Because you only live once…
UnWorkaholic Direction
Sep 10th
I want to take some time today to let everyone one know some behind the scenes information about where I am taking this blog.
In my last post, I wrote about the 4 Steps to Change Your Life. I’m going to change a few things about the blog to better align with those 4 steps.
I am currently working on an e-book series about Controlling Your Life. This series is meant be a step by step guide to auditing your life and learning methods that will let you track and control various areas of your life. Each of these books are based off of methods that I use in my own life to better control my money, time, projects, and more.
I will also be starting to offer consulting for people who need help is various steps of the process. You will see a page about this very soon. I love the idea of being able to help people on their own unWorkaholic journey.
I also want to be able to provide resources that you can use on your journey through life. This will include a resource directory as well as products of my own creation.
And of course, I will be updating the site regularly with more awesome content!
Lastly, I want to keep you updated on my own personal journey. I am currently working on two different internet based projects and I hope to keep everyone here up to date as I progress in each of them towards a steady income. The first is this blog and the other is an internet marketing company that I am starting. Currently neither of these projects are making any regular money, but I hope to change that very soon. I hope that you will see my updates as examples of how the unWork lifestyle is created and maintained.
Are there any other features that you’d like to see added to this site? What are you struggling with the most?
4 Steps to Live the Life You Desire
Sep 9th
You look around one day and say to yourself, “This is not the life that I want to be living!” You have made up your mind to change your life and are ready to start your journey towards a better life. Great! Congrats on that first step. But where do you go now? What do you actually do to create the life that you want to live.
There are 4 main steps that you will need to go through to change your life. Each of these has many sub-steps and may take some time, but master each of these and you will gain the life you desire.
1. Control Your Life
If you don’t control your life, you won’t have the ability to change it. Doing things like tracking your money, managing your time, and mastering your projects can allow you the flexibility to make changes in each of these areas. Being able to say “Here I am and this is my status on each area of my life” is an amazing feeling.
Some people may struggle with this step while others find it fairly straight forward and easy. One person may try and try to master their lives while others are probably already doing it. But wherever you fall, having some systems in place to track your life and control your life will lead to a easier time as you begin to make other changes.
2. Design Your Life
This step can be really fun. This is where you take time to dream. How do you really want to live your life? Do you want to travel? focus on a hobby? volunteer? Are there any dreams that you had as a child that you would want to pursue?
Designing your life so that it reaches its full potential (a process also referred to as Lifestyle Design), can give you a goal. The life that you want is where you are headed towards. Then sooner that you can bring aspects of that life into reality, the better life you will live.
3. Fund Your Life
This is where a lot of people get stuck. You have this life that you want to live, but it takes money that you don’t have. The goal here is to figure out how to fund that life without spending all of your time doing so.
There are various ways that you can do this. You can start an online business. You can create a product based company. You can work at a regular job, but only for part of the time. The key is finding a way to make the money that you needs while following your passions and interests. That’s what UnWork is all about.
4. Live Your Life
This last step is the best. Once you succeed at changing your life, go out and do all of those things that you planned on doing. Have an adventure. Do something different. Find ways to keep your life interesting and fun.
It’s your life. Do something with it.
Reflective Living – Thinking like a Blogger
Sep 7th
One change that I have noticed in myself since deciding to blog is that I am living more reflectively. I look for hidden lessons in everything that I do. I am forever asking myself the question ‘What can I learn from this activity?’
I started doing this as a way to generate blog posts. Life is something like this: Go to a ball game? Link it to Lifestyle Design. Go fishing? Link it to Lifestyle Design. Have a boring day at work? Link it to Lifestyle Design. The more I look, the more I can find little lessons in life.
And its not just me. Look at any regularly updated blog and you can find articles where the writer did something interesting but not directly related to their topic, but they were able to extract a lesson from the activity and write about it anyway.
Living Reflectively
For the next week, pretend that you are a blogger (or be a blogger if you are one), and try to find a blog post in everything that you do. Ask yourself these questions:
- Why am I doing this?
- What can this teach me?
- How can this relate to (insert topic of choice)?
You don’t have to actually write the entries unless you want to, but just try to come up with a title and short outline. The more you do this, the more that you will start finding the little lessons that are hidden in life. This is an easy way to teach yourself to be more reflective.
What lessons were you able to learn from everyday activities today?
Work Meditation
Sep 4th
I learned about a new technique that I have been trying out with some success. It is similar to some of the techniques that I have used in the past, but I like the way that this technique is frame. It is called Work Meditation.
