Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

Days after returning from India, my work e-mail inbox is down to just 84 undealt with e-mails. Which is pretty good since it was just under 300 when I went to India.

I realize, however, that the appearance of prospective manageability of my communications is because people have given up on me. If I start being responsive and replying right away, people will write more.

The key to balancing the inbox, I guess, is to respond quickly but write very discouraging things.

Presented by Hillary Rettig, http://www.lifelongactivist.com/

(This followed up the Time Management session. Which I missed.)

Procrastination: a thief of time. (Charles Dickens)

Procrastination isn't because you are weak. It doesn't fight fair.

Read:
The War of Art - Steven Pressfield
(Yes, that way around)

Procrastination is a rational response to overwhelmed or fearful feelings, being sick, tired, to interruptions and distractions, unmotivation.

A couple quick thoughts relevant to ye old grande thesis which will be written, ten years after it could have had a useful impact on the world. (Nah, i'm kidding, if i have an underlying life philosophy it's that it is never too late.)

Here is the larger fact, which undergirds any other claims.
Power differences matter.

It's pretty weird to have to make this claim, but much of economic theory is based on imagining power differences away. This lunacy allows – or rather requires – F. A. Hayek to argue that a man in a hole is as free as a man outside.

I was reminded by Zeldman's 20 signs you don't want a web design project about what Dad said about working for owners. The owner, especially the small to medium-scale owner, is most likely to care and know about what their business is doing.

My goal is to help build a world where we all people have the most power possible over our own lives.

The impetus for working with someone comes from my lack of progress on that which is most important to me.

Hiring help is obviously more about time than money, but in the interests of calculating sustainability some items are marked with return on investment...

If I can

Leading the LinkedIn Updates that arrived in the e-mail box this morning...

"Kathleen Murtagh is now Senior Web Developer at Agaric Design Collective"

Awesome. But what does that make me? Maybe retired...

We don't have any more food, so I'm going to drink some more beer.
– Dan

"It's the one situation where having faith in humanity is not a good thing."

Shannon, to me, before my interview with the possible hire for Science Collaboration Framework.

"Dan is a good snap judge of work character."

Charging for Value vs. Time
Posted At : October 1, 2008 9:59 AM | Posted By : Peter Bell
Related Categories: Agile Development
I've never been a big fan of charging for project work on an hourly basis - you can make a living, but there's no real upside, and because the variation in hourly pay between great and average programmers is (to my mind) less than the variation in the value they can provide, the better you get at adding business value as a programmer, the less the compensation matches the value you are capable of adding.

For SCF: "Please give Ben Melancon every assistance - he is a software contractor working for my group in Neurology Research on an important project."

Yep, that's me! :-P