It kinda struck me just now, although I’ve always known deep down, that I’m not a very balanced person.

I’m a to the hilt type of person. When I do something, I becoming fully involved in it.  I learn everything I can about it. It consumes most of my time and energy.

For instance, my mother still tells me stories of how when I was a child I had a time when I would wake up on Saturday mornings and spend the entire day in my room playing with K’nex. I didn’t care about anything else, except building with my construction toys.

And I’ve had a few people ask when I was going to write more posts for this blog, and my answer has been that I am currently working on another blog project that I was tired of talking about and decided to start. My energy has been completely involved with this new project from brainstorming and general plans for how the blog will go, to custom designing the theme and writing around 15 posts to start the blog off with.

So that epiphany got me thinking about which is better to be.

Extreme Person

An extreme person is typically, from my experiences, driven by great passion for whatever it is he is doing, but there is also that ‘burn out’ that tends to happen. I don’t know if ‘burn out’ is the best term, usually I just become more passionate for something else, its not as if I loath the project I previously had.

That extreme personality though causes everything else to suffer. I become so consumed with one project, all the others go neglected.

Balanced Person

On the other hand, the balanced person’s foibles are simply inverse to the extreme person’s fortes. A balanced person isn’t driven with passion. Their day, week, whatever is a routine. They spend 1 hour a day doing x and 2 hours doing y. They don’t have those nights where they stay up so late working on a project they love that their mind becomes mush and they can’t string together coherent thoughts due to fatigue.

A balanced person also can adhere so much to their routine that most of their projects are simply maintained and no worthwhile progress is had on any of them.

Final Thoughts

My writing skills have probably gone down in the past month of nothingness, but I can also smack out a decent Wordpress theme in no time after completing 3 in that same time period.

I can definitely see how becoming a more balanced person can help me. One thing I’d like to do but haven’t gotten very far on is to take an hour or two each week and go through some Photoshop tutorial to sharpen those skills. But I guess if I truly became passionate about learning Photoshop then I can make up those lost hours by powering through Photoshop books and tutorials in a passion-driven month.

Although, I better get some balancing skills by the time I start to become a real freelancer juggling multiple clients at once.

What’s your opinion? Are you a more balanced or extreme person? Any advice on why I should become more balanced or remain as I am?

“You must unlearn what you have learned.”

-Yoda

We’ve gone search crazy.

There was a time when search was a joke. I vaguely remember the time when going through a Yahoo directory was the way to find what you were looking for. Then Google came along and quickly become the poster boy for an utopian society. Now our society is utterly reliant on Google. People even type in full URLs into Google instead of their address bar. With the Internet becoming increasingly more crowded, how much longer can we rely on the top 10 Google search results to be exactly what we’re looking for? Use these tips to help make your searching more effective.

I was recently hit with the challenge from Crystal to complete the Dream Meme.

MY DREAM

is to live a life full of options with few requirements. To be financially able to embrace whatever passion might control me any week of the year. To be able to switch from being a designer, photographer, developer, blogger, chef or whatever whenever that is what I want most. I want to set up enough passive income streams so that I can spend time educating others on how to achieve their goals. I want to become popular enough in some niche of life where my words can have an impact on the lives of others in hopes of motivating enough people to effect some good on this world.

MY GOALS FOR 2008

• Take this blog more seriously by redesigning it so that it will be beautiful and unique, find my niche of topics to give more focus to the blog and start writing daily.
• Start the first blog in my personal self-improvement blog network.
• Pay off 2 credit cards.

TODAY

Do some sketching for this blog’s redesign.

Those are my dreams.

What are yours?

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.

-Thomas Edison

I don’t know if you are like me, but probably once a week I have one of the greatest ideas a person could ever had. Seriously. These ideas are life changing and in just a short time I’ll be filthy rich with my own private island to prove it.

The problem is that they stay ideas. I might discuss them with a few friends and they might grow a little, but often they stay on paper or only a little bit gets done.

Time is always the enemy.

The reason most of these things don’t get done is because, “I don’t have enough time” or “I’m too busy”. Time is the scapegoat for all our foibles.

Now I’m not acting like I have the answer. I just recognize that I have a problem, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.

Here are a few things that I am going to do that should help.

Prioritize my ideas.

Write down all my ideas and put some notes explaining the project. Then analyze them to see which ideas are the most doable.

Doable projects should be the ones that can either get done quickly or I have a strong passion for it. Some ideas of mine could take months whereas I’ve been putting off some things that could take one weekend. Some ideas are pet projects. Some are to help others. Some are to make money. I need to look over this list and pick the items that are most aligned with what I want to accomplish right now. If I am more focused on wanting to make money then I should complete those first. If I want to make some new community type site, I’ll do that one.

Set short deadlines.

After I realize what I want to do most, I need to break it down into manageable pieces and set short deadlines to accomplish them. I’ve been reading Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Work Week and this is a technique he recommends. It’s called Parkinson’s Law. It says that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” By setting short goals you don’t waste time on parts that aren’t needed to fulfill the goal. The short time frame causes you to recognize what parts are most needed for completion and get those done quickly.

Start it and Finish it.

I’m pretty good at starting projects, but finishing them is the problem. Finishing a project always requires so much extra unplanned work that most projects don’t get finished. This joke I’ve heard about consultants applies here, “The first 90% of the project only takes 10% of the total time to complete it.” The trick to finishing a project is nothing magical; you just don’t give up until it’s done. Check it off your list and start on the next one.

That’s the way it’s been lately for me and my Moleskine Notebook. I first heard about them from this productivity post. So I figured why not and decided to make the purchase. I ended up buying four. I use one and gave three as gifts. Since then I’ve heard/seen references to them almost everywhere. I’ve seen blog posts, heard it mentioned on Freelance Radio, and even some stranger at the coffeehouse commented on me "being a moleskine guy". So what makes them such a great item that everybody is talking about it.

Simple

Not enough can be said about this feature. In this crazy, cram everything into one society we are in, too often products are unusable because they bite off more then they can chew by trying to make everything an all-in-one solution. The Moleskine notebook isn’t trying to fool anyone. It’s a simple notebook. It has paper inside, a hard cover, a small pocket in the back, and an elastic cord to keep the notebook closed. That’s all it is and that’s all I need.

Variety

There seems to be a moleskine that suits everyone’s personal needs. When I first went to Amazon to get mine I planned on getting just one for myself. But as I browsed around for them I found myself thinking of friends that would enjoy certain varients of the notebook. My cousin likes to do all his work on grid paper and there happened to be a squared paper version, so he got one. Another friend travels to Boston a few times a year so I got him the Boston city notebook. I like the idea of the city notebooks. They give a small map, lists of popular locations for the select city, and places to jot down notes. If I ever vacation in one of the cities they make a moleskine for, I plan to get it. The major categories for moleskine styles are as follows: Pocket Journals, Large Journals, City Books, Datebooks & Planners, Reporter Notebooks, and Cashier Notebooks. Check out the main site to view them all.

Size

This is one of the main reasons that I carry my notebook around. I’m the type of person that hates to not be doing something productive. If I have to wait at a restaurant or at a movie I do my best the fill the void. I used to carry my DS around everywhere and play Sudoku while waiting. Lately I’ve been carrying the moleskine and sketching or writing To-do lists to occupy myself.

It’s kinda ironic that with this technology-driven world that the item that all techies are recommending to make your life more productive is a simple notebook. I’d love to hear your take on the Moleskine notebook. If you like it and use it. Maybe add a few points to why you feel they are so useful. Or if it isn’t your cup o’ tea and why you disliked them.