I’ve learned two valuable lessons recently: Don’t be lazy. Don’t be a brat. More specifically: add a subject line to your e-mails. It’s not that hard and it makes everyone’s life easier.

When I first started at Imulus, I was not accustomed to inter-office exchanges of e-mails. Most of the time if someone wanted me to complete a task, I would attach the completed item to an e-mail and send away. Naturally I would ignore the prompt asking me if I still wanted to send the e-mail without a subject line. After a while, my mail application would give up on me and stop the alerts.

Eventually, I was diplomatically informed by some of my co-workers that my neglect of subject lines may be a tad annoying. “Annoying?” I thought in my most indignant mental voice. “I’ll show them annoying.” After this cerebral conversation with myself, I proceed to add subject lines that had nothing to do with the actual e-mail. Subjects such as “sweet cuppin cakes” or “I like turtles” would crop up in my co-workers’s inbox giving them something to chuckle at or be irritated at.

My shenanigans ensued for around a year and a half until the day that cruel irony bit me square in the ass. During a dark day in Imulus’s history when we lost some information, I was doing my best as the diligent designer to help recover all that I could. This meant I had to look though old e-mails with my trusty search to help me. Side note: I am not a good organizer when it comes to my e-mail and I am a digital pack rat – bad combination. Anyway, back to our flustered heroine. As I was sorting through my old e-mails becoming increasingly murderous towards my past self I came to a harsh revelation – it’s not worth it. It’s not worth the inconvenience for maybe a couple of seconds of giggling at the silly subject line.

These days I have learned my lesson… Although occasionally I do like to slip in the old silliness, but only if it applies to the real subject line.

As an entrepreneur there is no boss to tell me what I’m doing wrong. Instead, I try to be hyper-vigilant on assessing my performance, skills and the myriad of daily communications. I can’t be truly confident in my abilities without being self-critical. It serves no one to hide faults and weaknesses behind a false appearance.

Here is my own personal list (made public) to help myself gain a perspective on a situation and how I can resolve it. This time it is “Why I fail to execute.”

Why?

• I don’t plan out enough.
• I’m always rushing myself, therefore things get missed and others pay the price.
• I put too many little things on my plate which should be delegated out.
• I’m not giving others enough information and training to adequately pick up some of my workload.
• When I do assign myself work, it’s too easy to push things off into the future.

What are my rewards for “not executing”?
It’s helpful to dig deep into the hidden reasons that a negative feature or characteristic continues despite a desire to change.

• Delaying work load if I don’t feel like doing it.
• Delayed responsibility.
• It allows me to choose what things I focus on thereby giving me some sort of twisted control.
• It creates a perception that I’m too busy, maybe deep down I want that perception, but busy doesn’t equal effective.

What does it cost me?

• Time
• Energy
• Lack of achieving goals.
• Stress & frustration.
• Lack of leadership.
• Reduced depth of relationships
• Loss of money & failure to capitalize on opportunities
• Self-confidence

How can I change this?

• Wake up each morning and plan the day; look at tomorrow; assess the next 5 days.
• Make time to focus on creativity during the week.
• Prioritize tasks which can be delegated and get back to others first thing in the morning so they aren’t left waiting for a response.
• Set aside a time chunk each day for tasks which only I can do; and make time to document, train and delegate items to others.
• Before pushing off a task ask myself “what is it costing me to delay this?”
• Minimize distractions and make time for brainless activities.

There you go. I hope this helps other entrepreneurs better understand themselves.

Well, what a surprise, AT&T is now behind on MMS messages for the iPhone again. This time the delay is said to be keeping the service out of our hands until September. Not to mention rumors of a $55 upgrade fee for tethering ability with your iPhone.

The delays are frustrating, yes, but compared to the bullshit I deal with daily on AT&T’s network a two month delay for MMS is laughable. In fact, I’d go as far as to say I would sacrifice MMS altogether just to get some decent service from the company.

