Safetygoat

RSS apathy

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

In the past 6 months, I seem to be constantly working, constantly putting out fires, and never getting truly on top of my to do list. Of course I’m the cause: I take on too much, am interested in too much, and don’t get myself away from work work work as much as I should. There have been a few causalities, including my personal projects, my drawing abilities, my blog writing, my creative projects and my education on being a better web designer.

My rss feed now has 594 unread items. My podcasts have stopped downloading: I have neglected them so long. I try and keep the list of both of these that I check to a minimum, but it’s getting bad. So, when I have a spare moment, I check the following rss feeds (in this order):

Every week

Seth’s Blog
Not web design, but philosophy about how to think about things. I often find, when overworked, I need to reinforce messages to stop myself from doing poor work. I need to remind myself that the goal is to have my own business and my own startup. It’s hard to take the leap, and Seth’s short posts are perfect mindset builders.

Maybe once every 2 weeks

IT Freelancers and Contractors….making IT work
This blog is fairly unknown, but it’s consistently got good tips for people like me: people running their own IT businesses. Often, the tips are obvious, but he always finds very concise ways of putting things that make sense to me. The posts aren’t too long, so I don’t have to feel like I am invested for an hour.

Signal vs Noise
I love this blog, and they’re pretty good at making their point quickly, but sometimes I find their stuff a bit too varied, and reading one post doesn’t always give me the hit I need. When I’m in the mood for people who draw business inspiration from just about anything, they do a great job.

On Startups
It’s no secret that I long for the days when I can have my own business, focus on that, and minimise client work.  That day is not now, but hopefully in the near future.  Anyway, I really like On Startups.  The guy who writes seems really personable and honest.  And I always learn something.  Posts don’t happen too often, which means that I never feel like I’ve fallen too far behind.  Which I like.

Maybe once a month

Gary Vaynerchuck
I like Gary’s enthusiasm, and his zest for working.  Nothing guilts you into working harder than listening to one of Gary’s rants.

Smashing Magazine
I love SM, and have written for them, and I KNOW I’m going to learn something new, but when I’m uber busy, reading an article that takes minimum 30 minutes mean that it gets relegated to when I have that time to spend!

The blog of Tim Ferris
Anyone who’s met me recently will know that I’m on a health kick.  I drink wheatgrass.  I have a personal trainer.  So, I love reading about the obsessed Tim Ferris, and his ideas on moulding your body.  Good clean obsessive fun!

What about the rest?

I’ve decided to cut down on my client work going forward– less clients, more personal projects, more blogging, more activities and much more education.  I need to keep up my learning, and I have 30+ blogs that I don’t check that I know I should.  Until this crazy time ends though, I’ll stick to my skeleton service.

Something has to give when you’re uber busy, and you find out what is really important to you!

Safetygoat all grown up

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011

Safetygoat has been around for a few years now. It has been a fun place to grow my skills and experiment with new ideas.

But I’m almost an adult now, starting to think about weird things like curtains and pensions, and doing web design full time now has meant that safetygoat can no longer do it all. Thus, I have moved my business life away from safetygoat’s youthful exuberance to Capra, the new safetygoat, just wearing a tie and top hat.

“But, what’s wrong with safetygoat?”, you might be asking.

As I got more serious customers, I ran into two problems with this site. 1) Trying to explain what safetygoat means is not where you want to start a conversation with someone with whom getting their trust is so important and 2) I like to rant and rave and I want to have a personal space to write about all the stuff that’s pissing me off, or maybe silly things that I find hilarious. Not something that’s good for a business first impression.

On the web, you can’t really keep your different web identities totally separate, and I have no problem with snoopy clients coming to read my personal blog. But, creating different personas for yourself, depending on where you’re writing, can mean that you can be relevant, professional, fun and all those things that you are.

And, at the end of the day, being yourself, wholeheartedly is what safetygoat + capra are all about.