Thoughts on Life, Design, and Business
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App Prototyping – 3 Types to Rapidly Validate Your Startup Idea
10 Hours, 10 Days, 10 Years
How will I feel about this decision in 10 Hours, 10 Days, 10 Years? I can’t remember where I first heard this but I remember clinging onto it almost 15 years ago. It thrust my thoughts and my resulting actions into more consideration and contemplation. As I was getting started in college, it’s a mindset…
Reflecting on 2019: The Year in Review
Looking back, twenty-Nineteen was a great year of learning, growth, and executing. Looking back, that’s a pretty common statement I use when reviewing the prior year. Here are the previous annual review posts: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018. While I didn’t hit my Big 10 goals that I set earlier in the year, I achieved…
Digital Minimalism
The Technology Machines are Everywhere I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I struggle with disconnecting from the technology machines we all have come to know, love, and use. Computers are everywhere. They’re in our homes. They’re in our offices. They’re in our pockets. There seems to be no escaping their reach. —…
Establishing Weekly Habits & Retrospectives
Looking back at 2019, there were some great accomplishments, some new habits, and a few things that were more difficult for me to make stick. About half-way through the year, I started working on a new pattern of weekly goals and along with that, reflection at the end of the week. Of course, with a…
Reflecting on 2018: The Year in Review
Personally This year I embraced becoming a father and loved every minute of it. I started off the year with two weeks of paternity leave. When you have a tiny human that you and your wife are responsible for, it’s an incredible feeling. It’s been great being alongside Violet during her first year journey. Violet’s…
Understanding Your Customers’ Journey: Improve the Way You Help Your Customers
Less, but better.
Dieter Rams. Photo by Gary Hustwit. Dieter Rams Two weeks ago, a small group of our Headway crew (mixed with crew from design, development, and marketing) took the short trip down to Milwaukee for the RAMS documentary premiere by Gary Hustwit. I saw the documentary pop up on kickstarter a couple years ago and decided…
The More of Less: Finding the Life You Want Under Everything You Own
A Brief Background When I think about it, I’ve really been into minimalism for a while, giving it my own meanings without really knowing exactly how other people approach their pursuit of owning less to make the rest more meaningful. For me, the journey of less started when my wife and I sold or donated…
Reflecting on 2017: The Year in Review
Before writing this post, I reflected back at my reviews of 2016, 2015, and 2014. Each year had it’s challenges and victories, and each year I learned and grew both personally and professionally. The trend of growth continued this past year in 2017. I love new challenges, new obstacles, and figuring out effective ways to solve…
Improving Design Versioning, Collaboration & Process with Abstract
Reflecting on 2016: The Year in Review
As we settled back into the Wisconsin lifestyle and stark transition from the Aloha Lifestyle in Hawaii, 2016 was great, but it had plenty of struggles. Overall, it was a pretty eventful year filled with lots of travels, new experiences, and growth. Colorado Snowboarding My brother and I bought brand new snowboarding setups in our…
Introducing Seaworthy – A Podcast about Building Successful Software
Where You Are Doesn’t Define Who You Are
It’s hard to believe, but it’s been 6 months Today since my wife and I moved back from the land of Aloha, oceans, and mountains. It’s been an abrupt but gradual transition back into the life we used to live for 25+ years before we experienced the Aloha lifestyle. The biggest changes are the weather,…
Reflecting on 2015: The Year in Review
A Year on an Island Made me Grow. There is a huge list of things that go through your mind when you have a dream of traveling and moving somewhere entirely new. It’s scary, frightening, freeing and exciting all at the same time. My wife and I had a dream to move to Hawai’i on…
Become a Keeper of Time
Priority Required In my last post I talked about getting time back on your side and that we need to think about time differently. With that said, we really need to focus on prioritizing our time and planning it out, otherwise it gets spent in ways that we can’t control. There are always going to…
Get Time Back on Your Side
We all realize that time is essential. We all have the same amount, and only by being intentional and ruthlessly prioritizing what’s important can we get out of it what we want. Regardless of what phase in life we’re at, we all have similar factors that pull us in different directions; family, friends, business/work, fitness,…
Aloha Epicurrence No. 2
This is a documentarianistic post about Epicurrence No. 2, from October 3rd – 9th, so it is quite lengthy! All photos were taken by me and my FujiFilm X-A2 or iPhone 6+ unless otherwise noted. What is Epicurrence? Epicurrence is the brainchild of Dann Petty. He started it less than a year ago with the…
Making Consumption Actionable
I’ve been reading a lot of books lately, but I need to start digesting and applying more of the advice and actions within the books. I consume a lot of content from a plethora of mediums; Twitter, Medium, Blogs, Magazines, Books, Podcasts, etc, but I’ve realized that most of this content goes un-implemented. There are…
Meerkat Tells Your Story Live
Tweet Live Video The Meerkat landing page says just that. It allows you to start a live video stream from the app which then tweets that your show has started. Meerkat was founded by Ben Rubin, and built on Twitter’s Fabric platform. Up until Saturday morning, it tied into Twitter’s social graph meaning that it…
Measuring the Impact of Our Decisions
I walk up to the counter at Starbucks and order my usual white chocolate mocha. I’m in mid-training season for a combine and I start to think about how many calories I just ordered. Is the preferred taste worth it? I make this purchase all the time, how is this affecting me overall? Usually the decisions…
Listen & Learn: Podcasts That Rock
I wanted to make a list and share a lot of the podcasts that I listen to on a regular basis. There’s so much great content out there from great hosts, guests, and so much to learn from others. “Good people learn a lesson once. Great people learn the lesson from someone else’s mistakes.” I especially enjoy podcasts…
Reflecting on 2014: The Year in Review
It’s a brand new year and while I don’t base my goal setting on the calendar, I do take time to reflect on the past year. What did I do? What did I complete? What did I let slip that I really wanted to finish and why isn’t it done? How do I get better…
Startup Weekend Honolulu: Snacks
When my wife and I were planning to move to Hawaii in October, one of the first things I did was look up the startup communities, hubs, and events on Oahu. After settling in and arriving, I bought my designer pass to Startup Weekend Honolulu as a good introduction to meet some new people and build…
Football & Fitness: Narwhals Podcast 006
A couple months ago Drew invited me to come on his & Keirans new podcast, Narwhals, and we were able to catch up and schedule a time that worked. What is Narwhals? “A podcast about design, development, business, family and fun. Join Drew Wilson and Keiran Flanigan as they share their experience on making a…
A Place for Writing, Learning & Growing.
WELCOME Welcome to my new website! I’m glad that I finally made time to make it – I’m really looking forward to writing and posting recent work here. I’m going to be documenting thoughts through this blog with a variety of topics about design, startups, products, and just life in general. Writing helps you articulate and…