Matthew Lang

Fascinating how many times this classic has been illustrated.

I began my annual tradition of reading A Christmas Carol last night. A chapter a night up to Christmas Eve. I look forward to reading it every year.

Hat tip to Michael Wade.

... that is Nicholas Bate.

Except that messages now travel 50 times faster than they used to, sent to us by 100 times as many people as we grew up expecting. Except that we're spending ten times as much time with a device, and one-tenth as much time reading a book.

Here it comes. The future adds a zero.

— Times 10 by Seth Godin

There comes a point in your career when you can no longer coast along just punching in and out and doing a day's work. Nobody tell's when that time will come. It can be in the first few days of your job or after years of working for yourself.

When that time comes to level up, you can do two things.

1. Ignore the opportunity and keep coasting along doing the same thing you do every day. Eventually though the opportunity will reveal itself again.
2. Use the opportunity to level up and start making improvements in your career and your prospects.

While I've been doing client work for five days a week for the last two years, the chance to level up has presented itself on a number of occasions. Each time though I've used the excuse that I don't have the time to make improvements or start learning something new, and while that is a poor excuse, it's what I did.

I'm paying the price for it now though. I'm still busy working for clients and next year's schedule is looking great. I can't always bank on having the same clients though in the next five years. They may no longer be using the web frameworks that I specialise in, they be looking for alternatives that I am not well versed in. They might even want to take a look at something completely new.

When clients want to level up, you need to be ready to level up with them. Whether it's technology, tools or processes, you need to be able to have enough knowledge to level up with them. To make this transition as easy as possible it helps if you can be the one that levels up first. Then your party of clients can follow.

So when the opportunity presents itself to learn something new, do yourself a favour. Don't ignore it.

When I first heard about Apple's AirPods I thought they were a joke. Honestly. After all they're EarPods with the wires lopped off. What happens if you lose one?

Well it seems that if you lose one you'll be out of pocket $69.

I think I'll stick with the EarPods.

via The Verge

Curtis McHale explains why tracking your hours as a business owner can improve the health of your business.

Tracking your time will also help you identify the most profitable projects you have. As you narrow down your niche this is going to be important information to have, since what is most profitable and what you enjoy most often coincides.

— 4 reasons a great business owner tracks their time by Curtis McHale

So apparently Evernote employees now have the ability to read the notes in your Evernote account. There is an opt-out feature in the settings but I wonder how many people will do this?

I started using Evernote when it first came out. Since then I've closed and re-opened my account a number of times. To me Evernote feels bulky and awkward. I've tried to use it a number of times, but each time I find the product too difficult to use. I last tried Evernote just over a year ago. I went for a couple of days before I closed my account again.

Evernote started it's life well as a product but in recent years it has taken a lot of criticism for it's usability, support, pricing and now it's stance on privacy. With the growing criticism you have to wonder if there's life left in the Evernote product and whether it will stand the test of time.

It's starting to look like Evernote has lost its lustre, which is a shame. I know a few people that use it daily to help them run their business.

If I was still an Evernote user today then I would be considering looking at alternatives. I use Simplenote myself for notes and there's also Bear which was named one of Apple's best apps of the year in their App Store.

Whether you're an Evernote user or not, you always have to consider the lifetime of the products you use. It's a small percentage of products that stand the test of time and maintain their status as a wonderful product.

For everything else you have to ensure that if your product of choice folds, you can take your data elsewhere with minimum fuss.