1. Noise Reduction – Being more mindful of what we share to reduce the numbness oversharing can create
2. Commitment - “Commit” is a word you’ll hear a lot more going forward and you’ll be expected to do so
3. High Value Content - This ties into Noise Reduction and Content Marketing, but means that what you create must have value
4. Humanization - This is not ‘corporations are people’, but a realization that corporations are not monolithic, but run by people
5. Case Studies - Showing how your company or product overcame obstacles and solved a problem is both High Value Content and Humanization
6. Stories - Storytelling has been around a long time, but the art of weaving it into everything from your About page to your office decor is a new trend
7. Do Something Great – Similar to High Value Content and a cousin to Committment, this is a push to use 2012 as a moment to make something great

Noise Reduction – I wrote about noise last week, but now that Social Media and Internet access has become somewhat ubiquitous a new rule has emerged: As the ease of sharing increases, the value of sharing decreases. Let’s call this Stauffer’s Law. You probably are already aware of this law even if you didn’t know what to call it because the people who post the most, often get read the least or blocked completely. It’s not enough to be creating great content, you also have to temper when you share it. This applies to your personal Facebook wall/newsfeed/timeline, your Twitter feed, or your company newsletter. Decrease what you share and increase the value of what you are sharing to keep your content from being filtered out like noise.

Commitment – Have you noticed feelings of drift? People saying they feel lost? Do you know people who can’t make up their mind or make a decision about what to do next? We hate it when politicians waffle back and forth, but most people and companies are no different. HP dropped computers, picked them back up again, and changed CEOs in 2011. 2012 will be looking for HP to commit to a goal – long term dedication to a cause beyond the next quarter’s estimates. And 2012 wants to see you commit to making something work, not looking for excuses for why it failed. This doesn’t mean you can’t pivot, but you must commit to something.

High Value Content – I recently wrote about writing what matters which talked about writing about solutions for your customer’s problems versus writing about your products. Very few companies can make a product that people care enough to buy for the products sake – even companies like Apple originally had to solve a customer’s problem by allowing them to carry all of their songs in their pocket. We used to call this type of writing a “white paper” and in 2011 we may have called it “content marketing”, but in 2012 it’s not enough to write content, you have to write what matters to people. Be impactful or risk irrelevance.

Humanization – Unless you’re using a computer to write your content, you need to show your human-ness. Humans make mistakes. Even the mistakes computers make are actually mistakes made by the humans who programmed them. In 2012 people are going to be looking to do business with other people like them – a.k.a. humans who have made similar mistakes. If 2011 was about being transparent about who you were, 2012 is taking that a step further by admitting your mistake and what you’ve done or are going to do to fix it.

Case Studies - Showing the customer how you’ve solved a problem like theirs in the past is a great way to “sell the hole”. It’s also a great way to show your human-ness by admitting your mistakes and how you overcame them. No one expects you to be perfect and those who think they are risk losing business. People like to root for the underdog and if you sell yourself in that light, it can help. There is a whole other piece of case studies that include customer interviews and solution interviews, which is a great way to write what matters, but that’s a separate topic for another day.

Stories - If you’ve ever had someone explain what a song means to you, you know the power of a story. Every time you hear that song you’ll remember what that person said and think of that moment. I’ve heard advice on how to tell a great story like, “Make the listener the hero”, but this is harder than it sounds. I’ve been trying to do it for the last 6 months. What I’ve found is that by practicing telling stories in non-marketing settings like blogs and emails to friends and family, you can practice the storytelling arts so that when you do pitch to a client, you can turn their use of your product into a story that makes them the hero in 2012.

Do Something Great - It’s never been easier to start something than it is right now. You have more resources at your fingertips than ever before. So why is it that the best we came up with in 2011 was a new timeline for Facebook and a new way to stream music (Spotify)? Sure, there are people in France trying to get fusion to work and others trying to find the Higgs Boson particle. And Bill Gates is both trying to eradicate malaria and create ways to reduce nuclear waste by reusing it in a new type of reactor in China, but what about the rest of us? Some would argue that the low-hanging fruit is already picked. We can’t just sit down and invent a paperclip before our benefactor comes back from lunch, but there are still big problems to solve – like how to replace Middle-Eastern oil, how to improve energy distribution and creation, how to standardize and distribute medical records, and of course, flying cars.

