"How is your planning/managing (in terms of life) when you have too many projects going on?"

I think there's three questions here:

1. How do you coordinate multiple projects that don't overlap?

2. How do you know how much is too much to be effective?

3. If you accidentally get into that "too much to be effective" category, what do you do?

First, how to coordinate multiple projects that don't overlap?

That's easy. First, you realize that you can only do one thing at a time, so you prioritize just one thing and realize everything else will come in a distant secondary place in prioritization. You basically must do this, because you can't do two different things simultaneously. So you pick what's most highly prioritized, and you do that.

Last week, my split of focused building hours was 30+ GiveGetWin, 10 Consulting, 6 Personal, 2 Writing. That's about normal for a successful week: when I look at hours, I rarely see even splits. It usually comes down along those lines.

With multiple projects, it's even more important than normal to have clear priorities. You need to sit down with paper and identify what's important. I recommend using paper and not a computer for this, and especially don't get distracted and multi-task this with email, internet usage, etc.

Then, you need to go into Terminator-mode on what's most important and get it done. Flitting around is dangerous always; it's especially dangerous when you have multiple things going on. You work your top priority until it's done.

Second, how much is too much to be effective?

Lately, I'm a believer in doing less things at the same time. If you're doing 15 different initiatives, what are the odds that they're all equally valuable? It's very, very low.

Lately, my life has been about cutting complexity and cutting areas of focus and cutting projects (and turning down intriguing ones). I get great ideas all the time that would be incredibly exciting to run, but the fact is I already have a few areas of interest where I can clearly make huge gains by putting creative time in there.

While adding more is generally not a great idea if you've got very important things to work on anyways, there's three kinds of work that are reasonably safe to add on:

1. Discrete things that start and end relatively quickly: Writing an essay, a client project, etc.

2. Things on autopilot: I write this blog regularly as a matter of course. I've been doing it so long it doesn't even count as work. Likewise, if you've played piano for ten years, sitting down and playing each evening isn't going to be as mentally taxing as someone, for instance, learning a new piece on the paino.

3. Things that hook into other key main areas of your life: Right now, I need to improve the nonprofit governance and get best practices in place (meeting minutes, transparency, etc) at the charity. So I'd happily help out an external organization with any of their meetings or finance, because it fits in with what I'm doing. If you're developing skills and resources more efficiency than you would if you self-studied and they're important skills, then it can make sense to do something.

Rule of thumb, by the way -- more than six "big areas that matter" is always too many. For people who have a lot of creative energy, 3 might be the sweet spot. There's of course advantages to doing just 1 at different times in your life. 

If you wind up with too much going on and you're ineffective, then what? 

I just spoke with a client who has around eight major business campaigns going on. They're all critical and can't be canceled.

This is just barely over the overwhelm threshold. So, our gameplan is like this:

*Pick 2 areas each week to work on that are most important.
*Prioritize working on campaigns that will finish and close.

Of those eight areas, four are ones that, after between 30 and 200 hours of work, will be complete and only need minor maintenance going forwards. So if you wind up with too much on your plate, you might paradoxically decide to work on your fifth area of priority intensely if you can get it done and closed successfully in a week or two. Get that book that's almost finished written, just finish your damn taxes already, get the tech in place, or whatever.

There's a certain dignity in quitting things, and if you realize you're actually really never going to do something that's on your campaigns, then quitting might be the right call. If you need to quit projects with other people, let me advise you this: Do it slowly and intelligently.

I've done it both ways in the past, and I'll never quit a project quickly again. The old adage about tearing the bandage off fast is wrong. People you've worked intensively with, partnered with, or so on will be important to you later in life, almost without fail. If it takes you a few weeks (or even a couple months) longer to elegantly extricate yourself from a situation and not leave people hanging, do it. Great allies in the world are rare, and people who you treated well on the way out the door are willing to go to war with you later, help you, and so on. They also tend to know you really well and become sources of good advice. So if you're going to quit something with other people, quit slowly and leave everyone in a good place.

Finally, and this ties in with all three questions -- you need an elegant "capture and prioritize system." We can get more into this in another post, you can use Getting Things Done, or whatever, but you need a good capture/prioritization system or you're going to go insane. So get one of those in place ASAP, too.

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Did you ever hear about "bystander apathy"?

It's a seemingly terrible thing where, if you call out for help to a large group of people, everyone freezes and no-one moves. There's been a number of psychological studies mentioning this, as well as examples of people being assaulted or even murdered, calling for help, and no-one stepping in.

The solution, they found, was to a single out one specific individual. So if you call out, "I'm having a heart attack, someone call 9-1-1!" -- very likely nothing will happen. But if you point at someone and say, "You, in the blue shirt, I'm having a heart attack. Can you call 9-1-1?" -- then they'll almost certainly do it.

My thinking -- and I think GGW needs to evolve along these lines -- is to move towards asking individuals who might be interested if they want to do it. That would mean specifically reaching out first to, say, Chris Dame, and then to Zach, and then to Paulo, and then to Dan, and then to me. (Or whatever order.) Feel free to lean on me for anything in particular if nobody else can pick up the slack of course, but definitely give opportunities for others to get involved on these before you come to me.

What do you think? My thinking is that's the best way to go forwards volunteering. If you want to recruit someone for a role, then you ask individuals specifically, 1-on-1, over Skype, email, or on a call. Your thoughts?

Sebastian

--

As the group of people collaborating on GGW gets larger, a challenge is coordinating people working together. Now, it's quite common for someone to say, "X person is going to do a GGW deal, can someone jump in with Y specific element to help?"

It's something that almost everyone would be happy to help with, but often these "emails to everyone" wouldn't get a reply and things would stay in limbo for a few days before being sorted out.

That's not because people don't care, but because of human nature. If you're trying to collaborate across a large number of people -- for a civic or charitable project, for a new business initiative inside a company, or anything along those lines -- broad requests to the whole group will have a lower success rate than thinking through who is the most logical person to ask, and asking them.

