A Freedom Timeline

On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the New Americans, and I (as an American) was made forever free of Great Britain’s rule.

On September 22, 1862, the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, and I (as an African-American) was made forever free of slavery.

On August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment was ratified and I (as a woman) was left forever free to cast my vote.

In 1992, I became self-supporting and I (as an adult) made myself forever free of my parents’ rules and priorities. Theoretically, anyway…

January 15, 2005 was my last day of full-time work as an employee. I invested three years into supporting Dan while he was in school full-time, and on that day he started returning the favor with three years of freedom to work from home. Maybe forever. Maybe not.

My Freedom

Much of my freedom was fought for by my forefathers (and foremothers!), but some I had to earn myself. With each additional chunk of independence came the joy of flexibility, the burden of responsibility, and the bittersweet confusing bliss of having choices.

That’s what freedom means to me, just as Sethe said in Beloved: waking up at dawn and deciding what to do with the day.

Not that I wake up that early…9:30′s just as good.

Building Freedom

There are 6 months of my Employment Freedom left and I’m revisiting my strategy on how to remain free. The original plan was to build a business, but the way I had it figured, I was actually building another job.

Now I know that I need to develop/create/manifest/engineer an income machine that will maintain—and maybe even extend—my freedom.

Tricky stuff, that. Because “independent work” only promises freedom from an employer, not freedom from a desk, freedom of movement, freedom from worry, or financial freedom.

Whatever I build, it needs to run for me, not run on me—there’s only so much Crystal to go around. Just as indispensable employees can never be promoted, an indispensable entrepreneur has built their own cage.

Work Freedom

As I see it, truly Independent Workers are queens and kings of passive income streams. They still work, of course, and from what I’ve seen they work hard. There is work freedom, but without a trust fund or a big win lotto ticket, there’s no freedom from work.

But these Independents work on projects for weeks or months, not so much on tasks day after day. And after a project is completed and earning, they don’t need to work as hard or as much, if at all. Nifty, eh?

Above all, true Independent Workers have incomes that aren’t limited by time. Their earning potential is not limited to the hours they can work (quite finite), only the price of their product or service and the number of people they can get to pay for it (also finite, but way more potential).

Going Forward

Starting today BigBrightBulb is going to continue with more focus on Independence: ideas and resources for passive income streams, mobile working, and similar topics. Other stuff will surely pop up from time to time, but the core topics are going to be on getting—and staying—free.

Et tu? When did (or does) your freedom start? What does your freedom look like?

And yes, Jeremy Adam Davis, I am finally reading The 4-Hour Workweek! It’ll likely be this month’s book review…

Yesterday we shared our kid dreams of what we would work at when we grew up, and got a peek at the totally wicked cool kids you all were! Every comment made me smile or giggle or wonder in awe at your clever, imaginative, and daring younger selves. Y’all haven’t changed a bit!

My Big Dream

I could kick/kiss Bob from the Writing Journey for his Dream Meme. It’s a fantastic goal-setting exercise because: 1) by being specific we’re compelled to perceive our dreams as doable, and 2) by posting them we’re accountable to follow through. Darn/Thank you, Bob!

And You?

Straight from Bob—

The rules are simple:

• Write a short paragraph describing your dream. What is it that you want to accomplish? Your dream doesn’t have to be related to your blog, though it can be. It can be anything – what you dream for your family, your career or anything else you want out of life.
• Identify three tangible goals you can accomplish in the next year that will bring you closer to fulfilling that goal.
• Describe one action – just one – that you will take, today, to work toward your goals.
• Link back to this post, if you please.
• Feel free to post a link in the comments back to your post.

Straight from me—

Dream big

Make it real

Write it down

Post it up

Email me the link at crystal ayt bigbrightbulb dawt com and I’ll add your dream to the Pot below.

Pot O’ Dreams

Brett Legree at 6 Weeks: field of dreams – the dream meme.

Steph at In Other Words: Whatever You Wish For You Keep

Wendi Kelly at Life’s Little Inspirations: The Addiction of Conforming

Pamela Weir at Weir’d Marketing: My Own Writing Journey – The Dream Meme

Jeremy Adam Davis at Jeremy Adam Davis: My Dream Is…

Oh, And Another Thing…

The curse/blessing of reading tweets and articles and posts and essays written by people who are living their dreams and improving their lives and building their spirits and overcoming their fears and seeking their ideal worklife is—

You get restless and impatient and intolerant
with your own flawed and imperfect and incomplete bits.

At least, that’s what’s happened to me.

And when I think on who’s to blame/thank: Bob, Brett, Chris, Clay, Jan, Jeremy, Kelly, Kyle, Naomi, Pamela, Shawn, Sterling, and Wendy immediately come to mind.

Y’all’s words just will not let me settle. Thank you so much!

You are the coolest folks I’ve never seen.

When you want to change your life:
read what these people say, and
think and act on how you feel

Do you remember the dreams you had when you were a kid?

Not the “ride a purple unicorn to Mars and live among the Little Red Men” dreams (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I mean the dreams about what you’d work at when you grew up…or at least, when you got older

I’ve been thinking about my early ideas of what I wanted to do and my most recent ideas for a worklife, too.

