A Meaningful Life

I read some trivia that claimed termites eat through wood twice as fast when listening to rock music. My anecdotal experience tells me this is true. You work faster because you get in the groove. The music tempo seems to push you along at a cheerful allegro pace.

In my head I hear the new Apple theme by Fiest but with my lyrics. “1,2,3,4 I’m eating at your wooden floor”

I’m not one for spreading rumors or second guessing corporate PR moves. However, for the second time in a week I was going underneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge with much suspicion. Upon looking up at the wire frame structure that holds fireworks for New Years Eve, I couldn’t but help see what looked like the framework for the Salesforce.com “no software” trademark.

Not being able to resist any “photoshop-it” opportunity I did some cut and paste. Note some premier salesforce operatives were on the scene last week. I’m out on the harbour again tomorrow with some Saasu.com Insiders, so I’ll update you.

Seth Goddin’s Squidoo.com caught a little more than the eye’s of Google. Seth has an interesting firsthand Google experience posted on his blog. Seth’s Squidoo.com lets you create online content on a topic you have knowledge about that you would like to share online. Much like Wikipedia, but as the author you get rated by the browsing audience.

Google announced their alpha version called Knol via their blog last week. When I read about this I didn’t flinch because the news didn’t seem big. After all, Amazon invented customer reviews of authors content online years ago. Google is really just applying it to content instead of books, an inevitable outcome. This was my initial thought, and a shallow one. My second thought is that it is not the technology that’s interesting in this direction by Google.

There is a clear evidence now that Google does no believe that the search algorithm is a search God.

Has Google been fighting the trend set by Del.icio.us, Digg, Technorati and others for the last couple of years in democratic search rankings?

This could mark a peak in search algorithms as a primary method for information gathering. It’s nearly a clear admission that humans are better than robots when it comes to scrutinising content. A spammer can’t trick a human, by default the coder and hardware combination need to be better than your brain. Humans can tell when someone is selling via content or creating it for selling reasons.

Interestingly Wikipedia.org is getting a lot of mention from the bloggers out there as a threatened species because of the Knol announcement. I think Wikipedia will live on and actually stands to win this battle if they play it smart.

Wikipedia has a huge content lead time and volume advantage. Market penetration counts. Wikipedia could easily introduce author tagging and scrutinising features like voting, tag counts and referral counts. Some small changes by Wikipedia could address this weak advantage Knol has. Interesting times ahead.

Google Reader tells me this morning that I can now share my RSS feed with friends. So the gap closes with Del.icio.us and other content bookmarking tool using humans rather robots to control what is deemed to be a good read.

Not quite yet, however there is some chat about the idea from Read Write Web. They put this idea up as the next area Google might head into. They are probably right, but it won’t happen for some time. History tells us why. When Google does it will be via acquisition.

Google is about SCALE!

Google likes to sell into big, fat, flat markets. They like to cover many countries to create reach for the paying CMO type customers with advertising spend in hand.

Their history saw them head into search, then email, mapping and more recently office tools like documents which nearly everyone except die hard hand writers use. Accounting is niche in consumer market sense. Except! Personal tax and budgeting. Everyone needs to do their tax, and not everyone does it because it’s a hassle. So this would be where Google enters the market in my opinion - personal finance and budgeting.

This is a market depth exercise for them. It is about owning a massive share of the net by having web junkies hooked via free use, who love their stuff. Good on them for doing it, it benefits all.

This is about getting as many free or near free services out to as many people as possible. Then you can charge a little later and whooshka! You will then see the first multi-trillion dollar business on earth and write a post about it and link back to my blog

The big issue in taxation/business accounting is the legal, legislative, documentation and banking process differences across 100’s of countries. This stopped Microsoft from heading into the space for many years. As I’m sure it stopped Google.

A spreadsheet is universal, email is universal, accounting isn’t.

I always ask the question why is it that I’ve been working in this space since 1998 and not until 2006 did it start to getting hot? It’s because of the reasons mentioned above.

If your running strategy at Google and have endless cash to draw on for development why get into the tough markets early, do the easy sells and then hit the harder stuff later. This is the main reason I headed in SaaS accounting, I new everyone would be off doing easier stuff so I’d end up with very few competitors while I got a head start.

I didn’t know it at the time but some smarties wrote a book about that kind of strategy amongst others called the Blue Ocean Strategy (see advert).

Google (and anyone) is only ever one good deal away from changing their mind. I’m happy to have them prove me wrong if they buy Saasu.com

Procrastination is easily my biggest weakness and I always delay working on it. Yes, that was humor. I even delayed writing this post for a year at least for fear it needed to be perfect. However I was inspired by a great read on the Pick The Brain blog.

This post is far from perfect so I’m actually using one of the weapons below that defeated Procrastination. That weapon had me hit the publish button. Read on to find out which weapon I used.

Tiny Tasks

Like a virus many tiny tasks can eat away at the enormity of a big task. Breaking big tasks into a multiplicity of small doable tasks to overcome that enormity you created with that little shoulder devil saying “that’s too big, do it later”. Recognise and admit it is the enormity of the task that is stopping you.

