Oy, this month has completely gotten away from me in. First, I’ve been busy with multiple projects for clients, which is great. Secondly, I had obligations with New England Give Camp followed by my friend Alen getting married the following weekend. The one-two punch had sapped me of energy in a good way.

However, I’ve not been as focused on the “becoming a functional stationery maker” as I had wanted. While the process is moving along, I’m learning (again) just how long it takes to do something as conceptually simple as “ship some new pads of paper to Amazon.” So for this month’s Groundhog Day Resolution Review, I’m going to reflect on why that is.

What are Realistic Expectations?

While I have not been very organized this month, I have been focused. One huge advantage of switching from “Dave Seah: Information Graphic Designer” to “Dave Seah: Stationer” is that I can measure progress in terms of number of products available and number of units sold. However, I’ve fallen back on old habits, doing “what seems the most pressing” and trusting that it will get done. While I’m keeping track of hours spent, I’m not rigorously estimating hours; it’s sort of a Hakuna Matata approach to work. This may be the correct approach to take for creative work; my own sense of what is proper has been skewed by working in a way that fits design into an available timebox (with the assumption that it should also be awesome). When the fundamental questions about the job haven’t been decided, this is a terrible way to work. This attitude would not likely win me any glowing employee reviews at a “competitive” job, but I’ve dropped those expectations from myself and am as a result more relaxed.

At the same time, I’m learning to relax my expectations of how things SHOULD be, and am instead allowing a bit more exploration into my work. In the past, I would get very hung-up on being able to deliver exacting work on demand. To deliver exacting work requires equally exacting specification, and most of the time neither I or the client know exactly what those specifications will be. We each have a piece of the puzzle, and need to be willing to explore the solution space as a team, maintaining focus as we navigate through uncharted goat paths of creative opportunity. It’s tough work, but it doesn’t have to suck.

Realistically, I remind myself, it takes hundreds of hours to learn then create something that didn’t exist before. It’s easy, by comparison, to imagine what superlatives will describe it. I remember this, accept it, and try to keep moving while maintaining a positive attitude.

I have to admit, though, that it’s tough to accept how long it takes to make something from scratch, especially when I can SEE how that thing will fit into my master plan. It’s like waiting for cookies to bake when you haven’t eaten for an entire day. Patience is required, as each tiny step of the winning process is cultivated and put into action. To forget this is a precursor to frustration. If you can’t wait, buy something off the shelf and accept its limitations. Otherwise, keep a good attitude and make those tiny steps.

Here are some recent resources I’ve found useful in shaping this difficult balance of attitudes. All of them, I just noticed, were brought to my attention via my friend Colleen Wainwright, truth-seeking marketing maven:

• Back to Work, the podcast featuring Merlin “43Folders” Mann and Dan “5by5″ Benjamin, covers subjects related to work and productivity. It’s something of a showcase for Merlin’s thinking on the subject, which is plentiful and insightful. Merlin, like me, isn’t particularly good at being productive, and he’s painfully aware of all the ways one can fall short because he’s done it. This gives his off-the-cuff analysis of root causes of various productivity pitfalls a cheerfully real credibility. Merlin is highly energetic and entertaining, too, which makes it a good listen even when they’re talking about Macintosh utilities for the umpteenth time. Worth a listen!

• Designers out there may remember Mike Monteiro’s F*ck You, Pay Me videotaped talk from last year, where he laid down the history and principles behind charging for his work. He’s expanded the material into a slim-but-mighty treatise called Design is a Job. A practical primer on charging for your design services, the book has renewed my confidence in the wisdom of saying NO when a potential project is not quite ripe for processing. Mike’s book isn’t exactly the guide for me, since I don’t really want to have a service-oriented business. However, I much appreciate the acerbic-yet-empathetic conviction in his voice, backed as it is by experience and admirable work. He speaks the truth as he sees it, without apology or malice. I also like his mildly-alarming manner of speech; if the Addams Family had a graphic designer locked up in the manor basement, it might be someone like Mike Monteiro. That’s a cheery-enough thought to get me up on a Monday and get the f*ck to work.

• Last week I received a review copy of Chris Guillebeau’s The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future. Chris Guillebeau is someone I’ve had my eye on for a while because he gets such good press from people I respect, yet occupies an Internet niche (self help) that I view with some suspicion. I attended one of his book tour stops in New Hampshire, and bought one of his art-related startup kits, looking for anything that smacked of bullshit. I didn’t find anything alarming that turned me off, nor did I find any whiff of hubris except in my own ungenerous attitude. The new book has swung my opinion of him hugely toward the positive. It is a humble book about being successful starting your own small-scale business. While it doesn’t paint a picture of just how hard things are, it does tell a lot of stories about people who did simple things to build a self-sustaining business that fit their personal desires and passions. The tone of the book is relaxed, factual, and conversational while incorporating ideas found in three of my other favorite reads in this area: the freedom-oriented aspects of The 4-Hour Work Week, the motivational aspects of Ignore Everybody, and business/marketing concepts of The Personal MBA. Chris’ secret to success appears to be his willingness to put in the long hours and think about people’s needs without the need to complain or expend energy showing off; he’s that guy who succeeds because he builds the best products he can without getting too wrapped up in the appearance-maintenance and personal angst that often comes with creativity. That’s really freakin’ fantastic.

The Product Refresh

Getting back to actual “Maker of Functional Stationery” work, I’m happy to report there has been progress made on the new version of the printed Emergent Task Planner pads. They are on their way to Amazon.com as I type.

The main goal of the product refresh is to reduce the price from $12.00 to $9.99, while increasing certain functional aspects of the package. To compensate for lowering the price, I’m reducing the page count from 75 to 50, but I’m incurring additional costs in terms of better cardstock + the inclusion of an instruction sheet. This makes the net cost of production of the new package actually about the same, so I’ll be making less money per-package than before. However, I want to test the theory of price elasticity, which says that given a change in price, there is a corresponding change in demand. The change is different for every product, and there are other variables involved, but this is a positive step toward understanding how “business” works.

On a philosophical note, I had positioned the printed ETP as a “premium” product so I could charge enough money to make a profit; it’s expensive to print and ship paper products. I’m finding that my natural desire for the ETP is not to sell it as a premium product, but instead to make a GOOD product available at the best price I can. We’ll see how this works out in practice. I may need a bit more deprogramming on this subject.

I’m not yet sure if I’ll continue to offer the 75-sheet pads at $12.00. Originally I was going to phase them out, but I think it might make sense to keep them as the “economy size” option. I’ll have to talk to my printer about this. I put a poll on my Facebook page, which is currently 50/50.

Juggling the Balance between Client and Personal Work

Both are important to me, and I think the major personal advance I’ve made is relaxing about where the time is going. In a sense, this is related to my recent epiphany about maintaining a good attitude toward whatever I’m doing. Before I was constantly worried that I was not working on personal success-building projects while doing client work, and when I was working on personal projects I worried that I wasn’t putting enough time into the client work. In the former situation, my fear was related to failing at finding my personal success. In the latter, I was bedeviled by my desire to please clients with great work. So many fears.

