Jeff Widman (.com)

The always excellent Paul Graham just published his latest essay… on distractions. Nothing very surprising–the internet is tricky because it’s necessary yet distracting–but as he observes, the key is simply visibility. I tried the Firefox Time Tracker extension but it was small and unobtrusive. Now I recognize I am 50% split between consumer and producer. [...]

Doing dishes in the kitchen listening to Pandora. High-speed inexpensive internet access is here. Right now. (My parents pay $40 a month for Sprint EVDO service.) With a laptop, an EVDO modem, and a cassette adapter, I can listen to whatever I want. Legally. I can search by author, genre, song title–you name it. Why [...]

Someone asked me how I ran a marathon without training. I’m not sure… it’s one of those feats that evokes “I wish I could do that” emotions–only to realize I accomplished it!   The 50 miles in 24 hours (with full packs) came first—that was hard! (Once you’ve done the first 30 miles, the next [...]

Several months ago, I was doing some rough conceptual work for a personal logo. Here’s my steps: Need–do I need a logo? (I do enough creative content that I thought a logo might enhance my personal branding.) Vision–what do I want to communicate with a logo? (Vision involves injecting yourself–your ability, passion, and experiences into [...]

Earlier this spring, I created an application for a super-exclusive internship. There was one catch–the application requirements consisted solely of the following: “Send in a 4-page PDF–you decide what’s on it, that’s part of the application process.” After spending many hours thinking about the intersection of the internship and my goals, I decided to create [...]

My buddy Brian recently shared a story of clever marketing with me.   Brian goes to college at Washington State University in Pullman–there’s a saying on the western side of the state that “All dirt roads lead to Pullman.” As he got within sixty miles of WSU, he began to notice yellow signs by the [...]

Two years ago, Dan Grossman posted about the Warren Buffett shareholder letters on his (now defunct) blog. Finally, I have copies of all of Buffett’s annual reports from 1957-1970. They’re spectacular; if you’d like a copy, let me know and I’ll send them to you. Unfortunately, I was asked not to post them publicly, though [...]

Just ran across this fantastic post–how to deal with the CC: deluge. It’s brilliant!   In manufacturing, the Japanese have this term Poka-Yoke for mistake-proofing a system. Granted, the people who CC’d Chris weren’t making mistakes–they chose to e-mail him. Their mistake was not tactical, but strategic. Poka-yoke’ing the e-mail server is Chris’s way of [...]

Sitting in the APICS student chapter at WWU. There’s a lady from Fluke here talking about cover letters. Make it easy for readers to scan your letter by beginning each paragraph with a topic sentence. What if you replaced “letter” with “blog”?

Recently, my Facebook profile status started saying Jeff is twittering:… No–I’m not a twit. I’m using Twitter, the trendy service attempting to fill the void of personal, daily updates about a person. If you haven’t heard of it, this Commoncraft video provides an intuitive explanation.   Why have I started Twittering? To understand the medium–I’ve [...]