The Keynote speech at a recent WordCamp in San Francisco was given by Tim Ferriss, author of the hugely successful book, The 4-hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich.

The keynote titled – “How to Blog without Killing Yourself.” talks about how he successfully used his blog to aid in promoting his book, and methods he uses for measuring the success of various aspects of his site.

I’m quickly becoming a big fan of Tim’s.

Both the book and his website are full of tremendous information, and both highly worth taking the time to read. Be aware, this video isn’t short. It comes in just over 50 minutes, but if you are looking to take that next step with your blog or website, I highly recommend you take the time to watch it.

“Once you say you’re going to settle for second, that’s what happens to you in life.”
- John F. Kennedy

Throughout our lives, there are times when we amble through our days in a fog of indifference and perceived comfort. These periods are usually caused by a relationship we take for granted, a job that no longer has any meaning or challenge to us, or loss of belief in our own capabilities. We settle for what we have because a deep lethargy has settled over us, and to strive for more is a dangerous proposition because we fear to fail. We would rather be comfortable now, than risk taking any chances and losing what we have come to believe is an ideal situation; our lot in life.

Deep into these periods something usually crumbles.

Just because we are comfortable in the relationship doesn’t mean our partner is. Though we coast through days in our job, those around us, and those who decide if we’re worth our pay-cheque, notice that there is no longer any ambition, eagerness, or pride to our work.

It’s at this point someone else in your life takes the decision away from you, and informs you that things can no longer go on the way they are, completely destroying the comfort zone you have been existing in. They make a decision that gives you no option but to stop, take stock of your life, and hopefully make you realise how unfullfilling and joyless your life had become.

When All Comfort is Gone

When this change is forced on you an initial sense of panic sets in. The safe and comfortable world you had been blindly wandering through has become unfamiliar and hostile, and in that panic you strive to regain that sense of that normalcy.

When you realise it can’t be regained, and that even if you could return to the status quo the doubts that it could all fall apart again would gnaw at you, you begin to ask yourself questions filled with fear and self-doubt. What if you aren’t capable of recovering from this setback? What if those moments were the best you could do? What if you lose even more? What if? What if? What if?

As long as you ask these questions of yourself you remain locked in this cycle of fear and inaction. Each person is different, each person comes to the same realisation in his or her own time but each, and every, person eventually comes to it.

The Realisation

The day you stop asking “What if?” and begin deciding what’s next, is the day everything begins to change. You come to a point where you have to stop looking backwards, because all you see is the indifference and lethargy that lead you into this situation.

Looking forward you begin to see the possibilities that are out there waiting for you to grasp; the opportunities you had been missing because of the fog you were walking in. You realise that most are not some far away dream that would always be unattainable to you, but are in fact very achievable if the correct steps are taken. The world has re-awoken for you all because of that one moment of adversity. You find that spark deep within yourself that drove you so far in the past being reignited, and is slowly beginning to shine. You look at your life as a whole and find where things require repairing, replacing, and improving.

You realise that being stuck in a comfort zone is a terrible place to be. You should never settle for what you have, but strive to improve it. You can always make a great relationship better, you can always push your boundaries at work, and you can always, always improve yourself. All it takes is to truly look at yourself, faults and all, and decide what you actually want from life.

Fear and indifference are the worst of you, push them aside and look for what brings the joy into your life. Frequently adversity is the driving force behind us taking that first step, but it doesn’t need to be.

“Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If only that were the case for every week. Unfortunately this isn’t a new setup at work, it’s not something I’ve managed to agree with my new position. Instead I’ve taken today and tomorrow as annual leave because my Little Sister graduates from university later this morning.

We’re going to go see her graduate, and then later today we’re all going to go out for dinner. Knowing my Sister as I do, I expect we’ll all end up very, very drunk tonight. It’s this little fact that made me decide to take tomorrow off work too. I don’t think I’d be able to drag myself out of bed, and into the office before 9am tomorrow, and even if I did I seriously doubt I’d be of any use to anyone.

That’s them here to pick me up. There should be photo’s of today up on Flickr tomorrow if my hangover isn’t all consuming.

I thought I should mention that the site is getting something of a makeover at the moment. I just bought the amazing premium Wordpress theme “Thesis” from diythemes.com and I’m trying to get to grips with all the options available. There are tons!!

Anyway this is just a heads up that the site is going to look crazy for a little while as I play with Thesis and get it looking the way I want.

Typically after the trip to London, and the few days of partying in a row, I ended my weekend a little run down and picked up a bug of some description. Because of this I’ve spent the last few days feeling a bit crappy and working from home instead of dragging myself into the office. It’s given me a slight insight into what I need to do for a Mobility project I’m beginning to develop in my new role at work. So far over the last few days I’ve seen what works, and what could be made better. I’ve yet to hit a specific problem I know exists so I can’t be sure how that fault is occurring.

