Andrew Garrett’s Outboard Brain

Time away is what I needed, to figure out what I stand for, and how I’m going to go about it.

The reality is that business, as a tool, isn’t a magic lamp – you don’t just rub/blog it and have good things happen.  You have to focus on what you want, and actively work towards those ends.

What I’m really seeking is a way to draw people to me, people who want what I can offer, who can see the value of what I’m offering and are prepared to pay for it.  Just blogging here isn’t really serving that purpose.  In short, like many others, I want blogging to move me in the direction of financial abundance, while allowing me to maintain ‘the good life’ I currently live.

I believe, one hundred percent,  in the power of blogging as a business and branding tool; however  I realised I wasn’t using it right, wasn’t walking the walk I was talking about.  So, I’m making a bunch of changes.

I’m moving more along the lines of blogging-for-business rather than blogging-as-business.

Firstly, I’ve got two ventures in which I’ll be using blogging to my advantage – Bloghaus and Traits.

Bloghaus is the starting point of a venture I’ve had in mind for a while – in a way, something I’ve been obliquely working towards for the last year or so.  As is appropriate for a weblog hosting service, it’s built 100% on Wordpress, and uses some of the ‘CMS lite’ functionality included in that.  That’s also where I’ll be shifting my ‘blogging about blogging’ content to.

The idea behind Bloghaus is that, although using Wordpress is easy, setting it up can be quite daunting for non-technical folks.  While the free services like Wordpress.com, or the installations included as ‘one click installs’ on some hosting packages work perfectly well, they offer a limited range of themes and plugins, less opportunity for personalisation (custom themes and plugins, for example).

Bloghaus offers a wide range of themes and plugins – and I intend to grow that list over time.  Because the installations are centrally managed, it’s easy for me to keep them up to date and sufficiently secure – both the core wordpress installation, and the plugins.

I could rabbit on about the ideas I have for hours – but I won’t – if you’re interested, subscribe to that feed over there, and I’ll talk your ear off for hours.  Well, maybe minutes… but more often :)

Now, on one side, Bloghaus is doing myself out of work – it’s making easier/faster the stuff that I’ve been charging by the hour for.  On the other side, it should (I hope) attract a higher volume of people, make my life a bit more interesting, and maybe even leverage me a bit more work of the consulting type.  We’ll see about that.

The other site is Traits, the new photography and makeup business that I run with my wife (I do the photos, she does the makeup).  Currently, it’s a fairly plain and boring site HTML based site, but there’s a wordpress one in the works, that uses a really cool gallery plugin I’ve found, and will allow both my wife and I to have blogs as part of the site (on Makeup and Photography, respectively).  There’s a couple more things I want to figure out before I make that one live, but it’s coming along nicely – I’ll be sure to announce it here when it’s live and tested.

We’ve got another venture in the works as well, but that will only be Wordpress temporarily since there are some things it can’t do that we’re looking for, but more on at at the time.

This blog will go back to being about everything and nothing, stuff that interests me, and possibly only of interest to folks who know me.  Possibly of interest to other folks as well, we’ll see about that.

Lastly, there’s another blogging venture under way – probably never going to be very profitable, but should be fun.  I’ll be anonymous there, so I won’t be linking to it :)

So.  Big changes, a lot on my plate, and keeping me active and busy.  I like it!

Dogfood Being Happy, Blogging, Business, Work+Life Integration

…In Which Your Author Breaks A Rule for a Worthwhile Cause

Tim Ferris posts: How Much Does Your Commute Really Cost You?

Now, I’m trying really hard not to post links to other blogs in the place of content on this blog – which is why there’s the Tumblog* over to the left there (which you can also subscribe to if you’re interested) – but this post, I think, is well worth reading, and it fits in so well with my personal philosophy on this subject that it’s well worth sharing.

In most of NZ, people’s commute is fairly short – in my last actual job, it was a mere 20 minutes each way – but the odds are pretty good that we all know someone who takes more than an hour to get to or from work each day.

Add it up – 5 days a week, an hour each way – 10 hours of dead time a week. About 9% of your waking hours spent in the worst sort of unprofitable time imaginable – worse, it’s probably negative profit (a fancy way of saying that it’s a dead loss) when you factor in the negative effects of boredom and frustration on top of the fiscal costs.

Freelancing isn’t the answer for everyone, nor is telecommuting (at least not yet), but it’s well worth thinking of strategies to reduce your commute, or at least ways to make the time a little more useful to you. If your route to work is in heavy traffic, it’s quite possible to arrange a shift in your working hours – starting and finishing an hour later, or an hour earlier can be enough to halve your commute time.

More and more these days, employers are open to ways they can help their staff to improve their lives. If you can’t get out of the employment rut (which I know is hard), then perhaps you can improve your work life in other ways. It’s up to you, really.

Uncategorized Being Happy, Mastery

…In Which Your Author Returns To His Central Thesis

I’ve been a little sidetracked here lately, and focussing too hard on the blogging side of things.