In searching for a way to close this article, I ran across this quote from Catchers in the Rye:

“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them – if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.”
- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Matt O'Dell, New Worship, image courtesy galerie Schleicher+Lange, Paris

I started using it and it’s been great, but I started to wonder if just tweeting links to my followers was actually helping anyone (including myself). I love to share things, but do people really care? And what does it mean to the messages I do want them to care about?

Chris Brogan, entrepreneur and social media expert, recently wrote a post entitled Our Responsibility as Media Channels where Brogan talks about how we are all media channels – no different than TV or radio stations – and we have a responsibility to our ‘viewers’ and ‘listeners’ to pay attention to both the content and the rate of what we are presenting.

You may not think that you are helping to curate the web, but every time you share something, you are categorizing it and sharing it with someone the same way a museum director takes a bone from the earth, identifies it, and displays it in a case.

Brogan says, “Attention is a currency, and if we spend too much of other people’s attention on frivolous posts and shares, we risk losing that attention…What if you look at this as your responsibility? What if you looked at all we just outlined with an eye towards making something bigger than just noise?”

Noise

Noise. That’s the word I’d been searching for to describe that feeling I had about sharing content that while useful, may be just, well – noisy.

Brogan encouraged me to “[not] just push the stumble, the retweet, etc, but give some value to the share by giving your points, adding your two cents, blogging a piece around it, etc.,” which is what I’m doing here.

Seth Godin, entrepreneur and marketing expert, recently wrote an article entitled, The trap of social media noise, “More noise is not better noise,” says Godin, who strategizes, “Relentlessly focus. Prune your message and your list and build a reputation that’s worth owning and an audience that cares.”

That was one of my initial questions: Do people really care what I’m sharing? Does less noise equate with more attention? Is less really more?

What Other People Are Doing About It

While Buffer is a Chrome app that allows you to spread out what you are sharing throughout the day, Handpick, which Jon Mitchell, a writer for ReadWriteWeb and former editor of NewsTrust, recently wrote about in Handpick: Selective Social Sharing Without The Noise, is an app that allows you to sum it all up in one email.

“The social Web is noisy,” writes Mitchell, who reviewed Handpick, a social Web app that collects things you want to share throughout the day and emails them to the contacts of your choosing in one email at the end of the day.

Pete Williams, entrepreneur, author, and marketer, created NOISE RE/DUCTION, which aims to, “remove all the noise [in the business and marketing space] to find the stuff that’s actually valuable.” In other words, they are curating content.

What are you going to do about it?

Eric Stauffer – Entrepreneur, Payment Solutions Consultant, SEO Ninja, and Business Development/Content Creation

•  CardPaymentOptions.com
•  twitter.com
•  facebook.com
• Google +

I’ve added this Eric(h) Stauffer I found on About.Me because he’s an entrepreneur, is interested in payment solutions, SEO, and business development. On all of those things we’re a complete overlap. It’s a little odd actually. I currently do SEO and content marketing, but also run blogs on items processing and digital wallets.

Erich Stauffer - CEO bei Starbusiness

Located in Basel Area, Switzerland, this Erich Stauffer does Management Consulting, which is also something I have both done in the past as a business analyst and something I currently do. I’m also CEO of my company, but I know that’s a stretch. My mom is CEO of her company and my friend, Jason Cobb, is CEO of his company too. Everybody’s a CEO nowadays.

If Starbusiness is anything like the .SU website, then it’s a multi-level marketing (MLM) business that’s currently expanding into Russia. Good for them! I’ve done my share of MLM (and so has my mother – we have so much in common!). I did Amway and sold Tri-Star vacuums (one to – again – my mother). She sold Tupperware in her day (when she was my age).