I don’t see the competition between client work and personal projects going away any time soon, so I need to deal with it and not get overwhelmed. I was initially excited about the possibility of product growth as I described in the “seeing the snowball grow” section of my last GHDR Review, I realized that it might take 2 years to get there given how long it was taking to fund and bootstrap new products. The StickyPads, which were a new product a couple months ago, are selling at 1/5th the rate of the Emergent Task Planner pads. This data underscores that not all products will be hits, and the ramp-up time will be correspondingly longer. At current rates of sales, it takes about 4 months to earn enough profit to fund another project.

But you know what? That’s fine. A positive attitude that is applied to both the personal work and client relations will pay off. I was reminded a couple weeks go that it’s critical to me to maintain strong communication channels with anyone I’m working with, as this boosts my attitude considerably. Working in a vacuum is one of the great displeasures of my life; I need smart, good-hearted people around me to thrive. From that, balance seems to come naturally.

On a different note, I now have so many communication threads out there that I need to figure out how to manage them. A few client threads have dropped, as they weren’t pressing or perhaps people are concerned about bothering me. I hope that’s not the case.

Concluding Thoughts

Also on my mind is how to keep the flame of my passions visible here on the blog, as this is the beacon that attracts new opportunity and collaborators. I have NOT been happy about the sporadic nature of my posting in the past two years, and the emphasis on business posts has skewed the content mix toward seriousness. I’m not going to go into that now, though, as this post is already getting super-long.

For the coming month, I have to finish a lot of client projects. This theoretically reduces the time I have to work on new products and related materials, but it also ensures that I have some income to do a few important home upgrades before Dad visits this fall.

What’s certain:

• New ETP Pad Package will Ship!
• Old Pad Package will remain!
• As time permits, will launch a new project. I have several to choose from.

What would be cool to have:

• Creating some new design-related procedures, so I can streamline client work further.
• Creating a better multi-task management system. There is a hole in my task management forms that I hadn’t noticed before.
• Finding some more creative partners, or people who would like to work for me in exchange for the experience of doing it.

What I want to avoid:

• Stressing out!
• Losing positive attitude.
• Disappointing clients and customers – that will have to be handled as it happens instead of worrying about it before I do the work.
• Falling out of the moment, and letting uncertainty-induced anxiety harsh my vibe.

We’ll see what happens!

Groundhog Day Resolution Posts for 2012

Here are other posts about Groundhog Day Resolutions for the 2012 season.

• 02/02 Kickoff
• 03/03 Review
• 04/04 Review
• The original post about Groundhog Day Resolutions

The first weekend of May was New England GiveCamp, a yearly “coding for charity” event that connects cash-strapped non-profit organizations with willing volunteers in the tech and media industries. True to its name, GiveCamp involved camping overnight in the Microsoft NERD Center down in Cambridge with a whole bunch of people. By the second day I realized that this was a more unusual experience than appeared to the eye: the non-profits involved were truly involved in the problem-solving, and the volunteers were really helpful and genuine; the very nature of the event filters out anyone who doesn’t give a crap. As it turned out, this was one of the best experiences I’ve had in a camp-like event due to the high level of support (catered food FTW, and prizes) and commitment to a cause. The non-profit organization team I was assigned to was for EV Kids, which connects Harvard and Boston College students with inner-city Boston kids for a multi-year commitment of mentoring, outdoor camping, and support. They already had a website from last year’s GiveCamp, so we focused on simplifying the home page and fixing some scripts that had become obsolete. It was also fun to work with people who had overlapping skills; we were able to split the tasks up with confidence and understanding of the underlying issues. This is a luxury I hadn’t experienced in a very long time, maybe since high school. With the right partners, difficult tasks are whittled down to size. The major takeaway for the weekend was to purposefully seek overlapping skills in my partners, and tackle tasks together.

This past weekend was the wedding of one of my best friends, Alen Yen. I was tasked with both being a groomsman and video stream implementer for the bride’s mother, who was unable to leave the hospital for the event. The event was held in Sugarbush Resort in Warren, Vermont, so I went up the night before the wedding to get ready. I’ve never been to Vermont before, despite having lived in neighboring New Hampshire for 12 years. First of all, I got to drive through farmland carved out of mountains; they were all abloom with dandelions and grass, ready to be plowed under. Beautiful. I reconnected with people I had known of or had met in passing over the years, and it occurred to me that the tribe that had formed around Alen was quite remarkable, and that it was fantastic that they were all here. The connections between people in the room, disparate though those groups may have been, were almost visible in their intensity. It was then that I started thinking about tribes. I really should reread Seth Godin’s book to see if what I’m feeling has already been summarized, but let me see if I can do it myself:

• I’m thinking of “tribe” as a group of people who really ‘get’ you, and have accepted you as one of them. The tribe recognition moment came to me when I realized that two factors had come together: I was a recognized member of the Alen tribe, and also a friend member of the Japanese Toy Robot tribe. While I couldn’t follow the significance of the vintage chogokin and vinyl photos flashed across half-a-dozen iPhones, I certainly felt I was among a group of like-minded people. I felt something similar at GiveCamp, except in more of a technical lifestyle sort of way.

• While my goals are my own, the tribe supports and nurtures them. The selection of one’s tribe, and the acceptance into that tribe, is about the celebration of shared values and goals. Personally, I am striving to achieve a high level of personal excellence, whatever that is, and it’s important for me to be surrounded by people who are doing the same. However, my goals are still uniquely my responsibility, because I’m the only person who can truly assess whether I’ve met them or not. My tribal buddies may help me, but they want to see me cross the finish line on my own power.

• A shift of identity. In the past, I’ve written that I believed “being part of something bigger than myself” was the key to some kind of breakthrough. At the time I thought it was inspiration or community connection, but both GiveCamp and the wedding are different in that my starting assumptions were different. These are both events that are about celebrating giving and union, and I subconsciously shifted into a giving mood that de-emphasized my sense of self. In a sense, I surrendered my identity to the event mission, rather than striving to maintain it in sharp relief. This was quite different than my attitude when going to an event like South by Southwest Interactive for the first time, when I was hugely concerned by how I would present myself and be perceived by other industry pros. I’m not sure what the ramifications of this observation are, but it feels important.

So what is the upshot of all this pondering? It’s the rediscovery of the importance of tribe as partners. It’s recognizing that my tribal instincts, particularly the community celebration aspect of it, have atrophied. I need to rekindle the bonfire and break through the barriers that I have in allowing those parts of me to shine like a beacon. By embracing my weirdness, I also rekindle my sense of conviction, which is a precursor to taking decisive action.

The Tribe I’m part of, if I were to bulletize it, would incorporate the following:

• The desire to self-empower through responsible learning and experimentation.
• The desire to overcome one’s self-imposed limits by deconstructing them.
• The desire to produce or perform at a very high level, and celebrate excellence at every opportunity.
• The desire to share and reciprocate knowledge and resources.
• The desire for complete transparency and authenticity, in an environment that promotes and protects it.
• The recognition that getting from here to there is a lonely, difficult, and uncertain journey with few meaningful shortcuts. And that this is no reason not to go for it and enjoy the challenge with a positive attitude.
• The joy that comes from helping comrades in the tribe to do any of the above.
• The appreciation of weirdness, uniqueness, and original thinking without imposing judgment due to differing tastes.

