As I continue writing for this blog, I am continually nailing down precisely what the theme of my writing is and the purpose of my philosophy of Boredom. I recently found greater clarity in what it's all about.
I used to tell people it was a combination of minimalizing your life while focusing on productivity, mixed in with some leadership insights. That's a mouthful and is saying everything without being anything. After mentally replaying this mouthful multiple times, I realized the philosophy of Boredom is about minimalism for high performers. Short and simple.
Before creating the blog, I remember talking to a coworker about how overloaded we were with projects and that my focus in life was to be Bored so that I could do more. He laughed, saying that's not how being bored works. My response was, "it is for me." I couldn't vocalize what I meant, but after exploring this blog, I understand what I was saying is that for high performers, that's precisely how it works.
A lot of people might be frequently bored. When they get this way, they might end up doing nothing, thus increasing their boredom. Or worse, they get into trouble or focus on time-wasters. Idle hands are the devil's playground. However, that's not what happens when high performers get bored.
When bored, we go out seeking a new project to do, which is why we get ourselves into burnout trouble so quickly. We're always eager to say yes to a new project. Which is why aiming for Boredom works. It helps us say no to some of these less ideal projects because seeking Boredom is more important than saying yes to one more random project.
But a philosophy of Boredom isn't enough. Once we free up our time from distractions, we must assert project discipline. That's where the Personal Control Book comes into play. The PCB helps channel our focus into what will make the most significant impact on our lives. It's the guard rails that ensure we don't get back into the trap of randomly accepting new projects with no rhyme or reason.
Boredom is my Goal is the philosophy to apply minimalism for high performers. The Personal Control Book is then the system that funnels this newly created available energy into the best possible applications.
(Written 2019.12.07)
12.26.2019
12.19.2019
#36 | FU Income
Life had become crazy busy for a while, but it's starting to calm down again. As things calm down, I've been able to evaluate the past few months. One of the insights I've discovered is a deeper understanding of FU Money.
JL Collins didn't coin the term, but he's where I first heard it. Just like his article, linked above, I hadn't known what FU Money was, but once he described it, it made perfect sense. It was something I was aiming for too. Or at least I thought I was.
The more I think about it though, the more I think FU Money itself is kind of bulls--t. Although I thought FU Money was my goal, I've never been able to incorporate it into my financial strategy appropriately. The first issue I have is that retirements accounts have typically been my first avenue of investing. But as the balance of my retirement accounts increased, I never felt like that would be considered part of my FU Money bucket.
If I wanted to say FU to my job and go on a self-funded sabbatical adventure to discover myself, what I want to live off of my would my retirement accounts? Not really. I wouldn't want to cash them out and take the penalty hit for withdrawing from them before retirement. Instead of funding retirement accounts, let's say I funded a non-retirement brokerage account. Would that make a difference? Doubtful. I wouldn't want to sell my wealth-generating assets to cover my monthly expenses. I wouldn't be comfortable missing out on the opportunity cost of not benefiting from compounding interest or returns. The milestone I would have to reach to feel secure is the 4% rule threshold.
But if I waited until I reached the 4% rule threshold, then I would call that retirement money, not FU Money. I imagine FU Money is when you have enough in assets and cash that for any reason, you can quit your job without worrying about the scramble of immediately finding a new income stream. Retirement could be a side effect of this short-notice quitting, but retirement is an all-or-nothing scenario. When you retire, you retire for good. If you come back out of retirement, then that means you drained your investment accounts before you were ready to retire.
Plus, retiring early is extremely hard. There are quite a few people in the FIRE community who have retired early, but to retire in your 20s or 30s usually seems to be a direct result of penny-pinching to the point of depression. Or at least a significantly decreased life satisfaction.
What's the answer then if FU Money seems like a reasonable goal but doesn't' actually fit my model? Figuring that out has inadvertently become my current focus.
Over the past three months, I've been focusing on several different side projects. The first was a commercial real estate project that I had been watching for years, but the time had finally come to execute. This particular project will kick off a healthy but not retirement-worthy monthly cashflow. The second project was starting a side business doing online selling with my wife. This project doesn't produce passive income, yet, but creates an alternative revenue stream. And the goal is to grow the revenue stream enough that we can hire employees and helpers and start working on converting it to either a leveraged income or a completely passive income. The last project(s) was a few individuals in my technology network who reached out to me for freelancing. Freelancing is something that I've always done since college graduation, but I had a year-long drought in projects. The income generated from these projects tends to be very short-lived but usually significant in size than other side-gigs. At this point in my career, I also manage other resources with these gigs and charge a markup for my resources time instead of direct billing for my time. So I consider this leveraged income.
For the past year or so, my focus was on adding to my investment account balances. However, for these projects, the entire focus has been on created alternative income streams. Income streams that pull the monthly burden away from the 9-5 income stream. These income streams started making me think about FU Income. They didn't increase my investment account balances one bit; there has been no impact on my net worth. But yet I still feel more secure now than I did just a few months ago.
So I dug deeper. My net worth is already large enough that I feel like I have preliminary FU Money. But even with that net worth, I'm not interested in cashing out any of my existing portfolios to cover my monthly expenses. So it's FU Money that is untouchable if I want to say FU.
I was trying to sort out all of this, and it finally hit me. I had discovered FU Income. Between these three new income streams, I can cover the majority of our monthly expenses. That means if I quit my job overnight, to be entirely income-to-expense neutral, I could get a minimum wage job and still maintain my current lifestyle without decreasing my assets.
Another angle I started thinking about was the golden egg-laying goose. The moral of that story was to have patience in receiving a golden egg every day. The protagonist loses patience and kills the goose hoping to extract all of the golden eggs hiding inside, only to discover there are no golden eggs inside, thus destroying their future golden egg income. In my opinion, prematurely tapping into your FU Money is equivalent to killing your goose. Except instead of impatience being the motivation, needing to eat the goose for daily sustenance is the motivation. Although it's not a selfish motivation, the outcome is the same. With the purpose of FU Income instead of FU Money, I equate that to pursuing more geese instead of pursuing more golden eggs.
So now, I know what my focus moving forward should be. I have surpassed having FU Money. I must now focus on creating FU Income so that I can genuinely gain the financial independence that I seek.
(Written 2019.12.07)
JL Collins didn't coin the term, but he's where I first heard it. Just like his article, linked above, I hadn't known what FU Money was, but once he described it, it made perfect sense. It was something I was aiming for too. Or at least I thought I was.
The more I think about it though, the more I think FU Money itself is kind of bulls--t. Although I thought FU Money was my goal, I've never been able to incorporate it into my financial strategy appropriately. The first issue I have is that retirements accounts have typically been my first avenue of investing. But as the balance of my retirement accounts increased, I never felt like that would be considered part of my FU Money bucket.
If I wanted to say FU to my job and go on a self-funded sabbatical adventure to discover myself, what I want to live off of my would my retirement accounts? Not really. I wouldn't want to cash them out and take the penalty hit for withdrawing from them before retirement. Instead of funding retirement accounts, let's say I funded a non-retirement brokerage account. Would that make a difference? Doubtful. I wouldn't want to sell my wealth-generating assets to cover my monthly expenses. I wouldn't be comfortable missing out on the opportunity cost of not benefiting from compounding interest or returns. The milestone I would have to reach to feel secure is the 4% rule threshold.
But if I waited until I reached the 4% rule threshold, then I would call that retirement money, not FU Money. I imagine FU Money is when you have enough in assets and cash that for any reason, you can quit your job without worrying about the scramble of immediately finding a new income stream. Retirement could be a side effect of this short-notice quitting, but retirement is an all-or-nothing scenario. When you retire, you retire for good. If you come back out of retirement, then that means you drained your investment accounts before you were ready to retire.
Plus, retiring early is extremely hard. There are quite a few people in the FIRE community who have retired early, but to retire in your 20s or 30s usually seems to be a direct result of penny-pinching to the point of depression. Or at least a significantly decreased life satisfaction.
What's the answer then if FU Money seems like a reasonable goal but doesn't' actually fit my model? Figuring that out has inadvertently become my current focus.
Over the past three months, I've been focusing on several different side projects. The first was a commercial real estate project that I had been watching for years, but the time had finally come to execute. This particular project will kick off a healthy but not retirement-worthy monthly cashflow. The second project was starting a side business doing online selling with my wife. This project doesn't produce passive income, yet, but creates an alternative revenue stream. And the goal is to grow the revenue stream enough that we can hire employees and helpers and start working on converting it to either a leveraged income or a completely passive income. The last project(s) was a few individuals in my technology network who reached out to me for freelancing. Freelancing is something that I've always done since college graduation, but I had a year-long drought in projects. The income generated from these projects tends to be very short-lived but usually significant in size than other side-gigs. At this point in my career, I also manage other resources with these gigs and charge a markup for my resources time instead of direct billing for my time. So I consider this leveraged income.
For the past year or so, my focus was on adding to my investment account balances. However, for these projects, the entire focus has been on created alternative income streams. Income streams that pull the monthly burden away from the 9-5 income stream. These income streams started making me think about FU Income. They didn't increase my investment account balances one bit; there has been no impact on my net worth. But yet I still feel more secure now than I did just a few months ago.
So I dug deeper. My net worth is already large enough that I feel like I have preliminary FU Money. But even with that net worth, I'm not interested in cashing out any of my existing portfolios to cover my monthly expenses. So it's FU Money that is untouchable if I want to say FU.
I was trying to sort out all of this, and it finally hit me. I had discovered FU Income. Between these three new income streams, I can cover the majority of our monthly expenses. That means if I quit my job overnight, to be entirely income-to-expense neutral, I could get a minimum wage job and still maintain my current lifestyle without decreasing my assets.
Another angle I started thinking about was the golden egg-laying goose. The moral of that story was to have patience in receiving a golden egg every day. The protagonist loses patience and kills the goose hoping to extract all of the golden eggs hiding inside, only to discover there are no golden eggs inside, thus destroying their future golden egg income. In my opinion, prematurely tapping into your FU Money is equivalent to killing your goose. Except instead of impatience being the motivation, needing to eat the goose for daily sustenance is the motivation. Although it's not a selfish motivation, the outcome is the same. With the purpose of FU Income instead of FU Money, I equate that to pursuing more geese instead of pursuing more golden eggs.
So now, I know what my focus moving forward should be. I have surpassed having FU Money. I must now focus on creating FU Income so that I can genuinely gain the financial independence that I seek.
(Written 2019.12.07)
12.12.2019
#35 | Heroes & Soldiers
Recently I was talking to someone at work, and we started discussing the topic of heroes and soldiers in regards to performance reviews and who gets recognized. I hadn't heard this metaphor before, but it made perfect sense. I wanted to explore the concept a bit more.
The breakdown is that at work, you have heroes, and you have soldiers. Your heroes are the ones who come in to save the day. If your production system is down, they figure out how to bring it back up. If a customer is angry and demands immediate attention and resolution, the hero calms them down and satisfy their expectations. Whenever things are in trouble, the hero enters. The problem is solved, congratulations emails are sent out, and praise showers start. The celebrations begin.
Soldiers, on the other hand, are the ones in the trenches every day. They keep the world going round. They handle hundreds of customers without letting things escalate to the point of needing a hero. They create feature after feature, with constant in-depth analysis, and deliver every time. Frequently, these folks might not enjoy the spotlight of being a hero. They might even crumble when the spotlight finds them. But they don't need the spotlight to become essential members of the team.
Which then gets around to our conversation topic. How to recognize and reward everyone appropriately? Before my work conversation, I would frequently think about people in terms of being top performers, medium performers, and the occasional short-lived bottom performer. Everybody fit comfortably into these three buckets. But over time, I've noticed that some top performers struggle to get proper rewards. Their stats and KPIs would be consistently at the top of the charts. They always worked on essential tasks and were goto people for their areas. They had all of the indicators that should make them easy to reward, but the best rewards always seem to bypass them.
On the other hand, other top performers seemed to walk into their rewards. Their managers would make little effort and bam -- instant-reward. There always seemed like a disparity in contributions and ease of awards.
That's where the heroes versus soldiers metaphor clicked for me. Being a top performer helped to secure a promotion, but it wasn't the primary factor. The more critical trait is to be a visible hero. Even if you were a hero/soldier shining in the spotlight while digging into the daily trenches, the hero aspect of your output is what justifies the promotion.
Then I started thinking back at my previous jobs and evaluating myself. At my first job out of college, I was a complete soldier. I was the guy who sat in my office toiling away, avoiding any visible spotlight while carrying the burden of workload for the team. Everyone who knew the intricacies of the group realized I was a top performer for the team. No one outside of the group knew what contributions I was making. Because of that, I gained a lot of valuable experience, and it launched me as a professional engineer, but my career growth was very stagnant.
In comparison, I've now come to embrace the spotlight. I still bear down and toil away in the trenches when needed, but I'm also known to be the person who steps into the foreground to save the day when a crisis occurs. I've learned how to play both roles. I'm confident that the hero part of my deliverables has made the difference from my first job. My career growth has reflected this difference in approach.
I find it somewhat discouraging. If I would have known at my first job, maybe I could have done things differently. Even now, as a manager, I might be reaping the benefits, but that's not enough. I tend to hold my team to high expectations leading a lot of them to be top performers, but some are heroes, and some are soldiers, but all, in my opinion, are deserving of recognition.
But at least I've made this realization. With realization comes the ability to plan a countermeasure to this anti-pattern. Once I figure out that countermeasure, I'll be able to be an even better leader and make sure I keep all top performers engaged and happy so that everyone can keep us marching forward towards victory.
Project success isn't won by only the heroes performing great feats of strength, but also by the soldiers putting in the grind and showing up strong every day.
(Written 2019.12.06)
The breakdown is that at work, you have heroes, and you have soldiers. Your heroes are the ones who come in to save the day. If your production system is down, they figure out how to bring it back up. If a customer is angry and demands immediate attention and resolution, the hero calms them down and satisfy their expectations. Whenever things are in trouble, the hero enters. The problem is solved, congratulations emails are sent out, and praise showers start. The celebrations begin.
Soldiers, on the other hand, are the ones in the trenches every day. They keep the world going round. They handle hundreds of customers without letting things escalate to the point of needing a hero. They create feature after feature, with constant in-depth analysis, and deliver every time. Frequently, these folks might not enjoy the spotlight of being a hero. They might even crumble when the spotlight finds them. But they don't need the spotlight to become essential members of the team.
Which then gets around to our conversation topic. How to recognize and reward everyone appropriately? Before my work conversation, I would frequently think about people in terms of being top performers, medium performers, and the occasional short-lived bottom performer. Everybody fit comfortably into these three buckets. But over time, I've noticed that some top performers struggle to get proper rewards. Their stats and KPIs would be consistently at the top of the charts. They always worked on essential tasks and were goto people for their areas. They had all of the indicators that should make them easy to reward, but the best rewards always seem to bypass them.
On the other hand, other top performers seemed to walk into their rewards. Their managers would make little effort and bam -- instant-reward. There always seemed like a disparity in contributions and ease of awards.
That's where the heroes versus soldiers metaphor clicked for me. Being a top performer helped to secure a promotion, but it wasn't the primary factor. The more critical trait is to be a visible hero. Even if you were a hero/soldier shining in the spotlight while digging into the daily trenches, the hero aspect of your output is what justifies the promotion.
Then I started thinking back at my previous jobs and evaluating myself. At my first job out of college, I was a complete soldier. I was the guy who sat in my office toiling away, avoiding any visible spotlight while carrying the burden of workload for the team. Everyone who knew the intricacies of the group realized I was a top performer for the team. No one outside of the group knew what contributions I was making. Because of that, I gained a lot of valuable experience, and it launched me as a professional engineer, but my career growth was very stagnant.
In comparison, I've now come to embrace the spotlight. I still bear down and toil away in the trenches when needed, but I'm also known to be the person who steps into the foreground to save the day when a crisis occurs. I've learned how to play both roles. I'm confident that the hero part of my deliverables has made the difference from my first job. My career growth has reflected this difference in approach.
I find it somewhat discouraging. If I would have known at my first job, maybe I could have done things differently. Even now, as a manager, I might be reaping the benefits, but that's not enough. I tend to hold my team to high expectations leading a lot of them to be top performers, but some are heroes, and some are soldiers, but all, in my opinion, are deserving of recognition.
But at least I've made this realization. With realization comes the ability to plan a countermeasure to this anti-pattern. Once I figure out that countermeasure, I'll be able to be an even better leader and make sure I keep all top performers engaged and happy so that everyone can keep us marching forward towards victory.
Project success isn't won by only the heroes performing great feats of strength, but also by the soldiers putting in the grind and showing up strong every day.
(Written 2019.12.06)
12.05.2019
#34 | Why I Side Hustle
I started talking about this in a different article but then realized that the content was diverging from the article's intended topic. So here we are, a followup post.
Ever since I graduated from college, I've been a hustler. There has never been a time when I did not have a stable and well-paying job, and I jump around companies very infrequently. I've worked at three companies over 16 years in the tech industry, which is almost unheard of these days. A lot of my tech peers jump to a new company every two to three years.
Why do I side hustle? I've had a lot of friends, coworkers, and acquaintances make comments or give me looks asking this very question. Like most things in life, there is no single response.
