How I Work: Bill Gates - Apr. 4, 2006
I have always admired Bill Gates. Yes, I have. Get that look off your face. To be perennially geeky, I wrote him a fanboy letter when I was 12 or 13 (and a Microsoft beta tester, id 230421 FYI).
It is funny then that his “My So Called Digital Life” post so closely resembles mine, you know, plus a few dozen billion dollars.
I do wish I had three monitors here at work. At home I have two 23″ Cinema Displays, and the amount it helps productivity can’t be overstated. Having the ability to drag things to an auxiliary screen helps mentally and physically. It improves focus, and makes life seem smoother.
I find it funny that Bill is probably the only person on the planet though that uses his Microsoft products to their full extent in terms of personal productivity. This actually makes sense when you consider how poorly designed much of Microsoft’s products are. They are over-engineered, and made to engender conformance rather than enable performance.
Microsoft makes applications as if they are saying “You should work this way, and if you don’t, we’ll make your life that much more difficult.” Other companies (not just Apple) make apps that say “I want to adapt how you work.” For examples: Quicksilver, iPhoto, Photoshop, Final Cut, Logic, Maya, etc.
I think everything wrong with Microsoft is everything that is right for Bill.
Read that again:
Everything right for Bill is wrong for us.
Everything right for us should be right for Microsoft.
Trackbacks & Pingbacks 2
E-mail and corporate attention deficit disorder…
Last night over dinner, Michael Neal and I talked about how businesses are increasingly run by e-mail.
Neal, who came to Microsoft after the Connectix aquisition and is now the vendor’s product manager for virtualization, says the transition from a s…
[...] I have to admit something right now: I admire Bill Gates. Yes. Just think of the humble beginnings, the grand vision, and now the ubiquitousness of Microsoft in everything computer related and you gotta give it to the man. I listen to interview or keynote speech podcasts when they pop up on ITConversations and have often wondered how he works. Well, wonder no more.CNN.com has published an article about How Bill Gates works. There is some very interesting stuff here.Staying focused is one issue; that’s the problem of information overload. The other problem is information underload. Being flooded with information doesn’t mean we have the right information or that we’re in touch with the right people.I definitely feel that with my blog lists. I use BlogBridge (more on that wonderful piece of software some other time, but honestly, if you’re suffering from information overload from blogs and other rss feeds, download BlogBridge immediately) to manage my information load by selecting how important something needs to be in order to interrupt me. I do this by assigning a number of stars to each feed and then filter all my feeds based on the number of stars they must have to even appear on my screen. So, information underload? 1-2 stars. I rarely get to those feeds. I honestly just keep them there because either they are extremely popular but not necessarily relevant to me, or relevant but not particularly information dense. When BlogBridge gets a search feature (its current weekly development release does, but I already find that it hangs a bit too often to migrate to a development release), these 1-2 star feeds will provide great search fodder.3-star feeds are relevant or interesting but either post too often (Makezine, various Technorati and Google searches) or don’t warrant interrupting me.4-star feeds are very relevant or important and where I spend most of my time.5-star feeds are reserved for family, friends (so if you’re reading this and have a blog, I likely have you 5-starred!) and things which are critical for my work/professional development. Here is one secret: the only non-family/non-friend feed I have in the 5-star category is Itzy Sabo’s Email Overload; the posts are mostly relevant, short and immediately rewarding and useful.Anyways, back to Gates. Black Rim Glasses says that I think everything wrong with Microsoft is everything that is right for Bill. […] Everything right for us should be right for Microsoft. I can’t say that I agree with this one. Sure, I would like it if Microsoft catered to my every need (okay, not every need), but do I really want the privacy implications that that would imply? Am I ready for that? And do I really want them to fill every IT/computer/productivity/Internet/software/hardware void? No. I like diversity. Sometimes, if I’m feeling particularly daring, I’ll slide in Ubuntu CD and boot up Linux. Sometimes I’m in IE, other times Firefox. I’m livin’ on the edge man!Anyways, I’m not Bill Gates, I only have one monitor, and it’s not even a flat screen. But I guarantee this: when/if Bill Gates starts blogging, he may just warrant a 5-star. // Used for showing and hiding user information in the comment form function ShowUtils() { document.getElementById(”authorinfo”).style.display = “”; document.getElementById(”showinfo”).style.display = “none”; document.getElementById(”hideinfo”).style.display = “”; } function HideUtils() { document.getElementById(”authorinfo”).style.display = “none”; document.getElementById(”showinfo”).style.display = “”; document.getElementById(”hideinfo”).style.display = “none”; } [...]
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