New year, new start

For those who have followed this blog in the past you will know and see that I have been very quite since summer.  The reasons for this are many but most of them are due to personal circumstances which have knocked my life completely off kilter and have no only taken a lot of physical time but it has also significantly hurt my drive on a day to day basis.  This in itself is a self perpetuating downward spiral in which you don’t do certain takes or maintain aspects of your life because you haven’t got the “get up and go” to do it but then you end up resenting, even hating yourself for no doing it.  Then as time goes by you end up putting things off repeatedly until finally they are way overdue and almost impossible to recover from.  Why am I laying this on the line and telling you?  Quite simply I have been there and have now vowed to turn things around, it is a hard thing to admit that things have gotten out of control but it is much harder, in my opinion, to recover from.

With that in mind I want to commit, publicly, to maintaining at least two posts a week here whether it tech news, geek stuff or just how things are going.  2009 is a new year and while this is not a new year resolution, it is a life resolution, I just thought that it was a damn good time to start…leave behind the old and move forward.

So let me start by saying happy new year to you, all the success for the future and remember if you want to contact me please use the form above.

Regards

Rob.

When the goings good…..

At the moment business is going from strength to strength which given the current economic climate is quite amazing because if the media are to be believed then we are on the brink of global recession.  Now while I run an IT business I do not claim to be the global economist nor a great authority of all things financial, this is why we have accountants!, but that said I am able to do simple maths and see the obvious.  What seems to be happening at the minute is the "credit crunch" a term which up until a few months ago never even existed and while this situation is very real it seem to have been brought about by the ever rising house prices and peoples need to own their own homes.  This then led on to the banks continuing to lend money in whatever way they could some working on mortgages up to 50 years….mental.  Now as a business owner I have taken a step back and looked what is happening in our business and in particular in our business sector.  What I have seen is very little difference it last year, in fact to be quite honest we have been busier than ever with sales month in month out increasing by up to 200% which is excellent.  So much so that I was asked recently what business I was looking for and I replied "None" as we are so busy.  So what is really happening? Well I think that in this case beauty is in the eye of the beholder or in this case the future of the economy is in our own hands.

I truly believe if we continue to bang on the recession drum and preach to all who will listen that a end is coming then it will come.  If that same energy is channeled into driving our businesses forward and working hard to keep everything going then it truly will. One of the great stories that shows what can be done with a little determination is "The pursuit of happyness", for those that do not know it follows the story of "Chris Gardner’s" dream of making a success and getting rich; its a real story of rags to riches.  So what do we need to do to get things moving, well here’s my opinion for what it’s worth:

1. Focus on what your clients need and supply it, provide what they are asking for and not what you want to.
2. Listen to what the media are saying and incorporate it into your plans but do not let it be of detriment to the business
3. Believe that what you are providing will give value to your clients because if you don’t believe it then why should they
4. Always remain positive, it will drive you forward each day and will carry those around you with it, remember when you smile the whole world smiles

Ok as I say not a global economist by any stretch of the imagination and it certainly is not the secret to success, but if you work hard and believe in these things then it will help drive your business further.

The school of human science

One of the thins that I am looking at now is stuff regarding personal development and the reason for this is that however good you are or however good you THINK you are; the bottom line is you can do better.  This is an area that I find interesting as I have found that there are quite literally thousands of sites out there wanting to give you advise on how to be "better" so which one’s do you believe?  Well for my part what I have done is looked at common themes throughout each of these sites and taken these on their own merits and looked at whether these can benefit me.

My current endeavour is to become an "early riser".  I have two reasons for this; the first is that I personally believe that by rising at 5:30am I will have a huge amount of time that then becomes available to me to use for business things, personal stuff and eventually to get back out cycling again.  Now I understand that 5.30am sounds early and I mean REALLY early but when you think about it really isn’t that early as most people will get up at around 7-7.30 so maybe it’s not THAT early after all.  Secondly is one of belief that it can be done.  The reason for this is that my other half’s nephew has recently joined that army and one of things that they do is they train all day from 5.30am through til when they get to bed at around 12am now my reaction was to think he would look like death by the end of 4 weeks and to be honest half way into it he did.  But his parents went to see him at the weekend and he looks good, better that ever so this proves that it can be done and I can see what the benefit it would be for myself.  So here we are Day 1 and feeling pretty bright and breezy, a little tired but definitely feeling good about it.  So how do we do this?  Well below is an extract from a blog for Scott Young who considering his age is a very enlightened young man:

How to Build Energy Into Your Mornings

Here are a few things I’ve found helpful to reduce the transition period from being asleep to becoming fully alert. Not only does speeding up this wake-up process save time, it makes waking up less of a struggle. A few tips:

1. Light. Your body’s natural clock is tuned to the amount of light. Turn on all the lights in your room right after waking up. Getting bright lights can help trick your body into thinking it is time to get out of bed.
2. Exercise. Put something physical right at the start of your morning. In the summer, I did a quick morning run and found it helpful in shaking off any sleepiness. Considering the outside temperature hovers around -30 C, I’ve stuck to doing a few pushups in my room. The exercise gets your heart pumping and snaps you out of a groggy state.
3. The 10-Minute Rule. If you want to stick with a consistent wake-up time, practice the ten-minute rule. This means you commit to staying awake for at least the next ten minutes. Once you get over that initial period, the temptation to go back to bed is usually gone.
4. Active Work. Start your day with work that actively uses your mind. Creative activities like writing, drawing, programming or designing work better than passive activities like reading. By focusing your mind early you can stay focused and brush off any unwanted drowsiness.
5. Don’t Skip Breakfast. Wake up early enough to get something to eat. Skipping meals throw your metabolism out of balance, causing you to gain fat and lose energy. Skipping breakfast also means your blood sugar will be low in the morning and energy levels down.
6. Commit to a Sleep Schedule. The obvious solution to combat sleepiness is to get more rest at night. Carrying a sleep debt throughout the week with the hopes of paying it off on the weekend is a bad strategy. Instead, compress your work into the morning hours so you can get the 6-8 hours you need each night.
7. Turn Up the Volume. I’ve found listening to music or audio books helpful in keeping myself awake during the morning. Best of all, if you put on an audio book from your favourite speaker, you can get some encouragement to start your day.

This is the plan that I am currently following and it is not a one-off opinion this is a similar theme that is echoed around all of the blogs that I have looked at.  I have tried just getting up early as I did throughout last year as I have always like to get up early and do some cycling but throughout that time I always struggled with getting up sometimes sleeping through the alarm.  So this is my plan and I will keep you all posted on how it goes.