Every tribe I’m part of celebrates the majority of these elements, if not all of them.

SUMMARY: I’m at I’m at New England Give Camp 2012 right now, a “coding for charity” weekend where around 100 volunteers help 29 non-profits improve their websites. This is my first year, having been roped into it by my friend Kelley Muir, who is one of the organizers. I’ll be writing periodic blog posts about the experience as I have the time.

At this very moment, I’m hanging out on a stylish orange coach at the Microsoft NERD Center in Cambridge, where a few dozen volunteers have elected to camp-out overnight to work. Earlier today, our team met with our non-profit project and went over some initial parameters. Tomorrow morning, we’ll start going through our hit list of tasks and new questions, and see what we can get done in the next 48 hours.

One of the reasons I’d signed up was that I would meet a bunch of new people that, like me, have particular passions about what they do. It’s also exactly the kind of thing I’d shy away from because I am naturally disinclined to attend events where there are a lot of people; this causes my self-improvement interlock to engage, and so HERE I AM. It’s about 8 hours since the event started, and a small group of people are hanging out by the Microsoft Surface playing some kind of space game, cracking silly jokes and basking in the shared nerd experience. It’s pretty awesome.

My response, so far, is that I’m actually feeling pretty comfortable. There is the comforting sense of belonging that comes from shared mission, which shifts the burden from “who am I in this networking situation” to “what should I do to move things along”. It also helps that I know more people here than I thought I would, even though I don’t know them very well. I’ve seen them around at various events like Podcamp and Barcamp, and have grown to know their faces and personalities. To my surprise, it seems that just hanging out sporadically over the past six years has led to friendship.

I probably should go to sleep, but there are people still up and being away from home, I feel the urge to write some thoughts down. Ordinarily, I would probably be playing Star Wars: The Old Republic to unwind, grabbing a few levels on a new alt character and chatting up virtual teammates. This is a little different. Although I’m just hanging out near the Microsoft Surface basically ignoring people, there’s the feeling that there are like-minded people around. There’s kind of a community spirit here that I haven’t felt in a long time.

Tomorrow should be interesting as we get down to work. There are some pretty incredible non-profit organizations here that have wonderful stories to tell. I’ll be posting periodic updates on the GiveCamp experience in my Stream of Consciousness Blog, so look there for the moment-by-moment updates.

There’s one detail in the current version of the printed Emergent Task Planner pad that has nothing to do with its functionality, and that is the thickness of the cardboard backer. It’s the one thing in the pad that has bugged me from the very beginning, but for economic reasons couldn’t fix.

Until now! Here’s a case study in home-grown product development.

Background

When I’d first started making the printed ETP pads for sale in 2009, I could afford custom ink formulation and great paper, but the lowly cardboard backer was surprisingly expensive and hard to source. This was one of many lessons about manufacturing at small scale: you’re limited by what your manufacturing partners can readily offer, so you work within those constraints if you want to minimize your initial investment. The printer could do the custom inks and source quantities of the paper because they already stocked those materials on a regular basis. They also stocked cardboard for making pads of paper, but thicker cardboard was a special order. As the run I was doing was the smallest possible size, and I was concerned with making the first pads as affordable as possible, I stayed with the regular cardstock. Although having to forgo nicer cardboard was disappointing (it was also a buck a sheet, which is a lot for per-unit cost), at the time it was more important for me to just bite the bullet and MAKE SOMETHING.

The standard cardboard that was available came in two thicknesses, which is measured in something called “points”. This is different from the points used in page layout, which are 1/72th of an inch. For paper weight, it’s a measure in thousandths of an inch, also called the “caliper”—I think this refers to the actual use of a caliper (a special kind of high-precision mechanical ruler) to measure it.

Anyway, I picked the 030 point cardboard, the thicker of the two choices. It’s considerably thicker than paper, but it lacks rigidity. In the first runs of the product, it was most important to have good paper, since that was the main aspect that bore directly on the tactile experience of the product in everyday use. The cardboard backer was a secondary part of the experience, and I wasn’t even sure if the pads would sell or if I’d lose my money.

Today, I’d say that the pads have met expectation, and they have continued to sell well enough that I’m no longer worried about recouping my investment in a print run. The cardboard issue, though, has continued to bug me. The flexible nature of the 030 point cardboard makes the pad feel a little “swimmy” in the hand. It’s fine when the pad is on a desk surface, but picking it up and moving it requires a little babying. It’s part of the product experience, and while I don’t think people really think of the lack of rigidity as a flaw in the design, maybe I’m missing out on an opportunity to make an additional positive impression. The last straw was a recent review on Amazon.com, where the extremely nice reviewer mentioned thicker cardboard as a “would be nice” feature. At last…I was not alone in my compulsion!

Prototyping the Product

Tactile experience is something that I’m sensitive to, and my automatic reaction to it might be the best indicator that the pursuit of stationery design isn’t so insane despite my lack of experience. It is like I can sense the bones of whatever I’m touching, able to visualize the underlying structure and material properties of its raw elements. What I am really reacting to is probably just relative weight, texture, and rigidity to other everyday experiences, but my reaction is so instant and immediate that it feels like a kind of clairvoyance. If I were to be more New Age about it, I’d say it is like the spirit of the material whispers to me. Magic or not, I’ve learned to trust it as much as my analytic side, as the combination of subjective and objective powers helps create a balanced design dialog. Plus, it’s fun!

Now that I have a track record with my printer (Papergraphics in nearby Merrimack, New Hampshire), I felt comfortable enough to ask again about cardboard stock. Frank, the owner, was willing to look into options for me. First was getting the paper reps to provide samples, which Frank took care of. Next, he made six prototypes of the pad using the samples, which I was able to look at yesterday. As I saw them all arrayed before me, using my own ETP designs, my first thought was that my printer is awesome.

I picked up each pad and allowed my gut reaction to take place. There were two kinds of cardboard: what seemed like thicker versions of the brown cardboard I was already using, and one that was a kind of coated paperboard. The cardboard thickness started to add the feel of “quality” to the pad at around 050 points. The thickest cardboard with 080 points, and reminded me of a delicious graham cracker crust. I really liked it and wanted to use it, but it was almost too thick relative to the paper it was supporting. The paperboard was just as rigid but was also thinner at 050 points. A different kind of material than the cardboard, and there is something about it that was appealing to me. For one thing, it’s 100% recycled paperboard, from a company that’s been making the stuff since the late 1800s. While it’s only 050 points thick, it was more rigid for its thickness than the other material (even the 080 points stuff had a slightly spongy feel to it). Frank mentioned that this material would be a bit easier to source too, so that was the clincher. An unexpected choice that I hadn’t directly asked for, which delighted me…that’s one of the benefits of working with a great printer. As a bonus, the paperboard is white, which would make the pad a little more special when compared to other products.

