So anyway, now that I’ve got a little more free time, I’ve found that 3 intense productive hours per day is still a sweet spot on my three non-warehouse days (warehouse days can be a little more unpredictable). Again, it doesn’t sound like a lot, but it really is. During that time I don’t really take breaks. I eat beforehand and afterward. I’ve generally already run my errands for the day and/or gone to the gym. I’ve already checked email and done any daily tasks. Later at night, if I have time, I’ll catch up on Twitter and my RSS feeds or write a blog post or try to expand my programming knowledge. But during those 3 hours I’m intensely focused. The night before I’ll plan out exactly what I’ll be working on. I like to make a cup of tea to sip on and crank up the music and get into my zone. It’s hard (impossible) to do this all day long. For 3 hours per day though, I find myself looking forward to it and not dreading work like most people do. Some of that is because of what I’m working on, but some of it is because I’m not wearing myself out by working a crazy amount of hours.

I particularly enjoy sandwiching these “blitzes” with the exact opposite type of thing. Before hand, I might go to the gym, cook breakfast, and read for 30 minutes, which is the total opposite of programming with Eminem blaring. When I’m done, I might make some more food and go for a walk or read some more. The whole thing just leaves me feeling balanced and relaxed, while still being really productive. When I’m in “work24x7 mode” I just can’t unwind even when I try to. The nice thing is that because we’re doing pretty well now, I don’t feel like I have to work all the time like I did in 2006 or 2007.

By structuring things around these short “blitzes” of work, I feel like I’m setting myself up for the kind of balance I want to live with for the long term, the kind of balance I’m lucky enough to be able to dictate because I own my own business.

I am a frequent commenter on Adam’s blog, beyond the blog we’ve become good friends over the last few years and enjoy sharing business stories and other lifestyle/technology concepts we come across.  As the story I’m about to share with you unfolded Adam was the first person I knew I was going to tell and he suggested a guest post for his blog, which leads us to the story.

I was out to dinner with some friends a little over a week ago, two married couples and I.  I won’t say that the two husbands (we’ll call them John and Steve) don’t like each other but they are at odds with each other, in particular with certain topics.  One of these topics is living through search engines, namely Google.  John is a self proclaimed Googleholic he will not do anything, buy anything or go anyplace without Googling it first.  Steve uses Google for researching, for example looking into buying a new cell phone, but doesn’t like it for reviews or let it influence him too much.  He argues, and this is where it gets interesting, that John is no longer capable of thinking for himself, his statements are derived from Google, his opinion is no longer his opinion, it is what he reads from Google.  Additionally, Steve feels that you are depriving yourself of experiencing life through heavy Google usage, a restaurant may have a bad review or two and may be an outstanding place to eat.

This really got me thinking, I am a heavy Google user, in addition to averaging 34.2 Google searches per day(Google tracks this for you, in case you didn’t know) I’m using no less than 21 Google Products on my Google Account Page.  A lot of my searching is because I recently moved over 750 miles from my home town/state and am learning a lot about my new area, Google has made this experience much easier.  I’m not making excuses for my usage but I own two businesses, one of which is a web business and work almost exclusively through my computer/from home, a lot of my searching is for work.  That is not the case for John, he is a blue color worker and that means he’s away from the ability to search for at least 8 hours a day.

The real question is, how much Google searching is too much?  Are we living better quality lives because we don’t need to have an experience to gain the knowledge from others?  This reminds me a book by Barry Schwartz called The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less only with a Google twist.  If we’re not to the point that we are virtually experiencing life, we are approaching it very rapidly – be warned!

Adam here: my thoughts are that this is a REALLY interesting topic. I too have a Google addiction, but I also don’t really want to know everything about everything I’m just about to do.  It’s kind of why I personally don’t like the concept of online dating.  It turns something that is adventurous and curious into a process that’s kind of like buying a car.  At some point you just have to get out there and live.  I also think that, in a way, the wealth of information hinders us from doing things.  In particular, starting a business.  There’s so much info out there that you can get sucked in to thinking you need to do 50 things before you can even consider starting a company, when almost none of that is as important as simply meeting a need that people are willing to pay for.  On a more personal level, I try to use my Googling to my advantage when traveling.  Often times my girlfriend and I will hop in the car and take a day trip to a small town in Massachusetts or Vermont on a whim because we heard it was a cool place, with no more info than the town name to throw into our GPS.  We explore the town and sometimes never need to use the technology available to us.  But by knowing that we have smart phones at our disposal, we don’t have to plan as much.  If we get lost, we use the GPS and/or our phones.  If we can’t find a place to eat, we can Google it.  The same technology that can cripple you can also be used to your advantage, depending on how you approach it.

