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The Ivy Lee Method: Your Guide to Peak Productivity

Tue, 14 Sep 2021 18:48:54 +0200

Productivity consultant, Ivy Lee explained his simple daily routine for achieving peak productivity:

At the end of each work day, write down the six most important things you need to accomplish tomorrow. Do not write down more than six tasks. Prioritize those six items in order of their true importance.
When you arrive tomorrow, concentrate only on the first task.
Work until the first task is finished before moving on to the second task.
Approach the rest of your list in the same fashion. At the end of the day, move any unfinished items to a new list of six tasks for the following day.
Repeat this process every working day.

The Ivy Lee Method of prioritizing your to-do list seems stupidly simple.

What makes it so effective? It’s simple enough to actually work.

The primary critique of methods like this one is that they are too basic. They don’t account for all of the complexities and nuances of life. What happens if an emergency pops up? What about using the latest technology to our fullest advantage? In my experience, complexity is often a weakness because it makes it harder to get back on track.

It forces you to make tough decisions.

I don’t believe there is anything magical about Lee’s number of six important tasks per day. It could just as easily be five tasks per day. However, I do think there is something magical about imposing limits upon yourself.

It removes the friction of starting.

The biggest hurdle to finishing most tasks is starting them. (Getting off the couch can be tough, but once you actually start running it is much easier to finish your workout.) Lee’s method forces you to decide on your first task the night before you go to work.

It requires you to single-task.

Modern society loves multi-tasking. The myth of multi-tasking is that being busy is synonymous with being better. The exact opposite is true.

Having fewer priorities leads to better work. Mastery requires focus and consistency.

[Via]

Social media influencer/model created from AI lands 100 sponsorships

Tue, 14 Sep 2021 17:55:16 +0200

‘Rozy’ is a virtual human that was created Sidus Studio X last year in August.
According to CEO Baek Seung Yeop, Rozy currently has advertising contracts with companies and a significant amount of sponsorships.
As CEO Baek said, the reason for the popularity of virtual humans is that there is no fear that advertisements will be suspended due to unsavory privacy scandals after the AI model is selected as the advertising model.
The location and scene can be created through computer graphics, so the virtual model is not limited in time and space, and unlike real people.
The other advantage is that period in which the model can be active is very long or eternal because the virtual human doesn’t get sick or grow old.

[Via]

MailChimp Story: How the monkey grew?

Tue, 14 Sep 2021 10:31:07 +0200

MailChimp reminded its customers that they had made the right choice by regularly finding unique ways to surprise and delight them.
Ultimately, the reason why Freddie works for MailChimp as a piece of its brand identity is because Freddie is an honest representation of the MailChimp brand.
The experience MailChimp delivered was warm and friendly, as if their customers were trusted friends – not entries in a CRM. Other email marketing solutions on the market, by comparison, felt cold and robotic.
In order to grow, MailChimp needed a strategy for getting potential customers to see, first-hand, what being a MailChimp customer would feel like.
Mailchimp founder, Ben Chestnut told the New York Times that MailChimp’s success stems from that fact that it had “a proximity to its customers that its competitors lacked.”
And he elaborated that because MailChimp “was itself a small business, it understood what those businesses wanted out of their marketing tools. Its offerings were cheaper, it added features more quickly, and it allowed greater customizations to fit customers’ needs.”

[Via]

Life tips crowdsourced from 20 million people on Reddit

Tue, 14 Sep 2021 10:26:49 +0200

Most advice sucks. So I crowdsourced the best from 20 million people on Reddit. Here are 10 life tips you wish you knew yesterday

Family Treasure 1) Get a blank book 2) Ask each family member over 50 to write down life advice that their descendants in 500 yrs should know 3) Keep passing it down You now have a family treasure that gets more useful over time.

Airplane Mode Hack “If you’re stuck on an annoying call, put your phone on airplane mode instead of hanging up. The other person sees “call failed” instead of “call ended”.

Reframing Your Day “Instead of feeling that you lost the day after a bad morning, Reframe each day as 4 quarters: • morning • midday • afternoon • evening If you blow one quarter, just get back on track for the next one. Fail small, not big.” – Gretchen Rubin

Keeping your Cool “If someone insults you during a meeting, pretend like you didn’t hear them the first time. Politely ask them to repeat themselves. They’ll either repeat the insult and look rude or realize their mistake and apologize.”

