
A message I wrote to my Facebook friends that they seemed to like..
"A few people seem pissed off this morning.
It's so easy to feel that way, we're all humans (well most of us) and our brains are programmed to want more. But just think about this...
The fact that some carbon atoms that came from a star randomly arranged themselves into 'you', and you're alive right now, in this time of abundance, in the first-world country you live, with the knowledge and abilities you already have, and the top-of-food-chain body & brain you have is sooooooooooooo improbable that it's insanely amazing. In fact you've already 'won', you've already got more than you can possibly imagine.
It's unlikely you will ever have to kill anyone, or that you will starve or have your home destroyed.
You can travel anywhere, learn anything, eat whatever you please, communicate with people all over the world, do almost anything you could dream, create the life you want to live.
And you will die, and it might be sooner than you think. And everything you ever 'achieve' in this tiny corner of the universe will eventually be wiped out by time, like a wave that crashes onto a beach and washes everything away.
Just think about this...
Today, right at this very second and for a incredibly tiny period of time in the history of the universe you are alive. Nothing else matters. So fuck everything else and relax and enjoy this amazing gift."
Coming soon - The Meaning of Life? (part 2)
So 2011 has passed and what a roller-coaster ride it was!
Some things went swimmingly well and others got washed up on the rocks.
Here are the headlines...
Successes
Built an app - One of my major goals of the year was to build a web-app from scratch and with the help of super-dev
@lukeoflondon we made this happen in the form of
flup.com. Building a web-app was an incredible learning experience. At the start of the year I could just about knock together a basic web page, but by summer I was fully up to speed in HTML5, CSS, Photoshop, and getting sharp on jQuery, javascript, Ruby on Rails and Illustrator. I was deeply immersed in the world of Github, Heroku, Redis, SCSS, CoffeeScript and lots of other lovely cutting edge technologies. Technically I now feel very comfortable and confident in my abilities to digitally create. I am once again literate in the language of code and I think this is an essential skill to have in a world that is increasingly digital.
Learned all about the Start-Up world - although our web-app never really had a decent business model behind it, the process of building the app threw me deep into the startup world and community. We were approached by investors, met angels and VCs and learned all about their investment strategies, term-sheets and shareholder agreements. I've made friends with other tech-entrepreneurs in London and around the world. We also tried many of the methodologies advocated to startups such as Lean, Agile and Customer Development. Although I've setup businesses before from scratch, I think this has given me a great foundation for setting-up and scaling businesses in the future. Personally I've always thought that the most successful brands, organisations and agencies need to think more like startups and being involved in a startup has really refocused my entrepreneurial spirit.
Travelled the world - The luxury of flexible working time and place meant that I could travel much more than I would have been able to do working for a company. Trips included Scotland, India, Portugal, Alsace, San Francisco, Hamburg, Amsterdam, and the Lake District. It's been fascinating wandering around these places, meeting random people and absorbing local cultures, and has left me hungry for more.
Minimal living - I've made huge inroads into cutting back on possessions. I sold my property and car and have ditched as many of the things that "own you" as possible. And really, it hasn't impacted my life in any negative way at all. In fact I've found that getting rid of possessions gives you tremendous mental freedom and reduces worry. I now think incredibly hard about the things I buy and usually more about how I will get rid of them in the future! I don't think I've bought any new clothes this year, and even cut my own hair (ok maybe I'm going too far!)
Fitness - I joined a gym this year and settled into a programme to improve my fitness. This has been a resounding success, I hit my goals and I feel healthier and stronger than I have since my early twenties. Much of this is thanks to the great advice contained in The Four Hour Body book. This is really important to me as my father, who was incredibly sporty and fit as a youngster, died due to ill health in middle age. I want to avoid that at all costs and actually become fitter as I get older.
Food exploration - My mouth and belly have never been treated to such an incredible variety and quality of food as they have this year. We've eaten at the some of finest restaurants in the world including what for me was the best, The Fat Duck, and tried foods from around the world. These experiences will be treasured forever.
Amazing people - People amaze me and I've met some truly incredible people this year. It's easy to believe (and I often do) that humans are just crazy creatures intent on wiping themselves off the face of the earth, but there are some truly inspiring people around who think differently, do things out of the goodness of their hearts and generally make you be proud to be a member of the same species. I hope to cover more about a few of these lovely folk soon.
Started
Music - I've realised I'm totally addicted to music. It's always been my passion, my lifetime love, the thing that keeps me up all night finding those long lost tracks on YouTube. What's amazing is how easy it is to produce high-quality music these days. Back in the old days when we were releasing techno records as Nukleotide, creating a track would cost a small fortune. I've tooled up my Macbook Air with a new copy of Apple Logic which is now only £140! and am busy writing new compositions. I've been inspired by old friends such as Simon Blackley, Ben Jeffreys and Roberto Sodano who are busy creating fantastic soundscapes in their own bedroom studios. I'll be publishing some of mine online soon.
Content/community site - as we reached the final stages of the flup build, I bumped into an old client and friend Alex Butler. Alex had a great concept for an online community that would bring together free-workers (digital nomads, freelancers, artists etc). I realised this would be something I personally would be very interested in joining. We've been busy pulling a site together and we will be launching (Minimum Viable Product version) soon at
www.kindredhq.com What's been really interesting about this for me is the people we've met during the process of creating content who are using technology to explore new ways of working outside of the traditional office model.
Not so successful
Online business - At the start of the year I intended to get at least one revenue generating website/app online. This never really happened as most of my focus went into flup app development and learning new technical skills. I found that there are different levels of risk/reward when it comes to web apps and online businesses in general. Of course everyone want's to create the next Facebook, Google or YouTube, but the reality is that making money from a free consumer facing app/site is a long and highly risky path. From an investment point of view it's all about the potential to scale and smart VCs know only a tiny fraction of these types of business will scale at the rate required to make a decent return on their investment. In the UK especially there seems to be an aversion to these kinds of businesses because they are so risky. When I visited the US that didn't seem to be the case though. Investors there were more keen to make sure they didn't miss the next big consumer app set for explosive growth, so would be more inclined to seed fund these companies. It seems obvious but if you can create something of value that people want to pay for (the 37signals approach), it's much easier to get a sustainable business up and running, with or without investment. I've learned a whole heap about what type of online business I want to setup so watch this space. Hopefully early in 2012 I'll have something up and running.
Film-making - Although I took a number of film-making courses I never really got round to making anything by myself. Through the KindredHQ project I've been able to work with a fantastically talented up-coming director/DOP Max Mallen who is busy teaching my the tricks of the trade. I've also got my hands on a sweet Canon DSLR so again, watch this space!
Sailing/adventure - #epicFAIL on the sailing front. I don't think I set foot on a boat once. Besides the travelling the real adventuring didn't kick-in. I'm taking notes from true life adventurers like Lloyd Davis and pushing at some doors that will hopefully give me a few epic adventures in 2012.
So on reflection, great year but could have been even better. I'm not going to beat myself up over anything, just learn, set new goals and get on with achieving them. I want 2012 to be a year where I embrace adventure, make some big changes and continue to learn and grow. I also want to explore the world further and my big goal is to figure out where I would like to live next. More on this soon...
I'm writing this post from one of the most gorgeous hotels I've ever been lucky enough to stay in. The luxurious Oitavos hotel situated on the spectacular Portuguese Estoril Coast, which is about 40 mins from Lisbon and near the most westerly point on the European mainland. Our balcony overlooks the forest and the sea stretches out to the horizon. The weather is perfect and earlier we borrowed some mountain bikes from the reception and cycled along the coast to Guincho beach where the Atlantic ocean crashes against the rocks. For lunch we had the most delicious local clams and hams followed by fresh sushi. Not a bad way to celebrate being officially unemployed for the first 6 months of the 2011.
The best thing about this is knowing that I don't need to rush back. Even though I'm on my way back to London soon, if I wanted to stay longer I could. I can do my projects from anywhere as long as I have wifi. This is much easier than most people believe.
What a great six months it has been. I've covered off most of the things I planned to do although I've switched a few things around. Instead of driving across Europe, we decided to explore the Portuguese coast. Instead of going to Thailand we went to Goa. Instead of developing a number of different ideas with The Bulb Club and learning to program, I've focused on
flup our first web app (and business) which is already getting a lot of interest and a large amount of users even before its official launch.
I've moved. I've got rid of lots of useless stuff (although I realise I could and should take this much further). I've dramatically reduced my living costs (and could reduce them much further if required).
I've had some incredible experiences such as eating at the finest London restaurants including
The Fat Duck,
Dinner by Heston,
The Ledbury and
Hakkasan. I've become at least 5 times as fit and much stronger than I used to be.
Most importantly though I've learned many things about myself. Like the fact that I often focus on one thing to the point of obsession. That I can be an annoying perfectionist. That I'm never going to be a morning person. That I can't see the point of being stuck in an office. That I'm the one that stops myself living to my true potential. That I can still be risk averse even though the best things that have ever happened to me all came as a result of taking a huge risk.