In general, the past few months have been more stressful than usual.  I’ve constantly been trying to get back into a more balanced routine, but to no avail.  Seemingly though, the rest of the year is shaping up to be pretty good with Mike coming back and the server chaos with LockerPulse behind us.  We’ve got a lot of awesome stuff planned for both LP and DI, but nothing that is pressing enough to have an absolute due date.

Instead of diving into something new, I decided to take today and get my “momentum” back.  *Most* of the time when you run a company, you can control most days with relative predictability. Sure, things always pop up here and there, but not enough to throw your day off track.  Lately though, every day has been thrown off track.  I know that’s not going to be the norm, so as quickly as possible I want to get that feeling of control back.

I had several left over tasks from yesterday to get to.  I ripped through those in the morning, took care of a few other small things that I have been putting off, caught up with all of my emails, and then, late in the afternoon when I could dive back into work, I simply laid out my plans for tomorrow, caught up with my Google Reader, and started writing this post. After this I’m heading out to dinner and don’t plan on working the rest of the night.

Could I have gotten more done today?  Of course.  However, for my long term benefit, sometimes it’s more important to get my positive momentum back and end the day on a good note instead of with my head spinning.   Tomorrow I’ll be excited to dive in to my work, instead of worn out.  Later this week I can really get going on some projects I’ve been wanting to get to for a while now.  All it takes for me is one positive, calm day to regain the momentum.

Update – and 15 minutes after hitting submit on this post, just as I went to close my email, a customer alerted me to a bug on Detailed Image.  Something I probably should just address now.  Sometimes you just can’t win…

Then the site goes live and I feel like this for a little while. Then I realize that I’ve got to get back to a more “normal” balance, which for me means going back to all of the things I wrote about in my productive output post a few years back. As I’ve done before, I’m making an intentional effort to spend more time with friends and family as the Summer gets started, I’m making sure I spend as much time as possible outside in the nice weather (this weekend was beautiful and I spent large chunks of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday outdoors), and I’m making it a point to allow myself more time to read and relax at the beginning and end of the day.

Once I get back to neutral, which I feel like I’m a lot closer to right now, things tend to get fun. Small, iterative improvements on the site design and functionality are some of my favorite projects to work on because you get to really hone in on a few details and try to get them right. I also like to actually market stuff…once upon a time I actually made my living doing SEO and web marketing, which I still enjoy doing. Both LockerPulse and Detailed Image have a lot of great projects in the pipe line. I’m also looking forward to being able to devote myself to learning and applying some new skills to our projects, like HTML5 and CSS3.

Now that I’ve finally pulled my head out of the sand we’ve got a really exciting few months ahead of us.

For fun, I was searching through my blog and found some interesting quotes from previous projects that exactly describe this same situation after previous launches. There might be more, but this was all that I could think of. I think a lot of my comments illustrate that how you feel on Day 1 or Day 10 or even Day 30 really has no bearing on the ultimate success or failure of a project.

6/2006 – iPrioritize Wacky Day 2 [launch of iPrioritize]:

From my limited experience as an entrepreneur, I’ve come to the realization that the day after the launch of a new business or product is a weird one. The initial excitement and relief of the launch has been replaced with a realization that you have exactly zero customers. Now, maybe for some people this doesn’t happen the next day, but I’d say something’s wrong if you are still celebrating your launch a week later.

I woke up in a weird mood today. I had that “holy crap, how am I going to get people to start using my site and eventually buy my service” feeling, despite the fact that I have a well-thought out marketing plan to execute. I suppose that I get this feeling because marketing is such an inexact science.