As I’m a little under the weather I’m not really doing the same amount of work I’d be doing if I worked from home on a normal day. My head is just a little too fuzzy to completely focus on anything major. So it could be I’m not seeing a few of the problems because the sustained volume of work isn’t happening. Then there might be the simple fact that I work very differently from a lot of the staff who have reported the problem. I don’t think it’s something I’m going to figure out today anyway.

Once I’m fully up and running in my new role I think I need to have a few meetings with people, who tend to work remotely, and get all of their individual issues with the current setup logged. Then spend a solid week, where I’m not ill, working from home and see if I can replicate any of those issues. The long term goal of this is obviously to be able to work from anywhere on most days of the week, and only really go into the office when I physically have to.

Hopefully that’s something I’m going to be able to make happen in my new role away from support.

Tomorrow morning David and I are heading down to our London office to do some user training, and sort out a few things for a major project that is looming on our horizon. The London trip, while rubbish for work reasons, is usually a lot of fun. I tend to go out with the guys from the office on the Thursday night, and I also get to catch up with my friend Chloe while I’m there.

The one real issue I have with the trip though, is the 5.50 am train we always use to get there. It’s much more comfortable than flying, but it so damn early I’m like the walking dead for the rest of the day. It doesn’t help that my insomnia usually kicks in during the run up to this trip and I’ll lie awake until at least 3 am tonight, before forcing myself out of bed at 5.

All the sleep deprivation aside it is usually a good few days, where I tend to get really creative, (I attribute that to having practically no sleep for the remainder of the week), and I get to hang out with people I don’t see as much as I’d like to these days. If they could make the train faster so it left Edinburgh a lot later but got me into London at the same time it would be perfect.

As I’ve come to the conclusion that my time is far more valuable than anything else, I decided to go through all of my RSS feeds again and strip out those that I didn’t read as diligently as I should. Even though I’d brought the list of RSS feeds down by a substantial number a few months ago there were still too many sitting in NetNewsWire. Once the decision to go through them, and unsubscribe from ones that I deemed less valuable to me than spending that time doing something else was made, I spent some time this evening  weighing up exactly how many sites I actively read and how many were still there because they might have something I found useful.

When asking myself whether my time is valuably spent reading these sites or not the culling process became slightly easier. I’d already organised most of the feeds into a “Must Read” folder and several other categories. Needless to say the “Must Read” feeds are still there. Other’s that weren’t “Must Read” but I enjoy for the content stayed, as well as the purely informational ones (my web hosts status feed & the MobileMe status feed for example). Discounting the status feeds, and my own feeds, (used to make sure there are no problems with them), I managed to cut around 150 feeds down to 35.

Here are a handful that survived the cull, and I highly recommend you check them out.

Whatever – The blog of author John Scalzi. This should be read by everyone.
Penny Arcade – Home of the fantastic Penny Arcade web comic.
Rapid Eye Reality – Brad ‘Otis’ Willis is a fantastic writer I suggest you all read.
Tao of Pauly – The personal blog of Dr Pauly from Tao of Poker fame.
The Totally Rad Show – A Video podcast talking about movies, video games and much more. My favourite video podcast out there.

There are obviously more that I think are worthwhile uses of my time, otherwise these would be the only ones left in my RSS Reader. I’ll save them for another time.

The last week has been one of varying states of being for me. I spent last Saturday at the Taste of Edinburgh festival enjoying the beautiful sunshine, and eating some fantastic food. Then rounded off the day with a couple of friends drinking some really nice wine that we’d bought earlier in the day. My weekend was relaxing, and at a pace where I found myself smiling again without any prompting.

Then the work week began.

Six months ago I was a day or two from quitting my job. I’d gone on a few very good interviews and was the front runner for a decent job, on more money, with more responsibility. I had one final interview to go through, which wouldn’t have been a problem, and then the job was pretty much mine. Word that I was about to leave filtered back to our HR department and I was asked to go in for a chat because they were worried I was going to go. The main point that came from the meeting wasn’t that I deserved more money, (I do, and I made sure that was noted), but that the way my current job works is stealing the life from me. Each and every day was more and more depressing, and became increasingly difficult to make myself get out of bed and walk to work.

The meeting brought around a few others, with more senior staff members, and I was told if I wanted to leave they wouldn’t stand in my way, but they wanted me to stay and would try to work something out. A week or so passed and there was discussions where a new, more challenging and responsible role was developed. A few things were required to be put into position first but in a month or so things would change for the better. A couple of month passed and there was a lot of talk but little action. The role that was discussed changed, before coming back to closer to the original idea, and I thought things were finally going to happen. Then a few more months went by. I asked time and again what the situation was, and found out how slowly things were actually progressing.

Here we are six months later and I’m still doing the same shit I was doing last year. The renewed enthusiasm I had for the IT world has slowly been chipped away by every week of inaction and I awoke on Monday with a feeling I’ve not had in a while, dejection. It wasn’t until I had such a relaxing and enjoyable weekend that I realised how badly this lack of progress in my working life has been affecting me. It wasn’t until I looked back on the last few months that I realised I’d been walking around, head down, without any joy in my steps. I’d reverted back to the state I was in six months ago that I was sure had been beaten.

