Ian M Rountree

Project Manager, Copywriter, Digital Marketer

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Kaizen and Application Level Lifestyle Design

August 1, 2011 by Ian Leave a Comment

One of the intensely appealing things about the current app economy is the sense we get of kaizen from the aps we’re downloading – constant, consistent improvement in their features and value propositions.

If we opt in early, we get to see the growth, the longer we use an application. If we opt in late, we get to see a mature version of the thing we’ve heard so much about – often at the same price, as the early adopters finance the enjoyment of the majority.

Strong revisioning practice powers this in software; the idea of taking a feature set basic enough to get a job done, calling that 1.0, and working up toward your dream. Every process in between initial betas and 2.0, or even 3.0 and 10.0 is powered by a simple, 3-4 step iteration process:

  • Describe the function
  • Apply it to the existing features
  • Gather response from users
  • Describe new functions

In this way, application developers can call every choice they make the right choice. Even if a feature fails, or is unpopular, under this model, it counts as an experiment rather than an accomplishment; and experiments only fail if you learn nothing from the doing of them.

What I always wonder is why we haven’t applied this theorem to our lives yet in a conscious way?

I’ve spent the past month working toward getting back in shape. I’ve busted my knee twice, damaged my shoulders by pushing too hard on a workout, and been out of commission with delayed onset muscle pain for nearly a week. I’ve dug out my weights, started eating somewhat differently, and modified my sleep schedule to accommodate for the occasional first-thing-in-the-morning run. It’s been difficult, and injury is not my favorite thing in the world.

But I’m continuing to work at it – why? Because I believe in kaizen as a personal ideal as well as a working ideal.

It’s an iteration process. Every time I make a change, run a little faster, or work a little harder, I mark the results and adjust my course. I make optimization moves – not just to my own process, such as finding the highest-energy points in the day at which to work out, but also finding better routes walking to the office (and shaving 10 extraneous minutes off the trip in the process).

Why is this a big deal?

Because it’s an awareness trap. By not paying attention to when I hit the milestone – when Ian 2.0, or 3.0 appears – I’m making the work of getting each maintenance release out far more easy.

We consider so many things by their end results; weight loss goals, study for degrees, getting that black belt, learning Esperanto, and so on. These goals are ambitious for a reason – they make us want to exercise our need to accomplish, to build ambition toward a goal. However, I’d argue that as we divide our attention more, we’re losing the ability to maintain the salience of these large goals in the face of all the many small steps it takes to achieve them.

What would happen if, instead of broad goals, we began to make the work of improving – the process of kaizen – a central part of our personal planning?

Filed Under: Marketing Strategy Tagged With: design, development, house md, lifestyle, quotes

Posterity

July 27, 2011 by Ian Leave a Comment

Everything we do on the web must come from a view of posterity. How else are we going to avoid putting drunken college photos up on Facebook, leaving something embarrassing on our work computers’ web history, or continually attacking others?

The largest part of this is that the net is nothing but posthumous in some ways. It’s an archive of past activity. The current trend of real-time computing, instant collaboration, and social media has changed how swiftly things become the past – but everything on the web is a past action. You liked this. You tweeted that. You blogged this. Everything is past-tense. Everything is posted – it’s placed into the record, upon publication.

When I write, I always consider how a given post will look next year, the year after – five years out, ten years out, and so on. I didn’t always write this way; when I was journalling, rather than blogging, I often wrote for the moment. For the ephemera. The unfortunate consequence of this is dissatisfying publications, arguments with friends, being misunderstood – or worse, professional consequences later in life.

You don’t even have to go out that far. Not everyone can, or needs to, plan on a lifelong scale; few people need to live their lives more than a few days in advance. In which case, think of posterity anyway.

How will what you do online influence people an hour after it’s posted?

How will your tweet be perceived two hours from now?

How will your industry see your blog entry after you’ve been picked up by a major aggregator?

What does your legacy look like now, with you at your most active?

What would it look like if you took a month off, starting right now?

When you hit publish – and don’t get me wrong, I want you to hit publish – consider… What will you think about what you posted, immediately after you’ve posted it?

Delete’s always an option. But then, are you participating in revisionist history?

Filed Under: Marketing Strategy Tagged With: archiving, Blogging, posterity, social media, the great index

Wanting By Proxy

July 7, 2011 by Ian Leave a Comment

You want to be a rockstar? Awesome! Do you have a band?

No? Oh. Well, you can’t be a rockstar until you have a band. Can you play an instrument?

No. I see. Well, you probably won’t form a band until you know what your place there is.

Oh, wait.

Your ambitions are different – you want to be a CEO.

Ok, do you run a division? No.

I see a pattern.

Do you have a good position in a good company? No…? Really?

How much is your dream to be a CEO helping you in your day to day life, if you’re not on the path to being one?

Wanting to be the CEO is no help to your daily work if you’re stuck in the mail room. None at all.

Filed Under: Marketing Strategy

I Wish People Knew…

July 6, 2011 by Ian 2 Comments

In response to this post by Amber Naslund, where she asks what we wish more people knew about us, I’d like to share.

I wish more people knew;

  • On the Myers-Briggs Typology Indicator, I’ve registered as INFP (Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling, Perceptive).
  • It’s very easy to startle me, but almost impossible to surprise me.
  • I have issues building habits – it takes forever, but it does happen.
  • I’m a huge roleplay geek – D&D, White Wolf games, text-based roleplay…
  • But not LARP. Never LARP.
  • I’m writing a novel, and I’m almost done.
  • Before I was a marketer, I wanted to be an accountant.
  • Before I wanted to be an accountant, I wanted to be an army marksman.
  • I’m scared. Of everything. All the damn time.
  • I hate lists because I hate disclusion, and lists always have to end somewhere.

What do you wish more people knew about you?

Filed Under: Personal

What If It’s the Only Way?

July 5, 2011 by Ian Leave a Comment

What if the only way to fix worldwide poverty is to abandon the idea of consumer credit?

What if the only way to cure cancer is gene splicing humans with animals?

What if we can’t escape, as a race, to other planets before our planet dies?

We never ask many of these questions, not because we don’t think of them, but because they’re incredibly hard to answer. But why? There have to be alternatives, we tell ourselves – there must be possibilities. There are unknown quantities in so many sciences, unknown variables in so many others – how can we possibly believe that there is ever a situation with only one solution?

Because we’re scared, most of the time, that we’re not thinking of things in the right way, and that there are blocks to our perceiving appropriate alternatives. Does this make us less valid as humans?

How about these:

What if social media is not the panacea for business we think it is?

What if democratization of media is a bad idea?

What if we can’t make every business survive?

What if you don’t have a future as a public speaker?

The best thing to do when faced with a question that amounts to “What if it’s the only way?” isn’t to accept an answer.

The best thing to do is to ask a different question.

Filed Under: Content Strategy

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