2011 Resolutions for the New Year

Before this year’s resolutions, a review of resolutions for 2010:

Write More (Non-Technical) – B – I did a pretty good amount of writing via my letterly. I am finding this medium well suited to more personal observation and less technical writing, and I think about these letters as conversations I might have in person if I had more conversations in person. ;)

Supper Club – D – We had a good Christmas party at our apt this year, but other than that supper club did not happen. I think I spent more nights on the couch in the office than at my apt, so maybe if I am home more often this year I can make this happen. Luckily, letterly has done an OK job of facilitating some of the same conversations the supper club was intended to generate, but written correspondance is not quite the same as dinner convos.

Delete the Negatives – C – I did not make a strong conscious effort to delete negative language from my vocabulary, but actually did a pretty good job with this goal. Something to continue working on this year.

Grow Venmo – B – We have a small but awesome team. Looking for more brilliant people to join us and hoping to provide an incredible experience to even more users this year!

Run 5k, Timed – F – I just did not do this. I did get Runkeeper and clocked some pretty incredible paces that I need to verify by running an actual 5k course. Setting a calendar event this year!

Be a Gentleman – This one is not for me to judge.

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Now, resolutions for 2011:

Continue Working on All of Last Year’s Resolutions Of course!

Be Precise I try always to resolve to improve in some way the language I use in speech and writing (eg, goals from past years have including deleting adjectives, deleting negatives). Earlier this year, my friend Dave explained to me his appreciation for precise language, which he usually noticed in conversation when someone made a statement, then immediately revised what they said to more accurately express the thought: “X is the best way to do that…. Well, actually, given Y, which is very often the case, X is the best way to do that.”

Most of my language oriented goals boil down to some form of precision or brevity, and “using more precise language” is probably not a precise enough goal, so in particular I am going to focus on constructing more meaningful exclamations of praise. Instead of, “Peterson is awesome!” => either (a) “Peterson runs 2x faster than anyone else on the field” or (b) a more figurative version, “Peterson looks like a man playing in a pop warner football game today.”

Ask More Questions, Learn About What Knowledge is Worth Having in RAM Sites like Quora, Youtube , StackOverflow, and Wikipedia constantly stun me by reminding me how much knowledge is instantly accessible if you simply look for it or ask a question.  So much knowledge is so readily available that I am ashamed I do not learn more on a daily basis. So, this year, I want to ask more questions—on Quora, on Twitter, and by emailing or asking individuals directly.

Part of the reason I believe I did not learn more over the past year is that the amount of knowledge accessible via Google is overwhelming. When you have the opportunity to learn about absolutely anything, it can be difficult selecting a topic of study.  Furthermore, when all of the information you can glean from Google searching is instantly accessible, it becomes a commodity, not incredibly valuable (or at least not valuable enough to merit storing in your brain if you can simply retrieve the answer with a quick Google search).

I am resolving to “ask more questions” rather than simply to “learn more” in hopes of getting to more valuable information.  Sometimes, when you ask someone a commodity question, you may get the witty response, “just fucking Google it,” eg, “that knowledge is so trivial that it is not even worth my time answering it. Please only ask me to spend my time sharing valuable knowledge with you.”

Though the tone of this response is one of jest, there is actually something important to be learned: asking questions of people, in the Google era, is now an activity aimed at acquiring non-Google-able, non commodity knowledge. So, a great way to direct your pursuit of knowledge toward acquiring valuable information, instead of trivia, is to ask people questions that Google cannot answer for you.

Build Tools for Helping People Remember the Right Answer Although vast amounts of knowledge are available freely and known widely, we often do a poor job of using this knowledge to select the optimal course of action. And, the knowledge we acquire is not valuable in and of itself—the value of knowledge to each of us is actualized when we use it to determine our actions.

We all know we should eat more vegetables, but few of us actually do it, even if we would like to do so in order to be healthier.  Remembering common sense knowledge at the point of decision, or actively being reminded of this knowledge, is just as important as acquiring knowledge. [aside: Anyone else thinking of Plato’s Phaedo and learning=remembering?]

I have observed that many people I admire and respect employ all sorts of quirky habits and tricks to help them remember the right answer at the right time. These habits range from simply tracking decisions and data points to managing complicated todo lists and reminder systems.

This year, I will build a few apps that employ these tricks for remembering knowledge at the crucial moments to help people make the decisions they want to make. Yesterday, in fact, I helped my sister Jenny start building one such app.

Be a Gentleman Always need to resolve to do this.

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What are your resolutions?