Organization
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Structure, Meetings and Other People
→: Structure, Meetings and Other PeopleWhen I started on this self-employed adventure, I had no structure. This was the first adjustment. I allowed myself to be distracted by potential projects, pitching things, doing unpaid work in the hope that it would pay off (it didn’t). Over time I created habits for myself, drew boundaries, evolved to this 5 days on /…
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Organising Things
→: Organising ThingsI have finally figured out how to make Trello work for me. I found having a board for each project overwhelming, and the items in cards too heavyweight. Often a reasonably sized task have a bunch of subtasks, and I might not manage to do them all at once. 1. Check Lists I use these for task-specific TODO…
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On Not
→: On NotI realised something earlier this year: if you want something different, you have to create space for it. Something different requires time, creativity, serendipity. If there’s no space, you never find the new thing, because you’re so busy going from A to B you don’t have time to see it, even if you were looking for…
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Reaching Profitability – 7 Things I’ve Learned
→: Reaching Profitability – 7 Things I’ve LearnedIn May, I met my revenue goals, and in June I’ll take a pay-check – my first since I escaped my gilded cage. It’s an exciting milestone, and one I’m proud of. However when people say they envy my life, or that I’m “living the dream” I get quite irritated. Yeah, it looks good, now.…
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A Small Focus Hack
→: A Small Focus HackI decided that my word for 2015 was “ship”. Part of this is that it’s easy to flounder in an unstructured environment (which I did a bit at the end of 2014). The way I decided to solve this was to give myself structure, and goals. How do you measure bigger milestones though? It makes…
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Running a Weekly Newsletter – 7 Things We’ve Learned
→: Running a Weekly Newsletter – 7 Things We’ve LearnedChiu-Ki and I have been running Technically Speaking for 6 months now. Neither of us had run a newsletter before, and we learned a number of things along the way! Here are the 7 I’ve found most important. 1. Shared Values What the values are is going to get a post of it’s own, but…
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March is a Whirlwind
→: March is a WhirlwindJanuary and February was for me a quiet period of focused productivity. I moved the needle on a bunch of projects, and I’m excited to push them out into the world. I love these periods, but I start to worry that my life – and therefore me – is boring. I crave adventure, excitement. And…
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Book: How to Invest Your Time Like Money
→: Book: How to Invest Your Time Like MoneyOne of the things I really liked about How to Invest Your Time Like Money (Amazon) is how short it was. There are plenty of lengthy books written about time management, I know I’ve read a bunch of them, and some of them have been very helpful. This book though, is short and strategic. Two key…
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Rest Day – Buffer Day – Focus Day
→: Rest Day – Buffer Day – Focus DayMy friend introduced me to this concept recently and I’ve found it really helpful. Rest days: complete break from work (I call them “no computer” days). Buffer days: get through the myriad of small things that pile up. Focus days: move the needle on Big Projects. Some observations: Rest days need to happen before they are…