Jarkko Laine » Work

The Only Piece of Productivity Advice You Really Need

Jarkko — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 04:03:31 +0000

Do something that you care about.

A true minimalist would stop here, but I’m guessing you want a bit more so here comes the longer version.

Do you know the feeling when your experience of the passing of time changes? Time flies or stands still, and you don’t pay attention to anything except the task at hand. That’s the state of flow, or “completely focused motivation”. Achieving flow is a great way to enjoy work and produce great results and doing something you care about helps you get there.

But no matter how amazing work can get when you experience flow, it’s not always possible. There are times when you just need to do the work, no matter how it feels. It can be that you don’t have the luxury of immersing yourself in the work without caring about the clock. Maybe the task is harder than you can complete comfortably, or maybe it is too easy and your mind starts to wander.

In a blog post I keep returning to, Seth Godin wrote:

Why do you need to feel like something in order to do the work? They call it work because it’s difficult, not because it’s something you need to feel like.
- Seth Godin

Truth is you don’t need to feel the flow or to be in the zone to get your work done, and you need to get your work done even if you don’t get to flow.

When you care about the goal, you don’t stop working even if you can’t keep your eyes open anymore. You forget to eat because you just have to finish the task. You work through the hard times just to create the change you want to see in this world. This happens when you have passion.

Passion towards the goal you are working for sticks with you even when other reasons prevent you from getting in the flow. If the reason for your work is something bigger than yourself, you will work even when you don’t feel like it, because you know that what you are doing, matters — to you, and often to others as well.

Don’t wait any longer, seek out projects that will build your legacy. Start ventures that make you lose your sleep. And ship something that will change the world.

No related posts.

Experts, Generalists, and the Tyranny of OR

Jarkko — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 10:45:56 +0000

“There are 10 kinds of people: those who know binary and those who don’t.”

This popular geek joke tells a lot about us and how we like to classify things into neat boxes with descriptive labels on them. How we put socks in one drawer, pants in another one, and then struggle with the question of where stockings should go.

But we don’t do it with just physical items. We also classify people: engineers, blondes, Americans, doctors, marketers, old, young, experts, generalists.

The Tyranny of the OR

Authors James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras studied visionary companies (companies that outlive their founders and stay fresh throughout big changes in the world they work in), and noticed that what makes these companies different from their competition has a lot to do with seeing past the classifications.

In their business bestseller, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, Collins and Porras write:

[Visionary companies] do not oppress themselves with what we call the “Tyranny of the OR”–the rational view that cannot easily accept paradox, that cannot live with two seemingly contradictory forces or ideas at the same time. The “Tyranny of the OR” pushes people to believe that things must be either A OR B, but not both.

But what do the visionary companies, bound to be successful, do? According to Collins and Porras:

Instead of being oppressed by the “Tyranny of the OR,” highly visionary companies liberate themselves with the “Genius of the AND”–the ability to embrace both extremes of a number of dimensions at the same time. Instead of choosing between A OR B, they figure out a way to have both A AND B.

So, a visionary company can at the same time value conservatism around its core AND bold, committing, risky moves on every other area of business. Only because it decides to embrace the “Genius of the AND.”

We, faced with the problem of whether we want to be experts or generalists, can do the same: instead of thinking “expert OR generalist,” we can be experts AND generalists.

That’s what makes being insanely interested in everything an option worth considering.

How To Embrace The Genius of the AND

In his post, What if You Have Many Interests and Cannot Commit to any of Them, Steve Pavlina talks about how he finds it hard to concentrate in just one thing at a time. I commented more on this in my post, Steve Pavlina, Insanely Interested in Everything, but as I see it, the key finding in the post is quite simple: if you are insanely interested in everything, you can — no, you need to — be an expert in many things.

The only alternative to being an expert is not a generalist who knows a little about everything but not much about anything.

The better alternative is to be insanely interested in everything.