So we're moving roughly in that direction. We're also putting together a training, mentoring, and credentialing system so people can know who is working on what, and can get good guidance/mentoring while working on their first things at GGW.

Do bear this in mind with future group projects of your own -- if you want a hand, single out a particular individual to ask first.

I think there's a tremendous amount of misconceptions regarding achievement, productivity, creativity, ambition, work, work rate, work ethic, and so on.

So I'm thinking of publishing some analysis weekly with examples of what happened in the week, successes and failures, noteworthy events, what I'm reading and listening to, and so on. If it goes well, I can give you a picture of a workweek for me, intermix tactics and techniques, and give you practical guidance about what's working well and what isn't.

I'm not sure if I'll keep this up as an initiative. I might like this, or I might abandon it. But let's give it a try. Make sure to comment if you've got strong thoughts on the topic.

Currently reading:

*The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire by Edward Luttwak (primary)

*Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port (I always have one business book going, even if my primary book is history/fiction/whatever).

*While choosing my next books to read this week before settling on Grand Strategy, I also picked up The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker (I'm halfway through it and it's brilliant, but I don't have the mental bandwidth to properly read it slowly and reflect on it), and Making Money by Owen Johnson (not enough was happening early on to stay with it; I most likely won't pick it up again).

*I also referenced The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes and The Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer, both of which I've read multiple times, when looking for some references for consulting work I was doing.

*I'm listening to The Millionaire Mind by Dr. Thomas Stanley on audiobook; this is my second listening of it. (It's good)

Random point on productivity -- starting weeks on Sundays: This week I did my weekly review last Saturday, and started the new week on Sunday. While most people plan and run a standard Monday to Sunday week with Monday as the beginning of the week, I find running a Sunday to Saturday week (where the week starts on Sunday and ends on Saturday) to be much more effective. While I don't keep a traditional schedule, the weekends still wind up with less scheduled on them for me naturally because my clients are less likely to be working, people are more likely to be on trips, and there's generally less of an expectation for quicker replies on weekends. Given that, starting and ending the week with a weekend day is great -- especially Sunday, which I work very hard not to schedule at all. That means my week can start off with a bang of focused intense personal/creative work without any traditional Monday-morning type obligations. 

Random point on productivity -- trying different kinds of planning: I'm always playing around with different planning mechanisms. Different ones will work well at different stages of your life, depending on if you're on one project or multiple, if in introverted or extroverted mode, if the period is highly commercial/money-oriented or not, if traveling or not, and so on. I enjoy different planning initiatives and experimentation and it's fun for me, plus mixing it up means learning different tactics and keeping things fresh.

How I planned this week, part I -- "Job description": My current method for planning is twofold. First, I have a "job description" that has exactly 17 roles on it that I perform right now. There's four categories: GiveGetWin related, Consulting related, Writing related, and Personal. The first three are obvious enough; the fourth encompasses the tasks that are "personal" but need prioritization into my work schedule and get equal treatment with those. The four areas under "personal" that I manage when I make my schedule are Fitness, Personal Habits, Finance, and Family. Meanwhile, I recognize that I can't make progress on all 17 areas at the same time. So I pick a particular set of interest for the week. This week GiveGetWin got the lion's share of my time, Consulting was oriented mostly around fulfillment of current projects, Writing did not get much time, and Personal did not get much explicit time. (Obviously, progress across all areas happens sporadically as ideas come, basic maintenance is done, etc, etc. This just details where I'll put my creative energy to try to do new things and make lots of progress.) 

How I planned this week, part II -- "List of 10": After selecting which areas I want to make progress in, I then write down my Top 10 priorities, and (and this is important) -- then I estimate how many hours it will take to complete that activity, and round up so it's conservatively high. If you're looking for one actionable win out of this post, this one is it: If you're making a list of multiple things to do, do yourself a huge favor and estimate how many hours it will take to complete. By explicitly writing down, "Unpleasant important thing I don't want to do…. Six Hours" -- then you know the beast you've got to slay, you'll mentally prepare for it, and you're less likely to slack off of it later. Really, it's magical. Try it. You'll be amazed.

This week's plan/priorities: 

*Consulting I: Estimated 2 hours; actual 20 minutes + 45 minutes

*Consulting II: Estimated 4 hours; actual 2 hours

Note: I don't ever bill hourly any more, I just estimate for myself to plan the week (see above about the priorities). Though in both of these cases, there was actually more time than went into completing/implementing with my two clients than just the above; time which I hadn't budgeted when making my weekly plan. It all highly productive and valuable time, so no worries there.

*First GiveGetWin All-Hands Meeting: Estimated 1 hour needed to prep/make agenda; actual 40 minutes

*Followup/selling on a potential project: Estimated 4 hours (conservatively high, this would have included writing a proposal) but did not reach prospective client. This is one of two of the 10 priorities that didn't succeed this week.

*Recruiting GGW providers: Estimated 1 hour scheduled; actual 15 minutes for the particular task that I noted down, and then an additional 3-7 hours that weren't planned in advance

*Inbox zero: Estimated 7 hours total for the week, actual 4.5 hours to get clear at first, and then another 3 to 6 hours throughout the week (about 10 hours total, and it's not empty… yikes)

*GIveGetWin planning/systems building: 14+ hours estimated, actual was 20+ hours

*Logo designs for consulting: 2 hours estimated, and 2 hours actual (about dead-on there)

*Writing planning: 2 hours estimated, 2 hours actual (dead-on again)

*Buy workout clothes, socks/shoes, and workout 3x: 8 hours estimated, partial failure here and only 1.5 hours spent

*Do some preliminary calculating of expenses and finance: 1 hour estimated, actual went 5 hours and covered more ground than intended

Analysis: 

I had pre-scheduled an estimated 16 hours for GiveGetWin, 8 hours for Consulting, 2 hours for Writing, and 9 hours for Personal.

In actuality, I spent 30+ hours on GiveGetWin, around 10 on Consulting, 2 hours on the specific Writing initiative I mentioned plus perhaps a couple more hours on this type of activity, and around 6 hours on Personal activities.

