A difficulty I've faced for most of my life (though im still relatively young) both in business and in working on personal problems, is one of organization and motivation. Often a project will start with an interesting theoretical problem that is exciting to solve, but once that "hump" is crested projects all become implementation and practical details. And, well, details are usually boring, and there are so many exciting "problems" that could be being solved in the time consumed working out the fine details of just one.
If, say, there's no immediate financial incentive to deliver on some personal project, how do you folks stay focused and organized enough to see it through to completion without becoming bored and/or distracted?
You mean some chore or project at home? Simple: Get married. From then on there will be a honey-do list and woe to those whose projects drone on forever or never get done. Because then SWMBO isn't going to be happy and as they say in the south, "If momma ain't happy, ain't nobody gonna be happy" :-)
I just finished some carpet work which I had quietly hoped would fall off the bottom of the honey-do list. It didn't, it popped back to the top at o-nine-thirty this morning ...
And no, maintenance on the motorcycle does not count.
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| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
When writing code, a common observation is that folks can get the
*internals* of a loop working relatively easily. But, have problems getting it *started* and winding it *down*! I.e., they can greedily obsess over the intricacy of the loop content but don't consider -- nor are motivated to consider -- how to
*get* to that place and, once there and finished, how to get back *out*.
The same sort of "disinterest" applies to dealing with errors, user needs, etc.
In the hardware world, it's the equivalent of getting a circuit working -- but not bothering to sort out the reliability and service issues, manufacturability, packaging aesthetics, etc.
In *all* cases, the abhorrence of "testing" and "documentation".
With "maturity" (bogus word), I think you learn the value of these other "niggling details" and how they can make an otherwise brilliant solution total crap! Only doing the things you "like" is a sign of selfishness and immaturity -- like only eating the foods that taste good vs. those that are "good for you".
To more directly answer your final question, you (i.e., *I*) focus on "being done" as the reward.
I have the same problem sometimes. I started kayaking a few years ago and I think that helped. I do kayaking like others do hiking I guess. I make a journey out of it and spend some hours at a time on the water. It is always more fun paddling out than back, but I find things to keep me interested. Sometimes I just focus on the rhythm and enjoy the zen of the moment.
Electronics has gotten that way for me. I don't have to work anymore and mostly do it for the fun. When I do a project I find a lot of it is done for the zen of the work rather than any real pleasure from the intellectual aspects.
Heck, just last night I started a repair on a canoe thwart. The work is not really fun, but a bit tedious. Still I managed to enjoy it by not focusing on the displeasure and letting the inherent pleasure of using hand tools come forth.
That's why I will now trudge to the eastern end of the property for some weed eating. I'd rather go on a mountain bike ride but that'll have to wait.
Hey, Jim, tried to email you but even when going through your web site it gets returned "A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address failed: ...".
Did I get placed on the naughty list for some liberal statement? Can't remember any in the last 50 years or so :-)
Nope. But my new server does utilize the RHSBL black-list police to block _known_ spam URL's... maybe your ISP is the naughty one??
I have E-mailed you to make sure you didn't make a typo in your old age >:-} ...Jim Thompson
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| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
One (and best) is to do work for other people who will be let down in some way or another if I don't do it. Especially when this involves me getting paid, it helps me keep my nose to the grind stone.
Two, I try to make a point, when stalled, to look ahead to how cool it'll be when I get things done and working.
Three, for personal projects I try to have a strict upper limit on the number of stalled projects I'll keep around -- if I start getting up there, then I either dispose of 'em (e.g., my '71 Vega engine swap project that moved to Montana last summer) or finish them (e.g. my TUT control line timer project, which I finished partially by agreeing to help someone meet a deadline. See
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tut.html, which not once mentions that it's a timer for electric-powered control line airplanes, oh bad me! (I may change this Real Soon)).
