Preparing

I've been thinking a lot about systems lately. I've been working on a system to analyze a new hosting service to see how it has been configured. Knowing this, I can tweak my projects to work properly on any given system.

I've also been thinking about a system to deal with new projects/clients. The benefits of such a practice would be that I wouldn't have to chance forgetting some piece or another of the process I have to go through to get them set up on my test server, set up a file for the project in question, and verify that a reasonable set of steps are in place to accomplish the task.

Part of the reason I've been thinking about this is that I was reminded tonight how much easier things are when I have a system in place. In this case, I was setting up for my quarterly LAN party. For those who don't know, this is an event where a bunch of grown men get together and connect their computers into a local area network (LAN) and then play computer games within which they try to kill each other -- repeatedly.

My wife tends to leave the house -- and often the state -- whenever I'm hosting one of these events.

Anyway, a couple of years ago, after spending 6 or 7 hours setting up for one of these parties, making mistakes that I made many times before, I decided that it was time to record all that I could think of in order to make the next one more efficient. Sure enough, it only took me about 2 hours on the next one. Each time I've refined the system, putting in any new contingencies which I uncover.

What was especially nice this time was that it's been 9 months since the last party (I'm not sure why there was such a long delay). Despite the hiatus, I was still able to get everything up and running in about 2 hours. Not bad!

So, what written systems to you have, for either your business or personal life?

That Which is Measured...

There's a rule in development, whether for business or personal pursuits: That which is measured, gets improved. I've been putting in some effort on this recently. It's a bit tedious, I'll admit, but it is informative.

Each business day, I record the number of calls I make, people I meet, events I attend, and presentations I give. I also record any sales I make and what their value is. I've been doing this now for about five months. My goal is to have a baseline "cookbook".

A cookbook is a concept I learned in my sales training with Joe Marr. The general idea is to understand, in my business, what level of effort leads to what level of results. When you know that, then you can control those results by increasing or decreasing your effort. With five months of data, I should have some picture of my return on investment.

The trick when analyzing this stuff, though, is to take into account the lag factor. For example, I haven't really changed the number of calls, meetings or events over the past few months, but just eyeballing the results, I'm seeing a gradual increase in the number of sales and their total value. So, for whatever reason, my results haven't reached the plateau dictated by my level of effort yet.

This is another good statistic to know: Lag time. If I look at my results and they aren't what I want, making a change now won't have an immediate effect, but might take several weeks or months to show.

So, what aspects of your business do you measure?

Cell Phone Tools

I just sent out volume 2, issue 3 of the "Clearing Up the Confusion" e-zine. Here's an excerpt:

OK, I'll admit it. I'm a bit of a cell phone junkie. I use my phone for everything from taking snapshots, to reading email, to keeping track of my "to do" list. Heck, I can even use it as a GPS when I'm out looking for a client's office.

Some of these tools are a part of the phone itself. Others, however, reside out on the Web. That means, whether I'm sitting at the coffee shop, or relaxing on vacation, as long as I have a cell phone connection, I have access to my information.

So, what are some of these services and how well do they work? Here's a quick rundown of some of the ones I've been using...

To read the rest of this article check out the e-zine issue. You might even like to subscribe!

So, what cell phone tools would you recommend?

A Day of Work

So, I've been spending a lot of time working on my business lately. Well, to be more accurate, I'm working on those parts of my business which aren't actual billable work. I've been out networking, writing, answering emails, reading, and making calls. I've even done a bit of paperwork here and there.

So, I was quite happy this afternoon to just sit down and work in my business. I released my inner Technician and just got some work done.

Primarily, I've been working on the Community Housing Network's site upgrade. Right now I'm adding in the new content. When that's done, I'll need to make some final tweaks to the user interface and we should be good to go. Wish me luck on that.

Now, this morning (during the "working on" period) I spent some time preparing a proposal for a potential new client. This afternoon they faxed the signed agreement, which means that, as of today, I'll be working with Bruce Donovan Construction to clean up their Web presence.

Today's been a good day.

So, how do you split up the "working on" versus the "working in"?

