Get Back To Work!

I want to open this post with a confession: I'm lazy.

It's not that I mean to be or that I know I'm being lazy when I am, it's just that I very often gravitate toward doing nothing when I'm not sure what to do.

As I mentioned in my first post, I plan to examine my past mistakes and discuss my planned solutions. So, in the spirit of that:

Mistake #2: Waiting For Something To Happen

Baldrick: I'm glad to say you won't be needing that pill, Mr. B.

Blackadder: Am I jumping the gun, Baldrick, or are the words "I have a cunning plan" marching with ill-deserved confidence in the direction of this conversation?

Baldrick: They certainly are.

Blackadder: Well, forgive me if I don't do a cartwheel of joy; your record in this department is hardly 100%. So what is it?

Baldrick: We do nothing...

Blackadder: Yup, it's another world-beater.

Baldrick: No, wait. We do nothing... until our heads have actually been cut off.

Blackadder: And then we... spring into action?

Black Adder the Third
Nob and Nobility (1987)

If my past actions (or lack thereof) are any indication then there is a good chance I would have gotten my head cut off in that episode. Baldrick's “We do nothing” suggestion would have really struck a cord with me. However, it took me a very long time to understand that about myself. Why did it take so long? Well, mainly because I'm always so busy...

You see, it's not really that I'm not doing anything, it's that I'm often not doing anything useful. I think a story would probably explain what I mean best.

Many years ago (the specifics don't really matter) I ran a very successful web-based business called Console Classix. (I still run it, in fact. However, the phrase “very successful” no longer applies.) It was making a fair amount of money and every month we made more money than we had the month before. This kept up for more than two years. At that point I decided I needed to do something to start making even more money.

So, what did I do? Did I invest in a new and improved website? Nope. Did I buy more games to build up our library? Nope. Did I start an advertising campaign to market our service to the general public? Nope. I built a house!

And I don't mean “I had a house built”. No, I mean that I (along with the other Console Classix staffers and even my Dad) built a giant house. It took roughly eleven months of often twelve hour days, but we got it built. Of course, it put me hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, but what difference did that make? I was going to make so much money building houses that the debt was actually going to make me money.

At the moment it's hard to look back at it and understand how I believed something so crazy, but I honestly did at the time. Well, the housing market collapsed and the long and short of it is that I lost my shirt. Plus, because Console Classix had been neglected for almost a year it started to go under. I had to let the staff go and could hardly make ends meet from month to month.

Although I had kept very busy working physically I hadn't been working where I should have been. At the time I thought I had learned my lesson. I hadn't finish what I had started with Console Classix. My mistake was taking my eyes off the prize. I planned not to do that again.

Sadly, that hadn't been my REAL mistake. The real mistake was not doing work where it needed to be done. I was to learn that later on...

My next project was a video game (which I've mentioned before) entitled Worlds of Magic. I was determined not to take my eyes off the prize this time. I threw myself into months of programming work and years (roughly three and a half) of designing, discussing, and generally working with the game. However, this wasn't a 40 hour a week job. Oh, some weeks I might work 60 hours. However, in the main, 2 hours was a much more normal week.

What did I do with all my “spare time”. Well, mainly I stared at the game. I kept my eyes on the prize. As month followed after month I sat there, not working, but watching. Refusing to look away. This was going to be the big one. This time I was finally going to hit it big because I had stuck with it.

So, what happened? Well, Worlds of Magic was released and did... well... we'll be nice and say “badly”. Why? Oh, a number of reasons that don't matter now. The point is that after waiting for years my hopes were not fulfilled.

Now, I readily admit that this could turn around at almost any moment. The game still has to come out on a number of different platforms and could still be a very real commercial success. In point of fact, it could still turn out to be a very lucrative use of my time! But that's not the point is it?!?!?!

The point is that I've wasted years waiting on something to happen. All this time I could have been using my skills to accomplish other things. And that is a mistake I don't plan to make again.

That leads us to:

Fix #2: Stay Busy Doing Things That Mater

When you work for yourself you have to almost pretend that you don't. (At least in my opinion.) Since I first started working for myself, over a decade ago, I have gotten up at 6AM to start the day, just as if I had a regular job. However, what I failed to do was put in a full working day, five days a week.

That's not to say that I necessarily believe you need to put in 40 hours a week every week. But if two or three days go by and you've got “nothing to do” then you better look over your assets and see which one you can put more time into.

Me for instance, I could have been building up a side business doing network engineering, or I could have been coding new Unity assets, or I could have been writing more novels. What did I choose to do instead? I filled my days with waiting for the day to end. Every day I wanted to be one day closer to my “Big success”.

Well, that was a mistake. A major mistake. It's one I'm now trying to rectify. In fact, this blog is part of that. If I don't have anything to post about it means I haven't been doing enough. So the time I spend on this blog isn't wasted at all. It gives me something I really need right now: Accountability.

And that is something almost every self employed person needs at one time or another. :)