Mind Pilot – Take Self Control

Earlier this evening, I followed a link to a blog post which had a very good list about the top 30 websites by gross revenue generated. It listed the founders of each website, together with how much each earned on annual basis, and how much each of these websites earned per second — and yes, I would be more than grateful for a few seconds of Google’s time right now!

Although the list was interesting, it didn’t give any information about the history of each website, and what particular success traits each of these people possessed in order to get where they are now. To find out more about their stories, it would certainly be more useful to look up these websites and the people behind them on Wikipedia. Anyway, I digress — the list could have done with some commentary, but it was still useful. To the right hand side of this blog post was an advert saying that the developer of this blog had grown his income by over 1000% since October last year, and how he was a ‘ 20 year old living the Internet dream.’

Now you can take income claims with a pinch of salt — if you start with £1 each month and grow by 1000%, your earnings have still only gone up to £10 — hardly enough to live on. Maybe this person is doing well, maybe he isn’t, but just exactly what is living the Internet dream? He defines it by saying he is able to work where he wants and when he wants, but just exactly what does he mean by work? I expect that there is some form of e-book or newsletter subscription which you will be expected to sign up for, which in turn will tell you that you can make a fortune by selling the same product on to other people. That’s not really generating proper wealth in my books, nor is it providing anything new or original on the Internet. I also just wonder sometimes how this Internet dream is defined. Last year, I was sent by a friend to a website called the four hour working week, which seems to look at the same idea of making money with no effort. Of course, I always want to do more with less, but I just don’t think I can relate to the idea of doing next to nothing week and getting paid a fortune for it.

Still, I’d much rather be spending more time on the drawing, or even painting, so if I can get earnings back up my main website, I should at least free up enough time to enjoy doing what I really want to do a little bit more, rather than doing stuff that I guess I only partially enjoy, if that makes any sense?

Anyway, I’m always going to be a motormouth, so I can knock off now pretty satisfied, having done 8000 words of content in the one-day. Maybe I will get those paintbrushes out tomorrow, or at least a sketch pad!

I said in my last block of posts that I thought I would go on for a while yet, as I wasn’t feeling tired, but I am now really starting to sag. As far as daily targets go, I’ve done more than enough, and I’m pretty sure that the amount of content I have produced today is a personal best. I’m just going to see if I have enough energy to complete any of the possible posts I listed above, or whether it is time to pack it in for the night. I don’t want to produce that much more, as I want to record that I can easily beat one day next week! The next time I have a go, I want to be writing stuff for my main website, not this blog, but who knows, maybe there’s enough stuff I could cover here to make a Mind Pilot a viable website in its own right. That’s not really the intention for now, the key aim is that by publishing a blog about my thoughts, I am able to keep on a more even keel and ultimately get more done.

If this website is going to pay for itself, then I need to look at how that might work, as it would inevitably mean taking some form of advertising. The easiest way to do this would be just to run adverts from Google, as these are selected automatically according to the content of the page. There are various other self-improvement programmes out there which might offer a commission for referrals, in much the same way that my main website effectively acts as a travel agent. However, some of these programmes are less reputable than others. This leads me on to one of the posts on the above list, which relates to blogs and other websites which promise to tell you how to make a fortune on the Internet. Do they really offer useful information, or are they just trying to get you to sign up to an expensive e-book or newsletter subscription?

