Jarkko Laine » Motivation

Glen Allsopp Plugs Into his Identity

Jarkko — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 12:52:50 +0000

Just a bit over a year ago, Glen Allsopp was an 18-year old guy from England, working in a job he hated, doing college courses that bored him to death, and running his own business part-time. In my books, that’s already quite an achievement for someone that young.

But it wasn’t enough for Glen, who wanted to plug into his real identity and live his life to the max. So, he took a job in South Africa, left his old life behind and moved to a whole new country far away from everything he knew.

If you checked out any of the links to Glen’s blog I posted last week, by now all of this is old news to you. You know who Glen is, and want to hear him speak, don’t you?

That’s why I think this is enough background.

Let’s get started with the interview questions.

Your blog is about plugging in to your identity and being the real you. But who is the real Glen? (A drawing to represent your mind would also be nice)

I’m someone who’s just realised they are not the box they thought they were trapped in. Despite doing crazy things like moving to South Africa on my own at 18, my life had been lived relatively shy and script-like.

As soon as I started to realise this, I’ve completely turned my life around. I’m starting to become a very confident person, someone who goes for what they want and I’m really enjoying life. I see it as my mission to help others do the same.

To describe myself in 5 words:

Authentic
Passionate
Non-judging
Creative
Challenging

A drawing that represents my mind:

The pink is my brain / mind, the light-bulb is my core creativity and centeredness. The green-lines are my distracting thoughts and beliefs that sometimes consume me and the majority of the planet.

This blog is about being insanely interested in everything. Often it’s not that easy to let go of all the prejudices related to the right way to lead your life and really make the most out of your unique personality. How can someone like this plug into her identity and make the most out of it?

Being insanely interested in everything must be great; I guess it keeps life interesting. I assume the prejudices you are talking about are that people think you are a little insane and should stick to one core focus.

Stick to what is true to you, because deep down you know what is right.

If being interested in everything is enjoyable and makes you happy, why change for anyone? Accept the prejudices / judgments and thrive off them. Be proud that you aren’t following the social norms and you are leading your own life.

What makes this September insanely interesting for you?

September has been very interesting for me; I’ve been offered a few great jobs in New York which I’ve turned down for personal reasons. The main thing for me this month is focusing on productivity, my workload has increased the last few months and using tools like ToDoist have really helped me keep on top of my tasks. That and the great ‘what are you doing this week’ discussions over at My Tropical Escape.

Every month is interesting because every month is different. I’ve also been planning the adventures for when my family come to visit me in Cape Town, it’s been over a year since I seen them.

What do you suggest others to do to make their September more interesting?

Do something different, give something a try, and even just set yourselves a challenge. Try a month where you try to cut costs and see how little you can spend whilst surviving. Or, look at areas of your life you would like to improve and spend a month working on them, such as going for interviews or asking for a pay rise if you want to improve your career.

I would actually recommend people try blogging if they’ve never tried it before; it can be almost meditative and could possibly become a new passion for many readers.

What is the most interesting/scary thing you have done so far in your life? How did you make yourself do it?

By far it was quitting my job in England, quitting college where I only had 1 year left (of 3) and leaving all my friends and family behind to go to Cape Town on my own (at 18). I did it by looking at my life situation, seeing if I was happy or if I wanted to make a change.

It might sound like risky business, but if the job you are doing isn’t for you and you don’t plan on extending education in the courses you are taking, why bother? That was my mentality anyway. Thanks to the support of my parents I realised it was possible and ended up in South Africa a few weeks after being offered a job.

Let’s play a word associations game: I give you five concepts, and you respond with the first idea that comes to mind.

Pizza: chicken, sweet corn, food fights, messy furniture
Pencil sharpener: scratchy, metal, small, sharp, shiny, cheap, annoying
South Africa: violence, beaches, women, sun, adventure, challenge, experience
Water: cold, windy, splashing, birds, clean, refreshing
Plug: PluginID ;), energy, voltage, electricity, implementation, doing

Thanks, Glen, this was fun!

Now, make sure to check out Glen’s blog if you haven’t yet. And even if you have, there is something big you just might have missed: an always up-to-date Personal Development Blog ranking list (too bad we’re not listed ;) Insanely Interested ranks 47th).

The Return of the Insanely Interesting September

Jarkko — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 13:00:02 +0000

This morning, the grass on our front yard was covered with frost. People were scrubbing ice off their windshields. The last signs of summer were long gone. While I still miss summer, in a bitter sweet way, I love the crisp, fresh air, the bright colors, and seeing the nature change into something new again.

Last year, we dedicated September for celebrating the insane interestingness of life.