5/2007 – Price Guide Live – is it ready? am I freaking out? & Positive response thus far, but I’m worn out [launch of the SportsLizard Price Guide, which has become very successful - over 4 million price searches and counting]:

When you first launch something you ALWAYS freak out. No matter how solid your plan or your product, you realize that all of the hard work you put in thus far has generated exactly $0 and you’ve really accomplished very little. I purposely posted immediately after I put it up to capture my feelings: Did I add enough features? Will people be able to figure it out? Will people even care? Did I quality check it well enough? etc, etc.

On a more personal level though, I’m worn out. When I’m programming like crazy I shut out my entire life – I exist for one purpose and that’s to get the job done. Now that it’s done, everything else is catching up with me. My back is still driving me nuts, is much worse than anticipated, and has sidelined me for over a month (although the doc just cleared me for light exercise this week which rocks). My free time/social life is still lacking, although I blame myself for holding back…it’s not like the opportunities aren’t there, just that I turn them down frequently to focus on my work (and recently cuz I can barely walk).

Side note: I think I programmed that entire project either standing up or lying in bed. It was impossible to sit. That back injury (torn oblique + herniated disk) took over a year to fully heal and added a completely different level of stress because I didn’t have the physical outlet that I normally do

9/2007 – DI Up – Completely and Utterly Drained [launch of the first DI cart]

I am 100% completely drained – I’ve got nothing in the tank right now. For the past 3 months, I’ve pushed balls out everyday to launch this site so that our company can make the efficiency gains from the automation of this site, which in turn enables us to focus more efforts on marketing existing sites and developing new ones (the key right now to our successful growth). Every bit of expendable energy has been directed to the site the past 3 months. Couple that with the PayPal disaster last week and this redirect fiasco last night, and those two “crisis” have worn me down.

Honestly, if I had a wife and a house and 2.5 kids I wouldn’t be able to do it right now. Even after a few years, I still need to give the business priority. We all acknowledge that this is the turning point for the company and it’s uphill from here, but the focus, determination, and sacrifice that all of us have given lately is evidence of just how hard you have to work to get to the spot that it looks like we’re at now. We’re all talented guys, but nothing replaces relentless hard work.

So I don’t burn out, I’m taking the next few days real easy (i.e. unless there’s ANOTHER disaster, I’m not working).

4/2008 – Downshifting Post-Launch [launch of Tastefully Driven]

I’ve got to remember that we’re in this for the long haul and we don’t need $50k months right off the bat to be having success. I knew this all along – it was part of our plan, but I still got the same anxiety. So I started asking myself WHY.

I think I was wrong back in 2006 – it’s not at all because marketing is an inexact science. It’s because you downshift yourself from going balls out to launch a site to a more steady, long-term marketing strategy. It’s a massive life change that’s akin to switching from being a sprinter to a marathon runner.

For months I was pushing with everything I could to launch the site. Since I knew it was a short term thing, I could work 15 hour days and push aside other aspects of my life. The “rush” was always there because I saw us rapidly achieving goals that brought us closer to the ultimate goal: launch.

Now, I’m doing a mix of things that will bring some sales right away (PPC, product syndication, etc) and things that will bring in sales months/years from now (blog posts, forum posts, videos). Programming goes from exciting features to mundane maintenance, with the occasional exciting feature a few times a year. The ultimate goal is thriving over a period of years, something that’s much harder to get motivated for.

5/2008 – The New SportsLizard is FINALLY Done [current SportsLizard revamp - which has resulted in a doubling of revenue]

Now that I’ve had a few days to calm down from everything, I’m not really sure how I feel about it. Weird is the best word to describe it. The guy who spends all day on the card message boards seems to have no use for what we provide, even the Price Guide tool. This makes me scratch my head and quite frankly pisses me off. Part of me thinks it will just never happen with SL – we have our audience, our niche, and I should leave it at that. Part of me wants to keep pushing and make it finally pull through. Another part of me wants to take everything I learned with SL and start another unrelated cards site and focus on that

5/2009 – The new Detailed Image is Live! [current Detailed Image cart]

As far as I’m concerned, I’m totally spent. (followed by about 8 paragraphs explaining the crazy launch…you get the idea)

I’m not sure if these types of posts are interesting for everyone to read, or if it seems like I keep re-iterating the same points over and over again, but I think this emotional rollercoaster is an important topic related to running a business that’s mysteriously not talked about much. I figure if even one person launching a project reads this post and feels better that they’re not alone, it’s worth my time.