And yet these aren't bad things, they are just things that I've become much more aware of. Sometimes they are helpful, sometimes they are not.
There's no advice in this post, just an observation. In my own life I've realised that good things happen more when I'm open to them and when I create opportunities for them. It's easy to get stuck in a rut. It's easy to blame your job or your circumstances or other people. The truth is... there is only one thing standing between where you are and the life you want. And that's you. And that's me. It's still me. I still find myself falling into self-created ruts.
My advice to myself for the second half of 2011 is take more risks, create opportunities, push beyond the comfort zones.
This afternoon I dived into the freezing cold hotel pool which felt like ice as I hit the water. My body froze and went numb as it was overloaded by the intense cold. But as I started to swim my body felt incredibly alive, tingling and rushing with euphoria. That's what being alive should really feel like right? More of that please.
flup
23 Apr 2011 4:56 AM (14 years ago)

Hey everyone, I just wanted to update you on why I've been so quiet recently. Basically apart from a brief trip to India, I've been dedicating every bit of time possible to a new project that's launching this summer. The project is called
flup (short for follow up with me) and it's an online system that helps you swap contact details safely and easily, and arrange follow ups (we call it a flup).
The project is very much a 'scratch my own itch' type project. For years I've been going to meet-ups and conferences, meeting great people, swapping business cards but then failing to follow-up, add them to my network or build real relationships. Who knows what opportunities I may have missed! I always believed that following-up could and should be easier.
flup is an attempt to solve this problem for myself and anyone else who wants to get more from their own personal and business networking.
We made a conscious decision not to talk about flup.me before we had 80% of the system built, so we've been busy designing and coding away using tools like
Ruby on Rails,
Compass and
HTML 5 and now it's almost ready.
I need your help...
We're about to go into beta-testing of the system and we're currently allowing people to reserve a unique flup.me personal address like mine which is
flup.com/michael. If you're interested in getting your own name (they seem to be going fairly fast) or want to help beta-test then you can do so here
http://flup.com
There's also a Twitter feed
@flup that you can follow and a
flup Facebook page that you can Like if you want to hear more about the business as it develops.
I hope to write more about how we generated the idea, gathered a team and brought the business to life over the next few weeks, but if you have any questions then feel free to leave a comment.
All the best,
Michael
OK so it's a bit late, yes I'm sorry, but here's the final report after my 5 week use of the 'Occum Protocol' in the new Tim Ferriss book The 4-Hour Body. My goal was to increase my weight from below 69kg to above 75kg in 5 weeks by adding muscle not fat.
In the end I made it to 74.7kg, just 300g off my target weight. Soooo close, and in no way a failure. Putting on over 6kg in 5 weeks is still impressive in anyone's book. In fact looking at the graph the only period where I dropped some weight and then failed to gain, was during a trip to Glasgow where I didn't have access to as much food or goats milk as I should have been consuming. As a sidenote I also now feel significantly stronger and am now pushing much higher weights than before I started.
So basically that's it, if you stick with the programme it works!
There's more details in the last two posts:
Thanks to Tim for putting together a really simple and effective diet and exercise plan.
And thanks to the guys at
Pareto Nutrition for supplying me with PAGG for the final two weeks.
Have fun with your own experiments! My next mission is strength, so onto the next chapters in the book. All the best, Michael.
For the last 2 weeks I've been focusing on following the 'Occum Protocol' in the new Tim Ferriss book The 4-Hour Body
. My goal is to increase my weight from below 69kg to above 75kg in 5 weeks by adding muscle mass not fat. The approach is to use a few principles that might seem counter-intuitive to hack your body and create exceptional results without too much effort.
Why am I doing this? Well, your body is the most important gift you have, so I believe that you should figure out how to make the most of it. After spending way too much time in the office, and not enough time getting in shape, I now really want to make sure I'm in peak physical condition, and this is the first big step.
After 2 weeks I can definitely say that it's already working!
The blue dots show weight in kgs. The green line is where I need to be in order to hit target. If I go below the red line it's not working, if I go above the yellow line it's working better than planned! The graph also shows the week previous to starting the experiment where I was already eating well and exercising a little but as you can see, I was actually losing weight.
As soon as I started on the plan my weight began to shoot up and I've consistently been above target since. This is with minimal gym time but a big focus on food input. What's interesting is that lots of people doubted that this plan would work at all, but for me at least it is proceeding perfectly and I'm not getting fat either.
Here's what I've learned so far...
Exercise
The biggest challenge is
NOT go to the gym as much as you want to! The method is all about doing what you need in the gym (and no more) as quickly as possible, then allowing maximum time to recover. It feels really strange doing less than 15 minutes in the gym less than 3 times a week but that's all that you need.
You need to
hit muscle failure. The method stresses the importance of hitting muscular failure of large muscle groups to kick start your hormones into sending growth messages. By doing heavy weights at slow speed you can hit failure in one set! Hardly any gym time is required, but it does need to be incredibly focused and productive gym time. If you can do any more reps after 1 minute rest you haven't hit failure.
You
don't need to do cardio. I did one cardio session before the start of the plan and one after 2 weeks. Even though I hadn't done any cardio in between my performance had improved. The book talks about the fact that the weight training alone will trigger an improvement and this has been the case for me. I do think that psychologically you feel better if you throw in some non-muscle-failure exercise, but it's not part of the plan and it will mean you need to eat more. Yoga seems to work well for me and makes sure your getting stretched properly.
The 2 recommended supplements
Creatine seems to help with achieving muscle failure. Adding creatine to my diet seems to have given me a muscular boost that means I can push a couple of extra reps out of each set. A downside is that for the first week it makes you go to the loo, a lot! Waking up 3 time in the night also messes up your sleep cycle quite a bit. After 2 weeks this seems to have reduced to a much more acceptable level thankfully!
L-glutamine is recommended to help improve food absorption, but it's also really helped me with combating muscle soreness. One things I always hated about weight training was the aches that came with it. So far I have had no aches at all, and this is likely to be due to having and l-glutamine tablet twice a day.
Food
As I mentioned in the last post, the real challenge is getting enough food and protein into your body each day. Having a stockpile of the following ingredients has made life much easier:
- Whey protein powder - mixed into a shake with peanut butter, milk and a bannana
- Protein bars - stick a couple in your bag for when you can't get access to protein rich food
- Liquid egg white - super easy to make a high protein snack
- Eggs - in case you get bored of just the whites
- Frozen spinach and frozen broccoli - super easy to add veg to meals
- Peanuts - good booster snack
- Quinoa - a 'good' carb that also contains protein
- Meat - beef, chicken, fish, pork, lamb are all good. Make sure you eat plenty.
- Water bottle - you need to drink lots of water (3-4 litres) so keep topping this up
Introducing PAGG
The good folks at
Pareto Nutrition have been giving me some advice on my plan and have also been kind enough to let me test out their new PAGG stack supplements. In the 4 Hour Body Tim raves about the effect of PAGG (which is Policosanol, Alpha-Lipoic Acid, Green Tea Extract & Garlic) on fat loss and muscle gain. Pareto Nutrition have designed their supplement formula exactly as Tim described in the book. I will be introducing PAGG to my diet shortly and will give you an update on it's effects.
If you're interested you can still track my daily progress in the
original self experiment post.
All the best and keep healthy and happy!
Michael.

Have you noticed something different in the last few years? Have you noticed that many people, maybe even you are addicted to information stimulus. We've become addicted to distractions that get in the way of what we want to do.
It's hard to imagine now, but only 20 years ago most of us wouldn't have had a mobile phone. We might have just set up our first email account, but we'd rarely check it. SMS wasn't used much (did it even exist?). Twitter and Facebook were a long way from being conceived. There weren't many distractions really. I'm not sure if this was a better time, but for me it was a very creative time. I'd lock myself in my room and create music, free from any distractions or disturbances. It was just me, my imagination and my music.
Now when I sit down to create there is so much temptation. The modern computer is an incredible tool, it gives us all the power to create things that 20 years would have been out of our reach. My little Macbook is a typewriter, a photography lab, an artistic workshop, a global communication device, an endless library of knowledge, a video production suite, a unix supercomputer, a publishing house, an incredible digital recording studio. It can do so many things, it has endless possibilities.
And yet now we sit in front of our computers or stare at our phones endlessly checking email, refreshing the Twitter stream or spending too much time browsing around Facebook. Instead of initiating action, we now await stimuli and respond to it. If there is no stimuli we feel somehow disconnected, we're not sure what to do, we have become addicted to this constant stream of new information. All these systems work on a similar principal to fruit machines and computer games, that of random rewards...
The clever people who invented the first fruit machines knew that if you randomly reward players, by varying the level of prize, then players will keep pulling the handle, because on the 'next pull' they just might get a big reward.
