Working against the clock.

I have found that the Most Dangerous Writing App has led to me creating a lot more writing than I used to before I used it. I have also found that it has improved both my writing skills and my typing speed in the process.

Five Features Of Terrible Clients

It is a pretty good rule in life to take total responsibility for your own achievements and failures.  What other people do affects you, but you  are the one in charge.  Life is a project and you are the manager.  So you can't blame others- it is all down to you.

Meditations on the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius

Ancient Greek philosophy probably wasn't much like how we think of it. It wasn't anywhere near as intellectual and rarified as its current manifestation. Doing philosophy in the the classical world was a lot more like a social support group, a set of exercises to help one live ones life and a sort of personal development programme.

Self Help Is A Form Of Entertainment

I had more or less stopped reading Steve Pavlina's stuff from just about the time I started this blog.  Whatever else you think about his writing, it is a little repetitive.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Repeating the familiar with a new twist is the stock in trade of large parts of the entertainment business.  Sometimes even the new twist is dispensed with.  But I realised that I had forgotten some of the stuff that I had found valuable, and missed the bits that infuriated me.   So I had a look at what he had posted recently and went through and bookmarked some stuff to read in spare moments.

Is Twitter Any Use?

I love Twitter and can happily spend hours on it.  I visit the site every day for at least a few minutes and I am rather worried that it might be the single biggest thing I do with my time after actually working.  I enjoy reading the amazing range of stuff people put up on it and often laugh out loud.  It is certainly a better source of news and comment than the mainstream media.  I regard it as generally a good thing and I am very happy that it exists.  I follow a couple of thousand people - I know some people regard this is as problem but I find that getting loads of tweets from all over the place is the best way to enjoy it.

Maybe I should be a Trainer Rather Than A Consultant

I have been doing my consultancy business for just over a year now.  It is going okay, in the sense that I have very nearly as much money now as I did this time last year, and there is every prospect that I will be earning more than when I had a job in the fairly near future.  So neither a catastrophic failure nor a runaway success.  I hasn't turned out quite how I expected though, so I have to confess that the modest results are down to luck rather than judgement.  In other words, when I took the plunge there was a real possibility that I would now be looking back on a year of failure and disappointment.

What To Do When Your Company Makes People Redundant

I can't really complain about how my career as an employee worked out, but I did manage to work for several companies who went through cycles of redundancies.  In every case the redundancies were done in a piecemeal fashion, at least at first.  In no case did they turn the company around and save the remaining jobs.  I was never senior enough to be privy to the whole story, but in every case it seemed to me at the time that they contributed to rather than ameliorated any problems.  In one case I am reasonably sure that they were a major factor in destabilising the company and making recovery impossible.

Zen Approach To Annoying People

Annoying People Often Reflect Ourselves

In a recent political story here in the UK a member of a political party was caught investing a considerable amount of  his time and resources to plotting against the party leader.  He ended up having to resign and left with the parting shot that the leadership had become too middle of the road and had abandoned its principles.

Repetition Can Be A Good Thing

I have just read a blog post by Steve Pavlina.  In it he goes over some stuff that he has done before adding no new information, just putting it into a new set of words.  In a sense this post is superfluous because you can get the same information in his previous work.  We tend to put a premium on originality and creativity so seeing someone trotting out the same old is not supposedly a good thing at all.

Write A Blog Post In 15 Minutes

How Quickly Can You Write A Blog Post?

If there is anyone it is possible to fool, it is yourself.  I have just set out to write a blog post in 15 minutes.  In the event it took 40 minutes.  The interesting thing is that if I hadn't timed it I may well have continued to believe that it had only taken 15 minutes.  That is a planning error of 260% of which I would have been totally unaware.  No wonder time is such tricky stuff to manage and why none of us do it as well as we would like.

Useful Bollocks

Lucky Mammal Looking For Purpose

The reality is we are rats that got lucky.  Our ancestors spotted the potential of tool using early on and we have been reaping the benefits ever since.  We have created a materially very comfortable if a bit confusing world to live in and are doing rather nicely thank you.  Especially compared to being chased across the savanna by hyenas.  If flint were just a bit less available, we might still be doing that.

Sacking Customers

So I have been getting enquiries almost daily.  I get repeat business and referrals from existing customers.  I have a full schedule and enough money in the bank to pay myself a salary I am happy with.  But I am working way too many hours and too much of what I am doing is selling time rather than generating a steady income.  I am also finding I can't turn jobs round as quickly as I would like or that my customers would like.  So all in all, 12 months in I could be in a lot worse place, but I have to do some really serious thinking and take some significant actions to get where I want to be.