Matt Warren

Author: Matt

  • Making Things Happen

    There’s a limit to the things a single developer can accomplish as part of a project. I get a great deal from checking things off my todo list. You can write great code and propose great ideas, but there’s a limit to what a single person can accomplish without a team.

    A team can accomplish a lot. Multiple people with different perspectives and expertises can pull together in the same direction to build amazing things. Even still there is a limit to what a single team can do.

    Making things happen can take the effort of someone to reach outside the boundaries of the team they belong to bridge the gap between teams. Getting teams to work together towards a common vision is how mountains can be moved. Getting developers to work in coordination with sales/marketing, and management. Getting developers that work on different individual goals to all pull together in the same direction is an amazing challenge.

    Communication is the key skill that can accomplish so much. An individual team member can often perform amazing things quietly working on tasks. But the communication of who you talk to, the words you use, how you connect people and ideas you push out of your brain can build teams, can inspire people, and it can make bigger things happen.

    But saying that communication is the the critical main component to make things happen is not particularly helpful without understanding the vast complexities of the individual tasks. How to run a meeting, the various types of meetings, how to handle difficult conversations, how to distribute ideas more broadly, how to propose ideas, how to shut down ideas, how to keep people on task and focused, how to know what conversations need to be had, what people need introductions and what people should be on a team or taken off the team. Much of this come down to practice, experience and organizing your thoughts. But for anyone who doesn’t stumble onto being good at this kind of thing, it’s very difficult to find books or resources on getting better at them.

    If there was a formula for what to say when to whom in all situations, then humans wouldn’t be relevant. Until then what you say when you say it, how you say and to whom you say it to is perhaps one of the most open-ended problems we can think through. Saying the right thing at the right time in the right way to the right people can change societies or more simply, help you get a promotion.

    In an effort to make things happen, sometimes those things are simple physical things like fixing a squeaky door in which case some how-to knowledge is what it takes. Other times it’s convincing someone to build a small business with you. But getting 1000 people working together is a completely different game, and this is something that I’m spending some more time thinking about.

  • Change Begets Change

    It’s amazing just how much making a change can trickle to other changes in life. Moving and a new Job are things that can kick off a cascade of other impacts. This year I did both of those things.

    Switching from a self-employed, and renting back to employed in a normal 9-5, and owning + mortgage resulted in many changes in my day-to-day.

    I used to be engaged with personal projects – multiple websites I was working on launching plus writing, drawing, and creating a youtube series. These were things based on my interests and ambitions. I had time to go to the gym everyday.

    Since buying a house, all of those things have stopped progressing. Of the 24 hours in a day – 8 are sleeping, 8-9 are working and the remainder are spent in traffic, eating and working on the house.

    It’s been a near complete change in my day-to-day patterns of living.

  • Beast Mode

    It can be amazing what is possible to accomplish in a day, week, month or year with the right motivation and habits. My life is documented in over 1500 blog posts on this website. My weekly routine for blogging has fallen to the wayside the past little while because of – new house purchase, packing, moving prep, planning a renovation, helping launch 2 businesses, and doing 3 people’s jobs at work.

    Beast Mode is part of the secret that makes it possible to do so much stuff.

    If you ever played the old SEGA game “Altered Beast”. Beast mode is the power-up you get that gives you extra abilities to defeat more enemies in the game.

    Beast mode for me is a frame of mind that is hyper focused on getting things done. When cleaning the house this turns into a bit of a race, tidying things at a running pace. With computer stuff, it is usually being focused at getting something good enough to ship and getting it done before moving to something else. Be hyper productive.

    The process of going into ‘beast mode’ to get things done quickly has been a helpful mental tool.

  • Finished a Game – First time in a Decade

    Finished a Game – First time in a Decade

    For the first time in maybe a decade I played a game all the way through to the finish. I don’t have much time to play games, but I’ve been chipping away at Portal 15 minutes at a time.

    Not sure if it was intentional, but it seemed a little too easy. Like geared towards a teen. But they did a good job of making it seem like you have to be smart to figure out the puzzles. Having challenges that look hard but are actually not gave me a sense of confidence. which I think is part of the brilliance in the game design.

    This was also a game that I was able to play with Ada (5 yo) which was cool. She doesn’t play much games other than baking/decorating cakes on the iPad. This was a completely different style of game-play that I don’t think she wrapped her head around yet. In particular the end of the game is a long sequence of puzzles as you try to escape, the computer voice is trying to convince you not to escape and that it has some cake for you.. but there are scribbles on the walls (presumably from other escapees) that says “the cake is a lie”. She was completely confused about whether or not there was cake. 5 year olds still have a hard time with sarcasm and deception. And it was interesting how uncomfortable it made her.. she wanted me to start over at level 1 and try again rather than finish.

