Reflection: Encouragement

I am looking back today at some of my emails from July of 2012 and I am seeing that I need to offer my team more positive encouragement and feedback. I know that we are in a tough, competitive business and oftentimes our team gets held to very high expectations. If I can offer more encouragement, I think it will keep people focused and motivated at a higher level.

Pushing to Improve

Yesterday I went for a run on the Orting Trail with Laurel and Jimmy. My usual running pace for six miles is around 10 minutes a mile, but yesterday we ran probably 8:40 miles. Running with others helped me push myself at a higher pace than I usually go. I think maybe I should try to join a running group to help hold me accountable for running faster in the future.

Reflection

In today’s reflection, I m looking back to November 2013. I am searching through my old emails and just seeing what was going on and what I can learn from it and apply to my life in the future.

  • At that time we had some account managers that were out of touch with production, so I suggested to my managers that we tie them in closer.
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Ancient Reflection

As part of my ongoing effort to reflect on the past, I have looked up archives from the New York Times from 1939- 1941 here http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/#/*/from19391111to19411230/

Amusing claim… May 26, 1940 the French government claimed that Nazi air superiority had been overcome…. this was 1 day before the emergency evacuation at Dunkirk of the defeated Allied armies.… read more “Ancient Reflection”

Occam’s Razor – Choose Less Assumptions

Occam’s Razor is a mental rule of thumb that instructs us to pick the simplest theory to explain something. A good case for this is “When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses not of zebras”.

Occam’s Razor is especially applicable to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as people assume Google is doing some crazy artificial intelligence thing to rank one site over another, when quite often it is very obvious things like keyword usage on site that causes ranking differences.

Personal History

I realized yesterday that I have my personal history documented on my blog, in my gmail, and on Facebook stretching back ten years.

I read some of my ancient emails and came to see a different side to myself. I found some good, and lots of the embarrassing. Sadly I also found the bad.

The good included old dreams and ideas that have come to fruition.… read more “Personal History”