SEEFAD #1 Results

This post is a followup to SEEFAD: Self Employed Experience For A Day.

I had a great time during the course of the day. I woke up earlier than I would on a normal day because I was excited to get started. I did some brainstorming over hot chocolate on my balcony and drew up a plan for the new site I've been scheming about. I uncovered a mindblowing realization that if I throw in a handful of 'user centric' pages on this site, then I could hope for a bunch more visitors that I hadn't initially anticipated. I did a good amount of keyword research and then I wrote ZERO articles to get the site started.

Unfortunately, the plan was to spend most of the 'working day' writing articles to not only jump start my progress on the site, but also to gauge how quickly I can produce these articles so I can use it as a planning benchmark. I got a lot accomplished, but article writing wasn't one of them.

Everything was well on track until about 10:30am when I received a call from a recruiter about a job I'm actually interested in (normally I get calls about embedded systems and other crap I don't like). I don't yet know if it will amount to anything, but I spent the next hour or so researching the area the job is located in. Of course this had to include checking cost of living prices, especially rent, and looking up some activities in such a small town.

At the end of these shenanigans, it was time for lunch. I took a break and watched an episode of 'That 70's Show' from one of my box sets and then attempted to get back to work. Basically from this point on I was all over the place, checking various websites, reading, and occasionally doing some work.

I reworked some of the SEO characteristics of my power inverter website to try to help it get a ranking. I found some strange problems with it and thought of another potential problem this morning. The most interesting problems were that none of the pages linked back to the index page and there were H2 tags on every page, but not H1 tags...

Clearly this was a different version of myself when I created this site two years ago ;) I wouldn't do things like this now. Anyway, I changed the H2's to H1's and setup the linking structure (which is still slightly faulty) to better accomodate the world. These could have been the major issues holding the site back from a good ranking (it was back at like 100 for 'power inverter', which is wildly absurd because there isn't too much competition and it's the site's sole focus).

I think the day was pretty positive but obviously I didn't accomplish the tasks I intended to.

Lessons Learned:

• Treat the day more like you're at a job
• Focus on task items, but allow for short timed breaks to pursue tangents
• Attempt a fixed schedule next time...

Speaking of next time, I've decided that it will be tomorrow! I do have a class from 10-11am, but I'll just pretend that is a business meeting or seminar. I'm going to create a fixed plan tonight with time slots and what should be accomplished/attempted in each of the time slots. I think that will be a more efficient method of tackling the goals.

SEEFAD: Self Employed Experience For A Day Preparation

Tomorrow I try a SEEFAD, a concept I borrowed from the Corporatepreneur blog. SEEFAD stands for Self Employed Experience For A Day and will allow me to experience a taste of being by own boss and doing things solely because I want to. Here is what the Corporatepreneur guys said about it:

"What we do is take a vacation day or use one of the many holiday days off to mimic a "a day in the life of working for ourselves." And the experience is amazing. It's like fast-forwarding into the future when you can control what you do and when you do it. And all of your productivity benefits you directly.

SEEFAD doesn't mean that we spend that entire day working a 9 to 5 for our own job. Some of us wake up late - hit the gym (because we always said we'd get in shape if we had more time) and then work leisurely from home. Other times a small group of 2-3 of us meet at a coffee shop with Wi-Fi and build our own businesses with great drinks and great company. Nothing is more motivating than being around others who are entrepreneurs (or have the entrepreneurial spirit) as well."

I'm going to do some preliminary research tonight so that I can hit the ground running tomorrow morning. I've always found that accomplishing things early inspires me to be more productive the rest of the day so I want to make sure I have a plan for the first couple hours.

In addition to observing the self-employed experience, I'm also using the day to measure my potential level of productivity building/writing content for websites. Then I plan to use the new 'data' as a benchmark to schedule a post graduation site building schedule.

Unfortunately I do have some commitments (including studying for a test thats on Tuesday) tomorrow, but they are minor and commitments will always exist even in a self employed world. I'm hoping to get in 6 to 8 hours of work in addition to a trip to the bookstore and a morning exercise/meditation session. I'll report back tomorrow night or Tuesday to review my experience and accomplishments.

April Goal Setting

It seems that lately I can't accomplish much without setting public goals. I suppose that has to do with some turmoil emotionally within my head, but life goes on. Here's a brief update before I get to the goals:

I finally got a firm no on the job that I originally thought I would surely get after my on-site interview, which is probably a blessing in disguise; now I can quit stressing about it and move on. Also I signed up for twitter today to try to discover why people like it and what its really all about. You call follow me, @vtgorilla, if interested. Now...moving onto April Goals.

Vegetarian
finish basic set of articles by April 18
basic article directory submission by April 30
basic link building by April 30
*Official "grand opening" delayed until May 1

Power Inverter
basic article directory submission by April 11
basic link building by April 30
*this will provide good analysis for the Clones I'm planning

Tyrod Taylor
some basic link building by April 30
*nothing like the off season to boost SERP ranking

PI Clones
more thinking and scheming
define target subjects and umbrella subject

Two Images of Myself in the Future

I took myself through a brain exercise to try to understand what I want out of life and how various careers can get me there. There is an interesting dynamic that I discovered that I thought was worth putting down here. This is just an exercise that I thought of myself, not a book or professional guided deal.

Basically I tried to imagine who I wanted to be when I'm successful. It really helps to have a clear personal definition of success for this, which I don't really have. Perhaps that is part of the problem, but nonetheless I attempted to go through with the exercise anyway. I created a mental image of what I will look like, the career path I have followed, and my general lifestyle choices.

Basically I come up with two utterly distinct images of myself, both of which I believe I am capable of. The first, and more traditional of the two, is a high powered executive. I'm not afraid to wear a suit to work everyday and having the ability to invoke strategy across a large business keeps my creative juices satisfied. This image comes with money, a fancy lifestyle, and work is the main focus of life. I certainly think that this could be exciting, but hesitate at the path that might need to be taken to get there and don't really know if I want to live my life in a business (my own or someone else's).

The second image focuses much more on lifestyle and a lot less on career. It is unclear how I stepped into the role, but based on the personality I've assigned myself it wouldn't really matter. This version of me has a grey pony tail and a tattoo sleeve on his left arm. He lives by the ocean and spends time enjoying life. Working is completely non-stressful and he doesn't care too much what people think of him. Money is not a major concern because, although it is much more limited, he just happily lives within his means.

I can tell you immediately that I'd be happier as the second guy. But I'm afraid that I have a drive to do and create things that may not be satisfied in that lifestyle. However, I have problems handling large amounts of stress which would clearly go right with the first guy. I'm sure that optimally I would be a hybrid of the two images, but it is hard to define where that is. The best I can come up with now is to aim to own my own business so that I can do what I want and act like the second guy with some of the good traits that come with the first. Then perhaps I can sell whatever business I would own (or at least no longer directly manage it) and move toward the relaxed lifestyle more.