  • 50 Year Apollo Anniversary

    Hard to believe that it’s been 50 years since the Apollo astronauts landed on the moon. It’s a long time ago, before my time when all that action went down.

    The Apollo mission was created and launched with teams of inexperienced kids who were hired right out of college at the age of 21 and 22 mostly and were on average around 26 years old by the time NASA finally landed on the moon in 1969. With strong motivation and the ambition of youth even the most challenging problems were overcome.

    Apollo was an expensive program at the time, but it is also up there with the best investments the US government have made – along with the interstate highways.

    Today, after 50 years of productivity growth access to the moon is within the reach of private enterprise. The next ten years promise a flurry of activity to get back there.

    The people who went to the moon 50 years ago or were part of the effort or were just alive to witness it are now seniors. “We” didn’t get to the moon, they did, and the reasons, and technology they used is lost to us today.

    It’s exciting to see this generation make their own mark and out-do things their parents or grand-parents achieved.

  • What’s going to happen to the ISS?

    What’s going to happen to the ISS?

    After two decades of ISS being the only game in town when it comes to space stations, things are finally starting to change. The decommissioning for ISS is in early planning stages now and the progress happening on new replacement stations from NASA and China, and perhaps Russia, as well as privately owned stations are starting to look like they are potentially close to finding a viable market. The future of space stations is looking bright.

    In 60 years of human space travel fewer than 600 people have been in space. And the maximum number of people who have been there at the same time is 13 – a record set in 1995.

    The good news is that since the ISS has become fully operational we have maintained a continuous presence in earth orbit. The ISS crew complement of between 3 and 6 people has been held since the year 2000. The limiting factor in putting more people up on the space station at the same time has not been the size of the station, but on our ability to have escape vehicle capacity to leave in the case of an emergency.

    The ISS is currently scheduled for end of life in the late 2020s. There have been discussions at NASA about how to do that. It’s a complicated international investment and different parties may have different ideas for what to do with the modules and equipment they have up there.

    In the case of the Russian modules, rumours are that they are investigating the potential of taking their components off to re-use on a Russian space station. NASA is potentially looking at the possibility of finding a way to off-load the operational aspects of the station to private industry. Certainly de-orbiting the whole thing would be dangerous and seemingly wasteful.

    China meanwhile has quietly already launched 2 short lived experimental space stations and is planning a larger modular Chinese station to call their own.

    NASA and international partners have shifted their focus to the new Gateway station. A small orbital outpost in heliocentric orbit of the moon – our first attempt at building something outside of Earth orbit. Though not designed to be permanently crewed, Gateway builds on the same modular design principles used for the ISS and will create new obligations to get astronauts out to lunar orbit on a regular basis for the foreseeable future.

    This is I think one of the biggest lessons from operating the ISS for the last 20 years. A great way at ensuring stable funding over a long time horizon, across multiple changes in governments is to have complex international agreements and sunk costs into the infrastructure that would be a waste to very publically abandon.

    In the private sector, things might finally be approaching a point where lower cost reusable rockets from SpaceX and Blue Origin make a privately owned and operated space station something that has a viable business case. NASA has been advancing a vision of increased private activity in space starting with the successful goal of privatizing the supply rockets to the ISS. Now they are looking into finding ways to make it possible for private industry to operate space stations.

    The best benefit from introducing multiple companies to operate at the same time (rather than picking a single contractor to build something like say – the space shuttle) is that we get diversity of ideas and visions. A variety of rockets to choose from, with different trade offs for cost, payloads, and scheduling. Paying companies for the service, rather than time and materials contracts puts pressure on the supplying company to work on things that can deliver value to more customers than just NASA. They still need to go out and drum up other business to make things work financially.

    When it comes to space stations we need the diversity of ideas more than ever, because there is wide open un-test potential for what to build, and unknown, untapped demand for things we might want to do in space if it was more affordable to do so.

    This is why companies like Bigelow aerospace has attached a test module to the ISS to validate it’s inflatable module technology and prepare for a more ambitious development of an orbital space hotel.

    Axiom space is a private company that likewise has developed conceptual modules for expanding the ISS and building independant space stations. They have proposed a future of expanding and replacing modules over time on ISS, essentially to rebuild it into something new.