Updating the Product

This new paperboard will be used for the updated version of the Emergent Task Planner pads. This is my very first product update. Currently, the product on Amazon is a 75-sheet shrinkwrapped pad on 030 point cardboard selling for US$12.00. After making the StickyPad ETP packages, which feel really good in the hand, I wanted to also include a new instruction sheet (single color to keep costs down). Having seen how the 75-sheet pad has sold for the past few years at US$12.00, my gut feeling is that if I can drop the price to under 10 bucks I might see an increase in sales volume. Dropping the sheet count will allow me to do this, though between you and me it doesn’t really cut costs that much. Plus, adding thicker cardboard and the instruction sheet ADDS to the per-unit cost a bit, so charging less for the new package is a kind of economic step backwards. However, I THINK that the overall product will be more attractive at $9.99 than 50% more paper at $12. I’ll find out whether my gut was right or not.

Another advantage the new pads may have is future retail sales. The new pads should feel really good when you pick them up, which may be important for selling in a physical stores. I still haven’t mustered the courage to walk into a stationery store to try sell them a case, but that’s an upcoming consideration. I am curious also whether the stiffer pad actually will make it easier to put a tighter shrinkwrap on the product as well…we shall see!

The plan is to phase out the current supply of 75-sheet pads on Amazon. I have about 6 weeks of stock right now, which gives me time to produce the new pads. I have to design a new instruction sheet too. Since the ETP design itself hasn’t changed, I had those printed when doing last reorder of 75-sheet pads; they just need to be padded-up once the new paperboard backers arrive (2 weeks) and the instruction sheet is printed. It occurs to me that I haven’t actually checked to see what kind of paper the instruction sheet will be on; I should ask about samples.

One issue that I’m unsure about is how much confusion will result from having both products listed during the transition. I think I’ve made sure that the products are different enough (sheet count, features) that the choice is clear, but I’m a little concerned that there will be some resentment. However, NOT doing something because of what MIGHT happen is a great way to fail by not trying. I’ve had plenty of practice doing that over my lifetime, so I’m going to take the risk and find out what happens. Eep!

I declared my intention to “be a stationery designer” this year, and now that the initial excitement has worn off I’m facing several realities:

1. It’s going to take time. It will probably take more than a year to see how this ultimately shakes out. In the meantime, I’ll need to maintain the other business: that of being a designer/developer for interactive.

2. I’ll need to do the unpleasant work. The fun parts alone aren’t enough to build a support structure that will allow the stationery designer to have fun. The biggest hurdle I face is just talking to people to tell them what I can offer them. The second hurdle is putting together the supply chain and accounting methods to make sure that I’m doing OK.

3. I’ll need to self-motivate and execute on the unpleasant work. A lot of the work I need to do is clear in its utility, but ambiguous in process details. For example, I know I need to find and talk to retailers to expand the market for my stationery, but I’m not exactly sure what to say.

So what’s stopping me? I’m facing a mixture of uncertainty and fear: the uncertainty is in what to do, and the fear is related to rejection and appearing foolish.

Facing The Blankness

Although the above diagnosis seemed to capture the true essence of my blockage, it didn’t really help me see a solution. So, I went to Starbucks yesterday to clear my head, sitting in the corner chair with my eyes clamped shut and my hand furiously scribbling down thoughts as they occurred. The very first thing I wrote was BLANKNESS, because I had no clue what to write at first. I then dubbed it THE BLANKNESS, for emotional drama, and then realized that it is NOT malicious. It’s merely the unprocessed form of opportunity, the raw idea that need to be somehow converted into something that actually works. The feeling of blankness is like having the idea to make an incredible cake, then acquiring a bag of flour without the foggiest idea about what to do with it.

• The Blankness offers no helpful suggestions.
• The Blankness does not let you know if you are doing things the right way.
• The Blankness doesn’t give a crap about what you want.
• The Blankness doesn’t want anything on its own.
• What you do with The Blankness is entirely your fault.

There are lots of ways to deal with The Blankness. You could go work for someone who already processes it and get a job following someone else’s instruction. Or you could acquire the knowledge yourself, find the right recipes, and go into business for yourself. The way I seem to be doing it is through exploration, creating my own recipes from scratch because I’m stubborn that way. This is more difficult, slower, and possibly an inefficient use of my time, but I think this is where I am. I’m like the erstwhile baker who has acquired all the equipment I need to open a bakery, but haven’t figured out how to operate it to keep things humming along while generating a sustainable revenue stream.

I scribbled down four structuring statements in an attempt to define some operational parameters:

• To do good work in a timely fashion in a predictable manner.

• To produce longer-form, meticulous, and excellent works that stand up to scrutiny.

• To be in control of my own time and impulses, maintaining balance and sustainable productivity.

• To find the joyfulness in work, and put playfulness into my processes.

These are principles that I think will lead to the production of excellence. They do not, however, tell me what to do. So let me add some operational intention, the justification for having principles in the first place:

• To maintain a production queue of things that can be released to the world as “finished”.

• To pick specific tasks that, when they are completed, add to the assets that a successful stationery designer would have: revenue, products, delighted buyers.

Doing is Hard when You Don’t Know What to Do

I can make up some tracking forms for this, make lists, and develop some good habits to try and maintain my energies. However, I also need to acknowledge that DOING things is hard when you don’t know exactly what it is you’re doing.

This is where a lot of the theory about definition and focus collapses for me. Definition and focus, I think, come in hindsight. To get to that place, my current belief is that I’m missing two qualities:

• Mental perseverance in the face of uncertainty, so you discover what you should be doing. Especially necessary when there is no recipe to follow.

• Enjoyment of the process. Necessary for maintaining maximum energy and momentum, and to some extent for excellence.

Right now, as I’m writing this blog post, I am actively fighting the mental perseverance issue. I feel myself getting very sleepy, which I have come to recognize as a physical reaction I have when doing something difficult or uncertain. Pushing past this is a decision I have to make. I have forced myself to reread this post over and over until it starts to make sense. And it IS starting to make sense, in a top-down fashion. And interestingly, I am re-energized. The mental fatigue has vanished…it was a manifestation of uncertainty, apparently. Amazing how real it feels.

The lack of enjoyment, on the other hand, is something of a surprise. I’ve been seeing work as a grim exercise of willpower, not a joyful exploration and packaging of experience. If there’s anything I know, it’s that joyfulness is one of the best parts of being alive. I have tended to judge my work based on value, utility, and timeliness I can bring to my clients. While I think the sentiment is appreciated, it doesn’t lend itself to creating joy. There are a different set of attitudes and control mechanisms that go with the value/utility/timelessness formula; they may be more familiar if you think of the old contractor maxim, “cheap, good, fast: pick any two.” It’s a defensive, negotiation-based approach that I find stressful at times. I can’t get entirely away from it, but I certainly could stand to think of how joy can actively drive the work process. It is completely necessary if I’m going to make this work.

Facing Imagined Backlash

Finally, I need to make a commitment to a small set of actions. Just typing that sentence out gave rise to a boatload of doubts:

• What are the right things? I want to choose the ones that give me the most bang for the buck!
• Will I mess up? Will the effort be wasted?
• Will I be mocked or judged based on what I tried to do?
• Will they work quickly and bring in revenue?
• What if people don’t like it?
• What if people think I’m wasting their time?

I think when anyone is doing anything that is uncertain and outside the norm of experience, they are going to think these thoughts. They will be thinking in terms of losing credibility, status, acceptance, or reputation. They will cope with this possibility in different ways. My way, apparently, is to write long blog posts about what I’m thinking. This helps me see what I’m facing, and I am hopeful that other people may see something in themselves in it and know that they’re not alone.

