The 10,000 Hour Chef

I have been quite underwhelmed with Tim Ferris's The 4 Hour Chef. Although the book definitely provided a good starting point for becoming a cook, it just wasn't very substantial.

As I outlined in my NYE blog post, the book isn't necessarily about cooking, it's about a methodology to learn new skills. And it's a great methodology. The foundation of the methodology is DiSSS:

D - deconstruct. Break the activity into the smallest learnable chunks

i - 

S - select. Identify the 20% of use cases that give you 80% of the results you want, and work on those

S - sequence. Sequence the learnable chunks of the 20% to maximize learning

S - stakes. Set consequences for failing. See stickk.com

This a great methodology. And it works. I'm definitely using it in other aspects of my life, like team management and ultimate frisbee.

The problem with his book is that he presents himself as having gone from slob to chef over the course of a few months. He did. And that's great for him. But he literally dedicated his whole life to it for a few months, with the intent of profiting off of those months of concentrated work by selling the book later. He spoke with dozens of chefs, travelled the world to sample flavors, did a 48-hour cooking marathon, and purchased all kinds of cooking equipment. I still work the same 60-hours/week job that I have been, and I have spent maybe $50 on additional cooking supplies since starting the book.

So really, the problem here is an expectation management and perception problem. He has learned 99% of what there is to know about cooking, and sells you that vision going into the book. But if you follow his book through the 14 key guide meals, you'll be at just 10-20% of his skill level. Yes, the book helps you identify and learn the most important 20% as he outlined, but the book just leaves you wanting more. There's some great content and tips, but I've come to realize that the only way to get to where I want to be is practice and experimentation, one meal at a time. The 14 core meals, and 20+ additional meals just begin to scratch the surface of what's possible.

I'm still looking forward for new opportunities to expand my cooking horizons over the course of 2013. TJ and I have decided to make 2 new recipes a week for the rest of the year. We're going to finish all 14 from The 4 Hour Chef, but after that we're probably going to start choosing new recipes from new places.

Why Do Consumers Hire OSes?

I'd like to preface this post by saying that I am not an OS level programmer, though I understand the fundamental abstraction layers in most modern OSes. On the other hand, I have a strong background in UI design, and consider myself a proponent of Clayton Christensen's "jobs to be done" theory.

Consumers hire OSes for 4 reasons:

1. Manage applications

2. Manage data

3. Aesthetic and functional preferences

4. Manage connectivity

Let's break down each one in detail.

1. Manage applications. This is without a doubt the single most important reason why consumers hire OSes. Microsoft didn't rise to prominence because it built the best OS. Microsoft wooed developers and attracted businesses who had problems that needed to be solved. The iPhone didn't really take off until it had the App Store because App Store enabled the iPhone to do so much more than Apple could ever on its own. Apps are and will be the key to all computing platforms.

It's interesting to note that iOs is also the worst modern OS with respect to allowing apps to share information with one another. The concept is nearly nonexistent in iOs. Given that application management is the most important function and biggest driver or purchasing decisions of modern OSes, this is a competitive threat for Apple. Consumers will eventually demand application and data interoperability that iOs doesn't provide today.

2. Manage data. This key tenet is the most interesting with regards to diversity of implementation in modern OSes because iOs, the pioneer of modern mobile OSes, completely abstracts the file system from the user. This stands in stark contrast to all other modern OSes. Apple's approach to data management is to integrate the data so seamlessly into the applications that you don't even realize that you're managing your data. This strategy has worked wonders in the mobile world where user inputs and screen real-estate are extremely limited. In the desktop world, consumers need more advanced data management tools like file browsers.

In the desktop world, the OSes have nearly perfected data management. Windows and OSX handle data management with ease, and allow applications to share data easily. Android is also competitive in this front, though the UI is much more limited, making its usefulness significantly less pronounced. Chrome OS takes perhaps the most interesting approach to the data management problem by abstracting it away to the cloud, accessible via apps, with the notable exception of Google Drive.

I would also throw data back-ups and security into the data management "job to be done", as they are a crucial aspect of data management. iOs probably does the best job here of all OSes because it's locked down, making it quite secure, and because OS-level data backups are available for free to all iOs consumers through iCloud backups. No other OS vendor has ever provided this level of data backup solution out of the box, seamlessly integrated, for free.