Venting at Work “Be careful who you vent to at work. Just because they listen, it doesn’t mean that they are your friend or have your best interests at heart.”

If you ever want software online for free, don’t search for “free”. Search for “open source” to avoid limited trial versions and malware.

“e.g.” and “i.e.” are not the same e.g. = for example i.e. = in other words

Email Address Hack • Add “+1”, “+2” before the @ in your email address • Websites will register it as a new email, but still send mail to your normal address Makes organizing accounts or free trials easy. Example: Primary: Bob@gmail(dot)com Bob+1@gmail(dot)com

On Arguments “What proof would it take to change your mind?” If they can’t give you an answer, then stop wasting your time.

Anger and Mistakes “Getting angry at people for making mistakes doesn’t teach them not to make mistakes. It teaches them to hide their mistakes.”

For more top-secret insights, follow me @chrishlad I share threads every week on frameworks, systems, and epic business stories.

Follow @chrishlad

Box’s Aaron Levie on How to estimate (and Grow) a Market

Mon, 13 Sep 2021 11:04:22 +0200

.never value a market by the size of legacy solutions or approach. If you do, you will wildly underestimate the potential opportunity.
Aaron Levie, CEO, Box

Market sizes are often artificially constrained by legacy participants or architectures. When we started Box, most investors could only see how large other players had gotten, as a way of evaluating the market size. But what was missed was that the cloud changed everything.

1. The cloud made software delivery more efficient, 10Xing demand. No longer did you have to install, upgrade, patch, and integrate software and hardware. That decrease in complexity meant any SMB could use enterprise tools, and any enterprise could support more vendors.

2. The cloud made distribution more efficient. When a customer can try a new piece of software with a few clicks in a web browser or a mobile app install, and only pay for what they use (SaaS vs. perpetual licenses), they adopt much more and much faster.

3. The design principles of the cloud enabled faster product adoption. By leveraging consumer design approaches instead of legacy and clunky design that the enterprises (but not end-users) had gotten used to, you could spread much more easily within organizations.

4. New business models let you reach vastly more customers. With freemium and pay as you go approaches, bottom-up distribution finally became possible. End-users had a say in the tools they used, which meant more vectors to enter an organization than ever before.

5. Everyone was moving to the web and mobile. Unlike the traditional constraint of enterprise software being for PC-based knowledge workers, with mobile, billions of people become digital workers, 10Xing the TAM for enterprise software.

6. Cloud brought down the cost of everything. By delivering software over the web, providers had economies of scale that could not be matched by any one customer. Combined with Moore’s Law, that meant new feats could be accomplished in SaaS that couldn’t be replicated on-prem.

7. Finally, macro work tailwinds changed everything. Mobile and remote work, digital transformation, cyber security challenges meant every business had to upgrade their IT stack, making the legacy approach untenable. The finally death knell to legacy.

The lesson: never value a market by the size of legacy solutions or approach. If you do, you will wildly underestimate the potential opportunity.

Follow @levie

Sridhar Vembu on building business skills: Write your press release first

Mon, 13 Sep 2021 09:33:00 +0200

1/ Building a business needs two basics, both of which are equally important: a) the ability to come up with a product that people want b) the ability to make a sale Both are hard and are only rarely found in the same person and when they are, you have a great entrepreneur.

2/ Since I was not born with either skill (in particular I had no sales skill to speak of), I am going to present an approach on how to train yourself in both skills. First start with product. We tend to think of a new product or service as “something no has ever done before”.

3/ It is extremely rare to come up with a new product no one has ever done before. Almost every new product is a variation of something that has existed before. So to come up with new products, study existing products well. Understand how they are built and why they sell.

4/ Now assuming you have a product to sell, how do you sell it? I will assume you are like me and so not a “natural” salesperson. If your new product is similar to existing products, find out how customers buy those and try to see if you can be present in the same places.

5/ That may mean attending events or shows where the customers congregate or it may mean approaching existing distributors that sell those products or it may mean hiring sales people who have experience selling to those customers. To persuade, you need a story or a message.

6/ First, what would you tell a prospective distributor or a prospective sales person why they should sell your product? They need to be persuaded that the end customer has a compelling reason to buy your product. You need to craft a message that persuades. That’s marketing.

