Climb to the Stars

Links for 2009-11-20 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-21T00:00:00-08:00

Study Hacks » Blog Archive » Fixed-Schedule Productivity: How I Accomplish a Large Amount of Work in a Small Number of Work Hours

Weekly Planning, First Attempt

2009-11-20T15:00:41Z

[fr]

Cette semaine, pour la première fois, j'ai réparti mes tâches sur la semaine au lieu de travailler au jour le jour comme j'en ai l'habitude.

[en]

As I mentioned in a recent post, I felt the next step to take in my “work life improvement” series was to plan beyond the day, and start looking at my weeks so that I can start building in time for long-term projects. I’ve done this for the first time this week, and overall, the result is pretty positive. Here’s roughly how I did it and what I learned.

1. Define office days and meeting days

This has to be done in advance, obviously, or the calendar fills up. I usually have either two or three of each in a week (minimum one). Every now and again exceptions slip in and an office day turns into a half-baked errand/meeting day, but I try not to. I think I can still improve the way I plan and manage these days (for example: errands vs. meetings, laundry days, exceptions for “immediate” paid work…).

2. Define “areas” that next actions fall in

I’ve refined the list I brainstormed in my “balance in the office” post and come up with these four areas:

things other people expect me to do (paid work, projects involving others, getting back to prospects…)
longer term business development (taking care of my sites, creating documentation, direct marketing…)
stuff I want to do more of (blogging, research, fooling around with cool toys, write ebooks and fiction…)
admin and daily business (personal and professional, checking e-mail, emptying physical inbox, accounting…)

These are my areas — yours might be different. Suw and I chatted about this on Skype on Monday and hers are slightly different from mine. Just find something that makes sense to you.

Looking at my areas, it’s easy for me to see that “bizdev” and “stuff I want to do” are the two areas which will easily be left aside if I just work day-by-day doing things as they become urgent (in bad cases, call this the “Fireman Syndrome”). If you don’t do stuff people expect you to do, sooner or later they nag you or you get in trouble. Same with admin: forget your taxes or invoicing long enough, and you’ll get in trouble.

As there were almost no tasks in these two areas, I realised that to fill them up, I probably need to do a little longer-term planning. For example, what are the things I want to do in the “bizdev” department over the next 6 months? Over the next month? That will help me generate next actions. Otherwise… I’m just flying blind.

3. Sort upcoming next actions in those defined areas

The way I’ve worked these last months I would have one “master” next action list (in Evernote — I love Evernote) and I would regularly “pull out” the 3-10 next things I was going to deal with, under headings like “today”, and then “next”, or sometimes a specific day.

What I did this week is that I first sorted this “master list” into the four areas I defined. I just made four big headings in my list, and that was that.

4. Plan the week!

This is the fun bit, actually. I just made another 5 “day” headings at the top of my list (Monday to Friday) and then started moving items to given days, making sure the urgent stuff was in there, as well as a certain amount of less urgent stuff (specifically from my two “left aside” areas, bizdev and stuff I want to do more of). Two things to pay attention to:

don’t plan to do stuff on errand/manager days, even if you see you will have some office time (a weekly plan is for the “minimum to accomplish” — if you have too much time you can always grab things to do from your master list or even… take time off!)
remember that a fair amount of what you do in your week is going to appear during the week, so leave plenty of buffer time for the unexpected and the unplanned.

5. As the week rolls on…

One of the reasons I like having my tasks in an Evernote note is that they have these neat little “todo” checkboxes (keyboard shortcut: alt-shift-T) that I can check as I go along. Sometimes I’ll do something that wasn’t planned for precisely this day, or that is still on the master list. Well, I check it, and it feels nice. It’s also nice to see a day with a list of completely checked tasks by the time I leave the office.

My Tuesday was a meeting day, but I made the mistake of planning quite a lot of stuff to do on that day because it looked as if I was going to have enough time in the office. Big mistake. So halfway through my Tuesday, I grabbed nearly all the items I had placed under the Tuesday heading and dumped them under Wednesday (a full office day).