If I show you mine, will you show me yours?

Here’s what I wanted to do for work as a 7 or 8 year old up to a (somewhat) wiser woman of almost 40, in order of occurrence, not preference—

I Wanted To Be:

• Wonder Woman
  Because she kicked everyone’s ass and her hair still looked good after.
• Oh Mighty Isis
  Because she kicked everyone’s ass with stuff like the weather AND her hair still looked good after.
• A Monkee
  Because they got to monkey around, and they’re too busy singing to put anybody down.
• A Librarian
  Because libraries are quiet places where people get smarter by the page.
• The Next Great Architect
  Because my father said librarians don’t make any money, and this was the only way I’d get rich using my drawing skills, because artists don’t make any money either.
• A College Student
  Because going to school to become an architect was looking to be far more fun than actually being one.
• The Good Wife
  Yeah. Right.
• Whatevah
  After I blew off the Next Great Architect gig and the Perfect Wife thing didn’t work out, I didn’t much care what I did as long as it paid okay and didn’t require me to think much. This was the start of a 10 year lesson in being careful what we wish for.
• Anything To Get Away From These Assholes I Work For And With
  Another important lesson: Never tell the Universe you’d do anything to get/have <fill in the blank>. Never. Do not voice it. Do not even think it vigorously. The Universe has an exceptional sense of humor…or at least, it seems to believe it’s funny.

And Now…

Looking back over all my Dream Jobs, as rough as some of those middle bits were, the worst were the last two when I gave up on trying for what I loved and settled for whatever I didn’t hate.

When it comes to choosing a career or a business or a pet or a partner or a car or even what to eat for take out, we need to be specific.

The “Anything but X or Y” strategy will fail us 99.9% of the time because there’s a motherlode of undesirable and unsatisfying careers, businesses, relationships, cars, and meals out there that are neither X nor Y.

Be specific about what you want.

Be specific. Even if it means having to live with the consequences of a bad call. And, of course, it absolutely does mean exactly that, but I’m hear to tell ya that there are worse things.

With that in mind, I’m going to address Bob’s Dream Meme in the next post. It’s an excellent call to action about being specific. It’s a compelling exercise because it asks for specifics. And I’ve been avoiding it because it expects specifics. And I’m dreading it because…?

So Wednesday is for specifics, but…

Today Is For Dreaming

What did you dream of being when you were a kid?

What do you dream of being now?

Lemme know down below.

Image credit: Palto

A friend or lover or partner or spouse who believes in you is a precious thing. A beautiful thing. A dangerous thing.

Precious and beautiful because they know and support your dreams and plans and hopes for your future. And they’re dangerous for the exact same fricking reasons. Here’s the story—

Last week I had lunch with a Precious Yet Dangerous Friend, and she spent a good bit of time watering the seeds of my business doubts. I nursed them over the weekend and the Doubt Harvest came in on Monday.

I woke up in pieces. I didn’t know what to do next or what I would be doing it for. I didn’t believe what I was working for would ever come to be. I asked myself who the hell I thought I was, to think that I could accomplish these things. I wondered what the hell I could have been thinking when I decided to do all this.

My Precious Yet Dangerous Friend suggested a job where predictable actions would yield predictable results and predictable income. We’ve been friends for years and she knows how important my business is to me. I’ve always trusted her counsel because she’s always had my best interests in mind. I considered getting a “real” job.

And that’s when I knew I had lost my damned mind.

I shouldn’t say I lost my mind. Everything was in my head, it was my heart that was lost. I’d lost heart in my business-to-be. Entirely.

Now, all kinds of people say you shouldn’t look outside yourself for validation. That’s bullshit. They must not know who to look to.

When my inner Negative Nelly bears down hard on my dreams and hopes and plans, I gotta have other people rally against my worst enemy: Myself.

So here’s my new reassembly process and the folks who helped. Maybe it (and they) can help you sometime—

Say: Can And Will

Weeks ago Brett sent an encouraging tweet about following through on a dream. He wrote, “You can do this. You can and will.” It’s a simple sentence full of power, rich with promise, and handy in times of need. When I thought, “I can’t do this”, my next thought was: “Yeah, you can. And you will.”

I can and will do it.

Ask: Who Do You Think You Are?

Many moons ago my business coach had me list everything I could offer the world: my skills, interests, and experience along with my knowledge, values, and ideas. A wonderful task. Now when I forget what I can (and will) do, or what I was born to and born for, I can read all about who I think I am.

I know who I am.

Remember How Far You’ve Come

On Tuesday, a graphic designer friend and I talked for hours about how strategizing online income streams is just like coaching football (seriously, it is). And when I recalled we’d known each other for 20 years, I realized that I’m not at all the person I was then. I’m not even the same person as when we talked last month.

I grow every day.

Honor The Winds of Change

Buddhism’s First Noble Truth can be translated as “Nothing is permanent” or similarly “Everything changes”. Success is not permanent, but then neither is failure. A bad day seems to last forever, but the sun will surely set on it and rise on a new and different day.