22:45

• Check-in — I can’t really give myself a tick for this, as I really haven’t had a proper focus for each day yet this year. I have just got up and got on with whatever I felt like doing. Clearly, there is plenty of room for improvement here — no tick.
• Fuel — I’m not sure how healthy Weetabix are — they are at least whole-grain, but there was no fruit, and what kind of breakfast starts at 2 p.m? Having said that, now that I’m putting up all these posts on this blog, I really don’t think I can let myself get up so late in the future, not if people I know are reading this! With such a late breakfast, I never had lunch, and as I’ve said above, dinner was pizza and chips, but I did at least wash it down with a Diet Coke and have some peas and sweetcorn with it. I took my medication at 10, but one of the side-effects is that this makes me hungry, so I have been having a bit of chocolate on the side, but this is at least the 86% Cocoa stuff, which is supposed to be a lot more healthy than milk chocolate. On balance, I think I’ll give myself the tick here, but I should really be having the five portions of fruit and veg.
• Maintenance — considering that I didn’t sit down at the computer until 2:45, to leave for a jog at four was pretty good going — tick.
• Takeoff — clearly, no tick.
• Cruise — concentration has been excellent, tick.
• In-flight entertainment — it is now 11 p.m., and I have just about been at my desk for the same length of time that might be expected of a typical office worker. As I said above, I should unwind with a bit of TV before going to sleep, but I had a massive TV session yesterday, so that wouldn’t count as a tick. Sod the routine, I might well just watch a bit of Family Guy anyway! Although I have kept myself to myself most of the day, the time I did spend online was dedicated towards actually meeting people, and I made some good plans for next week and the one after, so that would qualify for the tick.
• Land — When I have got back into a decent routine, then I’d really want to be heading to bed at 10 during the week, but I’d be a bit more flexible on a weekend. But right now, the routine has gone out of the window, and there’s no point in going to bed when I’m not tired. So for now, the jury is out on this one, but I am going to keep on blogging for a while yet.

As far as the weekly activities go, the only one I could take so far is tidying the kitchen, and I did also take the rubbish out on Wednesday. This is the first time I’ve attempted to do an update on the Mind Pilot routine since October last year, so I haven’t set the other seven tasks for the week. It would be a bit hard on myself to just give myself a fresh seven, I think there are a number of things I’ve done this week which were quite important, but I don’t need to list those here. Why I do need to make sure of is that now I have put the Mind Pilot routine up online, I get back into the driving seat as such I make sure I follow it. I’m not going to promise I get all 100 points right for next week, but I should at least be ready to have a go. You might be wondering why I would want to bother going to what seems like such an extremely detailed routine, but why I have been so lousy at following it. All I can say is that this is something that has worked for me in the past, but which is very easy to allow to lapse. By devoting all of my time today on updating this blog, I have been able to remind myself of how many different strategies I have for managing my chaotic brain, and I’m sure that things will go a lot better next week when I start putting more of these strategies into action.

(23:16 – a straight hour)

I can’t remember exactly when I first came up with the Mind Pilot concept, but I think it was some time in 2006. The exact routine has changed slightly since then, but the basic principle stays the same, namely to run each day as if it were a flight. I’m still a long way from getting this perfect — in fact since I started, I don’t think I’ve ever given myself a tick for every single box, but here’s to trying:

The main grid has seven focus points for each of the seven days a week, giving a potential score of 49. A bonus of two is then added for having a complete score either vertically (for the day) or horizontally (for the activity), potentially giving another 28 points, and two more are added for getting the ‘full house’ of 49. Added to this are seven weekly tasks which do not change (one point each), and seven variable tasks, which must be set before the start of each week (two points each). This gives a potential total of 100 points:

Daily Mind Pilot routine:

• Check-in — where are we going? Decide what the priorities are for the day (should really be done the night before).
• Fuel — eat a healthy breakfast (plenty of fruit), lunch and early evening meal. Drink no more than four units of alcohol.
• Maintenance — keep body and mind in good shape by engaging in vigourous exercise (at least 20 minutes running, 45 minutes cycling, 30 lengths swimming etc) at least five times each week. It makes sense to do this every day during the working week, and make it part of the daily routine. Mornings are better, as the positive effects can then be felt throughout the day, and exercising later on is not supposed to be so good for inducing sleep.
• Take off — get up at a sensible time (this sounds easy if you have an office to go to, it is much harder when self-employed and subject to low energy and mood swings) — current aim is to at least be out of bed at nine. Switch on computer and clear first 1000 words of good quality web content.
• Cruise — concentrate through the workday, staying off-line where necessary, respond to issues as they arise and continue with content, site updates etc.
• In-flight entertainment — even if the day starts late, or the workload seems massive, always find time for something enjoyable each day. This should change for one day to the next — watching TV or DVD might be fine for one-day, but it isn’t acceptable on two consecutive days. Solitary exercise doesn’t count either, but the game a five aside football would fulfil the criteria for this and for ‘maintenance’.
• Land — wind down at the end of each day. Anyone running a home based business knows how easy it is to work late in the evening, especially when everybody else has gone to bed, but it is still essential to allow a gap between finishing work and going to bed, otherwise your head will just be full of work-related thoughts. Ideally, I think this gap should be at least an hour, but I am a frequent offender here. For people to take medication which affects their sleeping patterns, then it is best to take this at the same time each day, and perhaps to start winding down from this time.