Overall, data management is probably the area with the most differentiation among modern OSes. Data management is also probably the least talked about, interestingly enough.

3. Aesthetic and functional preferences. There are 2 broad classes of modern OS UIs - desktop and mobile. Within each class, all the major OSes have achieved UI feature parity - they utilize these same fundamental UI paradigms (windowed apps with a keyboard and mouse, and capitative touch, respectively). But of course there are subtle differences in aesthetics and functionality among the major OSes, and consumers may develop preferences for a certain OS, despite the fact that other OSes can do the same thing. Some consumers prefer iOs's decidedly simple (and limited) grid of icons, while others prefer Android's more robust home screen widgets. On devices with limited screen real estate, I actually prefer iOs's limitations, even as a power user.

In some cases, consumers hire an OS because of aesthetic preferences. Some consumers just really love bright red plastic cases on the Lumia 920. I personally drool over the build quality and design of the Retina MacBook Pro - it's absolutely superb in every way that I need it to be.

4. Last, and most certainly least, OSes manage connectivity to 3rd party hardware, and most importantly, the Internet. All modern mainstream OSes are well beyond "good enough" in this regard. Still, for some consumers, hardware connectivity for specific devices or ports may be OS-limited, thus driving OS purchasing decisions. These cases are few and far between, and becoming less common as an increasing number of devices use common connectivity standards such as USB, HDMI, Bluetooh, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and Thunderbolt.

Android Will be the World's Most Used OS in 2015

I can't believe I left this off my prediction list I posted a couple of weeks ago.

The attached excel model can walk you through how I derived my conclusion. Bear in mind that my entire model is inherently underestimating the sales difference between platforms because the spreadsheet models unit sales as a step-wise function instead of a smooth growing curve. Still, you can see that Android will surpass Windows in 2015.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0eqwubTBaPScUZTaC1nNDVJeTQ/edit

Why do IT Departments Exist?

The inspiration for this post is the incompetence of my IT department manager at work. Unfortunately, my IT department manager is not special and my company's IT department is not uniquely poor. Many companies have the same internal IT problems that we do. Although there are many issues that cause the subpar IT outcomes that I observe, I believe that I have identified the greatest root cause:

IT department managers either never understood or forget why IT departments exist.

And as it turns out, the answer to the question "why do IT departments exist" is more nuanced than you might think. The very simple answer is: IT departments exist to help non-IT users with computer problems. But this statement fails to account for the much deeper reason why IT departments exist.

In the 1970's, before computers had entered the lexicon of the general public, businesses ran on paper. And they would have continued to run on paper if computers weren't better. Way better. Like, orders of magnitude better.

Computers have increased the average productivity of almost every white collar employee immensely. Computers have also ushered in a new era of communication channels that have allowed organizations to grow in size and shape in ways that were never possible in the analog era.

Despite all of the value computers create, computers occasionally go down, and they can be very complicated to setup and use. Obviously, IT departments are there to help when computers operate sub-optimally. So that brings us back to the original question: why do IT departments exist?

IT departments exist to make everyone else more productive.

Please, IT managers and technicians of the world, please just try to keep that in mind as you make decisions throughout the day. If you believe with all of your heart that your primary objective at work is to help make everyone else as productive as possible, you will be an amazing IT employee. So please, just remember that and care. It's all I ask. Thanks.

Abusing the BATNA

About a month ago, I started maintaining a few "rules of life." These are rules and guidelines that I hope I can live my life by at all times, regardless of emotional context. I spend 5 minutes reviewing these rules every week. I store them in Evernote using a "Rules of Life" tag, and I asked Google Calendar to remind me to re-read them every week until I die. Rules can only be added to this list if they're accompanied by a  story or article that substantiate the rules. I don't re-read all the stories every week, but I always reflect back on each story as I re-read the rules.

The first set of rules I added to my collection were 5 key negotiating tips. I know there are many more than this, but this is a good starting set.

1. Know your best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA) going in

2. Not all agreements are purely win-lose. Expand the pie along new dimensions.

3. Add-ons are key. After the primary point of contention has been agreed upon, add in small bonuses; the other party is more open to others once the primary point is agreed upon.

