This book by Andy Kessler has some key highlights:
- Engage in personal projects that you are passionate about; share your ideas and listen to other people’s ideas; prioritize your projects so you don’t sabotage yourself by trying to do everything; do what makes sense; be proactive
- Create a sandbox (community) for others to play in
- Regarding partners: open up your system Tom Sawyer-like instead of Overcome “not-invented-here” mindset
- Productivity = effectiveness (doing the right things) and efficiency (doing things right)
- Efficiency is about inputs (i.e., effort); productivity is about outputs (i.e., what is produced). Check your ratio of outputs to inputs…Find the balance
- Effectiveness is how outputs compare with what was planned/desired
- MIT Study = modern worker needs 11 hours/day to match productivity of 40 hour workweek in 1950
- Cars have a steering wheel, gas pedal, and brake pedal (and used to have a clutch!)…did not come from user design studies…instead this came from the horse and carriage design!
- Doug Engelbart gave a demo at Association of Computing Machinery in 1968 that highlighted menus, hypertext, and a wooden three button mouse. It took decades for Windows icons/pull down menus and mouse clicks to be implemented to increase user productivity (vs. a command line prompt!).
Are you effective (doing the right things) and efficient (doing things right)?
