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No matter where we go these days our phones are always with us. They keep us in touch with the wider world.

I feel like my brain has an invisible connection to the internet. In a way the internet is just an extension of our minds. We can find out about pretty much anything that takes our interest with just a few taps on a screen.

Always being connected does have it’s downsides though. Our concentration is constantly being interrupted by notifications. You hear that characteristic buzzing sound and instinctively look at your phone. We don’t even have to think about it anymore. It’s become a reflex.

Why do we let notifications rule our lives like this?

Many people have a fear of missing out. They need to know about everything. Every blog post. Every email. Every drunken picture posted to their friends facebook page. But what if we just turned it all off? Would we really miss out on anything? What if we cut out all the noise and just made things simple again.

A few months ago I did exactly that. I was finding it hard to concentrate under the constant bombardment of notifications. A lot of which really weren’t that important. So I just turned them all off, and it feels great. I’ve got my productivity back

I think a lot of app developers add notifications without really considering what impact they will have on their users. Sure, it’s a great way of reminding someone that your app exists but is the information really so important that the user needs to know right this minute. Could it not wait until the next time the user opens the app?

Over time I’ve turned a few things back on. I get notifications for messages that hit my priority inbox in gmail now, but most other apps remain muted. I feel liberated. Finally I can focus on my work without being constantly interrupted.

If you suffer from this problem too, try turning off all the notifications on your phone for a week. You won’t be missing out on much.

Today I wanted to share with you some advice that I received when I was 17. It was given to me by Edd Smith. At the time Edd was running a company called Dreadworx that was one of the countries largest sellers of dreadlock products. He now runs a creative agency called Purple Claw.

This email changed my whole outlook on business and gave me the confidence to go out and start a company. I hope that it’s as useful for you as it has been for me.

When you get home and you think about the computer idea, ignore what your family think, ignore what your friends think, ignore what your teachers think and ignore the negative thoughts in your head telling you not to do it. If you know you can sell computer parts (and as long as you don’t get yourself into massive debt!) then you should and at the end of your time in sixth form you can think ”˜hey it was fun but I’ve had enough of that and am going to uni’ (with I might add a fantastic addition to the CV) or you might think ”˜this is going really well I could make a living from this’. All that matters is your own self belief in your ability to sell products and don’t let anything or anyone else let you wonder otherwise. Work hard, believe in your ability and you will go far.

Another entreprenuer I met said something along these lines to me once, actually he wrote it on a bit of paper after I gave a business presentation to him as part of the A-Level course – still have it on my pinboard in the kitchen at home.

“The blind belief of others in your ability is always a boost when even those closest to you don’t always see the opportunity you see” ;o).

For the past few years I have been watching the revolution that is going on in education with much excitement. A traditional college education is rapidly becoming obsolete as the standard of online courses surpasses that of the courses taught at many institutions. Of course, I am biased. I never went to college. I took the view that there was nothing I would learn at college that I couldn’t teach myself using information that is freely available on the internet. I was probably a bit naive at the time (after all, college isn’t just about the classes) but I stand by the fact that it was one of the best decisions I have ever made.

Online education does however have some shortcomings. The one that I have been thinking about a lot recently is how we measure the quality of online education. The difference in quality of online courses makes it extremely difficult for employers to effectively gauge the value of online courses when reviewing applicants. Students taking a course from one organisation may get a significantly better education than a student taking a similar course from another institution. This isn’t a new problem, it existed in the traditional college model too, but I think it’s something we need to try to fix.

Each organisation offering online courses has come up with their own way of measuring a students progress. Be that using a points system, badges, certificates or something else. This works fine within that organisations ecosystem but these grading systems don’t play well with each other. What we need is a standardised system that represents both the quantity of content that a student has consumed as well as the quality of that content.

This isn’t a trivial issue and I don’t have an answer as of yet, but it’s something I’ve spent considerable time thinking about. If you have any ideas that you’d like to share please reach out on twitter or in the comments below.

As I was reading through the latest edition of Businessweek yesterday morning I came across an Obituary on Aaron Swartz. I never knew Aaron, but like millions of others I felt the effects of his work. There was one passage in the obituary that really resonated with me. It describes the state of the internet as it is now.

“This is the tension at the heart of the Internet: whether to own or to make. You can own a site or a program – Apple’s iTunes, Microsoft Word, Facebook, Twitter – but you can’t own a language. Yet the languages make sites and programs useful and possible. You make the Internet work by making languages universal and free; you make money from the Internet by closing off bits of it and charging to get in. There’s certainly nothing wrong with making money, but without the innovations of complicated, brilliant people like Swartz, no one would be making money at all.” Brendan Greeley

Does it have to be a choice between open and closed? Between an internet where users are free to act under their own will; or one where their actions are dictated and controlled. It’s clear which internet Aaron Swartz wanted. He fought hard to repel attempts at censorship so that knowledge can flow freely to those that wish to acquire it.

