luckyisgood.com - Blog

Interview with Ev Bogue, Author of "Minimalist Business", Part I: Writing Process

May 24, 2012

It's was my pleasure to talk to Everett Bogue, who is one of my favorite writers.

Ev is the author of Minimalist Business, a dangerous ebook that just might talk you into that thing you want to do anyway: to ditch your crappy day job and go live and work your dream from anywhere in the world.

Ev is interesting in many ways, one in particular: he publishes books the way software developers ship software. He publishes updated versions of his ebooks.

Ev was kind to answer a few questions burning inside me: about his writing process, and about building an internet marketing platform for your writing business.

You'll enjoy this interview if you want to write your first book, or are currently working on it. Sometimes we all need a little encouragement and help with the writing process and the marketing part.

I didn't want to make the interview too long, so I split it in two parts. This first part is about the way Everett writes books.

Everett Bogue's writing process

Me: I believe every writer must come up with a writing process that is working for her personally. Sometimes it helps to hear about other successful writers and their processes, so let's talk about yours. How long does it take you to publish a 100 pages book, from writing the first draft of your first chapter, to having your book ready to download online?

Ev: Somewhere between 27 years and two weeks. I write non-fiction books with the intention of befitting people who are living and working in the world right now, so a lot of the content comes from experiences I’ve had in my own life. If I don’t have experiences, I can’t write the book.

Most of my books have taken around 2 weeks to write from scratch. I hide myself away, and just bang it out. However, it has to be the right time for the book to be written.

My experience in writing and publishing a book has shifted over the past three years. I no longer think of books as bricked objects. Instead, they’re more like software for me. I write and publish them, then I rewrite and publish them, then I rewrite and publish them. Every time what I’m attempting to transmit from me to you gets clearer.

I have never published a book on paper, I don’t intend to. It would be horribly irrelevant by the time it came out.

It’s important to note: whenever I say ‘book’ in this interview, I’m referring to the digital updated-like software kind. Not the dead tree irrelevant kind.

Me: How much time do you spend on rewriting, relative to the time you spend on writing your first draft?

Ev: My creative brain and my editing brain are very different. I keep them as separate as possible. Initially when I’m trying to write a book, I’ll not edit at all. Then I’ll go back over and read the entire book from start to finish and delete anything I hate, or that doesn’t work. I’ll fix almost all grammar problems later. If I do it while I’m writing, I’m interrupting my creative process, which always ends in disaster for me.

I use a writing editor called Scrivener. It gives me superhuman writerly abilities. Anyone who’s a writer without Scrivener is suffering (until something better comes along.)

Me: What's the hardest part of the whole writing process for you?

Ev: Figuring out what people will benefit from, then doing experiments to learn enough about a subject to communicate it in a way that will benefit readers. I have to constantly challenge myself, or I’m not evolving as a human being. No one wants to read a book written by a stagnant person.

Me: What one advice about the writing process would you give to a writer who hasn't published a book yet?

Ev: Stop thinking about books as dead tree bricks. They’ve changed. Books are digital now, meaning their content can evolve now.

The last full length book I wrote is called Minimalist Business. It’s also the same name as the book I wrote two years ago by the same title. The subject is the same, but the content has completely changed. I reworked it from scratch. I had to rewrite it for the book to be relevant for the modern age of right now.

If I’d published Minimalist Business to paper, it would be coming out in bookstores right now, and it’d be irrelevant. Printed books are out of date the moment they’re published. Digital books have an opportunity to be incredibly relevant and evolve through time. We’ve been updating software for decades now. Why not treat books the same way?

Stay tuned for part II of this interview: building an internet marketing platform

Soon I'll be posting the other half of this interview, the one dealing with your online writing business. If you're writing anything, you're a business person, you know that, do you?

Meet Everett Bogue

Everett Bogue is a young author currently living and working in Singapore. This is his personal website evbogue.com, and this is his ebook Minimalist Business.

If you'd like to hang out with Ev, you can find him on Google+.