It was a month full of inspiring posts and interesting interviews with people with different interests. Here’s a brief recap in case you missed the posts or want to have another look at them:

Now it’s September again. And that means that it’s time to continue the tradition and roll out the second round of interestingness.

And as always, the second round must outperform the first.

So, here’s what you can expect to see in the month beginning today:

Use cases: There will be interesting interviews with readers and public figures insanely interested in everything
Tapping into your creativity: We’ll find out how creative you really are and talk about ways of making the most with the newly found talents.
How to see more: Opening your eyes for the interestingness of your everyday life will be an eye-opening experience.

…and much more: We’ll continue our discussion on expertise and acquiring more of it. You’ll see new links to interesting blogs and web sites. And after the summer break, there will also be a new report on how my make money online challenge is going so far.

To me this is a time for making blogging more fun and enjoyable than ever before. I can’t wait to get the interviews rolling, and sharing my creativity experiments with you guys.

Subscribe to my RSS feed, and you’ll be right where the action is.

Have an insanely interesting September!

Warning: Personal Development is a Punch in Your Face

Jarkko — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:30:07 +0000

(…or “How When You Think You Have Made It, You Are Just Getting Started.”)

Whoever said “ignorance is bliss” must have been longing for an easy life without knowing that things could be better. Most definitely, he (or she) didn’t want to be punched in the face by hearing uncomfortable truths about his path in life.

I have no idea who it was (it could have been Thomas Gray, but his version is more than just “ignorance is bliss,” and could be interpreted to mean the opposite: “where ignorance is bliss, ‘Tis folly to be wise”) but it wasn’t a personal development writer, that’s for sure.

The more you learn about yourself and your current condition, the more aware you become of your shortcomings and all the things you still haven’t reached. Both in your personal growth and the world around you.

If it makes you do what you need to do to get where you want to be, all of this is a good thing.

But there should also be a warning label stamped on every personal development book or blog:

Warning: This book/blog/article/tutorial can make you unhappy

When you read The 4-Hour Workweek, at first you got excited, saying to yourself: “Wow, this is so awesome! I must try this right away” The first few days were pure joy, but then came the disillusionment: It’s not even remotely as easy as it sounds.

You realized that before Tim Ferriss was able to achieve the lifestyle of his dream, he worked 60-hour weeks building his business for several years — until he realized that he could leave it behind.

You realized that you couldn’t just go to your boss and tell him you quit.

You realized that you weren’t even close to the goal painted by the book.

But hopefully, you also knew that the goal was not impossible to reach — as long as you were ready to fight for it.

The same pattern is repeated over and over again with every book and blog you read: Reading Scott Ginsberg reminds me of how bad I still am at listening to people. Reading Leo Babauta makes me aware of the fact that my habits still are sloppy as ever. Reading Clay Collins tells me that I haven’t gotten any braver than I was yesterday.

But that’s good.

It’s how I want it to be.

I need to be punched in the face every now and then so that I won’t just conform to my happy but still unfinished state of being, wondering how come I’m not doing all the things I thought I wanted to do, and not being the person I want to be.

As Dren pointed out in the comments to previous post, becoming an expert in many things is no short trip at all. You need to keep learning, for years, only to realize that there is still more for you to learn. That’s where reading personal development blogs and books can help: in showing you that you still have a long way to go.

Unless this is what you’re after:

Take a look at what happened around mid-April. No, not the big fall, that was a Feedburner tracking bug. I’m talking about the rather stable 450-460 RSS readers period from April to August during which the blog subscriber count did not grow at all.

That’s what happened to my blog during the summer.

It’s not what you would have estimated based on the growth before April, is it? But it’s what you would expect to happen if you become too content with your current state. I was simply paying far too little attention to growing and improving the blog.

But this doesn’t apply only to blogging.

The same thing will happen in your personal economy, in your knowledge, and in your health, if you decide that you are good enough, and stop trying to improve.

Personal development will tell you this. It will tell you that you are in a bad shape and need to start running again.

It will hurt, but you will be glad it did — in the long run.

My next fight is to get back on track with my blog growth (you can help by subscribing and/or telling your friends about the blog, see Leo Babauta’s summary of how to help a blogger).

What is yours?

Face It, Not Checking Your E-mail All The Time is Hard

Is Summer Costing You a Good Habit, And What To Do About It?

Jarkko — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:00:14 +0000

Summer is a hard time for maintaining habits. It’s hard to stay on a strict diet on a barbecue weather. It’s hard to keep waking up early when you don’t have to get to work in the morning. There are other times like this too (Christmas for example), but none of them can quite compete at the same level of habit-destructiveness with summer.

And no, I’m not untouched by this phenomenon.

