Monthly Archives: July 2010

22nd Jul, 2010

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How to return your iPhone 4

Updated 7/22: Added voicemail fix
Updated 8/9: Final notes on a (supposedly) finalized return

I just returned my iPhone 4 and moved back to my old 3G. The proximity sensor bug made it impossible for me to use the new iPhone for calls [1]. Returning the phone isn’t rocket science, but it required some trial and error. Hopefully I can save other people some time by collecting everything into one place.

It’s based on ship date.
You have 30 days from the date your phone was shipped to return it. My phone was shipped from China, which really means that I had 23 days to decide if I wanted to keep the phone. Here’s Apple’s official return policy for the iphone 4. I’m not clear on what needs to happen before the 30 days run out. Do they need to receive the phone or do you merely need to submit the return request by then?

You need to return it through the channel that you bought it
If you bought it from the store, go back to the Apple store. If you bought it from the ATT store, that’s where you need to go. If you bought it online try to go through their online process or call them.

I ordered online but my order wasn’t tied to my apple id, so I needed to call (you can tell if your email address isn’t properly connected to an apple id if you go through the online forgot password process and it doesn’t send you an email). Supposedly you can schedule the return of a phone you ordered online through the Order Status page. I wasn’t able to get that far, but found the phone process to be easy enough. Get your web order id (top left of your confirmation email), call 1-800-MY-APPLE, say “return iphone 4″ then read your web order id, then talk to a real person. Call between 5am and 8pm PST. The first time I called I made it through the phone tree at 8pm sharp only to find out they were closed, so I think you need to call early enough to actually reach the live person before 8pm.

Sending your iPhone back
If you bought directly from a store, then presumably you don’t have to go through this step. If you bought online then Apple will send you pre-paid return receipts that you can print out to send your phone back. The rep told me that it takes 1-3 business days to send you those return receipts. I got the receipt the next day, but didn’t notice it at first because it’s sent from a Fedex email account.

You have to print out the receipt, put everything back in the box, and take it down to a Fedex dropoff. Here’s a dropoff locator. Shipping is free, no matter where you drop it off.

Privacy reminder
You should wipe your data off your phone but before you do that you should do a backup. As part of returning the iPhone 4, I’m switching back to my old iPhone 3G. I can confirm that iTunes didn’t magically transfer my new photos over to my old 3G, so before you wipe your phone you should definitely make sure your pictures, video, and other important data is backed up. To reset go to Settings -> General -> Reset -> Erase All Content and Settings. I didn’t pay enough attention after this step. The NY Times says that this could take up to two hours because the phone is actually overwriting all of you old data. For me, it immediately rebooted into blank original state with a plug into iTunes message. I hope this means that it’s wiped of my data.

Transferring your service
My plan was to go back to my old AT&T service using my old contract and my old 3G iPhone. There are two things you want to happen, you want your old phone activated and your old contract reinstated. I’m not sure how this works if you came to the iPhone from a different carrier.

Go to an AT&T store to get your service reinstated. I tried to do it over the phone and the first AT&T rep claimed to have put everything in motion. But I didn’t get a confirmation email so I called back. The second ATT rep didn’t see any record of my first call and was very clear that in order to reactivate my old phone I’d need to go to a store to get a new SIM card. So skip the phone and go straight to a store. While they’re doing this make sure to take notes with times and names (since the first AT&T rep didn’t do anything she promised it seems like AT&T is likely to put you in a position where you’re going to have to dispute some of your bill).

If the AT&T store can’t do anything with your service (or you want to double check that the change has gone through), you can call ATT directly: 1-800-331-0500. The phone tree I had to navigate was 1-0-0-2 (for yes, that’s my phone number – speak to operator – speak to operator – no, i don’t want to take a survey). Once you get to an operator, they will tell you something about some federal law to which you should say, “No, I don’t want to hear about any extra products.”

Confirming your return
I tracked my return through Fedex and saw that Apple issued a refund to my credit card on the same day that they received the phone. That was nice. Unfortunately there was no other notifications that everything was settled. I’m particularly concerned about AT&T, as they’ve led me to believe that they can hold me to the iphone 4 contract until they’ve received confirmation from Apple that the phone was returned. However, I’ve called AT&T and they say that my service has completely reverted and that I’m officially out of contract.

Voice mail
Once I was back on my 3G, my visual voicemail was missing. I’d push the voicemail button and it would call into my voicemail. I tried a couple of fixes, including resetting my network settings. Eventually I had to work through the issue with AT&T tech support. The last thing that worked was them calling and leaving a message. After that, my visual voice mail was suddenly back. So, I suggest power cycling your phone and leaving yourself a message before calling tech support. I don’t know if this will work, but the supposed direct line to good tech support is: 877.998.5175.

Also, I lost my phone greeting and I couldn’t get it back through the iPhone. I had to call into my mailbox and go through the phone tree (if you press and hold 1, it’ll ring your mailbox).