Why I don't waste time writing in my mother tongue

May 1, 2012

I made my biggest business mistake 2 years before I even started my business 10 years ago. I met a guy who is today one of my two business partners, and he said to me:

"I'm making a ton of money running an affiliate website in English. Let's make a similar website, but for Croatian audience!"

I said yes. We were both fools. But we were 20 years old then.

It took me years to realize what a small town our country is. I'm writing this because I don't want other young people to make the same mistake I did, and in this post I've prepared the simplest math to prove my point.

I give you two words:

Pas
Dog

"Pas" means "dog" in Croatian. It took me the same amount of time to write down "pas", as it took me to write down "dog". It takes me twice the time to write "pas" and "dog" one after another. This simplified math becomes life-changing in the next few sentences.

The first word "pas" is understood by 22.3 million people in 7 South European countries (Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia, Kosovo and Montenegro). That's a whopping 0.003% of the world population.

The second word "dog" is understood by 1.5 billion people, spread across almost every country of the world. That's almost 22% of all the people living on Earth right now.

It's astonishing how a simple choice of letter combination magnifies my potential by the factor of 67. But, what's in a number, right?

Wrong.

For every 1 person that reads my blog post in the obscure language of my small country, there are 67 more people that can be touched, inspired and influenced by my ideas - but aren't, if I don't write in English.

For every like, follow, plus, comment and share I get from my fellow countrymen and neighbors who understand me, I can get 67 likes, follows, plusses, comments and shares from people all around the world - but I won't, if I don't write in English.

For every dollar I could make on the market of 22.3 million people in 7 countries, I could make 67 dollars selling to my fans everywhere in the world - but I won't, if my product is not offered to English-speaking people.

For every friend I make in Smallville, there are 67 new friends eager to meet me in Metropolis - but if I greet them with "Bok!" instead of with "Hi!", we can never be friends.

Oh, that reminds me!

Yesterday on Google+, I became friends with a guy from Greenland.

Greenland! Do you know anyone from Greenland? Well, I do! I now have a friend there! I could put that under "Bragging rights" in my Google+ profile.

Greenland might be the largest island in the world, but only 56.000 people live there - and they natively speak Greenlandic and Danish. My new friend spoke English when he talked to me, and that's why we were able to connect. Good for him!

Because, if he ever created a product or a service that was easily offered and distributed over the Internet, I could become his customer. If he chose to limit himself to 56.000 people speaking Greenlandic or Danish on a big wonderful icy world called Greenland, his chances of me ever buying anything from him come close to zero.

I have online friends in Finland, South Africa, United States, Netherlands, Italy... As well as in Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia. The neighborhood doesn't go anywhere if I choose so, and guess what? When us neighbors meet online publicly, we all speak English. This way, others can join our conversation - and they do.

One day, some of my online friends might buy stuff I make. One day, I might buy some of the stuff they make. For that reason, and because my life is too short for translation, I only create in English.

That is, until the Chinese decide to finally conquer the Internet.

***

Image: Touching Rosetta, credit to Namlhots on Flickr

What Guy Kawasaki does to sell shiitake-load of books

April 9, 2012

Yesterday I've read Guy Kawasaki's newest ebook "What The Plus!" in one sitting. The book is the missing manual about succeeding on Google+by attracting as many followers as you can.

I recommend that you read the book (it's only $2.99) and test everything he says. It works. I may not have 1.7M Google+ followers like Guy does, but everything he wrote worked for my Google+ presence as well.

This blog post is not a book review

Here I personally want to explore and write down things I think Guy Kawasaki does to spread the word about his books. Here's one book review by David Deal that Guy Kawasaki shared on Google+.

I'm writing this because I want to remember the following book marketing lessons from one of the bestselling authors in the world.

Give away book copies for FREE

Every now and then, Guy gives away hundreds of PDF copies for free.

Guy said in a recent hangout that the more he gives away, the more he sells. He has his own theories why this is so, and one of mine is that people who got the book for free do more than an average user to share the book. I got the book for free, liked it and felt like sharing. Also, knowing that Guy reads and responds to almost every mention of his name on Google+, this blog post I'm writing is a nice way to connect with a person I admire, and maybe get on his radar (because I will be mentioning this blog post on Google+).

