A Remarkable Blog

Re-set your RSS feeds and links to the new Remarkable Tributes blog at http://aRemarkableBlog.com.

The By-Product of Work

At this stage in development (working diligently towards the first private beta of a new product) it is easy to get anxious.  A ton of things have been accomplished.  A huge pile of work remains.  Excitement is growing.  Life is in fast-forward at the same time as time is ticking painfully slow to the next milestone.   The finished product is on our minds, while the activity on a daily basis is…daily.

I ran across a quote today that might shed some light on a different approach:

Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
  – Robertson Davies

Just like happiness is not a goal, not something you find as a direct result of effort, so is contentment or peace.  You can’t demand to be satisfied with things in their various stages of incomplete.  All you can do is work, day after day, towards the goal.  Happiness, as they say, is a by-product.  A by-product of work.

A Remarkable Blog

I am not officially blogging over at http://www.ARemarkableBlog.com.  Redirect your RSS feeds.  Reassign your bookmarks.  Update your address book.   Thanks much!

#1 Way to Address Procrastination: Do Something!

Isn’t procrastination such a fascinating thing!  It can lead to great innovations and streamlining as deadlines loom and the unimportant is stripped off the “to do” list.  It can lead to elevated blood pressure and heart rate and untold damage on our psyches.  There is always a good reason to procrastinate a task or decision. Sometimes you procrastinate really important things, perhaps because they are so important and you want to do them right.  This is where I find myself on this Sunday night.

In preparation for the upcoming beta (not to late to sign up, by the way) of Remarkable Tributes and the go live later this Summer, I have been working on a series of “Frequently Asked Questions.”  You know the type that walk customers through how to use the website, why to use the website, and what to do if things go wrong.  I will be putting them into the new Remarkable Tributes Help Center to be searched and added to by you once the system goes live.  This is really important stuff!  I have brainstorming a list of questions and typed them out this weekend to begin the work of answering them.  The list of questions is 9 pages long!  Those are just the questions, as I have not yet penned the answers.

Now, readers to this blog (or perhaps my other blog or Twitter stream) will probably rightly assess that coming up with a lot of ideas isn’t a problem for me.   So, perhaps some of these questions are not as important as others.  Some of thing may very well be a question that no one would ask, but still the list is there.  All 9 pages of it. 

So, I am going to fight procrastination.  I am taking a number of questions a day and will write the answers.  The ones that require screen shots or other reference materials from the software (which is in development and not quite ready for prime time) will have to wait, but there are many that I can do now, get out of the way, and be ready for the go live.

There, now I feel much better.  I have a plan.  Certainly, I can’t wait to see what questions you have once you start using Remarkable Tributes.  Stay tuned for more details on the Help Center and other things we are pulling together to make you successful!

By the way, this post will be mirrored over at http://RemarkableTributes.wordpress.com where I will be moving the blog officially in the next few weeks.  Go ahead and change your reader to the new address.

It’s Official!

The articles of incorporation have been posted with the secretary of state and we are officially Remarkable Tributes, Inc.  I feel like passing out cigars.