Let’s Get It In!

It’s currently 5:45 am and I’m writing a blog post. “Why is that? o_O” you might ask. It’s because I just woke up and my mind is CRISP!!! >:D .. Firing on all cylinders. Ready For Action.. Kickin’ Ass and Takin’ Names.

I had this conversation with my friend Jeff the other day. He was saying that it takes him a long time to get started once he wakes up, but as time goes on, he gets more and more productive, until it gets to the point where he doesn’t want to go to sleep because his brain is working so well and he’s getting so much done.

Of course.. That’s probably why it’s tough for him to put it together when he wakes up.. Because his mental activity and productivity overrides some sort of natural sleep initiative, and he ends up sleeping at the wrong times (for his own personal body cycles).

Meanwhile.. When The Kid wakes up, I start out mentally “so fresh and so clean, clean”, and “ain’t nobody dope as me! >:D”

I can do practically *ANYTHING* when I first wake up, and my powers diminish as the day goes on, and eventually, I can feel the slowdown.. The sluggishness.. I can feel that I’m not getting as much productivity out of my mind as I was getting before, and eventually, I shut ‘er down and deliberately conk out.

I have techniques to avoid going to sleep if I need to press on and get something done, but for the most part, once I start losing it, I hit the deck so I can reset the system and make it happen a few hours from now, fully recharged and ready for action.

This is one of the reasons (besides detesting the taste) that I don’t drink coffee and laugh my ass off at how many people are addicted to coffee but refuse to consider it a national epidemic.

Productivity

I don’t need to drink coffee because if I’m awake, it’s because I’m *SUPPOSED TO BE AWAKE*, Capisce? >:D

I don’t need stimulants to trick my system into doing things it’s not supposed to be doing, because when I wake up, it’s because my body’s ready to make incredible things happen.

I also don’t use alarms, unless I agreed to physically show up at a client’s site to work at a certain time.

I sleep when I sleep, and I wake up when I wake up, and that’s how my life works.

Having said that.. I drink beer. I drink a lot of beer.

Being buzzed helps me not feel bored with life. Not being bored helps me focus on what I’m trying to accomplish today.

Of course, people are going to complain that my beer use rivals the masses’ coffee use! :P

I agree and disagree. When I wake up, I’m automatically in the game. You can’t stop me as soon as my eyes open. I’m virtually invincible.

If you need to drink coffee to start your body up, you’re dead in the water if you can’t get coffee. o_O

Put us in the exact same situation and remove beer and coffee, and I wake up and kick your ass for hours before you’re even able to function at 75% of your potential.

As the day drags on, you get mentally stronger and I get mentally weaker, but I have tricks to keep myself in the game, so all you can do is catch up to me, not surpass me, and you can’t pass me to the degree that you EVAR make up the head start I got on you by being CRISP right out of the gate.

Pretty much, every day, I accomplish twice what you accomplish, because I roll with how my body works, and I’m productive when I’m supposed to be productive and I shut ‘er down when my body’s not doing what I need it to do to be who I am.

Scheduling

I wanted to talk about this because I’ve been doing some on-site work recently, and I’m having a really great time, doing great work with great people. :)

Actually, to give context, what I do is I’m a video editor, social media guru, dating coach, music mixer, etc etc, but let’s focus on the video part..

Primarily, what I do as a video editor is I receive projects and footage from clients over the internet, work on the projects when I’m fully-functioning, preview the work for them over iChat Theater or Skype, then either send them the finished product or post it to the web for them, depending on their desired outcome.

This means that right now, instead of writing a blog post at 6 am, I could be doing work and billing a client for the time I’m spending on his or her project.

In fact, I have a drive right here right now containing video I’m going to be working on after I finish my on-site gig in a couple of weeks.

The obvious difference being that I can’t do anything right now about my current project, because a) The producers I’m working with are asleep right now, and b) the drives are at their offices, so I couldn’t work on them right now even if I felt like it.

So.. The reason I wanted to talk about this is that I can currently feel the inefficiency of work that’s scheduled during “office hours” instead of work that’s done whenever I’m fully engaged, prepared and focused.

I would be *CRUSHING* my clients’ projects right now if I had access to them and we had agreed to middle-of-the-night/morning billing. >:D

We would have started on Monday (It’s Sunday morning right now) a day ahead of where we currently are, because I would have applied my personal “work hours” of extreme productivity and interest to putting their videos together.