[1] I don’t want this post to just be a rant, but I can’t help but note how bad my experience was with this phone. My new iPhone required an upgrade to iTunes. The new iTunes (9.2) wouldn’t start on my laptop (Vista) or my desktop (also Vista) so I had to connect to iTunes on a third computer. When syncing some (free!) apps wouldn’t sync without logging in, but my main account email address (which I have recent itunes store receipts for) wouldn’t log me in and the forgot password feature wouldn’t send me a password. On the new iPhone, one of the apps that I use every day crashes all the time. Almost every call I made included accidentally pressing buttons with my cheek because of the malfunctioning proximity sensor (I was on a conference call where another iPhone 4 owner and I alternated accidentally leaving the call). When I decided to return the phone the documentation told me to do it online. But I wasn’t able to login or retrieve a password with the email address that I used while purchasing the phone. My ATT rep told me that she was activating my old phone but when I called back there was no record of my previous call. I didn’t even get as far as finding out if the antenna issue that’s so prominent in the news is an issue. On my last call to AT&T, the rep let out that the my reason for returning the phone was listed as “Buyer’s Remorse.” I guess I’m just whimsical.

20th Jul, 2010

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Two Tips for Deliberate Practice

Roughly, deliberate practice is a means to improve yourself by intelligently breaking your target into components that can be practiced and upping the level of difficulty of each practice session to be just outside your comfort zone. Deliberate practice is often associated with the idea that even genius-level talents (Mozart, Tiger Woods) got there through practice, not talent. However, you can ignore the talent debate and just concentrate on the idea that if your talent level is X, deliberate practice is how you get to 10X.

There are two things that I think need more emphasis when people talk about deliberate practice.

Deliberate practice is more than 10,000 hours
Or maybe it’s less than 10,000 hours. Almost everyone I’ve used the phrase “deliberate practice” with has come back saying, “oh, that’s that 10,000 hour thing.” They’re referring to part of the research saying that after 10,000 hours of practice a person will have reached their improvement limit. This is the least useful thing to know about deliberate practice research. It’s the fine print warning that says if you keep a deliberate practice regime up for ten years it’s going to stop being effective. Big deal.

The ten thousand hour framing obscures two things, that deliberate practice can be applied to much smaller things (not just when your goal is to be world class) and when you want to make a smaller commitment. What happens after 1 hour of deliberate practice? Every hour spent practicing is time when you’re improving. There’s not 10,000 hours of work followed by a leap. It’s 10,000 hours followed by 10,000 gradations in improvement. The first research paper that I read on this topic is an study of competitive swimmers at all levels, The Mundanity of Excellence. Even at the youngest levels, they found that the fastest swimmers practiced better.

So, you’re an office worker who sends tons of email? Take one hour, read this article on writing effective emails, and then rewrite your last ten emails according to those guidelines. Forever after you’ll be a better emailer.

The key word is deliberate
A lot of people practice. They put in hours of work hoping to get better. Generally a high volume of practice does lead to improvement. But that’s not the key insight of deliberate practice. In the swimming example above they found that there were many similarities between the faster and slower swimmers, including how much time they spent swimming. The difference is that the slower swimmer would spend practice thinking about the hot tub and the faster swimmers would spend practice working on some minutiae, like how slight variations in the cupping of their hand effected the efficiency of their swimming stroke.

I generally find that it’s easier to work more than it is to work smarter. Why is that? It would obviously be much more efficient if my preference were reversed. For example, my number one productivity boost comes from keeping an obsessively updated todo list throughout the day. My natural inclination toward the todo list is to compete with myself to see how many items I can check off. The biggest problem with my todo list is that I’ll put everything on it and I don’t spend much time prioritizing. So at the end of the day my todo list reflects more activity than accomplishment.

In the language of deliberate practice, the “skill” I’m trying to improve is productivity. The naive approach is just to work harder. The deliberate approach is to break my productivity target down into smaller pieces and train up the areas where I am lacking. When it comes to productivity, I’m not afraid of hard work or long hours. Those are positives (I think). My weaknesses [1] are that I don’t like making plans (I distrust them), I often don’t follow my own plans, I procrastinate whenever the next step is not something I’m interested in (I almost lost an entire week to a screencast that still hasn’t happened). One of my old weaknesses was losing track of what I was working on and getting sidetracked. I solved that weakness by adopting a todo list. I bet if I spent more time “practicing” productivity I’d come up with an even more nuanced view of my strengths and weaknesses.

So, how would I train my own productivity? Each of those weaknesses needs a training plan. I’ve never seen anyone break down “productivity” in the way a coach would break down a training schedule. Should I say next Thursday I’ll re-prioritize three of my old todo lists, take a coffee break, then prioritize three more lists (written 2 x 3 x prioritize todo list; 2:00 rest)? That would be taking a small subset of my productivity goal and training it.