7/ I put marketing last there because that is often the hardest part. A very useful exercise before you come up with a product is “what is going to be my message that persuades anyone to care about my product?” It is hard! That is summarized as “write your press release first”.

8/ When you think deeply about how you are going to persuade anyone to care for your product, you may come up with how to endow it with unique capabilities or find unique ways to sell it or find new markets that are not well served by present products and so on. Think hard!

Follow @svembu

The Meme Economy and NFTs..

Mon, 13 Sep 2021 05:08:02 +0200

Introducing the “NFT Chain Rule” Definition: a meme’s value is proportional to the number of derivatives based on it. Thread (including some thoughts on @lootproject) below (1/21)

We increasingly live in a meme economy. Look at $GME, $DOGE, Punks, Glyphs, Loot and EtherRocks — not all of these projects are equal in their artistic or social merit but all accrue value as their core meme spreads. (2/21)

The meme economy isn’t new. More people are just buying into it now. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the traditional art world which celebrates artists who found movements, representations, approaches — especially when their ideas are adopted + evolved by contemporaries. (3/21)

IMO, the most interesting NFT projects are on chain with a unique point of view and potential to create many derivatives. No project exemplifies this potential more than @lootproject. (6/21)

Launched just a few weeks ago, Loot is an especially interesting meme economy experiment. Created by @dhof, the co-founder of Vine, the project was a call to action for creators to remix, create derivatives and build in the Loot universe. (7/21)

To date, dozens of @lootproject derivative projects have launched. Most will never accrue value but some will become canon and have tremendously valuable over time. How do we know which derivatives matter? (8/21)

Going back to the “NFT Chain Rule” — a derivative’s value is proportional to the number of derivatives based on it. If you want adoption for your @lootproject derivative, you want the maximum number of Loot holders to mint your project. (9/21)

Some good news: there are a few principles you can follow to make this happen! (10/21)

Principle #1: Make minting free for loot holders during some time period, then charge a fee. (Or use bonding curve) At least at the moment, gas costs a lot, so even if free forever there is still a real cost to minting. The free period will encourage more people to mint. (11/21)

Principle #2: Don’t make a limited mint period for loot holders. The most vocal members of the loot community will be long term holders of Loot. So if you give them a reason to adopt by allowing indefinite minting, they will support you.(12/21)

Conversely, if you don’t allow these long term holders to adopt, they might fork your project if it does somehow pickup steam. And that’s annoying / confusing for everyone. (13/21)

Principle #3: Derivative NFT’s should be maximally on chain. Loot was started with this ethos. If NFT’s are not on chain they don’t compose and other smart contracts can’t reference them easily. (14/21)

Plus, it’s important that all foundational projects in the ecosystem stand the test of time. Storing data in an impermanent way puts that at risk. (15/21)

Principle #4: The project should be a “yes, and” to the @lootproject lore canon. It shouldn’t contradict “history.” (16/21)

Side note: we need a way to identify what lore is canon. We also need to figure out what we will do when major “branches” of lore occur in the Loot universe. (17/21)

“Branches” are bound to happen because people who make multiple projects will connect them to each other. We might even see “clusters” of projects compete for what is canon. (18/21)

We are just at the start of Loot’s journey but I couldn’t be more excited about what’s ahead. It’s a pure expression of decentralization and one of the most interesting social experiments I’ve ever witnessed (19/21)

Lastly, a meta point: if you agree with this “NFT Chain Rule” definition…. spread it! By definition, every tweet / blog post / NFT purchase that references it makes the thesis more valuable (20/21)

OK… off to sleep now! Looking forward to some fun internet debates tomorrow Sleep well all and enjoy the week ahead! (21/21)

Follow @zoink

Everything you need to know about Apple/Epic lawsuit verdict

Sat, 11 Sep 2021 08:51:07 +0200

Everything you need to know – or at least I what I thought was interesting – in <100 tweets about the Apple/Epic lawsuit verdict today.

Fun facts – 64% of Fortnite users have only ever played the game on IOS devices, but 93% of Fortnite revenue is generated on non-IOS platforms; 87% of paying users never transacted via the AppStore.