The past two weeks that I have been on my summer holiday have been a relaxing two weeks, but at the same time they have made me watch my good habits turn into good intentions. Not completely extinct yet, but slowly degrading and almost being forgotten.

Habits rely on a routine

There are many reasons why a it’s hard to stay in shape throughout summer.

But on a more generic level, I think the biggest reason why keeping a habit alive during the summer is so hard, is losing your routine.

You have tied your habits to your daily routine, but then one day, that routine is gone – and so is your habit. Let’s take my morning ritual as an example. Here’s how it goes on a normal day:

Use an alarm clock to wake up some time between 5 AM and 5:30 AM
Do the ritual at the kitchen table while the rest of the family is sleeping
Go to work

Now, being on a holiday isn’t enough of a routine breaker to break this habit.

But then, add some more ingredients:

If you are on a trip where the one-year-old sleeps in the same room with you, you can’t use an alarm clock. After all, if the kid wakes up at the same time as you do, it’s “so long, morning ritual!”
If you manage to wake up at the right time without an alarm clock, then comes the problem of not being at home. Going to the kitchen table is not the same if you risk being interrupted by your parents in law.
Not having to go to work? That’s good. You have more time in your day, and that’s something you can use in favor for your habits – if you want to.

No routine – no habit?

You lose the routine. You lose the habit.

It can be this simple. But does it really have to be?

I don’t know the final answer, but so far I have come up with two rather good alternatives. If you know more, please share them in the comments so I can learn from your ideas too.

Be flexible. Flexibility is a tool that I have been using ever since my son was born. With a child in the house you can never know when your schedule will change, so the only thing you can do is to work on your projects and habits whenever there is some time at hand. It might not be every day – and most certainly, it’s not always at the same time of the day. But if you don’t worry too much about such details, it can help you get things done even on your summer holiday.
Get support. When you can make your family support you on your habits, they will make time for you to get them done. Often, this means that you pick the most important habits, that are important not only for you but also to the people you live with.

Together, these two partial solutions might well keep your habits from dying. It doesn’t mean a triumphant, victorious season full of productivity and getting things done. But that doesn’t matter.

It’s OK to go on a lighter schedule for a while if it means spending more time with your kids, or getting some important project finished. Just make sure to get back to your routines when the time is over. That’s the only way to keep learning and working your way towards the top.

How to Stay Motivated Working on an Idea From Last Year

Jarkko — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 03:45:16 +0000

One way to define someone insanely interested in everything is to say that he keeps getting new ideas all the time. It’s a great place to be, sitting there in the middle of a flow of new ideas, but it has a downside too: If you keep hopping from one idea to the next as ideas keep popping to your mind, you will never finish a thing.

But that’s not the final verdict. You can embrace your ideas but still be happy bringing your ideas into completion. It’s not easy, but then again – why should it be? Isn’t the best reward in completing something you thought you’d never finish?

Here are some tips that have helped me so far:

Write down all your ideas: When you write your idea down, you make sure it’s not lost while working on the previous ones. Your idea list serves as a queue. You keep adding new ideas at the bottom and removing them from the top. Feel free to skip bad ideas and not implement them, but don’t skip good ones – especially if you are already working on them!
Plan for continuity from one idea to the next: When you go through your list of ideas, you’ll notice that there is a development from one to another. It’s the way how your brain has worked to come up with the ideas. I have noticed that when I go through my ideas in the same order as I created them, I can see a road from one idea to the next and a way to bond them together. Then I just need to leave out the ideas and parts of ideas that don’t support this bigger plan.
Do some quicker projects on the side: After working on a long project for a while, you start to miss the thrill of finishing. This is good as it pushes you to complete the project more quickly, but it can be frustrating too, when you can’t do much to speed up your work. I have noticed that having some quicker projects going on at the same time helps: blog posts don’t take too many hours to write, magazine articles take a bit more but still not as much as finishing a book, and so on. By finishing something, you prove to yourself that you can get things done.
Keep moving: When the progress stops for too long, the risk of giving up grows rather quickly. That’s why it’s good to keep your momentum once you have reached it. Do something, even something as small as fixing the colors of the front page of your e-book. What matters is that you have the feeling that you are not stopping.
Make yourself accountable: When someone expects you to finish your project, it makes you work harder on it even when you feel like giving up. Ask someone you trust to test your product and give you feedback. Or just tell your friends about the project. But be careful: if you do this too often, and then don’t finish the projects, they will not trust you to complete anything anymore.
Keep the idea fresh: By adding new twists to the idea as you go, you make it feel like something new, even after a year from its beginning. As long as you don’t crazy with new ideas on how to change your idea, this can make it more fun, and help you stick to it.
Just do it: Don’t think about whether it’s new or not: if the idea is good, it’s worth making. And if it’s worth making, the fact that work becomes boring after a while shouldn’t stop you. Keep fighting, and get it done. Only then, move on to the next item on your idea list.
The power of good enough: It’s usually better to get something done than to always be looking for the perfect idea. A good idea that gets implemented is worth ten, or even a hundred times more than a perfect idea that never got done.
Daily routines: For me, one of the most important habits that help me keep working towards my goals is the morning ritual. It reminds me of my next tasks, and the place they have in the big picture, and makes me accountable: I just can’t let my projects die when I know that the next day I’ll have to report the status to myself.