Eric M. Stauffer – Eric M. Stauffer

According to his Twitter account, this Eric(h) Stauffer is an “Instructional Technologist, Consultant, Creative Problem Solver, Runner, Husband, Comedian . . . Not always in that order.”

I’ve often tried to be a comedian, am currently a husband, and creative problem solver; and I’ve called myself a technologist and consultant. This guy looks like he travels more than me, but that’s okay. We need different types of Eric(h) Stauffer’s in this world, even if we all have a lot in common.

Then of course there is the guy I’m named after (who was also a designer like me, even if he was designing fake Hummels).

When you run your own business, while you may earn more, much of your work is doubled or even tripled. Not only do you have to do the work, but you have to go earn it, and then process all the finances, documentation, and taxes on the back end. In a traditional job environment the work is handed to you and you just do it. When it’s done, someone else processes it. Your work is finite and so is your pay.

A Paradigm Shifts Again

For ten years I worked full time jobs in banking and technology, and I always would told myself I’d be happier running my own business until one day I did. I started off running it on the side in 2007 and in 2011 I finally went full time. I do web design with HTML, CSS, and WordPress, email support with web hosts and Google Apps, and computer and network support for Microsoft products like Windows and Server 2003/2008.

While I have been successful at running my own business, there are two reasons why I’ve recently began applying for jobs in the Indianapolis market. The first reason is because I realized that the ideas I had about working hard now in order to do much less later were not realistic. I didn’t even realize I had this mentality until after a couple of months had gone by and I discovered that there will never be a time when I’m doing ‘nothing’. I’ll always be doing something, so why not just spend some time figuring out what I want to do, not just what I can find a job doing.

The second reason I began looking for jobs in the Indianapolis area was because I realized that it didn’t matter who I was doing the work for, as long as I was enjoying what I was doing. Even as a business owner, I have a boss. I have clients, my wife, and my Lord to report to. It’s not just willy nilly around here. I have to meet or exceed all of their expectations just as I would have to in a traditional job scenario – only more so because while the rewards are higher, so are the risks. There are no written warnings with clients, just lost opportunities in the future.

You Are a Startup

A friend of mine, Jason Cobb, recently coined a term, “You are a startup,” meaning that whatever you’re doing, do it like a startup. But what is a startup? A startup is traditionally a software company that is rapidly trying to create a product that is useful and monetizeable as fast as they can. It normally involves a small team consisting of a leader, a technical co-founder, and a marketer. These roles could all be one person, or it could be five people, but the point is that it’s a small team pushing out useful iterations of a product with the hopes of expanding very fast once a market can’t live without it.

So how does a startup mentality apply to you? Whether you are working for a client or for a company as an employee, you must be producing stuff that matters, you must be a leader, and you must be marketing yourself. This means listening to your customers and getting feedback, getting to know your fellow employees, and continuing your education (via meetups, books, or traditional training).

As I wrote about in 13 More Books for Every Entrepreneur, Reid Hoffman, (co-founder of LinkedIn) together with Ben Casnocha (entrepreneur and author) have written a book about managing your career as if it were a start-up business: a living, breathing, growing start-up of you. The thesis is that the same skills startup entrepreneurs use, professionals need to get ahead today.

Now that I’ve experienced running my own business, I no longer look down on the traditional 9-to-5 job because I know that I can have impact either way and still accomplish my goals of learning, growing, and taking care of my family.

12 Month Goals (and Roadmap)

I recently subscribed to a blog I’ve been reading since 2008 called I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. Today he sent out a link to a PDF with a 12 Month Goals Roadmap worksheet, very similar to Michael Hyatt’s Life Plan. I’d like to share my answers here.