Change is always on the way.

Befriend Doubt

Doubt sucks. But it can nudge us to affirm our choices, tread gently, or change direction. In response to our own and others’ doubts we might uncover a new angle, reinforce a sagging concept, or transform an idea from half-baked to well done. Good stuff came out of standing up for my Self against her (and my) doubts.

Doubt is a good thing.

Seek The True Believers

My Precious Yet Dangerous Friend got laid off last week. Her sudden, intense need to create predictability for my “job” is likely a response to the shakiness of her own. Damn good thing I know where to find people who, like me, are betting their lives on the road-less-traveled.

Others believe as I do.

Big thanks to:

• Clay Collins for taking chances and sharing his life with us.
• Tonya R. Taylor for synergizing and saying that I’m her “shero”.
• Pamela Weir for asking “When are you starting your own mastermind group?” and believing there’s an easy answer.

Reimagine The Dream

On Monday Bob originated the Dream Meme to inspire thinking and writing about—and committing to—our highest hopes. Perfect timing! I revisited what I wanted, how I was going to get there, and what I can do today to make it real. I should make a vision board to keep the Dream in sight…

I Dream with open eyes.

Embrace The Uncertain Future

On the day of the Doubt Harvest, on the cusp of sleep, I remembered Pema Chodron said to approach the unknown as “thrilling instead of threat.” I set my mind to dream of wondrous possibilities instead of unforeseen dangers. I’ll be doing that every night.

Uncertainty thrills me.

Continue With Resolve

And today’s a new day. I don’t remember my dreams, but I feel like I’ve got it together. I have new tasks and projects, things to catch up on, and plans to rethink. Today’s a new day and there’s plenty to do.

What can (and will) I get done today?

Et tu? How do you put yourself back together when some reassembly is required? Who can you count on to help?

Image credit: DNY59

When I introduced my strategic collaboration consulting idea earlier this week, anything could have happened in the comments area. Thankfully, I got the same encouraging and helpful feedback BBB commenters give all the business bits that get posted here. And as always, I appreciate every word of it!

We had a good giggle about the alleged cleverness of my 140-character microconsulting service—which inspired yesterday’s Super Genius post—but the larger discussion ignored the nature of my services, and even the technology I’ll use to deliver them. Instead, we bantered about how much I wasn’t charging for it.

Both Chris Guillebeau and Shawn Christenson commented that my proposed $65 per one-hour session was too low. Their li’l duet harmonized with a chorus of offline voices including, and especially, my cheerleading whip-cracking business coach Christine.

This week has seen a lot of asking, listening, and reminiscing on the Consulting Rate Tango, which is sorta like the Annual Salary Boogie . The conversations were spun with anecdotes and recollections…some funny, some not-so-funny.

In no particular order, here are some snippets on the hazards of assigning a monetary value to precious intangibles: our skills and our time. Names have been changed to protect privacy, of course:

Anecdotes

Shena was referred to an organization by a friend who had been invited to bid on their project, but was unable to schedule it in. The organization welcomed Shena’s bid, and she offered her well-qualified self at the hourly rate she knew her friend would have charged. The organization balked at the price and offered her 25% less than what she asked. She accepted their reduction with good grace, suppressing a victorious cheer. What they were willing to pay was three times the hourly rate she’d charged her most recent client!

A short email from Stephanie: “Thought you’d be interested to hear that after laboring for 3 days over what I should charge that client, I finally, about 15 minutes ago, emailed my numbers to her (which were higher than what my head was saying and slightly lower than what my gut was saying) and literally within one minute, she’d written back to say, ‘Sounds good. We don’t need a new contract. Let me know when you want more money.’ Guess I coulda asked for more! All’s good.”

Darlene found the online job board that listed the new position at her small company. She was stunned by its $75,000 starting salary. The job description was a match to hers, except for an additional year of experience and a premiere IT certification. She’s studying like a woman-on-fire for those exams, because a $750 investment in testing fees has a potential ROI of $20,000 per year. Of course, she printed the job notice to hand to her boss with her exam results, just to make sure they’re on the same page.

Robin’s consulting rate sheet has two columns: a New York market price column for the North Atlantic states, and a much discounted rate column for the South. Clients in both regions are content with her rates, and so is she.

Recollections

Many years ago, Andrea and I argued bitterly on pricing ethics. The story: Her non-mutual friend charged a company $10,000 for an employee survey database consisting of one table, one form, and a handful of reports—it took the guy less than two days to assemble it. The client was delighted with their overpriced deliverable, Andrea was amused at her friend’s cleverness (and the company’s ignorance), and I was appalled by the whole damned thing.

I once undervalued (and underbid) a database/website project so badly that by the end, I made far less than the US minimum hourly wage. That was an awful feeling. But what soured me on future project work, maybe for all time, was overhearing the contractor billed the client for at least three times my foolishly low subcontractor’s bid…and thereby got a big fat lion’s share of the cash. It was my own doing, there’s no one else to blame. But of course, I was appalled by the whole damned thing!

