SUMMARY: Ongoing thoughts on accountability, ambition, podcasting, and forming associations with people. These are just things that are on my mind. Plus, a preview of some product reviews I’ll be writing.

I’m immersed in a major project now, I feel the need to brain-dump a few of the things I have going on as a placeholder.

• Accountability – The Communicatrix and I are still maintaining our GoogleWave experiment, which has become an experiment in accountability. Which is, at its base level, just telling people what you’re doing and then doing it.

• Ambition – I’ve been wondering what my passion really is, and have been for years. After visiting Red 5 Studios in California, I think that passion actually is not what I should be identifying. Instead, it’s ambition. That’s the combination of passion and goals, put into action. The way you find that, I think, is by noticing where you are REALLY PICKY about how things should be, and whether you’ve done anything about it to make things better. More on this tomorrow; I’ve got a blog post baking.

• Podcasting – Sid and I recorded a new one, but I have yet to process it because of the California trip. I’m not sure exactly where the podcasts are going, but they’re good practice for…something! A local radio station might interview us, so maybe that’s one of the perks of not shutting up :-)

• Juicy Product Reviews – I have several products that have been sent to me that I’ve been intending to review. One of them is Think Tank Photo, makers of intelligently-designed photo bags and carriers; I have been using their Streetwalker Hard Drive for half a year, putting it through its paces. It’s a great bag, and I’ve been using it over my beloved Urban Disguise 60 because it holds my entire digital office. I think I’ve used the bag long enough now to give a good review of its pros and cons. The other product is the Sumo’s new Sway Couple Bean Bag chair, which is the coolest bean bag chair I’ve seen. Usually I don’t like bean bag chairs because they lack shape and ooze all over the place, but this one has some structure built into it. It arrived the day before I started the big project, and I managed to stuff it into the back of my VW GTI (it’s huge) and bring it to Sid’s photo studio, where I can take some proper pictures of it.

• Regularity – Another insight from the California trip was how relaxing it is to have a routine and a place to go. What makes it stick, though, is a consistent daily purpose to give the routine context. Today, I got up and went to Starbucks and breakfast, because it’s an important energy-setting thing. I also walked around a department store to see new things and break up the routine a bit before heading home to work. In the context of working, I have to do these things to maintain an even energy flow; before, I didn’t have this requirement.

• Association – I’ve been also talking to Gary, a friend of mine who also works independently, about forming associations with other people. This has been an ongoing topic between us for the past several months, and it didn’t quite click until I put the “ambition” insight together with it. Shared ambition is a prerequisite for the kind of associations I want to form, and that means I better be clearer about what those ambitions are.

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p>So that’s the brain dump for the week. Summing up, it’s been a week of interesting work-related insights due to a significant change in place.