Michael Wilding

Category: Productivity

  • F**k Phones

    F**k Phones

    So… Happy Friday 😀

    I’ve been trying to make a video for Zuzman, showing just a basic walk-through of how to register and get started.

    Nothing flashy, after all,l it’s only in beta testing.

    I got the video recorded this morning, it only took about 10 minutes.

    But… it turns out that I forgot to turn my microphone on.

    FFS!

    That means I’ve got to re-record the audio over the top of it. Which I began to do, but now the day is under way and guess what?

    The phone won’t stop ringing!

    Aaaaagggghhh.

    Unfortunately I can’t turn my phone off toda as I”m expecting some calls which I need to take.

    So it seems, for now, that I’m going to have to put the video on hold.

    Whether the video is going to be good or a monstrosity is yet to be seen, but I’m hoping for the first 😉

    Time will tell.

    For now… have a great weekend.

    Hopefully I’ll have the video done by Monday, but we’re going to see Hamilton this weekend. So it’s all dependent on how much we enjoy ourselves afterwards!

    Over ‘n out,

    Michael

    P.S. You can still access the Zuzaman Slack group at https://goo.gl/LnMgfi

  • InstaLife

    InstaLife

    It occurred to me this morning that everything we do now is instant, or tries to be.

    Looking at my desk, I’ve got instant coffee cups, instant noodles and instant messaging.

    How depressing is that?

    I honestly believe that this new society, where we expect everything to be done instantly, isn’t good for our sanity.

    Because the truth is… nothing can be done instantly, and sure as heck nothing can be done well instantly.

    And let’s be honest, why do we need everything to be instant anyway?

    The biggest issue is communication. There’s simply too many ways to be able to get in touch with someone.

    You used to phone up the landline and if someone wasn’t available you’d leave a message. Now you try their mobile, then… text, Skype, Slack, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, email and a bunch of other communication methods.

    But if you turn all those off, here’s the truth…

    There’s almost nothing that can’t wait.

    How do I know, because I’ve done it, and I’ve implemented it for many people.

    The simple tactic of turning off all your notifications and not answering anything. The changing of your mobile number so only a few key people have it can be life-changing!

    What happens?

    Your life instantly becomes less stressful.

    Is it difficult?

    Nope. What’s difficult is the psychological understanding that you’re not going to miss something urgent, because we’ve taught ourselves to think that if we don’t answer immediately, we’re going to miss an opportunity, or something bad will happen.

    99.99999999999% of the time this isn’t true!

    Technology may have made our lives easier in a lot of ways, but it’s sure as hell also made it more stressful.

    Remember the days when you went home after work and physically couldn’t do any more because everything was in your office?

    Now people go home from a job and continue working.

    It’s great for employers, they’re still only paying you for an eight hour day, but they’re expecting you to work in your own time to get things done.

    If you don’t, there’s always someone behind you who’s willing to.

    Here’s my thought…

    Let them.

    Life’s too short to be getting stressed about things that, generally speaking, really don’t matter whether they’re done today or tomorrow.

    It’s certainly too short to be spending your personal time working without compensation.

    If you want to find out how I go about making my work life as stress free as possible, check out these blog posts.

    Ciao,

    Michael

  • Can you juggle?

    Can you juggle?

    I used to be a pretty damn good juggler, up to a maximum of four items.

    Balls, clubs, hoops, you name it and I could juggle with it.

    I was taught to juggle as a child by a family friend. What makes people struggle with juggling is that the balls get away from them.

    If you try to juggle by moving your arms forward, instead of to the side, then the balls get further and further away from your body until you drop them.

    How do you learn to juggle?

    Stand in front of a wall.

    Whaaaaaaaaat!?

    Let me explain… if you stand in front of a wall and the balls start to move away with you, instinctively you’ll move your hands out to stop them.

    When you do that you’re going to punch a wall.

    And I can tell you from experience… that hurts!

    It doesn’t take very many times of hitting the wall until you stop doing it. Guess what? Very quickly you find that you’re juggling.

    And that’s kinda how I look at business.

    Do it the wrong way and you lose control of all the balls you’re juggling.

    But do it right, and very quickly you learn to juggle.

    If everything feels like it’s running away from you, and it will at some point, take a look at what you’re doing.

    Ask yourself if you’re trying to learn to juggle without standing in front of a wall.

    Without a doubt, if you feel like you’re losing control then you will have processes that aren’t working or things happening that don’t have a process.

    You need to stop.

    Look at it objectively.

    Work out how you can make it manageable and structure it in a way that someone else could do the work if necessary.

    Then implement your new plan.

    And with that, I’m off to juggle some balls (or possible fire clubs).

    See you in the circus 🙂

    Michael

  • Oh Raggles…

    Oh Raggles…

    As I write this email Max is watching something on T.V. that seems to have a character saying “Oh Raggles” every few sentences.

    It’s surprisingly hard to focus on writing when there’s a blue bunny jumping around the screen talking about Raggles and wishes.

    But hey ho.

    Last Thursday I went to the London Lunch for the first time in an age, and what a great time it was.

    Well.. I say I went to the lunch.

    I actually arrived after lunch!

    Everyone was still eating and I lurked outside in the bar like some oddball loner.

    I was intermittently interrupted by the bar staff who thought I was being an asshole by sitting on tables with a Reserved sign on them.

    About thirty minutes after I arrived, everyone started coming out of lunch and we got chatting.

    But, as always, I walked away with a number of ideas of what to implement.

    There’s no doubt about it, networking in person is one of the best ways to move your business forwards.

    Just talking to people about what you’re doing and what they’re doing will give you a ton of ideas.

    And, of course, there’s always the possibility that you may walk away with a JV or partnership.

    With a ton of networking events, it’s never hard to find one that’s specific to your market.

    However, and this is just me talking personally, there’s no point in going to the heavy pitch events.

    Part of the reason for that is I absolutely hate them.

    But secondly… usually everyone at them is in the mindset that they have to sell.

    Which means you can’t sit down and just chat with people.

    It’s the chatting over a drink, or meal, that’s really where partnerships happen.

    There’s no magic to it.

    Just a group of people, at different stages, sharing their ideas and aiming for a similar goal.

    If something happens to click with someone.

    If you can work with someone and both benefit.

    Then that’s pretty friggin awesome, and you’ll probably do business.

    If not, then you won’t, but you’ll still walk away with a ton of ideas.

    My walk-away idea…

    Create an autoresponder service, double-optin only, and let you folk use it for free.

    Waddya think, is that something you’d use?

    Ciao,

    Michael

  • What would you do?

    What would you do?

    We’re at the stage where we need to start deciding the best route to take for future developments.

    Up until now we’ve been developing our software and then getting our developers to upload it.

    Which is all fine.

    But it’s not the proper way to develop with multiple developers.

    The way we should be doing it is…

    1) Use a GitHub repository
    2) Developers have access to the repository
    3) They create new features, do updates and bug fixes and push them to the repository
    4) One of our developers is then responsible for checking the code
    5) If the code is okay that developer then pushes the code to the live site

    This has the benefit of:

    • Developers not having access to all the code
    • Cross-checking all code for quality before being made live
    • Better streamlining of development projects

    Initially you’d probably be wondering why we wouldn’t do this!

    And, like most things, the answer is… cost.

    The cost of changing our development to this is likely to end up being the same as making a piece of software.

    But… this won’t directly make us any revenue.

    So the question is…

    Should we go ahead and implement this development structure going forwards?

    Yes or No?

    Hit the reply button and let me know what you think.

    Ciao,

    Michael