Let me recap briefly some of the issues I have daily while using AT&T as my wireless provider:

• Appalling 3g coverage – AT&T’s 3g network is horribly inconstant. It frequently drops in and out of reach, even in heavily populated areas. And, when it does work, the speeds are mediocre at best. I’ve used it on three different iPhones and a Sony Ericsson w600i. In comparison to Verizon or Sprint the 3g AT&T offers feels childish.
• Weird network restrictions – AT&T has a ton of network restrictions, some applications on iTunes can’t be used unless on wifi, iTunes store downloads over 10megs are disallowed, yet we as users pay a fee for 5gigs of data per month. Why should I be limited to 10megs per download if I pay $30+ dollars a month for 5gigs of bandwidth?
• Regular plain old cellphone coverage – It’s one thing not to get wicked fast 3g speed all over the city, but it’s another to simply not get cell coverage at all. I live in the middle of Downtown Denver, yet, I at this moment I have no service on my phone. In fact, if I want service I would need to walk over to my window in the other room and sit within a 10 foot radius. This isn’t just limited to my apartment though, it happened at my previous house, and still happens to this day at the Imulus workplace in Boulder.
• Dro…
• Dropped c…
• D…
• Dropped calls!!! – I’m not kidding, everyone I know on AT&T has calls dropped so frequently it’s literally become a joke. I recognize this would most likely be tied to cell service area, but I get dropped calls even at full bars. I swear if AT&T offered a land line it would still drop my call. I get at least 7 dropped calls daily. Daily!

The point is that AT&T is terrible when it comes to wireless cell service. It’s a travesty that the iPhone, which is an amazing piece of technology, is limited to such a terrible network. It’s like having a Formula-1 racer and only being able to use it on dirt roads.

The truth is if Apple doesn’t bring the iPhone to another network in the next year, I’ll honestly consider switching phones. Simply to get away from AT&T.

Instead of blogging about a cool new application or sharing a solution to a pesky development problem, I’m going to talk at length about what I had to eat today. To start off, I had some toast with some coffee at the office and then ate some strawberries. I might Twitpic the strawberries later just in case you have no effing clue what strawberries look like…

I lost you, didn’t I? Did I lose you at the toast? Or maybe right as soon as the word “food” came up. Well, if you’re still hanging with me, I appreciate it. It was all for a reason, I promise. How often would a person read through a blog about what the blogger ate that day? Very rarely (I would say never, but you never know). So, why does it happen so often on Twitter?

Well, lets think about this. Twitter is a social networking tool where the user writes anything and everything as long as it is under 140 characters. Yes, it says “What are you doing?” but these days that question is there for decoration. Twitter has turned into less of a status update, and more of a mini blog. So, what do you talk about?

Some people use Twitter as a gossip tool which can come in handy if you’re like me and you’re completely out of touch with what is going on in the world. Then there are people who make it a daily goal to say something witty and clever as they observe the world. Finally, there are the people who use Twitter as insight to their life. What they’re doing, what’s they’re thinking, who they’re hanging out with, etc. Personally, I think the only people who can do this and still be interesting are celebrities. However, these are the type of people who are culprits of the main subject of this blog.

So, why is this a common problem on Twitter? Obviously this many people wouldn’t post so many food related tweets if they didn’t find it interesting, would they? My theory is that people may not know just how pointless these statements may be. Eating is something that happens often in our lives (especially for Americans) and it is very often present in celebrations and social gatherings. Food is tied to so many emotions: relief, comfort, guilt, excitement, happiness, and the list goes on.

So obviously something that induces so many emotions is worth sharing with your Twitter followers every chance you get, right? Well, not really. Your emotions may be high from the experience, but unless the person can experience it for themselves, it often falls short. I’m not saying that sometimes conversations can’t start from a shared love of burritos from Big City Burrito but usually people just don’t care. So next time you want to post a Twitpic showing the omelet you are about to eat, or you want to talk about how good your sandwich was, take a step back and think “do other people really find this interesting?”

Today Apple announced the new iPod Shuffle and the big “new” feature on it is the absence of buttons. Apparently the solution for those using the shuffle is to navigate music via the headphones, which is great if you like wearing sub-par plastic pieces of trash in your ears.

Now, I realize that some people actually enjoy the feel of the standard Apple earbuds, and I realize they are very popular. However, I have seen a LOT of people that use 3rd party headphones with their iPod/iPhone (a brief office poll here at Imulus came up with over half of us using non-Apple headphones). So let’s just be honest, what this really feels like is a ploy to make you purchase the high-end Apple earbuds. And if you’re like me and hate earbuds in general because they hurt your ears, you’re basically out of luck.

Even if Apple decides to release their headphone control technology to 3rd parties I still have to purchase a new set of headphones to use while running, or at minimum a new control cord add-on for my current phones, which is sure to be a minimum of $20. Now suddenly to get a lightweight mp3 player for running I am dropping $79 plus $20.

This is a great example of how Apple’s want to simplify can be taken too far. In theory it sounds great, but in practice it ends up creating a mess for everyone but the most default basic customers. And worse, it makes Apple look greedy and out of touch.