The Distraction of Your Choice

I might have mentioned that I've been reading "The 4-Hour Workweek" by Timothy Ferriss lately. In it, the author recommends clearing out those parts of you life which don't actually contribute to your goals. This mirrors the advice from my Karate teacher, Professor Hafner. He says that sometimes, to achieve what you love, you must give up that which you like.

In Ferriss's case, some of the things he recommends cutting out aren't even the things we like all that much. Sometimes they are just the things we allow to consume our time -- things which make us feel like we are being productive when in reality we are only keeping busy. Reading blogs, reading the newspaper, watching the news, and, yes, even reading and responding to email fall into this category. Ferriss himself checks his email once a week, each Monday at 10am.

Now, he admits that you have to do some adjusting in your life and that it takes a while to get to that level. What he does recommend to start, is to limit yourself to checking only twice a day, at noon (or right before lunch) and at 4 (or right before you leave for the day). Answering it more often or (shudder) whenever it comes in tends to cost us too much time. It takes a certain amount of time to get into a project and each time we break to check our mailbox, we have to pay that price again in order to get back into the process.

So, I decided to take the challenge. I've been trying it now for about three days. No checking email in the morning when I get up. No checking it before I go to bed at night. I'm trying to do the same with the blogs that I read.

OK, this is tough.

Email has a siren song which beckons to me. What is an important message just came in? What about the answer to the question for which I've been waiting? You can think up a plethora of completely reasonable-sounding rationalizations for why you need to check. Today I didn't do so well.

Do you suppose there's some sort of twelve step program for email users?

So, how often do you check your email?

Setting Your Limits

Maybe you've got this time management thing all figured out. If so, then I congratulate you. Personally, I always feel like I get to the end of the day and there are all of these things which didn't get done -- some of which had the potential to generate revenue! Where did all that time go?

I picked up a book from the library a few weeks ago called "The 4-Hour Work Week" by Timothy Ferriss. He espouses a lot of ideas, tips and techniques in the book, some I'm more comfortable with than others. One that caught my attention, though, was the idea of setting "unrealistic" deadlines for yourself.

The idea of this goes back to the concept that a project grows in scope and complexity in proportion to the time you allot for it. If you have 24 hours to complete a 10-page research paper, you can probably get it done without too much difficulty. If the time span becomes a week, the project becomes more involved and might require several days of research. Allow yourself two months and the your mental image becomes something akin to Mothra attacking Tokyo.

As a self-employed businessperson, I often have work I would like to do on my business. I have no specified deadline for them, so you can imagine the internal resistance I have to working on them. I decided to try to apply this concept to see if it would work for me.

One of the things I've been meaning to do is start posting articles on ezinearticles.com. I figured that I could just repurpose some of the many articles I've written for other things over the years. I knew it would take me a while to do this, though, as I'm not a particularly fast writer. So, with my first article, I decided to allot myself 3 hours to do the rewrite. Then I decided to become "unrealistic." I made it 20 minutes instead.

They say a deadline has a wonderful way of focusing the attention.

I missed that first deadline. It took me 22 minutes.

So, I'm figuring that this might help my business a little. I'm starting to apply it not only to my own projects, but also to those for my clients as well. I'll let you know how it goes. Give it a try yourself. I think you'll be surprised.

So, what time management tricks and techniques do you use?

Trying to Change

I've been a bit lax about writing lately and I thought it would be better to write something small tonight rather than nothing at all.

As chief cook and bottle washer of Cyber Data Solutions, I've been burning the candle at both ends -- trying to meet with people, maintain the office, do the work and keep some semblance of balance in my personal life.

One of the areas in which I felt I was achieving less-than-stellar results was in the area of my health. Exercise quite often went by the wayside with more of a general "I'll get to it later" intention than with any real sweat. I finally decided to shift my schedule a bit -- going to bed earlier and getting up earlier so that I could get my workout in at the beginning of the day.

The only problem is that I tend to write at the end of the day. Going to bed earlier eliminated that time.

