Kernings & Chrome

I am often asked about Twitter’s prospects in a world of Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.

While those services are all popular products, they aren’t Twitter.

Twitter is the only place to have an open public conversation. Comments on Instagram posts are fine but limited to the author and the commenter at best. The commenter is subordinate to the author. There isn’t a public conversation with snapchat stories. And Facebook is really about private conversations.

A good recent example happened yesterday. I am excited about the new AppleTV because it’s now open for developers. I tweeted that out.

My friend @fredwilson tweeted back with a counter argument and we had a fun and interesting back and forth. A few other jumped into the mix which was great. Then @pmarca retweeted one of my replies which expanded the public conversation and the public discourse continued.

There are many things I love about Twitter. The people. The simplicity. The immediacy. The transparency. The mission. The community. That blue bird.

But the dynamic, public conversation experience is uniquely Twitter.

There is nothing else like it.

(via The Pencilsword: On a plate - The Wireless)

As I mentioned before, I write daily on “Allen’s Thoughts”, my Wattpad internal blog.  Many people ask me what I write on “Allen’s Thoughts”.  Well, join Wattpad and you will find out :-)  “Allen’s Thoughts” covers a wide range of topics about the company and everyone in the company can participate through comments.  

Also, quite a few people asked me if I can share them on Making Things Out Of Nothing.  Although I do want to cross post on here, sadly many of the posts are not suitable for externally consumption.  

But it is not all or nothing.  I will sharing some of the posts here.  Today I will starting with “Time Management” that I shared with the Wattpad team a few Fridays ago.

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It’s Friday.  I am going to pick a lighter topic today.  In one of the 1:1s, one of you asked me how I manage my time.  While I wouldn’t claim I am an expert in time management, I do put a very high value on time.  We’re all given the same 24 hours in a day.  What you do with it, how you spend it, invest it and how you let it leak away is entirely up to you.

Here is another way to think about it:  Other companies have 8386 hours until the end of the year to complete their 2015 company goals.  So do we.  Using our time wisely can give us an unfair advantage.

Here is how I manage my time.  To be respectful to your time, I will keep it down to just over 10 bullet points (and max 140 characters each):

- My calendar won’t lie.  Be very disciplined about it.  The most important task(s) should get the lions share. - I can always find ways to further optimize.  I constantly do a “post mortem” with myself so that I can “waste less time” in the future. - Avoid “fear of missing out” or FOMO.  You won’t miss the next “FB just acquired WhatsApp”. - Keep your notification to the absolute minimal.  You are not obliged to react to every push notification. - Set a time limit.  Even for important tasks.  e.g. our 30-minute 1-on-1s forced us to make good use of time. - Don’t let other people drive your priorities but still be supportive to your colleagues, users and customers (remember to set the right expectations). - Don’t be afraid to say no.  I have a “politely say no” Gmail template and I use it frequently. - Focus on what needs to get done rather than what you love to do.  Hopefully they should be the same but in many cases they might be different. - Make full use of your fragmented time.  You can always find a task that can fit into that 2 minutes while waiting in line. - Ignore the spammers or unsolicited email. - Give yourself a (small) quota of how many Internet posts (images, articles etc.) that you would read.  There is unlimited content out there.  You can’t finish them all. - You don’t need to read the full posts.  In many cases, just read the headline is fine. - Don’t click on anything from BuzzFeed despite the “5 things you don’t want to miss” subject line.

To suggest that this is about irreconcilable values, an attack against the freedom of speech and expression is a farce. It is also a corpulent, untruthful summation of European values, which are liberal only when it benefits those in power.

It is a criminal offense to deny the holocaust in Western Europe. In France in particular, religious attire of a certain type is unlawful. The colour of your skin in Germany or the wrong amount of facial hair on the wrong skin colour in Belgium can undermine your opportunities for employment, earning a promotion or renting an apartment.

Non-European values are unwelcome here in the land of liberty.

[…]

Lives have been lost, as hundreds and thousands are every day in cities and towns and villages across the globe – to crime, war, disease and famine. Yet, how is it that these daily routines do not set in motion immediate meta-narratives of human incompatibility? Is it because these happen in towns with names like Bangui or Beni, where life is cheap and ideology irrelevant?