How many times do you re-check your email/Twitter/Facebook/etc.. just 'one more time' because the 'next pull' might be something urgent or interesting or mildly entertaining? And how often does that get in the way of what you're really trying to do? Do you really need to pull the information handle again or are you simply becoming addicted to information stimuli?
If you feel you're getting addicted to these distractions then what can you do to regain control?
- Realise the world won't end - 20 years ago this stuff didn't exist and the world carried on just fine. It's generally not as important or urgent as we make out. Try progressively switching your information inputs off for longer periods. At first you could try Sunday afternoons or some other equally acceptable 'switch-off' time. Switch off email/Twitter/Facebook/etc.. on your phone and computer. If you're feeling brave switch off your phone. Then progressively switch-off at more times during the week. Ideally you should aim to check inputs no more than once a day, and preferably in the afternoon, only after your main task of the day if completed.
- Use focus tools - distractions only occur if you allow them to. The multitasking power of modern computers and phones can be useful, but it can also allow non-essential information to pull our minds away from the task at hand. So switch off all pop-up alerts. Even better use some of the excellent single-tasking tools that are now available. For example I'm writing this on the zen inducing OmmWriter. I also use a Pomodoro Timer which forces me to ignore everything until my 25 minute Pomodoro session is over.
- Work where you can't be interrupted - Jason Fried recently talked about why 'Work doesn't happen at work' and concluded that interruption in the office is what stops work happening. Tim Ferriss talks about how to avoid taking calls and, even worse, 'walk-ups' that break our 'flow' in his first book, The 4-hour Work Week
. If you have to work in an office, try buying yourself a headset, put it on and switch it off. People won't bother you if they think that you're 'busy' on an important call. Even better find a place where you can't be interrupted. It might be a quiet corner, a nice coffee shop, it might be your home, it might be the top of a hill. Be creative and find somewhere that inspires you. I've found a handful of places in London where I can go (ask me and I'll point you at a few), switch everything off and focus on getting a task done.
It's astonishing just how much you can get done and how creative you can be even with a small amount of time once you get rid of the addiction to distraction.
Stay focused, stay in control, stop consuming and start creating.
All the best,
Michael

At the end of December 2010 we began a demand test for Bulbomatic, a muse business idea. The idea of a muse business is that it isn't dependent on you being involved. For example if you setup a design agency, become a lawyer or any type of freelancer, then you're basically exchanging your time for money. With a muse business the goal is to setup a system that you can eventually remove yourself from, so you can earn money without having to trade your time directly for money. A muse business is ultimately more scaleable, as it's growth isn't dependent on the amount of time you put into it (in the long run). Ultimately it's a way to have both time and money.
Bulbomatic was a test case to go through the process of early stage business creation. We followed the steps that I talked about in a previous post
Bulbomatic.com case study - 7 simple steps to test any idea or muse business. We ran the
test page for 4 weeks, here are the results and learnings.
Results
- Traffic to the site was proportional to promotion - Basically we got traffic when we promoted the site. Twitter and Facebook drove site visits. We decided not to use Google Adwords in this test because...
- Traffic wasn't viral - As far as we could see there was little viral sharing of the site. This suggested the idea might not have been as great as we originally hoped. The share button on the page performed very badly.
- We hit our 10% conversion target - Our target was to get 10% of people who visited the page to sign-up. So the highly focused landing page design worked in terms of conversion.
Decision
Although we hit our conversion target
we decided not to take this idea forward into the next stage.
We failed fast! Because we didn't get much viral traffic we asked more people for feedback on the idea. We concluded that the problem with light bulbs is that they are generally low interest. People only care about them when they move or when bulbs break, and these days they don't break very often. Most people we spoke to wouldn't want to spend time identifying all their bulbs just to insure against the possibility of a bulb breaking. Low interest categories are generally hard to penetrate without large advertising budgets as people don't talk about them and they're not 'top of mind'. Insurance for example. Whilst we were researching the idea we also came across some logistical problems. Bulbs are very fragile and once you begin to factor in shipping and return costs the business model starts to become more risky. That's why many big retailers avoid online sales and shipping.
Learnings
- It was a fantastic exercise - By going through the steps we learned an incredible amount of new skills and met some very useful contacts. For example the design, video, html, css and data capture integration was all done by us. I now know how to build sites, honest! I've even gone on to build my first hardcore Ruby on Rails web app! All this can be taken forward into the next project
- Do something you're passionate about - although we genuinely belief there is a need to simplify the world of lighting, we're certainly not experts in the space, or passionate enough about it. When you're going to be investing a large portion of your life into a project, it's much easier if you're driven to be the best in that field.
- Don't be scared to 'park' an idea - we might decide to carry on with Bulbomatic sometime in the future. We like the brand, we love the name, there is room for innovation in the sector, and it's a huge sector. But we don't believe it's the best project for us right at this moment. Here's some great advice from Jack Dorsey (the creator of Twitter) who invented Twitter back in 2001. At that time there was no interest in it. He parked it till 2006 and second time round, as you know, it became a huge success. A long video but packed full of great advice for start-up entrepreneurs.
Thank you!! - for eveyone who signed up to Bulbomatic, thanks for your support. We're really sorry that we'll not be pushing forward on it, but it's not the right time. Of course you will be the first to know about the release of the next project, which I hope will be much more exciting for you.
We failed fast, we've taken the learnings, and are now well into
the next project (stay tuned).
The most important thing I've personally learned is that
action is better than talk. Everyone has a great idea in them, but most people never do anything beyond talking about it. As soon as you take action, even if it's just writing the idea down, things start to happen. Momentum grows, serendipity kicks in, opportunities open up and the adventure begins.
If you have an idea, then take the first step. Write it down, tell people about it, see how far you can get with it. And if you don't get far, don't worry, keep going, do something else. Because each time you take action on an idea, you learn and grow.
Never be scared to fail.
Take care and take action
Michael
The package has arrived and it's big!!
This week I finally received my (official UK) copy of
The 4-Hour Body: An uncommon guide to rapid fat-loss, incredible sex and becoming superhuman: The Secrets and Science of Rapid Body Transformation
. Quite a title!!! In case you don't know this is the second book by Tim Ferriss and the follow up to his best seller
The 4-Hour Work Week. I have to thank the first book for giving me the push I needed to transform my work life, start this blog and create the freedom to do the things I'd dreamed about but never got round to doing. So I was more than curious to see what this new book would be like and if it would assist me in improving my health, fitness and body.
For those that have been following me you probably know that I didn't want to buy a 'real' book again. I simply couldn't wait for the Kindle version of this, I'm only human!
So what's the verdict? Well it's a huge book and I've only spent 2 days with it so far, but I've followed Tim's instructions, picked an initial goal, and read the pertinent chapters.
What I've taken from this so far is that you really need to pick some numbers to track against and make sure you track them. And in doing this I've already started to notice a few things I'm doing wrong. In the last 3 months of 2010 I started to use the Slow Carb diet which is covered in detail in the book (you can find a summary in Tim's blog post
How to Lose 20 lbs. of Fat in 30 Days… Without Doing Any Exercise). Although I didn't drop 20lbs, I did get into great shape following this diet along with some light dumbell work and yoga. If you are out of shape I highly recommend this.
The problem for me is that now I've got the (sitting at my desk all day) fat off, I now want to put some more muscle on. Not too much, I don't want to be an Incredible Hulk lookalike! But I want to break through the sticking points I've had when I've trained in the past. I've always hovered around the 70kg mark and never been able to go much beyond.
Time for a self-experimenting
So I've set myself a clear goal. I want to move from my current weight (67.4kg) to 75kg in 5 weeks. Specifically the 12th Mar 2011. As a secondary goal I want to maintain, or even better, lower my Body Fat percentage, ideally to 9%. This is a bit harder as I haven't yet found an accurate way to measure it yet. But 9% is the point where you can really start to see your abs. I'm following 'The Occum Protocol' method set out in the book, and this time I am tracking the key variables to measure progress and see what is working.
Here's a live spreadsheet of my progress through the experiment which I will be filling in as I go along.
The book advises having a week off weight training before you start and this will also give me time to get hold of the recommended supplements: creatine for increased force production and protein synthesis (research shows it can also improve mental performance), l-glutamine to help food absorption and tissue repair, and protein shake powder for the following reason...
Here's what I noticed even before the experiment. I tracked my previous week's low-carb diet using the free tools at
DailyBurn.com and both my calorific and protein intake are way too low to gain weight. I'm really glad I found this out. You often find that personal trainers or gym instructors will focus on the exercise side of things, but there's only so much your body can do without the right fuel. This is true no matter what your goals are. So although I'm already on a fairly high-protein diet I'm going to be keeping an eye on the numbers and if necessary add more protein to get the correct intake. Tracking the numbers seems critical.
