I think there was a great lesson in college taught in the advisors office and we never knew it.

My routine is a little messed up right now and I’m trying to correct that. As I’m looking at personal productivity systems, they end up looking a lot like company operating systems. Once you open up that can of worms, there are hundreds of tools, products, and systems as well as thousands of coaches, consultants, and gurus who will get you into shape. I love these tools. I read the books. I listen to the podcasts.

They all have pretty much the same elements:

  • Driving Purpose
  • Goals that are broken down into tasks
  • Schedules that drive a routine

Back to the advisors office. I didn’t walk in and say “2.5 years from now I will make at least a 90% in Physics 315.” No, I had a dream. Sometime in the future I had a general thought of what I wanted my life to be, where I would live, what I would do for fun, who I would marry. I had come to the conclusion that Electrical Engineering was most aligned with my skills and passions, and could probably support the life I wanted. The advisor then slid over a schedule the detailed out the next 5 years of my life neatly broken down into two semesters and two breaks a year. The breaks should probably be filled with internships and here are the resources to pursue those. Each class, in itself was a a goal that led me to the world after college I envisioned. Once I step foot in each class, the professor handed me a syllabus which gave me a weekly schedule, a to-do list of homework, and another roadmap on how to achieve this goal on the way to my dream. Now I have a tasks list and a routine on my roadmap to success.

Whether it’s personal productivity or strategy of an organization, all we’re doing is building a plan like a college advisor. What motivates us has to be this dream in our mind of a better future, something not near, but not distant either. We break that down in a series of goals over the next 3-5 years. Those goals are time boxed in seasons of the year (which might nicely fall into fiscal quarters). Eventually, we get it down to the daily routines and tasks.

Whether you’re setting goals as an individual, a non-profit, a small business, or publicly traded company, I don’t think the specific tool, system, or guru matters so long as you’re hitting those 3 things.

Innovate or Die?

While attending a trade show yesterday, I heard two different people say, “You have to innovate or die, right?” In the moment and in that context, I agreed with them.

This morning, scrolling the YouTubes, the algorithms knew I am planning a semi-DIY remodel and fed me this gem of a video. It featured a significantly harder-to-install outlet at 90x the cost of a regular one—for something that, to me, looks like an afterthought.

“Innovate or Die” has to be balanced with “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

In our digital world, it’s just too easy for software companies to spit out new stuff. Recently, I’ve watched my go-to apps go to crap. Photoshop, QuickBooks, and MS Office have been inundating me with in-your-face AI while also making it clear that they are training that AI on my own data. All of this is driving me to other products. I want AI to help streamline certain tasks, but don’t shove it down my throat or turn my data into your product.

“Stay in your lane, Jared. You do vehicle tech, not software. Get back on topic.”

When innovating in software, hardware, transportation, or building a better mousetrap, the goal should be improving the user experience, not just innovating to stay alive. Instead of taking two steps forward and one step back, take a minute, think, and take one smart step forward. People get all excited when you take the two steps forward but get angry when you take the one step back. If we keep taking one deliberate step forward, we should keep moving in the right direction.

If you are a customer of JARDUM and you’re asking for two steps forward while I’m pushing hard for one deliberate step forward, please understand that I’m not trying to hold you back. I’m trying to innovate where it truly improves the user experience.While attending a trade show yesterday, I heard two different people say, “You have to innovate or die, right?” In the moment and in that context, I agreed with them.

Tariffs for thee, but not for me

Last week, there was talk of 100% tariffs on semiconductor manufacturers that don’t manufacture in the US. Apple, which has been under a lot of pressure to build iPhones in the US, announced billions in investments in American manufacturing. However, they will not be assembling the iPhones in the US. They’ll be making components and shipping them to Asia where they are assembled, but this will seemingly remove the tariff requirements on their homegrown silicon.

We partner primarily with US manufacturers. All of our Jardum-designed controllers, keypads, harnesses, etc., are assembled in the US. Many of these manufacturers are privately owned, US-based, small businesses too. All good, right?

Designing electronics is complicated, and part selection is a critical part of that. You aren’t just randomly picking a processor or power FET, or doohickey that meets the spec. The engineer evaluates the quality of the documentation, the availability of application engineers and support, the responsiveness of the sales folks, stock at distributors, and lead times. Then you rigorously test the parts in the application.

Throughout this process, it’s very obfuscated where the parts are being manufactured because these are global companies. Not too long ago, we got on a call with a critical component manufacturer’s application engineer. We were both working from home and figured out we were literally in the same neighborhood. I could ride my bike to engineering facilities for NXP, Silicon Labs, ARM, and STMicro here in Austin. But these companies have fabs all over the world. I, a measly small electronics company, don’t get to dictate where they build their parts. And it’s constantly changing! We get notifications that parts move from being built in Asia to Europe or tested in Arizona but built in Asia. There are also very specialized parts that a design hinges on. If you design a power circuit based on a low-RDS smart FET, you cannot just drop in an alternative. You have to tear up the entire board.

There are times when you can guarantee a part is made in the US. Back in the part shortage times of COVID, we had two options for CAN transceivers for a design. There was a common part, but it had a 26-week lead time. Then there was a MIL-spec part built in the US with a 6-week lead time. We needed the part now, so we went with the US part. It cost 3x as much.

Apple is a trillion-dollar company that committed to building parts in the US but keeps assembling in Asia. They will not have to pay the tariffs.

Jardum, a company privately owned by a couple of dudes, will buy the best components for the application and continue partnering with US small businesses to assemble the parts. Inevitably, our prices will go up as the tariffs are applied to our COGS and many US options are more expensive from the getgo. It’s not a line item on the final assembly because the final assembly is not affected by tariffs, just the raw goods.

Productivity Tip: Create custom autocompletes.

This is a small one but I end up using it every day For things that you type often across a lot of different apps, you can create custom text replacements. My most used one are addresses. So instead of typing out my entire address I just type “myaddress” and it puts in the entire address properly formatted.

On Mac you do this from Settings > Keyboard > Text Replacement and it works across all your icloud connected devices. So If I’m trying to send my address to someone in a WhatsApp chat on my iPhone, works there too. Don’t have to worry about fat fingering the wrong number or autocomplete guessing wrongly at your oddly named address.