I’ve been meaning to publish a post like this for a while. The irony of that combined with the topic is not lost on me and I find quite priceless. Have a look+listen and let me know what you think in the comments below.

Do you publish? or Do you wait?

Click here to view the embedded video.

There is no denying that the announcement this week at Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference, or WWDC, about the new iPhone 3G lived up to most everyones expectations. It has a great set of new features, including my want of built-in GPS, and now has the architecture open for developers to start creating some great new and interesting applications for the iPhone. The phone is slimmer and also has larger memory capacity. All of this advancement and the most impressive part of the announcement to me was the price point, $199. That is really incredible.

Last year when the first generation iPhone came out I held back because I figured that the second generation would deliver better features and performance at less cost. This has come to pass so my credentials as a swami have just gone up.

The only question left for me is Will It Blend? Yes, will the new iPhone 3G blend? Like its predecessor the iPhone-you can see what happened below-the new iPhone 3G may blend even better. Hopefully Blendtec will give it a go.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Well this past week was an exercise in getting back to the flow. Back to the flow of the family life—making coffee for my wife in the morning, taking kids to school, changing diapers, making bottles, getting kids to bed, watching movies with my wife. And getting back to the flow of work—turning off vacation messages on phones and email, email, email, and more email. Projects, clients, voicemails and the myriad of things that go along with running your own company all await your upon your return.

I am very glad to be back from my vacation. The vacation was great and I would like to take another break as soon  as I can. However, it is tough coming back from a vacation. Getting back on board takes time. Not the family part, I would not trade that for the world. It’s the coming back to work part. Don’t get me wrong I love what I do and it is great. However, getting coal back in the cold engine and firing up the furnace to get the train moving again is a slow process. It does take me at least one work week to get things up to speed—back on top of email, and projects too.

I took one working day to focus on one aspect. Monday was email, Tuesday was projects and their status, Wednesday was calls and appointments, Thursday was project work, and Friday was a professional development seminar.

So even though I started out the week feeling like the tortise, I ended it feeling like the hare.

Something I am not good at is taking a break from work. Any type of break–5 minutes or 5 days. On a daily basis I find myself sitting at the machine for 3 hours at a stretch without getting out of the chair. Obviously this is not good. I did get a pedometer over the holidays to see just how much movement I am getting during a typical work day. Right now I am averaging over 10,000 steps a day which is not bad for a mostly sedentary desk job. On a day-to-day basis I do need to take more breaks and get up and move around. I don’t think we as humans were designed to be seated for long periods of time. To help with that I recently setup a small mac-based application called FlexTime. It is a great app that will let me program periods of time and breaks, and it will put notices up in front of me to let me know to take a break or switch gears. Not only the physical change, but the mental change of focus and attention will help as well.

Other than the day-to-day breaks are the BIG breaks–vacations. We all need vacations to help rest and recharge. Problem is in this country (US) we tend toward the workaholic side of the spectrum and take very few breaks on a daily basis and take very little vacation time when compared to the rest of the industrialized world. Then again our GNP is the highest in the world so there is a positive side to it. However, I tend to work so hard for so long that I get burned out. I have been to burnout and back several times in my career and its no fun. To help keep this at bay I recently made a decision to take a vacation that sort of landed in my lap. A friend who is going to Mexico for 10 days asked me to come along–out of the blue.

Initially my reaction was. “Well, I do have so many projects going on right now I’m not sure I can spare the time.” I told this to someone I met at a party over the weekend and he looked at me and said, “You should go on the trip. Work will always be there, a chance to go to Mexico will not.” I thought to myself, he is absolutely right. It is the advice I would give to someone else if they were telling me the story. I would say figure out how to make it happen and I am making it happen. My new passport is on the way and I leave 2 weeks from this Friday. I have never been to Mexico and I have lived a couple hundred miles north of the border for almost 15 years. Its about time I take a visit. The work will be here when I get back.

When was the last time you took a vacation or a day off?

