Mickey Mellen

Feedback is meaningless if the receiver doesn't care about it.

How to Know a Person, by David Brooks - MickMel Now that I'm using Reading Refresh to keep myself up to date on books I've read in the past, I thought I'd share some of them as they came back up. Today is "How to Know a Person" by David Brooks. I s...

How to Know a Person, by David Brooks

“To speak to him was to be seduced by an inverse charisma, a sense of being listened to with such intensity that you had to be your most honest, sharpest, and best self.” Imagine how good it would be to be that guy.”

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Taking intentional time with nothing to do can open up a world of creativity.

Development is fun again - MickMel Roughly 25 years ago, from 1998 to around 2006, I created a ton of websites for myself. My first big ones were a Christian music website for guitar players (which was closed down a few years ago), Goo...

Development is fun again

In some ways, the web is starting to feel like it did in the 90's, and I'm loving it.

www.mickmel.com/development-...

Who do you know that you find to be incredibly "lingerable"?

The Sunday Summary: Algospeak, focus, green bubbles, and the Garmin Approach S70 - MickMel Here's a bit about what I wrote, read and learned over the past week. I hope you find it helpful! Blog posts from the past week It’s becoming easier to write software than to just find it. “We’ve hit ...

The Sunday Summary: Algospeak, focus, green bubbles, and the Garmin Approach S70

www.mickmel.com/the-sunday-s...

It's not that you're always wrong, but it's powerful to understand that you always could be.

Adding doesn't mean improving - MickMel One of the best things you can do for your product or service is to keep it simple, but it's much easier said than done. As I shared from Natalie Nixon a few years ago: "Making the simple complicated ...

Adding doesn’t mean improving

Making a product simple can be a difficult task, as it's far easier to just add more and more "features" to try to improve it.

www.mickmel.com/adding-doesn...

If you can go to bed just a little wiser than you were in the morning, the compounding effect of that can be staggering.

Google Messages is better than iMessage - MickMel When I moved to iPhone last year (before I recently moved back to Android), one of the things I was excited about was iMessage. Every seems to love iMessage, and the "blue bubbles are better than gree...

Google Messages is better than iMessage

Every seems to love iMessage, and the “blue bubbles are better than green bubbles” memes are everywhere.

Having used it for a year, I don’t understand it.

www.mickmel.com/google-messa...

Learning from others is awesome, but it's often worth doing a bit of digging yourself.

Atomic Habits, by James Clear - MickMel Now that I'm using Reading Refresh to keep myself up to date on books I've read in the past, I thought I'd share some of them as they came back up. Today is "Atomic Habits", by James Clear. The crux o...

Atomic Habits, by James Clear

Some quick thoughts on Atomic Habits as I've refreshed myself on it.

www.mickmel.com/atomic-habit...

We tend to focus so hard on preserving memories that we often forget to be present in them when they happen.

Your focus determines the value - MickMel Harry Truman famously said "Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers". I agree with what he says, but I think it stops far short today. If you've following my writing at all, you know ...

Your focus determines the value

These days there are many different ways that you can learn, if you're able to keep your focus.

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Yeah, she's calling me directly out on this one...

Algospeak by Adam Aleksic - MickMel We all see the new slang that pops up on social media, with words like "gyat", "rizzler" and "unalive", but where does it really come from? Adam Aleksic's book "Algospeak" tries to unpack that. He tal...

Algospeak by Adam Aleksic

“Skibidi,” for instance, has often been touted as an indicator of how the youth is being corrupted, but it’s etymologically no different from the name Scooby-Doo.

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I have a few people that I look forward to disagreeing with, as it always makes me come out a bit smarter than when I started.

It's becoming easier to write software than to just find it - MickMel I shared a few days ago about all of the little bits of software that I've been creating with AI, and that's only going to accelerate. In a recent episode of the Tech Talk Y'all podcast, Adam Walker e...

It’s becoming easier to write software than to just find it

“We’ve hit an inflection point where if I want software, it’s usually easier for me to go create it with AI than it is for me to go find a tool that does what I want to. It’s crazy”

www.mickmel.com/its-becoming...

This simple idea has really impacted me over the past few years. It's not always true, but when something good happens I love the link of "everything is always working out for me" as a way to remember whatever small blessing just occurred.

The Sunday Summary: Improving AI, fun apps, amazing features, and Time to Read - MickMel Here's a bit about what I wrote, read and learned over the past week. I hope you find it helpful! Blog posts from the past week AI is improving itself. AI is finally learning to improve itself, which ...

The Sunday Summary: Improving AI, fun apps, amazing features, and Time to Read

www.mickmel.com/the-sunday-s...

Kindness and inclusivity can sometimes go together, but they very often don't.

Separation of Church and Hate, by John Fugelsang - MickMel John Fugelsang's book "Separation of Church and Hate" bills itself as "A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds", and it certainly goes ...

Separation of Church and Hate, by John Fugelsang

"Strength is measured by who you protect, not who you attack."

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Creativity takes both wonder and rigor to really make a difference.

Amazing features that still haven't come back - MickMel In the past 15 years, I remember two technologies that came along and I thought "wow, this is amazing", and it was, and then the technology disappeared and I don't know why. The first was the Notion I...

Amazing features that still haven’t come back

In the past 15 years, I remember two technologies that came along and I thought “wow, this is amazing”, and it was, and then the technology disappeared and I don’t know why.

www.mickmel.com/amazing-feat...

You know your staff is doing some work off-hours, right? Make sure the opposite can sometimes be true, too.

AI bots are bad, but stopping them is worse - MickMel Generally speaking, AI bots on the web are a bad thing. They're consuming resources and stealing all of our content, but blocking them might make things worse. As I've shared with many people over the...

AI bots are bad, but stopping them is worse

I don’t want AI bots to crawl my site, but I really don’t want them to NOT crawl my site.

www.mickmel.com/ai-bots-are-...

It's easy to get trapped in our filter bubbles that show us all of the stuff that we already believe in, but seeking out contradictory information is one of the best ways to learn.

We're in the centaur era of AI - MickMel Right now, the best use of AI is to have humans and machines working together. Humans aren't anywhere close to as fast as AI, but AI still needs a human to keep things on the rails. As Anthropic's CEO...

We’re in the centaur era of AI

Right now, the best use of AI is to have humans and machines working together.

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What does it really mean to "do our research"?

Wouldn't it be cool if an app could do that? - MickMel There are literally millions of sites and apps out there, and one of them must have the solution to your specific problem, but I'm sure you've spent time looking for one to solve a specific task and j...

Wouldn’t it be cool if an app could do that?

There are literally millions of sites and apps out there, but I’m sure you’ve spent time looking for one to solve a specific task and just can’t quite find it.

Now you can just make your own.

www.mickmel.com/wouldnt-it-b...