• Monday – because we have to ship out all of the sales from the weekend, Monday’s are our busiest day.  The entire team heads in to the warehouse.  Whenever we finish orders, the four of us have our weekly meeting while our employees get the warehouse ready for the rest of the week (stock shelves, make boxes, fill the peanut dispenser, etc).  This is the only time all week that we all see each other so we discuss anything and everything that needs the input of the team. The meetings generally last 2-3 hours and we head home between 4 PM and 5 PM.  After I get home I usually shower, eat, and then actually try to do some work.  Generally I have some action items from the meeting so I try to take care of those if I can before I’m totally wiped out.
• Tuesday – my warehouse day.  The remaining three days my partners each go in for a day.  Currently, we have Charlie coming in every day so every day is Charlie + an owner.  Once school ends and John comes back, we’ll probably have him in a few days a week, plus I think there’s a good chance we add another part timer later in the year.  On average Tuesdays, Charlie can do everything in the warehouse and I can get a lot of small things done.  All I need to do is check his orders before he seals them.  However, on busy Tuesdays (seems like every week lately) I go out and help him so we can get orders out in time.  I try to leave right at 3 PM.  At night I’ll try to do some small projects or wrap up anything else I have from the Monday meeting.
• Wednesday – my “busy” day.  I go to the gym, run errands, do laundry, shave my head, meet up with friends for lunch, have dinner with my parents, and sometimes meet with Mike to review any design/development stuff that could benefit from some face to face time.  I try to “batch” all of the running around that I have to do. I tend to be really worn out by the end of Wednesday because these first three days I don’t really stop moving.
• Thursday & Friday – my work days.  Other than going to the gym, I just stay home and focus on my work.  These are the days where I can get multiple 3 hour chunks to work uninterrupted, and in turn this is when I get the majority of my programming done.  I can usually work hard all day and then actually relax and have some time to myself at night.
• Saturday & Sunday – every weekend is different, but for the most part I do what I want.  For the past few months, I’ve been trying to get as much done on LockerPulse as I can, almost treating Saturday and Sunday like another Thursday/Friday.  But now that the majority of the serious development is done, I’m going to go back to just checking my email once each day as my only requirement.  If I want to do a few hours of work, I will, but I won’t feel like I have to.

I’m sure this will all change within the next six months (it always does…and I kind of like that it does), but for now I’m in a nice little groove.

In the past several months a lot has changed about the way I do things, all for the better in my opinion.

I’m getting a lot less customer service emails since we changed the way we handle errors on Detailed Image and are in the process of getting rid of Amazon and Tastefully Driven.  In terms of customer service, I used to handle all DI technical emails, all of Amazon, all of Tastefully Driven, all of SportsLizard, and then the other misc emails that trickle in now and again (Music-Alerts, Z.ips.ME, iPrioritize).  Knocking the first two off of my list has decreased my emails by about 65% (educated guess).  Don’t get me wrong – I love handling customer service issues. I love hearing the feedback.  It makes me an infinitely better developer.  But in these cases, the emails I was getting were repetitive and adding little or no value to the business.  Those are the types of emails I dislike, and therefore am really happy to rid myself of.

For the past ~6 weeks I have only been doing two warehouse days per week. That will probably go back to three once volume picks up in the Spring, but two is where I’d like to be back to by the end of Summer.  Hopefully we’ll have our full-time warehouse manager in place by then. We should each be able to do Monday + one other day, with a part time employee and the manager giving us 3 people per day.  The extra day off makes all the difference.  At least one day off is always primarily an errand day.  I go to the bank, visit my parents, grocery shop, shave my head, etc etc.  So by going from one additional day off to two, I can get a lot more of my project work done.

