Author: Patrick Rhone

Are you looking for the reason to always have something to capture ideas with you at all times? Are you looking for the point in doing regular reviews? Are you stuck with not knowing what to do next out of the 50 things you should be doing and the 500 you could be doing? Then the solution can be found in answering, to the fullest extent possible, the one question above. Other questions, such as…

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much time do I have?

What tools are at my disposal?

What is the next action to move the project forward?

None of these questions can be honestly answered until you have truthfully quantified “What is true now?”. This is why regular reviews, brain dumps, capturing things easily, etc. is so very critical. Until you can define all of the truths of your world, until you know where you are right this moment, until you can appreciate both what you have and what you don’t, there is no possible way you can know for sure that the next step you take is the one you should be taking

I recently stopped to order some lunch to-go at an Asian deli that is newly opened and not too far away from me. Bethany and I had been there to eat-in once before and were blown away by the quality of the food as well as the general vibe of the staff. The Pad Thai was so good that we had been thinking about it ever since.
I walked in and was greeted warmly by the kind young man behind the counter. I placed my order and gave him my card to pay. As he was running it through I mentioned we had been in before and how much we enjoyed the Pad Thai. He mentioned that it must have been when he was not there because he remembers every face, which I confirmed was indeed the case. He let me know that it would be ready soon, directed me to a comfortable place to sit with reading material, and offered me a glass of water while I waited.
I sat down, pulled out my iPhone, fired up Instapaper, and waited. Not more than ten minutes had passed and, as he was delivering another order, he stopped to apologize for the wait (what wait?) and that my order would be ready as soon as possible. I let him know that all was cool with me (like I said, what wait?) no distress needed. Less then five minutes later he called me up for my order. Before handing it to me he placed a can of soda in the bag and proceeded to explain that he was sorry for the wait, that normally they are much faster, and the free soda was to make up for that.
It was less then 15 minutes between placing my order and having it in hand.
I did not feel like I waited an inordinately long time. I displayed no sense of urgency, either as I ordered (as the casual conversation I was striking up denotes) nor as I waited (Instapaper, FTW!!!). Therefore, his sense of urgency and expectations were not being set by me, the customer. And that’s when it hit me.
Greatness comes when one sets standards for their own results that are far higher then anyone expects and they strive to meet those consistently.
This young man obviously had a standard he set for service that was far higher then I had placed upon him. When he felt he had not met it, he let me know that. While it was not beneath my expectations, it was his and he apologized and compensated where appropriate. In fact, if he maintains this, he will likely never have a customer that can’t be satisfied.
It was more than great Pad Thai that won this business a customer for life in me. It was also more than a free can of soda. It was this lesson in greatness that I will now take and apply wherever I can.

I recently had the extreme pleasure of being interviewed by Ian Hines for is wonderful new project, Intrvws. Ian is an extremely skilled interviewer especially via email. He takes his time developing smart questions and is very comfortable letting people take a while to think about and compose an answer. As evidence, our interview was conducted via email between August 1 and October 4, 2010 (Two months!). I’m incredibly proud of having been a part of it.
I really urge you to read the whole thing, but I wanted to post a particular section here. It is the writing advice I wish I had given my younger self. I encounter young and just starting writers all the time and have given them all manner of hodgepodge advice.Henceforth, I will point them to this:
Ian:
I wonder, if you had the opportunity to send some advice to your younger self to read as you were first beginning to write on the web, what would it be?
Patrick:
Focus on writing well. Read as many posts and books on writing as you need to learn the craft without letting it distract you from, well, writing. Because, after a certain point, no book or post or advice will ever help you as much as putting those words down.
Also learn how to edit your writing to turn it into something other than a collection of words ordered according to some universally agreed to rules. Because some of those rules should be broken. In fact, many should have never been agreed to in the first place. Because those rules can stifle you from finding your own voice if followed too rigidly. More often than not, what you will be editing out of your writing is the rules.
Spend at least twice as much time editing as you do writing. Slave over every detail, sweat every word and punctuation mark. Read what you write over and over again. In fact, never stop yourself from revisiting something you wrote and improving or expanding on it if you feel it would make it better. Even something as simple as adding a comma where there should have been one can change the feel of an entire essay.
Be curious about everything but find one or two things that your are insatiably curious about and interested in. A subject or two that you can never know too much, or think too deeply, about. Write about these things.
Also, ignore the numbers. Ignore the audience. Ignore the fact that, for a very long time, no one may be reading. Just make sure that you are. Be your own biggest fan (when warranted) and harshest critic (when warranted).
Finally, do what I say, not what I do.