These numbers are kind of deceptive, though. I plan/pre-schedule "large initiatives" or "things that need watching" so to speak. Actual time spent writing my blog on a day to day basis aren't included in the Writing category. (It's for planning, writing large/long/extensive pieces, promoting my writing, and so on.) Likewise, I did a number of Personal activities which weren't counted. The numbers above just track my initiatives that fit a certain category of things that I'm paying attention to, and it wouldn't necessarily be intuitive to someone who doesn't know me extremely well and had seen me run through my system multiple times before and asked me why I classified things certain ways.

Calls and Meetings:

*I had 12 Skype calls scheduled this week. 11 of them happened; the final was a friend of mine who is a business owner and got caught in a negotiation that went longer than he expected. We didn't have a set agenda, it was just a fun/hangout/catchup call. I didn't miss, cancel, or reschedule any calls.

*I met almost every day this week with Dan Ternes to work on GiveGetWin things. I didn't track explicitly how many meetings we had; we'd often meet quickly around lunch, go do other things, and then put in a longer session around dinnertime. 

A few high points:

*We had out first GiveGetWin All-Hands meeting. Everyone has been very enthusiastic about it, and really enjoyed getting to know each other in a huge group and we covered tons of ground. We used Google Hangouts for it (plus.google.com) and it was very smooth… amazing technology. This was our first GGW All-Hands so there was some minor points about people figuring out how to logon, etc, in the beginning, but overall was quite smooth.

*Dan Ternes and I started developing the training, mentoring, and credentialing system for GiveGetWin going forwards. I'm very excited for this.

*Chris Dame is working to improve the site design for GiveGetWin for higher credibility, usability, aesthetics, functionality, etc.

*Chris is coincidentally in Ulaanbaatar, and has suggested and gotten underway an initiative on the philanthropy side by visiting the largest NGO in Ulaanbaatar who we had previous contact with. My prior plan was to come in when we had tens of thousands of dollars (or more), but Chris advocated getting a win in the $200 to $1000 range so providers and donors can see where funds are going, we can get some positive impact now, gain domain experience, and so on. Good call on his part, love this initiative. 

*Zach Obront continues to develop the Trello, recruiting, and project management system for GGW. He and Paulo Ribiero are now collaborating on the first GGW Deal that I won't be doing any of the five key roles on (Recruiting, Project Managing, Marketing, Copywriting, Fulfillment). This is incredibly exciting, because it takes away the "getting hit by a bus" factor from sinking GGW.

*Kai Zau and Jay Bobzin sat in on our first all-hands meeting. Brilliant guys. Both gave useful feedback which was very gracious of them.

*I love everyone I work with at GGW. Just amazing people overall. More on this in a moment.

*Both my consulting implementations went smoothly, and I finished those in the first two days of the week. It's nice when your "must do" things you're being paid for are done way ahead of schedule.

*I got invited to put together a bid for another project in Beijing with a couple guys I really like and I could make a big difference with -- I'm wanted immediately, but my schedule doesn't open up for another month or so. Whenever I get really busy and everything is clicking, I'm left scratching my head and asking, "Where was all this business back when I wasn't busy?!" So it goes.

*I'm also getting involved in a very interesting marketing/branding project. It's another one of those "add lots of value to something positive that's going to happen anyways, and put it over the top and increase magnitude" type things -- lots of leverage, because the guy behind it is immensely talented, has a very good scope, and will gain huge returns on the gains.

*I spent a number of hours on finances, corporate structures, taxation, accounting, and so on. I'm getting a much better grasp of how to plan for and run with irregular income. It's a nightmare and it sucks and it's awful (I can see why people get addicted to the regular paycheck), but I'm over time starting to grasp how to manage, budget, invest, structure, and spend given that my income swings incredibly. It helps that right now I'm not trying to earn and my top focus is GiveGetWin… ironically I'm feeling very positively towards money but am feeling very detached from wanting or needing to earn in the short/mid-term… off of people wanting to work with me and projects that were paid 100% upfront, I'm already cashflow positive over basic expenses for a while, and I'm turning down any work that I don't really want. Somehow, strangely, this is letting me get a more objective picture of how money, time, income, expenses, etc. interrelate. More on this in a moment.

A few low points: I'd like to point out that I fail a lot, and things are constantly off-track for me just like everyone else. Here's some of my failures this week:

*My diet was abysmally bad for most of this week. I went from bad to worse over the course of the week, descending the ladder from breads to pretzels to candy bars and ice creams, Red Bulls, sugary breakfast cereals, and… blah. I felt gross. Thankfully, it got so bad that I decided to have what I call a "kamikaze day" where I go totally overboard (force myself to hit rock bottom) and then re-quit and I'm 100% off carbohydrates for a while. When things smooth out more, I'll add fruit and some decent carbs back in. But for now, nothing. But most of the week was awful, I felt gross, and it was no good.

*I also missed my exercise goals. I got zero gym workouts in. I did manage to get one long walk up a mountain in on the last day (Saturday) of the week to halfway salvage things. But overall, that's bad too. I felt my health in bad shape and felt yucky about it.

*Maybe this will sound stupid, but I want to just share something here a bit transparently -- I got a bad haircut last week when I was in a hurry for some business meetings where I needed short-ish hair. The woman wasn't a native English speaker and didn't hear me well. When I said "50% shorter" she heard "95% shorter." So I had that "boy's regular" type haircut that I did when I was eight years old. I couldn't stop noticing it in the mirror and just overall felt a lot less good about how I looked. Every time I went by a mirror, it aggravated me. Every time I went on a video Skype, I cringed a little. Probably nobody cares, but sure, I'm just as vain and get upset at stupid little stuff like everyone else. I was also clean-shaved for those meetings, so I looked younger than normal. Thankfully my hair is already starting to grow out a little and I've got a solid beginning of a beard coming in and I feel marginally better about this. But it was actually bothering me all week. I'm not proud of this and I get that it sounds trivial, but this consumed way too many thought cycles.

