Category — Work

Not including the weekend of course, we’re into day 3 of starting Incredible Things Department. We met with our second client today and are really happy that we had a great meeting and are really looking forward to getting started with them.

I have to admit that the number of leads and possibilities that we’ve been presented with does not warrant the scepticism that I was feeling when we started. I really thought we would have months ahead of building up contacts and work leads. We’ve been really lucky so far and have had lots of enquiries for projects ranging from iPhone development to consulting on eCommerce projects.

Hopefully the demand will stay that way and we’ll be able to really operate our dev agency as we have always wanted.

Well, it’s day one being self-employed and so far so good. I’ve deployed the holding site for Incredible Things Department and upgraded my DSL to the fastest speed, which I’ve been meaning to get to for ages.

Since I have a tabula rasa I’m going to try to document everything that happens as we try to build a business from the ground up. I have the luxury that we’re right at the beginning of this adventure and I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of ups and downs over the coming weeks and months, hopefully years.

It’s still not hit me the gravity of the situation that we’re in. Having 24 hours a day to play with, to decide how to use as you see fit. It’s mighty exhilerating. But since if’s only the first half day I guess that’s to be expected.

So, first things first www.incrediblethingsdepartment.com has a holding page until the logo and design is done. And now it’s off to check out some offices. Wish us luck!

I think it was this article (or one of the similar thousand) where I inferred probably the most important lesson on productivity that really works for me. The idea is “do your most important task first” before you do anything else when you start your work day (or evening/night). Thereby psychologically minimizing the potential effort and resulting stress of the work/tasks for the day. I’ve also heard of this lesson being called something like “eat that frog”. You see where the analogy lies.

But my take on that lesson is this. I don’t go to the gym and jump on the bench press with 70 kilos on it. I need to warm up. And I certainly don’t want to get all the heavy lifting out of the way early on to ease things up. So what really works for me is rather than placing any emphasis on any tasks whatsoever (logically taking into account emergent or exceptional cases) the trick is just to get started on anything that is related to the goals of the day. The first thing that comes to mind, the first thing at hand.

I agree totally with the article that the effects of doing anything productive before procrastinating are amazing. But by ignoring priority, size, difficulty, you’ve already got something done and started that momentum rolling without having to eat any frogs or whatever.

I suppose I would call this “The art of effortless momentum“. Just don’t think about it. Just sit down, pick a task and get going, build up some momentum.