Having shared those, here a quote from the Greek historian, Herodotus—
It is better to be envied, than to be pitied.

I called a freelance writer for a quote on some copy. He offered me a reasonable price with a 25% discount if I promised not to be a pain in the ass. I paid him full price, saying there was no way I’d forfeit my PITA rights for $30. Sure, I could’ve taken the discount, but I value his time and help more than that.

Back when I regularly visited a salon, the posted price to tame my mop was $45, but I always paid my stylist $60. The shampoo staff expected a $2 tip, but I always gave them $5. Then, like now, I didn’t have money to throw away…but my hair works my nerves, y’all. What those professionals can do in 3 hours with a smile takes me 8 hours of pained sighs. I’m exhausted and snarky when I’m finally done. Their help is worth more than they ask for, so I give them what it’s worth to me.

Jonah said it’s impossible for me to value my own knowledge effectively. He says what I think my knowledge is worth is irrelevant. He says to consider two things only: 1) How valuable is my knowledge/expertise to someone who doesn’t have it and needs it?, and 2) How much are they willing and able to pay for it? He says it’s too easy to take my skills for granted and undervalue them, simply and specifically because they’re mine.

Takeaways

These stories have bits worth simmering on when considering the true monetary value of our time. Here’s a summary:

• Price your value by the market, not your rate/salary history.
• Price your value by your client’s locale, not your own.
• Get feedback on your value from people that you trust. You may not know best…or most.
• Words are feedback. Body language is feedback. Facial expressions are feedback. And so is silence.
• Choose a fee/rate you can live with, even if it means losing the gig as the highest bidder.
• Set your rates a bit higher than you think you should. Smarter to offer discounted rates to your budget clients than try to raise your rates for those with deep pockets.

Et tu? Have you got your own stories and rememories? Different takeaways, too? Lemme know down below!

Image credit: djrueb

I love mystery/thriller novels, and I’ve savored virtual stacks of audiobooks while cleaning, driving, and decompressing before bed. It’s fab to “read” one or two books a week while on the run (or inches from sleep), and following the story more closely is an unexpected bonus. My ears tune into small things that my eyes might have skimmed over.

One of these small things is from Tony Hillerman’s Jim Chee novels, where it sounds like the narrator emphasizes the Native American concept of being “born to” and “born for” their parents’ clans when discussing lineage.

My mind has a hard time with this elegant perspective…it’s entirely stuck on my own limited view. To me, born to and born for aren’t about who we’ve come from, they’re about where we’re going to.

I was born to __________

Whether or not we’re born to do something—like dance or sing or fight or write—is arguable, but from where I sit, it surely appears to be so. Even if we’re not born to a career or task or job, many people seem built to do what they do best. How else do we explain child prodigies? Or star athletes? Practice is key to fully developing anyone’s potential, but there also seems to be a predisposition for what these folks so excellently do.

But really, we don’t have to be born as a top-ranked anything to acknowledge, embrace, be fulfilled, and profit from our inclinations. As an example, I am a backstage person. Every Life experience from my childhood through 20 minutes ago has shaped and reinforced my tendency to be a person who works best behind-the-scenes.

I like to discover stuff: research, read, poke about, and pick things apart. I like to make things: scribble, assemble, sew, and knit. I like to make things happen: designing, assimilating, planning, and programming. I’m a packrat of ideas, resources, trivia, and bits of info.

I’m shy in group conversations, but I love to talk one-one-one. A lot. In grade school I got As in everything except Behavior, where I got Cs because I was often caught chatting with my “neighbor”. This post is way late because I spent the entire afternoon brainstorming with friends/clients about shopping carts, marketing funnels, and income streams.

Looking at it from here, my Life has been a winding road that sometimes cuts back over itself: going from one group of friends to another, into and out of a marriage and then into another one many many moons later, from architecture to databases to instructional design to internet programming, from admin jobs to independent contracting to technical jobs and now (happily, thankfully, blessedly) this.

I’ve walked a crooked path for 39 years, and somehow arrived in my perfect place with everything I need to keep steppin’.

What was I born to do, if not what I’m doing right now?

He was born for __________

In this context, maybe there is little difference in being born to do something, and being born for a specific purpose. Either way, I know a number of folks whose paths have twisted a good bit. Like me, they got to where they are despite—or because of—the detours, bypasses, and rest stops of their Lives.

For instance, my friend Scott Hummel is a wonderful designer, and always has been. It’s been 10 years since I’ve seen him, but in our college days (and after) he always had a sketchbook near-to-hand, filled with portraits of the people and objects he witnessed while moving around town.

Scott’s habitats were always artsy in the best way. Nothing that screamed “Artist!”, just elegant and simple, full of brightniftybeautiful mementos and stones and pots and whatnots that you were free to pick up and explore. He’s the son of an art teacher. His young ones are already showing clear signs of his family’s creative legacy. He was born for a creative life, and it is born from him.

His path took him away from architecture to some thoroughly non-design related major, then continued with an education and a career in service learning, all while playing and coaching football. I remember Scott saying he was “an East Coast guy”, that his career with college students was it, and that his sketching, pottery classes, and other artful hobbies were enough to satisfy him.

