Freedom

Freedom

by | Jul 4, 2014 | HD Wallpapers Collab with Helen, portfolio

4/30 in my collaboration with photographer Helen Montoya.

“Each person is a reflection of a freedom that belongs to all people.” Honestly, I wanted to play with the imagery of this one to express a thought that is a little abstract. Basically, the idea is that when you get to know someone, the more intimate details of who they are, it’s easy to agree that if each person carries the same level of depth, value and beauty, that all people must be free so that value and beauty can be realized in the world. Also, just as a side note, freedom isn’t always about governments or circumstances. Sometimes the most profound bondage comes from the prisons we create in our own minds. Be free.

Why You Don’t Need More Time, but Need to Do More With Your Time

Why You Don’t Need More Time, but Need to Do More With Your Time

by | Jun 30, 2014 | In The Boat

Playing Tetris With My Time

I have a habit (one that I think is a pretty healthy one) of sitting down periodically and taking stock of how I’m using my time during the week. My goal when I do this is to squeeze as much work time into my schedule as possible without compromising on family time and “me time” while allowing margin for all of the logistical stuff we have to do from day to day. It’s a lot like packing my minivan for a vacation. If I don’t pack everything in the right sequence, I end up running out of room a lot sooner. I treat it like playing Tetris, or putting together a puzzle. Placing the pieces in the right order allows me the room to make more time for the work that I need to do.

Going On Another Binge

Another thing I do is to look at where I might be wasting my time. There’s nothing wrong with keeping up with a favorite tv show or catching a movie, but when I see those things in my schedule I have to ask, “Did this accomplish something valuable for me that enriched other parts of my life?” Keeping up with a tv show, though it does not contribute directly to your work, may be a good way for you to wind down and enjoy a break so that you are relaxed and have a fresh mind when you return to your work. On the other hand, binge watching a tv show may not be as valuable or enriching to other areas of your life. Sometimes in this process I find things that I can give up to make more time for work.

Not the Most Time, but the Most of Your Time

While I find it very helpful to seek out more time and to use strategy to maximize the amount of time I am able to dedicate to work, there is an aspect of my work even more valuable that, if I ignore it, leaves me short of doing my best work. I am talking about the efficiency with which I work. It’s all well and good to make more time for work, but ultimately it is what you do with that time, how efficiently you work that really matters. I could have all the time in the world, but if my work efficiency is poor, I’m not going to get much done.

In his book “The One Thing” Gary Keller says “The people who achieve extraordinary results don’t achieve them by working more hours. They achieve them by getting more done in the hours they work.” This idea made me realize that, not only should I zoom out every once in a while to see how I can make more time for my work, but I should regularly look for ways to grow more efficient in my work.

Time Well Spent, Not Overspent

As a side note, I realize that the practice of zooming out takes time. Growing in your efficiency also takes time. From reviewing your work habits to get a basic sense of how you are using your work time, to implementing a new major strategy for maximizing your efficiency, focusing on these things will take time away from your work. Be strategic about when and how often you do this. It is possible to spend so much time trying to become more efficient that you neglect the actual work you need to be doing.

Practice 1: Break Distraction Habits

Though I’m still learning about what I can do to become more efficient with my work time, I’m already implementing a couple strategies that have proven to be effective. The most obvious and simultaneously most difficult, is breaking distraction habits.

I can potentially become distracted by a myriad of things, but the two most common are social media sites and distractions in my environment. Both are social in nature and being an extrovert I naturally seek out social interaction.

Knowing what the distractions are and knowing what causes the distractions are two different things however… If I’m being honest, I don’t go look at Facebook because I’m so intrigued by what I will find there. I go look at Facebook because I’m looking for a distraction and there are a few reasons why I would actually go looking for a distraction instead of continuing in my work. I either don’t have a plan for what I’m doing, in which case I need to schedule some tasks for myself, I feel bored with what I’m doing, in which case I need to either shift to something else or find a way to make the boring task a little more engaging, or I don’t quite know how to do what I’m doing, in which case I should either focus on some aspect of the project with which I am more familiar, or learn what I need to learn in order to move on in the project.

Practice 2: Invest in Building a Better Process

Another thing I’ve done to make the most of my working time is invest some time building a better process and workflow. An example of this is in my web development. As I was developing websites, I was finding that I would spend a lot of time doing many of the same things for each site, so rather than repeat those tasks over and over with each new project, I saved and notated a more complete version of a template that I use regularly that gives me a better baseline from which to start the development process, while still allowing me to provide a unique and effective design.

Notice that I said “invest.” It took me about 5 hours or so to create, notate and organize something that usually only takes me about an hour to do each time I build a website. That’s four hours of work time that I lost while creating this. But, having done this I will save an hour on each website that I build which will save me loads of time in the long run. Also, this solution might be valuable to someone else, and if I publish it I might be able to recoup my investment in other ways.

Ask yourself the question, “What is something that I can build that, though it may take time away from my work today, will save me time in the long run and help me to work more efficiently?” Be strategic about when you build this solution. In the middle of a big project under deadline is probably not the best time to work on something like this, but build it in your margins or between projects, using time that you are willing to invest.

Your Time is too Valuable to Not Make the Most of It.

I certainly don’t want to dismiss the importance of making time for work. For those of us whose available work time is scarce, this is a vital practice, but just as vital is ensuring that we are able to do our best, most efficient work with the time we do have.

The Value of Zooming Out and Essential Conditions for Dreaming Out Loud

The Value of Zooming Out and Essential Conditions for Dreaming Out Loud

by | Jun 9, 2014 | In The Boat

Stay-cation!