Think about those four words, concentrating especially on the first two. What does it really mean to be insanely interested in something? What do we call a person who is insanely interested in, let’s say, space shuttle design?

I would call her an expert. Or if not yet an expert, at least someone who is well on her way to becoming one.

Let’s continue this word game a bit more.

If being “insanely interested” means being an expert, then what does “insanely interested in everything” mean?

How about this?

Insanely interested in everything = expert in everything

I like it.

But Can You Really be an Expert in Everything?

No, I don’t think you can.

In our definition of “insanely interested,” we didn’t really say that being insanely interested in something means you are an expert in that field — but that you have the potential for becoming an expert.

So, let’s iterate:

Being insanely interested in everything = having the potential to becoming an expert in everything

It’s longer, and not quite as catchy as the first definition. But it’s closer to the truth. That matters more.

Our time is limited, and as Clay Collins points out, most of us have a hard time buying our time for our own use.

But with the right attitude, one can be an expert in many different things. All that is needed is time, curiosity, and passion for learning.

By looking at the things I am interested in, I can see that I’ve already come a long way towards becoming an expert in some things: software development, writing, web design, blogging, playing the guitar.

On some areas I have just started my journey — but judging by my passion, I can imagine that I will be an expert in them one day too: marketing, business, management, and baking bread, to name a few.

And I’m only 28.

What about you?

On what areas do you consider yourself even a bit of an expert? And what are the topics on which you want to become an expert some day?

Think about them, and what is required to turn an interest into expertise. The difference is not as huge as you would imagine at first.

You may never be quite the expert in any of your fields that you would be if you focused all of your energy in just one of them. But on the other hand, by being an expert on many topics, you will gain something bigger: you will be able to innovate by combining ideas in a way that single-minded experts can only dream of.

Life will be much more fun that way!

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!

Focus for the Insanely Interested

Jarkko — Wed, 07 May 2008 15:30:38 +0000

Focus is often seen as the ability to concentrate in one thing – even to the extent of flow, in which you forget all about the surrounding world as you immerse yourself in the one thing that really gets you excited.

While that’s a great way of looking at focus, it’s not complete.

As you’ll see by looking at the two photos below, you can have completely different views to the world while maintaining a perfect focus all the while. The first one focuses on the smallest detail while the second looks at the big picture – the two angles of focus.

Photo credits: [1] Hypergurl, [2] Ennor

With this post, I’m starting my new series on focus. More specifically, focus for the insanely interested. Focus for the creative, entrepreneurial generalistic who likes to look at all sides of things rather than some of their very specific aspects.

Focus in the sense of not losing the forest for the trees.

So, if your guiding principle is “God is in the details”, this series probably won’t be for you. And I won’t blame you – after all, generalists do need specialists in order to maintain their own, broader focus. But, if you are interested in looking at the concept of focus from a bit different point of view, get ready to see how the series unfolds.

(If you want to get updated of the articles as they are published, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or to get e-mail updates.)

I’m looking forward to sharing these thoughts with you, and hearing what you think of focus – from the point of view of someone insanely interested in everything.

Planning Your Life, Business and Everything

Jarkko — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 08:27:24 +0000

I think I missed something important in my previous post on plans: If you want to build a balance, you can’t plan your business and life separately.

A balanced business is an integral part of your life, not something extra.

That’s why today, I decided to go a bit deeper and present to you my once-every-day business and life planning process.

DISCLAIMER: I’m not a professional business plan advisor (is that even a profession?), and this is nothing more than the process I use for maintaining my own business plan. So, take from it what you find useful, use it abs a building block for your own model, and comment on it so I can further improve my approach.

OK, now that that’s out of the way, let’s move forward.

There are a few key principles that define how I see my business plan:

A balanced life contains a good career, and a rewarding career contains a rewarding life
Your life is personal, and so is your career, or business. It has to match your values, dreams and goals. No one else can pick those for you.
By trying things and documenting what you do, you learn new and better ways to define what your personal career should look like.
By planning, you get yourself moving and trying things.
…and soon you’re planning again

I’m not a big fan of long and thorough business plans, because I see them more as planning than action.

I want my business plan to be alive.

To be something I come back to daily to see how my understanding on life has evolved, and how well my business is reflecting those ideas.

The plan

This is the first time I present my model in public, so bear with me (and really, I’m all ears for comments and improvement ideas).

The plan is actually a collection of goals, an evaluation of where I am today and a description of my current understanding of how to reach my goals. I usually don’t have all of it written on paper because the plan lives in my head, growing and shrinking, until every now and then, I spend some time plotting it on paper. Quite a few separate, small pieces of paper, in my case.

1. Dreams

Like I said in an earlier post in this series, I am a dreamer.

I love to dream big (“I would love to be able to provide an amazing working environment for a few people”).

I love to dream small (“Aww… That MacBook would be such a great thing to have”).

I love to dream about work (“It would be so great to write a book”).

I love to dream about life (“I want to go to Japan”).

And in many cases the work and life dreams are the same (my biggest dream is that I would be able to work from anywhere I want to).

I collect a list of dreams (big, small, important, not so important) on which I write everything that comes to mind. From that list I can then easily identify the most important, or most urgent ones to work on as well as some easy ones that I can reach rather quickly.

My current number one dream is to be free from location and work from anywhere I choose to (which in my case means more or less the same thing as working from home). And the small, practical one that keeps me motivated is the new MacBook hiding just behind the corner.

Ask yourself the following questions:

What are your dreams?
How have they evolved since the last time you looked at your plan?
Is there something that doesn’t seem to go away? (If so, that’s a good candidate to your big, guiding dream)

Write down your answers so that the next time you are unsure of why you are doing the things you do, you can come back to your list of dreams and see the reasoning.

2. Making a difference

I want my life to have meaning.

I don’t care about death that much, but before I die, I want to be able to say that I tried to do the things I was meant to do.

It’s no secret that I’m Christian. I believe that God has a plan for me, and that’s why I want to spend time looking for clues, for finding out that plan. (One of my big business heroes, Phil Vischer, has written a few good blog posts on this topic)

But even if you don’t share my faith, I’m sure you believe in something. Peace? Eradicating poverty? Stopping global warming? Globalization?

And no matter what it is you believe in, if you don’t include that as a part of your life and business plan, you are not being honest to yourself. I believe in all of the things above, and many more (I told you I’m insanely interested in everything, didn’t I?), so it’s getting complicated to find a room for everything I believe in.

But I’m trying.

The questions to ask yourself about making a difference:

What do you believe in?
What is it that you would want to change in this world?
What happens if you combine these ideas with your dreams (from step 1)

Again, write down your answers. Play with them a bit, mixing them with the answers from the first step to see if you find some nice combinations. For example, a dream of traveling to Africa combined with a belief in eradicating poverty could lead to some interesting times spent helping out African entrepreneurs.

3. Neat ideas

I read a lot.

And when I read, I come across exciting ideas (for example, outsourcing my life, as Tim Ferris suggests) to try out. Sometimes when I read about an idea, I can put it to practice right away (like adding the CommentLuv plug-in to my blog), but more often, they are something I have to write down and save for the future.

When I say, save for the future, I don’t mean writing down the idea and then forgetting all about it (although sometimes that happens as well). You need to remind yourself of the ideas you find cool, over and over again.

Go through the list and see if you now could benefit from one of them. For example, in the case of outsourcing, go through your current projects and activities and ask yourself “what would happen if I outsourced this task?” If the answer is positive (“I would get more time to find new opportunities”), go for it!

And if you decide not to follow the idea, take a closer look at it and decide whether you still want to keep the idea on your “neat ideas” list or not. Maybe the idea doesn’t seem that neat to you anymore?

So, the questions, as a reminder:

How could I use this idea to improve my current work?
Do I still think this is a great idea?

Keep the idea list close (I suggest you start carrying a notebook with you) because you’ll never know when you will find something new to add to it.

4. Where will I be in a year from today?

By now you have a list of ideas, a list of values, and a list of ideas. If you have been super efficient, you have already sorted them by importance. But if you haven’t, that’s OK as well – I guess inside your head you have a pretty good idea of what is important and what is just nice to have extra.

This is one of my favorite moments in my business planning process. It’s the moment when you come closer to earth and start thinking about the possibilities, but still keep your feet just a bit above the ground, not getting down to your current situation but looking at the future:

Which ones of your dreams do you think you could achieve in a year from today?
Or if you can’t achieve them completely, maybe a partial goal? (If your dream is to be free from the office, maybe a nice partial goal would be to work part time?)
What can you do in a year to further the causes you believe in?
Which of your neat ideas can you use to get there?

This is a question about priorities and choosing a few most important goals to aim for. Be realistic and remember your current commitments (if you work for 8 hours a day, you can’t do as much as if you would be working full time according to this plan), but don’t be afraid to dream big (even if you just work one hour every day, it’s still 365 hours, which is about 45 working days, 9 full working weeks).

5. Next actions

And finally the part that makes this plan worthwhile.

Actions.

A business plan is about action. It’s about movement. And life.

Take all the material from the four sections above and think. What do you need to do to reach your goals for this year? Do you know how to do it? Does it make sense financially? Do you believe in the necessary actions?

I don’t have the answers to all of the questions. I answer the ones I can, as well as I can. And in most cases that’s enough to keep me moving. I’ll get more answers as I go.

Right now, my action plan consists of the following items:

Writing articles to Finnish magazines (brings in most of the money, and helps improve my writing skills)
Freelance blogging (brings in some money, helps improve my writing skills, and most importantly, helps me make myself known on the Internet)
Writing articles for this blog (keeps me in touch with all of you, improves my thinking, let’s me test my ideas in form of posts like this one)
Contributing to SproutWire (helps me share my passion for small business with the rest of the world, helps make a name for myself)
Writing an eBook / premium service (once done correctly, will bring in money as well as help people in their side business needs)

As you can see, most of the actions have something to do with making money, but many are also about things I believe in strongly, like small business or blogging.

This is it, my business planning process.

Except for one last thing: now that you are done with your business plan, you’re not really done. Come back tomorrow to revise your plan. And the day after tomorrow. The day after that. And so on.

Until the very last day of your life.

Side Business, Smart Business

Jarkko — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:45:39 +0000

When the time available for building your business is limited, you have two choices: you can play smart, or you can forget all about sleeping or relaxing with your family and spend all of your free hours working on your side business.

You choose.

If you want to work all day and all night, feel free to do so. But if that’s not your dream, I have some tips to share with you.

Be smart in picking your business

This is the first and most important decision that will define how much of your time you will spend on your business.

Sure, there is no such business that wouldn’t take a slice of your time – nor should there be. But still, some lines of business just require more work than others. That’s why when planning a side business you shouldn’t just pick the first thing that comes to mind. Instead, think about your different options and how likely it is for you to burn out pursuing each of them.

Pick the one least likely to turn you into a zombie.

Don’t do the same thing you do in your day job: If you code all day, going home to work on yet another programming task doesn’t feel like relaxing. You have other interests as well, don’t you? Starting a side business is an opportunity to pick one of your still unused skills and take the most out of it.
Don’t pick a business that requires you to be available all the time: One of the reasons why I chose freelance writing as my (first) side business is that it doesn’t require too many meetings with the customer at a specific time and places. Most of the communication can be handled through e-mail, and the working hours arranged according to my own schedule. This helps a lot in reducing the stress and balancing the days.
Pick a business model that scales both up and down: When you are just starting, it’s hard to know how much work you can handle. That’s why it’s a good idea to try and build your business from small pieces that you can drop or add easily when you learn more about your personal balance. For example, in addition to print magazine articles, I do freelance blogging gigs. Blogging work is quicker to get done so it gives me a finer resolution for defining how much work I collect for a week. In the same way a graphic designer could add small, quick poster designs or mini websites to her portfolio in addition to the bigger scale projects to have finer control over the work load.
Pick a business that can work without your input: I have to admit that in my freelance writing business I don’t follow this advice. And the resulting problems are already starting to show. As a side business entrepreneur, if growing your business means getting more work, you risk losing your balance and getting into trouble. That’s why even though the writing business keeps me busy, I can’t give up building this blog and writing my first e-book (I’ll share more information on it once I’m done with this series of articles) so that I could make my business bring me money even when I’m not working.

And finally, don’t be afraid to try things out, make mistakes and iterate.

Start small with some idea on how your business can grow in the future, and then improve and fine tune it as you go.

Be smart in picking your projects

Saying no is hard.

What’s even harder is saying no to a project you know would be extremely interesting.

But nevertheless, it’s also the most important skill you need to learn when building a smart, balanced side business. You will have to say no to boring, repetitive projects that don’t pay well or have any strategic value. But just the same, you will have to say no to many projects that you’d love to do. If you don’t, eventually someone else will say it, maybe your boss in your day job or your wife.

Here are the guidelines I use for knowing when to say no and when to say yes:

Know your goals: When you know where you want to be in a few years (or even a few months) from now, it’s much easier to know whether this project at hand will get you towards those goals or not.
Know your limits: This is something you probably have to learn through trial and error. By once taking more projects than you can handle, you’ll know where your limit is. Be sure not to cross it ever again. A good tip I read some days ago says: “One in, one out“.
Get more information: At first, every new venture looks doable (at least to me, I’m an optimist), so don’t decide right away. Ask for more information, and think about the consequences from going with that project. Think about things like money, strategic value for the future and most importantly, balance. Then in a day or two you are much better informed to say yes or no.

Because this is such an important question, back in January I decided to consult some experts regarding it. Check out their answers for more insight in picking the right projects.

Be smart in managing your time and workload

Finally, no matter how good your plan, there is still one thing that can bring it crumbling down: The way you use your time.

If you organize your time perfectly, you can add more projects and still get all of them done on time without compromising your quality of life. But if you fail in your time management, even a small amount of work can drive you to the edge of a mental breakdown.

There are two ways to address this question:

Optimize your hours: If you spend one hour on your business every day, you get a total of seven hours. In seven hours, if you use them well, you can do a lot. So, clear out distractions, concentrate fully during the time devoted to your business and then relax. (We will talk more about this in an upcoming post in just a few more days)
Know your limits: Don’t get greedy when planning the things to get done during a week. It’s way too easy to add still one more item to the list and think that you can do it. When the implementation comes, you will thank yourself for every project you dropped off the list.

Simplify. Implement. Relax.

Just be smart

I’m sure you are at least as smart as I am and can use these tips to create something meaningful and smart. And when you do (or if you have done it already), I’d love to hear about your experiences! Comments are open.

This was the third article (1, 2) in my series on building a profitable side business that doesn’t break your work/life balance. There are still more articles coming, so if you don’t want to miss any of them, subscribe to my RSS feed!

A boat insurance or even a pet insurance is much small as compared to a home insurance or a business insurance, but nothing comes even close to a life insurance.

Jonathan Fields And The Art Of Building Many Businesses At Once

Jarkko — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 07:00:15 +0000

In my pursuit to find great career paths for the insanely interested, I talk to friends who I think are doing something exceptional – something we could use as an example to guide us in our day to day choices.

Not every option suits everyone, but I’m sure you’ll find today’s interviewee an extremely inspiring!

Jonathan Fields is an entrepreneur. But unlike many, he doesn’t just run one company focusing to one service or product, but a variety of them. And that makes him a first class example of an entrepreneur insanely interested in everything.

Q: Your list of activities looks impressive: copywriting, yoga, speaking, coaching, and writing posts to many blogs. How did you end up starting so many things rather than concentrating on just one of them?

Funny thing is, to me, they are all just different tentacles of the same, unifying thread, which is a mad-passion to create and to have a positive impact on the world around me.

So, each is just a different way to manifest that master path. It’s a bit like exploring multiple-channels to market a business, really.

The biggest challenge is to continually checking in on what’s working and what’s not and be willing to shelve certain things that I simply don’t have time to do at the level I’d want to do them or allocate energy away from them in order to make sure what’s most treasured is getting the bulk of my energies.

Whether it’s writing my latest book for Random House on career-evolution, running my yoga center, blogging or helping someone craft their marketing message, I am in the business of creating business and lifestyle solutions that improve the way people experience their lives, including me! And, this all seems to be coming together this year under the banner of my newly launched Career Renegade project.

Q: An interesting piece of information is that none of these paths in business are what you studied in the first place. Why did you decide to become a lawyer, and what made you give it up?

I decided to go to law school because, not surprisingly, I spent most of my time in college as an entrepreneur and after kicking around for 2 1/2 years, I felt like I needed to challenge myself to find out what I was really intellectually capable of. And, law school seemed a good option. Plus, I knew that, even if I never practiced, it would be great analytical training for any business I went into.

What inspired me to give it up was an awakening to the realization that I did not aspire to become a partner in a firm, I had little passion or the practice, I had a lot of passion for things I wasn’t doing and I had a health crisis that led to emergency surgery after my body literally rejected my career.

Q: But the big question is how do you find the time to do all this? After all, you are also a guy who believes in having a healthy balance between work and life…

Constant rebalancing and a willingness to pull-back and reallocate whenever necessary to make sure my time and energy reflect my priorities.

Reality is, though, this is likely my greatest challenge.

I tend to push past my breaking point and then have to pull back. It’s something I’m working pretty actively on. Plus, I have learned to find amazing people to surround myself with and be willing to hand-off responsibility and trust that, while things might not be done exactly the way I would’ve done them, they’ll be good enough..and often better than what I would have done.

Nobody succeeds in a vacuum.

Q: If you were forced to rank all your ventures in an order of importance, which one would you put first – why?

Okay, first, the ventures that are public are probably only about half of what I am currently working on. But, of them, my yoga center has an incredible staff that doesn’t take a huge amount of my energy, but I love the people and the community.

The bulk of my energies are moving toward a combination of writing (books, blogging and direct-response copywriting), online ventures and presenting on entrepreneurship and careers.

Q: How do you decide on which project you work on day to day basis?

I have to rebalance this constantly. As I said before, this is likely my greatest challenge and one of my greatest opportunities for growth. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of just responding to whatever is in front of you. But, that always leaves you at the end of a long day wondering what the hell you did all day. Not good.

I try very hard to step back and allocate my time more strategically.

Q: Do you have plans to still start something new, or is this enough?

Dude, you don’t know the half of it!

Q: What is the most difficult part in working on multiple businesses at the same time?

Finding people to trust enough to plant the seed of your vision and let them run with it.

Q: And what about the most rewarding part?

Control and culture. I have ultimate control over my success and failure and I get to literally create my own culture and handpick people I love to be around.

Q: I’m sure there are many people in the audience who would like to follow more than one path at once. Where would you suggest to start from?

Check out Marci Alboher’s book, One Person/Multiple Careers, come play with me at my Career Renegade Bootcamps and leg into them one adventure at a time.

Launch one and get it as stable and systematic as possible before reallocating some of your energy to another project.

Q: And who would you recommend this kind of business approach to?

Honestly, not too many people. If you can get what you need from a single pursuit, it’ll be much easier.

First stop – find one thing you love to do, get really good at it, earn what you need.

Then, if you enjoy what you do, but keep Jonesing to explore more, do it the way I shared in the above answer.

If you liked what Jonathan had to say, check out his blog for more insight on careers, business life and lifestyle! And if you want to ask him a question, leave a comment.