1. What will you be doing for work? – Editing HTML, CSS, and PHP; Converting static HTML web pages into dynamic CMS blogs; converting clients from POP email access to Google Apps; training users on how to use WordPress; Affiliate Marketing; Computer Network Troubleshooting and Repair

2. What’s your boss (or the person to whom you’ll be accountable) like? – Gives me feedback; Challenges me; Considers me an expert in what I do; Trusts my decisions; Considers my feedback

3. Where will you be working? – The Greater Indianapolis area, preferably along US 31, Keystone Ave, or 465; In an office with time allocated to work in blocks without interruption,  the ability to get up and walk around or go outside for a walk; And good Mexican, Chinese, and Thai food nearby.

4. How much time do you spend working? – 10 hours a day, 70 hours a week.

5. What does your Monday look like? – Reading and sharing emails until noon, viewing reports, and responding to client requests.

If anyone is interested in using my services or would just like to get together for coffee, please don’t hesitate to email me or follow me on Twitter.

This is one of those personal blog posts, if you’re interested in reading more about me specifically, try this one next or not, it’s your life.

Startup Fever by Louis Perrochon

Set in the world of Internet startups, the pieces are employees – from engineers to salesmen to executives. Opponents try to steal them with better offers. As head of the company, you can choose to invest your resources in personnel or sales. There’s even an expansion that introduces venture capitalists and lawyers, for extra flavor. The goal, as in real-world product development, is to get the most users.

• Startup Fever – The Board Game
• Contest: Startup Fever board game
• Startup Fever – The Board Game – Beta Edition Overview [Video]
• Startup Fever [Official Site - Buy it Here]

ScrumBrawl by VicTim Games LLC (Bugher and Vic Moyer)

The object of ScrumBrawl is to score three goals by moving orb tokens into a portal. To do so, players control fantasy creatures – 50 in all – whose characteristics determine how they interact. Players also battle each other’s creatures to keep them from scoring. At one point, the game was much more elaborate than its final version, but play testers told VicTim Games that the concept was too unwieldy.

• Return Of The Board game: Norman Startup Scores Success With ScrumBrawl
• The ScrumBrawl Shop [Official Site - Buy it Here]

Fluke by Ida Byrd-Hill, Detroit, MI

A Detroit mother has developed a board game that takes players from accidental inventions through the tricky realm of patents, portfolios and finally to corporate wealth – if they’re savvy enough. The player with the largest portfolio wins.

• Startup board game
• Fluke: Detroit mom develops board game to teach entrepreneurship to inner-city kids
• Fluke-The Wealth Building Game of Accidental Inventions [Video]
• Fluke [Official Site]

GoVenture Entrepreneur Board Game by GoVenture

Run your own business and compete, collaborate, and negotiate with other players. Game play is designed to recreate the real-life thrills and challenges of entrepreneurship in a fun and educational social learning experience. Activities are expertly designed to enable you to experience the true challenges of entrepreneurship, while at the same time, provide an engaging and experiential group learning opportunity.

• GoVenture Entrepreneur Board Game [Buy on Amazon]
• Entrepreneur Board Game [Official Site]

Zeros-To-Heros by Richard Mak

Marketed as the “World’s 1st board game on Entrepreneurship” Zeros-To-Heros is the winner of MENSA Singapore SELECT Awards (2007) based on its originality, dynamic game play, ability to stimulate players’ intellect and fun. You start the game as an employee with ZERO capital and ZERO understanding of business. Take the exciting path to become your OWN BOSS and see whether you survive or become an entrepreneurial Hero.

• Funny, Innovation & Entrepreneurship Board Game
• Zeros-To-Heros – 2005
• Zeros-To-Heros [Official Site - Buy it Here]

Hot Company® Board Game

Students experience what it’s like to “be the boss” while experiencing the thrill of running a company and finding solutions that will lead to success. Each player or team is the “owner” of a hot new company. Roll the die, pick a card, and you’re in business! The object of the game is to get “your” company to turn a profit. Hot Company® develops a wide array of real-world business skills.

• Hot Company Board Game: Attitude [Buy on Amazon]
• Hot Company® Board Game

I’m The Boss!®

A game of deal-making and negotiation, where students are investors just trying to make a deal. Through intelligent negotiations, temporary alliances, and cut-throat bargaining, players can rake in millions. But watch out for the other investors at your bargaining table who meddle in your affairs and try to take over your deals. As the boss, you stand to gain the most, but you can find yourself quickly cut out of a deal. In the end, the winner is the investor with the most money.

• Im The Boss [Buy on Amazon]
• I’m The Boss!®

Rich Dad Cashflow for Kids

CASHFLOW for Kids teaches children how to have money work for them. CASHFLOW for Kids is a complete educational package which includes the book “Rich Dad’s Guide to Raising Your Child’s Financial I.Q.” CASHFLOW for Kids is recommended for children ages 6 and older. Children learn the difference between good credit and bad credit, assets and liabilities, earned income and passive income, and income and expenses. Cashflow for Kids is an easy way for parents to teach their children about finance, but it requires an adult or older child who already understands the basics of finance to reinforce the lessons as they are experienced.

• Rich Dad Cashflow for Kids [Buy on Amazon]

Entrepreneur’s Accessory to Monopoly by The Third Dimension

This game, subtitled “The Power-Business Venture Game”, is an unofficial expansion to Monopoly. It comes with a small board that fits exactly into the center of a standard Monopoly game board. The game plays like regular Monopoly but adds Corporations, Leverage Buyouts, Corporate Takeovers, Casinos and Financial Coups into the mix. Look for it on eBay, but Monopoly itself is a good economic game.

• Entrepreneur’s Accessory to Monopoly
• Monopoly [Buy on Amazon]

Globalization by Sandstorm

Build your global empire… one company at a time! As the head of a multi-national corporation with one goal in mind – to make money – players in Globalization attempt to outbid their competitors to acquire businesses within six different industries and grow their conglomerate. Streamline operating costs build additional factories sue your competitors or take one of your subsidiaries public for big returns! Your corporate strategy will impact which companies you buy and how to take your corporation worldwide. The first to reach a billion in net worth wins!

• Globalization [Buy on Amazon]

Want more learning sets for kids?

Here are some recent graphs of sites once I started using this method:

What I’ve learned from that is that there are direct search results related to doing this strategy and I spend very little time backlinking because I don’t have to. They customers find me because I’m solving a problem for them – they look for me instead of me trying to bait Google to make them find me over someone else.

After reading what this sales guy, Frank Rumbauskas of Never Cold Call (Again), has written and listening to his webinar, I’ve realized that the crux of his premise is that by creating content on your blog or in an email or fax that you send, you’re answering a problem, fixing something that your customers care about.

The result is that you’re spending more of your time finding out what problems your customers are having, solving those problems and publishing the results so that other people who are looking for the same solutions find you and hire you. You’re no longer selling, you’re taking business as it comes to you, and it will.

Don’t get me wrong, SEO is not useless. In fact it can be often be very useful as 70-80% of all traffic is organic vs. paid. I make part of my living from SEO web design, but I also make part of my income from affiliate marketing. Those are somewhat in juxtaposition as I make money from people who want more organic results and from people buying ads that display on my sites.

We would like to thank you for your reading over the past year and look forward to 2012 together. As we look forward to 2012, lets take a look back at 2011.

Here is a list of our top 20 posts from 2011 according to Google Analytics:

• Best of Erich Stauffer Figurines
• Best of Arnart Crossed Arrows
• Arnart Imports Porcelain Marks
• Arnarts’ Erich Stauffer Fake Hummels
• What Happened to Colleclub.com?
• How to Identify Porcelain Figurines
• 80′s Toy Rediscovered, the Original Roller Racer
• 13 More Books for Every Entrepreneur
• Dr. James Dobson’s Twelve Steps of Intimacy
• How to Delete a Digg Submission
• Colleclub.com Email
• Divine Love by Vicente Lladro
• Erich Stauffer Figurines Price Guide
• Willow Tree Mother Daughter Figurine
• 20 Good Business Ideas
• Best Dental Web Sites Reviewing Dentistry Web Design
• What Meetups Mean to Me
• Youtube Query String Parameters
• 20 Serial Entrepreneurs – An Analysis
• Willow Tree Complete 22 Piece Nativity Set by Susan Lordi

Before Kickstarter there were these metal things that started motorcycles.

One of my most popular posts is on why Collegeclub.com failed when Myspace and Facebook succeeded and in that post I propose that the reason was bad management and the high cost of technology at the time (Leslie Perlow argued that Collegeclub was ‘Saying yes when they really meant no’), but when Chris Dixon asked Roelof Botha the “why now” question regarding web-based marketplaces, “He said something I thought was really interesting: marketplaces depend on trust, and trust requires knowing the reputation of a prospective counterparty. Today, for the first time, you can get background information on almost any prospective counterparty by searching Google, Facebook etc. Or put more simply: we finally have an internet of people.”

Google’s authorship markup verification process has helped make the web less anonymous and so has Google+, which doesn’t allow pseudonyms, only real names. Brian Manning commented that, “eBay has been doing this successfully since the 90s. In the beginning their key hurdle to success was a lack of trust among buyers and sellers. At the time, they built extremely innovative tools that helped make users comfortable that they weren’t going to get ripped off; ratings and recommendations, slick complaint process, good customer service, etc. This was critical to their success. I recall reading that as trust among users increased so did eBay’s site usage and revenue. ‘Trust’ was their key revenue driver,” to which FAKE GRIMLOCK responded for the need for a “REPUTATION SYSTEM FOR INTERNET”. I agree, which is why I started YourSCOR, which was supposed to use metrics from eBay, Facebook, and Twitter to create a new type of credit score that people could control instead of corporations. It was supposed to be the “FICO for the Masses!”

Apparently banks are starting to think the same way as this article points out, As Banks Start Nosing Around Facebook and Twitter, the Wrong Friends Might Just Sink Your Credit. Of course sites like Reputation.com have been around for a while, they are more like a super-sized Google alert with a dashboard (please correct me if I’m wrong). What’s lacking is a Klout-type mechanism for trust in people on the Internet. I may not be the one to bring it to the table, but surely someone will.

How a Trust Metric System for the Internet Might Work

YourSCOR – A New Metric for a New Economy: Ebay came up with one of the first ‘social vetting’ mechanisms, which was their feedback system. For a while, people talked about how it was more accurate than a FICO score. What if there was a way to know ‘trust’ and ‘feedback’ “across all contexts”?

SCOR stands for “Self-Compiled Opinion Report”, which is created by individuals and purchased by corporations like banks and human resource departments to get a better feel for who society thinks the person is. The site would allow you to bring in some ‘guided metrics’, but would also let you add your own. Guided metrics would include:

• Linkedin recommendations
• Ebay feedback rating
• Flippa feedback rating
• #of Twitter Followers
• #of Facebook friends
• YourSCOR recommendations

It could also store achievements and statuses like:

• Married or single
• High school, college, post graduate education
• Foursquare badges
• Boy scout rank
• Military rank
• Tenured status at your job

It could also compile the person’s FICO score (for a small fee), help you apply for credit cards (for affiliate revenue), and even pull background checks as an attachment. It would be like a personal Yelp.com or BBB where people could manage their own reputation online in one place, where they would have a publicly recognizeable score that would be trusted across the country. It may use a Pressure score like Product Management uses or a straight FICO-like score.

I knew that the price varies by how clear the mark on the bottom is, whether a number exists or not, if there are any chips or cracks in the porcelain, and if it has a sticker. But I didn’t know exactly what metrics to use or what the official names of the figurines were or if the numbers on the bottom under “Designed by Erich Stauffer” were unique to each porcelain figurine or if that ID number tied it to a set.

What I found out by researching the completed Ebay auctions from the last 6 months was that:

• Not all Erich Stauffer figurines had paper tags glued to the front, some used tags on a string
• The ID numbers seem to correspond to groups of figurines, meaning they were meant to be sets – making collecting all of the figurines to a set more valuable than the individual figurine
• Some of the Erich Stauffer figurines have the same name, even though they aren’t part of the same set
• Some ID numbers are also re-used, even if they are not part of the same set
• If the number has a division symbol (/) it may be a limited run or made to look like it was a limited run
• I don’t know what the S or the U at the beginning of the ID stood for/stands for
• The prices of Erich Stauffer figurines ranges from $1.86 to $20.89 each with this limited sample:

I wrote a post on my technology consulting blog about a day in the life of a business analyst. It’s one of the most popular posts on that site. In my mind I imagine there are two types of people reading that post: the first being people researching the position to see if they want to do it or to write a paper on it and the second being managers and/or human resource personnel writing up a job description for one of the most widely used terms in business. It could, however, be a bored business analyst like I was looking for some validation that their life is like someone else;s and they’re not struggling alone.

I ultimately left that job as a business analyst after taking Steve Jobs advice, “‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘no’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” So I did. Although I’ve been able to sustain my family with web design, affiliate marketing, and technology consulting since leaving my day job, I didn’t leave my day job because I had six months of padding. I didn’t leave because I was making more on my side projects than my day job. I quit because I wasn’t having an impact, I wasn’t being utilized, and I felt like I was wasting my life. There were things I wanted to do and they didn’t include being 33% utilized for 8 hours a day.

Today I work between 6-8 hours a day without having to drive anywhere, but this doesn’t mean I never leave the house. The fact is I can work from anywhere. Right now I’m working from Starbucks. To my left is another web designer talking to his client about the paths users take through her site. To my right is a manager coaching an assistant manager on how to guide the career path of one of her longest employees. I check in to Foursquare, but never become the mayor. I come here for the power outlets and the warm bathrooms. Right now I’m drinking a chai latte. The foam is green. I don’t care for that.

Two days ago I started playing Minecraft for the first time. I bought it specifically to dig holes and play with flowing water. The zombies really scare me so I started playing in creative mode. However, there is something not as fun when there are no limitations. And I was disappointed in whatever physics logic is used to control water flow. When water is released by digging next to it, it flows for a little while and then stops. It doesn’t flood wherever it can like real water would. My ultimate game design would be one where I could manipulate a flowing stream using sand, rocks, and small shovels – just as I did when I was a kid under the bridges in our sub-division.

As I wrote in Affiliate Marketing in Indianapolis, my nook covers site is doing better and continues to do better, but I’m also trying to get my tablet comparison and learning sets sites to take off. One thing I’ve been doing is posting as many posts as I can, doing over 50 new posts over the weekend. This is just to give the site some “gravity” and depth, but it’s not sustainable. If I’m not adding value to the transaction, I will become irrelevant.

Adding value is so important to me that I made it the mission statement at Watershawl, “To add value to its customers and its community.” It’s not just something I do for my web design, computer repair, and technology consulting customers, it’s something I do as a person, through this blog, and with affiliate marketing. The web will not write itself. We need content makers, content mashers, and content editors. For a long time I was a consumer of data without giving back. Blogs are one way I can give back to the community some of the value I’ve gained from it. As Derek Sivers has pointed out, this type of sharing can be beneficial to all.

This is about the time when I would think about wrapping up my post, consider adding a picture and an affiliate link, and publish. I’m not going to add a picture and I’m not going to add an affiliate link. This post isn’t what that’s about. It’s about letting you know what’s going on in my life, a little bit about how I think, and a little distraction to your day. For those who’ve made it this far I thank you for reading and leave you with this little tidbit. Life, like money, will be managed for you if you don’t manage it. The world will have it’s way with you if you don’t have a clear vision for where you want to go. When I first started my career my goals was to work somewhere that had air conditioning and a dress code. I worked in that position for 6 years. Since then I’ve realized there is more to a career choice than that. If you’re not happy with where you’re at, there’s no better time than the present to make a change. It won’t be easy and it won’t be safe, but it will be a step towards making the most out of your life. Remember, it’s your life.