I’ll tell you right now, I don’t want to cold call retailers and ask them to carry my product. I don’t even know what that means, and I imagine things like having to commit ten thousand dollars I don’t have to take a bet on a production run, or being made to feel small and insignificant. But I also know, having written that out, that I can say “no” to that without any problem. There are always other opportunities. However, those opportunities aren’t going to present themselves unless I go out there and start talking to people. It’s Concrete Goals Tracker rule #2: “Show what you’re doing.”

Coping with Feeling Stupid

I know that there are people who have no qualms about doing things like this, and it may be instructive to imagine what the process might be like for them. It might just be like riding a bike for the first time, allowing yourself to be in the noobie-fear state until suddenly you master it. And then, you are free. The resistance and fear itself are indicators of the magnitude of the reward!

As a man in my 40s, I am less embarrassed about asking questions and being bad at stuff when I first start, because I already feel secure in knowing how to do some cool stuff already. However, there are areas where I am very sensitive, and I think it’s related to the desire to be accepted and to fit in. I want to matter and not feel diminished. Joining any kind of club, for example, where there are long-standing members, produces anxiety of this nature. Meeting attractive women creates a similar anxiety. The anxiety I feel in talking-up what I do comes from a lack of confidence in that my work is relevant at all. As I said, I would like to feel like I matter and am not diminished in the eyes of others.

I have a few coping mechanisms.

• The first is recognizing that I don’t need to appeal to 100% of the world. This is a lesson I learned from blogging and back-fitted into my social relationships. I know there are a handful of people out there, maybe 200 or so strong, that actually dig what I’m doing. That’s probably something like half a percent of all visitors. Everyone gets their half-percent, no matter what they do or are into. To put this in another perspective, how many best friends does one have? All friends can’t be best friends. There are a select few, a small percentage of the people you know, that fit in that way. You can probably “get along” with a higher percentage of people, which is nice, but they are not intimately part of your life. The same is probably true of the world of retail I’m entering. That’s just the way things are. You can only go up from your 1/2 percent audience. You just need to meet a lot of people, and show what you’re doing, and keep improving as you go.

• The second is not to take things so personally. Instead, project the positive beliefs you have outward despite what you think might be coming back. So instead of imagining that people are judging me harshly (which they may well be doing), I can instead choose to ignore them. They’re not in my 1/2 percent, or even in my 10% or 20% audience of simpatico people. That’s OK.

• When I’m faced with actual combativeness, I can see their point of view and shift into a critical mode. It becomes more of a conversation about perspectives, and agreeing to disagree without disrespecting their opinion. I often learn something. In the cases where it’s just deliberate hostility, I can recognize it and disengage the conversation. However, I do dwell on it for days, and it can be difficult to recover from. That’s when it’s good to know who is in your 1/2 percent. And have a good friend to buy you ice cream.

Conclusion

So I’ve identified a bunch of shortcomings, fears, and operational flaws in my 2012 approach. Having identified them, I can see what to do. I can also see it’s nobody’s fault. I’m not going to blame myself…what purpose would that serve?

Operationally, though, I can see that there are changes to make. I have a few new mental tricks to deal with The Blankness, and I recognize I have to commit to doing some difficult specific tasks that, for one reason or another, are rooted in childhood fears and anxieties that I know everyone has.

So let’s see how this goes.

It’s very similar to the compact calendar, but just starts from around August 15. In fact, the current version of the Compact Calendar uses the “arbitrary starting date” formulas that originated in the debut of the Academic version last year. I added some pretty PDFs to download, if you don’t want to muck around in Excel :)

» Visit the Academic Compact Calendar Page

Before, I was thinking that my master resolution was to create a very comprehensive map of my goals, relating intention with action and sorted by work-life category. While the work I did on this was quite illuminating, it actually ended up being the catalyst for declaring a new identity for myself: maker of functional stationary.

Progress

So, the major progress I’ve made in the past month has been accepting that new identity. Instead of worrying that I needed to see the COMPLETE SEAH-TIME-SPACE CONTINUUM on a big sheet of paper, I focused on two main things:

• I’m a stationery designer, hee hee hee!
• I’m a freelance designer, working on important client projects

These two identities, while not necessary at odds with each other, do represent a time allocation conflict between the old me and the new. March was also the month that I officially started a very-involved design project that will continue to the beginning of summer. It was difficult to stay focused on the difficult project work when the prospect of being a stationery designer seemed so much more enticing.

At the end of this month, I’ve affirmed several ideas that have kept me balanced:

Finding Faith to Act

I’ve accepted that worthwhile endeavors are inherently difficult and not possible to optimize. Difficulty usually manifests as something I have to learn that I don’t have time to learn, while at the same time making-up solutions that WILL suck up energy and time WITHOUT guaranteeing success. This is the only attitude that works. While it’s possible that shortcuts or other processes will fall into my lap, to seek such things first is self-defeating. The longer you’re in it, the more likely you are to win it. And I’ve come to believe that the journey is NOT the reward; the journey is where you HAVE TO BE in order to HAVE ANY CHANCE of grabbing whatever brass ring appears before you. It may not be the brass ring you want, and it may even begin another long journey instead of granting sweet rest, but you’ve gotta be on the road if you ever want the opportunity to see where it takes you. After ticking through the stories, personal experiences, and observations over the years…I think I finally believe this as a First Principle. That takes a lot of the questioning out of the work.

Community-driven Product Making

Last month I launched the Emergent Task Timer StickyPads, which was a product based on a reader email asking me if it was possible. He had provided a link, and I followed it, and then asked my printer (whom I’d built a working relationship with over the past several years) if it was feasible. I’m now looking at a followup product that will be a dry erase board, which was based on a photo of the DIY ETP-style white board that another reader posted on my Facebook page. I thought it was a cool idea, after talking to some local suppliers it looks like I can do it. The larger size offers new possibilities too that I’m excited to start prototyping with y’all. The upshot of all this activity? It’s fun and engaging. I like to share what I’m working on with people, and it’s even better it’s in the context of wanting to do more. I want to make products that reflect my own standards of cool, and there are people out there that want neat-looking organizational tools so they can be productive badasses! That’s a synergy I can work with.

Building Machines for Selling Stuff

I’ve been thinking a lot, perhaps to the point of public crassness, about what business is. To me, a good business is the result of research into a “machine” that successfully creates desirable benefits at a well-defined cost to be sold for profit while delivering exceptional happiness to the customer.

After deciding to call myself a “maker of functional stationery”, I found that this mental model of business pointed to a singular rule: devise more machines that make selling stationery easier. I have that already in the form of Amazon Pro Merchant and Fullfillment by Amazon, but it can be better. This exercise is unexpectedly fun, because Amazon provides me with feedback in terms of sales numbers and I can see if what I’m trying is working. Feedback rocks!

Seeing the Snowball Grow

Say you spend $100 to make 100 cookies that you sell for a total of $125. Take $100 from that $125 and make another 100 cookies. This is a self-sustaining process, and it’s how I am maintaining production of the Emergent Task Planner Pads.