So you have probably either done or know of regular meditation where you sit down, close your eyes, and try to completely clear your mind of all thoughts. (A task that can be rather hard.) I have tried this kind of meditation before and haven’t been all that successful with it yet. But the basic idea behind this is to train your mind to be controlled – not have it control you.
But what if you could meditate 8 hours a day, that would help you learn to be even more focused, right? Yep. And that is exactly what this technique is all about. Here is what you do:
1. Pick a task that you have to do.
2. Choose how long you want to work on it.
3. Then work on it non-stop for that period of time.
4. Each time a distraction comes up or a random thought appears, just acknowledge that it was there and dismiss it, just like in mediation.
This may sound easy, but there are a lot of distractions that can come up. The phone may ring. You need to just ignore it. A co-worker may try to ask you something. You need to tell them to come back. You may think of an important errand to run. You need to get it out of your head as soon as you can, either my jotting a note down and just forgetting about it. You have to stay focused for the amount of time that you are doing your meditation for.
Tips for Work Meditation:
- Prepare for each session by closing down all other open applications (including email) and addressing some common issues you may have, such as plugging in the laptop so your battery doesn’t die on you.
- Have a notepad handy in case you need to jot something down really quick to get it out of your head.
- Set a timer. That way you don’t have to worry about the time. You just work till the timer goes off.
If you try this technique, I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments. I learned about this technique here.
Controlling your Life
Sep 2nd
One of the biggest struggles that people have in starting their own Lifestyle Design Business is having the financial and time freedom to do so. Most people only have a vague idea about where their money and times goes. How much do you really spend on coffee?
Without the ability to control your time, money, and responsibilities, changing your life for the better might be a struggle. You can’t quit your job because you don’t have enough savings to cover you while you start a business. You can’t work on your business because you have too many other obligations in your life. You can’t find important items because you have too much stuff cluttering your space.
All of these things fall under the category of life control. You must first master yourself before you master the world. In order to really be able to follow your UnWork, you must first control yourself and your life.
I believe Life Control is a big issue for a lot of people that want to follow their UnWork. For this reason, I am going to make Life Control one of the topics of this blog, along with specific UnWork information. You will begin to see more info on this topic as time goes on.
I’d love to hear from you any thoughts on Life Control and its necessity when trying to find and follow your UnWork with a lifestyle design business.
Chasing Efficiency
Aug 31st
Nothing gets me more excited about working then reviewing my projects list and seeing all of these super awesome projects that I have on it – that is, until I start getting overwhelmed at the number of them. Just by looking at the list it doesn’t seem like that much. I have, say, 10 projects all of which are pretty exciting. I feel like I can just knock some out and move right along. I want to jump to the end and have the awesome finished product. It seems reasonable. They all seem doable. But then time passes and I don’t get them done.
When reviewing my list, I like to imagine myself doing the project. I can see myself working on my new ebook or building my new robot. I imagine myself totally sucked into the project that time is forgotten and I just work, completely focused, until I am finished. This is what gets me all excited. I am in love with the dream of this efficiency. I love the idea of complete focus, going from one project to the next without getting distracted by the latest cat videos on YouTube. I dream of crossing each project off my list and moving on to bigger and better projects.
So back to reality. Here is what really happens when I sit down to work. I may pick my first task and start working on it. Then a thought pops into my mind about some other project and I have to stop and take notes on that project else I forget the awesome idea I just had about it. I might then get back to the original project, but not without some other distraction or stray thought. I rarely reach the level of focus that I have when I visualise myself working. I do occasionally, and I take good notes on how and why those situations arise, but most of the time, my brain is not all the way there. I am chasing efficiency and never ever getting there.
I think a lot of people chase efficiency. This is why the productivity gurus can make so much money. This is the universal struggle that anyone with a project list faces. How do we align the way to actually work to the way that we wished we worked? Can we do more then just chase efficiency?
Stuck in a Rut
Aug 24th
Being in a rut is like being stuck in quick sand. You really want to get out but your just don’t know how – and it just keeps pulling you farther in. You didn’t mean to fall in. It just happened.
Okay. Now what? How can you get out of the quicksand?
First off… Don’t panic. Fighting it will only stress you out. You must be level headed and strategic.
I currently feel quite stuck and it can be overwhelming at times. There are reasons that I need to being doing what I am doing now and reasons that I should not be doing what I am doing now… and that can be quite frustrating at times. I tend to get overwhelmed too easily and panic. But that usually does no actual good (although it does let off a bit of steam).
But what from there? This is where I tend to run into trouble. So I’m going to open this up to audience participation…
How do you deal with being in a rut?
Winchester Commemoratives Vol 2
Aug 9th
So this is a post I should have written a month ago, but didn’t. So I’m writing it now. A project that I have been working on for 3 years now finally finished.