Speaking of which, I’ve really taken to batch processing my tasks based upon where I’ll be for the day.  For example, on my two legit days at home, I’m trying to do nothing but develop LockerPulse.  Those days I can go long stretches without being interrupted, which is really what you need to “get in the zone” and program effectively.  I try to save everything else for my warehouse days or my errand day.  Those days I often only get 15 or 20 minutes at a time to do stuff.  Especially on warehouse days.  There are interruptions left and right.  So when I add something to my to-do list that will take less than 30 minutes, I make sure I add it to one of those days and keep my days off totally free.

I’ve really taken to listening to podcasts when I’m in the car. It started when I listened to the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders and has kind of blossomed into a routine for me.  I really look forward to getting in the car now by myself.  I’ve got it to a point where the podcasts I listen to come out at roughly the same pace that I drive.   Originally I tried using my old iPod, but found it a pain to carry around, keep charged, and plug into my car, so instead I’ve just been burning a new MP3 CD every few weeks and just leaving that in my car.  When I start the car it picks up right where I left off.  In addition to the Stanford talks, I’m subscribed to the 37Signals Podcast, This Week in Google, TechStuff, Diggnation, and Business Week’s Behind This Week’s Cover Story.  If you have any suggestions for me I’d love to hear them in the comments.

Last but not least, I’ve changed my sleep schedule to get up an hour later.  Sleep has been one of my favorite topics on this blog, mostly because 1) it’s really really important for health and productivity, and 2) everyone I know (myself included) pretty much sucks at it.  Check out the sleep category if you want the full run down, but basically in Jan of 2008 I decided I was going to become an early riser and stop getting up late and sleeping erratically as I had for my entire life.  I worked my ass off and was disciplined as hell and after several months got my body on an awesome 10 PM – 6 AM schedule.  I didn’t realize how tired I always was previously until I did this.  One or two good nights sleep just don’t leave you feeling as rested, happy, and productive as months upon months of great sleep do.

Anyway, 10 – 6 worked great for a while.  It enabled me to get to the gym before coming to the warehouse.  Back then we also had clients, so it let me get a few hours of work done before they started harassing me with phone calls.  The past six months or so, I kept finding myself in more social situations that kept me out later.  The only way I could keep getting up at 6 was to nap a lot.  I love napping, it can be a great supplement if done right, but I didn’t want it to be an every day routine.  Napping is horribly inefficient when you factor in the time it takes to wind down and wind back up afterward.  I also found myself going to the gym on non-warehouse days after doing some work  (9 or 10 AM), so the need to be up at 6 wasn’t really there.  The last straw was when my girlfriend got a new job that will have her at the office most days until around 7 PM. I want to make sure we have some time at night to spend together. I finally decided to start getting up at 7 AM about three weeks ago.  This really wouldn’t be a big deal for most people, but I always thought I’d stick to my 6 AM forever and ever because of how much I liked it.  Since the change though, I’ve realized that it’s a much better lifestyle fit for me now.  I haven’t napped since.  I’ve never been tired at all during the day.  I just feel more relaxed and less stressed overall.

But how I go about accomplishing the bigger projects changes based upon all sorts of variables, like how busy we are and what types of things I’m working on. During the holiday season I have to be very flexible and (gasp) leave my email open more often. It’s hard to plan what my day will look like, and if I try to do so I generally get frustrated by the million little things that get thrown my way and take me off course. So I tend to just “go with the flow” and look at any free time to advance on long-term projects as “bonus time”.

January and February, however, are much different. We’re having a good month, up from last year. But obviously this time of year is down compared to the Spring, Summer, and holidays.

In 2010 so far I’ve instituted a really simple system that has resulted in me being very productive without feeling overwhelmed. I have a document with goals for every week and every weekend listed out for the next month. The goals for this week are much more “definite” than the ones for three weekends from now, which are subject to quite a bit of change.

I’ve found it really helpful to have weekly goals instead of daily goals. Weekly is still short enough that it keeps me accountable, but not so short that I’m reviewing my plan every day or getting frustrated if a day doesn’t go as planned. I really only open up that document to plan once a week. Otherwise I just open it to add a quick note about a project or to cross something off the list.

The other thing that I’ve found super helpful is to only plan for an average of 3 productive hours per day. That might not sound like a lot, but it is. Think about it – in most offices, do employees ever get 3 uninterrupted hours of work done? No. They’re constantly jumping from one task to another. When they do get some time to work, someone calls/IMs/emails/visits and throws the whole thing off. Most large companies should be thrilled to get 3 good hours out of their employees every day.