It is easy to take our freedom for granted. To forget that it was our forefathers that fought to give it to us. Today we face a new challenge. We must persist in our fight to protect an open and free internet. For if we lose the battle, we lose the single greatest resource humanity has ever had.

I was watching an episode of Charlie Rose the other day in which an idea was presented that really resonated with me, so I thought I would pass it on.

In the episode, Bill Maris and Kevin Rose (both from Google Ventures) were being interviewed when the question was asked: “Who is the next Steve Jobs?”. Now usually when this question is asked a flurry of names get mentioned. Jeff Bezos. Larry Page. Mark Zuckerberg. This time however Bill Maris simply answered by saying that he is not looking for the next Steve Jobs. He is looking for people that are capable of changing the world as Steve Jobs did. People with “a healthy disregard for the impossible”.

This thought stuck with me.

Our own personalities are a collection of the traits, ideas and mannerisms that we have picked up from those around us as we have walked the winding (and often complicated) path that is life.

As children, we learned by copying our parents. As we grow older we continue to copy from those around us and from the people we admire. It’s just part of human nature.

However it is important not to get too hung up on a single person. We shouldn’t be trying to emulate all of the traits of an individual just because they have been judged as a success. As if to think that by copying their personality we too will be able to enjoy the same success.

Sorry to burst the bubble folks, but it doesn’t work like that.

I personally admit to having fallen fowl of copycat syndrome a few times over the past few years. 
As I’ve learned more about the people I admire, I have tried to merge their personality traits with mine. Sometimes consciously, sometimes not. But it has always essentially led me back to the same conclusion.

Getting hung up on trying to act like someone you admire just leads you further away from discovering who you really are.

Don’t try to be the next Steve Jobs, Larry Page or Mark Zuckerberg.

Just focus on being the next you.

I just finished reading ‘Start With Why‘ by Simon Sinek and thought I would just summarise the main idea presented in the book which is called The Golden Circle.

The Golden Circle is an idea that states that there are three levels of concept behind a company.

• WHAT describes what the company actually does (making a product).
• HOW describes how the company does it (their USP).
• WHY describes the companies greater vision (the reason behind what they do and how they do it).

In his book Simon Sinek states that his research has found that most companies can easily articulate WHAT they do and HOW they do it but often struggle to communicate the reason that they do it – their WHY. He also states that what makes companies like Apple Inc. different is that they not only understand their WHY but they lead with it in all that they do. From their decisions in product design to their marketing, it is clear that Apple is out to challenge the status quo. This action of leading with their WHY makes Apple stand out because so many other companies do things the other way around. They lead with WHAT they do and use their HOW to persuade people to buy their product.

Leading with your WHY first makes a connection with the customer. If they relate to and believe in your WHY they are much more likely to buy your products, even if your WHAT and HOW is not quite as good as your competitor’s. Take the iPhone for example. The iPhone is a magnificent piece of engineering but when compared to it’s competitors, if you were to judge devices based solely on their cost and feature-set the iPhone would not come out on top. So why then does Apple sell so many iPhones? It’s because the people that believe in their WHY would prefer to buy from Apple, a company that has values and clear, visible ambitions, rather than a company that they might not no so well. The best bit is that the customer doesn’t always know that this is why they are choosing to buy from one company over another. It’s to do with how the brain works.

The part of your brain that is responsible for your ‘gut feeling’ is not responsible for communication and therefore if you were to ask someone who has acted on an inner feeling why they purchased a certain device they might not be able to accurately tell you. They may say something like ‘it was cheaper’ or ‘it looked nicer’. It’s kind of like when someone asks you why you love your girlfriend or wife, you know you do but it is hard to put the feeling into words.

In this post I just wanted to give you a brief overview of the concept of the golden circle but I would definitely recommend reading Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action. It could just change the way that you approach decision making for ever. I know that it has had a big impact on me.

I will leave you with a quote for the book.

People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

It’s easy to think that with all the technology that is available today, kids will have a very different experience growing up. This is true. However, there is a view that kids spend all their time in-doors playing on their XBox, missing out on the simple pleasures that exploring their surroundings can bring.

Yesterday I decided to go for a walk around the village that I grew up in. Curiosity lead me to explore some of the places where we had made dens when we were younger. Me and my friends would spend every minute of the summer holidays building dens, getting covered in mud in the process – and we loved it. We didn’t have just one den but a whole group of dens, joined by the imagination that makes your dreams seem so real when you are young, we called it the “den chain”.