Don't work alone on your book

Before Guy finished the book, he sent it to 200+ volunteers / beta testers. They checked the book for typos, factual and logical errors. Kawasaki basically crowdsourced bug fixing and attributed beta tester by mentioning people's names in the book.

I've seen other successful authors do this, and there's a good reason why this is good marketing.

First, other people lend you an objective pair of eyes and the book comes out better because of it. A good book gets more stars on Amazon.com.

Second, other people do your work for free. Time is money, and if I was Guy Kawasaki, I'd sure as hell tap the potential of 1.7M followers to do nice things for me. Guy shares so much quality information online that many people like to return the favor.

At last, but not the least: when Guy frakkin' Kawasaki mentions your name in his book, you're bound to tell everyone you know on Google+, Twitter and Facebook about it. Free, priceless word of mouth for Guy that helps his SEO as well, and powerful social proof for you.

Use other people's art and credit them

Guy used other people's photos wherever he could, and properly credited authors with links to their websites. This makes sense, especially for Guy - a photography afficionado. Why include your own photos if you can get a mention or a link to the book from one more artist, who you share a passion with?

Share, share, overshare - and be helpful

Guy's ebook is full of links to posts, books and other people. He shares lavishly. This makes the book a helpful resource, even to Google+ 1st generation users like me. I've visited almost every link Guy mentioned in the book and circled a few new interesting people.

People whose links and resources ended up in Kawasaki's book will most likely talk about it, buy a copy and write a review of the book on their blog.

So, why work in a vacuum, when you can share your knowledge and attribute people on every occasion you get?

Help people blog about your book by making the book awesome

Guy makes the book visually attractive by including relevant quotes at the beginning of every chapter and breaking long pieces of text with images and screen captures.

Also, a healthy dose of humor is present in every chapter. Just enough to turn yet another page.

An attractive book helps people finish reading the book, and people who finish reading the book will blog about the book. See what I'm doing here? Blogging about a book. If I read half through it, I would be ashamed to blog about a book I didn't finish reading.

Ask an influential friend to write a chapter of your book

Guy asked a few people to write chapters of his book:

A popular photographer Dave Powell wrote a chapter about sharing photos.
Peg Fitzpatrick, director of marketing and social media manager, talked about how to succeed on Google+ if you're not famous like Guy is.
Lynette Young, creator and curator of Women of Google+, explained how to succeed as a woman on Google+.

This is an awesome concept: the author does not pretend to be an expert in everything, and this very act makes him even more influential. Guy invites another expert to speak about his or her field of expertise, at the same time promoting those people, and giving them the chance to promote Guy's book. At the moment, 2 of 3 of those people have a direct link to Kawasaki's book in their About sections on Google+.

Three other people wrote 3 out of 14 chapters of the book. Again - don't work in the vacuum, promote other people's work, help them and they will in return help you. Guy's book "What the Plus?" is all about promoting other people on Google+ and collecting influence points for this free promotion.

Table of contents of the book "What The Plus!"

Here's what you can read about in the book:

Chapter 1: Why I Love Google+

Chapter 2: How to Get Started

Chapter 3: How to Master Circles and Streams

Chapter 4: How to Make an Enchanting Profile

Chapter 4+: How to Achieve Trustworthiness

Chapter 5: How to Comment

Chapter 6: How to Share Posts

Chapter 6+: How to Optimize for Social Search

Chapter 7: How to Share Photos

Chapter 8: How to Respond to Comments

Chapter 9: How to Hang Out

Chapter 10: How to Get More Followers

Chapter 10+: How to Be a Little Fish in a Big Pond

Chapter 11: How to Deal with Bozos

Chapter 11+: How to Thrive in the All-Boys’ Club

Chapter 12: How to Avoid Cluelessness

Chapter 13: How to Get Google+ Help

Chapter 14: How to Master Google+

Go get "What The Plus!" or read more on Mashable about how Guy launches books using social media.

Easy and high-quality content marketing: my "Always be upgrading" principle

March 25, 2012

This blog post is an experiment in a new way of creating content, so if parts of this post seem unfinished, I made it so on purpose and you are most welcomed to correct me in comments. Continue reading and you'll find a way to make your blogging easy, effortless and of higher quality than before.