If you are like me, working on your projects as a side business, you won’t have time to work on many of your ideas at once – and things will pile up. Just pick one, and stick to it until it’s done – all the while collecting your new ideas to a queue waiting to be implemented.

That’s the only way things get done: one by one.

Getting Started With Zooming Out

Jarkko — Wed, 28 May 2008 15:00:09 +0000

The process of focusing to your big picture starts a pile of small tasks, ideas, books you have read, hobbies you love, hobbies you haven’t even started yet and all kinds of other activities that at first don’t seem to have anything in common.

It’s the one happy mess that most of have learned to call life.

What we’re about to do now is to jump right into that mess and start making some sense of the chaos. This is not a scientifically proven theory, and I’m just a regular guy, insanely interested in too many things. But what I’m about to present is a simple approach to making some sense of your interests and the big picture behind them.

Let’s get started

Write all the things you are interested in down on paper, letting your keywords flow from your mind without thinking about them too much.

But don’t make it look like a list. A list is too organized, and doesn’t have enough room for change – at least compared to your mind. A mind map like approach works much better:

Now that you have your first inner picture, let’s start to add some more detail to it.

Just look at the interests you have listed, and write down the things you are doing or would like to do related to each of them. It’s also OK to add new top level items as they pop into your mind, or make some top level items to be lower level items…

It’s your mind, so feel free to do anything with it.

You will notice that some items already start to get connected, while others remain isolated.

It’s time to make your first focusing decision: Do you cut out most things and concentrate in only one or two of the items in your current picture, or do you start zooming out?

In my example, I have already done a bit of zooming out, and I can see quite a few different, interesting paths in it: I could pick the career of a political blogger, and cut out programming, I could become a creative musician, or then I could pick programming and leave all the others aside.

But this is still just the starting point, so I suggest you try zooming out a bit more – you can always decide to zoom in and become an expert in only one thing later on the road, so why not experiment a bit first?

Zooming out means that you look at all the things you have written down on your paper, maybe adding some new words as well, and try to see if there is something that would connect the things to each other.

You can’t have it all…

After zooming out for a while, you’ll see that some of the items form cliques together with each other. But some don’t seem to fit in. This is when you will go back to the question: Do you cut out the things that don’t fit in the image and concentrate in the items that do, or do you try to zoom out a bit more?

You have to give up on some things sooner or later.

Maybe not for good, but at least for now. Of course, we’re going to try to maximize the number of things you can keep by doing things like zooming out and finding the common denominator, as well as by outsourcing some work to specialists and buying more time. But in the end, you still have a limited amount of time and energy to spend. And you need to use it wisely if you don’t want to burn out.

If you look at my example again, you’ll see that I did some reorganization and noticed that most of the things listed are related to each other – only two things are completely unconnected: programming and family.

Family is something special, as it’s a value rather than an activity, but programming is something I might consider dropping. Zooming out more, I’ll however see that programming is related to blogging and Internet marketing.

Another border case, economics, is included in this version, but might still drop out in the next iteration. It’s only tied to one other item, after all. Then again, the round of zooming that comes after that one might again find new connections. As I said in my original post about zooming, the process never ends.

The more practical approach to figuring out what to drop

If you have the time and can get a hold of Seth Godin’s small book, The Dip, I recommend you check it out. The book gives you some ideas on when to quit a project and when to stick. Also, the entrepreneur interview I did some time ago on deciding what projects to take on can give you good insight to the question.

But what you’re after is most likely a step by step check list of signs that will tell you to abandon some activities and to stick with some other ones. The process described above is a slow one that will be good for getting an overall understanding on things you want to carry on doing, but doesn’t help much in deciding what you should work on today.

That’s what we’re going to talk about next. Subscribe to my RSS feed and get the next post delivered straight to your computer as soon as it comes out of the press.

But first, let’s talk about your big picture! Is zooming out working for you? What have you figured out so far? What did you drop? What did you keep? What would you improve in the process? Leave a comment!

