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My Footprint

November 27, 2011 By

I was happy, not long ago, to report that I had had 3 workstations:

  • “the big” imac to deal with video. (28″ with a dual monitor setup, loads of space).
  • a mac mini standup desk (and 30″ monitor) to deal with customer contact.
  • a white macbook for “writing.”

This was 3 workstations for just me. I wasn’t making a ton of money.  I was a poseur, hopped up on lists, GTD and other kludges that simply aren’t generally good ideas.  I wanted to be this serial entrepreneur.  All I was doing was spinning my wheels, reinventing my productivity systems time and time again.  I had it all: google notebook, evernote, Jott.

I had my own office, a place with my company name on the door that cost $1,000 a month or more, walking distance from my place.

All these tools. None of them necessary.

Fact is there was nothing that I did that needed to be “managed.”  I would have been infinitely more productive had I just gone to where I was drawn.  I kept thinking that this next tech gadget would be the one that recreated me. That saved me.  That changed things. That made me thin, happy, and rich.

Thing is, I was human sprawl. I was going wider without attacking real problems. I spent hours on productivity overhead, and before I could start to work, I had this convoluted system to manage.

Now, I’m making more money than I have in my life, I have a more stable business, and I’m happier.

My whole business fits in a small bag, on a 13″ macbook air.  I have an iPad for pitching. I have a PO Box for getting my mail.  I use things like Tout  and Batchbook. I could probably get  by without them just fine. I work from the back bedroom of my house, and the odd coffeeshop.  I do more real work than I did when I had these endless GTD lists.

I had a productivity apparatus that had become a one person bureaucracy where I barely had permission to get anything done ever.

There’s a lot of waste and failure points when you have a system with a ton of tools, and one that requires a ton of gear changes.

Now, it’s time to look at reducing my footprint in other areas:

  • What I wear
  • What I own
  • How I eat.
Being a “minimalist” is just as much of a sham as being a productivity junkie. They aren’t going to make any major changes. I have to figure it out though- I can always have less stuff. Fewer headaches.
Filed Under: Application, Sales Tagged With: , , ,

Sidebar Up: Goals and More.

November 30, 2008 By
gdocs

December 1st is tomorrow.  And that’s makes tonight my “new years.”   For 7 years I was in the real estate business.  I watched people piss away the time between Halloween and Christmas in a stupor, going to title company luncheons, builder opens, and other nonsense.   See–there’s a decoupling in Real Estate.  You get paid NOW for the work that you did 2 months ago.  So often, inertia carrys Realtors/LOs through the winter and they coast.

Then January hits and they do 0-1 deals, and the deeals that they do are carryover from December–fallout.

Then Feburary hits and they start to panic.

Well, I’m not in that boat–i’m not a full time practitioner anymore, I still am in the RE cycle.  And i still need business both now and in January.   So, I decided to do something fun:

I’m counting December 1, 2008 as my ‘fiscal year.’  I want to start a month early, while I’m focused and motivated so I hit my goals….starting this month, not wanting to dig a hole is a kludge to make sure I get what I want to get done, done.  I created something in Google Docs to hold myself publicly accountable.  Since I switched from being a Realtor->mortgage broker->freelancer…I needed to do this to make sure I do what I say I’m doing.

I made this scorecard to make sure that I stay on task & on target:

I’ve got 21 planned work days so that generates the calculations that are going to show what pace I’m going to be on/etc.  The workouts that I do will either be ahead or behind because I do one at a time, and that’s OK.   The rest of it tracks me.

It has some oddball goals: to lose 4.5#/week through the holidays is to be fun, and much easier this year…but the way it usually works is that suddenly I find myself 3# lighter, after staying the same weight for 2-3  days.  Anyway, that’s produced the idea that I’ll be losing 63# in December based on the fact that I weighed in on a ‘high’ weight day.  it’ll normalize when time passes and I don’t have extra days.  Still, kind of fun.

In 2009–which starts tomorrow–I’m going to have a good year.  My primary goal is to get myself to 160#.   That’s not going to be easy by any means, but it will certainly happen–of this I have no doubt.  The next goals are to finish the rewrite of Subprime, to get F–therapy up and out, and to have a practice that rakes in $225-250k in consulting fees.  All while continuing to enhance my character and work out my relationship with the Nazerene.  I’ll codify a little bit better tomorrow, at some point.

Right now, I’m overdue on about 400 deadlines cause I was fighting a war maiahost.com  (great company for 1-5 blogs, needs help for more than that).  So extricating 25++ blogs I manage for people to my new host is a PITA.  I can thank Laura for that stuff.

Anyway, as is always the case, more to come.

Filed Under: Achieving Goals, Products, Projects and Process Tagged With: ,