We must create content if we want to build our internet marketing platform

But there's a problem:

Creating content continuously is hard.
Creating quality content continuously is even harder.

Content marketing is hard because we make it too hard. I decided I won't put up with this anymore and that I need to change my attitude towards publishing.

For me, the choice of publishing platform complicates publishing because it dictates the number of words I want to write well.

So, as an experiment, I was watching how my feelings change as I said the following two sentences to myself:

"I will sit down now and write a tweet."

"I will sit down now and write a book."

The first thought results in "Sure, why not".

The second thought results in "I'd rather have my nails pulled."

There's a scale of rising complexity to every piece of content

Tweeting is super-easy. I'm usually done in 10-60 seconds.
Google+ is easy. The post that got me the most shares, took me 20 minutes to craft.
Blogging is hard. The best blog post I ever wrote, took me a few hours up to a day to write.
Writing an essay is much harder than writing a blog post. I've never wrote a real essay, but I estimate it would take me a few days to write a 5000 word essay.
Writing a book is the hardest thing on the planet. Don't let 1+ million published Kindle ebooks fool you: there's still 7 billion people on this planet, and there are more people who do not write books, than those who do.

The most important part of this scale is the difference between posting on Google+ and posting on my blog. Why must Google+ be almost easy, and why does writing a blog post must be hard? What's the difference, when Google+ lets me write blog-length posts?

I noticed I never complicate things for myself when I start writing on Google+. A post on Google+ is fleeting, while a blog post is something set in stone, immutable, unchangeable. But does it have to be?

The best way for me to make publishing content easy is to change my attitude towards various pieces of content I create.

So, I decided to make blogging as ephemeral as a Google+ post. I decided to publish early and treat all my blog posts as content in perpetual beta.

My content creation rules

1. Publish as soon as I think my idea is worth spreading. (This blog post is an example of such an idea, and I hit publish before I was satisfied with its quality.)

2. Publish first with minimum editing, heavy-edit and upgrade later.

3. Every content piece can stay in perpetual beta.

A blog post does not have to be finished once I write it. I want to write a blog post and come back to edit it. That way, every blog post I write will become better with time. Every time I come back to revisit a blog post, I will have the chance to reference new content sources, enrich the blog post with news and fresher content.

Numerous advantages to treating blog posts as perpetual betas

Existing readers will have an incentive to return to the blog post and see what's new (my publishing platform will give them a clue about what's new in this particular piece of content since their last visit).
New visitors will stumble upon a version 1.x of my blog post and witness epicness under construction.
Google now rewards fresh content, and Google also rewards content sources who publish more quality stuff (Google calls this algorithm "Panda" - here's an easy-to-understand infographic about Panda)

There is one major disadvantage to my approach: my content won't be as good as if I sat with it for hours and edited it till perfection. But guess what? We all have "perfect" pieces of content sitting idly somewhere on our hard disk. "I'll get to it later, when I have time - I can't publish it yet, it's crap".

Well, an old Chinese proverb about software development says: "If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late." If I publish a piece of content I am at least a little embarrassed by, I have an incentive to return to it and make it better. But at least I shipped! I hit "Publish"!

What I expect will happen

Let's be frank: most blog posts are crap. Mine are too. But publishing anything is the first step towards content marketing success. Publishing quality content is the next.

So, by treating blog posts as ever-changing, flexible, variable and upgradeable, I expect the following benefits:

It will be faster and easier for me to publish a blog post. If I wait until I have enough time to write an epic post, it will never be published.
With time and continuous editing, I can upgrade my every blog post to epicness. I am willing to expose my editing process to the public. I've seen Leo Babauta do this: while he was writing one of his ebooks, he was publishing every new chapter of it, every day, for everybody to see it, for free. When his book was finished, he let it be free on his website, and offered to sell it for money on Amazon.com.
This is the best way for me to begin my journey towards gathering my 1000 true fans. This might not be the best choice for everyone, but it is for me - because I let too many good ideas in draft on my hard disk. Fuck perfection, real artists ship.
Crowdsourced content debugging. My readers will let me know if I made a mistake, a typo or a logical error. I can't control who reads my public posts: haters gonna hate, and most people will always be nice and friendly. Either way, others will debug my content, and this way I can be grateful even for trolls.