On Wednesday, I didn’t manage to do everything I had planned (unsurprisingly, as I shifted the “Tuesday problem” to Wednesday). So I checked the actions I did accomplish and left the others unchecked. This meant that Thursday, in addition to the rather modest list of things I had planned to do (buffer time, remember? specially at the end of the week) I was able to go back and check tasks that were leftover from Wednesday. But I didn’t move them over to Thursday — somehow it felt better to be able to start Thursday with a “clean slate” and catch up when I felt like it.

So, Monday morning, I’ll be wiping the slate clean and planning next week — looking forward to it!Similar Posts:

Links for 2009-11-19 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-20T00:00:00-08:00

The Reality of a Times Bestseller | GENREALITY

Sandy’s clothes insisted on moving around

2009-11-19T19:04:31Z

Sandy’s clothes insisted on moving around in her cupboard. Nobody believed her. She even put cameras in her bedroom to prove that she wasn’t sleepwalking.

She fell in love with John, whose clothes misbehaved similarly.

The clothes were enchanted by their cupboards. The young couple learned to harness their magic.

This is a 50-word short story. Read more by me on CTTS or by others too on Facebook.Similar Posts:

Bagha’s Story, First Part, First Draft

2009-11-19T16:34:31Z

[fr]

Ma grand-mère m'a dit plusieurs fois que je devrais écrire un livre pour enfants basé sur l'histoire de vie de Bagha. Cet été, j'ai enfin commencé à écrire. C'est incomplet et c'est surtout un point de départ, mais je le publie ici pour que vous puissiez déjà le lire!

[en]

My grandma has told me many times that I should make a children’s book out of Bagha’s life-story. Sometime this summer, I actually started writing. I’ve not told the end of the story yet (maybe there is more than one book to write?) and it’s a very rough first draft, but I thought I might as well publish it here for you to check out. Feedback is welcome, as well as leads to interested illustrators!

The adventures of Bagha Byne the lucky Indian cat

Once upon a time, far far away in India, there lived a little kitten. He was tabby and white, like a little tiger.

He was still very small, so he lived with his mother and brother on the balcony of an abandoned house in the astrophysics campus. He didn’t have a name yet.

One day, a tall lady caught the little kitten and took it into her home. He was very frightened, so he hissed and spat and made his fur stand on end.

But the lady gave him warm milk in a bottle and petted him gently. “This is a nice lady,” he thought.

Day after day, she fed him milk and took care of him. Soon he forgot about his mother and brother and was very happy with the lady. The lady had a husband and a three-legged dog.

They called him Bagha.

Bagha quickly grew up to be a strong healthy young cat. He hunted geckos and mice. He got into fights with the older tomcats living around the house, and chased away the other young cats who tried to settle down too near.

One day, Bagha got into a big fight with his dad, who was a fierce tomcat. They fought and fought on the balcony. All of a sudden, Bagha took a big whack on the nose and fell from the balcony! The lady saw him and was very frightened. His nose was bleeding a lot. She put Bagha in a box and took him for a noisy ride across town to see the vet. Luckily, he wasn’t hurt very badly, and his nose had almost stopped bleeding by the time they arrived. He did keep a bumpy rib and bent nose for the rest of his life after the fight, though.

When Bagha was about one year old, the lady had a baby. Bagha too had had children, and he shared the big house with his daughter, who looked just like him. She liked hiding in the gutters and sleeping on top of the mosquito nets. Bagha liked sleeping next to the baby or behind somebody’s knees.

Bagha was a very happy pampered cat. He could go wherever he pleased, had a nice cosy home full of silk saris he could sleep on, friendly humans to pet him and rub his belly, and minced beef for supper.

When the baby was one year old, the family grew bigger again: another tall lady came to live in the house. She liked Bagha a lot. Though the first tall lady took care of Bagha well, she was now very busy with the baby. Bagha’s daughter had disappeared and the lady’s husband had gone to England for a few months. So, Bagha was very happy to have another human to fuss over him and quite soon, he started sleeping on the new lady’s bed every night.

Many months later, the new lady came back home with a rather large wicker basket. The basket had a lid. The baby played with it and hid inside. The lady started preparing big boxes and emptying the room she and Bagha slept in.