I think it’s very important for people to recognize / realize how their bodies and minds function when they endeavor to create a business strategy for themselves.

For instance, it’s 6:30 am right now here in New York City, New York, USA, which means it’s around lunchtime in the UK. While I’m waiting for Americans to wake up, I’m brainstorming and collaborating with people in the full swing of their day in England or France, like this video I created with Phil Campbell for The Charity Shop in Nottingham, UK:

Get Busy!

Especially with the American economy being what it is at this point, it’s in everyone’s best interests to maximize their productivity.

Trying to fit your square peg into the round hole of 9-5′ing may very well lead to drastically negative consequences for you and your family.

If you consistently do your best work after 7pm, get a job that begins at 7pm.

Better than that.. If you have good and bad times that are sporadically dispersed throughout the day, do work where you have a definite deadline and definite objectives, but it’s left up to you which times you actually work on the project.

Of course, I realize that what I’m talking about only applies to specialized vocations that you can actually perform in a flex-time environment where you make up your own work hours.

If your job is putting a door on a car, you have to do that while the plant’s open, so you don’t have any options as far as the timing of your day.

However.. With the extremely high rates of American unemployment in October 2011, this is the perfect opportunity for people to reinvent themselves.

Think outside of the box. Push aside what people told you and figure out what works FOR YOU. Drink your beer or drink your coffee. Work when you wake up or when you should be going to sleep. Work in-person with people or over the net. Work with people in your country or abroad. Be a “Jack of all trades” or a “Master of one”. Lock down a wife / husband or stay single.

What worked for the previous generation isn’t going to work now. Nobody’s getting that gold retirement watch when they’re 65 years old and have worked for the same company since they were 35 years old.

Reinvent yourself. Make a new plan. Play to your personal strengths. Figure out a new way to forge a path forward for yourself and your family.

Figure out how to maximize your personal potential and MAKE. IT. HAPPEN!!! >:D

Related Posts

• Deadlines
• “Free” Time [Time, Part 10]
• Time, Part 07: “Subcontracting”
• Time, Part 05: “Focus & Motion”
• Time, Part 02

People think that freelancers have all this “FREE TIME” to frivolously throw away on things that enhance the handout-asker’s career and does nothing at all of value for the freelancer.

It’s like they think the word freelance equates to “Never works much” like as if we’re hanging out on the beach every day with an umbrella-drink in our hands watching girls surf all day. It makes perfect sense that we’d rather work for you for free, right? :D

Maybe it’s the other way around… Maybe y’all think that freelancers are living large already since we don’t have to work 9-5, so we should somehow feel like doing charity work on the humanitarian tip and donate our time to helping YOU achieve your goals in life.

Permanent Vacation

I probably used to feel the same way before I became a freelancer myself. I can’t remember thinking about the concept much. There were people that had jobs and people that didn’t. When you got off work, you were suddenly ejected into FREE TIME, and until you walked back into the office the next day, you did whatever you wanted or nothing at all.

Same thing for weekends. When you work every weekday, the weekends are your sanctuary… Your time to be YOURSELF! :) .. Your time to do whatever YOU feel like doing. Rendezvous on the Champs-Elysées and all that… Hands in the air, as if you don’t care.

In fact, the concept of “Free Time” is a LUXURY that’s afforded to people that have their lives already planned for them.

I was talking to someone on Friday who asked me what I had planned for the 4th of July (which is today, and it happens to be 7:30am on a Sunday right now and I’m writing a blog post that will be live on my site later today, so get a clue where this article is going), and I shrugged my shoulders and said “Doesn’t make a difference to me.. I’m always on vacation.”

The longer explanation of that statement is that MY concept of “vacation” is probably way different from yours. When I say I’m on vacation, that means I do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it. If I’m partying, I’m goin’ all out! :D .. However, If I’m not partying, I’m “working”. I’m never *WASTING* time.

Besides actual work I do for clients, I have a ton of stuff to do every. single. day., not the least of which is managing my online presence. Self-Improvement takes time as well, while I teach myself to RAWK new apps, software & hardware, increasing my arsenal of what I’m bringing to the table for clients. Even partying falls under the category of business, because I’m networking with potential and/or current clients.