Dream Big, Set Goals and Make Things Happen

Jarkko — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 19:31:55 +0000

In my dreams, I wake up when it’s still dark. I grab a cup of coffee and a fresh bagel and start changing the world. Then, as the sun rises, I put down my keyboard and gently wake up the rest of my family. We spend hours having fun together, but also get some work done. Not too much – just enough to keep the business rolling.

I dream that I can create something important that will have a lasting impact on other people’s lives. And I dream that my work and life will be in a perfect balance.

I dream a lot.

Did I mention that I also dream that one day I will have an article published in Wired?

I know I shouldn’t say all of these things aloud. But dreaming is fun.

Too bad that dreaming alone won’t get you anywhere.

You need dreams, goals and action plans

It all starts with the dreams. Without dreams you can’t have goals. And without goals, nothing can happen.

So, let’s start by collecting your very own list of dreams.

Take a piece of paper and a pen, stop censoring your thoughts and write down every little things that you would like to do in your life. The things don’t have to make sense to anyone else than you, they can be corny like mine, or they can be just emotions and vague memories of some feelings you had when you were a kid.

If you can get 100 items on your list like Shane, that’s awesome! But if you can’t, that’s OK too. On my list, I’m currently tracking 67 dreams.

And if you get stuck, here are a few questions to help you keep coming up with ideas:

Where do you want to be five years from now? Paris? London? Dakar? Vantaa?
What kind of work do you want to do? Who do you want to be with? Who do you want to be?
What do you want to experience before you die? One of the items on my list says: “I want to take a ride in a hot air balloon.”
Is there something in your past that would have done differently equipped with the understanding and knowledge you have today?
What are the things that inspire you the most?
What kind of things do you recommend to your friends when they ask for life advice? Is there a common trend that in fact speaks more about you than it does about your friends?
What gets you in the state of flow and makes you forget all about time and place for hours?
Who do you want to help?
Who do you admire? Why?
What do you want to own?
What do you want to give?

By no means do your answers have to be definitive or final. All that matters is that you get some answers that feel real to you so that you get going. The next time you do this experiment, you will probably add some new items and drop some that don’t feel important anymore. That happens because when you work to reach your dreams, you learn more about yourself and find out more details on what it is that you are trying to describe with your dreams.

When you have done your list, if you are brave enough, I’d love to hear your answers in the comments. But if you don’t feel like sharing them, keep the list to yourself, put it in a safe place (I keep my list in my pocket) and then we can move on.

Turn your dreams into goals

What makes a side business different than your regular job or business venture is that you run it in your spare time. When you get to work on it, you have already spent about eight hours working on your day job and you feel like you need to get some rest.

That’s why I started this blog post by asking you about your dreams.

I believe that if you give up TV, sleep less than before and add new deadlines and projects to your life, you need to make sure that the reason for doing this really is worth it. To me, the only way to do that is by planning my side business goals along the guidelines set by my dreams.

If your side business is just about money, you will burn out pretty soon.

But when it is something you feel passionately about, you are already much more likely to survive it.

Do something you love. I am going to talk more about picking the right side business idea, but there is one thing above anything else that I want to point out: Make sure you don’t pick a business based just on its profitability but rather on how fun it will be. A side business is a great opportunity to do something different that what you do in your day job!
Set goals that support your dreams. Good goals get you going, but even more importantly, they remind you of why you are working hard and doing all the things you do. When I’m about to get discouraged, I remember my monthly goals and how I’ve set them as a path so that they ultimately lead to less work, although right now it might feel like work is just increasing.
Set goals that work as prizes. One of my dreams is to own a Mac. So, I have made that into one of my next goals: to buy one with the money earned from my side business. That gives me a clear image of what I’m working towards.
Set some big goals. Think of how you want your business to grow in the long term: how long do you plan to keep it as a side thing? Maybe at some point you want to divide your time between your main job and your side thing differently (50/50, for example) ? Or maybe you want to keep it as a side thing but make it function without requiring so much effort from you?
Set some small goals. The way I handle goals is that in addition to the big goals, I plan monthly goals and weekly goals. The monthly goals can be something like “Write two magazine articles” or “Pitch a new article for April”. I also try to assign some monetary value to them. This way they are measurable, but still rather abstract so that I can get them done in many different ways. In my weekly goals I then get more specific, setting goals like “On Monday, write a post for my own blog”, or “By Sunday, finish a post for NORTHxEAST”.
Set goals you want to achieve. And finally, don’t set goals just because they sound like something you should do. I’ve said this many times already, but I’ll repeat once more: This is a project that runs on your spare time. A project that competes with TV, long walks on the beach and all that relaxing stuff you are used to doing. So, set only goals that you really want to do.