In discussing the metaverse (this is the strategic reason why the Court says Epic brought this lawsuit), the Court hints at its feelings about the metaverse: “The Court generally finds Mr. Sweeney’s personal beliefs about the future of the metaverse are sincerely held.”

A nod from the court re pivots/new product releases: “The 2007 iPhone pales in comparison to today’s version. With 20-20 hindsight, we can conclude that Apple’s gamble to save a languishing company paid off. The lens with which to evaluate those early seminal years matters…

Apple was not the monolith it is today. It is easy, but not fair, to twist words today for self-serving reasons and forget the landscape in which they were made.”

The Court was NOT a big fan of the expert witnesses, particularly those offered by Epic:

On Dr. Athey: “While the Court finds Dr. Athey well-intentioned, the lack of data upon which she bases her opinion leaves the Court with little objective reason to accept her theory.”

On Dr. Rossi: “Dr. Rossi’s trial testimony revealed that he was more interested in a result which would assist his client’s case than in providing any objective group to assist the Court in its decision making.”

On Dr. Hanssen: “While Dr. Hanssen is more considerably more credible and independent than Dr. Rossi, Dr. Hanssen’s survey is also severely flawed and ultimately unreliable.”

This one was fun – the Court was pointing out that Dr. Hanssen testified that 30-43% of respondents in a survey he did “regularly” use Windows phones, even though MSFT has 0% market share in 2018 and no longer sell phones!

Now, to the legal stuff.

Key in any antitrust case is the question of “What is the market”?

Here the Court ultimately concludes that the market is Mobile Gaming, substantially narrower than Apple was suggesting. Apple argued that it should also include PC gaming, console gaming and cloud-based gaming.

Now, the Court has to look at market share in the relevant market (Mobile gaming) to determine how much Apple has and ultimately whether that share is anti-competitive.

Under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, the general threshold for a prima facie case of monopoly power is 65% market share; the Court finds that Apple has 53-57%, so it needs to look at other evidence (outside of market share) to determine if Apple is a monopoly.

Direct evidence – does Apple “act” like a monopoly by limiting the “output” (developers, customers, etc.) of mobile gaming transactions. Simply put, Epic failed to produce any evidence that output was constricted; to the contrary the market continues to grow at very high rates.

Indirect evidence – here the question is are new rivals barred from entering the market and/or are existing competitors unable to expand their own output? The Court struggles more with this question, although ultimately concludes that there is not enough evidence.

It relies heavily on the changing nature of the ecosystem – players like Nintendo Switch, MSFT in streaming – and argues that these players seem to be able to use their positions in those markets to enter the mobile gaming market.

Here’s the key line: “[T]he evidence does suggest that Apple is near the precipice of substantial market power, or monopoly power, with its considerable market shares…

Apple is only saved by the fact that its share is not higher, that competitors from related submarkets are making inroad into the mobile gaming submarket, and, perhaps, because plaintiff did not focus on this topic.”

Next, the Court looks to see if Epic has made a case for a Section 1 violation – effectively, restraint of trade.

To do so, Epic needs to show that customers/developers suffer from higher costs, lower transactions or other harms that ultimately stifle competition in mobile gaming.

Here, the Court is a bit more sympathetic to Epic – there is “some evidence” of anticompetitive effects: after all, Apple has been able to maintain its 30% fee despite lots of complaints from the developer community.

And the Court does say that it’s reasonable to believe that a lower fee from Apple would reduce the costs for developers and those savings could ultimately be passed along to consumers in the form of lower prices.

But, the Court ultimately finds no violation because it accepts Apple’s defense to these claims – that its need to protect security of the apps and to protect its intellectual property are valid reasons for the fee.

“Here, Apple’s business choice of ensuring security and protecting its intellectual property rights though centralized app distribution is reasonable, and the Court declines to second-guess that judgment on an underdeveloped record.”

For fans of Epic, though, all is not lost, as the Court does ultimately side in its favor under the California Unfair Competition Law.

Here, the Court focuses on “anti-steering” – Apple’s control of push notifications and email outreach to customers. Developers/publishers are prohibited from telling customers that they could in fact download games and make purchases outside of the App Store.

“In the context of technology markets, the open flow of information becomes even more critical…[I]nformation costs may create ‘lock-in’ for platforms as users lack information about the lifetime costs of an ecosystem.”