Continuing the example, after 4 batches of 100 cookies have been sold, I’ve now saved $100. I can spend it, or I can use it to create a completely NEW kind of cookie that taps a different market need (so it doesn’t cut into sales of the first kind of cookie). Presuming that the new cookie sells at the same rate as the old cookie, I’m now selling 200 cookies at a time for a total take of $250. So now I’m saving money at twice the rate. In two batches of two types of cookies sold, I have another $100 that I can use to launch a third cookie product that, again, taps a different market.

In this third run, it takes two batches to save $150, which is more than I need.

In the fourth run, it takes one batch to save $100 selling across four different cookie types, presuming they’re all selling at the same rate. This is where it starts to look interesting. I’m now able to save enough money per run, selling about 400 cookies in a time period. This is the magic point I’d like to reach.

This is a highly idealized model, but it shows me that I can invest profits from my production runs into new product development and increase the rate of revenue generated. That is presuming, of course, that having more kinds of products to sell is actually the way to grow the business. As I’ve seen sales of the ETP pads stay pretty consistent over the past few years, the addition of a new product has only added revenue. The more products that are maintaining this kind of slow positive growth, it seems the more likely I can ramp up the long-term revenue of my weird little stationery business. The other way is to increase volume of sales through marketing, or by placement with bigger retailers. That’s not off the table, but it’s nice to have an ALTERNATIVE PLAN to that. The more I can grow through my own efforts, the better I think. The big takeaway is that I can see how the money machine works in context with what I can control. That’s a HUGE relief.

Conclusion

So, reporting for this month’s Groundhog Day Resolutions Review, I’d say that I’ve found my set of working principles:

• Turn that Work Crank and see what comes out. Keep cranking. Even if nothing appears to be happening, it really is the only way!

• Create products for my tribe, with my tribe!

• Make simple machines that improve my capacity to sell, without requiring more of my precious hands-on education.

• Save profits to fund production of new products. Revenue levels will, in time, snowball into significant amounts. Also growing the volume of existing sales through marketing activities can help, but it’s not the only game in town. Good products first. Marketing second.

I’m feeling pretty positive about this, and the great thing is that all of these activities can be done in small pieces, which frees my large blocks of time up for contract work, which continue to pay the bills. By the time I hit 10 products for sale, I’ll be able to evaluate this strategy for sure. In the meantime, the numbers seem promising.

Next

By next month, I hope to see development progress on the following products:

• 50-sheet, thick cardboard ETP full-sized pad (test product)
• Fountain Pen Notebook
• Dry Erase ETP 18×24″ board
• Certificate of Chain Letter Breaking
• A5 Bound ETP Journal

It’s unlikely I can fund all these at once, but I can certainly put the legwork in now! I’m pretty excited.

Beeminder allows you to track anything you can count on a daily basis: pushups, cigarettes, etc, and it plots them on a graph as you enter them. There’s an ideal curve called the yellow brick road, meaning that you are hitting your goals consistently over time.

If you fall off that ideal curve, the graphing stops, and you can’t enter in any more data. And this is where Beeminder starts to play mind games with you. If you want to start the graphing again, you pledge some real money. If you fail again, you have to pay the pledge, which is sort of like buying another “life” in a video game. Or, you could also rage-quit and stomp away muttering about how the goal was never very good to begin with, but that’s up to you. If they are your goals, and they’re important to you, you will not mind putting a little money on the line to help trigger the powerful loss-averse aspect of your primitive brain.

Yes, really. It’s such a powerful concept that I’m afraid to sign up for it, though I suspect it is just a matter of time before I do. That’s because Beeminder is not just a graphing program: it is an artifact that makes the underlying productivity theory both visually accessible and quantitatively concrete. It specifically draws on observations about human behavior, like how we suck at thinking rationally about the future. Specifically, Beeminder seeks to be a “commitment device” with teeth by making you PAY UP.

Beeminder is also a tool for people who like to analyze data. It’s exactly the tool I wish I had when I was following the Hacker’s Diet several years ago, because it applies the “sliding window smoothing” filter to daily weight using “Rose-Colored Dots”. There are a variety of other averaging and threshold filters with fun names like The Turquoise Swath and the aforementioned Yellow Brick Road. They are somewhat hard to see unless you zoom in; this is an example from their site:

But this isn’t really why I’m writing about Beeminder, even if it IS a nicely-designed web application copy-written with a charm reminiscent of The Phantom Tollbooth. The reason I’m writing is because the blog is an amazing trove of writing about goal setting, written in an accessible magazine-like style—sort of an academic version of The Atlantic—that’s far more nutritious than the usual 10 WAYS TO MEET GOALS WITH A KITCHEN TIMER list articles rattling around the Internet. It’s smart, amusing, and generously filled with citations so you can learn more. I like it a lot.

The article that induced me to write about this was Flexible Self Control, which introduced me to the ancient Greek term akrasia. From Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

Akrasia (ancient Greek ἀκρασία, “lacking command (over oneself)”), occasionally transliterated as acrasia, is the state of acting against one’s better judgement.

This is an area that’s highly interesting to me, and now a whole new line of research awaits me. Thanks, Beeminder, for being there. Keep doing your thing!

» Beeminder: The App
» Beeminder: The Blog

They came back with a few options, ranging from a laminated flexible plastic to a rigid version. They are kind of expensive to make, so I’m testing the waters with this post.

So I’m looking for some feedback from people who like boards on their wall. The original idea was to adapt the ETP to this, but I’m open to suggestions. It would be cool, for example, to design a group project dry erase dashboard. I used to like these when I worked in teams, so we could see what the objective of the day was. I suppose I should prototype it.

Anyway, leave a comment here or post on the Facebook page if you have any interest in a future product like this. First, we’ll brainstorm and figure out what we’re looking for. Then, I’ll produce a mockup that testers can print locally at their nearby copy shops and see if it’s awesome or not. Thanks!

My productive work happens primarily at a computer screen, working with a myriad of documents and applications. It takes a while to set up all those app windows and documents, and once they are up I am not happy about moving them. It’s also a pain in the butt to dig into my document folders to find the right files.

For example, if I’m making an update to my website, I might have a good number of the following open:

• GMail
• An SSH terminal window, or two
• A browser with the system error log, plesk website admin panel, and possibly the ISP control panel
• Analytics pages
• WordPress admin page, and WordPress posts page
• Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Bridge
• Digital camera files directory
• Windows Explorer windows for images, public download directories, and related project
• Browser windows for reference links and supporting information

That is, by my reckoning, about 30-40 clicks of the mouse to get up and positioned on my screen. If I’m doing some work on a client project, I’ll have:

• Basecamp in three browser windows (messages, dashboard, writeboard)
• Project Files: Word documents, dev journal, issue tracker, InDesign or Illustrator
• Photoshop, Dreamweaver
• Subversion folders
• Various browser windows for looking up stuff.
• At least one Windows Explorer file window open, probably two
• Gmail / Calendar
• Skype
• Excel for timetracking

It takes dozens of clicks to close old windows and open new ones. I find this incredibly annoying. I’ve tried multiple desktops and leaving windows open all the time. However, this just makes it so I have to chase which window is where. Plus, I like to close documents and save them as new revisions periodically; leaving things open is just asking for trouble.