This was part two in my series of articles on balancing your side business. Share your dreams and goals as well as experiences and tips on deciding which goals you want to achieve in the comments! In the next article we will continue by talking about which side business ideas help you best in maintaining a good work-life balance.

Until then, have a great weekend!

How a Side Business Forces You To Balance Your Life

Jarkko — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 05:11:31 +0000

Some of my most popular posts so far date all the way back to August, when I wrote a five article series on securing your finances with a side business. It was an amazing coincidence that just when I was planning to start my second series looking at the same topic from a different angle, both Naomi from IttyBiz and Skellie from Anywired linked to one of the posts in the original series: The Seven Deadly Sins of a Side Business Entrepreneur.

The new series starts today.

Last time I wrote about side businesses (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), I focused on the monetary side of things: how building a side business makes you less relying to your employer and how you can maximize the amount of money you can make through your side business.

This time will be different.

Instead of money I will concentrate in the more spiritual side of balancing your life and making your life more meaningful through a side business. That’s why in the coming up posts you can quite easily replace the work “business” with “project” if you don’t feel comfortable talking in business terms. But for the rest of us, it’s business that what we will be talking about.

During the next two weeks my plan is to post a total of seven posts (including this one) about starting, running and balancing a meaningful side business. If you want to make sure you don’t miss any of them (or want to get notified when the whole thing is over and I’m getting to some other topic), subscribe to my RSS feed or sign up to get the latest posts delivered straight to your e-mail inbox.

Some background information before we start:

I’m a dad with a nine-month old kid.
I’m a blogger.
I work 5 days a week as a programmer for a games company.
And I’m an entrepreneur building a side business in freelance writing for blogs, magazines and businesses.

And I have the same 24 hours a day everyone else (both the super human who does all of this plus some more and the regular Joe who just goes to work and watches a movie from TV every night).

That’s why I haven’t slept that much lately. But sleeping is not the topic today, let’s talk about balance instead.

A side business will force you to prioritize your life, work, and business.

When the amount of time you have at hand is limited, you have to use it wisely.

Your side business requires time.

Your family requires time.

And your day job requires time.

They all compete for the same 24 hours, so you have some math to do. And I don’t say this wishing I had 30 hours, or even three extra hours a day. I think it’s a good thing as it forces you to think about your usage of time.

Day job: 9 to 5, which is 8 hours. Plus overtime.

That’s the first thing where you can cut some time from. If you can’t cut overtime for good, cut at least most of it. Your employer most likely isn’t paying for your extra hours anyway so why not use it for something profitable like a side business?

Side business: This one can take as many hours as you give to it, so I try to work wise and keep the amount of work required to the minimum (more on this in the upcoming articles) working only one to two hours every morning.

Family: We’re talking about your priorities, so you can do whatever you want. But my advice is to not cut time away from your family if possible. Find ways to work so that you are present to your family, or maybe even do some of your side business work together with your spouse. But after that, make sure you still give your full attention to every small event happening around the house.

What to drop next? How about TV? (TV is fun but you can live without it – I have tried it) Or surfing the Internet? (this is harder, though…)

But that’s really the beauty of it: because of the limited time we all have, you have to get creative. You have to think how to use your time to make it mean the most to you, and not just pass by. And that tenderly pushes you to live rather than just exist.

Balancing the things in your life will never be easy. But it’s an interesting adventure that will teach you more and more about who you really are and what matters most to you. With this newly found insight you are already much better prepared to the new choices that come your way every day.

On Friday we will continue the adventure by setting up goals for your side business venture. But until then, let’s chat about priorities: what are the most important things for you in life? And how does that show in the choices you make every day?

Photo by max_thinks_sees

20 Companies To Inspire You Today

Jarkko — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:35:43 +0000

Everyone needs to be inspired every now and then.

What inspires me the most is when I see people doing what they enjoy and believe in. It doesn’t have to be through business, but more often than not the truly inspiring actions are happening in that context. Today I’m listing the top 20 businesses that inspire me at this very moment.

20. Apple

There’s no question about it: Apple is the leader in computer and consumer electronics design and development. I’m still collecting money for my first Apple computer and waiting for iPhone to arrive to Finland, but I must agree: There is no one who creates products with quite the style and elegance as Apple.

19. Google

The classic inspiration for every geek out there, Google is well known and appreciated for its “Do no evil” policy. However as the company is quickly evolving into a Microsoftesque giant, it’s losing some of the glory it once used to have.

Google is moving from the club of the small and friendly companies to the big boys’ league, but no one can claim that it wouldn’t be setting a great example in treating your employees. The 20% rule allows employees work on their own projects during working hours and the perks at the Google campus are beyond imagination. This is what a big…huge company can offer at its best.

