#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)

#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)

#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)

#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)