My Thoughts

I share with you my thoughts on life and anything that I deem valuable in my world. I welcome you to tag along.

Who Fills Up Your Inbox

January 18, 2016

Your inbox. It can be a point of anxiety or your best friend, it’s all about managing what comes in and out of it. For the past 6 months, I’ve been operating at Inbox Zero and it is my number one productivity “hack.” One piece of this strategy is being diligent about who I give the right to email me. That means, when checking out at the mall, always saying ‘no’ to ‘would you like emailed coupons?’ and instantly unsubscribing to newsletters that don’t benefit either me personally or my business. I like to keep an up-to-date list with the newsletters that I am subscribed to and want to share that with you.

Why Your Side Projects Don't Suck

July 1, 2015

About one month into any new job and you already begin to get the hang of your responsibilities and daily routine. You are supposed to do this on Mondays, and supposed to do that on Tuesdays, and then usually you meet with so-and-so to talk about yada-yada on Wednesdays. Even at a fast paced company like a startup, you become ingrained in your core responsibilities and you lose pieces of the excitement that existed during the first few weeks. Not only do you feel less fulfilled and challenged, but the company loses its ability to explore and learn from a new set of eyes or new topic.

Recipe For a Rockstar App Launch

March 3, 2015

So you’ve decided to build an app? Congratulations! You’ve decided to be a contributor instead of simply a consumer, and we love that.

Learning: The Unschool Method

January 6, 2015

A few weeks ago, I shared lunch with a very good friend of mine and over the course of about two hours we talked about nearly everything on our minds, but one thing really stood out. He was about to graduate and I am only a semester away from finishing school and we both shared the same feeling about what it meant to be a “college graduate.” An almost lack of enthusiasm. It seemed odd to the both of us that every semester, a few thousand students would walk away with the same stamp of approval from the university, but yet have drastically different experiences.

Book Notes: Zero to One

November 24, 2014

I was slightly skeptical when I first saw Peter Thiel’s Zero To One pop up on the pre-order list on my ever-growing Amazon suggested purchases list. I knew Peter Thiel as one of the master minds included in the PayPal Mafia and even more so as an early investor in Facebook, so I assumed that the book would be full of “silicon-valley this” and “san-fransico that” and plenty of other technical startup mumbo jumbo (is this a real phrase?) that fills the headlines of Tech blogs and Entrepreneurship magazines. I underestimated Mr. Thiel.