I give credit to Everett Bogue for inspiring me to this thinking. He said books can be published the way we create software. If it's ok for books, why wouldn't it be ok for content pieces and blogs?

***

Image credit to just_a_name_thingie

Mind Reading for Web Designers

January 13, 2012

After days of sweating, swearing and panting, your proud Photoshop installation gives birth to a beautiful baby web. Instead of bursting with awe and promising more web project work to come, Mr. Jekyll - your favorite client - turns into Mr. Hyde and rejects your web design.

Yesterday's funny cartoon: not so funny today, because it happened to you (again). Now you have another disillusioned client and a few more days of expensive, unbillable work ahead of you. You wish you possessed the power of reading your clients' mind, so that next time you could nail the web design the first time around.

If you're a web designer or a project manager, I can imagine you nodding your head at the scenario above. If you're struggling with having your first web design proposal accepted by the client without additional work or a total bloody makeover, you should read my book "How (not) to run a web development agency". In it, I'm going to show and tell what I've learned about reading clients' minds in my 10+ years experience of running a web development company. Among hundreds of websites we launched, I can only find a few cases of a client taking advantage of our "satisfied-or-money-back" guarantee. I have acquired unique skills and shameless yet ethical techniques that help me deal with clients of all flavors. I'm ready to give my knowledge back to the community. I hope to help ease the stress and the frustration of less experienced, yet equally ambitious and talented web professionals, such as myself.

Hopefully you would like to know more about this topic. The bad news is: This is my first book, and it's far from being (self)-published. My plan is to put it on amazon.com by the end of 2012. I'm counting on the Universe to have accepted my order. The good news is that you can circle me on Google+ or follow me on Twitter right now, and I'll be happy to answer your questions about getting your creative web design work accepted. My background is project management and sales, and I co-founded an internet agency, so you can AMAA about running a web development business.

Dignity is for the unpublished. That's why I'm gonna flat out ask you right now - if you agree that web designers deserve less stress and more free time - to share this post with your audience across all your channels, or with anyone you think could benefit from reading my upcoming book. Thank you, and I promise I'm gonna make the book worth all your while!

Google Drive (GDrive): What I Want From It

January 4, 2012

There is no way Google could resist launching their own cloud storage service during 2012.

Mashable is almost teasing Google to go for it, after Techcrunch spilled the beans on Google Drive. Google's biggest competitors - Amazon, Microsoft and Apple - all have their own, more or less successful, versions od the cloud.

While I wait, I dreamed up a few neat features that our internet agency would very much profit from, mostly in terms of saved time. We are a project-oriented web development agency. Every internet domain is a project to us. All the information we keep about the work we have to do for clients, is organized by domain names, across many apps we use: Google Docs, a source control system, and our own project management and ticketing web application.

Right now, we are losing time copying and pasting attachments from clients' many emails. The thing is that we never liked the idea of giving clients access to our ticketing system - so we never implemented this. Access means managing their user accounts, answering to even more support calls about forgotten passwords, and writing extensive help and faqs about using our app. A simple, account-less and download-less way of securely uploading large files for clients would be a godsend.

So currently, most clients are emailing us pictures for website design, one picture per email, of course. Many of them are emailing us Word files with embedded BMPs. Some of them love sending us DVDs with 4 gigs of pictures to choose from. The more advanced ones are using a local uploading service that crashes more than it works.

On Google Drive, we would organize all the files and folders just like we organize our source control system: by projects.

Me wantz: tight Gmail + Google Drive integration

Every time a person sends a file, the file gets automatically synced to Google Drive. Minimum folder management is a must, of course: Let's say that Google Drive would let me create a new folder for a new, unrecognized email sender - right from the Gmail interface. I could rename that folder to a real project name later.

Sometimes a client sends us an email containing rich instructions about what he wants us to do. He usually sends a .doc attachment with text and embedded images. Gmail could recognize his email address, and Google Drive would know that attachments from his email (or his email's domain) belong to a specific folder on Google Drive.

