On Working Hard

Ed Smith writes on "working hard" may not be always as beneficial as modern world thinks. Quotes Bertrand Russel and Nassim Taleb.

"The idea that being good at something demands harried, exhausted martyrdom is a relatively new idea. “Only in recent history,” as Nas­sim Nicholas Taleb puts it, “has ‘working hard’ signalled pride rather than shame for lack of talent, finesse and, mostly, sprezzatura.” If we really want to be good at something, we should stop wasting time exhausting ourselves."

Importance of communication

Talking about lessons he learned from a failed bid to sell his web-based presentation to Google, Jason C Roberts says:

However, according to Jonathan that wasn't the reason as at all. It was simply that they were so busy during that time that the deal just fell through the cracks.

Now I don't know if sending a few emails to Jonathan and David would have meant the difference between Preezo being acquired or not, but my guess is that it would have significantly increased the chances. Maybe other impediments to the sale would have arisen, but I have a hard time imagining what those might have been. While I learned a lot of lessons from my experience with Preezo, the one that I shouldn't have had to learn in the first place is to never let a line of communication go cold with a potential acquirer and especially if it's a large and very active corporation like Google.