I find that 3 is the perfect number for me. 3 is very realistic, and there’s nothing worse than an unrealistic set of goals. That 3 factors out my emails, phone calls, time in the warehouse, and any unplanned programming maintenance (i.e. bugs). Some days I get 5 hours to work without interruption, while on other days I only get an hour or two. I try to always get at least one hour even on the busiest of days. You can get a lot done in one distraction free hour.

This makes my planning a lot easier too. I come up with tasks that should take 15 hours for the week, and then a small 2-4 hour project for the weekend. If something happens to take up more or less, I adjust on the fly. But for the most part I’ve been pretty accurate and in turn have just been banging out work left and right. It’s been one of my better stretches in a while. I’ve been getting a lot done while still having plenty of time for myself.

Sure it helps having some employees, and it helps that we’re slow now, but this new structure has worked well for me given how overwhelming it can be to look at the daunting list that we’re trying to get through this year. Last year I just couldn’t find any time to get things accomplished in January and February. It’s nice to get off to a good start this year. Nothing quite feels as good as crossing things off of a list.

But in business it’s a little different. When your fiscal year aligns with the calendar year like ours does, it just makes sense to take a step back and evaluate 2009 vs 2008 vs 2007 and then put together a tentative game plan for 2010.

Last year we did a good job of setting realistic goals. We got the new Detailed Image launched. We hired our first employee. We grew a lot in a year when many companies didn’t. We passed the point where we were “ramen profitable” and became very profitable. Essentially everything I had hoped that we would do, we did, plus a lot more good stuff that came from the unexpected.

A few weeks ago we met with our lawyer for our annual meeting. Then earlier this week we had a long team meeting about the past year and the coming year. I couldn’t have been more pleased with how things went.

From a business perspective, I’m really excited for 2010. I think we’ve done a good job of thinking through what our goals are and creating a work environment moving forward that meets everyone’s needs. It really is important to us that everyone involved has work that they are passionate about, a reasonable work load, and the flexibility that they want for their personal lives. Even more so than making a few more bucks. I love that.

Personally though, 2009 wore me out. It went from launching the DI site, to moving into a new apartment, to a whole bunch of trips (bachelor party, vacation, wedding, talk at JMU, etc), to the holiday season. It was a great year, but I think I’d like to slow that stuff down for at least the first half of ’09. I like traveling and keeping a busy social life, but last year was too busy at times. And for me personally, when things get too busy I get stressed out and start to lose out on time at the gym, time to read, time to just relax by myself or with my family/friends/girlfriend. I start looking forward to trips ending more than I look forward to them starting, and that’s not how I want things to be.

It’s interesting how this stuff unfolds. For the first two years after I left my job, it was business 24×7 just trying to survive and not take a job. In 2008 I made a concerted effort to get my personal life back on track a bit. And in 2009 I had to re-focus and get the DI site built so I could do my part in helping us take that next step as a company.

This year should be a little bit of a leveling out. Which I think is natural as a company ages. We’ve got some really really cool stuff to work on. Stuff that excites me and I cannot wait to show the world. My personal life and living situation is the best it’s been since I left my job (maybe ever), so I hope that allows me to just enjoy my work and enjoy my time off. Sometimes I over-extend myself and try to do too much, so this year I’m just going to try to keep it simple.

I’ll probably say “no” a little more than I have in the past. It’s impossible to be everything to everyone. It is possible to do a few things really well though. Overextending myself definitely does not make me happy. What does make me happy is running a profitable business, creating jobs, giving back to our community, developing a lot of great personal relationships, having some time to myself, and hopefully having fun doing it all. That’s what I’m shooting for in 2010.

So you end up being on call 24 x 7 x 365.

This used to stress me out.  I think it stresses a lot of people who are used to working a corporate job.  It’s rare at large companies that problems exist that no one else can solve.  But that happens all the time in a small business.  It’s impractical to have everyone trained on everything that goes on in the company.  One way or another, you’ll probably have some unique knowledge that others don’t.