Probably the most significant impact my side hustles have done is to expand my skill set. At every job, there is a lane we are expected to stay in — some list of responsibilities and tasks we are supposed to perform for our given role. If someone wants a promotion, they might look at the position above theirs and start executing against that list of responsibilities and tasks. But everything is very narrow. Seldom have I seen an environment where you are encouraged to do everything and anything possible. Engineers should engineer; support should handle customer interactions; sales should sell the product, etc. Expanding it further, people working in technology don't have any reason to deal in real estate, to perform market analysis for the food industry, or any number of non-technology related situations.
When I freelance in technology, I'm able to perform every job task, wear every hat. For example, I've learned quite a few skills that now make me better than a lot of product managers, even though I've never held a product manager title. The same goes for support, customer relations, or project management. When I resell online, I'm able to branch out of my industry and start thinking about things like small scale supply chain, procurement, inventory management, distribution, popular trends, and marketing.
Instead of becoming narrowly-focused on my one role within my day job, I'm able to become a well-rounded individual.
Another benefit of the side-hustle is the network that you create. Some people go to meetups, some to conferences and conventions. Some people try to work with every outside vendor or client. Those are all fine, but to me are a bit shallow from a professional sense. When I network professionally, I want to know how well someone can perform in completing their assignment, and I want to showcase my ability to execute. What better way to do that then to have real projects working with real deadlines. Even if it's an internal project like my online reselling where I don't have a client or a contract, it's still applicable. If I meet someone who sells on the same platform as I do, I can pitch a collaboration to test their abilities and follow through. If I need some help with SEO, I can reach out to professionals for advice.
By having real projects to work on, my networking is more accurate to life and all-encompassing to any facet of a professional need.
And the last benefit is financial, which is also the least important to me. Typically side hustle income goes into one of two categories. The first category is fun-money. This category is usually the case if I earn only a few hundred dollars. That can pay for a few nice dinners or a couple of months of Starbucks. Or maybe a treat for my wife or kids. It can even be something bigger like a laptop or iPad that will dual-purpose in both professional and personal or combined to help pay for a vacation. The second category is investment money. This category comes into play when the income generated reaches thousands of dollars. I love it when I can max out my IRA contributions from side-hustle pay; it feels like my "after 5" work is going towards my long term goals. It's even more exciting if I can generate enough side-hustle money to fund a more substantial investment.
When I can funnel my side-hustle money into an investment, I'm directly converting my limited time into cash, then into passive income. When the passive income is large enough, it allows me to buy back my freedom. I'm not just trading time for consumer goods or experiences but instead trading time today for freedom tomorrow. This exchange is a balancing act because tomorrow may never come, so you don't want to exchange too much time. But the entire purpose is to Financial Independence is to gain freedom, so being able to act directly against that goal is motivating.
Some people may think I'm crazy, or I juggle too many projects when I don't need to because of my day job. But I see these side hustles as a way to expand my skill set, expand my network, and to help buy my freedom.
(Written 2019.10.23)
Ever since I graduated from college, I've been a hustler. There has never been a time when I did not have a stable and well-paying job, and I jump around companies very infrequently. I've worked at three companies over 16 years in the tech industry, which is almost unheard of these days. A lot of my tech peers jump to a new company every two to three years.
Why do I side hustle? I've had a lot of friends, coworkers, and acquaintances make comments or give me looks asking this very question. Like most things in life, there is no single response.
Probably the most significant impact my side hustles have done is to expand my skill set. At every job, there is a lane we are expected to stay in — some list of responsibilities and tasks we are supposed to perform for our given role. If someone wants a promotion, they might look at the position above theirs and start executing against that list of responsibilities and tasks. But everything is very narrow. Seldom have I seen an environment where you are encouraged to do everything and anything possible. Engineers should engineer; support should handle customer interactions; sales should sell the product, etc. Expanding it further, people working in technology don't have any reason to deal in real estate, to perform market analysis for the food industry, or any number of non-technology related situations.
When I freelance in technology, I'm able to perform every job task, wear every hat. For example, I've learned quite a few skills that now make me better than a lot of product managers, even though I've never held a product manager title. The same goes for support, customer relations, or project management. When I resell online, I'm able to branch out of my industry and start thinking about things like small scale supply chain, procurement, inventory management, distribution, popular trends, and marketing.
Instead of becoming narrowly-focused on my one role within my day job, I'm able to become a well-rounded individual.
Another benefit of the side-hustle is the network that you create. Some people go to meetups, some to conferences and conventions. Some people try to work with every outside vendor or client. Those are all fine, but to me are a bit shallow from a professional sense. When I network professionally, I want to know how well someone can perform in completing their assignment, and I want to showcase my ability to execute. What better way to do that then to have real projects working with real deadlines. Even if it's an internal project like my online reselling where I don't have a client or a contract, it's still applicable. If I meet someone who sells on the same platform as I do, I can pitch a collaboration to test their abilities and follow through. If I need some help with SEO, I can reach out to professionals for advice.
By having real projects to work on, my networking is more accurate to life and all-encompassing to any facet of a professional need.
And the last benefit is financial, which is also the least important to me. Typically side hustle income goes into one of two categories. The first category is fun-money. This category is usually the case if I earn only a few hundred dollars. That can pay for a few nice dinners or a couple of months of Starbucks. Or maybe a treat for my wife or kids. It can even be something bigger like a laptop or iPad that will dual-purpose in both professional and personal or combined to help pay for a vacation. The second category is investment money. This category comes into play when the income generated reaches thousands of dollars. I love it when I can max out my IRA contributions from side-hustle pay; it feels like my "after 5" work is going towards my long term goals. It's even more exciting if I can generate enough side-hustle money to fund a more substantial investment.
When I can funnel my side-hustle money into an investment, I'm directly converting my limited time into cash, then into passive income. When the passive income is large enough, it allows me to buy back my freedom. I'm not just trading time for consumer goods or experiences but instead trading time today for freedom tomorrow. This exchange is a balancing act because tomorrow may never come, so you don't want to exchange too much time. But the entire purpose is to Financial Independence is to gain freedom, so being able to act directly against that goal is motivating.
Some people may think I'm crazy, or I juggle too many projects when I don't need to because of my day job. But I see these side hustles as a way to expand my skill set, expand my network, and to help buy my freedom.
(Written 2019.10.23)
11.28.2019
#33 | Go With The Flow
I've been obsessing about my release schedule recently.
I spent six months pre-writing my blog posts, sometimes having up to a month worth of posts written and scheduled. I had a rigid schedule of releasing a new post every Thursday. I like this schedule because it is a way to give the reader something on a relaxing Friday before starting their weekend.
I always had the intention that if I missed a Thursday, that would be fine. But I knew that wasn't true. I'm the kind of person that once I miss once, the drive will fade enough that I'll lose my momentum. Next thing I know, three months go by and nothing. I need the schedule to stay motivated; any will do.
When I picked up writing again, I considered a weekly release rate was burnt-out levels of output. I thought once a month would be better. That seems very doable. If I write a single post once a month, that would be easy. Sounds good!
Then I started thinking about the yearly article count. When releasing weekly, I would have 52 posts. That's a good number. When releasing monthly, that's only 12 posts. Sometimes I can write a dozen articles in a couple of weeks, so spreading the release of those out over a full year didn't fit.
My thoughts next went to a variable schedule. Something where if I have one or two posts queued up, I post monthly. If I have three to six posts queued up, I release every other week. And then if I have over six posts queued up, I would go back to weekly. That way, if I became inspired, I could release weekly and fade to monthly over time. It sounded genius.
Or not. I was getting my headache. This internal debate is how my brain works. I started spending more thought on HOW I would release my posts than WHAT would be in them (hence me taking an entire post on this topic). I'm going to try my hardest to let the obsession go and adhere to my original schedule: release on Thursday anytime I have something written AND to not fall off the wagon again for three months if I miss a week.
Forget the schedule. Just let the thoughts flow! Sometimes you just must let it go and see where things take you.
(Written 2019.10.19)
I spent six months pre-writing my blog posts, sometimes having up to a month worth of posts written and scheduled. I had a rigid schedule of releasing a new post every Thursday. I like this schedule because it is a way to give the reader something on a relaxing Friday before starting their weekend.
I always had the intention that if I missed a Thursday, that would be fine. But I knew that wasn't true. I'm the kind of person that once I miss once, the drive will fade enough that I'll lose my momentum. Next thing I know, three months go by and nothing. I need the schedule to stay motivated; any will do.
When I picked up writing again, I considered a weekly release rate was burnt-out levels of output. I thought once a month would be better. That seems very doable. If I write a single post once a month, that would be easy. Sounds good!
Then I started thinking about the yearly article count. When releasing weekly, I would have 52 posts. That's a good number. When releasing monthly, that's only 12 posts. Sometimes I can write a dozen articles in a couple of weeks, so spreading the release of those out over a full year didn't fit.
My thoughts next went to a variable schedule. Something where if I have one or two posts queued up, I post monthly. If I have three to six posts queued up, I release every other week. And then if I have over six posts queued up, I would go back to weekly. That way, if I became inspired, I could release weekly and fade to monthly over time. It sounded genius.
Or not. I was getting my headache. This internal debate is how my brain works. I started spending more thought on HOW I would release my posts than WHAT would be in them (hence me taking an entire post on this topic). I'm going to try my hardest to let the obsession go and adhere to my original schedule: release on Thursday anytime I have something written AND to not fall off the wagon again for three months if I miss a week.
Forget the schedule. Just let the thoughts flow! Sometimes you just must let it go and see where things take you.
(Written 2019.10.19)
11.21.2019
#32 | The Loss Of Focus
In the last post, I talked about my busy period and how it related to the philosophy of Boredom. This time I wanted to talk about how it impacted my Personal Control Book.
I've talked about how I organize my PCB. The guts of the PCB are within Trello. Life Focuses, Beacons, Areas of Focuses, and Projects are all kept within the Trello boards and cards. Then for my weekly updates, I keep them on a private Confluence page.
It's all very well set up, organized, and executed; until it's not.
I can admit that for a few months, I didn't touch Trello. I neglected all of those Projects with nicely laid out tasks. As new projects came in, I didn't consult Trello to see how they fit into my Life Focuses. I stopped all activity within Trello and stopped logging in. I still kept up my weekly updates, but Trello didn't exist to me.
This lapse is okay. I didn't abandon Trello or the PCB, and I still recommend them. I'm again using them today.
Overhead explains the lapse. Any system is overhead, even useful ones. Maintaining the system is energy that seldom is spent directly on whatever project you're trying to complete. So it needs to be viewed this way.
Let's imagine that your system is your car. To keep things running smoothly, you must maintain it. It needs oil changes, tuneups, and washes. Changing your oil does not get you to your destination faster. But not giving your car a tuneup will eventually cause you to be stranded away from your destination.
But life is not perfect, and we only have so many hours in the day. When we hit our most intense time crunches, that overhead involved in maintaining the system becomes a hindrance. If you need to get to your destination in an hour and it's an hour's drive away, you don't have time to take the car in for a tuneup. The tuneup can wait.
What I did was I kept the focus on the weekly updates, only because they helped me navigate my tasks and help prevent any from falling between the cracks. I shelved the rest of the PCB until I could breathe again.
As I'm writing this, I'm in the recovery phase. I've managed to include all new projects into my Weekly Update. Only about half of those have a Trello board, but any new projects will get one. I updated the boards that already existed. I even enhanced my Weekly Update now that I got to see how it performed under high stress.
I think it's critical that even when we get buried with life and start to feel like we're losing focus, we are prepared. It might seem chaotic, but we have the system. If we properly maintain our system before hitting chaos, it'll provide its value and serve its purpose during that chaos. It might start to break down, but a sound system will hold through until the turmoil dies down, and you can start maintaining it again.
(Written 2019.10.19)
I've talked about how I organize my PCB. The guts of the PCB are within Trello. Life Focuses, Beacons, Areas of Focuses, and Projects are all kept within the Trello boards and cards. Then for my weekly updates, I keep them on a private Confluence page.
It's all very well set up, organized, and executed; until it's not.
I can admit that for a few months, I didn't touch Trello. I neglected all of those Projects with nicely laid out tasks. As new projects came in, I didn't consult Trello to see how they fit into my Life Focuses. I stopped all activity within Trello and stopped logging in. I still kept up my weekly updates, but Trello didn't exist to me.
This lapse is okay. I didn't abandon Trello or the PCB, and I still recommend them. I'm again using them today.
Overhead explains the lapse. Any system is overhead, even useful ones. Maintaining the system is energy that seldom is spent directly on whatever project you're trying to complete. So it needs to be viewed this way.
Let's imagine that your system is your car. To keep things running smoothly, you must maintain it. It needs oil changes, tuneups, and washes. Changing your oil does not get you to your destination faster. But not giving your car a tuneup will eventually cause you to be stranded away from your destination.
But life is not perfect, and we only have so many hours in the day. When we hit our most intense time crunches, that overhead involved in maintaining the system becomes a hindrance. If you need to get to your destination in an hour and it's an hour's drive away, you don't have time to take the car in for a tuneup. The tuneup can wait.
What I did was I kept the focus on the weekly updates, only because they helped me navigate my tasks and help prevent any from falling between the cracks. I shelved the rest of the PCB until I could breathe again.
As I'm writing this, I'm in the recovery phase. I've managed to include all new projects into my Weekly Update. Only about half of those have a Trello board, but any new projects will get one. I updated the boards that already existed. I even enhanced my Weekly Update now that I got to see how it performed under high stress.
I think it's critical that even when we get buried with life and start to feel like we're losing focus, we are prepared. It might seem chaotic, but we have the system. If we properly maintain our system before hitting chaos, it'll provide its value and serve its purpose during that chaos. It might start to break down, but a sound system will hold through until the turmoil dies down, and you can start maintaining it again.
(Written 2019.10.19)
11.14.2019
#31 | When Life Happens
Recently my life has been seeing a flurry of projects. My life has been anything but Boring. I wanted to address that in direct correlation with my Boredom is my Goal philosophy.
Before this current explosion of activity, my life was getting pretty Boring. I had three ongoing projects according to my Personal Control Book, but making progress against those goals was not all-consuming. I was spending a significant amount of time every night reading graphic novels. I was staying on top of all household chores, and the house was impeccably clean and tidy. I was going to bed early every night and naturally early every morning.
It was amazing.
And then an opportunity blitz hit. I haven't touched a graphic novel in a long time, and a couple of new ones are piling up waiting for their turn to be consumed. I'm going to bed late, waking by my alarm, and sometimes slogging through my morning routine to get the day rolling. The house feels cluttered and chaotic and frequently doesn't get the much-needed attention it deserves until the weekend.
"But I thought your goal was to be Bored! Why would you take on these projects instead of saying 'NO'!"
That is a direct paraphrased quote.
It might appear that I lost my way, but I don't see it that way. Instead, I see things as life happening. Each opportunity that I said "yes" to somehow fit into my Life Focuses as defined by my PCB. They might have been all different, with different actions required, and different outcomes. But, with the help of my PCB, I could quickly evaluate each opportunity and figure out if they fit or not. If it didn't, I could reject it. And some things I did decline. If it did match my PCB, and that opportunity needed immediate action, I could accept it with confidence.
So I was prepared for the chaos. It was an organized and managed chaos.
It goes beyond that, though. Throughout the entire experience, my focus was always on figuring out how to make things Boring again. I keep my graphic novels in eyesight, teasing me to get back to them. I have held my morning alarm at the same time, to prevent myself from falling too far out of my routine. These actions, among others, have helped to make sure I defined a realistic scope for each project and pushed hard to close the project out as soon as possible. It helped motivate me to reevaluate a plan so that once immediate action was no longer needed, I could shelf it. It kept me sane, knowing that this wasn't my new norm and that every week, my goal was to close out more tasks than open new ones. I knew that as long as I kept my Boredom is my Goal philosophy close to my heart, this insanity was just temporary.
We can't control life, nor can we control what is presented to us: opportunities or otherwise. We can't control other people or the unfolding of events. We can't control time and magically create more. But we can control ourselves and how we react to the world. So when life happens, if you've mentally and philosophically prepared yourself, you can roll with it, embrace it, and thrive with it.
When life happens, go with the flow!
(Written 2019.10.19)
Before this current explosion of activity, my life was getting pretty Boring. I had three ongoing projects according to my Personal Control Book, but making progress against those goals was not all-consuming. I was spending a significant amount of time every night reading graphic novels. I was staying on top of all household chores, and the house was impeccably clean and tidy. I was going to bed early every night and naturally early every morning.
It was amazing.
And then an opportunity blitz hit. I haven't touched a graphic novel in a long time, and a couple of new ones are piling up waiting for their turn to be consumed. I'm going to bed late, waking by my alarm, and sometimes slogging through my morning routine to get the day rolling. The house feels cluttered and chaotic and frequently doesn't get the much-needed attention it deserves until the weekend.
"But I thought your goal was to be Bored! Why would you take on these projects instead of saying 'NO'!"
That is a direct paraphrased quote.
It might appear that I lost my way, but I don't see it that way. Instead, I see things as life happening. Each opportunity that I said "yes" to somehow fit into my Life Focuses as defined by my PCB. They might have been all different, with different actions required, and different outcomes. But, with the help of my PCB, I could quickly evaluate each opportunity and figure out if they fit or not. If it didn't, I could reject it. And some things I did decline. If it did match my PCB, and that opportunity needed immediate action, I could accept it with confidence.
So I was prepared for the chaos. It was an organized and managed chaos.