*I had an incredible run on Sunday and Monday. I wound up working about 15 hours each day (30 hours total) and finished most of what I wanted to get done for the week. It wasn't on purpose, I just had early Skype calls both days, and then I stayed working until midnight or 1AM because I was in a good flow. So why is it a low point? As I've noticed before, often are an inhumanly productive session I crash for a while, and I ran off a number of low days from Tuesday to Thursday. All three days were very low productivity… I had a number of calls and meetings, which meant they weren't total wastes. But in most of my undirected time, I was procrastinating and doing nothing useful. Even worse,

*I got off my work computer/play computer setup. My work Mac is hard-designated that no internet surfing, games, etc happen. But Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday was a descent into chaos. Eating nearly entirely junk food, surfing Hacker News, playing online chess, checking sports scores, and just… not doing more than the minimum to prep for my calls and execute on basic action items. This needs to turn around right now -- so I'll set that as a priority for next week. If I really need to surf the net, I'll do it on my iPhone to get back on the work computer / play computer setup, which is so vital and so valuable. If my first attempt at this doesn't work, I'll go download Self-Control for OSX and block everything.

*I had a good prospective client to follow up with who I'd really like to work with. Neither of us is in a big hurry (his company is growing at a very good rate, and my schedule is mostly blocked out for a while now) but I wanted to grab the reigns and move forward a lot this week on that. There's no time pressure, but I dislike missing objectives. 

*I'm tempted to complain about the awful weather in Germany in this "low points" section, but what's to accomplish there? But yeah, the weather sucked. It was probably a minor contributing factor to the Tuesday to Thursday negative run and the junk food. Though that's 95% on me, having a week of raining drab skies is no good. I personally like good weather and have built my life to minimize time in cold/rainy places (except London, which I curiously like and find charming even when it's yucky… ambiance or something). You should always accept personal responsibility for your own actions and results, but at the same time you should be pragmatic and look for patterns. Bad weather is like a -5% or -10% for me at least, still, despite my best efforts to be better than that. So it's a minor low point, though obviously much less important than the things inside my direct control.

Random point on productivity AND happiness -- only work with people you like: Right now, I really like everyone I work with. My schedule is very full, so I literally can't take on things unless they're bursting with joy for me. And you know, it's like paradise. Everyone I collaborate with on GGW and projects, all my clients, and everyone I socialize with are people I really enjoy. I'm never going back to doing it the other way -- for expediency, pragmatism, for short money, or whatever. It's been a while since I've only been working with people I REALLY like, and it's such a blessing. I always look forward to my work, even if it's very hard, because I like the people I'm with. This isn't a quick fix thing, but ask yourself: Do you like everyone you work with? Like, a whole lot? If you don't LOVE the people you work with and interact with regularly, you need to start searching and transitioning for a way to ensure you do. Life is exponentially more enjoyable when the people in your corner are people you admire, respect, and want to be around all the time.

Things on my mind lately:

*Finance, budgeting, investing, income, expenses, and generally planning around irregular income.

*I need to create more "anchor content" on the blog.

*I want to feature more of what's going on, more transparency, more sharing lessons hands-on, etc. This was a top request when I polled readers here a while back.

*Health and fitness immediately needs to be re-prioritized.

*I went shooting two weeks at a gun range with a new client of mine, and I've been thinking about going again all week. It'd been a while, but the interest is re-ignited very much so. 

*I had a few different people say to me, "If you made X Product, I'd pay you for it" recently. Both people that I already know and have worked with, and two different readers reaching out to me. I've been thinking about doing that and trying to choose the right one if I do so.

*I've been thinking about incorporating in Dubai and setting up permanent residency there. Just mulling the idea over right now, no rush with it. I haven't been to Dubai since the boom ended, so who knows if it's still good. But I see a bunch of potential advantages to it.

*I'm leaning very strongly now towards visiting the USA briefly for the first time since January 2010. This is kind of almost overwhelming when I think of all the things I could do, people I could see, etc. There's a bunch of admin I could do -- driver's license, bank accounts, new ATM card, things like that. I'm not even sure all the admin I could do. And there's a ton of people I want to see, more than I could possibly go visit. So, that's tricky to figure out.

*I've been giving a lot of thought to how to make it easier for people to join GiveGetWin as volunteers or providers. Noah Gibbs cold emailed me and asked if he could do GiveGetWin and it was a huge success; I'd like to make it very easy for people to reach out that way. 

*I'm always thinking about where else to recruit new GGW providers.

*I want to get more exposure for GGW deals with smarter marketing and more outreach on them. This is happening anyways, but I'd like more of it to happen faster, which is going to require a bit of a creative spark (and then good execution of course).

*I need to learn how to elegantly put out a press release. Or, hell, inelegantly. We need to be putting out press releases at GGW and getting in touch with the media. We're interacting with a lot of noteworthy people and doing noteworthy things -- I want to share everyone's interesting stories and get the word out more.

That's it for this week.

This took a while to write up. Did anyone actually read it all? Was it useful? Feedback? Questions? If you got all the way through this, you really owe it to yourself (and perhaps, me?) to comment and share your thoughts. I read all the comments carefully, and questions and requests do really hone my future content quite a lot, so let me know what you're thinking and you'll get more of what you want going forwards.

He wrote this up, and an introduction of himself and what he does below. He's a really neat guy, so you're going to enjoy meeting him and getting to see his work on philanthropy implementation, design upgrades, processes, and recruiting at GiveGetWin coming forwards. Here's Chris --

***

We are living in the future. 15 years ago, the only way to talk to an average person who was busy was by mailing a letter or voicemail, and now we have a list of options. 10 years ago, it was ridiculously difficult and expensive to get video onto the internet, and now it’s a button away. There is hardly anywhere on Earth that takes longer than a day to get to, and your phone is exponentially more powerful than any computer a decade ago.

I design innovative new products and services around the world for a living, and watching the present catch up to my designs is one of the most exciting things I can think of. Eight years ago I was working with Intel to design a computer that could withstand constant use in the sweltering, dusty environment of rural India and Africa where electricity was unstable. We finally settled on a design about the size of a tank engine that incorporated a car battery, a satellite hookup, a labyrinth of air filters that needed to be changed daily, and a keyboard so sealed from the air that the keys were hard to press. Not beautiful, and each computer cost $10,000 to make, but the villages were happy to finally have internet access out in the middle of nowhere.

