Grammar research: thereof vs. therein

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Because of my writing, and Pluralsight course research, I regularly find myself wondering if I’m using the right word, phrase, etc.  I’ll pull up a couple of dozen grammar-related searches when I’m in the thick of researching something… today I found a really cool resource while trying to figure out if I should use thereof or therein.

What are the easiest examples to understand how “therein”, “thereupon”, “thereunder”, etc. are used?

Thanks to Raj Bhuptani, who wrote an easy to understand guide on what there____ means, and how and when to use it.

And, for the record, I chose to use thereof instead of therein 🙂

More Startup Employee Thoughts

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Here’s another fascinating article about working for a startup: Candid Advice For Those Joining The Startup World: Sleep With One Eye Open

This is long, but worth the read if you are considering working at a startup.

The author wrote an ebook, which is currently priced at $85, titled How to Engineer Your Layoff. The idea is to get a package that is worth something awesome. My package was pretty lame, and I know my company would not have done anything more than what they did.  But I bet this $85 is a terrific investment if you work for a company or people with integrity.

Open Salary, Open Equity, Transparency

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From Friday’s article, I clicked through and started reading these posts which are fascinating. They talk about how to come up with employee compensation in a startup, and sharing those numbers with complete transparency.

Introducing Open Equity: Buffer’s Equity Formula and Full Individual Breakdown (April 14, 2014)

Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer: Our Transparent Formula and All Individual Salaries (Dec 19, 2013)

Buffer’s compensation and equity spreadsheet: fascinating!

Joel Spolsky post which inspired Buffer on this (on GitHub)

MVP: Product Management

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Great conversation on Quora about lean company/product development. I continually have stuff my developers work on that I refer to as Phase I or Phase II, etc.  Here’s a visualization of what I really need:

mvp_lean

As a product manager, the message is that each phase of developing a minimum viable product (MVP) is a functional step towards the end goal.  So each phase is usable.  Super important.

Sales Statistics: Power of follow-up

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This reminds me of a technology vendor that used to call me again and again and again. I was a Dell guy… always buying my stuff from Dell. But this lady that called me, she wanted my business.  She was a bit on the aggressive side, but she asked for my business, she asked for a shot.

And one day, she got it.  And for the stuff I bought from her, I didn’t go back to Dell.  She earned it. She won it.  She wanted it. She persisted.

sales_stats_ja_blog

Tools for writing better, vs. writing better

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On Facebook I saw a link to this hubspot blog post titled The 31 Best Tools for Improving Your Writing Skills.

It had the usual cool tools that you would expect… places to write, like Google Docs and all kinds of new-fangled tools to help you hack writing.

Let me share a different idea.  Instead of finding tools to help you write better, I’ll share a tactic: WRITE!

Just simply write.

9+ years ago I started blogging.  I blogged almost every single day. I thought I was a great writer, partly because that was what I had been told all though high school.  I wrote, and thought my blog posts were da bomb.

A few years into this writing journey, where I wrote almost every single day, I went back to some of my first blog posts.  To my surprise and embarrassment, I found them to be quite juvenile.  Poorly written.  There were mistakes (which is kind of okay, because hey, it’s just a blog), but worse, I didn’t like the tone I used.

I could only see this after having gone through the exercise of writing almost daily.

I don’t care if you get an old tool (pencil/paper) or a new tool (from that link above)… I have similar tools to a guy who lives down the street and does amazing finish work for a living.  My recommendation is, regardless of the tools you choose, JUST WRITE.  And write again and again.

As you write consistently, for years and years, you’ll improve your writing skills. You won’t improve them just because of a tool you choose (although obviously tools can help)… you’ll improve them because you work on your skills.