So, when I clicked "Save this attachment to Google Drive" button located next to every attachment in Gmail, the .doc file would be 1) automatically converted to Google Docs native format, and 2) saved into the appropriate folder. This folder would be named after client's domain, and the folder would already be shared properly across my company.

Public upload folder

Oh, how I want this feature. It is one of the better things Dropbox does.

So using Google Drive, clients could upload files to our company's public folder. It's a "misc" folder, where we would allow upload only to users with a link to the folder. Clients would *not* be able to access nor see any other files but their own. We would move their files to a newly created folder as soon as we received their files. This way, files would be secure from prying eyes; Clients wouldn' have to learn a new upload application, nor would they have to download any application for uploading into our cloud. All they would have to have, is a Google cccount.

Use case: Let's say an email, containing attachments, arrives in our inbox. It's from a new potential client who wants us to use his files as documentation for creating a sales quote. Since he's a new client and never contacted us before, no folder exists for him on our Google Drive yet. Also, we don't want to create a new folder every time a person asks us fo a sales quote (If we had $10 for every person who did...). In his email, I could click "Save this attachment to Google Drive" and all the attachments would be stored in the public folder.

Google Drive API

We would need a good API in order to connect our project management app to Google Drive. This way, Google Drive would save us a ton of software development time, and we would continue to use Google Drive for storage of all project files. I was just in the middle of researching Dropbox as a solution for project files storage, when rumors about the probable existence of Google Drive broke out. I am waiting...

Source control / file version control in Google Drive

What version control systems mean to programmers, Google Drive would mean to project teams. Why should developers have all the fun?

The sender could use Google Drive's versioning system to update the files he sent to us. No resending over email necessary. Oh, what a dream come true that would be! Of course, Google Drive would have to somehow visually notify me that files have changed, and how they changed. Right now, Google Docs has only a very basic version control. Currently it allows you to upload the same file into the same folder twice, and treats those two uploads as two different files. This is bad, but I understand how complicated this must be for Google to solve (merging changes safely is one of the biggest challenges in fully-blown source control systems).

Support for all file formats

Right now, I hear that people are renaming unsupported file extensions and uploading them to Google Docs. While this isn't unusable, it's impractical.

Come on, Google, how hard can it be ;-)

I don't want to store my music online (I pay Grooveshark to stream it for me). I don't want any more picture album apps (I chose Google+ picture album app and that's it). I want a fully-blown, professional and for-business-use Google cloud, and I'm not afraid to pay for it. Someone please tell Google.

Changing the pen you're writing with changes you as a writer

June 16, 2011

For more than two years, I've been using Sublime Text - a fine programmer's text editor - for writing blog posts. Since my final output was HTML, it seemed logical to start writing in HTML immediately. Sublime Text did some nice things for me as a writer (like fast autocomplete of HTML tags and wrapping selected text in HTML tags) and so I stuck with it.

I liked what I wrote. Some people liked some of the things I wrote, too. And then I converted to Mac.

Using Mac changes your perspective in many ways. Sublime Text does work on Mac, but some of my favorite functions still do not (version 2 is still in Alpha as I write this). I was on the market for a text editor, and came across OmmWriter - a simple app for writing stuff on Mac, PC and iPad.

OmmWriter has *none* of the features of Sublime Text (besides being able to type and press enter). All OmmWriter does is give you a pretty blank screen with no interface to write on. It shows a serene, unobtrusive background behind your text and plays inspiring music while you write. It won't let Twitter grab your attention. I wrote 5 posts in 8 days with OmmWriter. I got into the Zone and stayed there. And then, something weird started to happen.

My blog posts were coming out completely different. They looked differently, they were structured differently. And they were *short*.

You see, OmmWriter does not format your text. It won't create headings for you. No bold, no italic, no tables, no big fonts. No numbered lists! No bullets either! OMG!