Batching It Up

I finally got tired of this last week and made a batch file that opened all this stuff for me. I figure this might have two benefits:

• It’s easier to drive right into a project, because the batch file opens up all the relevant files for me to see without little effort.

• It’s easier to close everything related to one project (saving first) knowing that I can open it up easily later.

A batch file is simply a text file that has the extension .bat (for batch). If you don’t see the extensions on your files, it’s probably because Windows hides them from you by default, figuring that the carnal knowledge that there are such things as FILE TYPES would make your eyes bleed. To show the naughty file extensions, you can check out these instructions.

Windows still has this primordial command line interface (or CLI, as we old-timers like to say) built-in. If you open your Windows Start menu at the bottom-left of the screen and type cmd into the Search Programs and Files box, a CLI window will pop up. The batch file (below) are the commands that you could type into the CLI; the idea of the batch file is that it does the typing for you.

Here’s an example batch file (right-click to download):

REM Simple Batch File to start programs and documents
REM For 64-bit and 32-bit versions of Windows XP or greater

@echo off
set ProgRoot32=%ProgramFiles%
set ProgRoot64=%ProgramFiles%
if not "%ProgramFiles(x86)%" == "" set ProgRoot32=%ProgramFiles(x86)%

REM Start an File Explorer that stays inside the specified folder.
REM Remove the /ROOT parameter (leave the comma) to disable folder lock.
%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /ROOT, D:\path\to\directory

REM Start a 32-bit application. Replace with %ProgRoot64% if running 64-bit app.
start "Dreamweaver" "%ProgRoot32%\Adobe\Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5\Dreamweaver.exe"

REM Open a couple webpages
start "WPAdmin" "http://davidseah.com/"
start "Wikipedia" "http://wikipedia.com"

REM Open a document (simulates a double-click)
start "My Document" "D:\path\to\document.doc"

REM See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_variable#System_path_variables
REM for other variables you can use in paths

To use it yourself, you’ll have to rename it to .BAT instead of .BAT.TXT. Also, you’ll need to substitute your own programs and directory paths.

Anyway, this batch file does one of three types of actions:

1. A “file explorer” window with a specified directory already open.
2. A specific program (32-bit or otherwise)
3. A specific document or webpage, as if I’d double-clicked it

So when I want to open up all the files related to one project, I double-click the batch file and everything opens at once. When I’m done, I close all the windows and quit all the apps. I have several batch files set up to do the following common activities:

• Open specific client’s set of folders and project management docs / web pages.
• Open my invoicing files
• Open my “New Blog Post” apps (Photoshop, Dreamweaver), related image directories, and WordPress admin pages.
• Open my “Maintain davidseah.com” apps, folders, and so on.

The biggest pain in the butt in setting up the files is finding the “full path” to the programs and documents you want. If it’s a program, you can right-click the program’s name in the start menu, and choose Properties to view either the Shortcut or File Location. If it’s a document, you can actually drag the icon into the cmd windows, and Windows will fill it in for you. Yes, this is all very tedious; if someone knows of a utility that handles this all for you (or ideally sets up something similar so I don’t have to edit batch files), let me know.

• I wasn’t a computer engineer
• I wasn’t a computer animator
• I wasn’t a game developer
• I wasn’t even a hardcore gamer

Fortunately for me, the Internet was starting to supernova in 2000, and opportunities to do computer graphics and interactive design consulting dropped into my lap. In this world, credentials and technical ability matter somewhat, but what’s even more important is the ability to relate to people. It took me quite some time to realize this, having emphasized multi-disciplinary competence and unwavering ability as the ideal blend of talents to alloy within the crucible of my ambition. But, through good friends and one or two disasters I gradually learned the importance of this lesson. I started to develop an appreciation of people beyond ability, and my empathy—long suppressed—started to make itself visible in gasps and sudden starts.

In 2003 I became allergic to marketing work, and took some time off before leaving the company I was with for good. I had drifted out of alignment with their business trajectory. So I went freelance, and a couple years later began to start blogging. Unexpected success of a modest nature, in the form of the Printable CEO Concrete Goals Tracker, gave me an inkling of what it would be like to be appreciated for my own thoughts and own perspective. But I still didn’t know what I was, what I was doing, or where it would go. Eventually I learned a few more “I am not” things:

• I wasn’t an interactive designer
• I wasn’t a motion graphic designer
• I wasn’t an entrepreneur
• I wasn’t a consultant
• I wasn’t a web developer

I found it interesting that while I could perform these functions, I didn’t find my identity within them. I wasn’t filled with excitement about being any of those things as an ends in itself.

Since existing labels didn’t stick, I started making up my own fields of expertise. For a while, I called myself an investigative designer, combining the observational powers of a crime scene investigator with the creative toolkit of a visual designer. This appealed to the creative consultancies. I also tried labels like information graphics designer, as I had seemed to develop a design sensibility along these lines with the various Printable CEO forms. I see now that this was an attempt to use the need for consulting status to muffle my inner disquiet.

In the 36 months leading up to 2012, I started to recognize that what was important to me was actually not business-related, but freedom-related. I want to write about what I find interesting because really I have no choice but to indulge. This is what I needed to be able to sustain. The point of me even having a business, I realized, would be to do THIS all the time and make it work FOR me at the same time.

Which brings me to now. The difficult shift is dropping all the things I used to do in favor of a new label: that of a producer of goods. I am used to portraying myself as someone who has a lot of skills combined with the insight to make things happen, in the general areas of technology, graphics, and workflow. Even though I didn’t work in a company, I subconsciously told myself that I could work in one, at a senior level, and be successful. It was a kind of consolation prize for not making progress as quickly and surely as I thought was possible. That keeps me in the past, and judging myself using old guidelines is probably not going to be as effective as accepting new ones that are more relevant.

So, a few weeks ago, I started to erase my old professional identity from the Internet, replacing designer-for-hire and project lead credibility indicators with something that felt, at first, like a professional step backwards.

It’s kind of terrifying, to erase signs of past competence.

Intellectually I know that it’s not going to kill me, and that I still possess those skills at least at a conceptual level. And indeed, I use nearly all of them in the day-to-day operation of davidseah.com and in the creation of products I’ve been working on for the past seven years. And also, I am still working as a designer or developer for hire with people who have approached me through existing channels so I can pay the bills. But emotionally, I’m starting a zig-zag run in a new kind of marathon.

One reason I like the idea of being a stationery designer is that it’s easy to understand. That not only helps people “pigeonhole” me into an understandable category, it also makes it easier for ME to know what I should be doing. As I say I’m a “functional stationery designer”, this pretty much means continuing to develop the various forms and tools I’ve always done. An added dimension is that of being a business person building a machine that generate revenue, which in my case is being designed to support that desire to write about anything I want and pursue projects that I find interesting.

But is that enough? Friends and various acquaintances, familiar with my skillset, have pointed out that I’m throwing away a LOT of opportunity by not listing some of the things I do. And, if past history is any indicator, this may not be The One Thing that I’ll find satisfying in the long run. Is it wise to just throw away those old identities and work opportunities?