And then he dropped everything, moved to San Francisco, and went back to school for photography and sculpting. And then he was an art director and produced catalogs. And now he designs logos and websites and all kinds of good stuff.

I laughed out loud when I first heard about Scott’s change of direction. I knew his creative life would come for him, eventually. He could sideline it for awhile, but there was no way to deny it forever. That said, there’s no doubt his path was perfect for him, however crooked. As he puts it—

Now…I get to be an artist, an architect, a collaborator, and a community builder. I am able to weave my passion for design with my ability to translate the stories and dreams of others into forms that communicate each client’s unique offerings to the world. I have found my calling.

What was he born for, if not for the purpose he serves right now?

You were born to/born for ________

There are dozens of stories like ours, from Scott’s business coach—who started as a therapist, went on to counsel families with family businesses, and now also coaches solo shops (like his)—to his friend who was a chaplain, and then an artist, and is now a web design project manager. Some roads are crooked-er than others, but I’m finding that very few walk a straight path.

What were you born to and born for,
if not what you’re doing right now?

If you’re not sure, maybe your path—however crooked—can tell you.

Image credit: equality

Many moons ago, when I thought horror novels were fun, a fiendish book left me with mental images I’d rather forget, and a line that I’d rather not: “We waste no part of the animal.”

Bringing that up in a business context may seem a little off, but “waste no part” is right in line with this week’s reflections about what I’ve brought forward from design school, and last week’s post on my leaving grad school to walk a different road. It may mean something to you, too.

It’s relevant because I’m not an architect, and I’m never going to be. But I can–and do—take scraps from my old Life as an architecture student and put them to good use in my new(er) Lives of blogging and databases and corporate reporting and design.

My ex-stepfather (I’ve since fired him) used to grump that his money and my time were wasted on my degree if I wasn’t going to be an architect. But from this week’s posts, and more besides, it’s come clear I’m wasting little of that particular animal.

…

As I start my journey on this new road, I’m checking my pack and pockets for all the positive remnants from my previous Lives: my prize for best sewing in Home Ec in the 7th grade, wanting to be a librarian in the 8th, drafting and shop classes in high school, the first story I ever wrote, my first online chat, all the website and database projects, what I hated about the jobs I loved and what I loved about the jobs I hated. And praise for my reading voice and my analytical skills and the elegance of a design, and how I bring understanding to people, and that I’m a better tutor than teacher.

Sure. I could make a business out of my most highest earning, my best certified, and my most tenured skills. But if I felt passionate about any of those things, I’d still be doing them. More than that, recommitting myself to any combination of those would mean wasting the other things that I know.

And so I’m wondering

How much better will it be then, to collect and examine what some would consider the table scraps of my Life? How much better will it be to ignore my resume and other labor logs (for now) to rediscover what I enjoyed, what I originally planned to do, and of course, what I dreamed most of doing?

Doesn’t it make sense really, to sift through my skills and interests as a prereq to imagineering the thing(s) I Can And Will do next? How much better is it to pick off the bones of my Life with care…to be sure I’m not wasting any part?

…

A year’s wage worth of student loans is a five-digit testimony to my quest for more knowledge, more exposure, and more skills because I’ve never felt qualified enough to be a professional anything, though everyone else tells me otherwise. Everyone.

What a silly rabbit I’ve been.

How much better will it be for me to abandon having more and focus instead on making the most of what I have?

…

How much better would it be for you then, if you did the same?

Et tu?

Are you sure you’ve got all the gigs, billable hours, and referrals you’re gonna get out of your current clients? You already know that extending an old client relationship is cheaper and faster and easier than developing a new one. Waste no part.

Are you sure you’ve repurposed your existing content in every way? Have you distilled it to a multi-part email course? Expanded it into a weekend workshop? Has it been re-presented as a video? Audiobook? EBook? Has it been translated into English, French, Spanish, German, Hindi, Chinese, Thai, and Tagalog? Don’t develop new content until everything’s been done with what you have. Waste no part.

Are you sure you’re sick of your job/career? Have you tried integrating your personal interests into it? Could you improve your relationship with your peers, your colleagues, your boss? Have you tried teaching on the side? Have you tried teaching inside? Do you really hate it, or are you just bored with it? Don’t abandon your career until you’ve given everything you can, and until you’ve taken everything you can use. Waste no part.

Waste not, want not

Sprint qualifier—Image credit: Dave Haygarth

Yesterday’s zesty comments on brainstorming have encouraged me to continue reminiscing about my design school days. Anything I still remember after 15-20 years is worth massaging into something we can all use now.

What stands out for me today is the Virginia Society’s weekend charette. As I Remember It (AIRI), the annual event was always exciting, thrilling, exhausting, and disappointing. That last was my nature at the time (unfortunately), and the first three were the nature of the game.

The design guidelines and merciless countdown would have hundreds of students cranking out work all weekend—some without any sleep—and I’m still amazed at what we could produce in 63 hours. Looking back on it, what may be useful to us now is how I learned to manage the task, the ways we executed our solutions, and the competitive community spirit at its best.