Four years ago I was working on a completely different project in rural India, and we were developing what was essentially the next generation of that behemoth. This time it had shrunk down to the size of a large suitcase, slightly too big to carry onto an airplane, but small enough to check. The insides had been upgraded as well, offering stable electricity for long periods and packing an entire server and cel phone antenna inside for internet access. The details aren’t important, but when we were recovering from a long day researching outside, we could plug into the internet and it treated us like we were back home in San Francisco, which made life so much better.

Now there’s BRCK, “your backup generator for the net”. A non-profit company in Kenya has shrunk all of this down to the size of a brick, and it only costs $200. It provides 8 hours of electricity when the power goes out, automatically switches between WiFi and 3G depending on the signal strength, can survive being thrown around in the back of a Jeep bouncing through the countryside, and has software that backs everything up to the cloud, along with whatever apps people develop. And just to rub it in, it looks really stylish.

No matter where you are in the world (and I am writing this from Mongolia, where the internet and electricity are unstable at best), you can always have a solid internet connection, one email away from everyone you know. 15 years ago the first email addresses were appearing in magazine advertisements. We are living in the future.

****

I’m Chris Dame, an Innovation Consultant based in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia for another two weeks before heading around Southeast Asia again. In 2010, I left my job and sold off everything in my downtown San Francisco apartment except a handful of things that fit in my backpack, and I’ve been adventuring the world with just that ever since.

I know that “Innovation Consultant” sounds like a made up job, so let me break down what I do.

Phase 1) Deep research by living with people and getting inside their lives, figuring out what their real problems are, not just what they think they are.

Phase 2) Design potential solutions for these problems, making them as quickly as possible.

Phase 3) Get these prototypes in the hands of people who need them to see if they help people in real, measurable ways, including pure joy.

The goal is to fail as often as possible as quickly as possible so the best solutions rise to the top. If this is successful, the bugs are hammered out and it is sent to the masses. If not, I start all over with new things learned. I’ve done this for everything from worldwide medical services to children’s toys, helping Fortune 100 companies and small third-world artisans alike find their best voice in ways that help real people. Thankfully, it’s always been fun and rewarding.

GiveGetWin is an amazing concept I believe in, and I want to help take it to the next level. Great people giving amazing information, as well as making sure even more people are helped in the most effective ways. I’m here to help you be your best, and with the momentum GiveGetWin already has, I’m just helping aim the greatness.

If you want to know more about me, check out some of my adventures.

How to pack to travel the world indefinitely

Don’t be a hipster traveler.

My visits to Burning Man, North Korea, and getting kicked out of Vietnam.

And feel free to say hi. I’m here, and it’s always great to hear from like-minded people.

Do say hi to Chris! He reads the comments here, or go visit him at Travel True, and we'll keep you update as we work together behind-the-scenes at GiveGetWin.

This passage about Attila is insightful --

Deliberately mingling and confusing force and negotiations, Attila normally proposed peace talks as soon as he invaded. That too was a way of dividing his enemies, for in each case the war party in Constantinople or Ravenna was denied the clarity of an all-out war with no alternative.

It was also part of his method to justify his demands with legal, or at least legalistic, arguments. [...] It hardly mattered if Attila's arguments had any legal merit. Even a thin veneer of plausability was quite enough because he was not trying to persuade a court of law, but instead wanted to divide the counsels of his opponents  When facing Attila, the peace party always had a legalistic argument, however weak, to accept his demands. 

It's commonly recognized that one of the reasons that Hannibal lost to Rome was that he was unable to get full support from the Carthaginian aristocracy to fully back him with men, materials, and money. 

Attila was able to intentionally create this dynamic with his opponents. When a nation is unified in the face of total war, it deploys all its forces and people work on the same page. But Attila created semi-justified positions for accepting his terms and tried to get debates going about how much to mobilize against him, thus slowing down his opponents, leading to smaller mobilizations that were less well-equipped, and giving people an "easier out" to surrender and pay him off.

It's a fascinating book. It can be dry and difficult, and it's not recommended for people new to history. But if you've already read on the period at all, you'd probably incredibly enjoy it.

Well. I know myself, and I've also dined, traveled, socialized, and worked with many people that are heroes and exemplars to the people around them. And I'll tell you this -- there's a hell of a lot of publication bias.

From Wikipedia --

Publication bias is a bias with regard to what is likely to be published, among what is available to be published. Not all bias is inherently problematic – for instance, a bias against publishing lies is often a desirable bias – but one problematic and much-discussed bias is the tendency of researchers, editors, and pharmaceutical companies to handle the reporting of experimental results that are positive (i.e. showing a significant finding) differently from results that are negative (i.e. supporting the null hypothesis) or inconclusive, leading to a misleading bias in the overall published literature. This is usually a bias towards reporting significant results, despite the fact that studies with significant results do not appear to be superior to studies with a null result with respect to quality of design.

The concept was named after publishing in scientific journals -- people would set up correct experiment designs, but abandon the experiments or not publish the results unless something interesting/positive happened.

So, a lion's share of published papers have interesting stuff happening. Yet, when doing good science and testing hypotheses, most attempts to break new ground are going to wind up with your hypothesis wrong or getting inconclusive results.

Likewise, people experimenting in personal development or business development will share all the initiatives they do that worked, but give nowhere near the attention to the ones that didn't work. 

When someone finds a working strategy or intervention that works consistently, they'll publish the hell out of it. When things go off the rails, it usually gets quietly swept under the rug.

In full disclosure, today I had three cans of Red Bull and four giant German pretzels (two were cheese pretzels). I could explain my theory on why that happened (I had an amazing 2-day run of putting in 30 really high quality work hours, followed by 2-3 flat days, a common pattern I've noticed, and I gave in to junkfood and distraction on those days).