So, now that I've made one change, the ripples are starting to spread through my life. With any kind of luck, I'll figure out some sort of equilibrium before the Jenga tower which is my schedule comes crashing down.

Wish me luck!

So, when was the last time you tried to remake your daily schedule? Did it work?

Wiping the Slate

I read a fair number of blogs regularly. They bring insights, ideas, and sometimes inspiration into my life. The authors of these online repositories teach, cajole and invagle me to improve my life, my business and even my personal relationships.

And sometimes I just wish they'd cut it out!

Oh, I don't mean I want them to stop writing. That would be wrong. Every once in a while, though, I don't have a chance to read their pearls of wisdom. And that's when the trouble starts.

Many of you know that Lisa and I went on vacation to Hawaii this year. We had a great time, in part, because my laptop chose to die which meant I couldn't do any work. I also couldn't read my blogs. By the time I got back, I had close to one hundred blog postings to read. What plenty! What joy! What a pain in the butt.

I actually found myself avoiding my newsreader. Each time I looked, I had just as many or more posts to read than the time before. It became less about learning from these great teachers and more about just getting through the reading (kind of like high school was for many of us). I lost touch with Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki. The Brazen Careerist had to go on without me and Tom Peters only irritated me with his prolific posts.

Then it happened. I was just catching up on one of my favorite blogs (Scott Ginsberg's "HELLO My Name Is BLOG"). When I'm just reading one or two posts, I'll just use the Google Newsreader gadget for my Google Homepage. The gadget had recently gone through an overhaul and some of the controls had been moved around a bit. When I went to click on the "Refresh" link, I accidentally hit the "Mark all as read" link instead. Suddenly that list of hundreds of posts vanished. I had lost my place in the blogosphere.

And I felt great.

We so often accept stress and responsibility into our lives which has no real place in reality. Was Seth upset that I didn't read every one of his posts? Did Guy lose any sleep? I doubt it. Did I miss out on some good ideas? Probably. But, you know what? Those guys have a lot of good ideas and they will write many more in the future.

Now I'll look forward to reading them again.

So, how do you deal with the glut of online information? How do you say "no" to a good idea that doesn't fit?

"In" Basket Full

I'm discovering that I have yet another mental adjustment to make in my path to being an entrepreneur. I've found that my "in" basket seems to be constantly filling up (and occasionally overflowing onto the floor). I've got three development projects going on right now for clients (cellochan, AJ Boggs, and Community Housing Network), two classes (sales training, and website development) each with its own homework. I'm re-designing the Cyber Data Solutions website (as a part of the latter class), trying to maintain my correspondence, writing the occasional article, and attending the occasional networking event or meeting with a potential networking partner or prospect.

Don't get me wrong. I'm enjoying the process. Each of the items I've listed above has it's own appeal and challenge to it. I certainly don't wish that I could go back and change my decision to leave the University and go full time on my business. In fact, thinking back, I probably had just as many "to do" items back then as I do now. So, what's the difference?

I think it's the fact that the items that await my attention are so much more directly tied to my livelihood.

I think that this simple fact has placed a little more urgency in my life. Not necessarily a bad thing. I need a little discomfort to motivate me. I just need a little time to learn to deal with that urgency. I think it also wouldn't hurt to spend at least a little time each week developing systems to help process these requirements a little more efficiently. Maybe that would help me lossen up and relax a little more.

Maybe I should go finish reading "Getting Things Done". ;-)

So, how do you deal with the overflowing "in" basket?

Analog or Digital?

I'm running into a bit of a minor problem right now with my organizational system. It's my calendar. You see, I really like having a web-based calendar, like Google Calendar. It's easy to use, easy to share. I've also used Yahoo! Calendar and AirSet in the past, but Google Calendar has everything I want -- except one thing.

I have no way to take it with me.

Well, to be accurate, I can print out the calendar, but I have no way to electronically access the calendar when I'm away from my computer. Ostensibly, my cell phone can browse the Web, and therefore access my Calendar, but apparently, Google Calendar is a bit too complex for it. For right now, whenever I try to connect to the calendar with my phone, it just says "Sorry, we don't support your device, yet".

