f2f2s |

I’ve been working lately on coming up with my list of resolutions for next year. I’m going to save those for a couple more days, when I will also reveal how I did on my 2010 version.

Now, if you’ve been keeping track (you haven’t, it’s cool) you know that it looks like I’m waaaaaaaay behind on my “Read 50 Books” goal.

Well, I’m certainly behind. In fact, I’ll go ahead and say it’s darn near certain that I’m not going to make it to 50. But I’m a decent bit past 27 right now. I’ll probably come limping to the finish line at 40 or so, which, for someone who maybe read 5 books a year before this one, is still pretty impressive to me.

But anyway, this post isn’t to focus on how awesome I am, it’s for me to list a few more books I read, a quick grade on it, and one completely out-of-context line from the notecards I keep on all my books. Sorry I got lazy and didn’t post full reviews.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – J.K. Rowling (9/10)

98 – It sucks to be a house elf
125 – lazy people end up with unjust systems

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – J.K. Rowling (7/10)

All 3 of them are little bitches in this book
572 – Holy crap. This book just explained girls to every 13 year old boy.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J.K. Rowling (10/10)

119 – I love Fred & George’s entrepreneurship
306 – Fred and George! Unbelievable!!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – J.K Rowling (9/10)

185 – Don’t choose what to believe, find the truth.
715 – “perhaps those who are best suited for power are those who have never sought it.”

The Help – Kathryn Stockett (7/10)

Faulkner-esque use of diff narrators for diff chapters. Mississippi folk roots, obv.
I almost expected a random “Constantine” chapter to pop up like in As I Lay Dying

The 4-Hour Workweek – Tim Ferriss (7/10)

50 – don’t overestimate the world
265 – too much free time is no more than fertilizer for self-doubt and assorted mental tail-chasing

So there ya go. 33 and counting, with a few more updates for the next couple days before Jan 1.

Merry Christmas to everyone. I hope that you were able to enjoy a little break from work and spending some quality time with close family and friends.

I have a present for you now, courtesy of Chester Grant. I’m going to let him explain to you why you procrastinate.

You will observe that if you have a high skill level the emotional states are pretty much great, but take a look at what happens when your skill level is low.  These are states that are apt for procrastinating.

His analysis is pretty spot on. I would also argue that “Boredom” is a state pretty primed for procrastination as well.

So what should you do? Work on fun-but-hard problems and learn as much as you can. And when you can’t, just get through the work as quickly as possible so that you’re back to being able to do things that excite you.

An interesting pair of articles from the past few days about whether or not it’s worth it to take a pay cut to work at a startup.

First, Ellen Beldner says ‘No’ with some very well thought out reasoning.

Suppose I worked there at a salary cut of $50k per year for the 2 years until the startup has an exit event. I’ve invested $100,000 in the startup via lost earnings. (Remember, if the startup tanks, I lose my money too.) As a design-type person, let’s assume I was one of the first 10 employees and got 50 bp of equity. That means I’ve paid $2,000 per bp. On the other hand, the VCs who contributed $2m for 40% (4,000 bp) are paying $500 per bp. If the founders take, say, a $100k / year salary cut, they’re each investing $200k for, say, 10% — or $200 / bp.

If I’m going to get bupkes for bp as a non-founding employee, then I want a full salary. If I’m investing, I should get a comprable equity cut to other investors.

Daniel Tenner isn’t quite so sure, however, and lists out a number of other things than salary you’ll want to consider including:

Career development

Working at a startup will not only allow you to learn things that you wouldn’t learn while freelancing or working at a large corporation. It also allows you to meet people that you wouldn’t otherwise bump into. It is not uncommon for the founders or investors of startups which previously employed you to invest in your startup, when you decide to start one.

Passion

Compared to a market rate job at a large corporation, the right startup can give you the opportunity to work on a cool product that you can really be passionate about. I would add that, unless you feel that the product is that awesome, you probably shouldn’t work on it.

I’m pretty solidly in the second camp. I took a (pretty major) pay cut to go work at Flat World Knowledge for my internship summer and got to do more, learn more, and work with better people than I could have ever hoped for.

At this point I am getting paid basically nothing on my main business (although obviously 50% equity is worth something), and taking rates on my contract work (I still gotta eat while we build our business) that I know are below market rate in order to work with the same kinds of companies.

It’s not that simple of a decision for most though, so I hope people really take a good hard luck at it before just jumping in.

I need to complain about this somewhere. The world done done me wrong.

Stupid Desean Jackson and his stupid punt return doomed me from winning my fantasy football league for a second straight year. Here’s the play, if you haven’t seen it.

With that return, Ben got 6 points for the Desean Jackson touchdown, 1 point for David Akers’ extra point, and I lost 3 points from the Giants Defense. That’s a 10 point swing overall.

The final score this week? Ben wins 89-84. Blech.

An interesting exchange between Ted Leonsis (owner of the Washington Capitals and Washington Wizards, former big shot at AOL, and active blogger) and ESPN’s Bill Simmons.

You can listen to the whole interview here, the exchange below starts at around the 36:45 mark.

Ted Leonsis: Certainly when I came into the league, a lot of the things I thought were intuitive ended up being counter-intuitive.
Bill Simmons: Is there an example?
Ted Leonsis: Ummm, yeah. I think that there was one, “Get people into the building, give tickets away, let them sample and then they’ll come back. And when they’re in the building they’ll buy merchandise and the like.” Just like AOL gave away discs.
Bill Simmons: Right. Not true I guess.
Ted Leonsis: And so then you soon come to realize the exact opposite is true. When you give a ticket away, you suck the value out of currency for all of the ticket holders. Two, when you give someone a ticket, you forget that it’s their time and their money that a fan is giving you. So there’s no vested interest. When you give a ticket away, less than 40% of the people that get a free ticket actually show. They actually walk through. And because they were given the ticket for free, when they come to the game they don’t spend any money here! So, you know, very quickly when you meet like a new owner and they go “Oh, well there’s nobody there and I don’t like seeing empty seats so I’m giving tickets away” you know, I could tell them “That’s like the worst thing you can do. Suffer through it, build value, build a really good team and then people will create the demand for you.” That’s just one that I could give as an example.

Watch the movie above or go check out www.zelda448.com and help these Georgia Tech guys make some money for children.

Or wait a few more days, race them, and try to prove you’re better.