I went back to school

Only for a day, but still...it was a pretty good day. Here's a collection of related links until I have a full post ready (took lots of notes which will hopefully lead to a lot of ideas).

General links:
Startup School Main Site
Scheduled Speakers
What is Y Combinator?

From the conference:
Tim O'Reilly's talk: How to think about the future
Paul Graham's (word for word) talk
Collection of notes from the other speakers

And for now, here are some notable quotes from the day:

"You make what you can measure" - Joe Kraus
"Find a parade and get in front on it" - Tim O' Reilly
"In a startup there's always a disaster happening" - Paul Graham
"I view money as an errand to get out of the way quickly" - PG
"Foo up fast" - Caterina Fake
"Don't hamster me" - Caterina Fake
"The UI....eh, it's alright" - Caterina talking about Flickr
"If your product can change a user's behavior you got yourself a winner" - Om Malik

Lastly, my Flickr pics from Startup School.

More soon!

Jump already!

Turns out Scott Adams (Dilbert creator) writes a pretty decent blog. In particular, I liked his "Pleasure Unit Theory":

People organize their lives to get their minimum required units of pleasure. While individuals vary in terms of how many units of pleasure they need, everyone is striving to reach their personal minimum.

I think it helps explain the whole blogging/blog reading thing...if I've had a crappy day at work, then I know I can come home, read thru my favorite blogs and get a minumum amount of pleasure in for the day. The problem is when the "striving to get the minimum" becomes a habit, even when you're ready to do a bit more work to get to that next level of pleasure. Like electrons, it's not a linear increase to get to that next energy (or pleasure) level, instead it takes a big leap, and sometimes when you can't see what's on the other side you're content to stay where you're at.

Well here's a reminder...don't be afraid to jump!

Related: Seth Godin's "Understanding the Local Max"

Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it.

That quote is from Lily Tomlin, found in a post from A Clear Eye For Branding's blog.

I love how the author calls BS on Forbes magazine and there top 10 list of how to reduce stress. Basically, rather than sleeping more and getting a massage the best way to reduce stress is to figure out what's causing it in the first place...

Do you not like your job? Is it unclear how you provide value? Are you lying to yourself, your customers, your loved ones? Do you have control over your current situation?