In approximately three weeks there was a noticeable increase in requests for information about our services, mainly due to the new and simplified business processes which were defined in the strategic plan (tradestation demo, a simplified process of opening a stock trading account, etc.). At present, three months later, we can safely say that the renovation project more that accomplished its goals (the investment quickly paid off, due to an increased demand for our services), which is cruicial for a company dealing with stock exchange at a time of a global financial crisis.

- Niko Delić, Momentum brokeri d.o.o., Zagreb, Croatia

The same approach is often seen in startups. And NuLab is another startup I’ve been a part of in the last couple of years. They’ve all shared the same characteristics (at the beginning, at least): the buzz, the informal work environment, the free flow of ideas and the lack of bureaucracy. At this stage, we’re more productive than we’ll ever be. I for myself am involved in three different projects that define who I am. They all define my workday, my thoughts and ideas even when I’m not near the office or with the group of people I spend most of my time with.

Working and free time are no longer separate. And I don’t even think they should be. For anyone privileged enough to choose their own field of interest, education and workplace, at least. Which means the majority of us. Why? Because our upbringing was fully supported by our parents, our state provided for (basic) university education, so the only things that were “up to us” were our talents and our hard work, the latter being far more important.
Which of course doesn’t mean you should be making money from playing basketball with the gang in the evenings. But do consider a career in basketball if you constantly think about strategies, spend “work-related” hours browsing basketball forums and don’t miss a single game on TV. Then it is clearly your passion, which you will have to pursue one way or the other or you’ll end up being a miserable old fart, hating the rest of your friends and family for being happy.

Another thing I feel is very important during the early stages in one’s personal development is “evaluating the rules”. I really wish I’d known that earlier in my life. There’s a big secret that nobody (not even my parents) told me when I was in high school. It was kept in the closet, because it’s so sinister that “kids” couldn’t handle it. I can’t blame them, though. I’m not yet a parent but I think it is just easier for the whole upbringing process to stick to the philosophy most of our parents passed on us: do what you’re told by your parent | teacher | boss and if you do it well (with a lot of hard work, basically), you will be happy in your life. That’s bullshit. And the sad thing is, most people only realize it when they’re well into “the process” which makes it far more difficult to change their lives. If you have two kids and a mortgage, you should think twice before “going commando”, if you know what I mean.

Of course there’s nothing wrong with hard work. It is key to success. But one should always evaluate the results of all this hard work. I’ve seen great teams of people working their asses off and it resulted to - nothing. What a waste! You should always question why you’re doing something and if it can be achieved with LESS WORK. Which, of course, is completely the opposite of the “doing what you’re told” philosophy. Moreover, all this hard work should also include stuff that you do out of inspiration, not for the money. Because of curiosity for how stuff works. Saying “yes” to things that feel right and represent a challenge. If you start doing that in your early twenties, you’ll end up with a huge advantage over the majority of peers by the time you hit the big three-oh. They followed the usual no-brainer: “finish high school -> go to university -> travel a bit -> finish university -> get a job -> start building your career -> have a family -> wait for pension”. Remember, it’s far easier to follow the rules precisely and “being a good kid” than to start making up your own rules that work. This is also an important part of a startup. Let people work when they want to and how they want to.

The most important part is, I believe, the education. And I don’t only mean “school”. I’m sitting next to a guy who just came from Google. We attended the same University (Faculty of computer and information science in Ljubljana). He dropped out in the first year. Needles to say, he is a programmer I will never be (despite me finishing all the courses). He’s the guy that my parents always warned me I could become if I drop out of college. What I’m actually trying to say is that the “evaluation of rules” also applies to education. Sure it might feel right to finish university but is this really the best way to get you where you want to be? You will have to learn new things for the rest of your life. For the rest of your life! It doesn’t stop, when you finish university. So it’s basically a question of how the university program “fits” into your interests and reflects the stuff you want to do in your twenties, when you’re at your most productive.

It’s what you do for a living for 50 years that makes you a happy person. Thinking otherwise just means that your hobby should actually become your primarily source of income. And when you actually achieve that, you’ll probably need another hobby.

My blog post was inspired by this great article from Paul Graham and the fact that Vesna, a former co-worker, joined our team yesterday for (probably) the same reasons as stated above.

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon Gary Barber’s article on SitePoint. The story was more or less what I expected. The good tools were either expensive or only running on Windows or Macs. I also tried Pencil, a FireFox plugin, but didn’t really like the whole idea, it seemed inappropriate for bigger projects. When I read the iPlotz review I knew I found something I can work with. The application is running on Adobe Air, which basically means that the same code can be reused to power a web app or a desktop application. Furthermore, Adobe AIR framework lays on top the OS, so iPlotz will run just about anywhere (on Windows, Linux or Mac). If you decide to only use the web-based version, you’ll need a Flash plug-in.

iPlotz takes things a bit further and tries to mimic Basecamp with some collaboration and project management features, but keeps them to minimum. If you don’t use them, they won’t get in your way and you won’t get the feeling that you’re paying for something you never use. The pricing is also similar - you’re allowed to use the web app for free, but are limited to 1 project only. The Desktop Version costs 75$, which is fairly cheap. What I’m missing is connecting the online version with the desktop one (so my projects would be synced no matter where I use it) but the guys say this feature is already in development.

When I first installed it, I wasn’t completely sure that the cartoonish outlook is something we’ll all be comfortable with. By “we” I mean the client (if he is presented with wireframes first), Matevž, the designer, responsible for transferring the whole idea to Photoshop / HTML and myself doing the prototyping. But it worked like a charm! Andrej Bolarič, a well established designer (we share an office, actually) saw one of our prototypes yesterday and became very excited about the same cartoonish stylee, saying:
“Wow, that looks great and it will even work well with my clients - they always look at prototypes (produced by more popular tools on the market) as being the final designs. This way they won’t get confused and they’re likely to be more helpful in the process.”

An important point, for sure. Furthermore, becoming obsessed about “the grid” when doing the first sketches can be overkill. There’s a couple of things you’ll love if you give iPlotz a test run:

The less is more philosophy with focus on web development components only

Predesigned elements for common website and iPhone components, such as Accordion Menus, Pagination, Google Maps, Breadcrumbs, Audio and Video players, …etc, on top of standard components

The ability to quickly create and import predesigned components (built from other elementary components), such as Twitter Widgets and Contact Forms

The excitement about this being a new and fresh project and seeing it in development

Support, which is really great - they run a great forum where users can post questions or feature requests and their Online support actually works

There’s also a couple of things I hate about it, but the good news is that version 1.4 of the desktop application is coming out next week, which will hopefully fix a couple of major bugs, especially for Linux users.