So Many Words, Too Little Time

AIRI, we would gather at 5pm on Friday to receive a single sheet with the competition theme, design limitations, deadline, and submission format. The deadline and submission format were always the same—AIRI 8am Monday morning, one 30″ x 40″ board for the final presentation—but the theme and limitations were always very different.

For first year students cutting their teeth on assignments like Egger’s 100 Squares or K. C. Arceneaux’s Organize Three Colors On A Page, real-life issues like people and materials were tough. For older students who were hip deep in year-long projects, the short-lived competition could be a welcome relief or an irritating distraction. What everyone needed was focus, and my then-friend Hunter Pittman had THE answer to limiting the mind to what mattered: a black Sharpie.

Hunter taught me to read through the design problem with deliberate care and savor every word from stage-setting paragraphs like—

“The urban landscape has been erased by a hurricane. The supporting utilities remain, but every house is gone and the 1,546 residents wander…”

to the details of a challenge like—

“Your task is to design a core home plan that can extend or contract to suit the many familial configurations. Consider the recurring storms while ensuring the building materials and design meet state code…”

and then go back through the document with my mighty Sharpie and methodically black out every word I didn’t need.

Because while all of the information was useful and most of it was valuable, little of the text was significant and only a few bits were critical. And you know how Sharpie’s are…once a word, sentence, or paragraph was marked through, it was gone.

And this was ideal because I only had time for essentials. The design challenges were often worthy of a long-term project, but the key to managing the task within the scant allotted time was to obliterate anything that wasn’t necessary for the finished design. And yes, this was highly subjective.

Since then, I’ve found Hunter’s process of darkly eliminating non-essentials can be far more effective than brightly highlighting what’s important. It’s a handy mental trick for whittling down a task list, but when faced with a complex contract—or even my own project plans—I make a copy of the document and bust out my marker, because only Hunter’s original method will do.

Think Before, Think Now, Think Later…Or Never?

After receiving the challenge, it was time to start working…or was it? For some, it was best to start the project before the project started. For others, the solution came before they knew the problem. Here are the ways we approached the solution phase of the competition, and my take on some of them:

The Production Prep Method
If you knew how you were going to produce your work, you could get the jump on the project by preparing your board in advance. This was especially handy for students whose medium required prep work, like watercolorists. These folks didn’t spend precious charette time mulling over how they were going to present their solution, but their early commitment made it hard to change gears if the theme nudged them toward a different medium.

The Concept Prep Method
Similar to my suggestion for Banner Boy, if you preferred to spend your charette time on production and not conception, then it made sense to prepare your design concept in advance. Students would walk into the challenge armed with “light vs. dark” or “materials in their rawest form” or “blue”—anything they had simmered on for a day or two. By Friday, the design concept was an old friend that could ease their approach. The good news was they had much of the solution going in, the bad news was a concept too far removed from the theme meant that one of the two would need to be distorted or abandoned.

The Wait And See Method (WASM)
A majority of the participants didn’t do any prepwork, choosing to spin into action when the challenge was released. Some folks went out for burgers and beer to hash it over, some went straight to their desks, some started working in their sketchbooks right where they stood or sat. But even this standard method had many schools of thought:

—Quick Think, Long Work worked for people willing to commit most of their solution to excellent execution. They would have their idea resolved by Friday night and spend the whole weekend painting, drawing, or rendering. If their solution was weak, winning would depend almost entirely on their strong presentation, and sometimes that was enough.

—Long Think, Quick Work was for the procrastinators and the ponderers. While the procrastinators spent the greater part of the weekend hmming and hawing and gnashing their teeth, the ponderers were alternately sketching and scribbling and pacing the floor. Either way, executing their idea was fast work, and sometimes the brilliance of an idea was lost in a hurried presentation…but not always.

—Middle Of The Road was the balanced system, where you brainstormed Friday night into Saturday afternoon, brought things into focus by dinner on Saturday, and executed the design presentation into the wee hours on Monday.

The Already Done Method
No kidding, a few people prepared an entire project board in advance and submitted it as the response, whether it suited the design problem or not. Maybe they would leave enough room in their solution for customization, but maybe not. A one-size-fits-all (or fits none) answer to whatever question was asked. I always thought this way was a lame cheat.

The My-Way-Or-The-Highway Method
And there were always a few students who wouldn’t participate in the competition if they considered the design challenge unworthy. I used to think it was bold and daring to be so diametrical. Looking back, I think those folks were snarky wimps. Their way or no way? What kind of way is that to approach anything?

So there were lots of ways to work within the limitations or without them, including finishing early so you could enjoy watching everyone else sweat! And although I can’t remember a single one of the design problems or my solutions, I do remember the freefall failure of winging it [my continued regrets, Ton] and doing my best when I struggled comfortably with something I already had in mind.

For all the different methods, we had these things in common: 1) We all worked on the same problem, 2) We all had the same amount of time, 3) We all had the same chance at winning.