“[T]he anti-steering provisions ‘threaten an incipient violation of an antitrust law’ by preventing informed choice among users of the iOS platform…

Moreover, the anti-steering provisions violate the ‘policy [and] spirit’ of these laws because anti-steering has the effect of preventing substitution among platforms for transactions.”

So, after all that, what happened?

Epic wins on the CA anti-steering provision and the Court issue a nationwide injunction prohibiting Apple from dis-allowing publishers/developers from telling customers that they can effectively get the app and make purchases outside of the App Store.

But, Epic loses on all of the key antitrust provisions and is ordered to pay back commissions to Apple for the time where it un-locked its app to permit payments to not go through the App Store

Where do we go from here?

First, there were almost certainly be all kinds of appeals on this case. An interesting part of the appeal will be the Court’s application of a CA state law to all other states – likely to be challenged further on constitutionality (although the Court today said it’s OK).

Second, none of this impacts the ongoing federal investigations that are underway from the FTC and the DOJ. Lots more to come on those likely.

Here’s the Court’s summary of the situation:

“Ultimately Epic Games overreached. As a consequence, the trial record was not as fulsome with respect to antitrust conduct in the relevant market as it could have been.”

“However, [the Court] does find that Apple’s conduct in enforcing anti-steering restrictions is anticompetitive. A remedy to eliminate those provisions is appropriate…

[The] remedy will increase competition, increase transparency, increase consumer choice and information while preserving Apple’s iOS ecosystem which has procompetitive justifications.”

Follow @skupor

Google underpaid thousands of international ‘shadow workers,’ violating labor laws around the world

Sat, 11 Sep 2021 03:45:29 +0200

Google underpaid thousands of international contract workers, violating pay-parity laws in several countries, The New York Times and The Guardian reported Friday.
The tech giant’s compliance department discovered the mistake but chose not to immediately compensate the underpaid temporary staff, according to the reports, and instead only corrected rates for new employees in the hopes of avoiding legal, financial, and reputational damage.
The New York Times and The Guardian both reported that the issue has been flagged to the SEC, as even though the same pay-parity laws do not exist in America, the lack of public disclosure of the issue could be viewed as a material impact to Google’s business, and one that should have been mentioned in company filings.

[Via]

CarDekho shuts down over 20 stores amid move to home inspection model

Sat, 11 Sep 2021 03:40:07 +0200

Used car content and commerce platform CarDekho has shut down a number of its stores-Gaadi by CarDekho.
Entrackr contacted a number of Gaadi by CarDekho stores and can confirm that anywhere between 21-25 such stores have either been shut down or will shut down by the middle of October.
Post this, CarDekho has 60 operational stores across the country, although its major focus would be to purchase vehicles following a home inspection itself.

[Via]

TCS announces DataPlus update for intuitive user experience

Sat, 11 Sep 2021 03:37:10 +0200

Mumbai headquartered Information Technology services, consulting and business solutions company Tata Consultancy Services has launched the updated version of its data management software, TCS MasterCraft DataPlus.
The new update uses machine learning based sensitive data discovery and learns to identify probable sensitive and personally identifiable data attributes, enabling privacy-safe data provisioning.
TCS MasterCraft is the company’s suite of intelligent automation products to optimise IT service delivery.

[Via]

‘How Bitcoin will help Indian Economy’: RBI Guv has Major Concerns About Cryptocurrency

Sat, 11 Sep 2021 03:33:14 +0200

Shaktikanta Das, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India expressed on Thursday, at an event organized by The Indian Express and Financial Times, that the central bank continues to have ‘serious and major’ concerns regarding cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, reported PTI. This concern was conveyed to the government of India.
Das had mentioned that the RBI was aiming to launch the central bank digital currency as a mass-scale digital asset.
The RBI had put out a note stating that the central bank digital currency and the interest it held as an asset were universal.