    Blue Origin has submitted a proposal for a space station that looks to be based on a New Glenn upper stage. They are in the early stages of discovering the viable business strategy for building space habitats.

    Other companies like – SNC, Space Adventures, SSL/Maxar, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman all have their own visions for what the biggest opportunities are for using a space station be it for science, in space manufacturing, tourism or for servicing other activities in space.

    Space stations are central to the future commercialization of space and part of the bigger picture of expanding human influence out to the moon. We can’t have a human presence in space without a place for humans to stay. The rockets are coming that will make it more possible than ever to get people up in greater numbers and lower cost. The next challenge will be to build enough places for them to stay and work when they get there.

  • Da Vinci

    The Science and tech museum hosted an exhibit about Leonardo da Vinci which we went to go see over the weekend.

    One thing for sure is that it made me feel inadequate. He was able to get so much stuff designed and built that it just makes my efforts to be productive look like a snails pace. Designing everything from military weapons to musical instruments, flying machines, and cities. Then still having time to become a master painter. Truly prolific.

    The exhibit left me with more questions than answers. How the hell did Da Vinci accomplish so much. There must be some secrets. It got me curious enough to order a copy of Walter Isaacson’s biography of him to try to find out more.

    One question that entered my mind was: Is it even possible to have another Leonardo Da Vinci today? There is no question that our access to information has improved greatly since his day, but it is also incredibly difficult to have the time dedicate to deep thinking between jobs and abundant distractions.

    What do you think? If someone with the aptitude of Leonardo was born today would they achieve the same astounding historical significance or would they be found in a cubicle somewhere?

  • Selling Lighters

    Back in December a friend and I decided to try our hand at a simple e-commerce business. Drop-shipping lighters from China. We built a brand and website to sell the lighters and created ad campaigns and managed to sell about a dozen lighters in the lead up to Christmas.

    That first dozen sales lead to quite a few important insights.

    1. Drop-shipping is a terrible way to build a sustainable business. It’s so easy to do, that the barriers to entry are low enough for anyone to find and undercut you with ease. Shipping times are unacceptably slow and out of your control. Quality is hard to assess.
    2. People really dislike slow shipping. About 50% of our sales resulted in hands on customer support to calm nerves. Getting abusive and insulting emails is disheartening and not fun.
    3. Running ads on Facebook is subtly difficult. Even with what seems like great margins on the product itself, we found ourselves spending $50 in ads to sell a $30 lighter.

    But in an effort to continue to improve and crack this nut of e-commerce we took a break to assess the situation.

    To fix the problems with drop shipping business model we decided to do a custom product. We designed a lighter and found a manufacturer in China with the molds for a lighter and the ability to mass produce a couple hundred lighters for us. Bulk ordering like this cut our per-unit cost in half, which was a nice bonus.

    A couple months later and I got a couple hundred lighters delivered to my house. This was the second thing to improve on. Shipping from within North America will help to remove the bottleneck at the border and by doing the fulfillment myself I have the option of easily doing pack-ins, and testing shipping options. Solving the shipping issues should alleviate our biggest customer support problem.

    Finally, advertising is critical, and it unfortunately just requires copious amounts of testing and fine tuning to discover the ads that work with landing pages that convert. This will continue to be an avenue to learn more on and continue to do better with. But with several hundred lighters ready to ship sitting on the floor in my office, there is now a definite source of motivation to sell these lighters profitably.

    For those interested in seeing the result of all this, and in keeping with my space themed branding, you can find my Space Lighter at spacelighters.com

  • My Unique Productivity Hacks

    I like to think that I do a good job of getting things done. Certainly the way I do things is not going to be the perfect solution for everyone, but perhaps readers will get some ideas.

    Probably the best, most effective and unique productivity tool I use is a custom notification script. I have been running various versions of this code for the better part of a decade now. It is the foundation of how I have been able to consistently maintain this website and write so many blog posts since the early 2000s. The psychological hurdle that it helps to avoid is the problem of “out of sight, out of mind” for recurring tasks. It can watch two types of things for me: RSS feeds – like this blog, youtube channel or podcast, and recently it has been improved to check my Google Drive files. For things that I want to make sure I do I add a check to this script, if the blog/youtube/podcast/file isn’t updated according to my goal schedule then I get an alert. The alert is delivered every hour, after it is due, until it’s done.