Please keep an eye on my progress and feel free to prod me if I'm not filing it in. In fact if anyone wants to join me on a five week challenge even better. Just set an achievable goal. We can cheer each other on!
I'm not a betting man, but if anyone wants to bet me £5 that I can't do this, I will take you up!

Blogging is great. If you don't already do it you should give it a try. Everyone seems to have a unique story to tell or an interesting point of view on the world, and blogging about it attracts people who have similar interests or views as you do.
Many people tell me they would love to blog but don't feel like they have anything to say or they just don't want to put anything out because whatever they write isn't quite perfect.
The simple answer to this is 'don't censor yourself'!
We all do it each and everyday, some more than others. We think about what might happen if we say something wrong. Sometimes we are so hesitant that we miss the moment completely. I did this yesterday at lunch when I overheard two chaps on the next table talking about setting up an online social enterprise in an area that I know very well. I kept my mouth closed and probably missed out on making two new contacts and who knows what other adventures.
Yes we sometimes have to censor ourselves for self preservation! But is that little Mary Whitehouse in our heads a little bit too in control of what we are doing? Is she holding us back?
For some reason, I'm finding it hard to blog as often as I'd like. There's a number of topics that I want to discuss such as sleep patterns, travel plans, getting fit etc.. but I seem to be procrastinating by worrying that I need to research more. The censors have taken over!
So my mission for the next few days is to stop censoring myself, speak up more, write more, basically have a taste of my own medicine and get on with the adventure.
First of all apologies for not posting for a couple of weeks. I've been a little busy working on my current big project. I'm about a week away from completing the sale of my London flat. This process started over 5 months ago, so it's taken quite a while and has been a bit of a rollercoaster.
A few years ago I read a fascinating book,
Authentic: How to Make a Living by Being Yourself
which talked about the French origins of the word "mortgage". Mort = Death, Gage = Pledge. Mortgate = Death-pledge. This phrase lodged itself deep inside my head. For many people, myself included, a mortgage is a big trade. We're effectively exchanging a huge portion of scarcest commodity (our time) to make money to service a pledge which makes the banks rich and often goes on till we die (or are close to dying). Think about that for a minute. It's a bit scary!
But property is a great investment right? And highly leveraged debt (mortgage) is the only way to get your hands on it!? Well, yes and no. I had a very practical financial education from reading books such as
Rich Dad, Poor Dad
. If you struggle with money I'd strongly recommend reading these books (they were a huge help for me). They contain sound strategies on how to add property into a portfolio and make money. But they also point out that your own main property is rarely an investment, it's actually a financial liability i.e. it costs you money each month (unless you totally exit the market when you're up, which most never do).
For me, owning property has an effect of tying me to a location and tying me into owning property. It's a cycle. You own a property to store yourself and your stuff. As you get older you collect more stuff (and maybe your family grows), so you get a bigger place to store more stuff. The more stuff you have the bigger headache it becomes to change location. You lose your freedom and start to wonder if you own your property and stuff, or it owns you.
Don't get me wrong, I too dream of having the perfect home, in the perfect location where I can settle down, grow my own food and do whatever I feel. It's just that right now I'd rather spend my time having amazing experiences and investing my time into creating things of real value that will hopefully mean I won't need to get another mortgage.
So here I am now proceeding break the cycle, selling my property and getting rid of all the stuff I store for no reason and hardly use. I no longer want to trade a huge part of my time/life to service a mortgage that simply makes bankers rich via the huge interest payments. I no longer want to be tied to one place.
If I'm honest it's been much harder than I thought it would be. I've found it heart-wrenching to get rid of things that brought back sentimental memories. I've found it hard to have to give away or destroy ancient technology that cost a small fortune when I bought it, because it's worthless now and no one wants it. The process of selling property is still incredibly antiquated, time-consuming and riddled with extortionate fees that eat into your finances.
But on the positive side it's exciting to see 20 people simultaneously checking out a Google spreadsheet of everything you have for sale in realtime. It's great to meet new people with similar interests, through sites like gumtree.com, who want to make use of your stuff. It's great to give stuff to charity and see it being used again. It's great to turn the trash into cash. Most importantly it's wonderful to gain a huge sense of freedom from saying goodbye to all the useless stuff. Getting rid of stuff feels good!
Freedom is the real goal we're all seeking isn't it? From now on my mission is to be highly selective with anything I'm considering purchasing. Do I really need it? How will it add value to my life? How much space will it consume? Will it fit in my
Digital Nomad toolkit? How will I get rid of it!? I'm continuing to ruthlessly streamline the things I have, if it's not used then it shouldn't be in my life. I'm cutting the chains of property and junk to allow me the freedom to live life how and where I want to.
I'm also finding lots of other people are on a similar journey. Here's Sean Bonner's recent Ted talk where he shares his own motivations and experiences (to a fairly tough crowd).
Have a think today about what you really need in your life and if superfluous stuff might be holding you back from living your life to the maximum.
I talked in a previous post about our new venture, The Bulb Club. We're now bringing our first idea to life and it's called Bulbomatic.com. This time it's real light bulbs we're interested in rather than idea light bulbs!
I'd like to share with you the steps we've taken so that you can learn from our trial and error approach and hopefully be inspired to bring some of your own ideas to life rather than working on other people's ideas (i.e. having a job).
Who knows where any idea could take you, you could start a successful
Muse Business, get your ticket to freedom and live your life to the absolute MAXIMUM! The important step is to take action and get your ideas out of your head and into the world.
The Bulb Club project is trying to make this process as simple and repeatable as possible.
Our steps to date on the Bulbomatic idea are as follows:
- Brainstorm Idea - to find a problem that affects yourself or others
- Create Survey - a short SurveyMonkey form to explore the problem space
- Distribute Survey - via emails and social networks
- Analyse Responses - if you have sufficient data and a problem is verified continue otherwise go back to step 1 and iterate
- Initial Proposition - using the survey data to define the solution
- Create Demand Test Page - to see if there would be a demand for the initial solution
- Market Demand Test Page - await response, if low then go back to step 5 and iterate
This is really a test run to go through the whole process, rapidly moving from identifying a problem, through to getting a solution out into the wild. We're using agile methodology which involves testing ideas quickly, getting a
minimum viable product out as quickly as possible, then iterating quickly based on customer feedback. If we hit a brick wall at any point that's fine, we're just as interested in learning and creating a framework of easy steps as being successful with our initial attempts. We're also confident that there are plenty of other problems out there looking for creative solutions!
Here are the steps in more detail for those of you keen to learn more and TAKE ACTION:
1) Brainstorm Idea
Getting back to our Bulbomatic idea, the problem we originally identified was that many people find the whole subject of light bulbs incredibly confusing. We're quite geeky and even we found it confusing and so did almost everyone we spoke to about it. Our main gripe was that we'd bought the wrong bulbs and not taken them back, so we'd wasted money because of our confusion.
Sidenote - Finding problems to solve should come easy as the world is far from perfect. But if you're struggling keep your mind open and be as observant as possible in your own life. You'll soon come across things you or others find confusing or frustrating that will be ripe for your creative solutions.
2) Create Survey
We tested out our theory with a
SurveyMonkey.com survey (which is free).
We asked 4 simple questions (the lower the effort, the higher the response rate):
- What do you do when one of your light bulbs breaks? (multichoice answer)
- Do you know how to identify the type of bulb when it breaks? (multichoice answer)
- Do you have spare bulbs in your house that don't fit any of your lights (you bought the wrong ones)? (multichoice answer)
- What's the most frustrating thing you find about buying light bulbs? (optional question)
3) Distribute Survey
We distributed the survey to everyone on our social networks and email lists. It's a really good idea to participate as much as you can in social networks. If/when you need people to give you feedback on an idea, you'll have a pool of people to speak with.
4) Survey Analysis
What we found is that 58% of our 62 respondents had bought the wrong bulb and had the wrong bulbs in their house (question 3). That seemed very high and suggested to us that there's a breakdown somewhere between initial identification of the bulb and the final purchase. It also suggested that people had bulbs lying around that they didn't want or need.
Looking at the market it does seem that the light bulb industry is not designed to be user friendly and if you look at leading light bulb sites you'll see just how confusing it is to find the right bulb and how overwhelming the choices are. So we thought it was worth proceeding further.
5) Initial Proposition
We then brainstormed an initial proposition that could solve the problems we'd identified. We also contacted a number of suppliers, distributors and retailers to discuss logistics of our idea. Our initial idea is a freemium model where anyone can use our bulb content and tools for free and monetisation comes from selling relevant light bulbs and related products to our user base.
6) Create Demand Test Page
The next step was testing out demand for our proposed solution. We created a page at:
http://www.bulbomatic.com
to assess if there will be real demand for the services before we go into production. There are 2 reasons for this:
- To make sure we don't invest a stack of time and money into building something that nobody wants (it does happen!).
- So that we can recruit a small group of early adopters who we can help us develop a service that is truly useful for them. Win-win!