So me, am I super disciplined? Maybe sometimes. But you hear a lot more about those times than you do about Laugenbrezel mit Käse und Red Bull.

"Why And How I Started Travel Hacking (And Why You Should, Too)" by Algis Tamosaitis, as told to Sebastian Marshall

I was exploring and experiencing the world from the very beginning.

My parents were into travel, they were from Lithuania, married in Australia, and lived in California. So they didn't want to be "we live in Los Angeles and don't go anywhere. We had relatives in Australia, so I was going there as a little kid.

My mother became a travel agent eventually, and my dad was a private pilot. I was lucky. 

It's hard to describe the first travel experiences. You read about a place, and it never matches up to what you read. Some crazy tiny thing is what connects with you. My Mom and I were going to a farmer's market in Paris, and the food looks very imperfect to me. In Los Angeles, they pick and sell strawberries that have been colored and altered to be big and bright. 

The French strawberries looked funky to me. I said, "I don't want that!" But my Mom made me try it… and it was the most amazing fresh fruit I ever had.

I had a good start, but I slowed down from traveling. What woke me up to it and caused me to dive in so deeply was that both of my parents got cancer in a short period of time.

They didn't get to do a ton of stuff they intended to do. That was my wakeup call to get back into traveling, and do what I want to do with my life.

I was my parents' primary caregiver for seven years. After they passed away, it was one of those things where I was like, "What am I waiting for?" I was reading about people traveling, especially traveling long-term.

It was exciting to me. I booked a trip to go almost around the world through different countries that were very disparate, and it was one of the best things for my thinking and my attitude. I think it's the case for most people -- travel is the fastest way to make you feel alive and reassess where you are currently in life.

That might be because travel makes you realize how stoked you are to be alive, or maybe you want to rethink things and get new influences. At home, you've got your normal breakfast and your routines. On the road, you get new decisions to make all the time, all sorts of choices about even something like breakfast.

I really like one the posts Sebastian wrote, I liked the one where he was watching the people going by the station. Thinking about their lives and the set path they lived, and how his was different. Unless you're there, it's very hard to actually imagine that.

I didn't realize how much travel was changing me at first… I was upset both of my parents passed away… but right away it started to change how I felt. I started seeing hardship in other countries, and realizing certain things are going to happen in life. I began to feel like I should choose my own direction and life, and not just choose what's programmed into me by society. Choosing my own path.

I started being more selective about who I spent time with when I got back, and about what I did with my time… I didn't go on a trip and come back to my exact same life, I was changed afterwards.

I think everyone would benefit from pursuing this, but most people don't. The two main objections I hear is that they don't have the time or the money.

The goal behind my book was to help at least with the money option, to show how cheap it can be. If you want it bad enough, you could book a ticket for $1000 to $1200 from the US to Asia. That's actually not an unreasonable amount of money, and people don't think twice about buying more house than they need, or more car than they need, but there's this weird view that travel is an expensive luxury.

I want to show people how this isn't a luxury -- it's a necessity. It's worth it.

There's also ways to get flights for cheaper, or even for free, especially if you're an American.

Almost everyone in the U.S. has a credit card, and that card should do things for you beside just make money for the bank. That could be earning you miles. Small business owners in particular could be getting a ton of miles.

The airlines make it just barely difficult enough that you have to spend a little bit of time learning how to earn miles, and the people perceive that as being too difficult. But once they've done it once, they're hooked.

I wrote my book is to get people into the game. Once you read it, you're not clueless any more. And then it's just how far and how deep they want to dive into it. The payoff vs. the time invested is totally worth it if you want to travel. And then you realize, there's easily earned miles everywhere. 

The thing that'll move the needle the most is getting an airline-branded credit card, which gets you a free ticket the quickest.

Any of the following three cards is a really good choice to get, I recommend these three the most: Chase Sapphire Preferred, Starwood Preferred Gold AMEX, and the American Express Gold Card.

To get one of these cards, you need to get a decent credit score. Then literally, you Google any of these cards or go to the chase.com website or the americanexpress.com website, and they'll have all the cards with those benefits.

When you search, put "maximum signup bonus" -- the credit card company will give you a lot of miles for signing up. Often, you can get 40,000 or 50,000 miles for getting a card for the first time. A roundtrip ticket to Asia costs around 50,000 miles, so getting just one great card can get you a free ticket. And then, every time you put spending on that credit card, you get airline miles.

One card signup can practically get you to another country.

The next thing people need to know is about airline alliances. You can use American Airlines Miles to fly on Japan Airways or British Airways, for instance. People don't know about that. Basically, you do the best if you earn the most miles in one program, and then you can spend it on their partner airlines.

You can also earn miles when flying another program. Meaning, you could earn American Airlines miles while flying Qantas, British Airways, or Japan Airways. It's a little confusing, but the rule for the person who doesn't travel so much is -- get as many miles in a single program.

The reason I suggested the three above credit cards is because all of them earn points that can be exchanged for many different types of airline miles, so you can then transfer to your ideal program to get the flights you want. That Starwood card gives you a miles bonus and lets you choose between 30 different airlines.

Another thing I always recommend is opting into a dining program. It's free, and it means many restaurants you'll get 3x or 5x as many miles as normal. You're going to get extra miles at the end of the month for eating out.

I recommend you join dining programs with your credit card right away. Every major U.S. airline has mileage dining programs. It's free to join, you just need to be a member of their frequent flyer program which is also free. And you can link the dining program to as many credit or debit card as you want.

I recommend any credit or debit card you'd use at restaurants, you register with the airline you fly on. Tons of restaurants and bars are enrolled in dining programs. You don't even need to think about it after enrolling -- it just means you get free frequent flyer miles. You never have to think about it again after that, and it means you get free miles. It basically is a "set it and forget" kind of thing, it's a free bonus with no cost.

And where should you go for your first trip internationally? My personal favorite place to go is Tokyo, but I think the most important thing is to think about the thing you've always wanted to do since you were a kid. Did you see a movie you connected with, or read books on a topic? Or were your watching Animal Planet and looking at safaris?