My grandfather wrote a book in the eighties called Winchester Commemoratives. It is about, you guessed it, Winchester Commemoratives – those fancy guns that no one ever shoots but collect like crazy. It was published the same year I was born.
Well right before he passed away, he wrote the next book: Winchester Commemoratives Vol 2. He hadn’t finished it though, so that is where my mom and I stepped in to work on it. My mom edited while I did pictures. It took a long time and I learned a ton about print publishing, but we finally got it published.
I’m very proud of it. You can check out the project here:
What is Cool?
Aug 7th
So Wordcamp today had a lot of cool. WordPress is cool. Matt is cool. We even talked about cool.
The question was asked to us in one of the session about what makes cool things cool. Why is WordPress cool software and Joomla not? What lessons can you learn from such companies?
WordPress is cool because it works and its easy. If WordPress required you to jump through as many hoops as Joomla, it probably wouldn’t be as cool. The iphone works really well. Zappos shoes are really good shoes or they will replace them or take them back.
WordPress is also cool because it is very focused. You know WordPress. It is a simple yet powerful blogging platform. Apple computers do well what they choose to do. They don’t try to be something for everyone.
James Dean was cool because he was James Dean. He had his personal brand and stuck with it.
Okay, great. So what does that mean for me, who has interests in a wide variety of areas? Can I make a personal brand? Can I be cool?
Even limiting it down to just my company, can I be cool? Answer me this: What is your one thing? What does ever action you take boils down to? If you can’t easily answer that, think of an action you take and answer Why a bunch of times.
Take for example a marketing firm. What is their one thing?
Well we do websites, SEO and article marketing.
Why?
We get our clients to the first page of Google.
Why?
We drive traffic to their site.
Why?
We want to increase their sales.
Why?
We want to make them more money.
Why?
We want to help the business be on better financial grounds.
Why?
We want to increase the happiness of the people in the company.
Why?
We want them to be satisfied with their lives and their business.
Wow. Check it out. I ended up in the same goal as I had on UnWorkaholic. Crazy.
So helping people live satisfying lives is important to me.
But thats not all I am about. There is also this other half of me that loves technology. For example, I’ve had a long standing interest in robotics and techie stuff makes me happy. I spend my free time reading about all sorts of nerdy things, from programming guides to electrical engineering textbooks. And yes, I have been known to do math on Friday evenings.
But nothing about this improves people’s satisfaction with life. In fact, I don’t really do it for any one but me. And yet I feel that that part of me is intrinsic in my personal brand, or it really should be. If I had to pick one this to do for the rest of my life and money was no issue, it would have to be programming. Yes, I am a nerd and I’m proud of it.
But why?
I love the puzzles and the challenge.
Why?
I like being able to come up with the solution to a challenging question.
Why?
I guess I get a bit high from being able to get things to work to my will.
Why?
It makes me hope that I might be able to add something to the world through my creation (even if my current creations are straight out of elec 101)
Why do I want to do that?
Because I want to add value to the world.
So both areas are about adding value to the world through technology.
So maybe my personal theme should be something like:
Making the world a better place one line of code at a time.
Okay, that’s kinda sappy, but I like helping people and I like to code. And those together and I’m pretty happy.
Nerd girl makes her stand.
What is your one thing?
Where is Hailey?
Aug 7th
So as you may have noticed, I haven’t posted anything here in a while. I kept writing about about finding your passion and then turning that into your life when I really am not a writer and writing for a living or even for a hobby is probably not what I should be doing.
That by no means that I’ve stopped trying to turn my passion and interests into ways to live the life I desire. I’m currently focusing on freelance websites and marketing targeted towards local businesses. I just don’t really plan to be writing about it that much.
I am also finally pursuing a lifelong interest in robotics which is leading to some fun and nerdy friday nights full of math and code. I am trying to fill in many of the gaps in knowledge that I have in the realm of electronics. But I will bet that you won’t find too many other people who discuss the quadratic formula over breakfast who are not complaining about the math homework that is due that day. And yes, I’ve been reading Discrete Math textbook for fun.
Okay, enough about being a total nerd. I would like to keep posting here, but I warn you now that this blog will no longer be maintaining the super professional lifestyle design focus it originally had. I’m just going to be writing, when I write, on my own journey towards unwork and following my interests. If the topic change is not of interest to you, I will not hold it against you for removing me from your reading list.
I am at Wordcamp Houston, which is one reason I decided to pull out this app and post. Its kind of inspirational being around so many bloggers. It made me wish I liked writing more than I do.
Well anyway. Peace and nerd power to everyone. 
Hailey