Weekly activities:

• Task list update — doublecheck that the most urgent and important tasks have been completed properly.
• Clear out e-mail.
• Financial update — file receipts, etc.
• Wash clothes and make sure they are dried properly, ironed if necessary and put away.
• Tidy bedroom.
• Tidy office.
• Tidy kitchen and take out rubbish on Wednesday morning.

Well, for a day with such a late start, I’ve really made extremely good progress. I’m starting to see that my specialist was right when he said that I would be to cope without medication for ADHD if I put my mind to it. I need to do something about all these late starts, but I think it is fair to say that my concentration today has been second to none. In fact, my concentration has been far better than you might expect out of a typical office worker — I have kept my online sessions brief, and when done, I have unplugged the modem each time. Most importantly, when I have got up and gone away from my desk, I’ve also made sure that my modem has stayed unplugged, as this ensures that when I return, I just get on with the work that needs doing, and avoid needless messing around.

This doesn’t mean that I have completely blocked off all contact with the outside world — quite the opposite. Instead of just flitting around from one website to the next (how much time can that waste?), or reading people’s Facebook updates, I’ve actually decided to try and physically get in touch with people I haven’t seen for ages, and I think I’ve made about 10 such requests. That’s what all the social networking site should really be for — actually seen people in the flesh, not just catching up on idle gossip online!

As far as progress is concerned, I try to do a minimum of 1000 words each day, although I do like to make sure that goes on my main website. Today, I’m already over 5000 words, but all of this is going on Mind Pilot. Theoretically, if I’m creating content that is told like a story (like this particular post), I can produce just over 2000 words in an hour, so if there was ever a voice recognition ‘marathon,’ it might be to aim for 26,000 words in one-day! I don’t think I’m going for that any time soon — in fact I think my best day so far is around 5000, so if I can get up to 6 or 7000 today, that would be really impressive, especially with such a late start. Even though I’m not doing anything that has a direct commercial value, I’m not so concerned. I’ll freely admit that I obsess about my own personal productivity, but I don’t think it always has to be defined monetarily. I’ll feel that the day has been useful if I have at least managed to extract something from my head and stick it down into a format that is useful for somebody somewhere. The downside of this is that I don’t spend anything like as much time on other creative activities such as drawing (either by hand or in graphics programmes like Flash), painting or photography. Even when I do take photos, I very rarely actually take them off the memory card and process them on the computer. I’m even less likely to then get photos printed — but here’s another comment I have made on this blog that I think will make me much more likely to take action in the future.

Outside, there is still a bit of noise from people moving between pubs, and some idiot has just set a car alarm of, but I’m not then let that distract me too much. Of course, I’ve commented on it, but as I’ve said before, I’m trying to make this blog a conversation, rather than something more formal and if you are sitting having a chat with a friend, and a car alarm went off in front of you, one of you would mention it wouldn’t you?

I have still got six of the 10 possible blog posts I mentioned earlier on that I would do to get on with, and if I completed all of them, I think that would really be quite something for the day. Regardless of that, I think I can tick most of the boxes that the Mind Pilot routine ‘ requires’ — I think that will be post number 11: