Blogging Expertise

What would your ideal life be like?

There are a variety of reasons that people blog, and just as many goals that people hope their blogs will help them achieve. My personal dream is to spend most of my time learning and doing interesting things, and then tell other people about it (and help them do the same) via blogs.

I’ve spent the better part of the past week at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. The festival was filled with interesting and helpful panels, and one of the best parts was just interacting with other people who do similar work.

Introducing Tim Ferriss, seriously ambitious dude

There were a couple of panels that really stood out for their content, though. One that really caught my attention—and my imagination—was a presentation by Tim Ferriss by the same name as his upcoming book, “The 4-Hour Workweek“.

Daniel and I got into the habit of arriving early at presentations to get good seats (if we’re going to take the time to attend a session, we’re going to do it right!). Most panels found us in the second or third row, and for Tim’s session it was the second row.

We’d been sitting there a little while when a guy asked if anyone nearby had a schedule, so I pulled mine out and let him look at it. Eventually I realized that this guy was the presenter; that was a bit unusual because most of the panelists would come in just before the presentation. Tim, on the other hand, was energetically involved with people for a good half-hour before he started the official part—just chatting with people and much more involved than the average panelist.

Somewhat intrigued, I spent a few minutes before the presentation looking up info on Tim’s sites. I was pretty surprised by what I saw: he’s 29 years old and has accomplished a ton of really interesting feats, from taking a national Chinese kick boxing championship to learning speak six languages (besides English). By the time the session started, I was definitely ready to listen.

Getting free

During the hour-long presentation, Tim painted a clear picture of the situation most of us find ourselves in: overworked and tolerating it because we have accepted the idea that we have to work hard until we retire before we can enjoy the things we want to do. Then he asked, “How would your life change if retirement wasn’t an option?”

That’s an interesting question. I’ve pretty much already realized that I’ll probably never retire in the traditional sense of the word, because there are so many things that interest me, and I’m entrepreneurial enough that every interest looks like an earning opportunity. I’ve set specific financial goals as milestones that mean I can “work on what I want to work on” but maybe I shouldn’t be putting that off so long.

Tim’s catchy, acronym-based outline for how to achieve the freedom to do the fun stuff right away is as follows:

• Definition: this is basically the foundational knowledge that enables the next three
• Elimination: drawing on the 80/20 rule, elimination is all about getting rid of or minimizing the time-consuming and inefficient aspects of our work.
• Automation: your business won’t enable freedom if it all depends on you. Automation is about relieving some of that pressure.
• Liberation: it’s time to be free to do what inspires you, whether that’s world travel or just being able to shift the time and place where you work.

Tim himself seems to have taken these ideas to heart, and it’s quite obvious from observing him in person that he lives them daily. Daniel asked him if he has long-term goals, and he told us that he basically has 6-month goals and 12-month goals, and that right now, his major goal is to get his book (coming out on April 24, 2007) to the top of all the applicable best-seller lists. I honestly think he’ll make it.

We ended up being in several other sessions afterward where Tim was also present as a regular festival attendee (making good use of his presenter pass, I’m assuming) and at every one, he was at the front of the line of questioners, asking intelligent and perceptive questions that suggested great info absorption. He also went our of his way to introduce himself and his goals to other presenters, and is offering his book for review to bloggers. I see all these things as indicators that he is much more likely to experience serious success than many of his well-meaning author competitors.

I’ve been challenged

He’s also not afraid to do some kind of out-there things to drive his point home. A few presenters suggested that they could be contacted for follow-up or to receive a copy of the slide presentation; not Tim. He put forth a challenge to implement the ideas in his presentation, with a catch and a big reward.

The catch: to participate, we have to send him an email by midnight tonight, Wednesday, only two days after his presentation. Not a lot of time to implement life-changing processes, and I think that’s the point. It means taking immediate and decisive action.

The reward: Tim’s giving the best respondent free airfare to anywhere in the world. I don’t think any elaboration is needed!

My response

Given the short challenge period, I’ve tried to tackle a variety of strategies that will make a big difference in several areas:

• Clients: Every business has a variety of clients. Some match nicely with the strengths of the business, while others require more effort to help. Tim told how he identified the clients that were the best matches for his business goals, and helped transition the other clients to a low-maintenance setup.

  To that end, I’ve started tracking several metrics including income per hour spent, frequency of calls and emails, and hours of administration vs. billable hours for each of my clients. I’m now tracking this in a spreadsheet; I may eventually write software to track these things more automatically, but I firmly believe in getting started sooner rather than later.

  As soon as I start to see clear trends, I will be wooing my best clients and streamlining the clients who are perhaps not as good a fit.
  Elimination and Automation

• Projects: I have been in the habit of taking just about any project offered to me. This doesn’t allow me to really develop my skills in a focused way and become truly excellent, so I’ve spent some time thinking about the kinds of projects I’m naturally good at and that have the potential for great success.

  Specifically, I’m very good at blog designs and redesigns because they are well-defined, finite projects. Open-ended and long projects are not where my skills and personality lead me, so I’ve updated the services listed on this site to reflect this specific direction.
  Elimination

• Input (in the form of blog feeds): According to Google Reader: “From your 158 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 1,685 items, starred 5 items, and shared 13 items.” Yeah. 158 is a lot of subscriptions, especially when I am only marking a few as really significant.

  Taking this application of the 80/20 rule on blind faith (and mostly just because it gives me something concrete to work with), I am reducing my number of subscriptions to just 31. It’s going to be tough to eliminate the other 80%, but the amount of information I’m attempting to take in is ridiculous and just plain counter-productive at this point. My primary task for tomorrow will be to reduce to just the very best 20% based on how useful each subscription is to me.
  Elimination

There you have it: my short-term steps to improve my life long-term. Good enough to win a trip? Who knows (it probably depends on who else follows through! ). But I’d buy Tim’s book if it was out today for the value he’s already offered, and I really believe these changes will be extremely valuable, so from that perspective, winning would just be gravy.