So, for now, I'll just have to continue taking the paper version with me to networking events as I did this morning and then transfer any appointments I make back into the calendar. In the meantime, if you've heard of a way to display your Google Calendar on an LG enV cell phone, I'd sure appreciate a few pointers.

So, how do you keep track of your appointments?

Snow Day!

Southeast Michigan is getting a little bit of a snowstorm right now. Looking out my office window I can see the snow flying past in the light of the street lamps. It's been falling since around three this afternoon.

The funny thing is, I've had several meetings set up for this afternoon and evening. All of them canceled due to the inclement weather. Suddenly I found myself with unscheduled time. I had a Snow Day! I don't think I've had one of those since high school. U of M never closed. In the twenty-one years that I either attended classes or worked there, I don't remember a single official inclement weather day. If we didn't think we could make it in, we either arranged to work from home or took a day of precious vacation.

Now, of course, as a self-employed person, I don't really have a true Snow Day. There's always work to do. Still, it felt a bit like one. Before the snow got too bad, I went out to run a few errands and took some time to sit and enjoy a chat with Lisa. Not quite the hours of sledding I would have indulged in as a kid, but still kind of a fun release.

Ironically, tomorrow is supposed to be our next Leadership Ann Arbor class -- Education Day. If the snow keeps falling like this all night, I may have a Snow Day tomorrow, too!

So, when was the last time you had a Snow Day? What did you do?

Another Day (Off)

As most of you already know, when I decided to go full-time on my business, I also made the commitment to myself that I would not work at all on Sundays. That was the day for spending time with my wife, for getting some chores done around the house, and for just kicking back a little and recharging. No email, no phone calls, no programming.

Well, I've now had four such days off and I've got to tell you, I wish I had done this a long time ago. Before the beginning of this year, I was working part time for the University of Michigan and part time on my business. If I wasn't working on Sunday, I was feeling guilty for not working on Sunday. How messed up is that? I've had a number of small projects to do around the house for months (some for years). in the past, I was always waiting for a break in my schedule to attend to these tasks. You can guess what would happen. Right. Nothing. Oh, I would feel guilty that they weren't getting done, but, what could I do? I had work to do.

Now, during my work week, I don't feel that guilt. After all, I know that I have a day dedicated to completing those projects. And when I wake up on the "day of rest", I get pretty excited about all of the possibilities for the day. Just yesterday, for example, I finished the repair work on the drapery rods for our front room, re-organized my basement workshop, and found time to sit with my wife and watch one of my favorite movies, The Sixth Sense.

If you are a sole-proprietor or small business owner, take my advice. Set aside at least one day a week as a "not work" day. I guarantee that you'll still get pretty much the same amount done in your business and you'll become a real hero around the house. Who knows? Maybe your spouse will even remember what you look like!

So, how do you refresh yourself each week?

Frustrations and Limitations

As I've mentioned before, I do love a puzzle. The only times when that turns out not to be the case is when the puzzle just doesn't seem to have a solution. I've run into one of those problems today.

One of my classmates in Leadership Ann Arbor, Jim Anderson of A.J. Boggs & Company, called me in to help them out with some small enhancements and minor fixes on one of their legacy systems. The system was written in Perl, a language with which I have some passing familiarity. One of the "minor fixes" has now vexed me for far longer than it should and has gone beyond the range of a puzzle and is rapidly approaching "true annoyance" proportions.

Skipping over the gory details, the system allows users to get a 7-day subscription to one of the client's services. The user enters his or her vital stats and the system, behind the scenes, adds them to two files. The first is the subscriber database, the other is a password file.

Or at least it is supposed to.

Every once in a while, it just doesn't add them to the password file (which makes it really tricky to login and use the system). I have used every diagnostic that I can think of, examined log files, run simulations, etc, but I cannot seem to make this thing give up its secrets. It's maddening! Oh, I've set up some features so that the admins can fix the problem when it shows up again, but, really, to do the job right, it shouldn't be happening in the first place.

