I continue to write, just not here
From about 2018 to 2020+ I stopped adding new articles to this personal blog in order to focus on MassLandlords and RentHelper. I may return to this blog in the future. For now, you can see updates at: MassLandlords Letter from the Executive Director Banker & Tradesman
2018 Massachusetts Ballot Question One: Not Great Governance
This 2018 election, Massachusetts ballot Question One is about nurse-patient ratios. Specifically, they say there should only be so many patients assigned to a nurse, depending on how intensely the patients need help. Ballpark, this is a reasonable idea. The devil is in the details. The following is the summary of some emails I shared […]
Consensus Decision Making in a Room of 19
I liked a recent experience on the City of Worcester’s Task Force for Sustaining Housing First Solutions. In the current climate of incivility, especially on social media, consensus-oriented approaches to hard problems are especially appealing. Here’s how this one worked. Smart editors, including Barbara Poppe, prepared a set of 26 recommendations. The goal was to […]
Task and Management Update
I haven’t written a blog article in about seven months. It has been about a year since I optimistically wrote “The Great Untasking“. Here’s an update of that graph. Big-picture, little has changed: The “total queue” seems to be on average 280 items. “Days overdue” seems to be on average a month. Both series are […]
How Upwork Hobbled the Business Elance Started
Upwork was created from the merger and rebranding of Elance and Odesk, two remote-work behemoths. At the outset I was concerned. Part of it was just my usual aversion to change. Elance had allowed MassLandlords to be born and worked very well. Why change it? But now almost four years after the announcement, it’s clear […]
The Great Untasking (aka Truck Number ~1)
This update gives a little insight into a GTD fail and recovery. Last November MassLandlords hired a key full-time employee. Before then, we were already heading into task-trouble. The graph below shows the terrible climax. On March 6, 2017, I had 617 items overdue. The oldest was 84 days late. Most of these items were […]
What should be humanity’s top priority?
I saw a quora article by this title back in February. In it, there were various suggestions split into two main camps: either social or technological. I think humanity’s top priority is probably the intersection of the two. Specifically, humanity’s top priority is almost certainly is the predictive ability of economics, and thereby, the application of science […]
Bootstrapped Startup Update: Leveraged Management vs Individual Contributions
Starting 18 months ago, I began more detailed timetracking for MassLandlords, which is a bootstrapped startup. I started noting the difference between what Andrew Grove called “high leverage” activities and what Pratt and Whitney called “individual contributor” activities. This is the first time I’ve made a graph of the results. It’s a prime example of “what you don’t […]
Prioritization Grid
I drew this on a screenshare today while talking to a MassLandlords manager. I don’t remember where I learned it*. The basic gist is that lots of people will suggest lots of things for you to do. Some things are going to be hard and have a low impact on your goals. Write them down, […]
Why is the law so hard to read?
If I could wave a magic wand, I would pass a law that read, “Every law must be comprehensible by the people it is meant to govern.” and then I would pass another law that read, “For the purpose of the law, attorneys are presumed to have infinite intellect, and can punish themselves with whatever […]