I generally like to try to include my deliberate practice as an organic part of the rest of my work. That means I like to practice while I’m working instead of creating artificial exercises like the todo list one above. I’m not advocating this as the most hardcore way to approach work, but it’s as hardcore as I’ve managed so far. The way I broke down training productivity was just to create a meta list that gives me points for things like: making a plan, working to a plan, and not surfing random websites. I’d be interested in a more disciplined approach though–does anyone have any training ideas?


[1] The book The Cyclists Training Bible has cyclists identify limiters, factors that are holding them back from achieving their goals. Then the cyclist puts together a training program that specifically addresses these limiters. The difference between weaknesses and limiters may seem subtle, but I think limiters are a much more functional way of looking at your weaknesses. I’m a terrible singer, but that hasn’t held me back from anything meaningful. I’m also terrible at visual design and that often slows down my work. Gee, which one should I work on? Thinking about limiters also lets you work on things that you’re good at but which happen to be extra important to your goals. For example, as a programmer I’m a reasonably good communicator but I’ve still managed to collect a huge list of regrettable programming outcomes that could have been solved by earlier, more articulate communication. So communication is always one of the skills that I’m working on.

9th Jul, 2010

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What is success? Impact.

“Never mistake activity for achievement.” ~ John Wooden

The software project that haunts me the most was a single-sign on implementation that I did for O’Reilly. The project was handed to me, partially done, with the instructions, “These three things need to be finished, do you think you can do them so that we can launch in two weeks?”

The three things didn’t seem hard, so I said yes. I think it takes some experience to recognize that there’s a huge red flag in that question. I was answering, that, yes, I could complete those three things in short order. How would I know, having never looked at the project, whether those three things were sufficient for launch. In the course of the next two weeks, three more unfinished things popped up and the launch date was pushed back two more weeks. Then more missing features and bugs were found. And again. After three months of this I was racked with guilt over the missed launch dates.

I went home that weekend determined to figure out how to get the project on track. I was basically a junior programmer then and had no idea how to run a project. So I bought a book on project management, Rapid Development by Steve McConnell, and cracked it open. The book opens with 36 Classic Mistakes Enumerated. I checked off 17 mistakes for the project and was hooked on the book for the rest of the weekend. When I went to work on Monday, I hid out in an empty office on a different floor and spec’d the project for myself. According to my rough spec, the project had at least 180 function points and I had completed 90 over the last three months, leaving 90 more to do. Would we be launching in two weeks? Definitely not.

For a long time, this was the project I was most proud of. I used my spec to pull the project out of the weeds and onto a realistic schedule. A lot of good things came out of that weekend of reading. For one, the project got on track, a realistic launch date removed my late-project guilt, and the launch was a technical success. It also gave me a lot more work options: I got more respect at that job, I got opportunities to make bigger decisions, and that led to opportunities to work for some pretty cool startups. Then one day I asked myself: why were we building a single sign-on system?

Mixing some metaphors about nature and total ignorance, I had gotten out of the weeds only to see trees. Years later when I could see the forest, I realized that my proud moment hadn’t accomplished anything (minor convenience for a small population of users, inconvenience/confusion for a big population of users). The goal of the project was actually to allow for a second phase around business intelligence or some such thing. That never happened and I’m told now that the system is now being phased out.

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me.” ~ Steve Jobs

Ever since that realization, I’ve been working to figure out for myself how to maximize the impact of the work I do.

There’s a good discussion of what constitutes startup success over on Gabriel Weinberg’s blog (and the discussion is basically what prompted me to write). It goes over various scenarios for startups and tries to judge if they would be considered successful. Obviously a long running company that made millions of dollars for the founders and investors is a success. What about one that made a lot of users happy but didn’t make the investors any money? What about one that made everyone money in an acquisition but then was immediately shut down?

I just don’t think I could ever call my work successful unless people used it. I don’t want to be merely well paid. I don’t want to write great code that doesn’t get used.

There’s a logical argument to be made that taking part in a system that produces one google and nine failures is a way to maximize your impact. But I couldn’t handle that unless I was working on Google. I don’t want to look back on 30 years of work and realize that only three of those years mattered. That means I care about consistency of impact as much as I do about the magnitude of impact.

I think there’s a lot of other personal preferences in working out a way to optimize your work. Here’s where my preferences led me:
1. It’s better to be in control, at least of your domain, but better the company. It’s rare that anyone else has tasked me with a project that mattered.
2. Sustainability matters. The main reason I stopped working for venture backed companies is because investors introduce so many more ways for your project to get die an early death (small/medium successes get dropped and small/medium acquisitions often get killed).
3. Compounding interest works. The first two years of CrowdVine were very limited. Now, with some revenue and a few more people, there’s a lot more that we can do.

That’s basically why I bootstrapped CrowdVine. Not all the trade offs are good, but it’s the first job I’ve had where every day of work mattered. And I think that’s pretty fun!