Then one morning, she put Bagha into the wicker basket and they got into a big Jeep with all her things. They drove for hours and hours until they reached the big city. Bagha was hot and a bit worried, but the lady was with him and kept him company. In the big city, he was allowed out of the basket, but he was so tired and hot that he just lay down in the bedroom until it was time to leave again.Similar Posts:

Links for 2009-11-18 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-19T00:00:00-08:00

Links for 2009-11-16 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-17T00:00:00-08:00

About Free Consulting

2009-11-16T13:46:06Z

[fr]

On m'approche régulièrement pour me demander ce que j'appelle du "consulting gratuit". Mon feedback sur ceci, discuter d'un produit, etc. Lisez l'article anglais pour avoir droit à toutes les subtilités de ma tentative de résoudre l'épineuse question "quand est-ce que je facture, quand est-ce que je fais gratuit?" -- mais en très résumé, à moins que l'on ne se connaisse déjà bien:

je ne suis pas disponible pour des rencontre informelles "professionnelles" dont l'objet n'est pas un mandat concret -- si vous m'approchez pour mes services, soyez donc clair à ce sujet dès la première prise de contact;
pour avoir mon feedback sur quelque chose, ou me parler d'une idée, le mieux est de me croiser à une conférence, un apéro ou un p'tit déj de l'eclau, un Bloggy Friday, une soirée networking;
ne me demandez pas de faire faire gratuitement ce pour quoi je me fais habituellement payer (conférences, consulting, mise en place de sites/blogs et leur gestion, formation, écrire, promouvoir des événements...)

Ça paraît très limitant pour quelqu'un qui prône le "80% gratuitement". Ce n'est bien sûr pas aussi simple que ça, de rester ouvert tout en posant des limites.

Le point important à retenir, et qui passe peut-être un peu mal, c'est que tout ça (ce que je fais pour vous) dépendra en grande partie de la relation que nous avons. Ce que j'offrirai à mes amis proches, collègues, ou partenaires de travail dans des relations mutuellement bénéfiques, je ne serai pas nécessairement disposée à l'offrir à un inconnu (ou même un ami d'ami) qui me contacte pour me le demander. Aussi, s'il y a dans l'histoire des bénéfices évidents pour moi côté expérience ou visibilité, je vais aussi être flexible.

Mais au final, c'est ainsi que fonctionne le monde, non, et on le sait bien?

[en]

Regularly, I’m approached by people who would like to see me for a chat or a coffee. Sometimes I know the person in question, and sometimes I don’t. Usually, the topic of the chat/coffee will be:

tell me about their product/startup/idea and get my feedback on it;
discuss common business opportunities.

Now, first, let me state that there is nothing wrong with informal chats about things. But it can be quite a can of worms when you start putting your nose into the issue of “what do I do for free, what do I get paid for?“

I’ve written at least two articles on the topic (both in French). One was a rant about being asked to do things for free (or almost) again and again, and the second more recent one is about giving away 80% of my work for free.

Do you see the contradiction? Therein lies the can of wriggly worms.

There are situations where I do things “for free” and am very happy to do so. Usually, at least one of the following applies:

it’s my project or idea (blogging is the most obvious example)
it’s for a close friend or somebody I have a close “two-way” professional relationship with
there is an obvious long-term benefit in it for me.

As you can see, all this is very “me-centred”. To be honest, if I don’t see what I’m getting out of it, then it feels like work and I am going to charge for it (so that I get something — cash — out of it).

Now, there are a few other things to take into account:

there are limits to what I’ll do for free even for close friends or colleagues
I’m happy to provide “brain time” in social settings like conferences, apéros, etc. — because of the “networking” atmosphere which allows me to manage my involvement comfortably, and because I’m there anyway
I don’t usually take time to go and take a “networking coffee” with people I do not know unless it is clear that we are discussing a concrete business opportunity for me, or I have a specific reason for wanting to get to know them (I prefer to spend my available “coffee time” seeing my friends)
I see a lot of new products fly by me and rarely stop to investigate beyond a cursory glance unless (a) that cursory glance “hooks” me (b) my network keeps drawing my attention towards something (this means I don’t pay any attention to press releases or “pushed” information about new stuff)
the amount of current paid work I’m doing clearly has an influence on how flexible I am with my “brain time”
“mutual business opportunities” can be more or less one-sided (ie, be of more interest to one party than the other) — for them to be “mutual” my interest needs to be pretty obvious to me from the start (and it usually is — if I need to be convinced or talked into something, it’s usually a bad sign)
I rely on “gut feeling” rather than hard-and-fast rules.

