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- October 15, 2013
The Future Goals of Tomorrow, Today!
October 15, 2013Read moreOver the past several weeks, I’ve experienced the extremes of an early morning routine followed by a relapse into night-owl random sleeping. This week, I’m sort of in-between: waking up moderately early at the same time, followed by a trip (or not) to Starbucks where I can spend the first chunk of my day focused on something important. After that, it’s kind of up to what meetings I have, and what additional work I can do based on whatever energies I have left-over. You could call this a half-structured routine:
1. The Structured Morning
- A fixed but not super-early wakeup time (thanks to CricketB for the suggestion)
- Getting out of the house as soon as possible, without looking at email or social media
- Dedicating 2-4 hours of hard productive work that is TBD on a daily basis.
2. The Unstructured Afternoon
- Regular client check-in meetings
- Errands, chores
- Tasks that don’t require focused solo thinking.
3. Managing Meetings
- Meetings of any kind exact a huge amount of energy from me, from anticipation to followup.
- Because meetings often have to be in the morning, that disrupts the day. I am now severely limiting morning meetings.
- I don’t plan on STARTING anything serious done on a meeting day. I treat the entire day as an “unstructured afternoon”.
- I limit the number of days with meetings as much as possible.
Overall this seems to be serving me well, but there’s room for improvement. (more…)
- October 11, 2013
JetPens Mini Shopping Spree
October 11, 2013Read more
I ordered a bunch of desk props :-)
I saw somewhere that JetPens had some kind of multi-lead holder mechanical lead holder, and I thought it would make for an excellent photo prop. A lead holder is a bit different from your typical automatic mechanical pencil in that it lets the lead fly out; you have to adjust the amount of lead that is exposed with a careful touch of the hand. Anyway, the Pentel Multi 8 for Checking Use (whatever that is) lead holder holds 8 different kinds of 2mm (!) colored lead. The mechanism is pretty interesting: rotate the pocket clip to select which lead you want, and twist the clicker to line up with the silver line if you want to completely remove a lead.
To pad out the order, I also grabbed a few other things:
I wanted some kind of “sample product pouch” that I could move easily from bag to bag (I have several) without having to grab stuff out of each individual pocket. I’m not sure this will work, but maybe it will!
I bought a replacement white Lamy Safari fountain pen. I think I gave my other white one to Dad. In any case, this one is using a broad (B) tip. I tend to like thicker fountain pen lines when writing with them. Why not?
And I got some extra Lamy blue cartridges. Not the most luxurious of inks, but convenient to carry around. It’s a nice contrast with the white body and silver nub.
- October 10, 2013
GHDR Review 8: Balancing Priorities
October 10, 2013Read more
THE OCTOBER 10 REVIEW
It’s time for the 8th review of my progress on my “Groundhog Day Resolutions” for 2013. I actually have forgotten what they are, so let me look back and see what I wrote in February:
- Strive toward excellence and mastery in what I am doing.
- Learn how to make wonderful things, by first learning how to make sucky things.
- Share what I make and what I know with like-minded, self-empowered, conscientious, kind, competent people. That is my primary audience.
- Build the means for converting ideas into tangible, shareable goods and bringing them to market for the people who can use them. That’s my secondary audience.
- Be fully present in every personal transaction, as conduit for the values expressed above.
- Most of all: be visible, accessible, and willing to fail on the world stage.
A few months later, I later came to think of what I wanted in life as “creative independence”, which I summarized as follows:
- To be my own boss: mastering process, making money directly from work I produce under my own name.
- To have the time, freedom, and money to operate my business without anxiety.
- To act according to my values as a human being, friend, and maker in the pursuit of mastery and success.
- To live according to my values with a community of like-minded self-empowered, positive-minded, conscientious and competent people.
- To be respectful and mindful of others, while not being swayed from my path by their expectations.
- To document the process so it can be replicated by others in similar paths.
So for 2013, I’ve continued to try-out different ways of achieving these desired goals. In a nutshell, I have been figuring out ways to acquire resources and have ongoing conversations within the above frameworks. The two major challenges in this regard are:
- What do I need to DO to acquire resource (as in money) and have great conversations? What’s the strategy? What are the specific actions I should focus on? How do I know it’s working?
- How do I maintain the positive, productive attitude operating in a constant state of uncertainty? I want to maintain momentum, and it is not easy for me.
I know, I know…big questions! I think I’ve got a handle on it, though… (more…)
- October 8, 2013
Working More Slowly: Patching Leaky Motivation
October 8, 2013Read moreThis is a continuation, of sorts, of last week’s Working More Slowly: Preliminary Observations post. I had hoped to have a productive continuation of my early-rising work ritual (heretofore known as “The Morning Ritual”), as described in that post, but it collapsed. Why? I had no idea, so I collected my thoughts into this post. It turns out that I’d missed something important about the mission behind the Morning Ritual. Hint: it’s not really about having a productive day. (more…)
- October 7, 2013
Lowel Ego Continuous Lighting Digital Photography Lamps
October 7, 2013Read more
I got these for my sister a few years ago so she could take yummy food pictures.
Initial Review
They are actually quite large, larger than an 8.5×11 pad of paper as you can see here. They’re made of plastic, which includes the bulb holder assembly. Each unit holds two 27-watt daylight-balanced bulbs.
Although the units are lightweight and made of plastic, they actually have a surprisingly-good physical integrity…if you don’t jostle them too much. For table-top use, they sit lightly near your subject. You wouldn’t want to use these outside, though…they would blow right over.
The lamp enclosures are shipped flat, and you have to “puff them out” and fold down two clear plastic tabs inside them to keep them open. These tabs have holes in them to fit over the lamp sockets and two additional positioning pegs with plastic caps that hold the assembly together. These two plastic caps use friction, and hold poorly, so you should make sure you push-down the tabs enough so they don’t provide the spring energy to launch the caps into orbit (as happened to me). At first, I thought the clear plastic tabs would crack, but they actually are pretty bendy. I wouldn’t want to assemble/reassemble these units, though, very often. I am pretty sure the plastic would fatigue over a dozen uses.
That said, once put together they are pretty stable. I’m using them on the tabletop, but the units also have a light stand screw socket in the bottom (I haven’t measured it) so you could technically put ’em on a light stand. Not in the wind, though!
With both units at close ranges, I was able to use these lights with my Canon 40D at ISO100 through ISO250 at f/5.6 at 1/125s hand-held (with 2nd gen IS), so it’s certainly workable for casual table-top shooting. The paper pad I was shooting is probably the largest object that you could shoot with these; I think they’re designed for fairly small objects, where the diffuse lighting can cast sumptuous soft shadows around them. With a larger object, the lighting becomes more directional, so you need to use two units and the reflectors to do some fill-in. At about $110/unit ($250 for a two-light kit that includes a small shooting platform made of corrugated plastic), this is a pretty affordable solution for my needs.