The most important thing is not getting caught up in anyone else's recommendations, and instead following your own dreams. For some people, it's a gradual process. If you've never left the United States, maybe a non-English country is scary, and that would limit the options. But that's fine, and pushing the comfort zone even a bit lets you experience something new.

This entire thing is a gradual process. Travel, every single time I'll learn new things. It could be a miles thing, or something about myself, or something about a food I never tasted before, or how the mangoes are in Singapore, or something we don't have in the U.S.

When you travel, all of your senses are going to be engaged. Sometimes I land in a certain country, and Russell Peters does a joke about this when he lands off the plane and it smells totally different. I know a couple times I've landed in Bangkok and humanity is out there. It's not just the people out there, but all the different foods being cooked, the motorbikes, everything -- it's different.

It's exciting. Every new place is exciting. And the other thing I love is that when I go back to a place I really like, it's like visiting an old friend. You can see what spots are changed, you can see if your favorite hole in the wall spots are there. Maybe last time you went by yourself, and now you're going with a significant other and can share your favorite experiences with your SO and bond together. You bond together a lot faster when you're traveling than back home.

You can find Algis at rockyourtravel.com -- you can get his book on Amazon. And of course, you can get a copy of Rock Your Travel plus work hands-on with Algis during an intimate group session through GiveGetWin, with all the proceeds to charity.

Is self-promotion the answer?

Yes. Sort of. But there are a few prerequisites.

1. You must have the work you're performed tied to value you're delivering to the organization and individual evaluating you. Don't be a commodity.

2. The person evaluating you must like and trust you. Or at least, respect you.

3. Then, and only then, will some tactful self-promotion pay off.

Let's go a little deeper --

1. You're not coming across as a commodity, are you?

Being commodified is near-fatal for being recognized. The thought is, "Don't make too much noise, don't take too much of my time, I don't want to pay you too much, and get it done fast." When you're commodified, you don't earn well, you don't get respected, and you don't have much say in the matter.

The way out of this is to find the value that your service really delivers. If you were setting up IT, don't focus on sync'ing, intranets, and a great email provider. Focus instead on people really enjoying their computers (instead of hating them), focus on getting more work done (and pleasurably), focus on the headaches the people had before and how you're solving them, and focus on increased productivity and profits. 

You can only get this information through asking smart questions. If you take an order for work without diving into why they really want it done then you're stuck in commodity-land. The more you dive in and deliver on the points the matter to the buyer/decisionmaker, the better off you are.

Two notes on that topic: first, you need to find what the individual evaluating cares about in addition to the organization. Sometimes it can be very different. This can be accomplished with questions like, "And what do you want to see, personally, out of this project? Why did you take this assignment on? How will you be evaluated?" This is very important when dealing with someone who is part of a larger organization.

Second note -- some bosses or clients only want commodity work, and do not have the sophistication, nuance, or ambition to appreciate higher level work that's executed masterfully. The answer is to get better clients (or a better boss).

2. Does the person you're working with like and trust you?

It's a frequent mistake that people make when establishing themselves. They want to "get right down to business." But sometimes, it makes sense to take a little longer to get to know and like the people you're working with.

If you're an anonymous name or face in the crowd, you're very unlikely to be appreciated. People just don't work like that. People care about the professional success of people whom they also care about the personal success with.

This isn't to say you should schmooze with people you dislike. Rather, you should start narrowing how and where you work so you incredibly like the people you're working with. If you saw "networking with clients/boss/whatever" as difficult, you'd burn out quickly if you tried. But if you genuinely enjoy and respect the people you work with, it becomes a no-brainer to go to sports matches, go out to eat and drink together, do adventure sports together, even vacation together with your families. If you don't have this kind of relationship with your clients, where you'd be downright excited to to hang out for a few more dates after a grueling work-marathon together, then you need new clients. You can't compartmentalize your life into "people you like" and "people you work with" -- unless you want to be miserable (and underappreciated).

(Also note that most people don't have this dynamic with the people they work with. Also, most people don't enjoy their work. And most people aren't highly paid. Correlation isn't causation, but maybe something is going on here...)

3. Then, tactfully self-promote.

Self-promotion gets a bad rap, but the fact is, most work is somewhat invisible. When things "just work" it isn't always obvious it took 15 hours to get it that way. 

If you've never been involved in throwing an event before, for instance, it's hard to know quite how much work goes into it. Even a small-gathering takes many hours of tiny logistical details beforehand to make it go smoothly, and cleanup and consolidation afterwards. And things very often go wrong and need to be dealt with deftly by the host and their team.

Self-promotion can be tacky, so make it not tacky. A couple ways to do so are to make behind-the-scenes looks at what's happening, and make relevant documentation materials for future use. 

Behind-the-scenes videos, updates, processes, and inside-looks are exciting for people and are valuable for people who want to understand what you do. Putting together a case study or behind-the-scene look takes a lot of time if you do it separately, but isn't too prohibitive if you do it simultaneously with what you're doing.

Documentation also helps. When someone sees that the documentation for throwing an event is 15 pages long, it's all incredibly relevant with no fluff, etc, it makes people realize how much actually goes into it that they never thought of. 

Don't forget to put the name of yourself and especially the key team members who were part of it. Give lots of credit to the people who, for instance, decorated, handled any lights/audio, helped with setup and cleanup, and so on. If you have external partners (caterer, bar staff, etc) then feature them heavily and give them copies of the materials, as well as a reference for their boss and future clients (if they did a good job).

You need to self-promote, yes, but you should make all your self-promotion valuable for other people involved as much as yourself. Having your name on materials is much less valuable than taking great care of everyone that was involved alongside you -- and if you treat people really well, they'll speak about you for ages afterwards. I've written tons of reference letters in my life, and I'm constantly surprised how often I'm getting asked if they're still relevant and getting inquiries about those. Most people simply won't spend the 5-10 minutes after a project to consolidate and appreciate the key people they did it with, even though that last step accounts for so incredibly much in terms of how it's remembered by key people involved.

Recap

If you're not being enough recognition at work, it's probably because...

