June 2009

Typically after the trip to London, and the few days of partying in a row, I ended my weekend a little run down and picked up a bug of some description. Because of this I’ve spent the last few days feeling a bit crappy and working from home instead of dragging myself into the office. It’s given me a slight insight into what I need to do for a Mobility project I’m beginning to develop in my new role at work. So far over the last few days I’ve seen what works, and what could be made better. I’ve yet to hit a specific problem I know exists so I can’t be sure how that fault is occurring.

As I’m a little under the weather I’m not really doing the same amount of work I’d be doing if I worked from home on a normal day. My head is just a little too fuzzy to completely focus on anything major. So it could be I’m not seeing a few of the problems because the sustained volume of work isn’t happening. Then there might be the simple fact that I work very differently from a lot of the staff who have reported the problem. I don’t think it’s something I’m going to figure out today anyway.

Once I’m fully up and running in my new role I think I need to have a few meetings with people, who tend to work remotely, and get all of their individual issues with the current setup logged. Then spend a solid week, where I’m not ill, working from home and see if I can replicate any of those issues. The long term goal of this is obviously to be able to work from anywhere on most days of the week, and only really go into the office when I physically have to.

Hopefully that’s something I’m going to be able to make happen in my new role away from support.

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Tomorrow morning David and I are heading down to our London office to do some user training, and sort out a few things for a major project that is looming on our horizon. The London trip, while rubbish for work reasons, is usually a lot of fun. I tend to go out with the guys from the office on the Thursday night, and I also get to catch up with my friend Chloe while I’m there.

The one real issue I have with the trip though, is the 5.50 am train we always use to get there. It’s much more comfortable than flying, but it so damn early I’m like the walking dead for the rest of the day. It doesn’t help that my insomnia usually kicks in during the run up to this trip and I’ll lie awake until at least 3 am tonight, before forcing myself out of bed at 5.

All the sleep deprivation aside it is usually a good few days, where I tend to get really creative, (I attribute that to having practically no sleep for the remainder of the week), and I get to hang out with people I don’t see as much as I’d like to these days. If they could make the train faster so it left Edinburgh a lot later but got me into London at the same time it would be perfect.

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As I’ve come to the conclusion that my time is far more valuable than anything else, I decided to go through all of my RSS feeds again and strip out those that I didn’t read as diligently as I should. Even though I’d brought the list of RSS feeds down by a substantial number a few months ago there were still too many sitting in NetNewsWire. Once the decision to go through them, and unsubscribe from ones that I deemed less valuable to me than spending that time doing something else was made, I spent some time this evening  weighing up exactly how many sites I actively read and how many were still there because they might have something I found useful.

When asking myself whether my time is valuably spent reading these sites or not the culling process became slightly easier. I’d already organised most of the feeds into a “Must Read” folder and several other categories. Needless to say the “Must Read” feeds are still there. Other’s that weren’t “Must Read” but I enjoy for the content stayed, as well as the purely informational ones (my web hosts status feed & the MobileMe status feed for example). Discounting the status feeds, and my own feeds, (used to make sure there are no problems with them), I managed to cut around 150 feeds down to 35.

Here are a handful that survived the cull, and I highly recommend you check them out.

Whatever – The blog of author John Scalzi. This should be read by everyone.
Penny Arcade – Home of the fantastic Penny Arcade web comic.
Rapid Eye Reality – Brad ‘Otis’ Willis is a fantastic writer I suggest you all read.
Tao of Pauly – The personal blog of Dr Pauly from Tao of Poker fame.
The Totally Rad Show – A Video podcast talking about movies, video games and much more. My favourite video podcast out there.

There are obviously more that I think are worthwhile uses of my time, otherwise these would be the only ones left in my RSS Reader. I’ll save them for another time.

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The last week has been one of varying states of being for me. I spent last Saturday at the Taste of Edinburgh festival enjoying the beautiful sunshine, and eating some fantastic food. Then rounded off the day with a couple of friends drinking some really nice wine that we’d bought earlier in the day. My weekend was relaxing, and at a pace where I found myself smiling again without any prompting.

Then the work week began.

Six months ago I was a day or two from quitting my job. I’d gone on a few very good interviews and was the front runner for a decent job, on more money, with more responsibility. I had one final interview to go through, which wouldn’t have been a problem, and then the job was pretty much mine. Word that I was about to leave filtered back to our HR department and I was asked to go in for a chat because they were worried I was going to go. The main point that came from the meeting wasn’t that I deserved more money, (I do, and I made sure that was noted), but that the way my current job works is stealing the life from me. Each and every day was more and more depressing, and became increasingly difficult to make myself get out of bed and walk to work.

The meeting brought around a few others, with more senior staff members, and I was told if I wanted to leave they wouldn’t stand in my way, but they wanted me to stay and would try to work something out. A week or so passed and there was discussions where a new, more challenging and responsible role was developed. A few things were required to be put into position first but in a month or so things would change for the better. A couple of month passed and there was a lot of talk but little action. The role that was discussed changed, before coming back to closer to the original idea, and I thought things were finally going to happen. Then a few more months went by. I asked time and again what the situation was, and found out how slowly things were actually progressing.

Here we are six months later and I’m still doing the same shit I was doing last year. The renewed enthusiasm I had for the IT world has slowly been chipped away by every week of inaction and I awoke on Monday with a feeling I’ve not had in a while, dejection. It wasn’t until I had such a relaxing and enjoyable weekend that I realised how badly this lack of progress in my working life has been affecting me. It wasn’t until I looked back on the last few months that I realised I’d been walking around, head down, without any joy in my steps. I’d reverted back to the state I was in six months ago that I was sure had been beaten.

I believe the new position is going to happen, although not as quickly as I’d like. I trust the people making these decisions because they are good people, and they know keeping me around, and enthusiastic is a good thing for the company. I expect that the change will happen in the next month or two. I also expect that in the long run it’s going to be too little too late. My spirit is pretty badly damaged.

I may be wrong of course but the last six months of sitting and waiting on other people helped shape a few thoughts I’ve been having. It helped me realise that I’m at a point in my life where I want to control how my day is spent, and what the best use of my time is. Our time on this rock is finite, and to spend six months of it sitting and waiting, while dealing with one insignificant IT request after another is just wrong. My time is the most valuable thing I have and it is being unforgivably wasted by work, and more unforgivably wasted by me.

With these thoughts running through my head I finally decided to pick up a copy of The 4-hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich by Tim Ferriss. I’d heard some great things about it and thought I’d give it a read and see if there was anything I could make use of. It turns out there was… the whole thing! Reading it yesterday it was as if someone had finally switched a light on in my brain. The things I was reading made so much sense, and I lost track of the number of times I told myself that I should have already thought of that point. That first quick read through has already sparked my enthusiasm for changing my situation. I always work hard at what I’m doing but it’s now time to work smarter and put myself in a position where I control my time. I really wish I’d bought this book six months ago it really would have made things much different.

I’m still not looking forward to going into work in the morning, but now I have a renewed scense of optimism that I can make changes in my working life that dramatically improve it’s quality. The path to a better life starts now and step by step, inch by inch, I’m going to follow it until I’m where I want to be. There’s light at the end of the tunnel, you just have to want to go stand in it.

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