18. Reaktor Innovations

Reaktor Innovations (RI for short) is a software company from Finland. What makes it inspiring is their investment in continuously educating their employees in software development practices. RI is a leader in bringing agile methodologies to Finland and keeps organizing open seminars on the topic as well as practice sessions called Coding Dojos every once in a while. By making sure that their employees keep learning on the job, they help them be happy at work and appreciate the company a lot more

17. Weekdate

Weekdate is a new way of designing paper based calendars: it brings many of the features that you love about your computer based calendar systems, like recurring events, to paper and by doing that pretty much beats the digital counterpart. After all, a paper based calendar travels with you all the time and you can draw on it using a pen.

What’s inspiring about this company is that it demonstrates that you can always come up with a new idea and create business from it, no matter how filled the market seems to be.

16. Netura

Two years ago my brother Lauri and our mutual friend Joona Nuutinen decided to start a company. Without a clear business idea they rented a small office (“because it was so cheap”) and started thinking about what they should do. It’s been inspiring to watch them search for their business idea and finally found a clear goal to work towards.

Lauri and Joona have promised to write some guest posts about their experiences, so you’ll hear more about them soon.

15. gDiapers

As a dad I have noticed that some things that used to be of no interest to me have become some of the most interesting ones. Diapers are a great example for this. What makes gDiapers interesting is that just like Weekdate shows that you can still innovate in the calendar business, gDiapers shows that there is room for innovation in Diapers.

Also, making ecological living into something comfortable is always a great thing. Plus, it’s a small business started by a couple that wanted to make a difference. And they have a blog.

14. Joyent

In addition to being the coolest web hosting company on the planet, what makes Joyent great is their hiring policy. They try to hire the brightest minds no matter where they live and don’t force them to relocate if they are chosen for the job: “In most cases we hire the best, wherever you are in the world. Just have lots of connectivity, caffeine, competence, and confidence.”

And as a bonus, they just launched their free hosting plan (for a year) for Facebook developers.

13. A tie between Freshview, Blinksale and CrazyEgg

All of these companies are just great examples of the creativity and passion that goes into running a small internet based startup. They all have great products that I would be glad to recommend to anyone interested in a little help in handling their day to day business activities.

And here’s how Freshview describes their working environment. Sounds cool, doesn’t it?

Instead of a cramped high rise, our offices are located across from a park with a decked out kitchen, ping pong table and plenty of space for everyone. The fridge is always full of free soft drink and we’ll often have lunch together at the office or head out to a local restaurant for a free feed. We also organise other events during work hours like golf days, ten pin bowling, tennis and a cool drink at many of the fine local establishments (um, pubs).

10. Ben & Jerry’s

Ben & Jerry’s is probably yesterday’s news for you (or even news from the days when you were small kids), but I just tasted their ice cream for the first time last week. The ice cream was delicious, but what was even better was the company story. Two kids meet at a 7th grad gym class. Some years later they take a $5 correspondence course in ice cream-making and start making ice cream. What an entrepreneurial success story!

But that’s not all. The company also has strong values and isn’t afraid to stand up for them. And they give out free ice cream once a year.

9. Eemukka

Another diaper company!? What’s the matter with this guy?

No, I don’t think I have gone mad. I’m just really impressed on how the entrepreneur mothers running these diaper companies (there are many of them in Finland) have been able to create a business that is both successful and has room for their families.

I’m working on a bigger post on these companies during the upcoming weeks. So stay tuned if you want to know more about diapers and what kind of business you can make out of them. (You may even want to consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don’t forget)

8. MOO

MOO is a perfect example of how business has changed in the last decade or so.

It’s not that much about looking big anymore but rather trying to be seen as friendly and approachable. And these people are doing a great job in it. Just read the following two paragraphs in which they explain how they started making their most popular product, the MiniCards, and you can’t help but believe that they are serious. They really believe in what they are doing, and they do it with pride and style.

All of the staff at MOO have active online social lives – not for work, just for fun. We love the web. Over half of us have our own website, or blog, and pretty much all of us share our photos online with our friends.

Our first product, MiniCards, came about when we realized that sometimes, we wanted to hand out details of our personal sites, and we just didn’t have a nice way to do it. A business card was too cheesy, too serious, or too… businessy, and didn’t represent us the way we really are. A hastily scribbled piece of paper is more personal, but who ever has paper or a pen when you want it? We needed something else.

Now I just have to find some excuse for buying some MiniCards…

7. Blurb

I’ve been a fan of Blurb ever since I first found out about them about a year ago. They are not the first company doing on demand printing of books, but they are the ones who made it accessible for everyone. We all have some things worthy of printing into books: pictures of our kids, war stories, childhood dreams, cooking recipes, wedding pictures… And now Blurb makes it easy.