As I was walking through a wood near to my old home I stumbled across this (pictured). It was refreshing to find that children today still lust for the same satisfaction of building something within nature. This quite impressive structure reminded me of how we would sit in our dens for hours on end waiting for an imaginary ‘enemy’ to come and fight us for our territory. Of course no enemy ever came, but the strength of our imaginations was never dented.

As children, our imaginations ran wild with all that surrounded us. Dreaming up elaborate stories of heroes and villains, angels and demons, mystical beings that were never before known to man. As we grow older we lose the ability to let our imaginations guide us. We become guided by what we think we know for certain. No enemy is ever coming, sitting in a den for hours expecting one would be seen as a sign of madness.

I believe that we need to rediscover our younger imaginations and give them greater freedom to guide us along our path. Let them inspire our work and influence our decisions. With innocence and naivete we can obtain a fresh perspective of something, allowing us to see what so many before us have missed.

If you have enjoyed this post you may like Travis Schmeisser’s talk from New Adventures this January. You can find the video of his talk here: Travis Schmeisser: We Used To Build Forts

When you’ve been running a business for a while it’s sometimes easy for people to settle down and merge into the general day-to-day routine of dealing with email and plodding through the task list. The problem is that some people (me included) have the tendency to become too comfortable with this routine, we settle in and slow down. These sorts of clockwork routines will eventually only lead to something dull and uninspiring. No matter how much you love your job, if you sit and do the same thing day-in day-out for months (or even years) your not challenging yourself. You have basically become a glorified production line worker, forever doomed to undertake the same tasks.

I’m writing this post because I had a shocking realization that I’ve begun to slide into this. It’s been nearly two years since I took on running Developer City full-time and although I love the work I’m doing there, I realized that there’s nothing all that challenging anymore. I’ve definitely settled in and I’ve started to slow down.

The realization that I have started to settle in to a routine that could quite easily consume many years of my life has unsettled me. I have always been one to try and push the boundaries and to learn new things, and in a way I am still like that, but I feel that I have been poorly managing my most valuable resource, my time. There’s a lot I want to accomplish before my time is up and unfortunately it’s not going to happen in my current environment.

I think that money has been a big factor in the equation too. I don’t care much for financial wealth and I’m not rich, but as my company has grown the financial constraints that you deal with in the first months and years as a founder has dissipated. In the early days of starting a company money is always the primary concern. I started out with about £500, and out of that I had to furnish an office, pay the first months rent and bills, pay for some hosting and keep my car on the road so that I could get to meetings. I used my TV from home as a monitor so that I wouldn’t have to buy one. Turns out unplugging yourself from TV does wonders, you don’t have to hear the media moaning all the time. It’s sometimes surprising how far you can stretch something when it is a sparse resource. When it is scarce, money has a different value.

This reminds me of when I was in school and me and my friends would buy our lunch from the canteen each day. When I first started the canteen was reasonably subsidized, to the point that you could pick up a warm meal for about a pound or a filled roll for around 60p. When I would go to school money would take on a new value, in the real world 60p would barely buy you a packet of crisps but in the canteen that would be a hearty ham and salad roll or 3 big cookies. All of a sudden the value of the change in my pocket increased as I walked through those school gates. This taught me that the true value of money depends on the context in which it is used, and in some ways the amount that you have.

When a resource is scarce you hustle to make it stretch further. I only ever used to drink coffee at the office because I drink it black and it meant that I didn’t have to buy the milk and sugar that I would have if I drank tea. Thinking about this now seems ludicrous, but the extra couple of pounds a week I would save made a real difference. As money starts to become less of an issue your ability (and I guess willingness) to hustle decreases. After all, you’ve worked hard to get where you are, why not buy that nice coffee machine or that new monitor you’ve been looking at. I fell into this trap and I wish I hadn’t. When I look around my office now it saddens me to see just how much I’ve lost the hustle. Now it’s not like I’ve got solid gold figurines lying around or anything but over time I got that coffee machine, and the monitor. Subscription services are the best for catching you off guard, over time they build up and before you know it the services that you have come to rely on are costing you a considerable amount of money each month. Losing the hustle doesn’t happen overnight, it creeps up on you until one day you realise that you’ve settled in and slowed down.

If I’m honest this article is more for me than it is for anyone else, but maybe it will help someone out there to realise that the level on their hustle meter has been on the slide too. I miss the hustle, it’s my fault it’s gone and I’m sure as hell going to bring it back. For those of you out there that are still hustling away, be wary of the little temptations that will cause you to lose it. Losing the hustle is by no means the end, but it will take you off the express track.

Moral of the story – keep focused and don’t lose your hustle. Peace 🙂