Oneness

Posted on July 31, 2007 by Richard K Miller

Oneness with work is “flow”.

Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. (source)

The act of creating something, whether it be an article, a poem, a website, a computer program, or some other creative human expression, is one of my most cherished activities. … It usually takes a while for me to fully enter the highly creative flow state, but once I’m there I lose awareness of everything but the present moment and the ideas flowing through me. (source)

Oneness with surroundings is a principle of Eastern thought.

…practitioners of Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Taoism have honed the discipline of overcoming the duality of self and object as a central feature of spiritual development. (source)

The idea of overcoming duality of self and object is a key theme of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert Pirsig (1974). “When you’re not dominated by feelings of separateness from what you’re working on, then you can be said to ‘care’ about what you’re doing. That is what caring really is: ‘a feeling of identification with what one’s doing.’ (ibid.)

Oneness with people is a Christian virtue.

…be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace shall be with you. (source)

And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind… (source)

Oneness with God comes through the Atonement of Jesus

The word [Atonement] describes the setting “at one” of those who have been estranged, and denotes the reconciliation of man to God. (source)

And now Father, I pray unto thee for them … that they may believe in me, that I may be in them as thou, Father, art in me, that we may be one. (source)

Lesser Things

Posted on July 26, 2007 by Richard K Miller

I recently read similar passages from two very different books.

The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, chapter 5, “The End of Time Management”:

Effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. Efficiency is performing a given task (whether important or not) in the most economical manner possible. Being efficient without regard to effectiveness is the default mode of the universe.

What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it. Efficiency is still important, but it is useless unless applied to the right things.

Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of laziness — lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.

Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant. Being selective — doing less — is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.

Men of Valor by Robert L. Millet, chapter 2, “Have Done with Lesser Things”:

…drawing closer to my Heavenly Father, serving the people about me, and growing in gospel scholarship — along with devoting as much time as I could to my wife, children, and extended family — were the actions that had long-term, even eternal implications. Yet in reality I had spent the bulk of my time the previous week shuffling from one … activity to another.

More than once my friend and mentor, Robert J. Matthews, said to me, “Robert L., be careful not to spend your life laboring in secondary causes.”

…”have done with lesser things.” Lesser things do not satisfy. They do not fill the hunger of the human soul. They do not bring peace and rest. Lesser things do not build the family unit, bring harmony into the home, or fortify relationships that are intended to be everlasting.

Until yesterday, I thought the phrase “have done with lesser things” referred to frugality or resourcefulness, like “make due with less.” But these five words, in a bit of antiquated style, mean “be done with lesser things.”

The Patriot Act and Customer Service

Posted on July 19, 2007 by Richard K Miller

I. Mac and Linux computers come with a command called “rsync” that makes backup and synchronization easy. Every morning before work I synchronize my 4 year old dying Powerbook to my iMac at work. When I get home, I synchronize back. This way, I get my same mail, documents, and music wherever I am, and if something were to happen to one computer, I’d have a backup. I synchronize over the Internet, but I know a local guy that synchronizes to his iPod so he can physically carry his updates in and out of the office.

Photo by quimby

II. At work, we’ve begun using a service called rsync.net for backup. We synchronize our files to their service and pay them $1.60 per gigabyte per month. It’s a pretty inexpensive way to do backup, and it’s nice to have the backup offsite. The rsync.net engineers with whom I’ve spoken have been top notch.

For privacy, we actually use a derivative of rsync called “duplicity”, which encrypts our data before storing them at rsync.net. Their website explains how to use duplicity and other encryption techniques, but I thought it was particularly interesting to find they publish a “warrant canary”. Because the Patriot Act allows the service of secret warrants for the search and seizure of data, and criminal penalties for failing to maintain secrecy, rsync.net publishes a weekly declaration that they haven’t been served a warrant:

rsync.net will also make available, weekly, a “warrant canary” in the form of a cryptographically signed message containing the following:

- a declaration that, up to that point, no warrants have been served, nor have any searches or seizures taken place

- a cut and paste headline from a major news source, establishing date

Special note should be taken if these messages ever cease being updated, or are removed from this page.

Source: rsync.net Warrant Canary

If the “canary” dies, you’re supposed to close shop and get out.

I don’t know the legal implications of a warrant canary, but it seems like a particularly unique example of putting the customer first!

Markets are like parking lots

Posted on July 18, 2007 by Richard K Miller

Markets are like parking lots.

To get a spot:

Get there early, or
Park where there’s less competition (but you’ll have to walk more), or
Find a proprietary advantage that sets you apart and locks out your competitors

Parking is good when you’ve got two wheels — motorcycle or scooter. Imagine my excitement in finding a shady spot near the door which had been “reserved” by a car that parked over the line, blocking out all my four-wheeled competitors. I left for lunch and came back to a full lot, but my spot was still saved. That’s good business.

Market segmentation on your blog

Posted on July 10, 2007 by Richard K Miller

Seth Godin has suggested that you treat new visitors to your blog differently from returning users. New users should be given context and background about you, and perhaps be invited to become permanent subscribers to your blog. Returning users should have quick access to your new material.

You could also consider turning off ads for your longtime subscribers. On one hand, you’ll forego ad revenue from a large group of people and prevent your advertisers from targeting a known group, but on the other hand, it might deepen the loyalty and increase the satisfaction of your biggest fans. Or you could do the opposite. Personally, I like the first more than the second.

For WordPress users, I wrote a WordPress plugin to do simple market segmentation. It was already the most visited page on my blog but traffic recently jumped with a link from the namesake last week. One blogger even created a graphic for it. Thanks.

Do you do any market segmentation on your blog or website? Where do you make the split, and how is the experience different?