I've found conversations with friends to be great places to develop and test ideas. As Lance and I were talking recently, several topics that have been on my mind over the past few weeks came together and over the course of the call we developed our first take on the relationship between luck, skill, and effort. The post Luck, Skill, and Effort appeared first on Jonathan Wold.| Jonathan Wold
“Are you actually excited about turning 40 or are trying to convince yourself you’re excited?” It was a fair question. As was my tradition, the first of the year gave me the opportunity to accurately say that I’d be however many years older next year, which usually caught folks by surprise. 40 felt special this […] The post 40 Next Year appeared first on Jonathan Wold.| Jonathan Wold
I do enjoy writing. Well, I enjoy the output of writing. It’s been about 6 months, though, since I last wrote. It’s a new year and my experiment with JonathanOS continues. I’ve thought about moving an update on progress from my head to the keyboard and just didn’t feel motivated enough for one reason or […] The post Positive Peer Pressure appeared first on Jonathan Wold.| Jonathan Wold
I started work on upgrading my personal operating system with a fairly straightforward motivation. For years, I’ve been experimenting with tiny habits that require 5 minutes or less to complete and I’ve found that they work well for me. There are worthwhile efforts, though, that simply require more than 5 minutes per day and where […] The post Five weeks in appeared first on Jonathan Wold.| Jonathan Wold
I’m 5 days in to running the upgrade to my personal operating system. A couple of highlights so far. Day Planning Historically, I haven’t been one to plan out my day except around what’s already on the calendar. With now roughly 2 hours of additional items that I want to get done within a given […] The post Progress appeared first on Jonathan Wold.| Jonathan Wold
In Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary, there’s a key moment where they’re trying to decide whether to create new tools or to create an environment with gravity where existing tools will work. They decide to do the latter, reasoning that it’s far better to use tools that have gone through millions of hours of testing, […] The post Failure appeared first on Jonathan Wold.| Jonathan Wold
For anyone who asked I described 2023 as the best and worst year of my life. Now, nearly halfway through 2024, I'm ready to write about it. The post Loss and Sorrow appeared first on Jonathan Wold.| Jonathan Wold
This year has been simultaneously the best and worst of my 37 years on earth so far. Through the ups and downs, tiny habits have continued to do their part to keep me on the rails. Two habits in particular have stayed with me the longest: pushups, and a daily cold shower. Today would have […] The post Broken Streaks appeared first on Jonathan Wold.| Jonathan Wold
WordPress is an operating system for empowering creativity on the Open Web. With 40%+ of the web running on WordPress, WordPress is also an indicator of the health of the Open Web. The better WordPress empowers creators and the extenders and hosting providers who serve them, the better the health of the internet as a […]| Jonathan Wold
With 38 just behind me, I’ve been thinking ahead over this past week about the mental “operating system” I use to manage my life, particularly how and where I invest my time and energy. My experiment with tiny habits, has gone on for over 5 years now and habits have become a core part of […]| Jonathan Wold
It’s been 19 and a half years since I wrote my first entry, just over half my life ago. I’ve been feeling the itch to write again for a bit. Joshua has been crushing it lately, which has been part of my inspiration. I’ve also had more folks express appreciation for my writing and encourage […]| Jonathan Wold
I've been thinking and writing about the idea of an "App Store" for WordPress for a few years now and the time is feeling increasingly right for it to happen.| Jonathan Wold
WordCamps are part of the essential magic of WordPress. They connect community (including newcomers!) to each other, inspire attendees with what's possible in WordPress, and encourage (and empower) people to contribute, which makes WordPress (and the ecosystem) better for us all.| Jonathan Wold
I've been thinking about the benefits and tradeoffs of decentralization and my hypothesis is that the concept of a guild for WordPress product businesses might be just the thing we need to mitigate the tradeoffs of decentralization faced by extenders. So I started doing some research.| Jonathan Wold
What I'm intrigued about most right now is how you effectively monetize an ecosystem plugin. My hypothesis is that ecosystem plugins within WordPress are undervalued and underdeveloped as value-based businesses and, accordingly, are far from achieving their economic potential.| Jonathan Wold
On the one hand we love free riders. Their confidence in WordPress has lead to its adoption and has, overall, lead to an increase in investment in the project, to which we all benefit. Where it gets tricky, though, are the product businesses that extend WordPress.| Jonathan Wold