Mind Pilot – Take Self Control

I’m scanning through what I’ve written above, and thinking that it doesn’t really give much detail about mood changes, as that would require going into much longer articles, which I’d like to do if I have time. After Friday, I know that I could easily keep this blog full of detailed posts about the different thoughts I have, and my thoughts about those thoughts, but that this could soon get stuck into its own never-ending loop, and that’s not what I’m trying to achieve here. So before I go back and go into any details about the previous four days, it might be better to jot down a few notes from earlier on today, and to carry on from there:

·                     Driving to the bike shop — wanting to hit the accelerator when a classic tune comes on the radio.

·                     At the swimming pool — can’t really be bothered to do any swimming.

·                     Supermarket checkout — is that the healthiest trolley load I have ever purchased?

·                     As I write this diary update, why is my energy waning?

·                     Will I get anywhere near the amount of content I created on Friday? I’m not really trying to do that, I’ll be happy with half that amount, as long as most of it goes to my commercial website.

·                     Come to think of it, and I still going to be awake in 15 minutes? My mood is fine, I’m just feeling tired, but I haven’t had my caffeine injection yet today. I’m not sure how well that blue cheese (the one food sin that stayed in the trolley) agrees with my system, but it certainly tasted really good!

·                     Should this text be put back in paragraphs, or is it nicer to break it down into bullet points like this. I quite like using using the bullet points, and I generally find it easier to read text that is broken down in this way. I should never forget that a lot of people with wandering minds have very short attention spans. The only problem is that it is a bit of a nuisance to format when transferring from Dragon voice recognition into a WordPress blog.

·                     I’m just want to keep sitting here until four, then I might get the caffeine shot out. I might feel tired, and I might be making a very late start, but at least I can give myself a little pat on the back for the fact that I’ve already done my exercise for the day. I still don’t fully understand how swimming, including going to the jacuzzi/steamer/sauna impacts my mood and energy levels, but at this time of day I’m usually scrambling to get out of the house to make it there by four, which is the latest time of peak members can go, so the fact that I have finished my swim, gone to the supermarket, had some lunch, and sat down to write content by now isn’t actually too bad going at all.

·                     I am reminding myself that I am often slow to get going, no matter what time I start. Even when I start with a seemingly massive burst of energy, this often fizzles out after just a few minutes, and might then take a couple of hours before I really get back into the swing of things again. As I was out all day yesterday, today is effectively the first day of the week, so I could still be having a short dose of Monday morning blues, even though it is Tuesday afternoon.

·                     I should point out that as I dictate this, I’m trying to report on how I felt at different times across the last five days, and that if I get a chance, I would like to go back further than that. So it is only natural that I’m reporting on different moods at different times, but on the whole the last few days have still been extremely positive, and when I have had down periods, this has been due to tiredness, rather than any kind of depression. I mean come on, anyone would be knackered after cycling the equivalent distance of three marathons, so it is no wonder I’m feeling a bit groggy after going for a swim.

·                     (15:53) – Ok, that is enough for now, the blog post which was going to follow this doesn’t really make that much sense and I need that recharge.

Like last Friday, I am making a very late start, but at least I got up at a reasonable time (10 AM), after yesterday’s very long day in London. Although I do have a tendency to panic and get all worked up when I start late at this, I’m really not too bothered today, as I have already got a few things ‘ under my belt’ as such, and this also includes a ‘belt tightening’ swimming session! I really should be getting on with some text for my main website, but after I left off on Friday with such a massive block of blog posts and Mind Pilot, I feel there is was a natural momentum that I had got started which I want to at least carry on for an hour or so this afternoon, before getting started on my other work. Thankfully, my mood has been kept pretty much on an even keel through the last few days, with a major sense of breakthrough after Sunday’s bike ride. Here’s a summary of the last few days, which I hope to stick into some longer blog posts shortly:

·                     Friday evening — went to bed after waffling on for over 8000 words that day, but still had plenty of thoughts buzzing around, and was still awake at dawn the following morning. Perhaps writing that much content had made me a little bit manic, and apart from when we came back very late from Liverpool couple of weeks ago, this was certainly the first time I’d stay up until dawn for quite a while.

·                     Saturday — relaxed all-day, but still got up just before 10 to go to Birmingham. This could potentially develop into quite a long blog post, but for now I’m putting it to one side.

·                     Sunday — I got up with the intention of joining the local cycling club which is supposed to meet in a nearby park at 9 AM. Although this was a part of Sunday morning I’m not normally used to seeing, I didn’t actually get out of the house until nine, and it was only then that I realised that my spare bike, which I keep at the back of the house, had two flat tyres. The rear wheel was also rubbing against the frame, and this was proving to be very difficult to sort out, so I wasn’t finally ready to leave the house until 9:45. Having missed the cycling club, I wanted to make sure that I went on a decent enough bike ride on my own, so I headed off towards the Cotswolds. Needless to say, some eight hours later, I finally made it back home, and this felt like a real return to form, as I hadn’t cycled this kind of distance since the summer of 2007, just before my last serious manic episode kicked off.