It goes beyond that, though. Throughout the entire experience, my focus was always on figuring out how to make things Boring again. I keep my graphic novels in eyesight, teasing me to get back to them. I have held my morning alarm at the same time, to prevent myself from falling too far out of my routine. These actions, among others, have helped to make sure I defined a realistic scope for each project and pushed hard to close the project out as soon as possible. It helped motivate me to reevaluate a plan so that once immediate action was no longer needed, I could shelf it. It kept me sane, knowing that this wasn't my new norm and that every week, my goal was to close out more tasks than open new ones. I knew that as long as I kept my Boredom is my Goal philosophy close to my heart, this insanity was just temporary.
We can't control life, nor can we control what is presented to us: opportunities or otherwise. We can't control other people or the unfolding of events. We can't control time and magically create more. But we can control ourselves and how we react to the world. So when life happens, if you've mentally and philosophically prepared yourself, you can roll with it, embrace it, and thrive with it.
When life happens, go with the flow!
(Written 2019.10.19)
11.07.2019
#30 | The Company We Keep
This topic isn't very original, but it's something that I started thinking about recently. It's essential to think about the people surrounding you.
The reason why I've started thinking about this is a trifecta of scenarios.
The first is one of the reasons why I ended up taking a 3-month hiatus from the blog. Some real estate opportunities presented themselves, and it was a chance to put some foundational components into my Financial Independence life goal. The opportunity involved engaging in a part of real estate investing I hadn't done before, so the process was very new and intensive. I can't recall how many times I was talking to someone more experienced would say: "When you did due diligence on XYZ, what did you find out?". And I would scramble to not sound like a complete newbie with a stalling response like "That's a good question, let me check with my wife to see what she's found out." Even though we were scouring the internet for advice, there was still much more to know, and we were consistently a few steps behind.
In our defense, most of our contacts knew we hadn't done a project like this before. We were typically upfront with it on the first introductions. But it was still not the most flattering place to find ourselves time and time again. Sometimes my wife or I would start to get self-conscious, but I would remind us that everyone starts at the beginning. Everyone knows that, and so it was vital for us to always present the most professional and capable versions of ourselves in these situations. Every person we talked to was a future long-term contact. I wanted them to view us as new but reliable up-comers, someone they would want to know for our potential. On the flip side, we wanted to recognize them for their experience and guidance. Within this particular investment and throughout the entire process, we wanted to surround ourselves with competent people, while proving that we were worthy of joining that network. Having that network will be invaluable for future endeavors.
The second scenario is the FI meetups I had mentioned a few posts back. At the time of writing this post, we have only gone to two of their monthly meetups, but I already feel good about the company we can keep there. Everyone is at a different stage in their FI journey. Some just heard about financial independence and are working on converting the management of their finances. Some have already retired early. And then the majority seem like they are like us, somewhere in the middle.
While going to these meetups, I've found a good portion of the conversation does not revolve around finances, investing, or anything directly related to FI. But that does not matter as I don't feel that's the purpose of the meetups. Instead, we can surround ourselves once a month with people who understand this niche mentality. They understand the financial motivation of skipping the fries and drink to save a few bucks. They appreciate finding free or cheap entertainment instead of looking for pay-to-entertain activities. Even when talking about our side hustles, they understand the motivation. I've hinted at some of my other friends about our side hustles, and I get the impression they feel we are crazy. The people at the FI meetups understand the potential in a side hustle. Those are the people I want to surround myself with, people who encourage me to achieve my highest potential instead of feeling crazy for trying to maximize my accomplishments.
And the last scenario is my Personal Control Book "coaching" (if it can be called that just yet). Essentially, helping people to perform their own PCB Setup.
Besides the motivation to continue developing this PCB concept, I'm finding a new group of people worthy of knowing. People who, although they may be at different phases, just like the FI-folks, have a desire to be more focused and productive in their lives. People who want to set goals and accomplish them. People that feel there is a lot to do in life and want to make something worthwhile. This coaching concept is very new, but it's exhilarating to start embarking on this journey. The real estate network is solely an investment group. The FI meetups involve joining an existing community. PCB coaching is a chance for me to help build a community of like-minded individuals. The honor of helping to bring together what I hope will be a fantastic group of people is very humbling.
Although I love meeting new people and I'm friends with individuals from at all different points in their lives and different cultures, ideologies, and mentalities, making sure we keep close the right company is an invaluable action.
(Written 2019.10.19)
The reason why I've started thinking about this is a trifecta of scenarios.
The first is one of the reasons why I ended up taking a 3-month hiatus from the blog. Some real estate opportunities presented themselves, and it was a chance to put some foundational components into my Financial Independence life goal. The opportunity involved engaging in a part of real estate investing I hadn't done before, so the process was very new and intensive. I can't recall how many times I was talking to someone more experienced would say: "When you did due diligence on XYZ, what did you find out?". And I would scramble to not sound like a complete newbie with a stalling response like "That's a good question, let me check with my wife to see what she's found out." Even though we were scouring the internet for advice, there was still much more to know, and we were consistently a few steps behind.
In our defense, most of our contacts knew we hadn't done a project like this before. We were typically upfront with it on the first introductions. But it was still not the most flattering place to find ourselves time and time again. Sometimes my wife or I would start to get self-conscious, but I would remind us that everyone starts at the beginning. Everyone knows that, and so it was vital for us to always present the most professional and capable versions of ourselves in these situations. Every person we talked to was a future long-term contact. I wanted them to view us as new but reliable up-comers, someone they would want to know for our potential. On the flip side, we wanted to recognize them for their experience and guidance. Within this particular investment and throughout the entire process, we wanted to surround ourselves with competent people, while proving that we were worthy of joining that network. Having that network will be invaluable for future endeavors.
The second scenario is the FI meetups I had mentioned a few posts back. At the time of writing this post, we have only gone to two of their monthly meetups, but I already feel good about the company we can keep there. Everyone is at a different stage in their FI journey. Some just heard about financial independence and are working on converting the management of their finances. Some have already retired early. And then the majority seem like they are like us, somewhere in the middle.
While going to these meetups, I've found a good portion of the conversation does not revolve around finances, investing, or anything directly related to FI. But that does not matter as I don't feel that's the purpose of the meetups. Instead, we can surround ourselves once a month with people who understand this niche mentality. They understand the financial motivation of skipping the fries and drink to save a few bucks. They appreciate finding free or cheap entertainment instead of looking for pay-to-entertain activities. Even when talking about our side hustles, they understand the motivation. I've hinted at some of my other friends about our side hustles, and I get the impression they feel we are crazy. The people at the FI meetups understand the potential in a side hustle. Those are the people I want to surround myself with, people who encourage me to achieve my highest potential instead of feeling crazy for trying to maximize my accomplishments.
And the last scenario is my Personal Control Book "coaching" (if it can be called that just yet). Essentially, helping people to perform their own PCB Setup.
Besides the motivation to continue developing this PCB concept, I'm finding a new group of people worthy of knowing. People who, although they may be at different phases, just like the FI-folks, have a desire to be more focused and productive in their lives. People who want to set goals and accomplish them. People that feel there is a lot to do in life and want to make something worthwhile. This coaching concept is very new, but it's exhilarating to start embarking on this journey. The real estate network is solely an investment group. The FI meetups involve joining an existing community. PCB coaching is a chance for me to help build a community of like-minded individuals. The honor of helping to bring together what I hope will be a fantastic group of people is very humbling.
Although I love meeting new people and I'm friends with individuals from at all different points in their lives and different cultures, ideologies, and mentalities, making sure we keep close the right company is an invaluable action.
(Written 2019.10.19)
10.31.2019
#29 | Why 3 Life Focuses?
I wanted to talk today about why I pick three life focuses. I feel this is especially important because when I started this journey, one of my original inspirations had seven focuses.
That inspiration was a Merril Lynch life planner. My wife and I went through this life planner, and although it tries to be great, it's a bit overwhelming. It took us forever to go through all seven categories. Especially because each of the seven categories then wants you to have two goals. That means you end up with 14 life goals. To me, that's just insane. How can you apply focus when there are 14 things on your plate?
My wife and I pushed through the process and started prioritizing these 14 goals. We could only prioritize five goals before we started having arguments between what the next priorities would be. It was ridiculous. From my years of dealing with product managers trying to prioritize feature development, it's obvious anything above a certain threshold is pointless. If it's not something you can start working on immediately, it's priority will change by the time you get to it.
As a couple, if we can only work on a few priorities at once and trying to prioritize everything beyond that top group becomes pointless, why even try to prioritize everything? So the first thing I wanted to do when I was developing my Personal Control Book was to define better these life goals (called Life Focuses within the PCB) and goals (called Beacons within the PCB). During this redefining is when I determined three was the ideal number.
One might ask, why not just have one? Then you could focus entirely on something. This concentrated focus is what I feel a lot of the FIRE community does. The subreddit is bursting with people who put FI as their top and only priority and end up negatively impacting other parts of their lives. There is no life balance.
It makes sense if you think about it. If you become a workaholic, you will never see your family. You will eat unhealthy because it's convenient, and you will never make time for exercise. Eventually, your family life will fall apart, and your health will diminish. If you become an obsessed gym rat, you won't give your career the energy it needs to flourish, and again your home life will become heavily neglected. And if you spend all of your energy building relationships with your family, then unless they are part of your fitness and career, your performance at work will suffer, and you'll never take time to take care of yourself.
Three Life Focuses don't have the downside of either having a single Life Focus or seven Life Focuses. It keeps you well rounded, yet not so well rounded that you can't make progress on anything. It's in the Goldie Locks zone.
And just because some things are not part of my three Life Focuses doesn't mean I neglect them entirely. For example, if my three Life Focuses are family, career, and health. Friendships are not directly part of that trio, but healthy friendships might be necessary to health and so are indirectly included. That's why I don't have the family as part of my Life Focuses within my PCB, because to me, having a strong relationship with everyone in my family is a critical part of health. When I focus on health, typically, things related to building stronger familial relationships is top and center.
By having three Life Focuses leading to three On-The-Horizon Beacons, it lets you focus on what you feel is most critical while ensuring you still become a well-rounded individual.
(Written 2019.06.27)
That inspiration was a Merril Lynch life planner. My wife and I went through this life planner, and although it tries to be great, it's a bit overwhelming. It took us forever to go through all seven categories. Especially because each of the seven categories then wants you to have two goals. That means you end up with 14 life goals. To me, that's just insane. How can you apply focus when there are 14 things on your plate?
My wife and I pushed through the process and started prioritizing these 14 goals. We could only prioritize five goals before we started having arguments between what the next priorities would be. It was ridiculous. From my years of dealing with product managers trying to prioritize feature development, it's obvious anything above a certain threshold is pointless. If it's not something you can start working on immediately, it's priority will change by the time you get to it.
As a couple, if we can only work on a few priorities at once and trying to prioritize everything beyond that top group becomes pointless, why even try to prioritize everything? So the first thing I wanted to do when I was developing my Personal Control Book was to define better these life goals (called Life Focuses within the PCB) and goals (called Beacons within the PCB). During this redefining is when I determined three was the ideal number.
One might ask, why not just have one? Then you could focus entirely on something. This concentrated focus is what I feel a lot of the FIRE community does. The subreddit is bursting with people who put FI as their top and only priority and end up negatively impacting other parts of their lives. There is no life balance.
It makes sense if you think about it. If you become a workaholic, you will never see your family. You will eat unhealthy because it's convenient, and you will never make time for exercise. Eventually, your family life will fall apart, and your health will diminish. If you become an obsessed gym rat, you won't give your career the energy it needs to flourish, and again your home life will become heavily neglected. And if you spend all of your energy building relationships with your family, then unless they are part of your fitness and career, your performance at work will suffer, and you'll never take time to take care of yourself.
Three Life Focuses don't have the downside of either having a single Life Focus or seven Life Focuses. It keeps you well rounded, yet not so well rounded that you can't make progress on anything. It's in the Goldie Locks zone.
And just because some things are not part of my three Life Focuses doesn't mean I neglect them entirely. For example, if my three Life Focuses are family, career, and health. Friendships are not directly part of that trio, but healthy friendships might be necessary to health and so are indirectly included. That's why I don't have the family as part of my Life Focuses within my PCB, because to me, having a strong relationship with everyone in my family is a critical part of health. When I focus on health, typically, things related to building stronger familial relationships is top and center.
By having three Life Focuses leading to three On-The-Horizon Beacons, it lets you focus on what you feel is most critical while ensuring you still become a well-rounded individual.
(Written 2019.06.27)
10.24.2019
#28 | Career vs Job
I frequently tell my colleagues that their career is not their job. My intended purpose of voicing this opinion is to bring focus on the bigger picture of their career instead of the smaller front-and-center "distraction" that is their job. Recently I repeated this to someone but with a tweak.
I realized the concept was more profound and pointed out how some people risk their careers for the sake of their job, while others risk their job for the sake of their careers. As soon as I said that phrase, I wanted to delve deeper into that meaning. It felt like a light went off. So here we are.
This talking point stemmed from discussing how drawn out it was to get anything done in our environment. The politics, bureaucracy, stay-in-your-lane mentality, and non-productive anti-pattern roadblocks cause every task to take substantially longer than it should. Minute-long tasks could take days. Day-long tasks could take a month. Every step required making requests from other people, then you wait. You finally really receive a response, but find out your request was wrong. So you must make a new one, and then you wait. You finally receive approval to proceed, but you are required to talk to someone else to execute the task. So you create a new request, but that request is low on their priority list, and then you wait.
This cycle goes on, and then suddenly, you're 20 years into your career but feel like you only have a few years of experience. No matter how much you try to make that wait time more productive, you really can't. If you follow the rules, you're gated waiting. The sad part is, you might not even realize that two decades into your career has only produced two years of real experience because all of your peers have done the same thing. It feels normal. The reality is that everyone's years of experience has been watered down to be almost meaningless.
This situation is where I feel people risk their careers for the sake of their job. They played it safe. They followed the rules. They didn't step on any toes, crossed all their "t"s, and dotted all of their "i"s. They asked before acting and never did anything which would get them, their team, or their project in trouble. They never failed, but they also never really succeeded. Their job stayed happy, but their career stalled.
And then one day their company gets tired of them. That's a given in today's corporate landscape. What happens then? Panic is what happens. Because even though they might have two decades of being a warm body in a field, when they interview at another job, their experience level seems junior in comparison to what it should be. It's hard to find another job who will see value in them at the same level as their old job.
I saw this frequently happen at my first job out of college. It terrified me and even depressed me watching that happen to some of my more "experienced" peers. I see it happening to some of my coworkers now, and I fear for them. Their careers are at risk because they put their job first.
I try to do the opposite and put my career first. Straight out of college, I would freelance and do side projects even though most day jobs discourage extracurricular activities. Even within my day job, I'm respectful of job roles and responsibilities, but I center my focus around getting the project done regardless of whose lane I have to enter. One of my mottos is to let someone do their job first, but if they don't do it, then don't be afraid to step on their toes and get it done.
I've spent a lot of time risking my job to make sure my career was good. And that has given me confidence.
If I ever push boundaries too far, what's the worst that would happen? I would get fired. I've been in the field for a decade and a half, but between my mentality, my constant pushing, and my side projects, I have the equivalent of several decades worth of experience. I'm not worried about finding a replacement job.
But would my job fire me? It's possible; I might eventually cross a line. Sometimes I push too hard, and the anxiety hits me. But I have confidence that line is farther away than I'm willing to go. Plus, I provide value to my company. If I can get a "30-day" task done in a few days, that's invaluable. And Because I promote an influential positive culture among my peers and employees, and because I'm very respectful and compliment those around me that are skilled, I've built a social buffer. My teammates speak well of me. My managers praise me. And my (competent) colleagues support me. There is always a line, and there is still an ending, but I've built the proper offenses and defenses to help ensure that I'm secure.
By putting my career first at the risk of jeopardizing my job, I've created a win/win/win/win situation. My company wins by receiving more value; My coworkers win by having a champion to promote a competitive but collaborative culture. My job wins by creating a list of accomplishments and building a social buffer; My career wins in case my job ever gets tired of me, and I need to scramble to replace it.
It's not enough to say that your career is not your job. It is also essential to understand that those individuals who risk their careers to secure their jobs end up at a disadvantage in the long run, while those who risk their jobs to secure their careers tend to benefit all parties involved in the long term.
(Written 2019.10.05)
I realized the concept was more profound and pointed out how some people risk their careers for the sake of their job, while others risk their job for the sake of their careers. As soon as I said that phrase, I wanted to delve deeper into that meaning. It felt like a light went off. So here we are.
This talking point stemmed from discussing how drawn out it was to get anything done in our environment. The politics, bureaucracy, stay-in-your-lane mentality, and non-productive anti-pattern roadblocks cause every task to take substantially longer than it should. Minute-long tasks could take days. Day-long tasks could take a month. Every step required making requests from other people, then you wait. You finally really receive a response, but find out your request was wrong. So you must make a new one, and then you wait. You finally receive approval to proceed, but you are required to talk to someone else to execute the task. So you create a new request, but that request is low on their priority list, and then you wait.
This cycle goes on, and then suddenly, you're 20 years into your career but feel like you only have a few years of experience. No matter how much you try to make that wait time more productive, you really can't. If you follow the rules, you're gated waiting. The sad part is, you might not even realize that two decades into your career has only produced two years of real experience because all of your peers have done the same thing. It feels normal. The reality is that everyone's years of experience has been watered down to be almost meaningless.
This situation is where I feel people risk their careers for the sake of their job. They played it safe. They followed the rules. They didn't step on any toes, crossed all their "t"s, and dotted all of their "i"s. They asked before acting and never did anything which would get them, their team, or their project in trouble. They never failed, but they also never really succeeded. Their job stayed happy, but their career stalled.
And then one day their company gets tired of them. That's a given in today's corporate landscape. What happens then? Panic is what happens. Because even though they might have two decades of being a warm body in a field, when they interview at another job, their experience level seems junior in comparison to what it should be. It's hard to find another job who will see value in them at the same level as their old job.
I saw this frequently happen at my first job out of college. It terrified me and even depressed me watching that happen to some of my more "experienced" peers. I see it happening to some of my coworkers now, and I fear for them. Their careers are at risk because they put their job first.
I try to do the opposite and put my career first. Straight out of college, I would freelance and do side projects even though most day jobs discourage extracurricular activities. Even within my day job, I'm respectful of job roles and responsibilities, but I center my focus around getting the project done regardless of whose lane I have to enter. One of my mottos is to let someone do their job first, but if they don't do it, then don't be afraid to step on their toes and get it done.
I've spent a lot of time risking my job to make sure my career was good. And that has given me confidence.
If I ever push boundaries too far, what's the worst that would happen? I would get fired. I've been in the field for a decade and a half, but between my mentality, my constant pushing, and my side projects, I have the equivalent of several decades worth of experience. I'm not worried about finding a replacement job.
But would my job fire me? It's possible; I might eventually cross a line. Sometimes I push too hard, and the anxiety hits me. But I have confidence that line is farther away than I'm willing to go. Plus, I provide value to my company. If I can get a "30-day" task done in a few days, that's invaluable. And Because I promote an influential positive culture among my peers and employees, and because I'm very respectful and compliment those around me that are skilled, I've built a social buffer. My teammates speak well of me. My managers praise me. And my (competent) colleagues support me. There is always a line, and there is still an ending, but I've built the proper offenses and defenses to help ensure that I'm secure.
By putting my career first at the risk of jeopardizing my job, I've created a win/win/win/win situation. My company wins by receiving more value; My coworkers win by having a champion to promote a competitive but collaborative culture. My job wins by creating a list of accomplishments and building a social buffer; My career wins in case my job ever gets tired of me, and I need to scramble to replace it.
It's not enough to say that your career is not your job. It is also essential to understand that those individuals who risk their careers to secure their jobs end up at a disadvantage in the long run, while those who risk their jobs to secure their careers tend to benefit all parties involved in the long term.
(Written 2019.10.05)
10.17.2019
#27 | The Perks Of Having Kids
I hit my blog's half-birthday and lost steam. A lot of opportunities popped into my life, taking all of my time. Mix that with being dominated by writer's block. I haven't posted in three months, and I've been debating the future of the site.
Then my wife and I went to a Financial Independence (FI) Meetup, and the other attendees inspired me to continue. As they put it, I had already put six months into exploring this concept, creating content, and developing the site. But what sparked me was a question that someone asked me.
In this particular FI group, having kids is rare. So someone asked my wife and me: "What are the perks of having three kids?"
It's a great question, and my wife answered it well. However, we discussed it more on the way home and realized there were so many more layers to explore. So I decided to revive the blog and address this question.
The answer is multi-faceted, but I can summarize it with one word: mindfulness.
To begin explaining, we will address the aspect of time. When you have kids, especially three kids, every free minute of your life will be sucked up. To be able to get anything done, you have to learn to be very efficient and effective with your time. My wife and I are both ambitious, so we have become calculating where our time goes. When the kids are off at school, we have to maximize our time to work on our day jobs. We're human and still have idle times, but we don't have the freedom to dawdle around frequently.
This time is bookended by dropping the kids off in the morning and picking them up in the afternoon. There are exactly 8 hours between those two bookends. That means we need to pack a full 8 hours of work, including lunch, errands, or other distractions, into precisely 8 hours. This statement might sound obvious, but you would be surprised how many of your peers do 8 hours of work during their 8-hour workday. Although our day jobs frequently bleed into our evenings, we strive to keep it contained within those two bookends.
Then the evenings come. We have about three to four hours of family time. We feel family dinner is important, so most nights, we put a focus on a home-cooked meal and eating together as a family. We tag-team to get this done, but also get all dishes and household cleanup done. Let's not forget about the kids' homework. And then the real joys of just spending some quality relax time with the kids. Almost every night, there is a struggle to push past fatigue from a long day. But because we feel it's essential to have healthy meals and spend time together as a family, we make it happen.
And finally, the kids go to bed, and we get our final chunk of time. We have about two hours before we go to bed. Some nights we put our feet up and watch a show. Most nights, we look at our side projects, investments, or interests and push on those. These two hours are our only "us" time, so we have no choice to use this time as effectively as possible, even if that activity is to cuddle up and watch something together.
Our weekends are only a slight variation of our weekdays. Some weekends we relax and are idle all weekend. But those are very rare. We have to go to the grocery store to feed five, along with doing laundry for five. We want to do activities so that the kids can have an eventful weekend. But we also have things like Meetups, date nights, and other social events. And don't forget about the side projects. The weekend is the perfect time to knock out a chunk of tasks for those.
Especially with the theme of this blog, we want to maximize our time by minimizing our wasteful activities. Looking over our days, pretty much 24/7/365, we are mindful of our time and how we use it.
We can now get to the second layer of the answer. Having kids forces us to live in the NOW. Several of the leading FI voices who have reached early retirement have talked about the downside of obsessing over their FI number. They say they wished they enjoyed life more during the wealth-building years. Hoped that they had taken better of their health or cared a little less about every single dollar saved. But with kids, we don't feel we have that option.
As hypothetical kid-free adults, maybe we would be comfortable with making a decision where we give up five or ten years of life experiences so that we could retire early and have 50+ years of early retirement. But that's not fair to our kids. Those five to ten years might be an instrumental part of their childhoods. When each kid is only at home for approximately 20 years, even though that feels like an incredibly long time, it passes in a heartbeat. What's 50+ years of retirement worth if you lose half of your kids' childhood to FI obsession.
Although we have an FI-mindset combined with our ambitious personalities, we won't sacrifice our kids' childhood or their early life experiences. It can be exhausting, but our kids give us the energy and motivation to do exactly that.
And finally, the last layer. Motivation. After the birth of every kid, my productivity and drive in my career shot up. Once the chaos of having a newborn dies down, the thoughts of providing for the kids and ensuring they have excellent future opportunities shoots up. Not only do I want to be able to provide for them, but I also want to be a good role model for them. So I strive to achieve a career they could be proud of and possibly be influenced into also working hard and reaching their dreams when they get older. But life is much more about career. So we push hard towards living a healthy lifestyle for them to mirror. We push harder in experiencing life so that they can see what's possible. It's hard to be complacent in life when you want to provide the best life for your kids.
In the end, having kids increases the stress, chaos, and sheer amount of overhead in your life. But, besides the obvious of being a bundle of joy and happiness, the mindfulness they give you in just about everything in life is a fantastic perk to having any amount of kids, especially three. You don't have the luxury of letting life pass you by.
(Written 2019.10.05)
Then my wife and I went to a Financial Independence (FI) Meetup, and the other attendees inspired me to continue. As they put it, I had already put six months into exploring this concept, creating content, and developing the site. But what sparked me was a question that someone asked me.
In this particular FI group, having kids is rare. So someone asked my wife and me: "What are the perks of having three kids?"
It's a great question, and my wife answered it well. However, we discussed it more on the way home and realized there were so many more layers to explore. So I decided to revive the blog and address this question.
The answer is multi-faceted, but I can summarize it with one word: mindfulness.
To begin explaining, we will address the aspect of time. When you have kids, especially three kids, every free minute of your life will be sucked up. To be able to get anything done, you have to learn to be very efficient and effective with your time. My wife and I are both ambitious, so we have become calculating where our time goes. When the kids are off at school, we have to maximize our time to work on our day jobs. We're human and still have idle times, but we don't have the freedom to dawdle around frequently.
This time is bookended by dropping the kids off in the morning and picking them up in the afternoon. There are exactly 8 hours between those two bookends. That means we need to pack a full 8 hours of work, including lunch, errands, or other distractions, into precisely 8 hours. This statement might sound obvious, but you would be surprised how many of your peers do 8 hours of work during their 8-hour workday. Although our day jobs frequently bleed into our evenings, we strive to keep it contained within those two bookends.
Then the evenings come. We have about three to four hours of family time. We feel family dinner is important, so most nights, we put a focus on a home-cooked meal and eating together as a family. We tag-team to get this done, but also get all dishes and household cleanup done. Let's not forget about the kids' homework. And then the real joys of just spending some quality relax time with the kids. Almost every night, there is a struggle to push past fatigue from a long day. But because we feel it's essential to have healthy meals and spend time together as a family, we make it happen.
And finally, the kids go to bed, and we get our final chunk of time. We have about two hours before we go to bed. Some nights we put our feet up and watch a show. Most nights, we look at our side projects, investments, or interests and push on those. These two hours are our only "us" time, so we have no choice to use this time as effectively as possible, even if that activity is to cuddle up and watch something together.
Our weekends are only a slight variation of our weekdays. Some weekends we relax and are idle all weekend. But those are very rare. We have to go to the grocery store to feed five, along with doing laundry for five. We want to do activities so that the kids can have an eventful weekend. But we also have things like Meetups, date nights, and other social events. And don't forget about the side projects. The weekend is the perfect time to knock out a chunk of tasks for those.
Especially with the theme of this blog, we want to maximize our time by minimizing our wasteful activities. Looking over our days, pretty much 24/7/365, we are mindful of our time and how we use it.
We can now get to the second layer of the answer. Having kids forces us to live in the NOW. Several of the leading FI voices who have reached early retirement have talked about the downside of obsessing over their FI number. They say they wished they enjoyed life more during the wealth-building years. Hoped that they had taken better of their health or cared a little less about every single dollar saved. But with kids, we don't feel we have that option.
As hypothetical kid-free adults, maybe we would be comfortable with making a decision where we give up five or ten years of life experiences so that we could retire early and have 50+ years of early retirement. But that's not fair to our kids. Those five to ten years might be an instrumental part of their childhoods. When each kid is only at home for approximately 20 years, even though that feels like an incredibly long time, it passes in a heartbeat. What's 50+ years of retirement worth if you lose half of your kids' childhood to FI obsession.
Although we have an FI-mindset combined with our ambitious personalities, we won't sacrifice our kids' childhood or their early life experiences. It can be exhausting, but our kids give us the energy and motivation to do exactly that.
And finally, the last layer. Motivation. After the birth of every kid, my productivity and drive in my career shot up. Once the chaos of having a newborn dies down, the thoughts of providing for the kids and ensuring they have excellent future opportunities shoots up. Not only do I want to be able to provide for them, but I also want to be a good role model for them. So I strive to achieve a career they could be proud of and possibly be influenced into also working hard and reaching their dreams when they get older. But life is much more about career. So we push hard towards living a healthy lifestyle for them to mirror. We push harder in experiencing life so that they can see what's possible. It's hard to be complacent in life when you want to provide the best life for your kids.
In the end, having kids increases the stress, chaos, and sheer amount of overhead in your life. But, besides the obvious of being a bundle of joy and happiness, the mindfulness they give you in just about everything in life is a fantastic perk to having any amount of kids, especially three. You don't have the luxury of letting life pass you by.
(Written 2019.10.05)
6.27.2019
#26 | Half Birthday
Post 26. Wow.
With a new post every week, that means I've been working on this blog for half a year. Six months. I wanted to take the chance to make evaluate where things started and where we've ended up.
A year ago, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed. Although I've always had a focus on NOT being in the rat race of life, I was feeling the wheel pulling me in and locking me down. Life was progressing, but was it progressing how I wanted? I couldn't tell you, all I knew is that I was busy getting things done. I can also tell you that my stress levels were high while my energy levels were low.
That's when the philosophy of Boredom started to form. Initially, it was a struggle. Cutting activities and distractions out of your life is a hard task. Do the same thing for a blended family of 5 is near impossible. But we slowly persevered.
Six months in and I was starting to see dividends from our efforts. I decided to share my knowledge with a broader audience. The blog was born. I had no clue what I wanted to do with it. I still don't know, but I do know I should continue writing and see where it lead.
Creating the blog led to becoming semi-active in Reddit as both a topic contributor and comment contributor. I was a long time lurker but had never had a desire to post. It led to reaching out to a few of my favorite content creators, asking for feedback, and receiving some interesting and useful advice. It led to reaching out to some newly discovered content creators who were writing about the same subject matter, and starting some exciting dialogues while gaining some recommendations on some interesting books and articles to read.
As time passed on, I realized writing posts for the blog wasn't enough. It was an outlet for my voice, allowing me to tell my story, but it felt like the site needed to be more. The blog broke into three sections. In addition to telling my story, it became the home of my permanent Personal Control Book along with the transient accountability Weekly Update.
The Personal Control Book has become the containing force, ensuring I maximize my time and energy to it's fullest. The Weekly Update has become the driving force to make sure a week doesn't go by where I'm not in some form advancing one of my goals.
After executing against the PCB for a few months, my train of life was chugging along at full steam ahead. From a random conversation with a business associate, I found my first guinea pig to try out the PCB for herself. It was a success, so I reached out to strangers. That's currently a work in progress, but I'm determined to make it a success regardless if it takes one, two, or ten groups. I've even built a Business Control Book for a different business associate and started helping them progress through that.
As of this writing, I've created or helped create 26 posts, 5 PCBs, 1 BCB, 3 permanent pages describing my PCB, and 15 transient Weekly Updates. I feel blessed to be able to create this content and have the opportunity to continue writing. I can't wait for what the next six months will hold.
(Written 2019.05.28)
With a new post every week, that means I've been working on this blog for half a year. Six months. I wanted to take the chance to make evaluate where things started and where we've ended up.
A year ago, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed. Although I've always had a focus on NOT being in the rat race of life, I was feeling the wheel pulling me in and locking me down. Life was progressing, but was it progressing how I wanted? I couldn't tell you, all I knew is that I was busy getting things done. I can also tell you that my stress levels were high while my energy levels were low.
That's when the philosophy of Boredom started to form. Initially, it was a struggle. Cutting activities and distractions out of your life is a hard task. Do the same thing for a blended family of 5 is near impossible. But we slowly persevered.
Six months in and I was starting to see dividends from our efforts. I decided to share my knowledge with a broader audience. The blog was born. I had no clue what I wanted to do with it. I still don't know, but I do know I should continue writing and see where it lead.
Creating the blog led to becoming semi-active in Reddit as both a topic contributor and comment contributor. I was a long time lurker but had never had a desire to post. It led to reaching out to a few of my favorite content creators, asking for feedback, and receiving some interesting and useful advice. It led to reaching out to some newly discovered content creators who were writing about the same subject matter, and starting some exciting dialogues while gaining some recommendations on some interesting books and articles to read.
As time passed on, I realized writing posts for the blog wasn't enough. It was an outlet for my voice, allowing me to tell my story, but it felt like the site needed to be more. The blog broke into three sections. In addition to telling my story, it became the home of my permanent Personal Control Book along with the transient accountability Weekly Update.
The Personal Control Book has become the containing force, ensuring I maximize my time and energy to it's fullest. The Weekly Update has become the driving force to make sure a week doesn't go by where I'm not in some form advancing one of my goals.
After executing against the PCB for a few months, my train of life was chugging along at full steam ahead. From a random conversation with a business associate, I found my first guinea pig to try out the PCB for herself. It was a success, so I reached out to strangers. That's currently a work in progress, but I'm determined to make it a success regardless if it takes one, two, or ten groups. I've even built a Business Control Book for a different business associate and started helping them progress through that.
As of this writing, I've created or helped create 26 posts, 5 PCBs, 1 BCB, 3 permanent pages describing my PCB, and 15 transient Weekly Updates. I feel blessed to be able to create this content and have the opportunity to continue writing. I can't wait for what the next six months will hold.
(Written 2019.05.28)
6.20.2019
#25 | PCBs and Boredom
I wanted to write today about the Personal Control Book and how it relates to my philosophy of Boredom is my Goal.
I’ve recently put a more substantial focus on running my PCB and have been exploring the idea of coaching other people on how to run their own. While doing this, the nagging voice in my head has been telling me this doesn’t make sense. The PCB is a productivity tool that on its surface is made to help you accomplish more. The philosophy of Boredom is my Goal is to minimize what you’re doing in life so that you can have more moments of Boredom. They seem like they are in direct conflict with each other.
This apparent conflict is what I would like to clear up.
To recap what the philosophy of Boredom is my Goal tries to promote, it’s not actually about sitting around and doing nothing ALL day long. It’s about trying to make pockets of time to do nothing by decluttering your life of all of the pointless tasks and distracts that we have every day. It’s about being mindful regarding where we put our time. It’s about minimizing the activities we have in our lives.
During this cleansing process, we get to do nothing and achieve Boredom. Once we have removed all of the unnecessary, that’s where the real benefits come in. We have a clear mind and spirit. With rested bodies and minds, we become more capable. When we add new projects to our lives, they can be projects which are most critical to us.
The question then turns towards what projects to add. And this is where the PCB shines. The reason why I developed my PCB was that I had gone through all of my long-running random projects. The sense of accomplishment of tackling another nice-to-have project was wearing thin. There was no ultimate goal. There was just busy-ness.
Being mindful about the random projects you pick up is just slightly more advantageous to flittering your life away with distractions. If I spend my days browsing the latest Game of the Day app, or if I spend my days conquering a specific game, the result is the same. Mindless entertainment. There is little difference between YouTube surfing for an entire week watching YouTube’s recommendation list versus binge-watching the latest Netflix intriguing series. Even if I was productive with my random projects, like doing odd-job projects around the house, it’s still just tinkering. There is no value added to my life, besides just causal distractions.
The PCB became a tool to focus these random projects. It helped paint a picture of where I wanted to head in my life. I already had a vision, but the PCB helped make that vision concrete. It also helped with motivation. Even today, when I start to get distracted by the latest fad activity, I remind myself how it helps me to reach one of my three Beacons. If it can’t, I question if I should start it.
Boredom is my Goal is a philosophy of life to live by, while a Personal Control Book ensures you spend your time and energy to maximum benefit.
(Written 2019.05.28)
I’ve recently put a more substantial focus on running my PCB and have been exploring the idea of coaching other people on how to run their own. While doing this, the nagging voice in my head has been telling me this doesn’t make sense. The PCB is a productivity tool that on its surface is made to help you accomplish more. The philosophy of Boredom is my Goal is to minimize what you’re doing in life so that you can have more moments of Boredom. They seem like they are in direct conflict with each other.
This apparent conflict is what I would like to clear up.
To recap what the philosophy of Boredom is my Goal tries to promote, it’s not actually about sitting around and doing nothing ALL day long. It’s about trying to make pockets of time to do nothing by decluttering your life of all of the pointless tasks and distracts that we have every day. It’s about being mindful regarding where we put our time. It’s about minimizing the activities we have in our lives.
During this cleansing process, we get to do nothing and achieve Boredom. Once we have removed all of the unnecessary, that’s where the real benefits come in. We have a clear mind and spirit. With rested bodies and minds, we become more capable. When we add new projects to our lives, they can be projects which are most critical to us.
The question then turns towards what projects to add. And this is where the PCB shines. The reason why I developed my PCB was that I had gone through all of my long-running random projects. The sense of accomplishment of tackling another nice-to-have project was wearing thin. There was no ultimate goal. There was just busy-ness.
Being mindful about the random projects you pick up is just slightly more advantageous to flittering your life away with distractions. If I spend my days browsing the latest Game of the Day app, or if I spend my days conquering a specific game, the result is the same. Mindless entertainment. There is little difference between YouTube surfing for an entire week watching YouTube’s recommendation list versus binge-watching the latest Netflix intriguing series. Even if I was productive with my random projects, like doing odd-job projects around the house, it’s still just tinkering. There is no value added to my life, besides just causal distractions.
The PCB became a tool to focus these random projects. It helped paint a picture of where I wanted to head in my life. I already had a vision, but the PCB helped make that vision concrete. It also helped with motivation. Even today, when I start to get distracted by the latest fad activity, I remind myself how it helps me to reach one of my three Beacons. If it can’t, I question if I should start it.
Boredom is my Goal is a philosophy of life to live by, while a Personal Control Book ensures you spend your time and energy to maximum benefit.
(Written 2019.05.28)
6.13.2019
#24 | Personal Productivity Mastermind
The evolution of the Boredom continues. At this point, I feel like this adventure barely resembles its original form.
As I mentioned in my last post, I was exploring ways of exposing the Personal Control Book concept to others. This past weekend, I posted an offering on Reddit. The post explains it all. The PCB has been very beneficial to me. That doesn't surprise me, since it was built for me, by me. When I had my business contact go through the first steps of the PCB, the reflective characteristics of the first few steps blew her mind. It gave her renewed focus and energy.
Now we'll see if I can get strangers to benefit from it. It's pretty exciting for me to try and grow this concept. But it's even more exciting to see if I can help others achieve their life goals. Considering I posted in the Productivity subreddit, I'm assuming everyone that has contacted me will already be productivity-minded. I'm hoping this sample run will be a chance for me to test my ideas against a set of individuals eager to learn.
It's only been a few days, but it's already been quite a journey.
As of this writing (which will be almost a month after it posts), I've had 11 people show interest. All 11 have been contacted, with a Slack invite link sent to five of them tonight. My ideal size would be 2-3 people. Probably five would be the maximum size I would want to do. Any more and it might be too overwhelming. I'm hoping with the level of interest I've received that I'll be able to get at least those numbers.
We'll see if it's even a mastermind. I proposed to the first half dozen of people doing either a Slack workgroup or individual 1:1 discussion. Today someone said they liked Slack, so tonight I created a new Slack workspace. Created, customized, and locked down to create a safe walled garden. I did put together a post for the five steps required to set up a PCB. So I have an idea of how to progress things. I've already gone through it a few times. In theory, it works. I'll have to work with strangers to help them feel confident it'll work.
My mind is racing of what I can do with this group. But it's also a bit intimidating not in what I need to do but in the possible amount of work. If it's my projects, I can work on those on my own time. If I'm trying to engage in individuals, I'll want to make sure things are moving at a pace that keeps people involved. I'll have to do tasks like creating a new Slack workspace quickly and efficiently. I'm going to have to figure out Trello Teams rapidly. I've used Trello Teams before, but there are some unknowns. There is so much I'll have to figure that out just-in-time.
And to think, this is where the Blog adventure has morphed after only six months. Whether this mastermind is successful or not, I'm excited to see where the winds will blow us next.
(Written 2019.05.20)
As I mentioned in my last post, I was exploring ways of exposing the Personal Control Book concept to others. This past weekend, I posted an offering on Reddit. The post explains it all. The PCB has been very beneficial to me. That doesn't surprise me, since it was built for me, by me. When I had my business contact go through the first steps of the PCB, the reflective characteristics of the first few steps blew her mind. It gave her renewed focus and energy.
Now we'll see if I can get strangers to benefit from it. It's pretty exciting for me to try and grow this concept. But it's even more exciting to see if I can help others achieve their life goals. Considering I posted in the Productivity subreddit, I'm assuming everyone that has contacted me will already be productivity-minded. I'm hoping this sample run will be a chance for me to test my ideas against a set of individuals eager to learn.
It's only been a few days, but it's already been quite a journey.
As of this writing (which will be almost a month after it posts), I've had 11 people show interest. All 11 have been contacted, with a Slack invite link sent to five of them tonight. My ideal size would be 2-3 people. Probably five would be the maximum size I would want to do. Any more and it might be too overwhelming. I'm hoping with the level of interest I've received that I'll be able to get at least those numbers.
We'll see if it's even a mastermind. I proposed to the first half dozen of people doing either a Slack workgroup or individual 1:1 discussion. Today someone said they liked Slack, so tonight I created a new Slack workspace. Created, customized, and locked down to create a safe walled garden. I did put together a post for the five steps required to set up a PCB. So I have an idea of how to progress things. I've already gone through it a few times. In theory, it works. I'll have to work with strangers to help them feel confident it'll work.
My mind is racing of what I can do with this group. But it's also a bit intimidating not in what I need to do but in the possible amount of work. If it's my projects, I can work on those on my own time. If I'm trying to engage in individuals, I'll want to make sure things are moving at a pace that keeps people involved. I'll have to do tasks like creating a new Slack workspace quickly and efficiently. I'm going to have to figure out Trello Teams rapidly. I've used Trello Teams before, but there are some unknowns. There is so much I'll have to figure that out just-in-time.
And to think, this is where the Blog adventure has morphed after only six months. Whether this mastermind is successful or not, I'm excited to see where the winds will blow us next.
(Written 2019.05.20)
6.06.2019
#23 | Changing the World
This morning I was thinking about my efforts to expose more people to my PCB. I was thinking through ways to reach out to people, what I would say, how I would respond and organize them. Then my mind started going towards that thing so many people dream about: changing the world.
I remember early in my career, that was the response everyone, including myself, gave for their ambitions. What do you want to do? Change the world. Why do you want to go down this career path? To make an impact and change the world. What's the end goal you see for this project? To see the world changed.
I realized that's all bullshit. We have a lot of true global visionaries: the Gates and the Jobs, Musk, Bezos, Branson. The list goes on. But the list is incredibly exclusive. Although they have the personality type, intelligence, and correct connections to achieve that level of success, I'm betting that luck was the most prominent attribute they had.
There are seven and a half billion people on the planet. Most likely, there are thousands if not millions of people that have the same combination of personality type, intelligence, and connections as these visionaries. Not everyone can execute the same steps to achieve the same level of success. Otherwise, everyone would be that successful. If it was that certain, I could read a biography of someone I wanted to emulate who has my background and personality type, take the same steps they did, and end up in the same spot they are. Sounds great, let me do what Bezos does and become the wealthiest person alive. It doesn't work like that. These are very talented people, but luck has a lot to do with it too.
So then why would I place my happiness and image of success on luck? If my goal in any endeavor I do is to change the world, what happens when luck doesn't favor me, and I don't change the world? Do I go back and blame myself for not being lucky? Maybe it's my parent's fault for not tapping me with a lucky stick when I was a baby. It's silly. And I realize it's a vision that's outright poisonous.
I look back at some of my side projects. Right out of college, I launched multiple hobby projects that ended up with a small handful of users. Instead of embracing that audience, my co-founders and I focused on how to go global. We ultimately failed due to visions of grandeur. When I first moved to Los Angeles, I built another hobby project which became an internet darling and made it into the 5-digit Alexa global rankings. We had partners who wanted to integrate with us, buyers who wanted to acquire us. Again, my co-founders and I focused on changing the world though instead of realizing our reality. That project is now in massive decline, and it's been years since I've even looked at it because, in my opinion, we focused more on the future than the present.
You might be asking, but aren't your Beacons looking at the distant future? That may be true, but the Beacons I've established for myself are something that I can obtain 100% if I apply myself. There is no luck involved. If I execute step by step, I can get there. One of my Beacons isn't to become a billionaire. It's to be able to work remote for 1-3 months a year during summer. One of my Beacons is even to live a healthy life until my mid-60s. These are very attainable long term visions. Only my philanthropy goal is more of a stretch goal, but that's also attainable with a long term plan.
When you include luck in your calculations for your future success, you might as well go to a casino and try to find success there.
(Written 2019.05.11)
I remember early in my career, that was the response everyone, including myself, gave for their ambitions. What do you want to do? Change the world. Why do you want to go down this career path? To make an impact and change the world. What's the end goal you see for this project? To see the world changed.
I realized that's all bullshit. We have a lot of true global visionaries: the Gates and the Jobs, Musk, Bezos, Branson. The list goes on. But the list is incredibly exclusive. Although they have the personality type, intelligence, and correct connections to achieve that level of success, I'm betting that luck was the most prominent attribute they had.
There are seven and a half billion people on the planet. Most likely, there are thousands if not millions of people that have the same combination of personality type, intelligence, and connections as these visionaries. Not everyone can execute the same steps to achieve the same level of success. Otherwise, everyone would be that successful. If it was that certain, I could read a biography of someone I wanted to emulate who has my background and personality type, take the same steps they did, and end up in the same spot they are. Sounds great, let me do what Bezos does and become the wealthiest person alive. It doesn't work like that. These are very talented people, but luck has a lot to do with it too.
So then why would I place my happiness and image of success on luck? If my goal in any endeavor I do is to change the world, what happens when luck doesn't favor me, and I don't change the world? Do I go back and blame myself for not being lucky? Maybe it's my parent's fault for not tapping me with a lucky stick when I was a baby. It's silly. And I realize it's a vision that's outright poisonous.
I look back at some of my side projects. Right out of college, I launched multiple hobby projects that ended up with a small handful of users. Instead of embracing that audience, my co-founders and I focused on how to go global. We ultimately failed due to visions of grandeur. When I first moved to Los Angeles, I built another hobby project which became an internet darling and made it into the 5-digit Alexa global rankings. We had partners who wanted to integrate with us, buyers who wanted to acquire us. Again, my co-founders and I focused on changing the world though instead of realizing our reality. That project is now in massive decline, and it's been years since I've even looked at it because, in my opinion, we focused more on the future than the present.
You might be asking, but aren't your Beacons looking at the distant future? That may be true, but the Beacons I've established for myself are something that I can obtain 100% if I apply myself. There is no luck involved. If I execute step by step, I can get there. One of my Beacons isn't to become a billionaire. It's to be able to work remote for 1-3 months a year during summer. One of my Beacons is even to live a healthy life until my mid-60s. These are very attainable long term visions. Only my philanthropy goal is more of a stretch goal, but that's also attainable with a long term plan.
When you include luck in your calculations for your future success, you might as well go to a casino and try to find success there.
(Written 2019.05.11)
5.30.2019
#22 | Own Your Career
I want to discuss a topic that comes up frequently during my one on ones — taking ownership of your career.
I find that frequently people are focused on the thing directly in front of them. They are concerned with the status of their project. They are concerned with what their next performance review will be. They are concerned with when their next promotion will be. All of these are valid concerns, but every time someone brings this up in our discussions, I challenge them to reframe their focus.
Let's break down each of these examples — first, the status of their project. Everyone wants their project to be successful. Everyone wants to know they've contributed to a success story. Although I think it's imperative to take pride in one's work, frequently a project is successful or not based on external factors. Did everyone you depend on execute like they said they would? Did your customers react the way you felt they could? Did your upper management provide the proper direction and support? Some things can be done to mitigate failures, but if you're just one of many cogs in a business, chances are there is more out of your control than in your control.
Therefore the focus shouldn't be on if the project is successful but instead on personal growth. That doesn't mean you let the project fail — the exact opposite. If the project is successful, most likely you'll get the most personal growth. But even if the project fails, there is still a lot of personal growth to be obtained. Your self-value shouldn't be derived from the outcome of something out of your control but entirely on what you do control. By turning your focus internal, you are focusing on something you have more control over and can make adjustments easier.
The same is true for the next performance review. Even if you kill it for a particular year, maybe your company has shifted its rating weightings and decide to give everyone a lower rating than previous years. Maybe your manager changed, and you didn't have time to establish yourself. There could be countless reasons why you don't get the performance review you would expect. But none of that matters if, at the end of the year, you can honestly say you provide more value to your company than the previous year.
Promotions follow the same thread. Maybe your company had a lousy year, and no promotions were given out. Or internal politics awarded it to someone else again. Who cares if you grew.
Notice the trend? In the end, everything boils down to personal growth. That makes life easy, almost boring. Every focus you have should be in personal growth. I don't consider emphasizing personal growth as selfish either. When I notice my direct reports are doing this, I never think negatively and highly encourage it. If you focus on yourself to become a better employee, then your employer benefits from that. It's a win/win situation.
And here is where the counter-argument comes in: "What if my employer doesn't recognize my growth, so they are benefiting from it but not rewarding it?' That's a natural debate with a smooth response. Find an employer who will reward appropriately. If you've grown out of your current position and pay scale and can't move higher, then switch companies.
I'm not promoting job jumping either. I've been at my current employer for almost a decade, the longest I've been at a company. A lot of my employees have told me that they have also worked for me at this company for longer than they've worked at any company before. We are far from being in a perfect company, but we've framed our career adventure so that sticking with this company is a win for us just as much as it's a win for the company. And when it no longer is a win/win, I'll move on just as I expect my employees to do too.
You own your career, not your company. So take ownership and don't tie your career's success, or your happiness, to something outside of your control.
(Written 2019.05.08)
I find that frequently people are focused on the thing directly in front of them. They are concerned with the status of their project. They are concerned with what their next performance review will be. They are concerned with when their next promotion will be. All of these are valid concerns, but every time someone brings this up in our discussions, I challenge them to reframe their focus.
Let's break down each of these examples — first, the status of their project. Everyone wants their project to be successful. Everyone wants to know they've contributed to a success story. Although I think it's imperative to take pride in one's work, frequently a project is successful or not based on external factors. Did everyone you depend on execute like they said they would? Did your customers react the way you felt they could? Did your upper management provide the proper direction and support? Some things can be done to mitigate failures, but if you're just one of many cogs in a business, chances are there is more out of your control than in your control.
Therefore the focus shouldn't be on if the project is successful but instead on personal growth. That doesn't mean you let the project fail — the exact opposite. If the project is successful, most likely you'll get the most personal growth. But even if the project fails, there is still a lot of personal growth to be obtained. Your self-value shouldn't be derived from the outcome of something out of your control but entirely on what you do control. By turning your focus internal, you are focusing on something you have more control over and can make adjustments easier.
The same is true for the next performance review. Even if you kill it for a particular year, maybe your company has shifted its rating weightings and decide to give everyone a lower rating than previous years. Maybe your manager changed, and you didn't have time to establish yourself. There could be countless reasons why you don't get the performance review you would expect. But none of that matters if, at the end of the year, you can honestly say you provide more value to your company than the previous year.
Promotions follow the same thread. Maybe your company had a lousy year, and no promotions were given out. Or internal politics awarded it to someone else again. Who cares if you grew.
Notice the trend? In the end, everything boils down to personal growth. That makes life easy, almost boring. Every focus you have should be in personal growth. I don't consider emphasizing personal growth as selfish either. When I notice my direct reports are doing this, I never think negatively and highly encourage it. If you focus on yourself to become a better employee, then your employer benefits from that. It's a win/win situation.
And here is where the counter-argument comes in: "What if my employer doesn't recognize my growth, so they are benefiting from it but not rewarding it?' That's a natural debate with a smooth response. Find an employer who will reward appropriately. If you've grown out of your current position and pay scale and can't move higher, then switch companies.
I'm not promoting job jumping either. I've been at my current employer for almost a decade, the longest I've been at a company. A lot of my employees have told me that they have also worked for me at this company for longer than they've worked at any company before. We are far from being in a perfect company, but we've framed our career adventure so that sticking with this company is a win for us just as much as it's a win for the company. And when it no longer is a win/win, I'll move on just as I expect my employees to do too.
You own your career, not your company. So take ownership and don't tie your career's success, or your happiness, to something outside of your control.
(Written 2019.05.08)
5.23.2019
#21 | Creating Beacons
I wanted to address this how to write useful On-The-Horizon Beacons, as defined in my Life Overview.
Although I'm sure there is the entire gamut of personality types who would try to write their Beacon, the two most common ones I've found are due to people either not knowing what they want to focus on or wanting to be a perfectionist detailing every single detail.
Both sides of the spectrum struggle to put together a reliable Beacon. If someone is not able to focus, they will never take steps in any single direction. They might spend their lives drifting in the wind. However, if someone hyper-focuses on the final picture, to the point of outlining every single detail, they'll spend their life planning and never take a step forward either.
To explain how to break either of these patterns, let's discuss this topic using a map metaphor. For the sake of this discussion, let's say you currently are in Los Angeles. That is your starting state. And you're trying to figure out your Beacon, but you don't know where to place that Beacon on the map.
Now let's take a step back. Why are you trying to place a Beacon? The purpose of the Beacon is to give you a guiding light in figuring out which life path to take to bring you closer to that Beacon. Let's say I know I want to end up in Florida. Do I need to know the address of my destination? Not really? How about the street or even the city? Nope. I also don't need to know Florida. Or even the east coast.
I can start my journey knowing only EAST. With that knowledge and nothing else, I can plot my course and pick a road heading east. Even if it's not the ideal road, it doesn't matter. I could be traveling for hours or even days and still be getting closer to my destination. It might not be the most efficient path, but it's getting you closer, and it's your life journey.
And for all you know, after Day 2 of heading east, you realize Florida isn't where you want to go. Instead, it's New York. Maybe this will result in a slight course correction. Perhaps it changes nothing. Either way, you're still heading in the right direction. Then after Day 4, you're now in the same state as your destination. You're wiser and more mature. You know more about what you want. You know if you're going to be in the city or the country. You know if you're going to be close to water, or in the mountains. As you start getting closer to your Beacon, the details will start coming into finer granularity.
Even if back on Day 2 you realized you wanted to go to Hawaii instead of Florida or New York, there's no harm in that. At least you've already packed your bags started your journey. Ideally, you don't want to make too many 180 turns since that negates your progress. But even if physically you might be driving back and forth, emotionally and mentally you'll be growing from your journey.
The destination still matters, but the important taking those first steps is what matters the most. The rest will fall into place as your journey progresses.
(Written 2019.05.07)
Although I'm sure there is the entire gamut of personality types who would try to write their Beacon, the two most common ones I've found are due to people either not knowing what they want to focus on or wanting to be a perfectionist detailing every single detail.
Both sides of the spectrum struggle to put together a reliable Beacon. If someone is not able to focus, they will never take steps in any single direction. They might spend their lives drifting in the wind. However, if someone hyper-focuses on the final picture, to the point of outlining every single detail, they'll spend their life planning and never take a step forward either.
To explain how to break either of these patterns, let's discuss this topic using a map metaphor. For the sake of this discussion, let's say you currently are in Los Angeles. That is your starting state. And you're trying to figure out your Beacon, but you don't know where to place that Beacon on the map.
Now let's take a step back. Why are you trying to place a Beacon? The purpose of the Beacon is to give you a guiding light in figuring out which life path to take to bring you closer to that Beacon. Let's say I know I want to end up in Florida. Do I need to know the address of my destination? Not really? How about the street or even the city? Nope. I also don't need to know Florida. Or even the east coast.
I can start my journey knowing only EAST. With that knowledge and nothing else, I can plot my course and pick a road heading east. Even if it's not the ideal road, it doesn't matter. I could be traveling for hours or even days and still be getting closer to my destination. It might not be the most efficient path, but it's getting you closer, and it's your life journey.
And for all you know, after Day 2 of heading east, you realize Florida isn't where you want to go. Instead, it's New York. Maybe this will result in a slight course correction. Perhaps it changes nothing. Either way, you're still heading in the right direction. Then after Day 4, you're now in the same state as your destination. You're wiser and more mature. You know more about what you want. You know if you're going to be in the city or the country. You know if you're going to be close to water, or in the mountains. As you start getting closer to your Beacon, the details will start coming into finer granularity.
Even if back on Day 2 you realized you wanted to go to Hawaii instead of Florida or New York, there's no harm in that. At least you've already packed your bags started your journey. Ideally, you don't want to make too many 180 turns since that negates your progress. But even if physically you might be driving back and forth, emotionally and mentally you'll be growing from your journey.
The destination still matters, but the important taking those first steps is what matters the most. The rest will fall into place as your journey progresses.
(Written 2019.05.07)
5.16.2019
#20 | Evolution of Engineering
Today I wanted to talk about my path as an engineering manager. It's a story I've told to countless team members before to help frame their career advancement in a way that enhances the appeal of engineering management; a path most engineers I know avoid.
A lot of engineers get into engineering so they can build things. This desire to create is the passion that drives them to work countless hours. This desire is what inspired me to become an engineer. I love building things. I love being able to look at a finished product knowing I made it. I built legos as a kid, and now I engineer things for a living.
Although there is nothing wrong with staying on the technical path, I know quite a few engineers who purposely avoid the managerial path. There are always different reasons why, but a frequent one I hear is they want to keep their hands' dirty building something.
I too was a reluctant engineering manager. I'm an introvert who prefers to put my head down and bust out code. The thought of having to deal with everyone's drama, both personal and professional, is not appealing. However, at the time, the only path to career advancement was through management. The company was very focused on headcount. The more headcount you had, the more "important" you appeared and the more compensation you received. So off I went into the managerial path.
I can't say it was a smooth ride to start. But at a certain point, I changed my perception which changed the game. I quickly realized I didn't want to get bogged down in the weeds of people management. It wasn't rewarding enough. Plus it had a low ROI where I might put in a lot of effort to help a single person advance to have them eventually move up the ladder or move on to a different company. Instead, I focused on the culture, environment, and process. In other words, I started engineering the team.
For example, I have team members in the US and team members overseas. If someone complained about communication problems with their overseas counterparts, I analyzed the environment. I could have looked at trying to coach a single person on how to increase their communication skills, but that gives a very low ROI. Instead of trying to correct individuals, I would look at how could we change our tools or processes to promote communication.
This thought process led to holding the majority of team discussions, including daily standups, in IM so everyone could catch up to the conversation on their own time and contribute. No one was left out. All team status or staff meetings were moved to a wiki so that both the US and overseas could remain informed. This change ensured everyone was treated equally and could get the same updates. When doubling up engineers to work on a task, I would purposely assign one from each time zone to force them to collaborate. This assignment forced people to break out of their comfort zone and break communication barriers.
Additionally, I encouraged everyone to send their peer code reviews to someone in a different time zone instead of the person sitting next to them. This encouragement taught them to seek out new team members on their own. Even peer code reviews had guidelines on how to review to avoid divisive and confrontational language and promote collaborative and constructive dialogue. I could go on, but every part of the team was thought out to encourage communication.
Not everyone warmed up to this culture, and some people left. But the people who stuck around have become highly collaborative across time zones, cultures, and consider all their teammates as close peers. Over the years continue growing; we continue to hit growing pains; we fall into our old traps, but we've managed to remain highly collaborative throughout it all because we engineered the team that way. It naturally falls into place more than it falls apart.
Communication is just one example, but I engineered every possible aspect of my teams in this manner. Once I viewed management as engineering a team culture, I became highly engaged. It became an exciting challenge to look at tendencies and patterns that emerged, and through modifications to the team setup, change the natural outputs into something desirable. This process became my primary focus; I go to work to make sure they can work well together and deliver at the highest level of productivity possible. Team engineering became more rewarding than software engineering ever did.
It didn't stop at engineering the team. At this point, I've engineered multiple high performing and versatile teams. My attention has been freed up to move even higher. I now engineer the system. Figuring out how everyone's finished projects interact, how each team interacts with each other, how different disciplines (engineer or product manager) interact, how different personas (employees or customers) communicate, and even how our products interact with the customers and how it should grow. In other words, I'm turning director responsibilities into an engineering challenge too.
It turns out, a change in perspective can take an undesired pain point and turn it into an exciting engineering challenge.
(Written 2019.05.04)
A lot of engineers get into engineering so they can build things. This desire to create is the passion that drives them to work countless hours. This desire is what inspired me to become an engineer. I love building things. I love being able to look at a finished product knowing I made it. I built legos as a kid, and now I engineer things for a living.
Although there is nothing wrong with staying on the technical path, I know quite a few engineers who purposely avoid the managerial path. There are always different reasons why, but a frequent one I hear is they want to keep their hands' dirty building something.
I too was a reluctant engineering manager. I'm an introvert who prefers to put my head down and bust out code. The thought of having to deal with everyone's drama, both personal and professional, is not appealing. However, at the time, the only path to career advancement was through management. The company was very focused on headcount. The more headcount you had, the more "important" you appeared and the more compensation you received. So off I went into the managerial path.
I can't say it was a smooth ride to start. But at a certain point, I changed my perception which changed the game. I quickly realized I didn't want to get bogged down in the weeds of people management. It wasn't rewarding enough. Plus it had a low ROI where I might put in a lot of effort to help a single person advance to have them eventually move up the ladder or move on to a different company. Instead, I focused on the culture, environment, and process. In other words, I started engineering the team.
For example, I have team members in the US and team members overseas. If someone complained about communication problems with their overseas counterparts, I analyzed the environment. I could have looked at trying to coach a single person on how to increase their communication skills, but that gives a very low ROI. Instead of trying to correct individuals, I would look at how could we change our tools or processes to promote communication.
This thought process led to holding the majority of team discussions, including daily standups, in IM so everyone could catch up to the conversation on their own time and contribute. No one was left out. All team status or staff meetings were moved to a wiki so that both the US and overseas could remain informed. This change ensured everyone was treated equally and could get the same updates. When doubling up engineers to work on a task, I would purposely assign one from each time zone to force them to collaborate. This assignment forced people to break out of their comfort zone and break communication barriers.
Additionally, I encouraged everyone to send their peer code reviews to someone in a different time zone instead of the person sitting next to them. This encouragement taught them to seek out new team members on their own. Even peer code reviews had guidelines on how to review to avoid divisive and confrontational language and promote collaborative and constructive dialogue. I could go on, but every part of the team was thought out to encourage communication.
Not everyone warmed up to this culture, and some people left. But the people who stuck around have become highly collaborative across time zones, cultures, and consider all their teammates as close peers. Over the years continue growing; we continue to hit growing pains; we fall into our old traps, but we've managed to remain highly collaborative throughout it all because we engineered the team that way. It naturally falls into place more than it falls apart.
Communication is just one example, but I engineered every possible aspect of my teams in this manner. Once I viewed management as engineering a team culture, I became highly engaged. It became an exciting challenge to look at tendencies and patterns that emerged, and through modifications to the team setup, change the natural outputs into something desirable. This process became my primary focus; I go to work to make sure they can work well together and deliver at the highest level of productivity possible. Team engineering became more rewarding than software engineering ever did.
It didn't stop at engineering the team. At this point, I've engineered multiple high performing and versatile teams. My attention has been freed up to move even higher. I now engineer the system. Figuring out how everyone's finished projects interact, how each team interacts with each other, how different disciplines (engineer or product manager) interact, how different personas (employees or customers) communicate, and even how our products interact with the customers and how it should grow. In other words, I'm turning director responsibilities into an engineering challenge too.
It turns out, a change in perspective can take an undesired pain point and turn it into an exciting engineering challenge.
(Written 2019.05.04)
5.09.2019
#19 | Assembly Line vs New Build
It's been a while since I've written, almost a full month. My buffer of written posts is now gone. How did this happen? Things got crazy at work. The best way to describe it is that I had to move one of my teams away from the assembly line mentality and into the new build mentality.
Now you might be wondering how software development relates to manufacturing. Even though we aren't building a tangible item, the manufacturing plant concept is still applicable.
Let's first jump into the assembly line aspect. Using Kanban, an Agile methodology, the process of pushing work from analysis to production release, is already visually laid out. For my own Personal Control Book, I have a trimmed down version of a Kanban board (as detailed under Organizing Focuses & Projects). I only have three states: Queued, In Progress, and Completed. These relate to different stations in an assembly line. Queued would be equivalent to a pile of raw materials ready for assembly. Then there is only one actual work station: In Progress. Completed is the final product, let's call Widgets. Each Trello Card is an assembly that will turn raw materials into a completed Widget.
When we start a new project, we can quickly build our assembly line with the three work stations. We then brainstorm to create our raw materials for the Queued column. We then take all of that raw material and start creating widgets. We complete the project once we create all widgets.
In theory, a different person manages each work station. A task-delegator manages the Queued work station, moving tasks to In Progress and assigning out when they are ready. A task-doer handles the In Progress work station. Once they complete the job, they move it to the Completed work station. Then a task-validator oversees the Completed work station, ensuring satisfactory completion of all tasks.
In a Personal Control Book, a single person plays. In a team environment, different team members manage different work stations. If there is a clear contract for moving one task to another, everyone can work quickly and efficiently on their work station without knowledge of the entire assembly line. All assignments are broken down into small and manageable bites so that any skill level (from junior to senior) can manage any work station. This process turns even the most highly complex process into an easily managed process. Everyone can go into cruise control as they flex their habit muscle. Everyone works smarter instead of harder. The same concept applies to the Personal Control Book; if I break the work into these bite-size tasks, I can work smarter to accomplish something hard without putting much using much effort.
I prefer to break down both my team's work and my work in this manner. Assembly lines are easy and fast and productive and rewarding. Who doesn't want to produce more output with less effort?
But then we find ourselves with a New Build. New Builds happen when the assembly line doesn't exist yet. Maybe we don't have our workstations (Queued, In Progress, and Completed) yet. Or perhaps we will use the same workstations, but the type of work completed at each work station is drastically different than usual. There is no familiarity. There are no pre-defined habits.
A New Build is what one of my teams is going through at work right now. They are building a brand new project. It's using similar technologies that all of our other projects use and the workstations are the same, but the work done at the workstations is drastically different.
In this case, significant hand-holding is needed to move a task through the process. In both an Assembly Line and a New Build, we create something new. But in the New Build situation, we create a new gadget while also building the Assembly Line. The result might seem the same, but twice as much effort is required to get there.
It took me a while to realize what was going on. I kept getting frustrated that everything was taking longer and progress kept stalling. I didn't recognize the New Build because the process was the same. Once I realized we were in a New Build situation, I changed my expectations and my focus while massively simplifying the process into more granular tasks. I delegated the responsibility to advance tasks to someone else so I could focus solely on building the Assembly Line. Until the Assembly Line is completed and running smoothly, each job will stall and require manual intervention to start up again.
After a month of New Build and experimenting with roles and responsibilities of the new team, I think I finally have the Assembly Line built and the right people at the right work stations.
It feels good to turn the complex into bite-sized tasks and watch progress fly by.
(Written 2019.05.01)
Now you might be wondering how software development relates to manufacturing. Even though we aren't building a tangible item, the manufacturing plant concept is still applicable.
Let's first jump into the assembly line aspect. Using Kanban, an Agile methodology, the process of pushing work from analysis to production release, is already visually laid out. For my own Personal Control Book, I have a trimmed down version of a Kanban board (as detailed under Organizing Focuses & Projects). I only have three states: Queued, In Progress, and Completed. These relate to different stations in an assembly line. Queued would be equivalent to a pile of raw materials ready for assembly. Then there is only one actual work station: In Progress. Completed is the final product, let's call Widgets. Each Trello Card is an assembly that will turn raw materials into a completed Widget.
When we start a new project, we can quickly build our assembly line with the three work stations. We then brainstorm to create our raw materials for the Queued column. We then take all of that raw material and start creating widgets. We complete the project once we create all widgets.
In theory, a different person manages each work station. A task-delegator manages the Queued work station, moving tasks to In Progress and assigning out when they are ready. A task-doer handles the In Progress work station. Once they complete the job, they move it to the Completed work station. Then a task-validator oversees the Completed work station, ensuring satisfactory completion of all tasks.
In a Personal Control Book, a single person plays. In a team environment, different team members manage different work stations. If there is a clear contract for moving one task to another, everyone can work quickly and efficiently on their work station without knowledge of the entire assembly line. All assignments are broken down into small and manageable bites so that any skill level (from junior to senior) can manage any work station. This process turns even the most highly complex process into an easily managed process. Everyone can go into cruise control as they flex their habit muscle. Everyone works smarter instead of harder. The same concept applies to the Personal Control Book; if I break the work into these bite-size tasks, I can work smarter to accomplish something hard without putting much using much effort.
I prefer to break down both my team's work and my work in this manner. Assembly lines are easy and fast and productive and rewarding. Who doesn't want to produce more output with less effort?
But then we find ourselves with a New Build. New Builds happen when the assembly line doesn't exist yet. Maybe we don't have our workstations (Queued, In Progress, and Completed) yet. Or perhaps we will use the same workstations, but the type of work completed at each work station is drastically different than usual. There is no familiarity. There are no pre-defined habits.
A New Build is what one of my teams is going through at work right now. They are building a brand new project. It's using similar technologies that all of our other projects use and the workstations are the same, but the work done at the workstations is drastically different.
In this case, significant hand-holding is needed to move a task through the process. In both an Assembly Line and a New Build, we create something new. But in the New Build situation, we create a new gadget while also building the Assembly Line. The result might seem the same, but twice as much effort is required to get there.
It took me a while to realize what was going on. I kept getting frustrated that everything was taking longer and progress kept stalling. I didn't recognize the New Build because the process was the same. Once I realized we were in a New Build situation, I changed my expectations and my focus while massively simplifying the process into more granular tasks. I delegated the responsibility to advance tasks to someone else so I could focus solely on building the Assembly Line. Until the Assembly Line is completed and running smoothly, each job will stall and require manual intervention to start up again.
After a month of New Build and experimenting with roles and responsibilities of the new team, I think I finally have the Assembly Line built and the right people at the right work stations.
It feels good to turn the complex into bite-sized tasks and watch progress fly by.
(Written 2019.05.01)
5.02.2019
#18 | The Path to a Higher Education
Every quarter I do a re-evaluation of my financial standing and strategies. I just completed it this weekend and noticed the levels of my kids’ college funds. The middle kid’s account level was starting to look a bit hefty, so I decided to do some investigation into if I should slow it down or even stop it. What I researched shocked me.
Don’t get me wrong; this isn’t the first time I’ve researched this subject, so I wasn't shocked by the numbers. But it’s the first time I’ve examined it with the new Boredom goggles. I didn’t realize the ludicrous nature of the situation before. It’s scary how much college education has become the new “Keeping up with the Joneses.” It used to be about having the biggest home, the shiniest car, or the most featured gadget. Now it’s about what college “experience” your kid is given (NOTE: frequently not earned). No wonder the nation has an ongoing massive college admittance cheating scandal.
Let me document some of the findings I unearthed this weekend, mixed in with some of the research I’ve done in the past.
The first step in planning college finance planning is to break college expenses into thirds. The first third will be paid in the past and is done by the parents from the child’s birth to adulthood (18-years-old) on a monthly payment. Present efforts fund the second third. Parents pay for this portion through their regular monthly income while their child is in college. Considering the first third is spread over 18 years with compounding interest or returns (depending on if you’ve done savings or investment accounts) while the second third only contains four years of contributions, that means the first third is a slow accumulation while the second third is a frantic spend-fest.
Then the last third is paid in the future in the form of a loan taken out either by the parents, by the child, or both. Since college loans are the new mortgage, this is spread out over decades. Although there is interest associated with it, there are also tax advantages that offset the real costs. Therefore I imagine this is another slow burn.
Okay, we have our buckets. Now how much do we fund? Boiling everything down to averages, I saw the following recommendations for covering 33%-50% of college expenses (which fits into the 3-bucket approach).
Buckets: check. Allocations: check. Next up defines where to make the allocations. Typically 529 plans are the first vehicle of choice. Tax advantages on gains and some states let you take tax advantages on contributions. Transferable if the initial benefactor decides not to go to college. Downsides are that there are restrictions on what expenses this money can cover. Besides 529 plans, I’ve also seen a couple of child custodian accounts. I don’t recall their names, but from what I remember, they are very similar but have a few key distinguishing factors. Then, of course, there’s just an earmarked account in the parents’ name reserved for the child’s education.
At this point, I’m just like holy ****. Can this be any more complicated?
I need a 4-year STEM degree to figure out my kids’ college experience with the roadmap starting at their birth with the first 529 plan contribution and lasting potentially into their 50s with their final student loan payment. How did the act of planning for a college education become so moronic? It's like our life's purpose is to figure out how to pay for a college education, instead of our college education's purpose is to help figure out our life's journey.
I’m not sure what my next steps will be. There has to be a way to hack this system. The FIRE community, among many others, has figured out some very cost-effective hacks to decrease or remove college expenses. But hacking implies complex maneuvering to beat the system. Is that honestly the best way? Instead of the “experience” of college spending four more years in a party and alcohol invested, high consumption, arrogant dominated atmosphere, how about swapping or preluding that with the “experience” of traveling the world for even a year moving from city-to-city earning a living wage while finding out who they. Instead of putting in four more years in a classroom setting, emphasis your kids to put themselves out there and start a High School business which they can grow to profitability before graduation.
I’m not saying higher education isn’t beneficial; it’s just not the end-all solution that we make it out to be.
I have some ideas now that I would like to try implementing, but I'll kick this re-evaluation down the road a bit more. My contributions are inline for the in-state/out-of-state contribution levels in a 529 plan, so there's no pressing need to minimalize this yet. Being that these costs can be a bit part of my Financial Independence path, I’ll want to tackle this eventually. But there’s still time, and there is more simplification cleanup needed in the other parts of my financial life.
(Written 2019.04.06)
Don’t get me wrong; this isn’t the first time I’ve researched this subject, so I wasn't shocked by the numbers. But it’s the first time I’ve examined it with the new Boredom goggles. I didn’t realize the ludicrous nature of the situation before. It’s scary how much college education has become the new “Keeping up with the Joneses.” It used to be about having the biggest home, the shiniest car, or the most featured gadget. Now it’s about what college “experience” your kid is given (NOTE: frequently not earned). No wonder the nation has an ongoing massive college admittance cheating scandal.
Let me document some of the findings I unearthed this weekend, mixed in with some of the research I’ve done in the past.
The first step in planning college finance planning is to break college expenses into thirds. The first third will be paid in the past and is done by the parents from the child’s birth to adulthood (18-years-old) on a monthly payment. Present efforts fund the second third. Parents pay for this portion through their regular monthly income while their child is in college. Considering the first third is spread over 18 years with compounding interest or returns (depending on if you’ve done savings or investment accounts) while the second third only contains four years of contributions, that means the first third is a slow accumulation while the second third is a frantic spend-fest.
Then the last third is paid in the future in the form of a loan taken out either by the parents, by the child, or both. Since college loans are the new mortgage, this is spread out over decades. Although there is interest associated with it, there are also tax advantages that offset the real costs. Therefore I imagine this is another slow burn.
Okay, we have our buckets. Now how much do we fund? Boiling everything down to averages, I saw the following recommendations for covering 33%-50% of college expenses (which fits into the 3-bucket approach).
- In-state public institute: $100 / month
- Out-of-state public institute: $250 / month
- Private institute: $500 / month
Buckets: check. Allocations: check. Next up defines where to make the allocations. Typically 529 plans are the first vehicle of choice. Tax advantages on gains and some states let you take tax advantages on contributions. Transferable if the initial benefactor decides not to go to college. Downsides are that there are restrictions on what expenses this money can cover. Besides 529 plans, I’ve also seen a couple of child custodian accounts. I don’t recall their names, but from what I remember, they are very similar but have a few key distinguishing factors. Then, of course, there’s just an earmarked account in the parents’ name reserved for the child’s education.
At this point, I’m just like holy ****. Can this be any more complicated?
I need a 4-year STEM degree to figure out my kids’ college experience with the roadmap starting at their birth with the first 529 plan contribution and lasting potentially into their 50s with their final student loan payment. How did the act of planning for a college education become so moronic? It's like our life's purpose is to figure out how to pay for a college education, instead of our college education's purpose is to help figure out our life's journey.
I’m not sure what my next steps will be. There has to be a way to hack this system. The FIRE community, among many others, has figured out some very cost-effective hacks to decrease or remove college expenses. But hacking implies complex maneuvering to beat the system. Is that honestly the best way? Instead of the “experience” of college spending four more years in a party and alcohol invested, high consumption, arrogant dominated atmosphere, how about swapping or preluding that with the “experience” of traveling the world for even a year moving from city-to-city earning a living wage while finding out who they. Instead of putting in four more years in a classroom setting, emphasis your kids to put themselves out there and start a High School business which they can grow to profitability before graduation.
I’m not saying higher education isn’t beneficial; it’s just not the end-all solution that we make it out to be.
I have some ideas now that I would like to try implementing, but I'll kick this re-evaluation down the road a bit more. My contributions are inline for the in-state/out-of-state contribution levels in a 529 plan, so there's no pressing need to minimalize this yet. Being that these costs can be a bit part of my Financial Independence path, I’ll want to tackle this eventually. But there’s still time, and there is more simplification cleanup needed in the other parts of my financial life.
(Written 2019.04.06)
4.25.2019
#17 | My Self Image
I recently showcased my site to a couple of my entrepreneur friends. They gave me some interesting feedback. Summarized, they wanted to figure out how to collaborate but felt like my content would relate to 3% of the population in terms of ambition, and only 1% of the total population that is both in the tech field and ambitious. That's a small target audience.
Maybe that’s true. I thought about that comment, and I thought about something Mrs. Boring told me in our early courting days.
I had told her that I felt I was a role model for my peers while growing up. I grew up in a poor neighborhood where gang activity was commonplace. By the time I made it to high school, a good handful of my elementary school friends were dead, in juvie, or dropped out. The first year after high school, it felt like non-stop stream of shooting and deaths; house parties, bad deals, whatever.
From a young age, I learned how to navigate away from the trouble and carve out a safe environment. Isolate away from the bad influences and focus on the people with futures. By the time high school came around, I had a highly curated group of friends.
I wasn't an outstanding student, but I did well. I wasn't valedictorian or salutatorian, but I tutored both. I didn't stay out of all trouble, but I stayed out of most. I wasn't the most honest, but I still had a strong moral compass. In general, I had a lot going for me on many different fronts. Overall, I had it down. At a certain point, I realized that some of my friends looked up to me in a certain strange way. We all had our path to travel, but it was apparent I was going to make it out. So I learned to put up an image of myself that we could all strive to become.
Fast forward to today. I still do the same thing but for different reasons.
Almost every productive person knows some form of Begin With the End in Mind. Before starting anything, it’s best to visualize what the end goal is. Write it down. Plan it out. Create it first mentally and on paper, then create it again in real life.
Between what Mrs. Boring said and my entrepreneur friends' perspective of this site, it made me realize that I’ve applied that same concept to myself. When I think about what I’ve written on this site, the picture I paint of myself is more “perfect” than I am. Although I do get things done, I’m also lazy, lounge around, get tired, and have plenty of imperfections. I include a glimpse of that in what I write, but that’s not what I want to portray.
Since this site is mostly for myself, I want to paint a picture to myself of WHO I want to be. This person might change over time. He probably changes almost every time I write a post. But the direction of this person stays the same. To be a better person, who gives more to those around them, who remains focused and productive and executes on their goals, who lives a happy and fulfilling and productive life.
That’s not to say the portrayal I describe on this site isn’t me. It’s just the best possible version of me. It's the version of me that I aim to be, that I want to be when I'm all grown up.
It’s fresh and exciting to think about it this way. It helps to frame the personality traits I want to enhance, the bad habits I want to minimize, and perhaps will point out areas of myself that are just absent altogether.
(Written 2019.03.27)
Maybe that’s true. I thought about that comment, and I thought about something Mrs. Boring told me in our early courting days.
I had told her that I felt I was a role model for my peers while growing up. I grew up in a poor neighborhood where gang activity was commonplace. By the time I made it to high school, a good handful of my elementary school friends were dead, in juvie, or dropped out. The first year after high school, it felt like non-stop stream of shooting and deaths; house parties, bad deals, whatever.
From a young age, I learned how to navigate away from the trouble and carve out a safe environment. Isolate away from the bad influences and focus on the people with futures. By the time high school came around, I had a highly curated group of friends.
I wasn't an outstanding student, but I did well. I wasn't valedictorian or salutatorian, but I tutored both. I didn't stay out of all trouble, but I stayed out of most. I wasn't the most honest, but I still had a strong moral compass. In general, I had a lot going for me on many different fronts. Overall, I had it down. At a certain point, I realized that some of my friends looked up to me in a certain strange way. We all had our path to travel, but it was apparent I was going to make it out. So I learned to put up an image of myself that we could all strive to become.
Fast forward to today. I still do the same thing but for different reasons.
Almost every productive person knows some form of Begin With the End in Mind. Before starting anything, it’s best to visualize what the end goal is. Write it down. Plan it out. Create it first mentally and on paper, then create it again in real life.
Between what Mrs. Boring said and my entrepreneur friends' perspective of this site, it made me realize that I’ve applied that same concept to myself. When I think about what I’ve written on this site, the picture I paint of myself is more “perfect” than I am. Although I do get things done, I’m also lazy, lounge around, get tired, and have plenty of imperfections. I include a glimpse of that in what I write, but that’s not what I want to portray.
Since this site is mostly for myself, I want to paint a picture to myself of WHO I want to be. This person might change over time. He probably changes almost every time I write a post. But the direction of this person stays the same. To be a better person, who gives more to those around them, who remains focused and productive and executes on their goals, who lives a happy and fulfilling and productive life.
That’s not to say the portrayal I describe on this site isn’t me. It’s just the best possible version of me. It's the version of me that I aim to be, that I want to be when I'm all grown up.
It’s fresh and exciting to think about it this way. It helps to frame the personality traits I want to enhance, the bad habits I want to minimize, and perhaps will point out areas of myself that are just absent altogether.
(Written 2019.03.27)
4.18.2019
#16 | Parenting & Leadership
Some days, especially on the most challenging days, I start to feel like my role as a leader and manager is very similar to the role I play as a parent. I entered management and fatherhood around the same time. Maybe that’s why I feel this way. Or perhaps it’s common for everyone. I’m not sure.
About a month ago, I was complaining to Mrs. Boring about trying to lead some senior members of the team. I frequently claim I would rather have an eager and optimistic average mid-level team member than a stubborn and uncooperative genius senior-level team member. This time, she drew a connection that sparked something. I had said that senior-level people are hard because they know enough to get things done but not enough to know the best path forward. They frequently don't take into account all angles, including business, politics, technology, culture, etc. Their original preferred path forward frequently doesn't work. Her response was describing a senior-level member of the team as a teenager. They think they know everything, have a hard time taking constructive feedback, and love to debate everything with the assumption that you aren’t informed enough to be in the know.
Amazing. I loved the metaphor. Since Mrs. Boring first mentioned it, I’ve been mentally expanding the metaphor. I finally decided I should put this down on paper. This metaphor isn’t meant to belittle employees or the relationships between leaders and their contributors. Instead, I’ve found that it’s beneficial to relate my team members to something I can understand easily to better lead them. It also helps to classify each team member, since titles seldom match contribution levels and frequently lag. Knowing what I'm working with turns me into a better leader.
Here is the metaphor.
The Kid-Team Member Metaphor
This metaphor involves having a clean room. With a clean room, you can have a clear mind and be more satisfied with your surrounds and more free to put your attention to more significant activities.
Junior Team Member
These team members are like a 5-year-old. I’m able to tell them to keep their room clean. They don’t understand. So I explain why it’s important to keep it clean and how a clean room should look. Everything goes over their head. The best option is to go into the room with them and help them keep it clean. I can tell them what pile to pick up and where to put it. They are helpful. It might take me an hour by myself to clean it, but with their help, we can get it done in 30 minutes.
This relationship is useful if I need to be in the room anyway. If we’re both working in there making a mess together, then having the help to clean up is very appreciated. Plus while I’m there working, I can also provide enrichment activities to help them grow faster.
In the end, they are beneficial, as long as I already intend to be in the room. If I’m not, then the place will naturally get messier with no one cleaning it up. They need a grownup in the room with them, or else they are more of a detriment.
Mid-Level Team Member
This person more relates to a 10-year-old. At this point, I can tell them that it’s important to clean their room. I can start them off with a clean place. I can then leave them alone and trust that for the most part, they’ll keep it clean. If I want to change their direction, I probably need to go back and help them pivot. But once they have their new direction, they can get it done.
The work this team member does is solid. It’s usually very close to what they were asked to do. Occasionally they surprise you with something exceptional. Most of the time, you’re just happy that they finished what you asked them to do. Frequent checkups are needed, but it’s just for touch-ups, not disaster control.
Senior Team Member
There are two types of people in this group, but both relate to teenagers.
Senior Team Members that share my values: These are the people who I either coached, mentored, or came from a similar environment. These are the holy grail individuals. They already have a clean room. That means I can go in and not spend time on basics like how to keep the place clean. Instead, since I have access to dozens of other rooms, I can work with them to figure out how to make their rooms even better. We can start digging into exciting things like upgrades, decorating, or room expansions. We can figure out ways to optimize and share that knowledge with others. And when I leave the room, I can trust that they’ll keep the place in order and keep being productive. They help make me better as I help make them better.
Senior Team Members that do not share my values: These individuals cut their teeth somewhere else. They frequently don’t understand why a clean room is essential. Their last environment didn’t care about that as long as they produced, which is fine if they are productive. But if they aren’t, then I need access to the room to see what’s going on. But I can’t, because the door won’t even open due to the mess. I can sit there and debate night and day about the basics of a clean room, but they disagree. They think they are killing it, regardless of the reality. They think they know best and want to be left alone. Unfortunately, they have a minimal set of experience and visibility, and so although they might be doing okay, in comparison to other rooms, they could be underachieving or worse. These individuals can still be productive, but they take a lot more work in first changing their values before getting real productivity out of them.