The page was hand-coded in HTML/CSS using
Textmate and a little guidance from
@danpaulsmith (our friendly CSS guru). Data collection is handled using a free
Wufoo.com form. We also created an 'elevator pitch' in the form of a simple explanatory video using just Keynote and iMovie in the interest of speed until we get round to making a better one. The video is hosted on our (free)
YouTube channel.
We reached this point with very little expense using mainly free or cheap tools.
I strongly believe anyone who has an appetite to learn and get stuck-in can get to this stage and test out demand for an idea.
7) Market Demand Test Page
We've made the decision to initially use our existing social networks (email lists, Facebook and Twitter) to kickstart the marketing of
http://www.bulbomatic.com but we may also run a test of Google Adwords if this isn't delivering enough traffic. We've also tried to optimise the page for SEO by looking at what keywords people search for (using
Google Keywords tool) and adding these keywords into the page. Ideally we want a minimum of 1000 unique visitors to the page and a conversion rate of at least 10%, but as this is a test project we'd probably settle for 50 sign-ups before moving to the next stage.
What's next?
Whilst the demand test page is up and running we will be working on a usable prototype Bulbomatic identification tool. We'll launch the tool with our initial group as long as we get 50 requests for an invite within 6 weeks. If we don't then we're obviously doing something wrong and will need to step back and rework the proposition with help from interested users before investing too much time and money on the first prototype.
Do let us know what you think of our Bulbomatic idea and the approach we are using to bring it to life. And if you need any help bringing your own ideas to life then why not come along to one of our
Bulb Club meetups.
All the best,
Michael (and
The Bulb Club).
I’ve spent the last 3 months carrying my homemade 'office' on my back. This means that I can work practically anywhere. Recently Jason Fried of 37signals.com gave a excellent TED lecture on "Why work doesn't happen at work". He has a point. When was the last time you managed to get much work done at your office desk? The joy of a digital nomad lifestyle doesn’t just have to be for the not-employed. If you’re in a job you can benefit too, improving your productivity and reducing your working day. I can now get as much done in about 3 hours as I used to do in 8-10 hours at a conventional office because I’m inspired by my surroundings (that I choose and change) and because no one interrupts me.
Here’s my toolkit...
- Macbook 2ghz running Snow Leopard - although it’s almost 3 years old it still flies. Once you’ve nailed a few shortcuts you’ll wonder how you ever coped on a PC. I upgraded the RAM to 3mb and this has made it more than capable of running standard graphics and video apps. It also looks a bit old so I hope it’s less nick-able than a shiny new (but slightly slower) Macbook Air.
- iPhone 4 - love it or hate it the iPhone 4 is a serious piece of kit. It’s now my everyday camera and video cam as well as having an app for just about every online service I use. It’s the device I’d be lost without (literally as I use Google Maps to find everything).
- Photoshop - insanely overpriced but it’s the swiss army knife of graphics. If your profession includes anything graphical it’s almost a requirement unfortunately. Having said that it absolutely rocks and there’s nothing that can touch it (there's a trial version on their site)
- TextMate - I’ve switched to handcoding all my HTML/CSS files and the built-in macros have increased my coding speed by at least 30%. You really don’t need an expensive app like Dreamweaver to make web pages/apps. TextMate will help you learn to write excellent code.
- Cyberduck - Free FTP upload program essential for getting everything onto your webservers. Pros will advise to use a version control program but FTP is ok for most folks.
- Dropbox - Probably the best online file storage perfect for sharing files and backing up
- Time Machine with External Hard Drive - I use Time Machine (free in Snow Leopard) to do a full backup at least once a week just in case anything happens to the Macbook whilst I’m out and about, or (like Delicious.com) DropBox decides to shut down.
- Firefox - This is now my main web browser. I was using Chrome but the sheer number of web development extensions on Firefox has made me switch back. Firefox 4 beta is astonishingly fast but doesn’t support all the plugins I use so I’ll stick with version 3 until it does.
- Toodledoo - Free online To-Do manager that integrates with Google Calendar. Can be accessed online or via iPhone/iPad app. It could do with an overhaul but I’ll stick with it until I find something better.
- Gmail/Calendar/Contacts/Docs suite - the only email/calendar/contact/office system you’ll ever need. Forget MS Exchange and overpriced Office. Super powerful, although the contact management could be improved.
- Hootsuite - I use this when I know I’m going to be busy as it allows me to schedule Twitter and Facebook updates across all my channels including Facebook fan pages.
- Blogger - probably the simplest of all blogging platforms and the easiest to quickly get to grips with. I have Wordpress and Posterous accounts that I setup and manage on behalf of others, but Blogger has everything I need for my personal writing.
- Skype - Video conference, talk, chat, share. As long as you’ve got access to decent wifi this can massively reduce the amount of spent traveling as it makes it easy to have an impromptu online meetup.
- Survey Monkey - Free data collection tool. Just remember to keep below 3 questions and you stand a good chance of getting useful sample of data back.
- Wufoo Forms - Perfect for idea testing Woofoo provides super easy setup of data collection forms. It's free for smaller data sets.
- Google Analytics - The beauty of being digital is that you can try things out, track what happens and learn from the results you get back. GA is free and it's easy to setup.
- Keynote - Sometimes you have to dig out the old presentation software to make a point so Apple's superior version of Powerpoint is my weapon of choice. Prezi has crossed my mind but it makes me go dizzy and you have to upgrade to be able to make your files private.
- Small notepad + pen - Always to hand for scribbling down contacts, thoughts, ideas.
- Large notepad - In the bag so that I can sketch out diagrams, wireframes etc..
- Nike C.O.R.E. backpack - I’m still looking for the perfect backpack but for now this is big enough to fit all my gear including an overnight change of clothes, plus I was given it for free.
- Berghaus RG1 jacket - Lightweight and surprisingly warm. If there is any chance of rain this goes in the bag.
- Water bottle - small bottle of water usually filled up at filtered water spouts to keep hydrated.
- Basic overnight gear - Carrying a spare Tee, underwear & deodorant means that I don’t have to go home if an impromptu adventure occurs!
THAT’S ABOUT IT!
My toolkit doesn't weigh too much and it can go anywhere with me.
I do have other applications on my devices such as iWork, Illustrator, Ableton Live, Evernote and also an iPad which I use for Kindle reading and DJing, but I don’t take it out much. These aren’t really essentials. Most of my real work is done on a cheap text editor!
It’s really incredible that we live in a time where with a fairly minimal setup like this, you can break free of the office, get out into the world, find a place that inspires you (even better has good wifi) and start getting more things done. Many of the above are free and if you’re strapped for cash you can even get cheaper alternatives for expensive items like Photoshop, you might even find you don’t need them at all.
So come on what’s stopping you? Offices are boring, venture out into the big wide world, work wherever takes your fancy, avoid the commute, make new friends, get more done,
become a digital nomad!!
P.S. do you think I'm missing anything, do you have any favourite nomadic places you like to work?
Following on from my last post I’d like to tell you more about The Bulb Club. As you know my loose goals include being more creative, increasing connections and collaboration, starting a business and achieving a target monthly income.
The Bulb Club is a club / social framework for achieving these goals. What I’ve realised is that it’s actually more fun and energising (for me at least) to
work with other people. I believe that small, nimble, practical, skilled teams can be incredibly productive. What I don’t believe in (well it doesn’t work for me) is fixed working hours, pointless meetings, too much talk, commuting, interruptions, big teams, lack of focus, lack of ethics or higher values etc.. things that many companies often suffer from.
So how does it work?
In a nutshell BulbClub is like-minded folks working together to bring their (hopefully)
great ideas to life, making mistakes, learning and sharing. We
get together in the real world once or twice a week in a nice space, the rest of the time we collaborate online from anywhere. There’s a focus on
less talking and more doing, rapid testing, and using data generated from low-cost experiments to steer idea development. We actually make things! We’re stealing a lot from the ‘
agile’ methodology and we’re infusing it with a social and morale compass. It’s the antithesis of the large corporate structure where decisions are often made by committee, risk taking is sparse, and the aim is to make the shareholders rich. We’re bored of all that.
Right now we’re prototyping
our first idea which is already getting a lot of interest. More importantly we’re planning to make our journey and the evolving process totally
open-source so others can use our templates to rapidly bring their own ideas to life. And we wan’t to make sure everything we work on (and don’t work on) is defined by a set of
higher values so we avoid spawning another money driven and destructive company into the world. We’ve even decided to write a
manifesto!
Maybe this sounds interesting?
We’re looking for collaborators, in particular people with technical and/or design skills. If you’d like to get involved, come to a
Bulb Club meetup, or just want to know more then I’d love you to drop me a line via the homepage.
All the best,
Michael.
It's been just over 3 months since I left employment. It actually feels like much longer than that, so much has happened already! I thought it would be good to take stock and look back on the things I've been up to so far.
