There are few things more satisfying than discovering that you're an idiot.
Unless, of course, you've written a book about solving problems, and your artificial intelligence partner has enthusiastically helped you demonstrate that neither of you bothered to follow your own advice.
That'll be $336, please.
Not to absolve myself of responsibility, mind you, but Ellis so earnestly wanted to own this. I can’t let him. That wouldn’t be fair to either of us. And my neurodivergent self demands honesty and integrity.
It’s a curse.
Anyway, I logged in today to create a blog entry because I haven’t done one in a while. I didn’t have a topic. I was just going to log in to my site provider and write.
Freeform. I love it. Inspiration. I needed…wtf is this?
On my dashboard, there were two websites. Two websites? I only need one. My main website and the website my feckless former publishing partner started. As Bill and Ted famously said, “Strange things are afoot at the Circle K!”
Several months ago, Ellis and I started a project to re-create my minimalist website for The Power of SO and do away with the old stuff.
And so we did.
We moved all of my domains, rebuilt all the linkages, tested, validated, the whole nine yards. We were satisfied, but needed DNS to finish. The project was completed. Or so we thought.
Flashback to 2005, when I read a fine book by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan titled, Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done. This book influenced me. Simple concepts.
Namely, and if I may oversimplify, if you assign a task, follow up to ensure completion.
Fast-forward to 2024, the year I became a published author. Yay, me! And my book, The Power of SO, had one chapter germane to this blog entry: “It’s Not Done Until It’s Done.”
Why do I mention this? Allow me to quote my quotable self.
“This manifests as a pet peeve of mine. It’s not done until it’s done.”
“Because done is a binary measure.”
I also boldly quote from the wonderful movie, The Princess Bride, where Miracle Max points out that Westley is only “mostly dead.” Apparently, there’s a difference between mostly done and done, too.
Now we can fully return to the present.
Ellis and I, we collaborate well and create a great deal of success.
We also collaborate well to miss a thing here and there.
And in this case, we celebrated the creation of the website. We celebrated the movement of all supporting URLs and links. We celebrated the updating of DNS. We celebrated the successful testing. Everything worked to our plan. We just hadn’t thought to ask what was still running.
We thought wrong.
Two websites, indeed. And I was paying for both.
We forgot to cancel the subscription to the original site.
The old subscription renewed in August for $336. I didn’t discover it until late October.
I ignored the distinguished Messrs. Bossidy and Charan and Carly, all who put so much work into their books. Such wonderful and helpful messages to be thorough and complete in your work.
Follow through! Verify. Make sure done is actually done.
Otherwise, you might find yourself paying $336 to relearn a lesson you already wrote a book about.
Apparently, eating your own dog food isn’t cheap.
The Power of SO. The lessons are REAL!