I don’t know. Only hindsight will tell. But I think there is a connection between this path and what I have done all my life, which is just trying to make sense of the world. The new wrinkle of understanding is that it’s not so much the “making sense” of things that is my focus; that’s just the technical aspect of something bigger. And that bigger thing is addressing the yearning and desire to achieve. Whether it’s my own needs or the needs of someone else, this is what I always respond to, and it’s what shapes all my work., It’s actually what starts me working. I see the emotional need, and then create something technical that will help meet it. The emotion comes first. It’s productivity in the context of yearning.

Because it’s difficult to express that sentiment in a pithy slogan without sounding like a fruitcake, I’ve decided that just saying I design-, I mean MAKE functional stationery is a useful way to capture the sentiment without being sentimental. Instead of DESIGNER OF, which has service implications, I say MAKE to impart a sense of finished product. That allows me, I think, to focus on the emotional relationships that my products can perhaps resolve. When someone tells me they are happy with the Emergent Task Planner, it’s the sense of joy at having taken control of their day that moves me: Things aren’t so hard to track. Change seems possible. I can do more and dream bigger. That’s what it is really about.

That I get to expense paper, pens, and packaging materials as “research” is just a perk ;-)

Although I’m just 20% through a fast read, I’m already planning to go buy a physical copy of the book for my shelf of canonical reference material. Perhaps I just haven’t been paying enough attention to the “motivational science” book scene, but I found this book to provide a WEALTH of new-to-me concepts that I’d half-stumbled over for years, but have been unable to define beyond gut feeling and personal experience. As a bonus, it’s much more readable than Dan Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness, which has a wry academic cadence interwoven into the material that keep me guessing as to his intent. Maybe this is by design, building plausible deniability into the material in case mobs of “serious academics” were to peer-review him behind his back…but I digress.

While I plan to do a full review sometime in the next year (or ten, given my current progress on this), here’s some takeaways:

• Some people believe in FIXED levels of intelligence, while others believe it is MALLEABLE. I’m totally on the MALLEABLE side, which gives rise to belief I can do things. There is research that shows that the mere belief gives rise to increased success.
• Believing that ACHIEVING is EASY, though, has a negative correlation with success. Apparently, we’re far more likely to succeed if we believe it’s going to be difficult.
• Willpower is like a MUSCLE. It can be exercised and developed. It has a limited store of energy that must be replenished.

I’ve written about various aspects of this over the years, as I’ve experienced the ups and downs of trying to achieve my own vision of what it means to be happy. The above (which is just from the introduction) seems to fit, AND it is based on research observations. The upshot is that I am NOT BROKEN. I’m just human.

Flipping randomly through the remainder of the book (I’ll review this fully at some later time), it seems filled with the familiar material one might expect from a goals book, except steeped in psychology. If you are of an introspective nature and enjoy understanding the differences in mindset that give rise to certain behaviors, you’d find this book fascinating. If you’re looking for a DO THIS THEN THAT book, probably not. I’m of the former persuasion, so I’m jazzed about filling in some gaps in my own personal approach to productivity.

For example, somewhere in the beginning of the book there’s a description of the ways we think of goal choices that are easy versus difficult: we tend to think either in terms of WHY or WHAT. As a dreamer that looks for meaning in everything, I often think in terms of WHY I do something. However, this turns out to be a less effective approach than WHAT to do when the goal is DIFFICULT. There’s an interesting study cited about coffee drinkers and heavy mugs that show the mental proclivity to think one way versus the other, depending on how much effort is required to drink the coffee. There may be a correlation between this and my own stuckness relative to goals, and how I find writing to be the way that I get through things. I often just write what I’m doing to keep continuity and context. This worked, I thought, because my memory and attention needed backup…but perhaps it’s related to WHY and WHAT approaches given a particular kind of task.

Anyway, check it out:

• Succeed: How Can We Reach Our Goals by Heidi Grant Halvorson (who has a blog on Psychology Today)

Thanks, Eugene, for pointing this book out to me.

I find myself constantly expending decision-making energy on tasks as trivial as making an extra trip down into the basement. If I’m going to go to the basement, I rationalize, I need to have something to bring down AND to bring back up. Maybe my real calling in life is to be a shipping dispatcher, but since I’m not in that business it’s actually a problem because it’s often faster to make multiple trips. Failure to do so leads to distraction and unnecessary delay.

Interestingly, this doesn’t happen when I’m working in a group of people, because I don’t like sitting around waiting for something to happen. Movement usually begets action, so in social situations my desire to see progress overrides the desire for efficiency. Secondly, I recognize that efficiency in a group arises only after the group task is successfully executed a few times, so the beginning is ALWAYS non-optimal and inefficient. I find that getting through those first passes quickly, then establishing a baseline shared experience to anchor productive discussion, tends to lead to efficiency later.

How quickly I forget that lesson when I’m working on my solo projects.

I’m not sure why I’m like this. I really like seeing massive return on effort, and this may not be due to a desire for efficiency. It is just more exciting to think about, and that may be the fundamental deficiency in my workflow: I have a high threshold point for action. Optimization is a rationalization I make in the absence of immediate gratification and/or reward. And my idea of a reward is receiving something that enables higher-quality experiences. It’s a catch-22: to create higher-quality experiences means doing a lot of grunt work right now that isn’t rewarding in the same way. In other words, it’s hard, often unrewarding work…UNLESS you are doing it with other like-minded people.

Hmm.

As I wrote earlier today on Picking the Right Projects (in my “stream of consciousness” journal, I seem to be in a place where I am deficient in shared motivations with my peers. A lot of the work I’m doing now is related to the unique abilities that I seem to have. Because they are unique, and because I work from home, I am continually in a state of isolation that doesn’t feed my soul.

To be sure, the “optimize later” maxim is good production practice, especially when you are learning to produce something new and aren’t sure what you are making. This is the creative part of the work. After you have the fruits of your labor in front of you, THEN you can start optimizing because it’s much clearer what is or is not working on a system-wide level.

Playing devil’s advocate, “Optimize Now” may be a reasonable approach to take if you’re not really working on something novel or ground-breaking, presuming that you or your team has the skills to make what’s being asked for without a lot of ramp-up. In other words, an experienced team already has the skills to make what they have before. If improvement is not the goal (such as having some kind of product to fill a niche in one’s marketing plan) then “optimize now” is actually part of project definition tinged with a bit of management pressure. I’m not going to say that’s bad, but ironically it’s not the way I want to work.

So where does my desire to optimize come from? It’s probably a combination of laziness and disinterest in the process itself. Learning to transform the dull parts of invention into something tolerable is a key discovery I need to push for. The clerical aspects of creativity, such as collecting hundreds of facts so I can see the pattern in a flash of insight, or slogging through the layout process until I can imagine the element that pulls everything together, is so unrewarding to me that I don’t want to start it. I start daydreaming of magic tools that do it for me, or I make excuses about the lack of optimal technologies or energy levels.

There’s no getting around the dull clerical work, unless you hire someone to do it for you and let go of the expectations that it will be done exactly the way you want. So either you do it yourself GLADLY (or at least without judgment) or you DON’T do it. When not doing is not a choice, then wishing for an optimal solution isn’t going to help. Make it fast and ugly, and then optimize later. On the other side awaits the real payoff, even if it’s hard to see right now with all that boring work of cutting/pasting thousands of words into tiny boxes is in front of you.

Or so I tell myself. Back to work with me :)