Not too long ago, I was asked by a client of mine how long it would take to complete a certain large project. After thinking about it for a while, I gave what I thought was a fair estimate given all of the parameters, possible hurdles and building in time for contingencies. The client then asked me if I could do it faster than that. They asked if I could do it in about a third of what I had estimated…
The time a project takes does not somehow magically change because the actual time one has to complete it has. Could I have done that job in the timeframe the client wanted? Sure. Would I have had to spend just as much time as I originally quoted after the fact correcting mistakes and problems because I rushed through it? Probably. Would it be harder, and thus take more time, to make such corrections after the fact than to get them done right the first time? Definitely. Yet I can’t even tell you for how long, by how many clients and managers and in how many different ways I have been asked to do this very thing. I know I am not alone. As a matter of fact, a common joke in the computer industry is “You can have it cheap, you can have it fast or you can have it done well. Pick two.”
What you trade in time you most often exchange for quality or quantity. Sometimes you have to change the project or task that you set out to do. Sometimes you just don’t have the time you need for the project at hand. Maybe you cut a corner here and there. Maybe you drop less important aspects. In this case, the time itself does not change. The quality or quantity of the project changes accordingly with the time saved. It is now a different project, with possibly less than satisfactory results.
I try to use this approach with even the simplest items on my daily task list. For instance, I try to take an honest look at what I want to accomplish in the 15 minutes of time I may have to make a phone call. I am not going to make a call that I know has an hour worth of discussion in that time frame. If I do, I know that I will be trading a true discussion of the topics for bullet points at best. I may have to make another call to the same person later that will make up for, or even equal the time I chose not to spend in the first place. Is that the most effective use of the time? I think not.
Therefore, when you have a block of time to fill be careful to choose the right sized task to fill it. Like most things in this world, when it comes to time, nothing is free.

Yesterday, I lamented that tools like Twitter and Facebook are not designed to promote real face-to-face connections and that I wished there were an app or service that did. Then, I had some real world conversations that helped me to realize a couple of things…
The first is, be careful what you wish for. For my app to really work, it would have to know far more information about your interactions and private details than such current services likely track today. Interpersonal relationships are incredibly complex, nuanced, and ever changing. There is already some discomfort with a service that asks about my relationship status with one person. In order for my idea to really work effectively, I would have to regularly provide information about my relationship status with everybody I was connected to.
Second, and perhaps more immediately important thing is this – I have all the tools I need to be able to do this myself. Right now. No app or service required.
The fact is, I know who the people are that I have conversations with on Twitter. I know which ones are local and which ones are not. I can own enough self-direction to think about having a face-to-face with these folks. I then could put a reminder down to shoot them a message and schedule a lunch or coffee (I like Backpack for this because it will send me an email and SMS and allow me to set times like “In a couple of days”).
For the ones that are out of town, well, that is a bit trickier but not much. Many travel services offer “fare/price alerts” where they will send you a message if travel to a particular destination drops below a certain price. I could easily set up one of these for each of my out of town contacts. Then at least I’ll have the information in hand to decide if I can swing it.
The point is, far too often I am guilty of wishing for a tool instead of wishing for a solution. You have now witnessed a twenty-four hour live demo of this. In doing so, I have wasted time that could have been spent actually doing, planning, and scheduling. Certainly something I need to work on.
Let’s do lunch soon.