This blog is intended to be about more than that – the lifestyle entrepreneur, small business (especially in NZ), personal/small business branding, and using blogging to tie them all together.

For a while now, I’ve been saying ‘Screw Work/Life Balance, I’m all about Work+Life Integration’. It’s a work in progress, but it is progressing.

Recently (as in, over the last few weeks) my wife and I bought a couple of new ‘bikes. We recently shifted to a smaller, flatter city, and we intend to use the ‘bikes to get around as much as possible – you know all the benefits of doing that, I’m not going to bore you by listing them.

So, Friday, we packed our bags, got on our ‘bikes and rode (the long way) to the beach, bought Fish and Chips from an award winning shop (honestly, best FnC ever), and sat on the beach and ate them (along with a salad brought from home, just ‘cos, you know, we’re healthy like that). Then we stretched out on a blanket, and worked (in various ways).

I didn’t bother taking my laptop with me, but I can do some of my work on my phone – I answered a few emails, and checked on Jaiku’s health, then put the iPod on (only to discover it wasn’t charged… d’oh!) and did some concentrated thinking and writing about a business idea I’ve been batting around in my head for a while, and about a blog concept that I’ve been working on with a couple of friends* (I very carefully packed my thinking notebook, so I could make notes while thinking). After an hour or so, a bit of a breeze had come up and it was getting chilly – so we packed up, and headed home.

Now, my time is my own – I could have justified leaving the phone and notebook at home, and just taking a book, and lying there in the sun reading instead of working. Hell, I probably would have, if I’d been in the middle of a really good book. But I like what I do, and don’t generally feel a need to escape from it – just doing it at the beach felt like a break, refreshed me, and blew off some cobwebs.

Integration. That’s what it’s all about.

[* more on these ideas will follow, if and when they launch]

Uncategorized Being Happy, Business, Mastery, Wellbeing, Work+Life Integration

Why Your Free Time is Boring – lifehack.org:

Or, as I’ve been saying it for a while:

“Screw Work/Life balance – I’m all about Work-Life Integration”.

(note – much easier to have that attitude when you’re self employed).

Balance implies contention – that you work and your life are fighting for your resources/time in some way.  Which I guess is true, if your job is just a job, just a thing you do to make money so you can live.  Personally, that’s very much what I’m NOT about.

Integration means you can work in the evenings, and do personal stuff in the day time with no guilt.

It means that you don’t differentiate between ‘work’ and ‘life’.  You just live, and your work is as much a part of that as your hobbies, your relationships, your sleeping, eating and ablutions.

Practically, it means that I can get up, feed the cats, check email and do some reading while I have breakfast, answer Jaiku support questions, go have a shower, do some work, head into the library and supermarket, go out for a ‘bike ride, have some lunch while reading some feeds, write a blog post, write some code for a couple of hours, take a break and read a book, come back, catch up on reading some feeds, answer a few emails, go make dinner…  etc etc etc.

It means that I rarely get bored – I can always find something to do to liven things up for myself.

It’s all my life.  Some of it just happens to make me some money :)

Uncategorized Being Happy, Blogging, Business, Mastery

A friend commented semi-recently that I used to write of my hopes and dreams on here. I haven’t done much writing here of late, mostly because I’ve been busy with stuff that’s a bit more interesting than introspection (but not really interesting enough to write about). However, it’s Sunday morning (in the mind, if not on the clock), I’m feeling good, and have a few minutes to think about things before properly settling into work for the day.

I do periodically do mini-braindumps on my Tumblog, however – it’s a combination of interesting links, amusing photos or videos, and mini-posts. Of course, uber-mini-posts go onto Jaiku.

The more I do, the more I want to do. My SomeDay/Maybe list just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

Off the top of my head (since I never actually write that one down), here it is. Some items kinda depend on other items.

• Learn a human language other than english, probably something asian, spoken and written, followed by living in that country for a while.
• Return to study (part time), most likely in something like Sociology or Anthropology, with an eye to progressing beyond undergraduate level. Particular interested in both subcultures and on-line/cross border culture.
• Embrace the steampunk aesthete, including a workshop to make/alter stuff in, and the skills to do it.
• Own property that suits our targetted lifestyle.
• Increase business levels and related skills (ongoing, and many, many directions – this could be a list just by itself).
• Two or three other business ideas need further investigation.
• Complete a triathalon.
• Spent far too much money on my dream computer setup. Be able to update it every year or so.
• Be a better cook.
• Get fitter and smaller.
• More Aikido.
• Learn to weld.
• Read more broadly. There’s never enough time to read all the interesting new stuff that comes out, let alone revisiting old friends.
• Spend more quality time with quality people.
• Broaden my local social network.
• Embrace and enhance my right-brain.
• Actively eliminate negativity from my life (doing pretty well so far, to be honest).
• Intelligently give more time and effort and money to causes I consider worthwhile.

