens when you stumble? You fall. Hard. You miss that bar by a long, long ways.

Failure like that can be tough to deal with. If you expect excellence in all things, the inevitable misstep or serious struggle will weigh you down. It will be a serious burden, and not one you can easily shed. Thus, I would say that you should strive for your best, always. But be honest with yourself. Failure is more progress than not doing anything at all. Failure teaches you things. No one can avoid failure all the time. Failure is part of life. Sometimes the best you can do is simply not very good. Accept that fact. You cannot be everything to everyone at every moment. You need to have the power to put 100% into the most important things in your life, and that means cutting out a lot of slack most of the time. That can be tough, especially if that slack turns out to be other people.

Do not worry though; you will make it through. You must merely have the will to pursue excellence in life, for few things are more important than life itself.

Note: This was originally posted on 5/20/2010

Sometimes the only progress you can make is not taking a step backwards.

After dealing with other problems, I realized one big issue I was having was the fact that my test e-mails were being caught in spam filters. Once I figured this out, after going through everything detailed below, things were peachy. That is, until I realized I hadn’t been receiving e-mail from my university e-mail address for a week or more!

A week or so ago I transferred Book Hatchery from a shared host to a virtual private server (VPS). While this gives me a lot more control and some dedicated resources, it costs almost four times as much. It also means I have to maintain the server myself — updates, configuration, security, log checking, uptime monitoring; it is all on my plate now.

The migration went well enough, and I thought I had everything set up well. I noticed some time later that a subscription hadn’t gone through. The problem was that I forgot to install a mail transfer agent (MTA) to handle outgoing mail on the server. That is simple enough:

apt-get install postfix

Postfix is the standard MTA for Ubuntu, which happens to be my particular flavor of Linux. So I followed the on-screen setup and called it good. Newsletter subscriptions worked and I was happy, for a time.

After the veritable blitzkrieg of traffic related to me being named one of five finalists in Entrepreneur magazine’s College Entrepreneur of 2010 contest, I noticed that subscriptions were working well, but some people using the contact form were not getting through to me. I went and manually pulled the messages together and replied in turn, and then three hours of mess ensued.

For the unknowing, Google Apps handles Book Hatchery’s e-mail. This is handy and useful on many levels. However, with the default install of Postfix it will try to locally deliver any mail it generates to its domain. That is, if it generated e-mail to go to a bookhatchery.com e-mail address, it tried to dump it locally instead of giving it to Google. This is wrong.

I spent a lot of time looking at what it was I was supposed to actually be doing, since the Internet had me believing that I just needed to set up Google as my SMTP relay. This is also wrong. You don’t need Google to send e-mail for you that you can simply send yourself. If you are using a free Google Apps account then you have a limit of 500 messages per 24 hours that you can send, and you may potentially reach that if you make Google send all of your mail for you.

To save everyone else the time (supposing search engines grab this content), here is the answer. If you have your own web server, you’ll need to have an MTA installed in order to take advantage of PHP’s mail functionality. I would wager that is a requirement with any CMS on the market these days. Hosting your e-mail with Google Apps does not change that. When you set up Google Apps, you put MX records in your DNS so that all incoming mail is sent to Google. Thus, the only mail you need to be concerned about on your server is outgoing mail. Any mail you generate to your own domain will still need to be sent out.

The solution is setting up a null client — a server that only sends e-mail. It turns out this is extremely simple to do using Postfix, as noted in their basic configuration section.

The simplest way to do this would be to install Postfix with no configuration. Once everything is installed, create /etc/postfix/main.cf with the following contents:

myorigin = yourdomainhere
relayhost = yourdomainhere
inet_interfaces = loopback-only
local_transport = error:local delivery is disabled

Edit /etc/postfix/master.cf and comment out this line (add a # to the front):

local unix - n n - - local

Now restart Postfix (/etc/init.d/postfix restart) and test your functionality. You should be good to send mail from your server, but anything you get will be relayed to its correct location. You also won’t be annoying Google’s SMTP server with e-mail you can send yourself.

Note: This was originally posted 7/30/2010