Because you only live once…
Find your UnWork in your Childhood
Apr 29th
Think about yourself as a child. You had energy and excitement. You were not yet coded by social norms. You just followed your interests. If you are having trouble figuring out what your UnWork is, try asking that young version of you.
What I wanted to be when I grew up?
So the answer to this question that you gave as a child is probably not very useful. I wanted to be a vet. Okay. Great. That doesn’t really interest me now. But ask yourself “why?” Why did I want to be a vet? Because I wanted to care for animals. Why? Because I loved animals and working with animals. Okay, Great! Maybe my UnWork could have something to do with animals. (It does, btw. I’m using my blog to raise money for Wildlife Rescue).
What did I like to do?
Children have many hobbies and interests as they grow and change. Some of them were phases that passes and some of them stick around (at least in some form) when they grow up. What hobbies did you have that you still have an interest in?
I really loved organising when I was little. I would organize all of my toys and hold events for my stuff animals so I could plan them. And I never could have too many school supplies.
I also loved fundraisers. I would create little businesses where I would sell stuff in order to donate the money to charity. I don’t know how many times I got in trouble for selling candy at school. I would always think outside of the box when coming up with these schemes. This has translated well into my UnWork, which deals with finding unconventional ways to make a living.
What did I collect?
Another place to find possible UnWork ideas is your childhood collection. I collected all sorts of things, from McDonald toys to Rocks. Do any of these collections still interest you? Could one of them lead to an UnWork topic? Or, if not your UnWork, could one of them be a good niche to generate your income?
Find a good idea in your childhood? I’d love to hear about it below.
Photo By: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arcticpuppy/ / CC BY 2.0
My UnWork
Apr 27th
Many people have asked about my story. I get questions like:
- Are you UnWorking?
- What is your UnWork?
- Do you have a job?
My Journey
I am a programmer. Even before I learned to program, I had a logical bent to my thinking. But it also meant that I had a bit of a crazy streak. Not the go-wild-and-do-drugs kind of crazy, but the I-am-not-going-to-do-that-just-because-you-tell-me-to crazy. In middle school, I cut all of the belt loops off my pants so I didn’t have to wear a belt. Yeah. That kind of crazy.
Well, I grew up a bit and got my first job. It was an after school envelope stuffing position, which was great for me at the time, but I learned a good lesson – I didn’t want a traditional ‘job’.
During college, I tried blogging, but didn’t really have a good topic. I quit that soon after it began. Then I got a job at the University programming web sites. As far as jobs go, it was awesome. It was a cool environment and I was learning a lot. I liked programming.
Graduation rolled around and they liked me as much as I liked them, so they offered me a full time position. It was super flexible and fun work. I took the job.
Towards UnWork
After working a little while, that same notion began to return.
“Didn’t I say that I wasn’t going to do this?” I said to myself one day. “But it’s fun. It can’t be that bad!”
But I needed something else. I had to do something different in my free time. So I sat down and asked myself what I was really passionate about. What did I enjoy doing?What did I want my life to look like? What could I do to create something of my own while still working where I do. UnWork is what came out of that session. I realized that above all else, the idea that I could do whatever I wanted with my life became my focal point and I wanted to spread this idea to others. That’s why I started this blog.
But I didn’t want to quit my job. It was fun, so why should I quit? I decided to take a day off to blog and take an art class (two things on my list of goals), so now I work 4 days on and am off 3. It works great. And that is how I want my life to be set up. It’s also giving me a little extra income while I get the blog and some other, at this point, unannounced projects off the ground. The extra income also allows me to donate to charity.
My UnWork
So to answer the questions, I am UnWorking. You are seeing the results of that now. I really have a passion for helping people (myself included), design and create the life that they want to live. Do I make a living at this? Not yet, but I believe that I will. I know people who are living the UnWork lifestyle and making full time incomes at it. Will a little effort I (and you) can to.
What is UnWork?
Apr 25th
When you introduce a new term into the lexicon, people are always going to wonder exactly what you mean by that term. So here is my definition of UnWork:
An activity that one does regularly that is motivated by passion and interest rather than money.
But that is just a hobby, you may say. A hobby is a type of UnWork, but usually only in one’s spare time along side a regular job. UnWork is like a hobby that takes up the time you would be holding a job. Your UnWork is primary. You income is secondary. That is the key.
In the UnWork lifestyle, you do what you are driven to do. You do what you love to do, not only in your ’spare time’, but whenever you want to. Money comes secondary to living the life you want to live.
But what about making a living? Won’t I starve?
If you just quit your day job today to start rock collecting without any forethought and planning, you may, in fact, starve. And I don’t want you to do that. But with a little planning and some initial hard work, you can quit your day job and still make a living. You have two basic options:
- You can make money by turning your UnWork into a business.
- You can start a lifestyle business that earns you money while you do your UnWork.
I will go into more details about each of these in later posts.
So what is your UnWork?
PREP for Freedom
Apr 20th
Most of you reading this probably want more freedom. It may be the freedom to travel without having to worry about running out of vacation days. It may be the freedom to spend more time with your kids and love ones. It may be the freedom to choose what you do everyday. But whatever your reason, you want more freedom in your life.
But how do you get freedom?
The attainment of freedom focuses on two main areas: your money and your time. To gain more freedom, you need to free your time to do more of what your want to and to free your finances so you can afford to do what you want.
I have distilled this into a convenient acronym for the process of gaining freedom in your life: PREP, which stands for passion, revenue, efficiency, and play.
The steps of PREP
- Passion. To start off, you need to find your passion. I refer to this as finding your UnWork. It’s that thing which you love doing and would still be interested in doing even if you didn’t get any money from it. It’s what you wake up in the morning burning to do. Your passion also can give you motivation and inspiration as you continue towards freedom.
- Revenue. The next step is to find a way to free your finances. This may be a way that you use your passion to make money or a business that makes money without taking much time. Both work. The key is to make sure you have time and money to follow your dreams and doing your UnWork.
- Efficiency. Once you get revenue, the next step is to clear as much clutter out of your schedule as possible. Just think of IDEA: improvement, delegation, efficiency and automation. Use these to free up as much time as you can.
- Play. The last step is to have fun and get the most out of life. I’d bet that this is the step you want to do most, but remember, it’s last for a reason. It’s your reward.
Make a Million Dollars in a Day
Apr 17th
I make a million dollars a day and I can show you how to do it. Buy my product and it will walk you through my process step by step!!
Just give me $10,000 and I’ll show you how to control the world!!!
Just click here!
Let me guess… You don’t believe me. Good. Because if you hear something that good it’s probably a scam. They are probably just out to steal your money.
One of the awesome things about the internet is that anyone can publish anything. This allows writers who never had a chance to get published before to be found and sell their work online. This allows people to have blog, write ebooks, and sell stuff online. This also allows people to scam you.
Scammers are not always from Nigeria
Internet scams come in all sorts. Some try to trick you into buying a false product. Some try to steal your email address so they can sell it to spammers. Others try to trick you into clicking on false ads so they can get paid by an ad network. Some of them are less offensive then others.
As a patron of the Internet, you must learn to recognize scams for what they are. Here are a few tips I use when trying to separate the scams from the authentic products:
- Don’t fall for unreasonable claims – if they offer you a million dollars but only want you to pay $10, it’s probably a scam. The reasonable offers and products won’t make such grandiose claims.
- Flashy sales pages – The flashier the sales page is, the more suspicious I get. Most of the honest offers that I have seen have thorough, down to earth sales pages.
- Money for nothing – I hate to break it to you, but to make money you are going to have to do some work. People that promise no work systems are probably scams.
- Read reviews – The awesome thing about the ease of posting something online, is that if it exists, it is probably discussed somewhere online. If something is a scam, there will be people telling about their experience being scammed by it. I will google “(product name here) scam” before every online purchase that is not from a known seller. This can really save you a lot of grief.
In short, just really do your homework and trust your instincts when buying things online.
And yes, I know that there are actually people out there who may make a million dollars in a day, but they are rare and if they do offer training, it’s going to cost a lot and will come well recommended by current students. Just be careful.
What other things do you do or use to spot scams online?
Photo By: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amagill/ / CC BY 2.0
Gamers Guide to Getting Rich pt. 2
Apr 14th
Simple games like We Rule can teach you basic information about money management and give you some ideas, but in order to get a fuller picture of economics, look at a game with it’s own economy: World of Warcraft.
Full economy?
WoW has it’s own full economy, with items with various degrees of supply and demand. Each item has a value that it can be sold to a vender, but most higher value items are sold to other players in the auction house.
Blizzard, the makers of WoW, has control over the supply and demand by controlling the game play and use of the various items. This is a bit different from real life, where the governments can control the money supply, not the supply and demand, but it actually brings the effect of these two things to light.
Things that have more uses are in greater demand.
Things that are limited in availability have greater value.
To maximize your auction house profit in WoW, you must have something of limited availability (such as a high level mineral) then try to sell it at a price that is the highest someone would pay for it. Each time you put an item in the auction house, you lose a small portion of that item’s listed price. So if you continually list an item at a high price, at some point it will no longer be profitable. There are add ons and software that helps you figure out the price sweet spot.
So how does all this apply to real life?
Photo By: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mojodenbowsphotostudio/ / CC BY 2.0
iPad Only
Apr 12th
I got my iPad a little over a week ago. I’ve been using it so much that it feels like longer. I have been watching a few people on the Internet try to use only the iPad for a month, specifically Ed Dale and Paul Colligan. I haven’t vowed to go iPad only, but on my personal work (aka anytime that i’m not being paid to code), I have been pretty much iPad only.
The two main exceptions to this have been when I was testing some code that I got back from a contractor and watching some videos on Vimeo. The code was in python and needed to be run locally, so couldn’t do that on my iPad (although I do have an FTP and SVN client running on my iPad for non-local stuff). The videos were a webcast that was going to be taken down that I really wanted to see.
The only other thing that I haven’t been able to do well is post to my blog. I had to work out a system where I write out my blog entries in Pages and then get my VA to post them for me. Still working on this one, but I think it will be doable. I really wish the iPad WordPress app worked better than it does, but without copy and paste and rich text display, it’s just not real usable right now. I also didn’t have much luck editing via the web interface. For some reason, my rich text fields are not working correctly.
But some of the things that I have been able to do on my iPad make the limitations well worth it. I love writing on the iPad. Typing is really easy in the landscape mode and since the keys and the text are right next to each other it’s really easy. And pages is super pretty.
Yesterday I finished my business plan using one of the Pages templates, and brainstormed on my new web app using a combination of MindNode and iWireframe. Both of these tools work great in their infancy and I expect them to get even better. Once I finish my diagram and wireframes, I just need to email them to my designer and programmer and that will get the project started. All from my iPad.
For notes, I have ended up using an app called CourseNotes. It is made for students, but does a great job at collecting and organizing notes on various topics. My only wish is that I could name a session of notes, but that feature is probably coming.
I have even gone iPad only during play time too. My relaxing time has been spent playing iPad games and watching Doctor Who on Netflix. At some point, I’ll go back to reading actual books, but for now, it’s all iPad. I have yet to try reading a book in iBooks, but I have my doubts about the backlit screen hurting my eyes. But i’d really love it if iBooks would store PDF files as well as epub. A lot of the books I read are PDF ebooks that I get online. It would be nice not needing a separate PDF reader.
Well there are some of my initial thoughts about the iPad. I am really looking forward to coming up with even greater tasks to try to do on my iPad. This device is truly awesome!!
Photo By: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ivyfield/ / CC BY 2.0
Dragon Diction Fun
Apr 9th
It’s almost as fun as playing with babel fish translator. In short it doesn’t really work that well. I just told it a simple story about the things sitting on my bed around me. The result? See for yourself:
Okay I want to see what crazy things I do think you are consenting but you didn’t say I am on the phone like that you come up and I am going to get away from you soon I had to work out system is intended to Adam breakfast
I’m planning on playing with it some more, but right now it’s not really usable for any actually work.
Gamers Guide to Getting Rich
Apr 8th
Yesterday I was totally absorbed into my new iPad. I watched some tv shows on netflix, played a bunch of games, and in general, did very little work. One of the games that really grabbed me was We Rule, a kingdom building game where you grow crops and charge taxes. It’s surprisingly addictive.
But as I was playing, it occurred to me that this game teaches the basics of money. Here are the steps to getting rich in We Rule:
- You start with enough money to buy a farm. And you can plant corn for free. You grow corn until you save up enough and gain enough experience to plant a larger crop.
- While you are in playing the game, plant as many rounds of corn as you can. These have the best payoff, but are the most time consuming.
- When you are about to leave the game, decide when you will be able to come back and plant to crop that takes that long to grow. Set a calendar alarm so that you don’t forget to come back.
- As you save up more money, you can expand your kingdom but always be sure you have enough saved up to plant your crop for while you are away.
Now let’s translate that into real life.
- You need to start with a little bit of money saved up or be at a job that provides you with money until you can get residual income. Start your business by doing small but possible time consuming things that can begin to grow the value of your business. These may be setting up a blog, designing a project, or writing a free ebook so you can start an email newsletter.
- When you have the time, work on these time consuming things as much as you can, as they will lead the way for you to offer sell things that don’t require as much effort on your part. These may be things like consulting or larger ebooks.
- Over time you will begin to get income coming in from the less time consuming sources enough that you can spend much less time on your business and much more time on living your life.
- But as you live, always make sure you have a bit of savings that you can live on if you need to, and some extra cash to invest into your business.
What other business principles have you been able to learn from a game like We Rule?
Photo By: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mojodenbowsphotostudio/ / CC BY 2.0
The Changes We Love
Apr 7th
Have you ever experienced a change that caused your productivity to increase a great deal, but only for a limited time?
Maybe you got a new device or office supply that you really loved using. Maybe youstarted working in a new location. Maybe you started working with someone else on aproject. Your productivity soars, but as soon as you got used to the new toy, space, or person you went right back into old habits.
This is currently happening to me with my new iPad. I just love working on it, so I’m being really productive with tasks that I can do on my iPad. But I know that without lots of discipline, the productivity will not last. I’ll start not checking my iPad task lists. I’ll put off that same tasks that I have always put off. I’m going to try to avoid it, but it will probably happen.
What’s to be done?
But how can we use this to our advantage? Can we use regular systematic changes to keep a high level of productivity? Here is a system that I try to use to regularly give my self a productivity boost through changes:
- Once a month, I treat myself to a new toy. This doesn’t have to be an expensive electronic device. It can be as simple as a new pen that I enjoy writing with or a new journal to write in. Or a new piece of productivity software that looks promising. Something that makes me want to work with it.
- At least once a week, I work in an alternate location. I will either go to a library, a coffee shop or a public space that is conducive to work. Of course the work that I need to do helps choose a location. I can write in the park, but I can’t work on the web. I have found that this helps even on the other days when I’m in the office.
- Once every week or two, I have a work party with a friend. This habit was formed in college when I would go to study groups to do homework. Even if you don’t have anyone to meet up with to work, maybe larger cities has co-working groups that you could join that do just this thing. Some may not work as well in groups like this,but I have found that when I’m surrounded by a bunch of people being productive, I’m more productive. And it never hurts to give it a try.
These are 3 ways that I use regular changes in my life to help myself be more productive.
Do you have a change that you use to help yourself be more productive? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.
Photo By: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kthread/ / CC BY 2.0