Managers, Leads, & Architects
To expand the metaphor higher, these individuals are the parents. They can see all of their kids’ rooms. They have more experience and can help guide others. Even if they don’t have more years of experience, they get to watch multiple rooms at once so get to see an accelerated rate of experience. The good ones can go into a room and point out how each team member can do things better, depending on the individual’s level.
Directors
And at the top of this metaphor would be the directors. These are the landlords. They can see multiple houses which let them see large scale trends. They might no longer care if a particular room is producing as long as it’s not taking the entire household down. But they care if the whole unit is being productive and can give insights to the parents if adjustments are needed. And they can provide upgrades to the entire house to increase everyone’s quality of life.
(Written 2019.03.22)
About a month ago, I was complaining to Mrs. Boring about trying to lead some senior members of the team. I frequently claim I would rather have an eager and optimistic average mid-level team member than a stubborn and uncooperative genius senior-level team member. This time, she drew a connection that sparked something. I had said that senior-level people are hard because they know enough to get things done but not enough to know the best path forward. They frequently don't take into account all angles, including business, politics, technology, culture, etc. Their original preferred path forward frequently doesn't work. Her response was describing a senior-level member of the team as a teenager. They think they know everything, have a hard time taking constructive feedback, and love to debate everything with the assumption that you aren’t informed enough to be in the know.
Amazing. I loved the metaphor. Since Mrs. Boring first mentioned it, I’ve been mentally expanding the metaphor. I finally decided I should put this down on paper. This metaphor isn’t meant to belittle employees or the relationships between leaders and their contributors. Instead, I’ve found that it’s beneficial to relate my team members to something I can understand easily to better lead them. It also helps to classify each team member, since titles seldom match contribution levels and frequently lag. Knowing what I'm working with turns me into a better leader.
Here is the metaphor.
The Kid-Team Member Metaphor
This metaphor involves having a clean room. With a clean room, you can have a clear mind and be more satisfied with your surrounds and more free to put your attention to more significant activities.
Junior Team Member
These team members are like a 5-year-old. I’m able to tell them to keep their room clean. They don’t understand. So I explain why it’s important to keep it clean and how a clean room should look. Everything goes over their head. The best option is to go into the room with them and help them keep it clean. I can tell them what pile to pick up and where to put it. They are helpful. It might take me an hour by myself to clean it, but with their help, we can get it done in 30 minutes.
This relationship is useful if I need to be in the room anyway. If we’re both working in there making a mess together, then having the help to clean up is very appreciated. Plus while I’m there working, I can also provide enrichment activities to help them grow faster.
In the end, they are beneficial, as long as I already intend to be in the room. If I’m not, then the place will naturally get messier with no one cleaning it up. They need a grownup in the room with them, or else they are more of a detriment.
Mid-Level Team Member
This person more relates to a 10-year-old. At this point, I can tell them that it’s important to clean their room. I can start them off with a clean place. I can then leave them alone and trust that for the most part, they’ll keep it clean. If I want to change their direction, I probably need to go back and help them pivot. But once they have their new direction, they can get it done.
The work this team member does is solid. It’s usually very close to what they were asked to do. Occasionally they surprise you with something exceptional. Most of the time, you’re just happy that they finished what you asked them to do. Frequent checkups are needed, but it’s just for touch-ups, not disaster control.
Senior Team Member
There are two types of people in this group, but both relate to teenagers.
Senior Team Members that share my values: These are the people who I either coached, mentored, or came from a similar environment. These are the holy grail individuals. They already have a clean room. That means I can go in and not spend time on basics like how to keep the place clean. Instead, since I have access to dozens of other rooms, I can work with them to figure out how to make their rooms even better. We can start digging into exciting things like upgrades, decorating, or room expansions. We can figure out ways to optimize and share that knowledge with others. And when I leave the room, I can trust that they’ll keep the place in order and keep being productive. They help make me better as I help make them better.
Senior Team Members that do not share my values: These individuals cut their teeth somewhere else. They frequently don’t understand why a clean room is essential. Their last environment didn’t care about that as long as they produced, which is fine if they are productive. But if they aren’t, then I need access to the room to see what’s going on. But I can’t, because the door won’t even open due to the mess. I can sit there and debate night and day about the basics of a clean room, but they disagree. They think they are killing it, regardless of the reality. They think they know best and want to be left alone. Unfortunately, they have a minimal set of experience and visibility, and so although they might be doing okay, in comparison to other rooms, they could be underachieving or worse. These individuals can still be productive, but they take a lot more work in first changing their values before getting real productivity out of them.
Managers, Leads, & Architects
To expand the metaphor higher, these individuals are the parents. They can see all of their kids’ rooms. They have more experience and can help guide others. Even if they don’t have more years of experience, they get to watch multiple rooms at once so get to see an accelerated rate of experience. The good ones can go into a room and point out how each team member can do things better, depending on the individual’s level.
Directors
And at the top of this metaphor would be the directors. These are the landlords. They can see multiple houses which let them see large scale trends. They might no longer care if a particular room is producing as long as it’s not taking the entire household down. But they care if the whole unit is being productive and can give insights to the parents if adjustments are needed. And they can provide upgrades to the entire house to increase everyone’s quality of life.
(Written 2019.03.22)
4.11.2019
#15 | The Imaginary Audience
I tried doing some experimenting for audience growth over the past couple weeks and discovered something interesting about myself. I don’t need an audience at all.
I tried a couple of things. First, I went on Reddit. I created an anonymous Mr. Boring profile with references back to the site and subscribed to several various related subreddits; personal finance, productivity, minimalism, financial independence. I started commenting on existing threads and started a couple of threads. The thought was that I would learn how to make intriguing content while also building a brand and following. Once I felt confident that I had both, I would start plugging my site and see if I could get some readers.
The other path I tried was I reached out to a handful of the content creators that I follow. I didn’t ask them to guest post or see if I could guest post for them or even ask them to help spread the word. I just asked for feedback to see how I could do things better.
After going through both of those exercises, I started questioning why I was taking the time to do those things. Doing that outreach was very far out of my comfort zone that it felt like good practice, but that was the only real value I could see. I know some people want to become influencers, some people want to be heard and have a voice, some people want to be the center of attention, and some people do it for a living or to help them channel their energies. All of these are fine, but none of them related to my beacons. I didn’t need an audience to accomplish any of the things I’m set out to do.
But then why maintain the site in the first place? That’s an excellent question. I’ve gained value from creating content for the site. I can’t deny that. Let’s deconstruct that a bit.
I’m a big fan of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Creating content for this site has forced me to do Habit 2: Begin With The End In Mind. All of my goals and ambitions are nothing new. But I haven’t put my current goals down on paper before and tried to organize them. They were only flying around in my mind, hoping to see the light of day. With this site, I’ve started to write out plans on how to achieve what I want to accomplish in life instead of just winging it and letting persistence push me through. On top of that, by organizing my projects and starting a weekly update, I was able to see how much I was overloading myself — double whammy by writing it all out.
The other way it’s helped is the imaginary audience. Let me explain. I don’t know if this is normal, but as a little kid, I would always imagine I was talking to someone when I sorted out my thoughts. It was usually someone I liked or respected. However, it was often someone who I wasn’t close enough to so that I could share my thoughts in real life. The internal dialogues I would have would always be one-sided. They would involve me explaining to this person what I was thinking and what was going on with my life. It’s not that I didn’t have friends that I could talk to about stuff. I just preferred not to tell people the innermost thoughts. I didn’t trust people to share that information. What I put out to the rest of the world was always more fine-tuned and structured. Or at least I thought it was, even if the reality is what I presented to the world was very similar to my internal dialogues.
I’m an introvert. I’m guessing extroverts tell their life story to real people all the time. Instead, I keep my life story to myself and let my actions represent my story to the world. I prefer it this way. I don’t burden people, even close friends or family, with that constant energy drain. Active listening takes a lot of energy, and I wouldn’t want to put that on other people. The reality is probably worse; that most people would only pretend to listen. Internal dialogues are so much better.
This site is an internal dialoguing on steroids. Thinking about what I’m trying to write to my audience, an audience that I know is non-existent from checking my analytics, let’s me sort through my thoughts. I’m able to toss them around, massage them, refine them, and then put them down on paper to get them out. I even discreetly discuss them with real people to distill them even more before sitting down at the laptop. It’s provided focus and direction to these internal dialogues.
If I were to turn the site off, I would lose my outlet. That’s not something I want. Not now at least.
(Written 2019.03.17)
I tried a couple of things. First, I went on Reddit. I created an anonymous Mr. Boring profile with references back to the site and subscribed to several various related subreddits; personal finance, productivity, minimalism, financial independence. I started commenting on existing threads and started a couple of threads. The thought was that I would learn how to make intriguing content while also building a brand and following. Once I felt confident that I had both, I would start plugging my site and see if I could get some readers.
The other path I tried was I reached out to a handful of the content creators that I follow. I didn’t ask them to guest post or see if I could guest post for them or even ask them to help spread the word. I just asked for feedback to see how I could do things better.
After going through both of those exercises, I started questioning why I was taking the time to do those things. Doing that outreach was very far out of my comfort zone that it felt like good practice, but that was the only real value I could see. I know some people want to become influencers, some people want to be heard and have a voice, some people want to be the center of attention, and some people do it for a living or to help them channel their energies. All of these are fine, but none of them related to my beacons. I didn’t need an audience to accomplish any of the things I’m set out to do.
But then why maintain the site in the first place? That’s an excellent question. I’ve gained value from creating content for the site. I can’t deny that. Let’s deconstruct that a bit.
I’m a big fan of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Creating content for this site has forced me to do Habit 2: Begin With The End In Mind. All of my goals and ambitions are nothing new. But I haven’t put my current goals down on paper before and tried to organize them. They were only flying around in my mind, hoping to see the light of day. With this site, I’ve started to write out plans on how to achieve what I want to accomplish in life instead of just winging it and letting persistence push me through. On top of that, by organizing my projects and starting a weekly update, I was able to see how much I was overloading myself — double whammy by writing it all out.
The other way it’s helped is the imaginary audience. Let me explain. I don’t know if this is normal, but as a little kid, I would always imagine I was talking to someone when I sorted out my thoughts. It was usually someone I liked or respected. However, it was often someone who I wasn’t close enough to so that I could share my thoughts in real life. The internal dialogues I would have would always be one-sided. They would involve me explaining to this person what I was thinking and what was going on with my life. It’s not that I didn’t have friends that I could talk to about stuff. I just preferred not to tell people the innermost thoughts. I didn’t trust people to share that information. What I put out to the rest of the world was always more fine-tuned and structured. Or at least I thought it was, even if the reality is what I presented to the world was very similar to my internal dialogues.
I’m an introvert. I’m guessing extroverts tell their life story to real people all the time. Instead, I keep my life story to myself and let my actions represent my story to the world. I prefer it this way. I don’t burden people, even close friends or family, with that constant energy drain. Active listening takes a lot of energy, and I wouldn’t want to put that on other people. The reality is probably worse; that most people would only pretend to listen. Internal dialogues are so much better.
This site is an internal dialoguing on steroids. Thinking about what I’m trying to write to my audience, an audience that I know is non-existent from checking my analytics, let’s me sort through my thoughts. I’m able to toss them around, massage them, refine them, and then put them down on paper to get them out. I even discreetly discuss them with real people to distill them even more before sitting down at the laptop. It’s provided focus and direction to these internal dialogues.
If I were to turn the site off, I would lose my outlet. That’s not something I want. Not now at least.
(Written 2019.03.17)
4.04.2019
#14 | Project Consolidation
I’m excited right now. This blog, which has now grown into a full site, has already proven its weight in gold. I started it so that I could gain mastery in Boredom is my Goal as a life philosophy. Although I feel like that’s happening, it’s helped me to channel my focus into accomplishing all of my other life goals.
The latest example comes from the last two posts and the one I’m writing now. The first post was organizing my projects into a consolidated and more straightforward approach. I now have visibility into my core life ambitions. During the process, I realized that I was overbooking myself so I eliminated some fat by removing some projects.
The second post was about defining out my approach to the project organization and setting up a weekly self-accountability system. Yesterday (from when I wrote this post), I posted my first weekly update. While composing the update, something started bugging me. Today it hit me. I’m still overbooked purely based math.
At work, I have established my teams in a similar organization pattern that I'm now doing in my personal life. When I first started, I would assign one engineer to one project. That seemed logical. But I quickly saw that the result was that too many projects were ongoing and when project scope deviated or expanded, no one had time to assist. After a few discussions with the team, we shifted to a two engineer to one project approach. This approach changed the game for them. It helped to develop collaboration but also limited the number of focus items. Easier for the leads to track. Easier for engineers to help each other. We completed projects quicker which countered the fact that fewer projects were ongoing.
I was at that same moment personally. I had four projects: building an Earthquake Kit, setting up a new set of IRAs, taking my food and exercise to the next level, and starting a new philanthropy effort from the ground up. Let's look at the math of that. I have a full-time job, so I'm looking at maybe 5-20 hours max a week. Split between four projects, and that's 1-5 hours a week per project. Spread that out over five weekdays and two weekend days, throw in everything else like family, this site, reading, and other non-project activities, and it's obvious it's too many projects to juggle.
The lack of progress against all projects would demotivate me. I would try to focus on only one or two projects. Feel guilty about ignoring the rest, try to binge-work to close some out to get progress, burn myself out, and be right back into wishing I could live a Boring life. I had set myself up for failure and writing everything out made that painfully obvious. It was time to trim down even more. Let’s take a look at whose four projects.
The first to go is taking my food and exercise to the next level. Although I could lose about 10 pounds, 10 pounds isn’t going to do anything drastic. I already eat healthy enough plus my wife is on a big healthy eating kick, so that helps. I can also exercise more, but it’s been raining every week for months. Since my exercising involves being outside, it’s a bit hard to get into an exercise routine. This project is out.
The Earthquake Kit is pretty essential considering I live in earthquake country. However, I’ve made that gamble since I moved to Los Angeles 9 years ago and I’m willing to take that risk a bit longer. This project is also out.
That leaves IRAs and Philanthropy. I’m tempted to reduce this down even more, but I think this will be fine. The IRAs project will be a lot of waiting; waiting for the accounts to open, waiting for the funds to accumulate, waiting for the funds to transfer. Which then puts the Philanthropy project as the main focus. That feels right.
I’m excited to see where my ambition energy goes from here — baby steps to greatness.
(Written 2019.03.11)
The latest example comes from the last two posts and the one I’m writing now. The first post was organizing my projects into a consolidated and more straightforward approach. I now have visibility into my core life ambitions. During the process, I realized that I was overbooking myself so I eliminated some fat by removing some projects.
The second post was about defining out my approach to the project organization and setting up a weekly self-accountability system. Yesterday (from when I wrote this post), I posted my first weekly update. While composing the update, something started bugging me. Today it hit me. I’m still overbooked purely based math.
At work, I have established my teams in a similar organization pattern that I'm now doing in my personal life. When I first started, I would assign one engineer to one project. That seemed logical. But I quickly saw that the result was that too many projects were ongoing and when project scope deviated or expanded, no one had time to assist. After a few discussions with the team, we shifted to a two engineer to one project approach. This approach changed the game for them. It helped to develop collaboration but also limited the number of focus items. Easier for the leads to track. Easier for engineers to help each other. We completed projects quicker which countered the fact that fewer projects were ongoing.
I was at that same moment personally. I had four projects: building an Earthquake Kit, setting up a new set of IRAs, taking my food and exercise to the next level, and starting a new philanthropy effort from the ground up. Let's look at the math of that. I have a full-time job, so I'm looking at maybe 5-20 hours max a week. Split between four projects, and that's 1-5 hours a week per project. Spread that out over five weekdays and two weekend days, throw in everything else like family, this site, reading, and other non-project activities, and it's obvious it's too many projects to juggle.
The lack of progress against all projects would demotivate me. I would try to focus on only one or two projects. Feel guilty about ignoring the rest, try to binge-work to close some out to get progress, burn myself out, and be right back into wishing I could live a Boring life. I had set myself up for failure and writing everything out made that painfully obvious. It was time to trim down even more. Let’s take a look at whose four projects.
The first to go is taking my food and exercise to the next level. Although I could lose about 10 pounds, 10 pounds isn’t going to do anything drastic. I already eat healthy enough plus my wife is on a big healthy eating kick, so that helps. I can also exercise more, but it’s been raining every week for months. Since my exercising involves being outside, it’s a bit hard to get into an exercise routine. This project is out.
The Earthquake Kit is pretty essential considering I live in earthquake country. However, I’ve made that gamble since I moved to Los Angeles 9 years ago and I’m willing to take that risk a bit longer. This project is also out.
That leaves IRAs and Philanthropy. I’m tempted to reduce this down even more, but I think this will be fine. The IRAs project will be a lot of waiting; waiting for the accounts to open, waiting for the funds to accumulate, waiting for the funds to transfer. Which then puts the Philanthropy project as the main focus. That feels right.
I’m excited to see where my ambition energy goes from here — baby steps to greatness.
(Written 2019.03.11)
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