improveTHIS!

I'm happy to report that taskthis! has been well received. It has over 1200 registered users! I've gotten a lot of positive response; bugs, suggestions, and feature requests. I appreciate it all.

Originally it was just a tech demo for illustrating how easy it is to use Ajax in Rails... But from the response, and my own usage, I think I'm going to commit a little time and flesh it out.

Oddly enough, the taskthis.com domain was available. So, of course, I snatched it up! That means in the near future it'll have a new home (a textdrive home, at that).

So what does it need to make it 'full-fledged'? ... That wasn't rhetorical, it was a request for feedback! Here's the list, at the moment:

1. Various little cleanups in the UI
2. Fix UTF-8 support
3. Public tasklists (everyone can see)
4. Shared tasklists (multiple users can add/complete taskitems)
5. Pervasive RSS
6. 'Remember Password'
7. Taskitem reordering
8. Tasklist reordering
9. Tasklist merging
10. Taskitem due date (I'm rather leery of this one)
11. Help (seems obvious enough, eh?)

Let me know what features you'd like added to the list.

You Must Watch...

I command you to watch!

Flight of the Moot

Is Hard Work Overrated?

I worked with my last employer for over five years. And getting away from it for awhile affords a new perspective. In these couple of weeks of unemployment, I’ve been analyzing the way things work. At my previous employer, and with life in general. I’ve come to a conclusion: Hard work is overrated. It isn’t directly related to success. Some of the hardest work I’ve done has been on failing/unsuccessful projects.

Now, I’m not condoning a weak work ethic. The point I’m making is more semantic, or perhaps a matter of attitude.

You see, I don’t think that hard work has a bearing on the success of any endeavor. I think that commitment does. Passion does. If you have passion for what you are doing, you will be committed to it. If you are committed, the work won’t be hard. It will simply be whatever is needed, and you won’t think anything of it. It’ll be a labor of love, if you will.

This may be an inevitable conclusion that I’ve been slow on picking up. Or perhaps it’s a bit of an epiphany. Either way, I’m going to be sure that I’m passionate about my next endeavor, whatever it may be. I’ve always said that ‘if you aren’t having fun, why do it?’ Now I think I’ll say ‘if you don’t love what you do, why do it?’