So. What have I missed? :)

Uncategorized Being Happy, Mastery

Some days, everything goes wrong.

It’s easy to fall deep into self doubt when this happens. I know the fall well, I’ve taken it more than once.

For me, it often starts by needing to put effort in on something I’m not so great at. Today, that’s been coming up with a semi-decent design for a client with a fairly precise set of data display needs. Because of these needs, I can’t follow my usual route of hunting out a template that comes close, and altering it to fit – it has to be bespoke the whole way.

Design is something I’m not good at. My creative side is less strong than my logical side. This is not news to me.

Today has been an exercise in abject frustration.

If I were to follow the old path, I’d internalise today’s failures, and make them a part of my emotional makeup. Get up tomorrow, and carry on, and probably carry on falling.

So, that’s not what I’m going to do.

First, I’m going to find an easy win before I go to bed – probably something that’s impossible to fail at – housework!

Then I’m going to queue up a couple of tomorrow’s easy wins. Little things, like setting up the juicer all ready to go for breakfast. Get the day started right, make damned sure I can stop falling. Get some easy work tasks lined up.

Some days, everything goes right.

Tomorrow is one of those days.

Update: Pile of dishes done, kitchen all sparkly. Juicer set up for tomorrow. Writing shopping list. These are all successes. Easy!

Uncategorized Being Happy, Design, Mastery

I recently read Avoid Retirement and Stay Alive (Why you should never retire and how not to). 

Mostly, I picked it up because it fits with the concept of how I’m planning to live my life, but it also got me thinking a lot, putting solid thoughts around stuff I actually knew without knowing I knew it.

Example:

Retirement killed my parents.  Dad worked his whole life, and died a few short years after retirement.  When he had nothing in particular to do, his motivation to carry on sort of fell away, he got sicker and died. While Mum’s not physically dead, she’s no longer really here either.  She didn’t really get to retire until Dad died – her ‘job’ was looking after him, after their house, their finances.  Once he was no longer there, she didn’t have that much of a purpose, and her mind slipped away – startlingly suddenly.

I don’t plan to go out like that.  Like either of them.

I don’t know if either of them really had a lot of ‘when I retire’ plans, but I know some of the stuff they wanted to do wasn’t possible because of health reasons.  That’s not the way I plan to go, deferring life until I’m too old to enjoy it. 

The classic life model is to work hard until you’re in your 60s, then retire and live off what you’ve saved (perhaps topped up by the government, perhaps not).  I’d rather work smart now, do the stuff I want to do now, build up my capital and resources(of various sorts) so I can keep working as I get older, doing what I love as much as I want to do it.

I’m looking for a variety of things to do that I enjoy, that I’m good at (or can become good at), that I can earn from.  I’m planning on staying more mentally active (I’m actually thinking of finally getting a degree of some sort).  I plan to stay active, involved, interested and interesting for as long as possible.

Fuck retirement.

General Being Happy, Business, General, Opinion, Vitriol

En Avant » Blog Archive » Good strategy is making choices and meaning it:

From Jim Donovan’s new Weblog: Jim’s recipe for success in business – and much of it applies to life in general as well, now that I think about it.

My favourite quote:  “Think & act for greatness!”

Jim’s weblog just went live this week, and is the most recent implementation I’ve completed.

So….  welcome Jim!  Looking forward to more great content :)

Uncategorized Being Happy, Blogging, Business

Well, a part of it…

There might be more swearing than that, however…

[Image stolen from here with no shame whatsoever. If you go there, and spend the next 2 hours clicking to see the next random image, I want it on record that you did so after this warning, and it's Not My Fault. It's fun though!]

[thanks oddy!]

Uncategorized Being Happy, Design, Geek

Last night, I went out to get some takeout – I ended up getting chinese.

The place I went to has a nice little window into the kitchen from their waiting area – you can see the guys doing the cooking, watch them preparing your meal.

Now, I’m a reasonably good cook.  But I’d like to be a better one.  So, while idly sitting there, waiting (not very long) for my meal, I was thinking about how I might go about learning to cook like that – perhaps approach one of these places, and offer free labour on a couple of nights a week, just to learn how they do things.

I don’t really have 2 or 3 nights a week free.

That’s my problem.

I’ve said before that I’m a dilettante.  I’ll never be a world-class chef.  A high end programmer.  An ‘A-list’ blogger.  Not because of any innate lacks in my base ability in these things (although, if I pushed, I’d probably find those lacks), but because I get distracted too easily.  I work on multiple things in parallel, rarely do I focus on a single task for an extended period, and when I do, I find it incredibly draining.

Part of the problem is wanting too much, I think.  Part, is indecisiveness. Another part, is probably just fear of finding my limits.

I’m not sure if I’m unhappy about this or not.  I like the variety in my life.

I don’t have a conclusion here.

Uncategorized Being Happy, Geek, Mastery