I had a revelation with OmmWriter: I was sick and tired of writing posts with bulleted lists. I've had enough of writing *scannable* posts. Those posts were never me. If you write for scanning, you'll make people scan. No more unneeded H2 and H3 headings, which I often used as a visual delimiter. OmmWriter took all of this away and liberated me to just - write. To write naturally, to write *prose* - not blog posts. As soon as I couldn't use bullets, I stopped thinking about extensive content which is ideal for "list posts". So I stopped writing them. I started writing one simple idea per post, like this one: That the choice of the text editor influences your writing style. Simple ideas are easier to write, so I was able to write more. The more I write, the more I publish, the more people get exposed to my ideas. Not everything I write will be good, but I will get to Carnegie Hall.

the art of laziness - how not to do stuff

September 27, 2010

"Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something." Robert Heinlein

i hate the word "productivity" with the gravity of thousand black holes. everybody, including myself, wants to be more productive, to check-off more tasks, to be busy-busy-busy the whole day.

i know why we keep task lists. a pile of tasks prevents us from doing the labor that really matters - thinking kind of work. when was the last time you wrote "think about x" on your task list?

thinking is hard. thinking forces us to be accountable and responsible. thinking results in mistakes.

i want to stay lazy, because laziness is the path to freedom and riches. i'm not kidding - knowing what *not* to do is golden. my job is to think, and no thinking will be done if there's a task list in front of me. matt cutts wrote one of the best articles on productivity, but i think the following philosophy of mine is not so bad either.

this is my art of positive laziness. i'm still just a student of this fine art. every morning i'm practicing my art in front of the mirror. there's a piece of paper pinned to my bathroom mirror, that says: "what will i do today to make myself proud?" checking off some st00pid task off some list is not what i have fought for.

while playing urban terror yesterday, this is what i learned about myself and the art of practicing

September 21, 2010

nobody likes the complainers. always bitching about their life, universe and everything. how they've been dealt a bad hand in life, and how others - unlike themselves - either had helpers, or got lucky. how their work, their colleagues and their bosses were lousy. they're bitching about the government, their partner, their pet, the national football team, and gasoline prices.

luckily, that's not me - and never has been.

but give me a game to play - any kind, ranging from monopoly through tetris to first-person shooters - and i become one nasty complainer.

not only a complainer - one sorry-ass sore loser. i get mad. jealous of other people's results. grumpy. offensive. rude. looking to pick a fight with the first person hanging around me.

the thought that a bizarro version of me actually exists, scares the living shit out of me. i've seen too many superhero shows and movies to treat this as a triviality it actually is. i'm afraid of bizarro-me taking over my real world, where respawning takes its real, usually expensive and painful toll.

on a conscious level, there's nothing to complain about. even the most trivial thing, like playing a computer game, takes time to become good at. me knows that. but bizarro-me does not care. bizarro-me demands i start playing a completely new game, like urban terror, and instantly become the best player in the arena. bizarro-me thinks it should be easy to take down a sharpshooter from half the map away - with nothing but a desert eagle in the hand - while bleeding from both arms and legs - with only two bullets left. and when the stellar achievement of the said magnitude does not happen, bizarro-me starts complaining out loud, annoying the hell out of my in-game comrades and spoiling it for everyone.

so instead of running for cover from snipers, i was slowly, but surely running a risk of becoming that person nobody wants to play with. i imagined myself, playing bejeweled (my favorite puzzle) all alone in the silence of my apartment, while my buddies counted frags and kicked ass on some online game server far far away, making their parents and their country proud.

gotta know myself to know how i must practice

bizarro-me resurfaced yesterday night, when i decided i wanted to practice and improve my game play. but the way i chose to practice was exactly the way that annoys me the most. instead of just playing, i.e. shooting with guns that *i know* give me the best results, and steadily getting better while enjoying myself, i stubbornly insisted on 'practicing' with my two favorite weapons. i like the remington sr-8 sniper, because one shot kills, and the desert eagle sidearm, because it's similar to sr-8, but for close combat. map after map, i got the same shitty results, expecting to get just a little better. i expected noticeable results too soon. other players don't give a shit about my preferred weapons, nor does the universe. either you choose the right - not the favorite - weapon for the kill, or you die. and i died a lot yesterday.