·                     Monday — after Sunday’s marathon cycle ride, I was glad that I could still get up in time to make the train for a lunchtime event in London, where I had been asked to be a panellist. This was a rare opportunity to talk about the industry I work in, and it was nice to be sitting next to other panellists who represented businesses far larger than my own. Come to think of it, considering how much most people are supposed to have a total fear of public speaking, than event actually went extremely smoothly, so I hope I can get another opportunity to do something similar soon. After the event, I decided to go for a walk from the event hotel in Bloomsbury to the Tate Modern, but by chance ended up meeting up with another person from the Internet industry, who just happened to be having a drink with one or the other people from the event I just attended. I was then supposed to meet a friend for curry, but his phone seems to be on the blink, so I ended up making a brief visit to the Tate modern, before grabbing some food inside St Pancras International and then heading home.

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:

I know this website might be more about mood swings, but I’ll have to admit that my cooking standards have been a bit bipolar lately as well. Last night, I thought I was being well disciplined when I took a pizza and chips out of the freezer, and then decided to put them back and cook a stirfry, but it really did end up as one of the most disgusting concoctions (voice recognition says comic options — if only it was that funny) I’ve ever made. Unfortunately, I already had a bit of a headache when I started looking, so I was feeling extremely rough after I finished. I’m not sure exactly what I did to make it so bad, but I will certainly remember to never use frozen mini carrots in a stir-fry again — they had absolutely no flavour.

On the other hand, on Wednesday night I cooked pasta dish, which I was extremely proud of. I named it ‘Pasta Toulouse’ after the French ‘ville rose’ (pink City), and I guess it was a bit of an answer to spaghetti Bolognese, which does after all take its name from the redbrick city of Bologna, which I’m visiting next month! Whereas last night’s meal was almost toxic, Wednesday’s meal is what I would call nutritionally balanced — i.e. it had some very healthy ingredients (lashings of garlic, red onion, whole wheat pasta and harvest brown garlic bread) and some not so healthy (bacon, crème fraîche). Fortunately, Wednesday night was when I had agreed to cook for three guests, so at least I presented the best of my culinary skills to them.

Concurrently, this is often the way I am with my moods — most of the time when I’m out meeting people, I am confident an upbeat, and it is only when I’m with a select bunch of people I really know that I might discuss some of my more darker or downbeat moods. Hopefully, by having this website, I can make more people aware that there are two very different sides of my personality, and that I am far from alone in being this way. In the meantime, here’s to healthy eating and looking on the brighter side of life!

(21:38) — 4 1/2 posts in just under an hour , that’s enough for now.

(21:21) One thing I always wonder about when writing blog posts like this is just who exactly is going to read them? The bottom line is that I have absolutely no idea who could end up here, and in certain ways I don’t even really want to know. Some of the stuff here is quite personal, but I have decided that it is better out than in, so does it actually matter who might be reading?

One thing I’d like to keep is the conversational style that I get when using voice recognition, but oddly enough, I really hate to work on this if I think there is anyone else in the background. My housemate is home right now, but she’s upstairs, so I’m not too worried there, but there’s no way I could see myself sharing an office and using voice recognition, even when working on my other website, where the content is purely travel related, and nothing like so personal.

Meanwhile, there are people walking past my front door all the time, as it is Friday night, and I’m on a street with six pubs. Would I rather be out in one of them at the moment enjoying a drink, or some might say, drowning my sorrows? Well, if I had been more organised in the week, perhaps I would be, but I’m not really too bothered as next week is already looking extremely busy. Would I like to randomly go out to one of the pubs, and just start a conversation with whoever I met at the bar? I do that sometimes at my local, but as it is an Irish pub, and this is the weekend before St Patrick’s Day, I know it will be an extremely tight squeeze in at night, just as it is on any other Friday night, I really don’t enjoy that. Last week, I picked a pub at random, but it didn’t take too long for the conversation to degenerate down to the person standing next to me using the phrase ‘ I’m not racist but’, and we all know where that ends up.

So actually, I’d rather have a conversation with his blog, even though I have no idea who I’m talking to. But if you have read this far, please drop a comment and say hi!

As I was saying in an earlier blog post this afternoon, I would much rather share any ideas I have, rather than keep them to myself just in case somebody else might ’steal’ them. I think that a lot of people grossly overestimate the value of the ideas they have, and in my experience an idea is worth next to nothing if it isn’t acted on. As it happens, the one idea I did have which has made me money was never really that original; all it did was take an existing idea which appears in print in many places, and put it on the Internet.

I have one particular idea for a new website which I keep on telling people I’m going to launch, but I don’t think that anyone would take from me, because it is going require a significant amount of passion and detail subject knowledge to make it happen. For now, this idea is to stay on the back burner whilst I keep my main website afloat.

But what about other ideas I have for future projects, some of which don’t really have that much to do with the Internet? What if an idea is just a quick sketch or a design or in many cases as I find, just a play on words? I’d far rather flesh out a very brief description of what I’m thinking about in no more than one page, and stick it up on the Internet somewhere. If I should happen to meet someone, whether in person or online, who expresses an interest in something similar, then I can always point them in that direction. In the meantime, I always have plenty on my plate to get on with.

(21:17) after complaining before, I’m now wanting the voice recognition and a warning to come up, so I can take a break, or at least go online or just do a bit of sketching in Flash. But for the time being, I have flagged up 10 potential blog posts that I could do, and I have just done one of them, so I think I’m going to be here for a little bit longer. Well, I restarted the session after dinner at 8:40, and I’ve now gone on for 40 minutes, so I think I’ll do another 20.