Start Building Your Minimalist Business Today

Why Would You Need An Office?

Jarkko — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 04:31:08 +0000

The history of offices dates back all the way to ancient Rome. It was a time before laptops, wireless Internet connections and mobile phones. In fact, it was a time when all writing had to be done by hand. In that context gathering people in one place to do their work made sense – they couldn’t have worked together without physically being in the same space.

Today the tools have changed, and we can work together no matter where we are staying.

But the office building remains.

Photo by mstorz.

Photo by ideath: “And this is. The place i work.
I feel kinda like i’m playing a grownup -
get on the bus, take the train into downtown,
go into the office building and up the elevator.
Like the first couple of scenes of a movie. “

Is that what an office is for us: a place to go to play a grownup?

A status symbol of a sort.

This is my question today: why do you want to work in an office? What benefits do you get to compensate with traveling 2 hours per day to work and back, eating in expensive downtown cafeterias, working with set hours in an office space that you didn’t decorate yourself?

Leave your thoughts in the comments, I really want to know.

Why?

Because the alternative seems so good to me that I don’t understand why most of us are still ignoring it completely:

Working at home. Photo by rocketlass.

Working on the beach. Photo by Jim Callender.

Or in a coffee shop. Photo by ddesilvi.

That’s a whole new generation of Location Independent Professionals, neo nomads, nuNomads. People who have decided to put the technology work for them and leave the office environment.

And that’s my second question: which one would you pick? This, or the office? Why?

A Book Recommendation

If you got excited in the idea of becoming location independent, there is an e-book I can recommend: X Marks The Spot by Lea Woodward. It’s an inspiring book written by an original location independent professional that tells you how you can leave the office world behind and live free and wild. If that’s what you’re looking for, this is the perfect opportunity to learn.

And now, time to chat.

No related posts.

How To Tame a Mail-Eating Monster in Five Easy Steps

Jarkko — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 16:10:53 +0000

After once again stumbling to an unreplied e-mail message received a month ago that I had completely forgotten about, I decided that now it’s finally time to take over my inbox. I collected a list of tips and ideas to save me time and effort, and make sure no message is left unprocessed, and then started implementing them one by one.

Results are looking more and more promising as we speak. If you’re struggling with managing your inbox, struggle no more, check out the ideas and join me in beating the dark, mail-eating inbox monster.

As a rule of thumb I want you to think of your e-mail inbox as a river. Mail flows into it, and once you’re done with the mail, it continues its way with the waves. When everything goes well, it’s almost as if you just watch the water flow. But when mail starts to get stuck in the rocks in your river, it piles up, slowly forming a dam that makes it hard to keep your mail flowing.

Here are the best tips I’ve found for preventing my mail river from getting stuck:

Keep your inbox empty: Create folders for different topics such as business, blogging, personal or freelance writing, and move your e-mail messages from the inbox to those folders when you are done with them. This way you know that whatever is left in your inbox, is something you still have to do something with. Keeps things much clearer, when you don’t have to dig through hundreds of messages to see if there still is something you missed. (Leo Babauta is also a fan of an empty inbox, and does a similar system but with only one folder – archive)
Process your e-mail when you first read it: This is something you can’t do every time, but it’s a good principle to try to follow. It will save you time because you’ll only have to read the message once.
Dedicate time for e-mail: Doing this will help you in achieving the tip #2. If you go through your e-mail only at specific times, you are not tempted to just skim the messages and go back to other things. Productivity gurus like Tim Ferris will also tell you that getting rid of the habit of constant e-mail checking will improve your overall performance dramatically.
But in order to maintain a friendly and approachable image, reserve enough time for e-mail: If one extreme is to only process your e-mail once a day, the other is the idea of immediate response supported by the approachability guy, Scott Ginsberg. In his books he tells that he replies to his e-mails right away, and his contacts are positively surprised every time. This, of course, isn’t good for getting things done (unless your work is all about e-mail), so I think we need a compromise. For example three times a day: in the morning, after lunch, and in the evening.
Don’t sleep with unprocessed e-mail messages: And finally something interesting I found just yesterday. A simple idea that sounds like it should be the perfect backup. If you still have e-mail messages in your inbox when you’re about to go to sleep, you can’t go to bed. This little pressure might be just the thing needed to make sure you get your e-mail done in your dedicated e-mail time slots.