A few weekends ago, Rachel and I sent the boys away to the grandparents for a few days, something we try to do quarterly, so we could spend some time hanging out just the two of us. We call it our “stay-cation” because our house is actually a fun place to stay and is not too far away from many of the things we enjoy doing. As an aside, can I just say how refreshing it is from time to time to be able to just get in your car and go somewhere without spending ten minutes looking for shoes?

Typically we spend the time doing some fun stuff around town, catch a movie or two, grab some meals out, and at some point we do a little dreaming out loud, talking about our dreams and business goals and evaluating where we are.

Dreaming Out-Loud

This particular weekend we decided to make the “dreaming out loud” activity a much bigger part of the weekend. After dropping off the boys we took a trip to Hobby Lobby and got a big whiteboard to match the one we’ve already got. We tidied up all of the clutter in our room (helps our minds to feel less cluttered), opened up the blinds to let in some natural light, set our whiteboards on their stands and got to work.

The Overlap Technique

We talked about book ideas, writing schedules, pod-casting, and everything else that we want to do. We ended up having to photograph our whiteboard scribbles and erase a few times because there was so much. At one point we were talking about our finances and about SeanWes’ Overlap Technique, (if you’re not familiar with the concept, you owe it to yourself to listen to this podcast episode where my good friend Sean McCabe explains it in-depth) and I had written down all of the different ideas I was working on. One of them, a business venture that I had decided was going to be my main focus, had a lot of words like “start” and “begin” in the task list. As we were standing back and looking at the board, my wife pointed to the “Ben Toalson Design” section and said, “You’ve already got all of this stuff built. You’ve got a website, you’ve got the blog going, you have an audience… why wouldn’t you just focus your time and energy on that?”

A Welcome Slap in the Face

BOOM. She was right. Here I was prepared to sink my time into something that I was essentially having to build from scratch when I already have a platform that, were I to spend the same amount of time and care further developing it, would be a much better tool for accomplishing my goals. Had we not taken the time to zoom out and evaluate all of these things, I don’t know if I would have seen it.

If you are building your own freelance business or pursuing your passion, it is vital to zoom out periodically and look at the bigger picture. If you’re like me, you may tend to feel a little lost in the details of what you’re doing. It’s much like wandering through a forest on your way to a mountain. Sometimes you’ve got to climb up and get above the treeline to make sure you’re still heading in the right direction.

Frequency

The frequency at which you do this is important. Too seldom and you may find yourself wildly off course. Too often and you will steal time away from the journey. If we zoom out to often, sometimes we find ourselves addicted to this activity which, though it feels productive, is not meant to be on our task list, but is meant to be a catalyst propelling us toward our goals. For my wife and me, once a quarter is really good. It causes us to set more targeted goals, to see what we are capable of accomplishing within each 3 month period.

What does zooming out look like? Zooming out effectively requires the following conditions:

A New Environment
This could look like going to a place where you don’t normally spend your time. It could be getting out in nature, going to an abandoned warehouse, a cabin in the woods, a lakehouse, etc. It could even be your own home, like in our example, the room felt new to us because it was clean, there was natural sunlight, and there weren’t children threatening to interrupt us at any given moment.

Seclusion
A coffee shop, though often a fine place to work, is not a great environment for a “dreaming” session. You need a place where you can be alone, away from the presence, voices, thoughts and eyes of other people. It’s okay to bring a fellow dreamer along if you are working on things together, but keep it to that. If you have children, you’ve got to get away from them or get them away from you for some period of time. I’ll address this challenge in next week’s article (I started writing down the ideas today and it was getting pretty lengthy, so I’m going to split it off). You will feel much greater clarity when not faced with the potential for interruption or distraction that comes from being around others.

A Big Writing Space
I am a huge proponent of writing by hand for dreaming sessions. There is scientific data that supports the idea that when we write our ideas as opposed to typing, speaking or thinking them, it fires in a unique part of our brains and actually carves a deeper memory path for those things. This is why many experts encourage you to write your goals down. For this reason, get something like a huge whiteboard, chalkboard, a large blank wall, whatever you can get your hands on that you can write on and is big and blank. This space will allow you to express your ideas freely without worrying about whether or not you are keeping within the margins. I find that my mind often reflects the writing space, in that my thoughts feel less constrained and I can think and dream more freely.

Constraints
Okay, so I just said that it’s good to not have constraints when it comes to dreaming, and certainly you should try to remove as many constraints from your environment as possible, but I find that having the right kind of time constraints actually causes me to think and dream more efficiently and gives me a boundary to break through from time to time. For us, we have the natural constraint of the length of the weekend, but we also build into our time little breaks here and there. If you’ve even gone to a creative conference you know that they don’t just have you sit in a chair and listen to speakers all day. The good conferences break up the day, put things on a schedule and offer different activities at different times. This allows the things your are hearing and experiencing to “breathe” a little bit before you dive into the next topic. Similarly, you want to have good, concentrated dreaming sessions, with occasional breaks or changes in activity, so that your thoughts and dreams can breathe a little bit. You’ll find often that you come back to the dreaming with a fresh mind. Also, sometimes knowing that you’ve only got 10-15 minutes left before you are supposed to take a break adds an excitement and energy to the process that you might not otherwise experience.

Hopefully this gives you some ideas for instituting or continuing your practice of zooming out periodically. I can’t overstate the importance of this practice. The world needs your ideas and solutions. Zooming out is the best way to ensure that you are staying on course so that you can reach your goals and realize your dreams! If you have any thoughts or ideas to share you can leave a comment below. Thanks for reading!