4. Bargain with empathy. People respond to empathy.

5. Wait. Patience is key.

Today, I witnessed the most horrific, destructive and somehow completely legal abuse of the first rule.

My colleagues, Tom, TJ, Brian, and I just spent the past few days in Cleveland doing all day on-site sales presentations and demonstrations for a few long term acute care hospitals in the Cleveland area. Just a few days before the Cleveland trip was set to begin, Brian scored another on-site demo in Pittsburg. Brian and TJ had to buy new tickets to fly first to Pittsburg, then to Cleveland. Their original round trip tickets from Austin to Cleveland and back weren't refundable, so we figured VersaSuite would eat the cost of Brian and TJ's original voyage to Cleveland, and utilize the original tickets on the way back home.

This morning, we got to the Cleveland airport about an hour before our flight was scheduled to take off. We weren't late, but we weren't early either. Tom and I checked in and got our boarding passes as usual (Brian had flown out on an earlier flight). TJ didn't. The automatic flight locator wasn't finding TJ's ticket. So he started talking with the American Airlines representative at the check in desk. He couldn't find TJ's ticket either. At this point, everyone was thoroughly confused. TJ pulled out his phone and showed the AA representative his ticket purchase confirmation in his email. It was quite clear that TJ's ticket had been purchased.

What? That makes no sense.

Well, it turns out AA cancelled TJ's ticket. Without telling him or notifying him in any way.

What? That makes no sense. Why would they do that? Don't they have a reputation to maintain?

Apparently, AA has a policy that if you miss your outbound flight, they automatically cancel your return flight without issuing a refund or notifying you so that they can try to sell your seat to someone else. That policy is almost sound, except for the part where they should reach out to you to confirm that you want to cancel your return flight. Although their logic works 99% of the time, there are always exceptions, especially in the travel business where plans can change with just a moment's notice.

You'd think that in this case, AA would just re-issue TJ his original ticket. The flight wasn't sold out, and AA had already collected its deserved revenue for selling that ticket. Re-issuing a free ticket would be the sensible thing to do.

It turns out that AA just doesn't do this. The AA check in representative found TJ's scheduled flight back to Austin and the associated "Cancelled" status, but he couldn't do anything to un-cancel it, even though there were still open seats available on the flight.

25 minutes of arguing and confusion later and with an enormous line of pissed off people piling up behind us, AA forced us to re-purchase the ticket, and they charged $550 for a one-way trip from Cleveland to Austin. The original round trip was about $400 total. To make matters even more offensive, AA re-sold TJ the same seat he had purchased before. He literally paid twice for the exact same seat on the plane.

That is theft. And a horrific abuse of the first rule of negotiation - they knew that TJ didn't have a choice, and they abused that fact as much as they could. They messed up, and they forced TJ's employer pay for it.

I'd like to conclude this post with an Ode to American Airlines:

American Airlines, o AA. How prestigious you used to be. You pioneered the airline industry. You helped create billions of dollars of economic value by allowing people to travel an order of magnitude faster than they could before.

But something happened. While your competitors stayed lean, innovated, and explored new business models, you indulged, stagnated, and built a massive, poorly organized, and ultimately unmanageable empire. And perhaps worst of all, you got incredibly lucky.

Fuck you.

You are just over 80 years old, and you are the only living corporate entity in the history of capitalism to undergo chapter 11-style bankruptcy 7 times. You have gone bankrupt once a decade every decade since your inception. You devolved from an value-generating innovator to a giant, flaming, value-destroying piece of shit.

Every time you go into bankruptcy, you abuse your stakeholders' known BATNA, just like you did you did to TJ today. You use bankruptcy protection to force your stakeholders to forgo their profits and their livelihood. You don't figure out how to run a profitable business despite the fact that all of your competitors have, and you simply abuse the broken legal system to avoid repaying your debts. So you exit bankruptcy court a few years later with a new lease on a life.

You look out on the world as a leaner, more capable entity. You underwent liposuction to cut all the fat, but never killed your old habits or developed new ones. After surgery, you still eat McDonalds and candy bars every day. And after 8 more years of gluttony, you realize that, once again, you're too fat to walk. Maybe you should just fall over and roll your fat ass all over the world instead. After all, you know better than anyone else that walking is for suckers, right?