I Work

Hey, I wanted to step away from the specifics for a moment and talk to you about how I work.

I Turn Off the Internet

I only keep the Internet physically plugged in for a few hours a day and only when I absolutely need it. To go even further; I have not had an Internet connection at home for the last month or so.

I buy Ebooks, download the official manuals or go to the library (where I am now) for reference books. I can’t stress enough the importance of actually reading entire books instead of searching for code snippets every twenty minutes when I can’t remember something.

I have played the Google-as-you go learning style. IT IS A TRAP. Don’t do it, you will waste a huge amount of time. While i was Googling-as-i-went i was training my brain for short term understanding of the subject. Now that I have to really understand what I am reading and not just cut and paste my brain is TRAINED to pay attention and remember long term. This is huge. I am a way better coder now.

I am FORCED to automate to high heaven and to get code to work right the first time instead of a bunch of guess and check and google.

I am Working or I am Not

When I am working I try to stay glued to my work. Work is what I am doing. I create a block of time and I get done what i am supposed to get done or I don’t. If the deadline passes, i might sudo rm -rf project. No looking back, get it done, or don’t.

I spend as much time on the important, but not urgent things, as possible. This ties back in with turning off the Internet. The Internet tricks you into working on urgent matters, weather they are important or not.

I don’t beat myself up. I just stay happy and moving forward. Without endorphins i wouldn’t get anything done.

When I am not working I am playing, I am getting some fresh air, hanging out with people, I exercise, I listen to music, go for walks, I travel and move a lot.

I Screw Up

Sometimes I don’t work or play as hard as i should. Sometimes i don’t work up to my ideal. Sometimes for reasons I can’t fully understand, i just don’t do what i should be doing and i waste time.

Sometimes i swear i actively sabotage my success.

Although it sucks to have to admit it, sometimes i find my own internal drama life affirming.

If everything is going too smoothly then i am just not striving for something worthy enough. Looking at my over educated history, you can see this measurably in my report cards. I consistently got the best grades in the hardest or easiest classes, the stuff in the middle just wasn’t worth the mild effort.

I Secretly Want to Have A Partner or Two to Work With

Although I normally work very much alone* I dream of having people to work with, who work nearly as hard as me, but on complimentary skills. People who are great at outsourcing, like writing, like doing the maintenance, and have a few stellar ideas they want really bad to implement but have not.

I can come off as a jerk and hard headed to work with for reason that will become apparent in the next section.

* Over the last year or so I did work with someone as a partner. That person did not work well, did not have great ideas (had really, really great products) and i lost A LOT of money just for the honor of learning from a lot of business mistakes i will never ever make again. I am still digging to get out of the hole this made.

My Ego is Unaffected by Anyones Unvalidated Opinion of My Work

Putting it another way: I am in whatever business my clients want me to be in and anything i create, write, or work for is for them and only them.

Obviously i don’t work in niches that don’t have interesting people or interesting products, so don’t take me the wrong way and think i would start selling lead weights to fish as long as the margin was big enough.

That being said, I don’t care if your neighbor’s dog’s cousin’s mother thinks the color of your websites are too plain or that there is too much text, or that the navigation says what it means instead of some stupid made up language you want me to use.

If you can’t show me MEASURABLY how your ideas will lead to either happier customers (who refer) or ones that buy more stuff than frankly you can STFU.

Its not my problem if you were picked last in gym class and now you have to show those kids how “fashionable” or “cool” or “chic” or “novel” your storefront is.

The only measure of success is if you are getting cool, happy customers who are putting money into your pocket.

I Respect Superiority

It doesn’t matter how great we think we are, just about any other person we meet will know how to do, at least, one thing considerably better than us.

When i meet someone who has more experience, more training, more ability to accomplish something useful, i STFU and do what they say, no questions asked.

Even if I think i could do a better job then the person i am working with/for, unless i actually have verifiable PROOF that there is a better way to do things, i just STFU. I make sure i am the right hand man, getting done whatever i am tasked to get done.

Nobody cares how smart and knowledgeable i am, they just care about results.

Nobody Cares How Hard I Work

Nobody does or should care how hard I work. Not once in my entire life have i walked to the bank, handed over a check to cash and had the teller ask me “How hard did you work to get this money, because if it was really hard i might just add a couple extra zeros to it for you.”

Things I Need To Improve

- I don’t hold myself hard enough to the rule of “Always be working on the thing which has the most leverage.” In other words, there is almost always one thing i could be doing which would be making me the most money or saving me the most time, but i am not always doing it.

- I do not spend enough time networking with successful people.

- I do not spend enough time finding people who could be really successful if they had a little more guidance.

- I love coding and marketing so much that sometimes i get caught up in the thrill of building things to be “perfect” instead of just getting it out there and cashing the checks.

Over all i think i do a pretty darn good job and am happy with my work. My projects generally make money and my ideas generally turn out to be either correct or wrong in such a way that lessons can be learned from them.

This blog is going to live in conjunction with my biggest project yet, i am going to take on a huge, established, difficult niche which is full of suspicious and finicky prospects.

Seeing as this is going to be build from the ground up, i will be able to replay the drama here in abstraction.

Enjoy the ride, subscribe to the rss and keep in touch.

In the next post i will suggest some FOSS applications i think everyone who is into automation and replication should use.