Quick Hits of the Week

• Writing your first home budget can be a challenge, especially if you’ve never really thought about all the possible goods and services that your household needs every month. Nothing is worse than getting to the middle of the month and realizing that you’ve forgotten to budget for pet food, or toiletries. To help avoid a surprise, I recommend working from a list like this one to start with. You may still miss something (this list excludes a house alarm, for example) but it’ll get your brain working about where your money is going.

• As a software developer, let me emphatically agree with and share this. Design by democracy is a terrible idea.

• I’m not quite up to eliminating 92% of my online arguments, but I’m a lot better than I’ve been in the past. The best thing that I learned to do was to wait until after my knee was done jerking around to start writing. A good 80% of the time that means I won’t feel like writing at all. I think Jon Acuff’s advice might be able to help me knock out that next 12%.

• One of the hardest things for me to learn was that it was alright to enjoy being a part of a bigger vision while still being true to my dreams and passions. A lot of that was immaturity on my part. Some of it was the lack of good leadership. It took a couple of really exceptional leaders to call me out and help me learn to stand out while still fitting in to the organization I was a part of. I didn’t even realize they were doing it until I grew up a bit more.

• My name is Jonathan, and I like IKEA. (No, I’m not that Jonathan. Although, he is very cool.) I actually enjoy walking through their endless showroom maze. The meatballs actually are tasty. Best of all, they inspire a bunch of people to hack their stuff in cool ways. A couple of my favorites thus far: Turning a studio apartment into a one bedroom and these elf/fairy wings. I wonder what they have that would double for an office door.

Is there something valuable or important or cool or funny or weird or awesome out there I missed this week? I can’t hit it all, but you should let me know about it by dropping me a line or sharing it in the comments below! I’d appreciate the heads up.