So, here would be my advice to people getting in touch with me and who are not part of my “inner circle”:

if you’re approaching me for paid work or a concrete business opportunity, be upfront about it in your intial contact (or I might imagine you just want to pick my brains for free)
if you’d like to pick my brains for free, arrange to meet me in a social setting (conference, Bloggy Friday, apéro, p’tit déj, networking event, etc.) and bear in mind that it will remain superficial — picking my brains until there is nothing left is a privilege people pay for
don’t ask me to do for free things I normally charge for (consulting, training, speaking, writing, setting up websites/blogs and managing them, promoting events…)

This sounds very restrictive for somebody who believes in a marketing model based on providing roughly 80% of her value to the world for free. At least, it does to me — but only if I forget that things work pretty differently for the “inner circle” mentioned above.

I guess that’s the hard truth: how much we know each other has a great influence on what I’ll do for you for free.

But that’s kind of how the world works, isn’t it?Similar Posts:

Social Media Survival Kit

2009-11-16T10:42:51Z

[fr]

Deux règles très simples pour survivre à l'ère des médias sociaux.

[en]

You do not have to read everything.
If you feel bad about missing stuff, apply rule one. This goes for e-mails, too.

Similar Posts:

Basic Bilingual 0.4

2009-11-14T09:36:43Z

[fr]

Mon plugin bilingue vient enfin d'être mis à jour: version 0.4 à disposition, par les bons soins de Luca!

[en]

Another long-overdue update of my Basic Bilingual plugin (which, as you can see by following the link, now has its own page here, in addition to the page in the WordPress plugin repository).

Luca Palli e-mailed me a few months ago saying he had upgraded the admin code to make it compatible with WordPress 2.8. I’m happy to let you know that you can now drag the language and other excerpt fields to more convenient places in your post and page editing screens.

Luca also added an options screen, and I have hope that I (or somebody) will at some point manage to write the code to set the languages through the options screen rather than by editing the plugin, as we have to do now (it’s pretty simple editing, though).

So, thanks a lot, Luca.

Thanks too to the “how to use Subversion” page on the WordPress extend site, as it saved my life once again. I update my plugins so infrequently that I completely forget how to use svn in between.

As always, back up your data regularly, and if you bump into any problems, let me know. If you want to contribute code, as you can see, you’re more than welcome!Similar Posts:

Finding a Balance in Office Work: Long-Term Projects

2009-11-14T09:18:29Z

[fr]

Quelques réflexions sur comment je m'organise pour mon travail "de bureau", et la difficulté que j'ai à avancer sur les projets "long terme, pas urgents".

[en]

Here is an umpteenth post about my journey figuring out how to “be the boss of me” — getting work done and still having a life as a freelancer.

Honestly, I have not been doing too badly this year. It’s even been pretty good.

The other day, when I was catching up with Suw, I told her that I was now pretty competent at managing my days, but not that good at looking beyond that. What I mean is that I have a system to keep track of the next things I need to do, and I’m much better than I used to be at evaluating what can get done in a given day. I still tend to be a bit ambitious, but overall my “day plans” are pretty realistic.

Proof of that, in my opinion:

I now very rarely have a day where I’m “running” or “scrambling”
I rarely have to work during the week-end or the evening to do stuff that “absolutely needs to get done and I haven’t managed to squeeze it in yet”.

So, the next step is the week. I’m still using maker days and manager days (it’s not perfect, sometimes I give in and sacrifice a maker day, but overall I’m getting increasingly better at sticking to my plan). What I’d like to think about here (you read me right, I’m writing this post to think something over) is what I do (or try to do) during my office “maker” days.

