The Thirty Day Challenge is happening again this year, kicking off in August. They are already in preseason. If you don’t know what it is, basically it is a 100% FREE step-by-step guide to going from zero to making your first $10 online.
I’ll be following along again this year, and using it to launch a new Internet business. And this year I plan to actually stick with it and go beyond making just that first $10 with the site
I’ll be detailing most of what I do (market research, traffic generation, conversion testing etc) here on this blog. I am yet undecided whether or not I’ll be writing specifically what niche I’ll be working with, as we’ll have to see what the niche is first.
I WILL be starting a team for the 30DC, so if you are doing it too… shoot me an email and we can talk
Oh these ancient skies
I’ve had these wandering eyes
but you took me by surprise
when you let me inside of you
Inside of you
Inside of you
There’s got to be
Some part of me
Inside of you
Inside of you, I could cross this desert plane
Inside of you, I can hear you scream my name
Inside of you, while the stars unfold
I’ve crossed me heart and I’ve crossed the world
And I need you here and I need to be
Inside of you
Now the flowers bloom
I feel you creep into my room
And if this should be our tune
I’ll die here inside of you
And the world explodes
I’ve never been down this road
Teach me how to glow
While I’m moving
Inside of you
Inside of you, the restless find their dreams
Inside of you, this king has found his queen
Inside of you, all the stars unfold
I’ve crossed me heart and I’ve crossed the world
And I need you here and I need to be
Inside of you
Inside of you
Bay blue
So say it’s you
To thoughts untrue
Who I woo
It’s you I woo
Through and through
And through and through
There’s so much more than just a screw
Inside of you
And I was blizzard blind
Felt like I’ve lost me mind
But you’ve treated me so kind
I don’t know what to do.
“Lately, it’s really been bothering me that, I don’t know, the way people work like this every day from morning to night is kind of weird. Hasn’t it ever struck you as strange? I mean, all I do here is do the work that my bosses tell me to do the way they tell me to do it. I don’t have to think at all. It’s like I just put my brain in a locker before I start work and pick it up on the way home.”
I’ve recently made a move away from my old time management system of lists and mindmaps to a more fluid and flexible (and at the same time more structured!) system.
I use a piece of software called My Life Organized, coupled with my Outlook calendar.
As usual, the 4 areas of life make up the top-level hierarchy, and are further broken down into goals, projects and tasks. The handy thing about this program is that it synchronises nicely with Outlook and therefore my cell phone too, so I have all my goals and tasks with me wherever I go.
I have also added a category called ‘miscellaneous everyday stuff’ which contains all the small errands that crop up during the day that have to be attended to but don’t really contribute to any long-term goals. My aim is to keep these to a minimum so that most of my productive time is spent working towards what I want.
I won’t say the program is perfect, especially considering the rather idiosyncratic way I organise my life… but it comes pretty darn close.
On the business side of things, I am still keeping some long-term project plans in mindmap form and I have a nifty web-based project management system, but for the everyday, I have returned to the tried-and-tested Moleskine notebook, where my ideas, thoughts and daily to-dos go.
Simple always seems to better. An interesting thought that came to me is that the #1 problem most people have with “time management” is that they don’t work on what they are supposed to be working on. They either procrastinate, or try to work around it, or do other stuff and in the end, just simply fail to get what needs to be done actually DONE. Once you get this out of the way however, it becomes really simple: pick 6 things a day, start at the first… and work your way through the list. If you get through all of them, great! Go celebrate and enjoy the rest of your day off. If you don’t then roll them over to the next day and keep going!
In a recent effort to get my procrastination and motivation under control, I noticed that throughout the day I would have fractions of time where I was extremely motivated to get things done. These were usually triggered by my remembering something, or the realisation of some real-world facts.
Upon further thinking, I’ve come to realise that all these spurts of motivation stem from two things: pain and pleasure. Now Tony Robbins has been saying this for years, but pain and pleasure govern everything we do.
So what I did, was sat down… and wrote a list of all those things that motivate me to get things done - things that would cause me pain if they weren’t handled, or pleasure if they were.
So now every time I find myself backing away from a task… I just pull out the list and read over it, carefully visualising each item to let it sink in. Then I go get things done.
I’ve written about this before, but it’s worth mentioning again: Balance is the key to everything in life.
I know that my own personal tendencies are to put out fires as soon as they pop-up. If there’s anything that causes my natural state to be uncomfortable, I channel all of my resources towards getting it done - case in point, moving to the States and furnishing my new apartment. The problem with this is that it is often at the expense of other things and it is out of alignment with my grander vision of what my life should be like.
Is there a solution? I don’t know, maybe there is. I’ve been trying to read Eckhard Tolle’s book over the past couple of weeks, but there’s just something about his way of expression that makes in really hard for me to digest it. It almost seems like what he professes is at the opposite end of the spectrum to what more goal-oriented thinkers suggest (e.g,. David Allen or Tony Robbins). I think though, that my personal application of Tolle’s principles would be something like this:
Underneath the larger framework of goals, time management and all that stuff, when you are working on a specific task, forget about everything else. Focus your mental, physical and spiritual energies (yeah as I said, something about his way of expression) on getting the job at hand done, and when it is done, clear your mind and move onto the next thing.
Maybe THAT is the key to balance - being in the moment at every moment, and really focussing on every single thing as it happens… but doing so intelligently within a more productive framework.
So I’ve noticed over the past couple of weeks that a lot of the things I’m writing contain messed-up grammar and/or syntax, and are lacking the usual expressive flair that I’m accustomed to. I don’t know if this is the effect of living in a non-English-speaking country for the past 6 months, or if it’s the effect of 1) not reading a lot lately and 2) not actively writing a lot lately.
So I’m going to try to write more. And more often. And hopefully this problem will go away by itself.
I’m trying to stay positive. I really am. But sometimes it’s just hard to.
Like when Fedex leaves a note at your door saying “sorry we missed you, please go collect your package at our shipping centre”. I mean, how on Earth did they miss me? I was home working all day!
Or when you find out that there are local, state and federal laws governing your business. And that they all collect annual fees. And that you have to file paperwork independently to all of them. What ever happened to the millions of dollars that the government spends on technology and systems integration?
On the bright side, I started my new exercise regime and I’m loving it. Fast, convenient and highly effective, just the way that everything else should be..