My Rival, My Comrade

A notable thing about the competition is that all the Virginia architectural design schools participated. To be fair, the responsibility of creating the design problems fell to each school’s faculty on a rotation…so most years we Virginia Tech students imaginated offbeat solutions to the painfully practical design challenges from Hampton and UVA, and once per cycle the other schools suffered from the mind-melting cryptic sh!t we’d been dealing with since the crib. It was so very fab!

And there were two levels to the competition: intraschool and interschool. The cream of our particular crop moved on to be juried at the state level among the very best from the other schools. So while we spent the entire weekend trying to outdo each other, after our faculty jury made their selections, we all rooted for whoever went on to represent our school.

I still do that in a way, and it seems I’m not the only one. A fellow blogger recently emailed me congrats on my improved Alexa ranking…which he’d apparently been watching. This tickled me because I pace this blog’s growth by his (and other’s) Technorati ranking, and had Twittered him last month about his notable gain there. I don’t care at all about “winning”, but I care quite a bit about keeping up with my pack. A fellow blogger’s advance isn’t a threat to me, nor mine to him. Any win is a win for the group, and that’s as it should be.

What’s In My Pocket

So here’s what I carry with me from these intense competitions after 20 years:

• Tomorrow morning I’ll wish I had slept 8 hours tonight!
• It doesn’t matter how I prepare, so long as I’m prepared
• Friendly competition is the best competition
• Less resources (time, money, etc.) means more managing my (and my client’s) expectations, and most of all

I can do a helluvalot in very little time when I can set, and maintain, my focus

With that last in mind, chew on this…

If you were promised two consecutive, uninterrupted days:

• What could you do for your business?
• What could you do for yourself?
• How would you prepare for that sacred time? and
• How can you make some version of an intensely focused time block happen for you?

252 of 2,601 squares—Image credit: striatic

The Backstory

Back in 1987—before CDs, iPods, the Internet, and eBay—I was a first year student in Virginia Tech’s architecture program. The program’s first phase was the Foundation, where they stret-t-t-t-t-tched our mind with design possibilities. And my first professor, Gene Egger, was max fabulous at making design possibilities happen.

The man wouldn’t let us use color for three months—he said we had earn it. No fasteners or glue for model building, either. From Labor Day to Thanksgiving, our world was pencil and black pens, white poster board, white paper, and clever assembly.

And so he kept us focused on the fundamentals of making things—not making things pretty—and we learned to handle materials the way they wanted to be handled. His offbeat rules had an amazing way of teaching us things we didn’t appreciate until much later.

Oddly enough, his lessons have helped me throughout my many detours, like developing websites and building databases. But the best of Egger’s lessons might be the most widely applicable: his 10% rule.

Only 10% of what you create is going to be worth looking at. So you better create a lot of things. Don’t make only 10 things and risk having only 1 thing to show. Make a hundred so you can choose your best from 10.

As you read on, think on how you can use this method to brainstorm your next product, a new service offering, that client’s logo, or a new tagline [Go GirlPie!].

The Assignment

After his proclamation (he never spoke, he always proclaimed), Egger sent us back to our desks to:

Draw 10 squares
We could draw them however we liked, so long as we didn’t draw a typical 4-sided box, they were all different, and we didn’t take too much time. So I lightly penciled 10 1-inch squares on a sheet of paper and got to work filling them with inked dots, scribbles, smudges, fingerprints, whatever.

A bit later he called us back to the meeting room to display our collection of mini-masterpieces. Once they were hanging, he walked the wall and did his usual round of harrumph-correct-encourage-tease-taunt. Then he had us collect them, and

Choose one square we liked, and make 10 more squares just like it…but not exactly like it
The drawing style or technique we used for our favored square was now a theme, and I found it tricky—but satisfying—to repeat it 10 times without duplicating it.

Soon after, Egger rounded us up again to show off the new families of squares. He was content with the results, and congratulated us on our cleverness, our variety, and our stamina. And then he told us to

Go make 100 of them
As they say in the South, we liked to’ve died. Imagine the sound of 24 jaws hitting 24 desks and 1 professor cackling and rubbing his 2 hands together. He was the best kind of wicked.

And so I spent the rest of the morning drafting a faint 10 x 10 grid and a long night thoughtfully crafting 100 different inked squares.

And—as you’ve already guessed—Egger was right.

The Results

Most of the 100 squares were OK
But just okay. Not thought-provoking, not well-designed, not well-drawn. Just meh.

Some of the 100 squares were really nifty
Who knows…maybe I jumped to a new string of ideas, or worked my way up to a good’un, or just got out of my own way. But some of them were interesting to look at. It seemed that if you looked long and hard enough, you’d find a whole world in there.

A few of the 100 squares were amazing
After drawing dozens of them, I got good at it. My drawing technique strengthened and the theme solidified. I was drawing a lot less and creating a lot more. And every so often, I’d make a square that shimmered with craftsmanship.

The Takeaway

A fabulous way to drag the best bits from all the corners of your mind or all the people in your workgroup: Find 100 ways.

You don’t need a new product idea. You need 100.

You don’t need a new service offering. You need 100.

You don’t need a logo idea for a client. You need 100.