[Via]

U.S. and EU Advance Talks to Preserve Data Transfers

Sat, 11 Sep 2021 03:29:14 +0200

In talks that will continue next week in Brussels after a round in the U.S. this summer, the two sides hope to avert a disruption of company data transfers by resolving a long-running conflict between strict EU privacy laws and U.S. surveillance measures.
An EU court ruling last summer restricted how companies can send personal information about Europeans to the U.S., in part because the court found that Europeans have no effective legal redress in the U.S. Last fall, Ireland’s privacy regulator issued Facebook, which has its EU headquarters in Dublin, a preliminary draft order to suspend its transfers of European user data to the U.S., citing the court ruling.
Under EU law, information about Europeans can’t be sent overseas unless the country where it is being sent is deemed to give the same level of protection as the EU. The U.S. has never made that cut, but to keep data flows alive, the EU two decades ago struck a special deal with the U.S. to allow companies to keep sending data if they opt into a program to apply EU privacy principles, enforced by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

[Via]

WhatsApp to offer end-to-end encryption option for backups

Sat, 11 Sep 2021 03:24:27 +0200

In what could lead to possible pushback from security agencies and governments across the world, global instant messaging giant WhatsApp said on Friday it will start offering end-to-end encryption on backup of messages.
WhatsApp currently provides Android phone users the option to backup their chats either on Google Drive or some other storage of their choice, while for iPhone users it provides the same option on iCloud.
An end-to-end encryption on backups means that media and messages, stored on either Google Drive or iCloud will now be encrypted with a unique and completely random encryption key.

[Via]

Over 96% of Indian gamers prefer PC over other platforms: Survey

Sat, 11 Sep 2021 03:21:21 +0200

A new survey on the Indian gaming market has revealed that most gamers prefer PC over other mediums of gaming.
Other findings of the survey reveal the age brackets in which gaming is popular and the gender gap between male and female gamers.

[Via]

Beware! These Google Play Store apps can leak your personal data

Sat, 11 Sep 2021 03:13:41 +0200

Google Play Store is considered the safest source for downloading apps on Android devices, but there are apps listed on the store that can put your device’s security at risk.
Digital security company Avast had recently found vulnerabilities in more than 19,000 apps on the platform with a crucial misconfiguration that can potentially leak users’ personal information.
Do not download apps from Google Play Store without verifying them.

[Via]

Ford Motor Shuts Down India Business After $2 Billion Loss

Fri, 10 Sep 2021 12:53:20 +0200

Ford will wind down the manufacturing of vehicle for exports in Sanand, Gujarat by the fourth quarter of 2021 and vehicle and engine manufacturing in Chennai by the second quarter of 2022, a statement read. This is the second major exit of local manufacturing operations in India by a global automotive brand.
Ford India said it took these restructuring actions after investigating several options, including partnerships, platform sharing, contract manufacturing with other OEMs, and the possibility of selling its manufacturing plants, which is still under consideration.
Ford has invested over $2 billion in India at Chennai and Sanand manufacturing plants.

[Via]

CoWIN develops a new API to track vaccination status of individuals

Fri, 10 Sep 2021 12:23:04 +0200

Co-WIN has developed a new API called ‘Know Your Customer’s/Client’s Vaccination Status’, or KYC-VS, which will enable a verifying entity to know whether a person has been vaccinated against coronavirus or not, the Union Health Ministry said on Friday.
An enterprise/employer may like to know the vaccination status of its employees to resume functions in offices, workplaces etc, it added.
Hotels may want to know the vaccination status of the residents at the time they are checking into the hotel, or at the time of making online bookings, it further said.

[Via]

Electric Vehicles registration are more than CNG Vehicles in last two months in Delhi

Fri, 10 Sep 2021 12:19:26 +0200

In the last two months, Delhi saw more electric vehicles being registered in the city than CNG vehicles.
The Delhi government launched its EV policy on August 7 last year and as per a ToI report, it saw the registration of 739 EVs that month.
Comparing the registrations with that of CNG-run vehicles in the last two months, there were 2413 EVs registered in July as opposed to 1,966 CNG run-vehicles.

[Via]

Infosys rolls out digital commerce platform Equinox

Fri, 10 Sep 2021 12:06:57 +0200

Bengaluru-headquartered Information Technology services and consulting major Infosys announced the launch of its omnichannel commerce platform Equinox for business-to-business and business-to-consumer buyers.
The Infosys Equinox platform will help businesses transform digital commerce across marketing, merchandizing, ecommerce, store operations, supply chain and customer service through its multiple offerings.
Infosys Equinox is currently being used by global enterprises in retail, consumer products and goods, telecom, manufacturing, automotive and media industry.

[Via]