And, of course, sometimes you just have to face the facts of diminishing marginal returns. If the problem doesn't occur often enough for the client to justify paying for my time, then sometimes a work-around is good enough.

But for a puzzle-solver it can be really annoying!

So, in your line of work, do you ever have to be satisfied with just "good enough"?

In Search of a Schedule

My lovely and long-suffering wife, Lisa, has heard me complain about this since about the time I started working in my business full time. The topic is having a schedule and, more to the point, my need to have one. This latter fact was brought home all too forcefully tonight when I had a private lesson with Professor Hafner down at the Karate School.

The Professor (so-titled for his 7th degree Black Belt status) put me through a short, 15-minute lesson. We worked on the basics and ran through some forms. I'm ashamed to say that by the ten minute mark I was gasping for air. The reason? Pretty obviously, I've allowed myself to get out of shape. To much eating over the holidays, almost no real exercise -- it all adds up. And now, I'm using my business as an excuse not to work out. "I've just got to get this done by tonight!"

Oh, sure, I say that I'll get back on the exercise wagon, "just as soon as I can make it fit into my schedule", but I haven't really put in the effort. As I often do to myself, I feel like I've got to have all of the information before I can come up with a plan (and, of course, I can't accept a plan made up by someone else!). You know what? It isn't working.

So, I'm going to kill two birds with one stone. First, I'm going to give up the paralysis of analysis to which I am susceptible. Lisa came up with a good first-attempt effort at a schedule for my mornings. Right now, I'm committing to follow that schedule for the next week. I get the feeling that I will learn more about a good schedule for me by trying out what she suggested, than all the thinking and planning I will do over the next several weeks (or months).

And, by following her suggestions, I will at least get in a workout or two!

So, do you have a set schedule which assures that the important things get done? How did you develop it? How do you deal when life doesn't cooperate?

14 Lessons from a Fortnight

Well, it's been two weeks now since I've headed out on my own. I don't know if I've learned any momentous lessons yet, but I have come across a few minor ones.

1. Do priority work first thing in the morning. It sets the tone for the day.
2. Email is only rarely priority work.
3. Blogging and reading blogs are even more rarely priority work.
4. Developing a schedule is vital to success. I'm still working on this one.
5. Make time for things other than work in your life.
6. A cleared desk at night sets the tone for the next day.
7. Skipping sleep to work just leads to having to redo the work the next day.
8. Be curious. Explore the possibilities of new tools, new techniques, new relationships.
9. Make time to take care of your health.
10. A twenty minute walk is better than no exercise at all.
11. A spouse who supports you wholeheartedly is better than twenty great business ideas.
12. Things rarely go as planned. You expect a quiet month in which you can plan and develop a good strategy for your business? It probably won't happen.
13. When you are expecting a quiet month and it doesn't happen, be grateful.
14. When you are tired, a nap will do better than a can of Coke.

I'm sure there are a few more, but I'm pretty tired and it's time for me to get some sleep.

What new lessons have you learned in the last week (or which old ones have reminded you of their truth)?

Starting Off Right

With the new year and my new chapter of life, I've been paying closer attention to tips and techniques to improve my personal time management and productivity. Even though I've only been working part time in my business, Cyber Data Solutions, I've come to recognize that one of the key components for success for is just getting things started. As happens to almost all of us on occasion, the blank canvas can be a real stumbling block. Actually, the concept of "starting" has a variety of subconcepts for me, each of which requires different tools to overcome.

First is the idea of just starting a project from scratch. Fortunately for me, this doesn't plague me as much as it used to. After seventeen years of programming, I've built up quite a library of code. I've got templates and programming chunks and function libraries already built. "Starting" a project for me often involves grabbing some of these pieces (which already run fairly well) and starting the process of tweaking them. If I built houses, this would be the equivalent of setting up a pre-fab building and then just customizing it for the new owners.

