Author: Matt

  • One Great Developer is better than Three Good Ones

    I saw this said in a book I recently finished reading about company planning and strategy.  For sure when I read it first it caused me to pause.  Could there really be that much difference between good and great? The more I thought about it, the more I came to agree that it is a…

  • Productivity of Decision Making

    Decisions can be paralyzing when you have to make them.  Even more so when you don’t have the information you need to make an informed decision. In the day-to-day work of programming we make decisions all the time.  However the decisions we either don’t have answers for of don’t have the power to make ourselves…

  • Quantity over Quality

    Why would anyone ever suggest that it’s better to focus on quantity over quality?  Clearly pushing out a pile of sub-par work is not a good idea when you could take your time to think though things and produce a master piece the first time. The fact is that you can’t easily produce top quality work…

  • Taking Action

    Being action oriented is one of the biggest differentiators I have noticed in the most productive people.  It’s amazing what you can get done in a day when you just take action to make it happen.  Even a small step can get the ball moving on a large project. One of my partners is the…

  • Transition From Text Editor to IDE

    For a decade I have pushed back on switching to an IDE for coding Python.  My preference has always been to use the minimal editor possible to help force a level of consciousness in my code and avoid the complacency that can come from having tools that are just too powerful.  Auto-complete is awesome, but…

  • Morning Routines for Success

    The morning is probably the best time of day to get things done for yourself before work and stress start to derail your day.  When you’re trying to accomplish something big finding a way to take advantage of these early morning hours can really ramp up your productivity. The quiet morning hours can be your…

  • Creating More

    One of my new years resolutions was to give my side business a chance to start making real money.  To get actionable on that goal I started building a software tool (which is currently undergoing private beta testing).  The next part of the strategy is to produce several informational products and grow an email marketing…

  • Productivity Research

    As part of a project to release a tool for productivity I am reading, researching and testing various concepts and tools.  The goal is to compile all this information into a couple of reports and launch a newsletter, website and write some software based on mashing together some of these concepts. Colum, Heather and I…

  • Finding Your Motivation

    The theory for motivation has been best described by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Peak motivation can be achieved when you become self-actualized – internally self motivated, however to get there you need to fulfil your lower level needs first. At each level of this pyramid you will find factors that might be motivating you.  Working…

  • Deploying Flask With Ansible

    Over the last couple weeks I have been getting acquainted with using Ansible to provision and deploy servers. One nice thing with using Ansible over a tool like fabric for deployment is that everything from provisioning, initializing, updating, management, and application deployment can be done with a minimal amount of code. There are tips I…