1. You didn't tie what you're doing to the end-value that the relevant people/organization wants. You don't do graphic design; you make the firm look super professional, help them win more business from their competitors at higher fees, and make the person giving out their card or writing on the letterhead feel powerful and prestigious. Deliver value, not commodities.

2. You're not liked, respected, or trusted on a personal level. You've got to want to be friends and enjoy the company of the key people you work with. If you don't legitimately want to spend time with people you work with after work hours, you need to change jobs, roles, or get transferred. When you loooove the people you work with, it's easy to build great personal relationships. And it's hard to have great work relationships without great personal relationships.

3. And then, did you promote the work enough? If you don't self-promote, rest assured that no-one else will. Everyone is busy. Highlight what you did, in a way that's also valuable to the busy people involved. Liberally give credit and highlight the contributions of everyone involved, create interesting behind-the-scenes footage, or create documentation and procedures to make things go smoothly next time -- which also shows how much you accomplished. A quick recap summary or report might also be in order, depending on the field.

Alright, now stop selling commodities, build some value, make sure you love the people you work with, and make sure you promote what you all accomplished together -- that's easier said than done, but a nearly guaranteed formula for success.

If you have two radically differ subjects to cover with one person, send two different emails.

That way, they'll get messages like this:

From: Sebastian / Subject: Scubadiving in Cozumel in June

From: Sebastian / Subject: Required forms for accounting and corporate minutes

That's much better than getting:

From: Matthew / Subject: Scubadiving in Cozumel + Required accounting and corporate minutes

Why? Many reasons. Here's a few:

1. The likelihood that someone is processing both vacation planning and corporate formalities/accounting at the same moment is virtually zero. 

2. It's easier to "pick off" one or two of the messages quickly on the go if they're not crammed into the same email.

3. If there's more than one topic, you can get, "Did I get to this other one yet...?" moments.

4. When you get a reply, you know what topic it's about.

5. Easier to skim to see what needs to be done still.

6. Easier to search and find the relevant messages later.

I recommend you do this even if you have four or five unrelated subjects.

You can of course group messages together if they're very similar ("Agendas for the next two weeks," similar kinds of paperwork, reports/resources on the same topic) or if no action is required.

If there's no action required and it's a "just giving you a quick update" message, I like to start the message with "No action required, just keeping you in the loop" so the person can archive it after reading without thinking.

Break up your messages! It makes people's lives much easier. It only takes a few seconds more, and it's much better than having one gigantic message with a million things going on. It's often little communications upgrades that make you a better communicator, so jump on this one and stop sending people "War and Peace" length messages covering eight topics!

"...the question now is how to rise from the subordinate position we have imagined you in, through the successive grades to the position for which you are, in my opinion, and, I trust, in your own, evidently intended. I can give you the secret. It lies mainly in this. Instead of the question, "What must I do for my employer?" substitute "What can I do?" [Sebastian note: substitute "customers" or "clients" if you're running a business or self-employed] Faithful and conscientious discharge of the duties assigned you is all very well, but the verdict in such cases generally is that you perform your present duties so well that you had better continue performing them. Now, young gentlemen, this will not do. It will not do for the coming partners. There must be something beyond this. We make Clerks, Bookkeepers, Treasurers, Bank Tellers of this class, and there they remain to the end of the chapter. The rising man must do something exceptional, and beyond the range of his special department. HE MUST ATTRACT ATTENTION. A shipping clerk, he may do so by discovering in an invoice an error with which he has nothing to do, and which has escaped the attention of the proper party. If a weighing clerk, he may save for the firm by doubting the adjustment of the scales and having them corrected, even if this be the province of the master mechanic. If a messenger boy, even he can lay the seed of promotion by going beyond the letter of his instructions in order to secure the desired reply. There is no service so low and simple, neither any so high, in which the young man of ability and willing disposition cannot readily and almost daily prove himself capable of greater trust and usefulness, and, what is equally important, show his invincible determination to rise.

Some day, in your own department, you will be directed to do or say something which you know will prove disadvantageous to the interest of the firm. Here is your chance. Stand up like a man and say so. Say it boldly, and give your reasons, and thus prove to your employer that, while his thoughts have been engaged upon other matters, you have been studying during hours when perhaps he thought you asleep, how to advance his interests. You may be right or you may be wrong, but in either case you have gained the first condition of success. You have attracted attention. Your employer has found that he has not a mere hireling in his service, but a man; not one who is content to give so many hours of work for so many dollars in return, but one who devotes his spare hours and constant thoughts to the business. Such an employee must perforce be thought of, and thought of kindly and well. It will not be long before his advice is asked in his special branch, and if the advice given be sound, it will soon be asked and taken upon questions of broader bearing. This means partnership; if not with present employers then with others. Your foot, in such a case, is upon the ladder; the amount of climbing done depends entirely upon yourself.

One false axiom you will often hear, which I wish to guard you against: "Obey orders if you break owners." Don't you do it. This is no rule for you to follow. Always break orders to save owners. There never was a great character who did not sometimes smash the routine regulations and make new ones for himself. The rule is only suitable for such as have no aspirations, and you have not forgotten that you are destined to be owners and to make orders and break orders. Do not hesitate to do it whenever you are sure the interests of your employer will be thereby promoted and when you are so sure of the result that you are willing to take the responsibility. You will never be a partner unless you know the business of your department far better than the owners possibly can. When called to account for your independent action, show him the result of your genius, and tell him that you knew that it would be so; show him how mistaken the orders were. Boss your boss just as soon as you can; try it on early. There is nothing he will like so well if he is the right kind of boss; if he is not, he is not the man for you to remain with--leave him whenever you can, even at a present sacrifice, and find one capable of discerning genius. Our young partners in the Carnegie firm have won their spurs by showing that we did not know half as well what was wanted as they did. Some of them have acted upon occasion with me as if they owned the firm and I was but some airy New Yorker presuming to advise upon what I knew very little about. Well, they are not interfered with much now. They were the true bosses--the very men we were looking for."

The whole piece is worth reading and takes 5-10 minutes to read.