Yeah. Exactly–too long. Make it happen. Take the opportunity when it comes, or make the opportunity now.

I was thinking about the whole idea of having a blog and writing in general. Just like any exercise humans engage in one needs to “use it, or lose it.” In other words, you need to work the muscle whether that muscle is writing, designing, selling, making, or doing. Without use the ‘muscle’ will atrophy and your ability to use it efficiently and effectively will diminish.

So, in hopes of helping build my blogging and writing ‘muscles’ I plan to take only 15 minutes a day to write something relevant to the things that I am working on and things I am passionate about. To do this all I need is an Internet connection, WordPress for blogging, a copy of Mineteur to keep me on time, the free stock image website , the ideas in my head, and my fingers to type. With those elements I plan on posting once a day during the business week and perhaps on the weekends should time permit.

Here is my first resolution of the new year.

Ack! New years resolutions—perhaps that will be Mondays post.

Meetings, email, projects, laundry, dinner, kids, cell phone ringing! Don’t pull the alarm yet. They all demand your time and attention many at the same time as each other. No wonder our sleep-deprived lives are fueled by a steady diet of caffeine all the while stumbling around dazed and confused.

I recently read an article in the most recent Oprah magazine titled, “Wait! Stop! It’s All Too Much” by Martha Beck. I don’t typically read Oprah but my wife has a subscription and recently read this article and had to pass it along to me. Why? Because the stuff I complain about on a frequent basis was talked about in this article. The feeling of overwhelm is usually characterized by something called attentional blindness. It’s the feeling you get when presented with too many stimuli. As the article says, ” you sink into a muddled netherworld, like Dorothy in the poppy fields of Oz. Your intentions grow fuzzy. Is it dementia? Is it Alzheimer’s? Sheer cursed laziness? None of the above.” I have had this feeling on more than one occasion and it’s disabling.

A great example.
For a great example of attentional blindness go here and watch this video (It takes a moment to load).

You need to focus on the white team and how many times they pass the ball. Go do this now and then come back and continue reading. Don’t continue to read until you have done this.

Done? Great. Now how many times did they pass the ball? I counted 15. Should be about right. Want to know what is really the trick in that video? About halfway through a person in a gorilla suit walked through, thumped their chest and walked out? Did you see that while you were counting? If not, you just experienced attentional blindness.

You should go and read her full article. She does give a 6-step process for helping train your clogged mind to focus and help strip out the overwhelm. I highly recommend it.

I often wonder how the hell am I ever going to reach the promised land? I read many blogs on productivity and life-hacks and wonder when it will happen. When will I ever get all my crap together and sit cross-legged floating 3 inches off the ground while scanning to-do lists, doing, deferring, and delegating all the while with a blissful calm about me?

Our workloads can, at times, get quite heavy. The workload I am referring to is the professional sort. Not that I am making personal or family workloads less relevant—trust me they are very relevant and very heavy in their own right—it just that the professional workload can dominate our lives. I believe this is due to the fact that for those of us doing the 9-5 a majority of our waking time is spent in the professional workload mode.

Recently the professional workload has gotten quite heavy for me. This is not something new as workloads wax and wane as do the phases of the moon. However, when I am in the heavy workload phase I notice a slight shift in productivity—a clarity of focus and purpose if you will. Initially when the heavy workload begins its climb I tend to fight it. I will try and procrastinate, put off, and mentally deny that I have a lot to do. All during this fight phase I am typically not very productive. I can usually be found rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Then one day it ‘clicks’ and I start to get my productivity-fu going, or flowing. I cease the fight and give in to the flow. Face it, eventually if you keep fighting you will lose. You need to give in and go with the flow.

When the flow hits my lists of tasks become very targeted. My communications are more succinct and less chatty. I really start lining things up and knocking them down as I always dream of doing. The paradox of this is I seem to need to proceed through the procrastination and fight before I hit the flow–before I hit the fu.

I wonder how others perceive their fight and flow in relation to their workloads? Are you a fighter? Do you ever get into the flow? Or are you in the flow all the time?