Apologies for another long post, I promise I'll write some shorter ones soon! :) Here goes...
The first item on my todo list when I left was to write the big masterplan, but I quickly realised that could be a bad idea. For the first time in a very long time I had the luxury of unplanned time, so I purposely set out without a master plan. I wanted to spend the first few months with enough space to let random things happen. I did want to set some vague 'goals' though just to give me some direction. So I created some directions of travel that I wanted to explore. I did this rough plan using the technique described here, creating some 'nothing' time and taking a pen and paper along.
 |
My 'Agile' plan has areas of explorations, targets and a first step rather than a detailed timeline |
As you can see it's very rough but there was a reason for that. The theory was that if I have a number of diverse areas that I'm always exploring, I'll start to get much more out of life. Rather than plan each as a project with a timeline and task list, I set a target and a first step for each area. I then started to convert this into a
dream list with more defined targets and goals. I'm not 100% sure that targets are a good idea, but I'm trying this out so that I can test and measure effectiveness. As a lapsed project manager I was tempted to create a 1 year timeline and fill it with tasks, but I'm exploring a more
Agile approach (responding to change rather than planning too far ahead) which allows me to define vague goals and take the first step towards them. It also allows for
randomness and
serendipity to take me in new directions that I could have never planned for. I'm finding it a more exciting way to live, it takes a bit of trust that things will emerge at the right time, but so far they are doing.
Fitness was an important area for me to focus on, especially as my father died at a young age. I really haven't looked after myself as well as I could if I'm honest. The idea of going to the gym before or after work never appealed to me, and a diet of quick snacks and sandwiches isn't the best way to look after your body. To improve strength I've started doing
weight training at home using a
high intensity, slow reps to failure technique. I changed my
diet to include much more
protein, vegetables and beans, and less carbohydrates. For flexibility I signed up to a month of
yoga at
Hot Power Yoga who currently have a great introductory deal. The other thing that I've been doing is listening to what my body is telling me. I
sleep longer and get up slightly later between 8am and 9.30am rather than forcing myself out of bed. My body also tells me when it needs exercising so I generally go for 2 or 3
running sessions a week. The results so far are good, my energy levels are much higher, body fat is very low and muscle tone is improving rapidly. I probably should start taking more measurements to analyse what is working but overall I feel much stronger, more supple and more present in myself. I've just signed up to a 1 month mixed martial arts (MMA) course and also I'll no doubt be trying out the theories in the upcoming Tim Ferriss book,
The Four Hour Body when I get my hands on it!
Learning, well this isn't such a success story. I started to learn
Spanish by taking one to one lessons, listening to Spanish radio, downloading an English-Spanish dictionary and putting a stack of auidobooks on my phone. Although I started with the best intentions, I was finding that the lack of practice with Spanish speakers meant that things just weren't sinking in to my brain. So for now this is on the back burner. I'm still listening to the audiobooks, but I think I need to be fully immersed and living in a different country to really get the best from any investment in lessons. I'm consoling myself to the fact that I'm making real progress learning/re-learning a whole heap of
web building craft skills including html, css, php, python, javascript, photoshop, illustrator etc..
Happiness, is a success story so far. I've really
never felt as happy in my life! This isn't because I'm not working, if anything it's easy to feel down when you haven't got the community and stimulation that a job provides. It's because I'm making huge progress on the things that I'm identifying that really make me happy. In the past happiness hasn't come easily, but now I feel like I'm getting to know more about myself and am
being more honest and authentic to everyone. I think
time-freedom is a huge factor in being happy. We all want to be free don't we? I've almost
sold my flat! This is probably my biggest achievement. For years I've been tied to a mortgage, but soon I won't have one. I'm really excited about the flexibility and options this will open up. A big short/mid term goal is to be
location independent and being able to work this way will hopefully allow me to explore the world more and accelerate my long term goal of finding the perfect place and habitat to live with my family for an extended period. I'm also spending
much more time with friends, both old and new and really enjoying hanging out for a few hours rather than rushing off to the next appointment.
Adventure, it's interesting how goals can start to overlap, for example
Adventure and
Happiness. I set out with the goal of getting my
competent crew sailing certificate so that I could have the adventure of crewing yachts more often. But because the flat sale and getting rid of all my unneeded stuff, is taking up a chunk of time, I can't really go off for a week to do the course. But amazingly I found that the sailing club just round the corner from me were looking for volunteers to help out.
Tideway Sailability charity provide a fantastic service to people of all abilities getting them out sailing and even racing. The summer season is over but I've still been able to put a few sailing hours in, take out some disabled sailors, and use a little of my marketing skills to begin to get their social media platforms up and running ready for next year. I think anyone who works in
marketing and has any sort of conscience can find themselves concerned about the morality of what they are doing. I'd highly recommend using your skills (not just money) to help people wherever you can. They will benefit, and you will also feel better for it, win-win. I've been trying out other forms of adventure such as
climbing, but I'm still looking for new things to try. We've also been able to
travel more and had trips to
Istanbul, the Norfolk coast and spent time with family and
old friends in Manchester. Once the flat sale is complete I'll be more free to travel and get more adventurous. Can't wait! I think the biggest thing is that I'm now much more
open to adventure and have started to throw myself into more random situations and out of my comfort zone. It makes life so much more exciting.
Three areas that are crossing over in a big way are
Creativity, Learning and Business. I started to write this blog just before leaving my job as a way to record what I get up to and also because writing is a very easy way to be creative. I'd highly recommend to anyone that they
start a blog, it's a fantastic way to meet new people. It's also a useful way to experiment online, bringing together social channels such as Facebook and Twitter and seeing what people are interested in using tools like bit.ly and Google analytics. You can learn a hell of a lot about people and technology by trying things out online and seeing what's actually effective, and these days it's incredibly easy with the free tools that are available. I've been very lucky in quickly finding an
amazing 'business' partner to 'work' with. 'Business' and 'work' are interesting terms because
what we're focusing on is more around 'creating' and 'having fun', it just happens that our first project has the potential to make serious money so I guess it would be classed as business. But primarily we're focusing on getting great ideas rapidly to market, action not talking, building things, real world testing... I'll be writing in detail on what we get up to and our progress in our 'business goals' and
our site will be up soon at thebulbclub.com if this is something you're interested in. It's really exciting to be able to combine creativity, learning and building a business and we're also
looking for other like-minded people to join us.
And that leads me on nicely to
connections. I've been really surprised at the amount of
fascinating, inspiring, supportive people that I've met over the last couple of months. If you read the news too much you get the impression that most people in the world are negative or nasty but that's just not true. The
world is full of amazing people and you just need to get out there and meet them. In big cities like London it's so easy just to hang out with your circle of friends and never meet anyone new. So go to random events, work in public spaces, say hello to strangers, strike up conversations, hang around instead of rushing off. Comment on blog posts, email people who interest you, pick up the phone. Who knows what exciting new directions your life could take just by speaking to someone new!?
Overall I think the approach is working. I could be moving faster in one direction and smashing goals quicker, but actually the variety, balance and randomness of the approach is what makes it interesting and enjoyable.
I'd love to hear more about what you think of this approach and how you plan (or don't plan) your life.
All the best and thanks for taking the time to visit,
Michael.
A great deal is talked about productivity. There are literally thousands of blogs, books, techniques, videos etc.. around on how to improve it. I've just installed a Pomodoro timer onto my Mac and am going to use the Pomodoro technique to write this post. But is productivity really important? Do we need to be more productive? Should we be focusing on this?
There are things we need to do in life. We need to make sure our dependents are healthy, nurtured and loved. We need to make sure we eat and sleep occasionally and look after our own bodies. Beyond that everything else is all gravy, it's a bonus. We really don't need to do much more.
Last weekend I watched a bunch of grey seals with their pups on the coast of Norfolk. If I was a productivity coach I'd say these guys really needed a LOT of help. They didn't have any todo lists, schedules, pomodero timers, in fact they spent most of their time just lying around on the beach. Totally useless really.
But guess what, they looked pretty happy! They were doing exactly what they wanted to be doing. To be honest they made all the humans who had driven for miles to see them in expensive and technically advanced cars (and got stressed out in traffic jams) look a little silly. Why didn't we just laze around in bed all day!?
The only 'work' they were doing was occasionally plopping into the sea to catch some fish. And that looked more like play than 'work'.
Now I'm not saying that we should all just laze around in bed and occasionally go to the back garden to catch a squirrel for lunch! Humans are too curious and restless for that and there is little point in fighting our genetic programming. But when we do make the effort to do more than the minimum required, we should think about why we are making that decision.
Do we really need to do the dreaded commute? Do we really need to work late to get that job out of the door? Do we really need to answer that email? Do we really need to check Twitter for the 10th time today? Do we really need to go to work at the job we don't like to pay the mortgage on the big house that we don't need? Do we really need to get that pay rise to buy the flashy car that will make all our friends jealous? Do we really need to do more? Maybe, when you think about it though, maybe not?