of course, being negative during the game is the best way to start sucking even more. i become inprecise. my brain freezes with annoyance to the point where i can't think anymore. i forget my custom keyboard bindings. i forget to relax in my chair, which in return makes my back hurt sooner than usual. i become every sniper's favorite cannon fodder, which is bad - because when you play in teams, one bad member makes the whole team lose.

instead of having fun, i got miserable - and it's not the first time. "if you're no good at this one simple thing, how do you expect to run a serious company, with serious consequences, with real people?"

when i hear the lizard brain talking shit to me like that, i know it's time to do something about the game. and i'm not talking about urban terror. i'm talking about the game of life.

so, my biggest mistake, and my biggest lesson from yesterday's urban terror game, is "do not practice the wrong way". every way which is not the fun way, is the wrong way. if i put 10.000 hours of real game play - not practice with selected weapons! - into urban terror, all the players of the world would tremble at the sight of my nick joining their game server. at this point, i'm 9970 hours away from mastering one game. the point is: i don't care about urban terror that much. it's just one silly game. but i do care about playing and having fun with my friends.

so, today is the first day i stop spoiling it for myself and for everybody else.

and i do care about not letting bizarro-me take over. she's real. i imagine she was a rogue player on my own team, the kind who deliberately shoots friendlies (i hate it when those lame fuckers join the server we're playing on :-). bizarro-me is crouching somewhere high above the ground, watching me through her remington sr-8 scope. one shot in the head is enough to take me down. i better never forget she's there, i better never stand still, and i better surprise her first.

the path less traveled always has fewer holes

September 20, 2010

after four days of heavy rain, this morning greeted me with sunshine and with just enough degrees celsius for me to take out my bike and ride 8 kilometers to work. it would be a much needed exercise after last night, when i tortured my spine with playing urban terror online for four hours straight into the midnight.

on the way to work, i always take my favorite of the three possible roads. it is the longest and the most pleasant one, the one that takes me for a ride along the river and the woods.

there is something serene in riding your bike early in the morning and occasionally closing your eyes for a few seconds, every time the road gets lonely. this morning, i felt like i was superman, charging my powers through my face into my body, while bathing in the september sun.

one kilometer away from my office, there's a fork in the road. there are two paths, both unpaved, and both dirty. this morning, my first instinct was to take the more trafficked one, the one everybody else would take, the one i *never* take because it's boring and easy. but this morning, i thought to myself: both paths must be full of potholes now, filled with four days' worth of heavy rain. the more trafficked road is wider, it should be easier to cross. my usual path is muddier, i don't want to get stuck and fall off my bike into the mud. although that would make a good story, i'm happier with this one i got to write instead.

so first, i took the path more traveled. after only 20 meters on it, this story gets as figurative as it is literal.

the more trafficked, the more popular, the wider of two paths, has deeper and bigger potholes, created by the cars of many unsuspecting drivers, driving the same path for decades. as long as the sun is shining, you never see how deep the potholes go. it's only during or after heavy rain do you see the path's many dangerous features. but only a few decide to walk any paths after many days of heavy rain. the dangerous features remain completely invisible to people riding inside their seemingly safe cars. but the path more traveled has many potholes - some are so big and deep, that one could damage his car if driving too fast - even when the sun is shining. only a slow-riding or walking person, mindful of the features of the path she is on, gets to see the more popular path for what it really is.

and so i turned my bike and took the path less traveled - the one i always take, the one i was at first afraid to take today. sure, there was one part of the path where i could easily end up in the mud, because the path was completely covered with water. but i let my inner voice encourage me, i made it loud and let it speak to me:

"just drive. just drive steadily and very slowly, and drive right through the middle of the widest pothole you come across. this path really is less traveled by everybody else, but it is also safer for you, you know why? because luckily, you already know this path. because you weren't afraid to walk it by foot just six days ago, when the path was still mostly dry. and this morning, when there are muddy potholes on your path, all those silly walks begin to pay off. this morning, you know exactly just how deep all those potholes go."

as it turns out, the potholes on the path less traveled are actually shallower than everybody else thinks. because there is no traffic to make holes in it.