Even if I *AM* “sitting on the beach watching the girls surf”, I’m STILL not “doing nothing” because that’s the time that I need to recuperate from whatever I was working on, learning or managing before that and I need to build up strength, determination & reserves for the next round of work or self-improvement.

Grindin’

I remember the exact day and time when I recognized what time it was and hopped up and turbocharged my GRIND! >:D

April 14, 2007 (3 years ago), I was hanging out with a bunch of friends after a day of ultimate frisbee, dinner at a Mexican restaurant and finally drinks @ NYC’s Rodeo Bar.

Somewhere around 3-3:30am, we decided to call it a night and went outside to hail our cabs home. My friend Mike received either a text or voice message on his phone, reads or listens to it and immediately calls someone…..

Next thing I know, Mike’s having a real-time conversation with whomever was on the OVERNIGHT SHIFT of his company, explaining to them that blah blah client has an issue with this and that and it needs to be dealt with immediately.

So I’m standing there like :O because first of all, it’s 3:30 in the morning. Second of all (not that I have anywhere NEAR the level of responsibility that Mike has, but) I don’t answer my phone AT ALL, forget about in the middle of the night, much less actually DO SOMETHING about what the message was, immediately, standing on some NYC street corner.

The issue was quickly dealt with and we all went in our respective directions. As I’m in the cab home, I’m thinking “What am I going home TO DO? O_o”. I suddenly felt lazy that I had no plans in mind… at 4am. Friends of mine were working hard, LITERALLY around the clock, so long as they were physically awake, and I was doing whatever amount I was doing, which was a very low percentage of my actual potential.

There was no way I was going out like that and getting left behind, so I amped it up. My time is spent very efficiently now, which is why none of my time is “free”. I never make plans, but something always comes up. Since something always comes up, I never make plans. I do whatever comes naturally at any given time because my ultimate strength lays within my natural focus.

If I feel like tracking guitar, it’s not the time for drums.

If I feel like writing a blog post, it’s not time to do music.

If I feel like reading and commenting on my friends’ Facebook updates, it’s not time to write a blog post.

If I feel like creating a “how to” video, it’s not time for Facebook.

Similarly.. If I wake up at 3am and feel like putting in some billable hours for a client, that’s what I’m gonna do.

I might be half a day into their project by the time they wake up. I might still be working on their project 16 hours later while they’re out to dinner with their families. I might put in two days’ worth of work during the same 24-hour period where 9-5ers put in one day’s worth, so there’s no such thing as “free” time.

There’s only MY time.

Don’t Get It Twisted

If I appear to be doing nothing, I’m either relaxing/recouping, socializing or trying to THINK or feel out what my next ultra-efficient power move is going to be. It’s not an invitation for you to attempt to interrupt my flow with discussions about whatever YOU happen to need right now.

If my schedule appears to be clear, it’s because making future plans hinders my ability to pivot on a dime and do the best thing I could do right now…. Actually, that’s not true…. More accurately, my ability to pivot on a dime and do the best thing I could do right now is *NOT* hindered by plans I made in the past (unless it’s a block of time that I promised to accept money from someone for working on a project of theirs, in which case, Business is Business), which is why I don’t make plans.

If I make a plan with you on the 3rd to do something on the 12th and then the 12th comes around and I feel like doing something different, “something different” is what I’m gonna do. Therefore, there’s no point in making plans with you that I don’t intend to keep. All I can do is thank you for the information or the invite and let you know one way or the other when I positively commit to your event, which will definitely be on the day-of and might be an hour before the event begins.

So keep these things in mind next time you decide you’d like to ask someone to donate some of their “free time” to a project of yours without a) offering to properly compensate them or b) offering them anything that might be of commensurate value to them to the amount of time of theirs that you’re wasting when they could otherwise be relaxing, enjoying themselves, thinking, planning, improving themselves or putting in billable hours for their actual clients.

Related Posts

• Time, Part 02
• Time And Productivity
• Time, Part 04: “Spend Your Money”
• Time, Part 03: “Office Hours”
• What About The Proletariat? [Time, Part 11]

Episode: “Get A Job” (download iPod version)
Show: “Rock Star” (category | rss feed | iTunes)
Host: Bill Cammack
NewInNovember: newinnov.tumblr.com

The New York Times ran a classified ad stating that there was a job fair Friday at the Pierre Hotel to replace about 250 jobs lost during an ongoing renovation.

This is what happened….

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