With this simple system in place my e-mail is now flowing nicely and the e-mail inbox becoming a friend rather than a dreadful monster.

How about you, do you already have a process for handling your e-mail? Or some good tips to share? Let’s share ideas, and as a result all of us will have a stronger than ever control over our inboxes.

Random Thoughts After a Week of Sickness

Jarkko — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 20:45:30 +0000

About a week ago, on Thursday night, my wife got struck by a high fever. 39 degrees Celsius (102,2 degrees Fahrenheit). She couldn’t get up from bed, so I had to stay home and take care of her and our baby boy. She was sick for the whole week-end, and when she started to get better on Sunday, Oiva was next. 40,2 degrees Celsius (104,4 Fahrenheit). And finally on Monday evening my resistance broke and I found myself trembling in bed (a bit over 39).

Why am I telling all of this to you?

For two reasons: First, it’s a great excuse for not having written anything to my blog in some days. Second, this sickness episode reminded me of some pretty interesting lessons in life, business and everything that I wanted to share with you today.

Lesson 1: Don’t get sick

Being sick means that you can’t get your work done.

You might be optimistic and think that with the help of a few pills and a few cups of self-discipline you will be able to write those hundred lines of HTML, or twenty pages of clever copy writing for a customer of yours. But at the end of the day you’ll notice that all you managed to do was to sleep and moan in your bed.

So, if you are in a business and have people rely on you being there, you better not get sick.

Lesson 2: If you get sick, you’d better prepare for it

Sickness comes unannounced. So when you are sick there is nothing you can do about it. You can try, of course. But usually you won’t get better unless you stay in bed and get some rest.

But that doesn’t mean there would be nothing you can do about it.

What you can do is to prepare for it in advance. It’s called risk management, and it is something pretty cool — and important.

The risk in this case is that you getting sick will make you lose money. And the ways you can prepare for it are many:

Make your money sources independent of your work. Many people commented on my post about making your business to be about you saying that you shouldn’t make your business rely on you. They said that you have to have a backup so that if you are suffering from a cold, someone else can do your work. Or even better, if you can make your income sources passive, it’s completely OK for you to stay at home until you get better and are able to work again.
Be open about it. When you are down with the flu, let your boss, customers or co-workers know about the situation. They will most likely be OK about it. After all, everyone is sick from time to time.
Start early. By starting to work on your deadlines early enough, you build some buffer for yourself. When the work is almost done a week or two before the deadline, if you happen to catch a cold, you’ll still be able to finish the project when you are back from the death. On the contrary, if you drop to bed a few days before a deadline that you haven’t even started to work towards, that’s not a good thing at all.

Lesson 3. When your kid gets sick, you really want to work from home

One of the things that make working for someone else tricky is that you always need to get your boss’s approval for how you use your time. I’m in the lucky position that I work for a rather relaxed company (we make games, so maybe that has something to do with it). But still I can’t just say “hey boss, I’m staying at home this week to take care of my son who has a cold and isn’t doing so well…”

So while this sickness episode showed me one reason why working for someone else is easier (someone at work will do your job if you are sick and can’t make it), it also gave me an important reason for staying at home and working for yourself (you don’t have to beg for permission to stay at home and take care of your family).

It also taught me that it’s frustrating and stressful to see your baby suffer. You see that he’s in pain, but all you can do is to give some medication and try to get him to sleep.

Luckily now everyone is doing much better, and we’re slowly returning back to normal.

What about you? What kind of lessons have you learned about sickness and health lately? How do you make sure your work gets done even if you can’t be there to do it? Or do you have some tricks to make sure you don’t get sick?