BANJO

It stands for “Bang A Nasty Job Out”. I love this one (thanks Pick The Brain). In a nut shell knowing you have nasty tasks ahead stops you working down your list. Getting the nasty one done solves this problem. Personally I think a more realistic approach for a procrastinator is to use the previous weapon in conjunction with this weapon for a more reliable way of taking out the enemy.

Endorphins

Wow these little guys kick some you know what. They arrive shortly after exercise and for me they always inspire me to take action, get stuff done and help me fell good about things that might in another mood send me into a spiral of procrastination.

Don’t do it, just strike it off the list

Do you have to do this thing you are procrastinating about. If you keep delaying it maybe you really aren’t committed to doing it. One example for me is painting (the artistic kind). Been procrastinating about it for years before I realised I’m obviously not that desperate to do it if I haven’t started. It’s probably just a mental desire. So now it’s on my maybe later list.

Road block removal

You find reasons, dependencies and blocks that allow your mind to justify not doing something. Interestingly this technique also counters the guilt associated with not getting something done. So the trick here is removing the excuses you come up with via a method outside your normal way of being. Get help from another person, delegate the thing that is stopping you, pay someone to do that part which will free you up to do the rest.

I first realised this was happening to me many years ago when I was doing up my house. I stopped at plastering, seemed to hard and nothing happened for months. Then I spent a pitiful $200 to get the few holes and section of a wall plastered and I was off and running again.

Deadlines

Here is a weapon that can be used lethally against procrastination. Tell lots of people about your commitment to do X and that you plan to have it complete by Y date. Then schedule it in your calender. Then ask your partner or close friends to call you on word to do it in the event of likely failure or post failure. Ask them to tell you you are procrastinating on this. Lastly as a bonus ‘hammer it home’ weapon, create a financial loss out of not having it done by your deadline. Just a token financial loss like a friendly bet or a forfeited deposit can work a treat.

This one isn’t for everyone but in many people the procrastinator in them is easily defeated by their desire to win a bet, to be right, to prove themselves to others. It is driven by trying to look good and be admired.

The setup

All through history people win games, battles, arguments and all kinds of competitive situations through “the setup”. Create a setup that has you win in this battle to achieve this task that you keep procrastinating about. Put some conditions, variables, resources to bear on the outcome so only one thing can eventuate - success. Thinking a few moves ahead like in a chess game can help.

Say you want to start going to the Gym. Having a friend go with you is a setup technique. It’s harder to pull out or say no on the day. Extend this by having them pick you up. Go further and pay for the session in advance. Yes its a setup but its enough to channel you into action.

Sleep

Of all the things that saps enthusiasm, lack of sleep is the one. Well slept, is well kept, in the game of life. How can you expect to play hard against ‘team procrastination’ if you go out partying the night before. All that will happen is that you will wake up hungover, unmotivated and feeling very sorry for yourself to the point where the only thing that will be crossed of your list that day is “make coffee”.

Reward

All intelligent species respond to rewards. If you don’t get something for doing something you are procrastinating about then I ask why do it? What is the reason? I’m not proposing a selfish way of being, I’m just being realistic on this. What’s in it for you? Survival, happiness, making others happy? Create a reward. If it is a job for someone else then concentrate on how it will help them, they will appreciate it and you can bask in your good Samaritan sun. Bask away and don’t be ashamed of it!

Martyrdom

Sometimes a task can be crappy, dangerous or boring. Worse still you get no reward at completion for doing it. I suggest creating a reward called Martyrdom. Take it on, bring it on and state your position to others who won’t (with your chest out). Be the Martyr, just do it. Be like the guy who volunteers to take “point” in the jungle war scene and gets the medal. Be the person who takes the dive for the team victory and gets lifted up on their shoulders. It sounds bizarre but I assure you when you come out the other side and the nastiness is over others and even yourself will say. I did the yards, I played the position no one wanted to play, I got the job done. You will feel very alive.

Anxiety reality check

Is this your root cause of procrastination? Historically procrastination and anxiety go hand in hand. You are anxious about something and accordingly find ways to avoid, delay and distract yourself from that something. In severe cases people avoid living life in a normal way. I get anxious and I try to remember to remind myself that anxiety only has a home is in my head. Anxiety isn’t a physical thing, it’s not made of atoms. It is mind created, possibly has genetic or medical reasons for being there but it doesn’t change the fact it isn’t real and can’t be touched. Remembering that helps me reduce its impact. It can feel very real and significant for many and if so get to the Doctor they are the professionals on this one.

Near enough IS good enough

This is tough but quite often procrastinators are actually perfectionists in disguise who won’t start or finish something for fear of the result being less than perfect. If this is you then dwell on this. Doing nothing about ‘X’ is so far away from perfection that you would be a fool not to do something about it.

So suit up, get your weapons together and kick procrastinations butt!

On the weekend I was cleaning old clay wasp nests of the eaves of our house when I accidentally scraped one off that hadn’t hatched it’s youngsters yet. Inside it where 37 spiders in total, all alive (twitching) but paralyzed by a parent wasp who had collected them to lay baby’s in. These wasps make little clay homes and stuff them full of spiders. Charming

However I realise these wasps keep all the spiders away and as we live in a very typical Australian bushland valley I leave them until they have hatched. Otherwise we would be inundated with spiders. Hat tip to our little spider hunting wasps.

This is funny in a nervous laughter kind of way. Here Comes Another Bubble - The Richter Scales