Joel Gross's Blog

Rocket League has become quite the nightly attraction for me. I usually will have dinner with my wife, then read for awhile, and finally play Rocket league for an hour or so.

I listened to a good Audible.com lecture this morning on the cognitive fallacies that contribute to conspiracy thinking. Conspiracy thinking is what leads to the belief that aliens landed at Roswell, the 9/11 attack was orchestrated by the US government, the Federal Reserve is a secret global domination cabal, global warming is a fraud by all of science, etc.… read more “Conspiracy Theory Thinking”

Lately I have been feeling absolutely buried in the millions of tasks I need to get done. I am trying to get better at prioritization rather than just doing a random assortment of things that capture my attention temporarily. I am going to spend some time today to prioritize all of my tasks and then start at the top and work down.

Parkinson’s Law says that work will expand to fill the time allocated to it.

This is a great danger in companies like mine that do work on a project basis. We try to keep scopes of work strictly defined so that we can hold team members accountable for realistic timelines.

Gate’s law says “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do it 10 years”.

My status:

• Business: I have been running Coalition for 7 years and involved in the SEO industry full time for 10 years. I have been a manager of others for 5 years.
• Physical: I have been exercising for 15 years and am in pretty good shape.

… read more “Gate’s Law”

 

 

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.

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.

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.

… read more “Reflection”