Tag: Productivity

  • Help Me Find a Parking Spot

    Help Me Find a Parking Spot

    Last week I  was sitting in bed, wrapping my brain around a programming problem presented by my newest project. With no warning, someone started pounding on the wall of my RV. No identification, no verbal communication. Just banging on the wall. Within a few seconds someone else started banging on the other side. Would you…

  • The Risks I Take

    A couple people recently have asked about the risks I take. On one hand, as they point out, I play it extremely safe by eating healthy foods and abstaining from alcohol and drugs. On the other hand, I climb construction cranes and go skydiving. Isn’t this a contradiction? It isn’t – at least in my…

  • Entrepreneurs Don’t Want Jobs

    Entrepreneurs Don’t Want Jobs

    If you paid me fifty times what I make now to work at a regular job, I wouldn’t do it. Over the past few weeks I’ve informally asked some of my other entrepreneur friends how much they’d have to be paid to work a normal job in their industry. None of them quoted any reasonable…

  • I Got Twitter.com/Tynan!

    I Got Twitter.com/Tynan!

    Fresh off my eleventh hour victory in buying Tynan.com, I turned my sights at my next vanity obsession, the @tynan Twitter username. I was late on the Twitter train, and by the time I climbed aboard, @tynan was taken. I settled for @tynanbtyb, which made sense back when my site was called Better Than Your…

  • How to Build the Smallest World Class Camera System

    How to Build the Smallest World Class Camera System

    I spent $1800 on my first high quality camera. I was on the brink of Life Nomadic, and I justified the purchase with two ideas. The first was that I would be seeing a lot of things for the first, and possibly the only, time. Second, the particular camera I bought, an Epson R-D1s, seemed…

  • How to Have a Workplace Everywhere in the World for $4.18 a Month

    How to Have a Workplace Everywhere in the World for $4.18 a Month

    When Todd and I arrived in Panama the second time, we couldn’t find a decent apartment to rent. Prices had gone up by 50% since the last time we visited, and it was Carnaval Season, which crushed availability. So we stayed in a hostel. The location was great, our room was decent enough, but to…

  • Who You Are (a.k.a. My Target Audience)

    Who You Are (a.k.a. My Target Audience)

    A couple weeks ago I asked you to take another survey, this time sharing details about who you are as a person. This was borne from a conversation between some blogger friends who discussed the importance of knowing who your audience is. While optimistic, a lingering worry in the back of my head was that…

  • How and Why to Self Publish and Distribute Your Book

    How and Why to Self Publish and Distribute Your Book

    Step 1. Write Book Step 2. ??? Step 3. Profit Let’s focus on Step 2. There are a number of ways you can disseminate your book, and since I’ve tried the most popular of them, I’m going to share my experiences and advice for each. Self Distributed eBook This is when you whip up a…

  • My 2009 In Review

    My 2009 In Review

      I’ve given up on doing my yearly or bi-yearly goals. Why? I don’t actually do them, and I don’t actually care. I like having a somewhat chaotic life, changing my priorities and focus as I go along. Most of the time when I look back at my previous incomplete goals I’m glad I didn’t…

  • The Peg System: How to Memorize Lists of Ten in Twenty Seconds

    The Peg System: How to Memorize Lists of Ten in Twenty Seconds

      I first learned about the peg system through pickup. The idea was simple: rather than bore a girl with dumb stories about work and parties like every other guy, you teach her an interesting skill. The next day the one guy she remembers is the one who stood out and taught her something. And…