The second area is restarting a project after a delay. Occasionally, I have to wait for some third party to complete a task before I can continue my work. This is not an unusual occurrence. After all everyone has their own schedule. Sometimes they mesh. Sometimes they don't. The biggest problem I run into here is just getting back into the flow of the project. Little details that I had in my head can fade even after only a few days. To combat this I take notes as often as I can. I keep a paper notebook for projects. I have Google Notebook, I put notations in the code itself. Oh, and I keep every single email about a project that crosses my desk. I can't tell you the number of times that particular habit has saved my bacon.

My last challenge in this area is the simple act of starting out each day. This is the one I've been trying to work on more recently. Far too often, the minutia of life seem to jump to center stage. Emails, blogs, working out, eating, etc. Each thing seems either innocuous or tremendously vital. Don't even ask me about checking blog statistics. I'm still new enough at this that I get pretty excited when I have more than ten readers in a day. All of that stuff, though, clutters the morning and before I know it, it's 1pm and I haven't gotten anything truly important done.

Now lately, in order to short-circuit this behavior, I've taken to getting up and going into the office and immediately starting work on my highest priority project. I promise myself that I only have to work for a single hour without stopping. No checking email. No reading (or writing) blog posts. Nothing but the work. Funny thing is, when I really put my mind to it, it's almost laughably easy. The exciting thing is that I can't believe how much I can get done in just that one hour.

I'll let you know if I find any other tricks which help me get things done. Of course, if you have any suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them, too. I'm also compiling a list of helpful sites and blogs on my Squidoo lens. Feel free to visit or suggest some entries.

So, how has the beginning of the year gone for you?

Not Getting Things Done

I'm no expert on personal productivity, but I have at least learned to recognize a lack of it in myself and, with a little observation, have discovered certain behaviors which can prevent me from getting things done. What follows is my list. Yours may vary.

1. Keeping it all in my head. I don't even like to think about the number of times I've gotten to the end of the day only to discover that I forgot to do some vital thing -- like call someone or pay a bill. It goes on a list or it doesn't get done.
2. Multitasking. If I try to do two (or three) things at once. In general, it takes me longer than the total amount of time it takes to do them separately. There are very few exceptions to this. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is watching TV while riding the stationary bike. Even then, though, I think I get a better workout when I am fully focused on the exercise.
3. Having a cluttered workspace. For me, a cluttered desk is the physical manifestation of multitasking. Each additional object takes up a small amount of my mental cycles. I'm at my best when the desk is clear.
4. Overloading the "To Do" list. When I am working up my "to do" list for the day, I sometimes get over-ambitious and really pile on the tasks. The problem is, I then get discouraged that I can't get it all done. After that, it;s a short downhill slide into apathy and an afternoon of wasted time.
5. Insufficient rest. I am a chronic night-owl. This wouldn't be a problem except that the rest of the world still wants me up bright and early. I can get by with only five hours of sleep, but too much of that and the best that I can hope for is a day of nodding off at my desk. The worst is that this can lead me directly to migraine-town, where I can't even beg to die.
6. Irregular schedule. I love meeting with people and going to networking events. The difficulty arises when it chops up my day into small chunks of 30-60 minutes of usable work time. I barely have the chance to get into "the zone" before I have to run off to my next event.

I'll be fighting these pitfalls even more now that I'm going off on my own. I've been reading the books and blog posts on how to improve my chances at success, but I fear I will be fighting these battles periodically for a long time to come. I guess, though, that we all have our blind spots and our Achilles heels. At least I've started the process of identifying mine. Next, I'll need to find some ways to counteract them.

Any advice would be appreciated.

So, what keeps you from getting things done?

14 days.

Multi-tasking is Bad

Through circuitous routes I found myself reading a delightful blog called "Brazen Careerist" by Penelope Strunk. This is one I'll definitely be adding to my Google Reader list. The post I first read was about time management in a multi-tasking world. Penelope offers ten tips on how to be more effective with our time even as technology continues to place greater and greater demands on us.