I believe the new position is going to happen, although not as quickly as I’d like. I trust the people making these decisions because they are good people, and they know keeping me around, and enthusiastic is a good thing for the company. I expect that the change will happen in the next month or two. I also expect that in the long run it’s going to be too little too late. My spirit is pretty badly damaged.

I may be wrong of course but the last six months of sitting and waiting on other people helped shape a few thoughts I’ve been having. It helped me realise that I’m at a point in my life where I want to control how my day is spent, and what the best use of my time is. Our time on this rock is finite, and to spend six months of it sitting and waiting, while dealing with one insignificant IT request after another is just wrong. My time is the most valuable thing I have and it is being unforgivably wasted by work, and more unforgivably wasted by me.

With these thoughts running through my head I finally decided to pick up a copy of The 4-hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich by Tim Ferriss. I’d heard some great things about it and thought I’d give it a read and see if there was anything I could make use of. It turns out there was… the whole thing! Reading it yesterday it was as if someone had finally switched a light on in my brain. The things I was reading made so much sense, and I lost track of the number of times I told myself that I should have already thought of that point. That first quick read through has already sparked my enthusiasm for changing my situation. I always work hard at what I’m doing but it’s now time to work smarter and put myself in a position where I control my time. I really wish I’d bought this book six months ago it really would have made things much different.

I’m still not looking forward to going into work in the morning, but now I have a renewed scense of optimism that I can make changes in my working life that dramatically improve it’s quality. The path to a better life starts now and step by step, inch by inch, I’m going to follow it until I’m where I want to be. There’s light at the end of the tunnel, you just have to want to go stand in it.

Paul O'Connell British Lions Captain (image from http://lionsrugby.com)

Saturday marks the first game in the British and Irish Lions tour of South Africa. Their first game will be against the Royal XV in Phokeng. The starting team were announced a little earlier this morning and I’m delighted that Mike Blair has been given the chance to show what he’s capable of.

For some reason the fact that the tour starts in two days completely took me be surprise. I’ve obviously known when the first game was going to take place, but the announcement of the team this morning completely caught me of guard. The surprise is really that it’s almost June already. Where has 2009 gone?

While I love these provincial games in the tour, I’m obviously looking forward to the tests against South Africa much more. I have some fantastic memories of watching the last Lions tour to South Africa back in 1997 and on occasion will still watch my Living with Lions DVD with one of my flatmates. With Jim Telfer’s motivational speeches still being some of the most inspiring speeches I’ve ever heard.

The fact that Ian McGeechan is the Head Coach again, and there are a few Scot’s in this squad, helps to keep my interest. It also helps that the games will be on TV at a reasonable time of the day, and not extremely early in the morning as the last two tours have been.

Annoyingly because of other commitments I’m going to miss the game on Saturday, I’m intending on watching every other game on the tour. I have a good feeling about this tour. We have a really good squad, and I honestly think they’re good enough to beat South Africa once again.

For all your Lions tour news check out the official Lions website – LionsRugby.com

Image from the BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk

Congratulations to FC Barcelona. They deserved to be crowned Champions after that magnificent performance last night. I must admit it surprised me that they outclassed, and out played Manchester United to the extent they did. I fully expected Man Utd to take advantage of their make shift defence, and dominate the game.

Of course it’s difficult to dominate the game if you never have the ball. The central pairing of Ineista and Xavi must surely be the most talented midfield partnership in the World. The understanding they both seem to have with each other was a joy to watch. With the ball at either of their feet they completely controlled the middle of the park and made the Man Utd midfield look like they had no clue what they were doing.

While the superb performance of Ineista and Xavi would probably have been enough to control this match. Man Utd then had to deal with the magnificent Lionel Messi. His creative influence and attacking threat decimated the Man Utd defence. There was a moment in the match when he was surrounded by three players, fouled, and then managed to get to his feet first while still in complete control of the ball. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and my flatmate and I both had a look of wonder on our faces for a few minutes.

I never realised how much Man Utd depended on Darren Fletcher in the middle of the park. While I doubt he would have been able to stop the domination by Barcelona, I do believe Xavi and Iniesta would not have had the same influence over the game that they had. Even with Fletcher there to attempt to wrestle control of the match from Barcelona, too many Man Utd players just didn’t perform. Much of that can be attributed to the fact that they never seemed to have the ball for more than a few seconds at a time, but their attacks just seemed rushed, and unfocused, especially when compared to Barcelona’s methodical and precise attacking style.

Barcelona truly deserved their win last night. They are the best attacking team in the world by far, and simple joy to watch. Man Utd while a fantastic team, will need to take a hard look at themselves, and strengthen that midfield for next season. There are a couple of players just not good enough, that became obvious when they stood against the current Champions of Europe, and were found wanting.