Here’s what I’ve identified so far:

daily business: checking e-mails, taking phone calls, hanging out on Twitter/IM, responding to prospective clients, journalists, people who want to pick my brains, dealing with little emergencies, reading stuff online
“regular” paid work: these are gigs that are long-term and require a little work every day or every week at least, and therefore fall in the “daily business” category too, but are for a client who is paying
my projects: taking care of eclau, Bloggy Fridays
my “promotional” stuff: blogging, keeping my websites up-to-date (technically and content-wise — ahem), writing, planning ebooks but not writing them, preparing general documentation to promote what I do to prospective clients, research
accounting and administrivia: personal and professional, including writing to the gérance to ask them to change the windows so we can save on heating
support network: I have a bunch of friends I’m in regular contact with to talk things over (their things, my things)

OK, the list is a bit messy, but it’s a start. I know that one thing that can usually “kill” an office day is when I’m asked to do a one-off, time-limited gig by a client: for example, a 2-4 hour WordPress training/coaching session. The reason for that is that this kind of gig pays immediately: shortest path to money. So usually, when I make exceptions and kill a maker day, it’s because there is immediate money at stake (as long as it doesn’t compromise the work I need to do for my “regular” paying clients, of course).

Items 1, 2, 3 and 6 of the list above are not really a source of trouble right now. I mean, that’s what I spend my time doing.

Items 4 and 5, on the other hand, are problematic: I keep falling behind. In the case of accounting and administrivia, as they are something I get in trouble about if I don’t do them for long enough, every now and again I go “gosh, am behind, gotta spend a day on it” and I get it done. But I have trouble with regularity (less and less though, to be fair with myself).

The big painful one is what I call “my promotional stuff”. It’s long-term. If I don’t do it, there are no direct consequences. It does not involve other people. Summary:

it’s for me, so it tends to end up less high priority than all the rest that is “for others”;
no time constraints, so it is less high priority than emergencies and deadlines;
some of it is actually difficult for me (preparing promotional copy for example).

So, here are some of the items that are on this long-suffering list of things I want to do but never get around to doing because there is always more urgent stuff to take care of:

upgrade WordPress and plugins on a bunch of my sites
do something about the horribly out-of-date content on my professional site (organize another WPD?)
get a proper lifestream up and running (as Nathalie aptly put it earlier this morning, “FriendFeed is nice and all, but I never go there”)
start writing the blasted ebook
write more fiction
write up shiny material explaining what I do (including “terms and conditions”) that I can send or give out to my clients and prospects (including sending stuff to schools saying “I give talks” and “looking for somebody to teach a few hours on social media over the next academic year?”)
catch up with my photo uploading on Flickr (in a way, yes, this also ends up being a “promotional” activity)
blog more (you’re getting tired of hearing it, but look, it’s working).

I’ve tried a few times to state (to myself, that is) “Friday afternoon is for administrivia and accounting” but weeks are so short that my resolve usually falls down the drain. I’m thinking that I should firewall time to work on these “longer-term” projects each week — but again, I look at my calendar and think “ugh”. A day a week? Sounds like a minimum when I look at the list right above, but quite impossible when I think of what my usual weeks are like. On the other hand, I do have (what feels to me like) quite a relaxed workstyle, so maybe if I did firewall a day off I’d discover I’m perfectly capable of dealing with the rest of my work on the other four days.

So, the questions for me remain:

how many office days vs. meeting days in a week? (right now I try to have three office days, but don’t always manage)
what’s the best way to build in time for long-term projects which tend to stagnate at the bottom of the priority list? (firewall a day or half a day off each week, or every two weeks, or something else…)

Dear readers: your insight is much appreciated. How do you do this? Do you do it? What have you tried? How did you fail? How did you succeed?Similar Posts:

De la dégradation de la langue

2009-11-14T08:00:07Z

[en]

About my French spelling being worse than it was 15 years ago (is it the keyboard? is it something else?) and the terrifying experience of "losing my French" while I was in India 10 years ago.

[fr]

La mienne, en l’occurence.

Plus de 15 ans que j’ai passé mon bac (XB, s’il vous plaît). Plus de 10 ans que j’écris sur le web. Quelque part en chemin, j’ai fait une licence en français.

Et parfois, quand je me relis, je suis horrifiée par les fautes que je trouve dans mes textes.

J’ai toujours été bonne (allons, n’ayons pas peur des mots — excellente) en orthographe et grammaire. Au gymnase, franchement, je crois pouvoir dire que j’avais un français écrit irréprochable.