And not only that. Everything at Blurb shows that these people are doing what they love. By reading their blog you can feel the passion and experience the feeling that they are building something great together as a team. To me that’s what inspiration means.

6. Davidville

Once again an example showing that you can take something that everyone is doing, like blogging, and turn it into something new, creating a great product and putting it out there.

In case you don’t know what product I’m talking about, it’s Tumblr. Go check it out. Blogging can’t get any easier.

5. Energia Productions

“We excel in doing what we can’t do.”

The above quote describes Energia Productions very accurately. These people after all were the ones who created the hugely successful science fiction movie, Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning. The story that lead to that movie is legendary. It all started from some really simple computer animations made by a young kid with too much spare time. At that time no one would have believed that one day this kid would be making movies for a living.

The determination paid off and now Samuli Torssonen and his company are about to have a great impact on the future of movies.

4. Threadless

Threadless makes T-shirts.

While that’s true, it doesn’t say anything about what Threadless really is about. So let’s try again: Threadless makes really cool T-shirts. But even more, they have been able to create a living and breathing community around their shirt business.

The shirt designs are done by customers. The promotion pictures are shot by customers. And I’m sure a big part of their marketing is also done by customers. It’s word of mouth at its best.

And boy, have you seen their head quarters?

3. 37 Signals

This should be no surprise to anyone who has been reading this blog for some time. I think 37 Signals is the best example today on how a software company should be run, not to mention that their products are elegant, smooth and useful.

Check out the book, Getting Real, written by the partners of 37 Signals to learn their philosophy in more detail. For this post, I think it’s enough to say that they are passionate, they have strong values, they are small and they work mostly from home.

And during summer they only work four days a week. Case closed. These guys know how to make work enjoyable.

2. Iridesco

Do I need to say more? Check out the company website and you’ll know that these guys rock.

1. Jellyfish Labs

After the fall of Big Idea, Phil Vischer decided to start over with a new, much smaller approach to business. His new company, Jellyfish Labs only employs four people, but is still able to do big things like bringing VeggieTales to NBC.

This is the kind of inspiration that I’m most excited about right now: small companies showing that growing isn’t always the number one goal. That you can do big things without being big.

What about you?

If I asked you to name twenty businesses that inspire you on some level, which ones would you pick? Surprise me with some great company I have never heard of before! Or tell me why some of the companies on my list aren’t that great after all.

And a year from today, November 22nd 2008, I’ll compile a new version of this list to see how my favorites have changed. Maybe your company will make it to that list. (In fact there are two more companies that I would have wanted to list today, but I have been linking to them so much already, that I thought it’s fair to give others the chance today. I’m sure you know who I mean.)

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People in Movies Don’t Play For Keeps

Jarkko — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 09:00:59 +0000

Why is it that the lives of people in movies seem to be so much more interesting than ours? There are many reasons: people in movies don’t watch TV, movies don’t show them doing their everyday chores such as cleaning the house or washing dishes, and in general, the boring parts are removed at the cutting board.

But none of these is the real reason.

The real reason, I believe, is that people in movies are 100% devoted to what they do.

Can you imagine a scene in Die Hard (any of the four) where after a few rounds of fire, John McClane stops, puts on his coat and walks away, giving up on his mission?

I didn’t think you could. That’s not how John McClane operates. No matter how hard it hurts, he goes on. He doesn’t worry about his career, reputation as a police officer, or even his health, when he’s fighting to save innocent lives.

He goes on, because he is completely devoted to what he’s doing. He believes in what he does.

One of my all time favorite movies (I know most people wouldn’t agree with me on this) is Jerry McGuire. I know nothing about sports, so the setting for the movie couldn’t be further from my normal circles. But there’s something special about Jerry’s character.

He’s the John McClane of the business world.

His life crumbling to pieces around him he goes on because he has a dream. He believes in treating his customers right, and giving them a special place in his life. Just like John, Jerry stands up and takes the step to uncertainty. He doesn’t stay in his cubicle dreaming about a better life, he takes the risk and starts living it.

In a whole different movie genre we have Finding Nemo, where nothing can stop the brave little fish from swimming through the ocean.

Why?

Because he loves his son and wants to rescue him no matter what. He just can’t stay home and wait. He takes the risks needed, and gets in a big adventure. A big adventure in which he risks his life, but for a good purpose.

Do you see a pattern here?

Devotion leads to adventures. Adventures lead to interesting stories. And learning.

Without devotion and doing things wholeheartedly, nothing interesting can happen.

So, let me ask you this question: Are you playing it safe, or do you truly live to your fullest potential? If someone made a movie about you, would it be an interesting one?

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