Today was supposed to be an off-day from the warehouse for me, but at 9 AM I got a call from Greg telling me that FedEx updated their Ship Manager software and something was preventing us from being able to process our orders.  We import a batch file from our system, print all the shipping labels for the day, and then export back out the tracking numbers to the system.  Nothing was working.

So I dropped what I was doing, hopped in the car, and a few hours later was able to get everything up and running.  All of our orders were able to ship out for the day.  No customers were affected.  It could have been much worse.

It was frustrating, it wasn’t something I had anticipated or hoped would happen today, but once it did it didn’t really bother me.  It’s part of the deal.  If you want to run a business and have all of the freedom and benefits when things go great, you’ve got to accept the fact that there are going to be a bunch of mini-crisis that occur on a semi-regular basis.  When the problems are critical to your business – like printing shipping labels or your server mysteriously displaying an error on New Years Eve – you have to drop what you’re doing and solve the problem.  No matter where you are or what you’re doing.

Because, if you don’t, no one else will.

One of my favorite parts about Food, Inc was at the end of the movie, after revealing just how bad things are, they give you specific steps that you can do to take action.  The list is up on the website.  I love the fact that they encouraged action.  How many documentaries, heck how many people in general, just whine and complain but don’t ever suggest a better alternative?

I do a pretty good job following those rules, but the ones that always get me are #6 & #7 – “Buy organic or sustainable food with little or no pesticides”  and “Protect family farms; visit your local farmer’s market”.  I actually do buy quite a bit of organic food.  My girlfriend and I shop farmers markets.  But, that stuff is expensive.  Really expensive.  So we pick and choose what we buy.  It’s important to me, but not so important to me that I sacrifice other things financially.  So in reality, I only somewhat value organic food and local farms.

Which brings me to my point.  Every day we vote with our actions.  We vote with the time we spend.  We vote with the money we spend.  That’s what’s important to us.

One of my favorite blog posts ever was Adam Gilbert’s post How to tell what someone really cares about (How to tell if someone is full of shit, Part Deuce):

A lot of people always talk about what they want to do, what they want to accomplish, what they meant to do, their intentions, how they want to change the world and on and on and on. It seems as though everyone has intentions of doing big things. Clearly, sadly and unfortunately, that’s not the case. Most people are talkers, rather than doers. Let’s face it. It’s a lot easier to talk than do.

In a world where people are moving a million miles per minute how can you actually tell what someone really cares about? Look at their calendar! It’s that simple. Your calendar never lies. All we have is our time. The way we spend our time is our priorities, is our strategy. Your calendar knows what you really care about.

What’s important to you is a very bottom line business:

• If you don’t spend time with your family, they aren’t that important to you.
• If you eat fast food routinely, you’re placing convenience ahead of your health.
• If you don’t exercise or eat right, losing weight isn’t that important to you.
• In business, if you don’t spend time interacting with your customers and understanding their needs, you don’t care about them.
• If your video games keep getting in the way of you starting a business, you’d rather play games than start a company.

And so on and so forth.  I could go for hours.

Now, there are always exceptions to the rule.  But mostly that’s how I see it.  It’s pretty black and white.

Ask yourself two questions: what do I spend my time on?  What do I spend my money on?  That’s what is important to you.  It is.  You might disagree, but you’re wrong.  If you want a different answer, you’ll have to change how you spend your time and/or how you spend your money.

It can be a humbling set of questions.  I’m constantly asking them myself.

For me, there are three really key things that I have control over that I think factor into my overall happiness and well being.

1. My work.  Am I striving for and accomplishing great things?  Am I having fun doing it?  Does it have an overall positive impact?
2. My relationships.  Do I actively strive to spend time with my girlfriend, friends, family, and business partners? When I’m with them, am I doing a good job of focusing on being with them and not on my work?
3. My personal well being.  Am I getting enough sleep?  Am I eating well and exercising enough?  Am I making sure that I get personal time to relax and reflect each day?

Everything else, for the most part, is just ancillary noise to me.   99% of the time, if something doesn’t fall into those three categories I don’t want to be doing it.  So I stop.  It’s not that important to me and I want my actions to reflect that.

Now, time allocation within those three is quite the challenge.  But that’s another story for another day.