Ça s’est gâté, ensuite. Dix ans à prendre des notes à l’uni, d’une part ça vous fiche en l’air la calligraphie (qui ne fut d’ailleurs jamais mon fort) et d’autre part, ça vous ramollit les règles de la langue.

Je me demande aussi parfois quel rôle joue le clavier dans tout cela. Je me retrouve à faire des fautes de “frappe” inimaginables lorsque j’écrivais à la main. Une terminaison en “-é” au lieu de “-er” par exemple, qui vient se glisser là, mine de rien, au milieu d’une phrase. Je l’attrape au passage si je prends la peine de me relire, bien entendu, mais le drame est que la faute ait simplement jailli de mes doigts. Ça n’arrivait jamais, “avant”.

(D’ailleurs, je tiens à le préciser, je ne me relis que très rarement. Oui, je sais, ça va faire des jaloux — chacun sa croix: mes compétences dans le graphisme frisent le zéro absolu et je suis tellement peu physionomiste que c’en est régulièrement embarrassant.)

Qu’est-ce qui a donc changé?

Est-ce le clavier au lieu du stylo?
Est-ce l’absence de correction en rouge pour me rappeler de temps en temps mes manquements à la perfection de la forme?
Est-ce l’âge?
Est-ce la proportion moindre de français par rapport à l’anglais, dans ce que j’écris aujourd’hui?
Est-ce la plus grande quantité de texte écrit que je produis?

Allez savoir.

J’ai vécu une autre expérience de dégradation de la langue, orale celle-ci, qui m’a profondément marquée. En 1999-2000, comme vous le savez, j’ai passé une année en Inde (le cas échéant, chers lecteurs, relisez vos classiques).

Bilingue déjà à l’époque, mais avec un anglais passablement rouillé, je me retrouvais pour la première fois depuis ma petite enfance à communiquer exclusivement en anglais, durant des mois — à l’exception de l’occasionnel e-mail qui, m’avouera-t-on plus tard, arborait des tournures de phrase de plus en plus étranges à mesure que passait le temps.

Après 6-8 mois, une amie de Suisse est venue me rendre visite. Et là, catastrophe. Je cherche mes mots. Je suis maladroite. Je construis mes phrases à tort et à travers. J’étais en train de perdre mon français! Il avait suffi de si peu de temps…

Je savais que j’avais pas mal perdu de mon anglais durant mon adolescence, au point qu’il m’était devenu pénible de le parler. Il revenait après quelque temps, bien sûr, mais c’était depuis longtemps ma deuxième langue. Jamais je n’aurais imaginé que je pourrais (aussi vite!) perdre mon français.

Je vous rassure, il est bien revenu. Et mon anglais est resté — j’avoue qu’il est rare que je passe une journée sans utiliser mes deux langues à présent (et internet joue très clairement un rôle là-dedans).

Mais même sa langue maternelle, quand on ne la pratique pas, se dégrade.Similar Posts:

“Have-to” Posts and “Want-to” Posts

2009-11-11T17:10:02Z

[fr]

Quand je blogue, il y a les articles que je "dois" écrire, souvent de nature informative: annoncer des événements, par exemple. Il y a également les articles que je "veux" écrire, où je partage des réflexions, des idées, ou des choses sympas.

[en]

I was about to blog about something else when I realised one thing that is bothering me about this whole “blogging more” theme that I’ve been talking (and thinking) about a lot over the last year (or is it years, actually?)

Blogging, for me, is divided into “have-to” posts which I write to inform my readers of something, and “want-to” posts which I write because I’m thinking about something or what to share something cool I’ve done or seen.

Informative blog posts are the part of blogging which really feels like work. For example, telling you that eclau is one year old, that you can listen to me on the radio (again!), that the blogger accreditation form is open (it’s closed now, sorry) — and also most of the stuff I publish on the Bloggy Friday blog, the eclau blog, the Coworking Léman blog, and used to write on the Going Solo blog.

It’s like creating facebook events and groups, sending messages to mailing-lists, promoting happenings and projects, my stuff or other people’s stuff, left, right, and centre.

It’s work. Nice work, but clearly, work. And most of the time, it’s time-sensitive, so at one point it gets this “have to do it now” or “oops I’ll be in trouble if I don’t do it” flavour (which is probably what makes it feel like work). These are the “have-to” posts.

