Sky's Blog

I was watching Charlie Rose interview Paul Farmer tonight and I thought, “gee I was going to become an M.D. when I was an undergraduate in college, and it would have been so nice to have that M.D. and then be able to go do other things if I wanted to.” But then I did a double-take and realized that I was truly fortunate to realize while an undergraduate that what I really wanted to do is become part of the “core” of those working on Computer Science in its early days.

Compared to today, 1963 really was the early days. It was pre-Internet. It was pre-Ted Nelson. It was pre-Doug Engelbart. And so forth. And getting a PhD in computer science back then was really an adventure in the unknown. Most of what we regard as Computer Science was unmapped in those days.

So some unaskedfor advice to my readers. When you find yourself saying ”I think I should do X but I really like Y” please pay attention to what your intuition is telling you. Don’t waste your time doing what someone else thinks you should be doing. Above all, be realistic, but give great weight to what your intuition is telling you, because it’s very likely right about it.

That old Steve Jobs advice again (see also)

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

My life is a series of cycles. One of them in particular has the lyrics “Business; learning; business; learning; business; learning…” I spend a few years building a company or a product, I become successful at it (most of the times), I then leave and cycle back into something I want to “learn.” And that learning period becomes formative in determining what I can productively do in the next business cycle.

Steve Jobs knew about these cycles, and said during his famous Stanford University commencement address of 2005 [7:22 into the video, which you can find on NPR]

“The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again.”

These cycles have nothing to do with whether you get rich or become a bum. They have to do with how you decide to use your precious years. He put the exclamation point on it [12:40 into the same video] by adding

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

Took me many years, but I have finally learned to articulate my First Commandment.

Don’t participate in something (anything) unless you can make a real contribution.

All through my school years I was focused on soaking up knowledge and, of course, on using that knowledge to get things done. But I also spent a lot of time going to events where I was listening rather than really interacting and learning. Soon after that, as a young faculty member at Northwestern University, I started a research project and began helping other professors and graduate students learn how to use computers in teaching. Converting “learning” into “action” is what got me that faculty position, and what has worked for me ever since.

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I love Joi Ito’s advice about startups. Mostly he is talking about understanding risk. I particularly focused on one section just after 9 minutes into the video where he talks about how it’s folly to spend a lot of time building a business plan when it’s so inexpensive to go ahead and develop your product iteratively and develop the plan after you’ve seen how your customers are reacting to the product. Here’s the video:

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