Do I really need to write this post? No, but I'm doing it anyway. Why? Well my motivation is connection. I want to connect with like-minded people because I enjoy connecting and working with like-minded people. That excites me. Hopefully the blog posts attract people who are heading in the same direction and maybe also show people it's possible to change direction too if they want to improve the quality of life.
And there is a reason why I can do this blog post on a Tuesday afternoon in London. It's because I removed many of the things I didn't need to do in my life. Previously I'd always tried to squeeze more and more into a finite amount of time. I'd used advanced productivity techniques to optimise every second. But I'd forgot the whole point of why I was doing this. In fact I didn't even know why I was doing it! Being hyper productive didn't make me even slightly happy. It just made other people money and I'm not sure even they were happy.
So for a while I became a metaphorical seal, I rolled on the beach, I ate fish, I did very little. It was great! And I think we should all do this more, it's really good for us to step off the wheel of productivity. But you know what, I am human, I'm not a seal. I need to get off the beach, do things, meet people. But now I'm thinking about it more. I'm thinking why? I'm thinking quality not volume.
For me being productive is not about doing more. It's about doing things that excite you. Taking it further it's about doing less of the things that don't excite you then filling that space with things that do excite you.
By all means use the techniques if they help, we are all easily distracted and they can help keep us focused and moving in the right direction, I'm at the end of my Pomodoro right now! But if it's not absolute necessary (and always question that) or it's not exciting then it's not going to be my version of productive. So learn to say no, learn to stop doing things and become really productive.
OK that's my Pomodoro up, do share what your version of productivity is and what works well for you.
All the best everyone,
Michael.
This morning I saw a team if people picking up rubbish. They had 'Community Payback' written on their yellow vests and I'm guessing they were there because of their crimes.
But it got me thinking. Why is it only necessary for 'naughty' folks to 'payback' to the community. It seems to me that many people are extremely disconnected from their local communities. What if for a few hours a week it was compulsory to 'payback' or even 'invest' in your local community. Now I'm not a big fan of heavy handed state legislation but surely this would help to solve a lot of our modern day problems.
Reconnecting and helping the local community could lead to less litter, less loneliness, less crime, less pointless travel, less tv watching, more interesting activities, more local business, more art, more tolerance and understanding, more of a sense of a real community that helps and supports itself, the benefits would go on and on. Just a thought really.
We all need to have money right? Me included. Unfortunately it's necessary to eat, put a roof over your head, cloth yourself, travel to other interesting places, or even indulge in the little luxuries that might make you happy. You need some of the stuff if you want to live to the maximum. You can work for other people or you can try to make it yourself, and many people including myself are exploring the latter option so they can have more freedom and flexibility.
If you've watched The Social Network you may think that it's worth investing your time into trying to create the next Facebook and set yourself up as the next billionaire. The odds of that happening though are well, tiny!
The good news though is that the odds are much better if you want to create a small online service that might appeal to a couple of thousand people. It's possible to make a million dollar business with even numbers this small. You can even create something that you find fun and that could benefit the world...
David Heinemier is the guy who created Ruby on Rails and works at 37signals. I'd highly recommend the books that they have written such as
ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever
and
Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application
Here he talks entertainingly, sensibly and practically about how to create mid-sized, sustainable online businesses. About finding problems that small groups of people or businesses have, solving them, providing value, giving excellent service and being paid because what you do is great and useful. It's not rocket science and David explains exactly how to make this happen.
Side note
David made me aware of a
rather shocking experience with airport security and the controversial new full body scanners. Take a read, it's worth being up to speed on this debate, knowing how our freedom is being eroded by these security measures, the health risks and the fact that there is very little we can do about it.
This week I've been dipping in and out of Internet Week Europe and generally mixing it up around London on the look out for innovation and inspiration.
Here are a few highlights...
The Brilliant Design Lecture came along to digital agency
Poke and introduced 3 creative people who talked about their work and what inspired them. What I loved about this show was that the creatives weren't traditional or web/app designers, they were all pretty out there in terms of their work and the way they approached creativity.
Sam Bompas is a man with a vision, he wants to make all your jelly dreams come true! He co-founded
Bompas and Parr to fill the void in the world of Jellymongery and the business has gone from strength to strength turning Jelly into an avant-garde artform and they've had a whole load of fun in the process. Check out their site to see some of the
crazy projects that they've worked on such as alcoholic weather systems and the Artisinal Chewing Gum Factory. What really impressed me was their ability to take the ordinary and make it extraordinary.
Also appearing was the legendary Tim Hunkin who's work includes the giant Pink Floyd inflatable pigs. He talked about his highly eccentric and entertaining machines that he built for his
Under The Pier Show. I'm actually surprised no one has created online machines like this. Maybe they have?
Miss Cakehead also talked about Cake Britain and also her 18+ cake shop. I'll let you look this up yourself, but be prepared to be shocked by just how far you can take an innocent little cake.
The
Made by Many relaunch party took place in their lovely new warehouse offices and there was more than one person there! Actually it was full of fascinating people and the champagne flowed till 4am allegedly. Although I'm a huge fan of location independent working I think they have picked a great space to call home and I can imagine some exciting work coming out of there very soon. I'm not that interested in the world of agencies these days, personally I'd rather put my time into creating my own stuff than creating it on behalf of big brands. But even so Made by Many are interesting in that they approach communications from a platform development rather than campaign point of view. I think agencies like
AKQA and
R/GA were the pioneers in this area, but Made by Many are taking it even further by focusing purely on
Agile product development and shunning traditional online advertising work. Founder Tim Malbon explains their approach...
Tim Malbon from Made by Many from
The IPA on
Vimeo.
I mainly agree with all of the things he said and have felt that if agencies are to survive or thrive they need to think more like startups. My only question would be if you're already thinking like a startup why wouldn't you be a startup instead of an agency? Anyway, they have a heap of smart people working there, it's an interesting approach and I will be keeping an eye on their progress.
Lastly this week's Tuttle Club was officially part of Internet Week Europe's calendar of events. The Tuttle Club defies explanation. It was created by Lloyd Davis as a prototype
Social Media Cafe, a way of bringing a diverse group of individuals together in the real world who had been connecting with each other in the world of social networks. For me Tuttle is a breath of fresh air. For years I've attended 'networking' events where your value is often judged on what you do, where you work and even how much budget you control! At Tuttle you sometimes get asked
the usual Big Questions, but it's more likely you won't. Tuttle is full of people who do interesting things and are very interested in meeting other interesting people, no matter what they do! It's all very random, no agenda, no introductions, just coffee and conversation. All I would say that if you are in London and can spare a couple of hours on a Friday morning then Tuttle is the perfect way to get your brain cells firing and put you in the mood to get creative.
So the message for the weekend, go out, connect, be inspired, get excited, make strange things, have fun.
As usual all comments are more than welcome, but remember to be like Fonzy and stay cool. Healthy and respectful debate is encouraged but any comments that are insulting or abusive will have to be removed from now on sorry. I hate rules but sometimes they are necessary folks.
Peace love and cake,
Michael.
Calling all designers (or friends of designers)...
PLEASE SHARE THIS WITH ANYONE WHO YOU THINK
MIGHT BE INTERESTED
Do you fancy getting involved in something a bit different? Are you getting bored of what you are doing? Too much corporate work, or maybe working for people who just don't appreciate you or let you show off your talents. Are you still studying, or maybe just finished and looking for some experience. Are you in between jobs or working but not really enjoying it?
Life to the maximum might just be able to help.
What's on offer
A chance to be really creative, be in control, do something different, go in exciting new directions and do some stunning and meaningful work. Break out of what you're doing right now and use your talent for good. Work with some interesting and highly experienced people. Maybe even be part of a team that helps to change the world.
I'm currently developing a number of projects that need to be visually brought to life online and offline. The projects aren't for clients, you would be in charge of the creative direction and design execution giving you a chance to really show what you can do without any 'client feedback' getting in the way. You would be a key member of the team and be involved in the big decisions. You would be creating real things. At the moment live projects include work for charity, branding and developing intellectual property, online and app based businesses and training materials.
You might not get rich instantly
We don't have a huge amount of funding right now. Charity projects are being done for free. Some projects will earn money and anyone involved will take a share in the money of course. Some projects have the potential to make a lot of money and again that would be split across the team. I need to be clear though that the primary motivation behind these projects isn't to make money, so although we might all get rich,that's not the main aim. If you want to get paid per day and be told what to do then this isn't for you.
You will have fun, join a growing team, learn lots and do some good
If you do want to be part of something fresh, new and exciting then this is for you. The aim is to have fun, learn by experimentation and hopefully do some good in the process. Everyone involved will benefit, and you'd be in from the start. If that sounds interesting at all then email me.