Given what my job is, the other kind of blogging I do (the “thinking” posts, or the “sharing” ones) is of course also part of my work. But it feels more optional. There are no real time constraints. It doesn’t feel like work. This is the kind of blogging that (I think) I became known for, and that I prefer. These are the posts that I want to write more of. Like musings on the evolution of the web social sphere, a 50-word story titled “Love”, giving 80% for free as a marketing model, or talking about new toys I’m discovering like a bunch of Twitter tools, Fluid and Prism, or Google Wave. These are the “want-to” posts.

Confusing the two, or not making the distinction, has led me to be frustrated with my blogging at times: if what I feel I want to do more of is “want-to” posts, and I spend half a day writing “have-to” posts, then of course I won’t really feel like I’ve been “blogging more”. My “have-to” posts also tend to get in the way of my “want-to” posts, because if I keep a list of things I want (need?) to blog about (in my head or elsewhere) I have not, until now, separated the two types of posts.

So from now on, “have-to” posts will go on my next-actions-todo list, and “want-to” posts will go on my “things I want to write about” list. We’ll see if understanding this changes anything.Similar Posts:

My Web World Has Grown

2009-11-05T13:46:04Z

[fr]

Quand je repense à mes "débuts" (comme blogueuse, il y a près de 10 ans, ou comme consultante en blogs, médias sociaux, et choses associées, il y a 4-5 ans) je réalise que la mare du web est devenu un lac. Si je me suis réveillée un beau matin en constatant qu'on me considérait un relativement gros poisson dans la petite mare, les temps ont changé -- et je ne m'en plains pas.

Depuis longtemps, j'ai renoncé à être "à la pointe" (oui je sais, pour beaucoup d'entre vous, je le suis, mais croyez-moi, il y a encore de la marge). Ma vie s'en porte mieux, et à en croire mon agenda, mon business aussi.

[en]

The day before yesterday, a tweet of mine prompted me to get into blog gear again (honestly, why do I need other people? seems I have enough inner dialog going on).

The idea, as expressed in my tweet, was half-baked. I was actually thinking back to when I started blogging, or even when I became a freelance “something-or-other” 2.0 consultant. There are more people around today. The pond is bigger. This is a normal phenomenon when it comes to adoption: if you’re an early adopter, a cutting-edger, well, sooner or later those technologies or subcultures which were the turf of a happy few you were part of become more and more mainstream.

I’m seeing that. It’s been going on for some time. There are people all over doing tons of interesting stuff and I can’t keep up with them (I don’t even try). And here, I’m not even talking about all the wannabe social media experts.

So yes, the pond has turned into a lake, and I find myself a smaller fish than I used to be. Though I sometimes look back with a bit of nostalgia upon the “golden days” of blogging or Twitter, it suits me quite well. I actually never tried to be a big fish: one day, I suddenly realised that it was how people saw me. So I went with it, quite happily I have to say.

But it’s nice to slow down. I’ve never really been in the “breaking news” business, and have no desire to. I feel I’ve retreated somewhat from the over-competitive fringe of my web world, and my life is better as a result. Business too, if I look at my calendar for the upcoming months.

There are times when I regret that my “poly-expert” profile does not allow me to stay as up-to-date with everything as I’d sometimes want to. I haven’t given a talk in a school in nearly a year, and I miss it. I’ve played with Google Wave, but haven’t taken three days to dive into it completely as I would have done five years ago. (One of the reasons, here, is that I simply can’t afford to spend three days diving into something, like I could when I was an employee. The irony is not lost on me.)

All in all, there are more people now in my web world, and in the web world in general. It’s a good thing for the world. It has changed my place somewhat, but overall I’m pretty happy with it.

I don’t feel I’ve shrunk to tadpole status yet, though! Similar Posts:

Links for 2009-10-25 [del.icio.us]

2009-10-26T00:00:00-07:00

Robin writes a book (and you get a copy) — Kickstarter
New economic models.

Links for 2009-07-24 [del.icio.us]

2009-07-25T00:00:00-07:00

Links for 2009-07-21 [del.icio.us]

2009-07-22T00:00:00-07:00

Getting Started with Social Media | Euan Semple | GuruOnline