A Quantum Immortal

Long lost friends who have moved to the states years ago – this post is for you.

If you want to visit me / have a coffee (in between my insanly busy schedule), drop me a line (Write “URGENT” in your email or message me on Facebook so the email doesn’t drown in my inbox).

My tentative schedule:

1. Arriving at San Francisco on either 7th or 8th of December (might have some time).
2. Attending the Future of Money conference in San Francisco on Dec 9th. Busy day, flying to Vegas in the evening.
3. Attending the Vegas Inside Bitcoin conference on Dec 10-11.
4. Spending part of the day in Vegas on Dec 12, recovering from the conference. Driving in a car to Utah sometime that day.
5. Snowboarding at Salt Lake City Utah for about 3 days. Rumor has it that it has the best snow in the world (is it as undecidable as trying to find the best hummus in Israel?)
6. Either flying back to Israel immediately, or extending my trip for a few extra days if something interesting pops up.

If you want to, and see a way to fit yourself into this schedule, please drop me a line.

So, I recently posted that I am looking for a personal assistant.

I still need it, badly, and I got a few CVs after I posting that … only I didn’t even have time to review these CVs 🙁
Yes, I am that busy – I wasn’t lying when I said I need an assistant to save me my precious time!

So, after some thought, here is what I decided to do: I will ask everyone who applies to this position, as a first task / entry exam, to find me the best personal assistant for my needs out of “everything that is out there”. There can be several results to this request:

1. The applicant can be insulted by the unorthodox request and just refuse to proceed with me.
2. Even if they’re not insulted, they can just give up, possibly because they do not think the exercise is worth their time.
3. They might decide to do some digging here, and really find me a top quality assistant (or perhaps just a a better assistant … I can apply this recursively if needed)
4. Or, they might do the research and convince me that they are my top choice for assistance.

If somebody passes all this, reaches item #4, finds me a few alternatives but manages to convince me that they are better than their alternatives … then by golly, they deserve the job. If somebody gives up and decides to either get insulted, or that the job isn’t worth doing 1-2 hours research … then they prove to be the wrong candidate.

I hope I don’t come off as too cruel here – I really do not have time to review a lot of CVs and do the homework, and I think it’s an interesting test of abilities for this position. If this sort of exercise seems as cruel or mean to you, then odds are you and I won’t get along  anyway, and so this filter has served its purpose.

P.S.

If you do manage to find me a quality Personal Assistant, I’ll make it worth your while, time and effort.

I partition the world into two sets of people:

1. People who I can rely on to Get Things Done, in a Fire and Forget mode
2. Everybody else

I am not passing judgement on either groups – people behave as people do, and it is not my role or desire to try to change anyone else. However, I can try to belong to the first group of people, and I prefer to work more with people from that group, as it’s just so much easier for me to manage my communications with them.

This is what I do to get myself into Group 1:

1. I start by using Inbox Zero, and keeping my inbox clean and empty.
2.  Whenever I ask someone a question or delegate a task to them, I use a service such as SaneBox or FollowUpThen to make sure that person will reply. It’s really easy – just BCC 3d@sanebox.com, and this email will pop up in your inbox after three days, if you haven’t received a reply by then.
3. I keep myself honest. Sometimes it’s hard to follow the above rules, especially when my inbox gets blown with incoming emails. Still, no matter how much it is crowded, I never cheat by archiving an email without doing it. If I have too much inbox overflow, I just forward some emails to SaneBox and postpone these emails, thus giving me the empty inbox I need in order to remain a Type I Person.

I’ve been using this methodology for a few years now, and it has served me well (I hope you would categorize me as a Type I Person). If I work with someone who is also a Type I Person, I rarely need to actually follow up on anything with them, because I know they get things done at the right time. I’m just so much happier working with such people, because their reliance simplifies my own work flow and allows me to achieve a lot more through delegation.

What are you guys using? How well is it working for you?

Due to the huge flurry of Mastercoin related activity, the amount of free time I have has decreased rapidly – just ask my wife.

I am looking for an assistant to help fix that and simplify my life. Job requirements:

1. Trustworthiness and open communications on both sides is a must
   (“both sides” means you need to be able to deal with criticism and I won’t need to filter myself to you).
2. You need to be an excellent communicator both in Hebrew and English, verbal and written.
3. Good personal management / time management skills.
4. You must be the type of people to always replies to every email they get – I need a “Fire and forget” kind of person that I can delegate things to and just know they’ll get done promptly.
5. Preferably located in Tel Aviv and mobile, although most work will be done remotely.
6. Quick learner and motivated, technology friendly.
7. Bonus: Familiarity with Bitcoin.
8. Update – Major bonus: I would like to one day find someone who can be trusted with reading, filtering and answering all my email for me. It will be a while before I reach a high enough level of trust with someone for this position, and it is certainly not a requirement at this stage. If you believe you have the qualifications and/or recommendations required to convince me to trust you with such sensitive information, that would be a huge plus.

We can start part time on an hourly basis, and see where this develops. I intend to pay with Bitcoin (you can convert it to ILS if you want).

Please send relevant CVs to ron.gross+assistant@gmail.com

Must watch. Seriously.

I was asked how I use a Yubikey. This is how I do it:

1. I ordered a Yubikey from Yubico. An Mt. Gox Yubikey is only good on Mt. Gox, you need a generic Yubikey.
2. Actually, I ordered two. If one of them is lost the other can’t be used to access it, but I don’t want to waste time ordering another one … I want to have a backup.
3. On blockchain.info I attach my Yubikey to one of our more secure wallets.
4. Then, whenever I log in to blockchain.info, my Yubikey is required.
5. I still retain the complete encrypted backup of my wallet, which of course does not require a Yubikey to decrypt.
   This is why Yubikey only semi-protects you … against a specific type of attack (for further security, use a cold wallet).

If my primary Yubikey will ever be lost or destroyed, I will decrypt my backup, open a new blockchain.info account, import my previous wallet, and secure that with my new Yubikey.

As you know, I was recently appointed to Executive Director of the Mastercoin project.
We have a ton of work to do, and you can help and get paid for your help!

Please check out this thread for more details.

(Don’t forget to check out our FAQ first)

FYI – If you want to follow Mastercoin, we will be posting weekly updates on our blog.