    The code I use for this is on Github for anyone who would be interested in trying it for themselves. https://github.com/mfwarren/BlogPostingReminder

    My next most effective hack for getting more things done is a physical journal. I leave my journal open and on my desk so that it is always front and center. Note taking apps and todo list apps on the computer or smartphone have never worked for me. Again, the out of sight problem. Once the app is closed, I have to remember to check it without having the memory hook that triggers me to check my todo list it gets forgotten too easily. A physical book has a presence, and the act of using a pen to make notes helps to cement those things I write down into permanence. Being unable to copy/paste or delete afterwards are good attributes for commitments not to be forgotten. For the Journal, I roughly follow the Bullet Journal patterns, I write down the date and 3-5 bullet points for goals for things to do that day. It helps to keep my day deliberate.

    The final hack I use is a policy of “Just do it!” for small chores. This is a fight against the desire to procrastinate. For small things that aren’t worth putting into my journal as a daily goals like clean the basement or fix a broken toy I try to get it done quickly and move on to something else. Many things, that psychologically feel like onerous chores have a higher perceived time cost than reality. Tidying up the basement usually takes me less than 2 minutes when I time myself. Folding a basket of laundry: less than 10 minutes. If you can keep the list of tasks from building up by knocking off these deceptively small tasks immediately it creates room to breath and relax. Plus it just feels good to get things done. Like you’ve accomplished a lot.

    But hey, I’m not perfect, life is always a work in progress. I’m always looking to level up my productivity. If you have your own favorite productivity tips feel free to leave a comment below.

  • Resist Simplifying the Complexity of Complex Systems

    Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

    Albert Einstein

    When looking at the world there are lots of things that are beyond the limits of human cognition. Not only do we not understand these complex systems but it is physically impossible for us to ever understand them. This is information theory, we cannot encode more information than we have space to store it without some loss of information.

    The human memory is good at lossfully encoding information in the billions of neurons and dendrites. But there are very real limits. For instance, it would be impossible for me to losslessly add another persons memories into my own without also doubling the size of my brain. It is impossible to encode the information without the physical space to store it.

    Complex systems such as how the brain works are possible for humans to understand only through the help of simplifications. We can’t possibly track billions of interacting neurons mentally the way we might be able to visualise 2 + 3, so we reduce the brain to regions and sub-regions. The value of sub-dividing the brain into regions is not because it simplifies the complexity of billions of neurons, but because it adds complexity to the brain as a single mass of grey matter.

    Our inability to completely understand other people results in compromises. Instead of taking time to get to know people at work, HR often advocates for personality tests. By putting labels on people’s personalities, we believe we can then extrapolate and make assumptions about them. This is inherently inhuman. Rather than having deep conversations and personal relationships we can do a quick test online by ourselves, register the result with HR, and that data point can be used to direct our future opportunities. Like a distopian sci-fi thriller.

    The world is filled with complex systems that are too complex for humans to really grasp intuitively. Ecology and Climate are complex systems with billions of interactions – humans cannot apply intuition and common sense to gloss over these complexities. Traffic and stock markets also are complex systems for which intuition and common sense often fail us.

    Traffic is a common topic of conversation. Everyone has their opinion on fixes for the congestion problems. The evidence shows that you can’t build roads to fix congestion – major roadworks projects around the world just provide temporary relief – see Boston after the big dig, Houston’s grand parkway. There are rarely simple solutions to complex problems. Rarely are complex solutions palatable to those in power. If we were able to build a complex city simulation and model growth against zoning changes, tolls, bike lanes, road works, and taxes, etc. maybe we could find some optimal solution – but note that even optimal solutions have trade-offs. Fixing traffic might require making single family homes illegal to improve density. It would be impossible to create an optimal solution that everyone is happy with. To make things more complex, majority rule doesn’t always result in ethical decisions – deciding how to decide can also be a complex system.

    There is a natural desire for humans to try and simplify things, or see simple solutions to things, and then be frustrated when they are not done. We see road workers on seemingly perpetual coffee breaks and complain about it as if the project manager who spends all their time trying to keep the worksite working hasn’t considered some simple fix.

    I like to think that there are some complex systems that require complex solutions which are beyond human understanding. That’s Ok. Accepting the limits of the human mind is the first step to transcending them. Computers provide the tools to augment our memory (hard drives) and thought processes (AI). In that regard it seems inevitable that AIs will produce answers that we do not, and perhaps can not understand.

    As Einstein suggests, we should strive to make things simple as possible. But in some instances that will still be too complex for us to understand within a single human brain. In those cases we need to be careful not to push simplifying things past the limit. We should attempt to recognise and resist the desire to simplify things that are inherently complex. Embrace the complexity.