I loved tip #2 -- Admit multitasking is bad. This one goes right to the heart of some of my personal time management challenges. I've tried to convince myself in the past that I could just quickly check my email in the middle of my programming time, or watch TV while answering my email, or play a quick game of solitaire while waiting for a long upload to complete. Looking back, though, trying to do two things at once, just made things take a lot longer than if I had just done them sequentially (or not at all, in the case of the TV thing). I would have been much better off focusing my attention wholly on the one task at hand (and making sure that this task is a priority).

So, this is something that I want to work on, as I move more into my new career as a self-employed business owner. Wish me luck. Old habits die hard.

So, which of the ten tips speaks most clearly to you?

17 days.

Working from Home

For a number of years now I've done most of my work from home. Of course, from the start, the time I've put in on my business, Cyber Data Solutions , has been from the home office. In recent years, though, even my University of Michigan work has been largely done from the confines of my home.

Of course, as with most things, I've discovered both the good and bad aspects of this situation. On the good side, I can pretty much work whenever I want. I can schlub around in my sweats and slippers all morning and take a break in the middle of the afternoon to get in a workout. I get to arrange and decorate my office exactly the way I want it -- the way that helps me to be my most productive. As if this weren't cool enough, a little over a year ago, my lovely wife's job shifted. From that point on, she, too, was able to work from home. I'll have to admit that it's more than a little wonderful to be able to share my breakfasts and lunch hour and the occasional afternoon break with her -- to hear all about the challenges of her day.

Now, before you start to think that it's all buttercups and warm Spring days, working from home does have its downside, too. I have to provide and maintain all of the equipment in the office. I occasionally have a cat or two who think that the keyboard is the perfect place to take a nap, no matter how many times I shoo them out. Working from home can also lead to a certain level of professional isolation. I have to make a much greater effort now to maintain contact with my peers.

Of course, the biggest disadvantage, bar none is...

... the job is always there. From the moment I wake up in the morning to the last key-click before I retire at night, I hear the siren call of the work. This is Lisa's major concern about me going off on my own to focus on my business -- that the business will consume me. I can't say that it isn't a valid concern. Heck, after Lisa went to bed, I sat down "just to check my email". Two hours, ten emails, two web scripts and the beginnings of a proposal later, I'm still here sitting at the desk.

Fortunately, I'm still loving what I do -- right now. I guess I'd better re-read my copy of The E-Myth Revisited before I get too much farther into this adventure.

So, do you work from home? How do you keep the job from taking over?

27 days.

100 Percent!

I've been reading a pretty good book lately called "The Success Principles", by Jack Canfield (one of the guys who brought us the "Chicken Soup..." books). I just read one of the section last night called "99% is a Bitch; 100% is a Breeze". The basic concept here is that, if you set a rule for your life, it is easier to follow it 100% of the time rather than allowing yourself to break it "occasionally".

I've found this to be true in my own life. For the last two years, during Lent, I've given up television. That meant no watching DVDs, no live programs, no taped programs, no channel surfing. Nothing. The only difference was that the first year I allowed myself to watch on Sundays.

Ask me which one was harder.

That first year was a real drag. I would tape all of my programs and starting at 12:01 am on Sunday morning, I would spend a good portion of my day in front of the idiot box. I would watch that evening and then at midnight, I would turn it off for another week. I'm rather ashamed to say that hitting that "Off" switch at midnight was truly difficult, especially if I was in the middle of a program. I was always tempted to just finish up that show, or just watch "until the next commercial". Boy, was I glad when Easter arrived!

The second year? Well, it was tough for a week or so, but, you know? It gave me a completely different mindset. I knew that I wouldn't be watching TV again until Easter, so I started doing other things with my time. I read. I chatted with my lovely wife. I worked a few extra hours. I listened to some good inspirational and educational audio programs. After that first weekend was passed, I didn't even really miss it. To tell you the truth, I think I even lost some weight (since I tend to get snacky when I sit in front of the babblebox).

Now that I'm going to be working on my business full-time, I'm going to remember this lesson. What sort of things could I accomplish if I commit 100% to reading for an hour a day? To taking one business course a semester? To writing for 30 minutes every day?

Kind of exciting thoughts, right?

So, tell me, what one thing would you commit to 100%?

41 days.