When we do stuff to sell, there are all sorts of secondary drivers, beyond the initial concepts. The board layout has to be beautiful, it has to work without kluges, manufacturing and testing have to approve, the customers should like it. It's a team sport with peer pressures and rewards everywhere.
Alone, I occasionally make something that's not sellable, like some unnecessary test circuit breadboard, or the remote automation thing for our cabin. The breadboards are art forms in their construction, and then they work and make cool waveforms or something. Poking wires into white plastic breadboard things isn't art.
It's a personal thing, whether building a circuit, and making it work, is enough to maintain your interest. There are people who just Spice things and never build them. I like cutting and Dremeling FR4 and soldering parts and seeing the waveforms on a scope, but that's just me. I like to build outrageous breadboards, which helps overcome the tedium of rounding up parts and running wires and stuff:
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But you're right, it can get tiresome after more than a few hours.
Thinking about architectures and signal processing is a huge amount of fun. Some of the downstream things, like rounding up parts and BOMs and test procedures and manuals, can get to be a chore.
Do you *want* to follow through and build stuff and make it work? If it's just a hobby, playing with the concepts, or simulating, may be all you want to do. Of course, building something that works validates the abstract ideas. Without an end goal of some sort, I can see running out of motivation.
In larger organizations, there are people who do stay at the top of the abstraction stack, and let other people implement.
--
John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers
jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
I don't know but I found that such simple blanket blocking is not a good way to weed out spam. Our church did that, until I rattled the cage and they stopped. Because it resulted in lots of legit emails being dumped. If you must use it one way is to whitelist everyone you have already written emails to.
I am feeling younger than 10 years ago since I started mountain biking and road biking again. I am now up to 80-90 miles per week with some of the rides being quite gnarly. The kind where visitors occasionally scream "Holy smokes!".
Can't be a typo because on the first one I used the very address from the last PM I had received from you (by clicking the address) and the
2nd time I went through your web site.
I just sent another email but last time the bounce message took several days. If it doesn't work I'll try Skype during the week as you suggested. It's nothing urgent.
If you do get a reject, display all headers, copy and paste into a text file, and send the text file to me... there's all kinds of possibilities for rejection.
(My blocking isn't blanket, it's just RHSBL-listed sites _known_ to support "broadcast" spamming.) ...Jim Thompson
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| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
_When_ was this? A few weeks ago, when my site was moving to a new server, DNS may not have been able to find analog-innovations.com during the move. ...Jim Thompson
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| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Did you receive my email from 1/2h ago? If not then it'll be tough to send a text file to you.
As long as it doesn't block whole URLs of common ISPs it should be ok. There was one (huge) incidence where a large German ISP blanket-blocked West Coast AT&T. Suddenly I got calls from Germany, people almost desperately wanting me to check in with a business contact of theirs that was now unreachable. This is one of the many reasons why I still have a fax machine. Internet will never achieve the reliablity of POTS and one reasons are spam cop lists.
It was on Tuesday, May 26. An hour ago I sent another email, responding to yours.
Now I'll have to get dinner on the barbie. Pizza tonight, my wife always makes it from scratch, grilled over Lazzari Mesquite charcoal. If was was a good boy I'll get anchovies on my part of the pizza (she doesn't like them).
That's funny! I love anchovies so much I could eat the whole tin in a Caesar salad... my wife hates them ;-) ...Jim Thompson
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| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Didn't get it. When you get it back, text me the reject info.
Oooops... I just remembered a "back door". I'll activate it and then have you E-mail the reject headers to it... once Cox gets their act together :-(, seems some security changes all @#$%ed up.
...Jim Thompson
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| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Guy goes into Motorola Credit Union and takes out a home improvement loan.
Goes home, hands his wife the money, and tells her to take a hike ;-)
(I worked with the guy at Motorola SPD, Mesa, for four years. At the time I commiserated... but now, here I am married for 55 years, and I wouldn't change her out for the world.) ...Jim Thompson
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| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
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