It doesn't matter if you already have a day job or can only work certain hours, this can be very flexible.
Take action now, email me
The greatest journey starts with the first step. Joining a small but growing band of life adventurers who want to stir things up and do things differently might be just the thing you need to put a new surge of excitement nto your life.
To get in contact email me at
mixedge@gmail.com with a few links or examples of any work you have done, what you can do and what you're interested in getting out of this. You can always pull out if it's not for you. What have you got to lose?
Michael
All great designers and musicians know the power of nothing. If you're new to the design world it's very tempting to put as much as you can onto the page, to fill every last inch with images, shapes, words or information. Experienced designers know that white (or any other colour) space is incredibly powerful, it allows the page to breath. It gives the design power and presence.
The legendary Peter Saville used this technique to give an almost spiritual dimension to much of his work. It's very brave and hard to leave so much of the canvas empty, our natural inclination is to fill things up. Surely the more you add, the better it will be? But this just isn't true.
Why do we so often think the more energy and effort we expend on something the better it will be? Our minds buzz constantly thinking of the future, planning, processing, worrying. Our bodies zoom from place to place, commuting, meetings, traveling, daytripping. We rattle through emails, tweets, phone calls getting more and more distracted and thinking we are getting things done.
How often do we just stop and do nothing?
I'm not talking about collapsing at the end of the day in front of the TV to fill our minds with pointless drivel. I mean actually stopping and creating total nothingness. Totally switching off to all our wants and needs, our worries and distractions. Stopping, totally unplugging, creating a very powerful nothing.
Because when you do, something really interesting starts to happen. You start to live in the present. You start to connect with the real you inside. By stopping you begin to create the white space in your life that you can truly exist within.
And from this white space comes a creative energy. By stopping, switching off your mind and body and being in a state of nothingness you create a vacuum. And that vacuum will begin to naturally suck in new and exciting ideas from your subconscious mind, things that you never even realised were there. You may see a problem in a totally different way and a solution may pop up. You may discover what would make you truly happy in life. You may realise that all the amazing things you already have in your life are more than enough and you're overwhelmed by how fortunate you are. You might come up with that idea you knew was always inside you waiting to get out.
There are many ways to force yourself to stop, and it's important to find ones that works for you. This week I took a run along the river in London. At the half way point when my mind and body were pretty numb I spent 15 minutes staring at the river watching the water as it flowed about. It was the most productive 15 minutes of the entire week, as my subconscious told me the exactly what I needed to write for an upcoming presentation. You could also try going for a walk in nature, yoga, doodling, sitting in a quiet room like a library or art gallery, whatever it is just be still, be quiet, let go of your thoughts, clear you mind, just stop.
I like to listen to this song, which also uses plenty of white space and has perfect lyrics, to get me in a good frame of mind...
Sinead Macmanus of excellent blog
From Apps to Zen shared this Ted video of Scott Stratten, who tells exactly what can happen if we don't remember to Stop. It's extremely moving.
Are you able to stop? Has it had a positive effect? How do you force yourself to stop? I'd love to hear about your experiences.
Thanks for taking time to read this, I hope it's been useful. If you like the post then please join the Facebook group by clicking the Like button on the right, follow on Twitter, or sign-up for the email.
Have a lovely and exciting day,
Michael
This post has been inspired by Neils Hermus, a guy who I've gotten to know more about over the last few weeks since. Like me, he decided to quit his job, jump into the unknown, and write about the whole experience. His blog lifeisabucket.com stands out because of it's honesty. Neils is writing exactly what he is thinking and feeling, and if some people don't like it that's fine by him. In fact he's so keen to ensure his true message and personality come across that he's dedicated a whole post to it.
It made me think about a couple of things...
1) Why do we pretend to be people we are not?
Everybody wants to be loved, liked or appreciated and it's very easy to change the way we act, speak, dress etc.. in order to please others. In fact sometimes it's very scary to truly admit to being the person we really are and show that to others. What if we offend someone, what if they laugh at us, what if we are exiled from our tribe or country even! Since the days in the school playground it's always been a safer bet to fit in than to stand out. Conforming to the norms of a society or a community might make it easier to 'fit' within it. But isn't that cheating ourselves and importantly also cheating others out of who we are?
Wouldn't you feel better if you could be yourself, wear what you wanted to wear, spoke like you wanted to speak, act like you wanted to act, ALL the time? What if you were totally honest, what would happen? Maybe people would get upset, maybe people wouldn't like you anymore, but maybe just maybe you'd start to attract like minded people. People who liked you for who you are, not who you pretend to be. Wouldn't that be better?
2) Why do people need to be experts?
Another great point that Neils made was that he wasn't an expert who lectured to his audience. He admits he doesn't have the answers and neither do I.
We are both simply documenting and discussing what is happening, what is working well and what is going badly, drawing a few conclusions and sharing them. I can tell you now that I am not an expert lifestyle designer, I'm just experimenting and seeing what happens. There's an excellent post about on the
philosopher, Montaigne that talks about how as he became older and wiser he would use the phrase "Que jais se?" (what do I know?) more often, followed by the answer "Nothing!".
In a world that is changing as fast as ours is now (and as his was back then after the French civil war) being convinced you have all the answers is quite a stupid position to take. Surely it's much braver to admit you don't know all the answers and are able to change your point of view depending on what's happening. Wouldn't it be good if more people in positions of power or authority thought this way?
The real me
So now it's time for me to be honest with you and if you don't like it that's totally fine. I'm starting to understand it's better to have a few like minded readers rather than a massive following anyway. Here are some of my deep dark secrets so you know a bit more about me and why I'm doing this...
- I don't have all the answers. Sorry if any of my post seem condescending or patronising, they're really not supposed to be.
- I love music, no seriously I get so addicted that I will often stay up all night surfing YouTube for tunes I've heard one time in the distant past. It's a problem! I used to DJ and make music and would like to get back into that again.
- I'm a clean freak and start to get anxious in dirty places or even if things are out of place. I have a physical revulsion to certain things my mind considers dirty, yes I need help!
- I have a love/hate relationship with alcohol. It's ruined the lives of many people I know, yet I love a glass of wine, beer, saki anything. It's one of life's pleasures, yet part of me want's to never drink again. Confusing!
- I question everything, probably too much!
- I love food and have a hunch that I'll end up as a farmer at some point. The idea of growing my own food is very sexy!
- I got bored of what I was doing so decided to do something about it. This involved selling stuff that I didn't need, living within my means and saving an 'escape fund' along with cutting out buying all the stuff that I didn't need. So now I'm able to live for a while without having to be employed and am trying to make the most of it.
- I prefer to have a small to medium sized group of friends that I really trust and enjoy being with. Trust is a big deal for me and really can't be bothered with people who have an agenda or obviously lying.
- I have a love/hate relationship with cities. When I'm in the city I crave nature and having the earth beneath my feet. When I'm in the country I miss the energy and convenience of the city. Having lived in the city for the last 10 years, I'm currently craving the country.
- Some of the most important people in my life have died, some before they were old, and that has made me realise you should make the most of every moment you have.
- Being from Manchester a town of excessive rain and melancholy music, I don't always have the most positive outlook on life. Happiness doesn't always come easy and I have to work at it, but strangely this is useful as it's made me realise what things truly do make people happy.
- I like girls in outdoor clothing, is that weird?
- Im 39 but look at least 5 years younger. This used to really bug me, but now I love it! I think it's genetic as my mother often is mistaken for being 10 or even 20 years younger than she is.
- I want to make the world a better place somehow. This is one of the reasons that I decided to do this. I just think we all have something big inside us that is waiting to get out and make a difference. I have no idea yet what this will be yet, but I can feel it and hopefully soon will discover what it might be.
- I want to have children but haven't got any yet.
- I have the most amazing girlfriend, Hemmy, who is a constant source of happiness and inspiration for me. I actually think she is some kind of enlightened being as I've never met a happier person. I feel extremely grateful to have her in my life. She also looks great in hiking boots!
- I can be a perfectionist and often wonder why things aren't as good as they could or should be. Friends sometimes joke that I'm from the future where everything is clean and has perfect design and user experiences, because that's how I expect everything to be. Well at least Steve Jobs understands me!
- I'd like people to remember me as someone who is a good person at heart just trying to find a way to have a fun and interesting life.
- I've learned that money doesn't make you happy, but I also have experienced not having any, which isn't very nice at all. Part of me would love to be a stoic, but a bigger part loves a bit of luxury and indulgence.
- I think there's a lot more that I can do to make my life extraordinary rather than ordinary. I really don't want it to be ordinary so I've decided to get off my arse and do something about it.
- There's a lot more but thankfully I also know when to shut the fuck up!
Thanks to Neils for his honesty and inspiration and if you have time, read his excellent post on
Time vs Money, it's a really excellent read and agree 100%. All the best and never be afraid to just be yourself, admit you don't know everything or tell people about the real you.