And GirlPie had 65 super-yum taglines for Naomi, but when it’s your turn to make a tagline, you need 100.

You need 100 of whatever you’re creating so you can feel free to create stuff that sucks. Sitting there trying to invent one great-and-most-perfect thing can drain your creative juices and tie your thinking cap in knots.

It’s far better to plan for 100 so you can look at the first six (that might be complete crap) and know your plan includes 94 more opportunities to get it right.

It’s also easier, funner, and effective-er to design generously, to lavishly and carelessly cover a cocktail napkin/legal pad/whiteboard/moleskine with miles of potential suckage, knowing the odds are in your favor that you’ll find 10 well-crafted options in the end. And if you’re having a really good day, you’ll hold 1 that’s purely brilliant.

But most of all it’s important to do any amount of what you want to get done. Doing however much you can manage is better than doing nothing at all because—

What’s 10% of nothing?

Et tu? What do you think? Is creating 100 things excessive, utter brilliance, or somewhere in between?

Image credit: cc Crystl (not me!)

It’s still surprising when Life tosses me an opportunity for a rethink (but at least I’ve stopped ducking or dropping them, eh?). Now, I see them coming out of the corner of my eye and field them easily, being sure to keep my eyes and mind wide open for what I know comes next— <switching metaphors> Signs pointing in a new direction.

Blessed are the Sign-makers

It’s no good sharing with y’all what’s on the signs. They’re meaningless without the context of my entire Life-to-date. But I do want to share my thanks to my Sign-makers: Becky, James Hipkin, Jeremy, Kelly, Shawn, Sterling, Wendi, and others—and especially Brett—for what they’ve written. In the comments here, in Twitter, and on their own blogs, their words have been bright humongo signs with glitter and bells stuck on. Thankfully, they all point in the same direction

The right road turned wrong

Which is all to say, I’m taking the next two semesters off my Master’s program at Capella University and don’t intend to return. The University Road isn’t “wrong” of course, just wrong for me. And while it used to be right for me, it’s surely the wrong road now. There’s no call to turn back, though. I needed the classes I’ve taken and I’m better off for having taken them. But I’m not continuing down the paved and finely landscaped University Road to the Land of Advanced Degrees. Metaphors aside, Capella hasn’t changed, but a recent rethink revealed that my goals have changed considerably, and so have my needs and my situation—plenty enough reason to pause my progress, think things over, and make a new plan. I went back to school for all the things I wasn’t getting from my long habit of trial-by-fire learning. As you can imagine, that was great for getting me through the task at hand, but it left my work open to unanticipated, and therefore unresearched, issues and problems. I went back to school for four things a university environment promises that my self-teaching obviously didn’t deliver—theory, structure, community, and credibility. And Capella keeps the promise: 1) They select the most awesome textbooks, 2) the course syllabus is always solid, thorough, and challenging, 3) the online school environment encourages collaboration, and 4) in the end they give 3rd party proof that I know what I’m doing in my specific, chosen arena. Except, like Dan pointed out recently, Capella is a career-oriented school and I don’t have a career path anymore. So while the textbooks and structure still work, the community and credibility areas are lacking for me. The other learners all have “real” jobs and busy lives, and while courseroom interactions fit into their schedules, casual exchanges outside of class do not. And for me, a degree is flimsy credibility at best. It’s a great piece of paper for securing a promotion, ensuring a raise, or getting to the next level of education…but it ain’t a portfolio, it ain’t a track record of success, and it ain’t social proof. Collaboration without community. Credibility without street cred. Clear signs for change. So I’ve worked out a way that better suits my situation, my goals, my needs and ME, while still getting the education I want. It will be just as challenging, far more fun, probably just as effective, and cost a helluvalot less.

The wrong road, made right

There is, and was, nothing wrong with being self-taught. But I wasn’t going about it the right way. My old task-based knowledge-as-needed approach left icky gaps, but an approach reflective of formal education will do me just fine:

• Theory University bookstores, Amazon reviews, and expert advice will help me select the best textbooks for my topics. Ideally, the texts will provide comprehensive background on the topic, a detailed glossary, and point to additional free resources online.
• Structure There are plenty of well-organized guides with nibble-sized instruction and practical examples, such as the “…In 24 Hours” series. The ideal text will take me step-by-step through projects where I can easily manage my progress, pick up theory along the way, and validate my work as I go.
• Community I’ve met more helpful, encouraging, community-minded people in 2 months on Twitter than in all my years at Capella (I got a grad certificate in Instructional Design for Online Learning before trying a full Masters). Also, there are topical forums full of experts (certified and otherwise) who have made a personal commitment to welcoming folks and answering their questions. I’ll be on my own, but never alone.
• Credibility After reading on social proof for bloggers [thanks @ittybiz!], I knew I had to make a change. A degree isn’t worth as much in the blogosphere as rank and ratings. The clincher was seeing how Alexandria Brown gathered her experience, success, and media proof for cred. A degree was mission-critical when I was trying to get out of my cubicle and into an office, but now I’m making a place for myself online. No one will see me study, but there will be plenty of proof that I have.

Where ya goin’?

But really, this isn’t about me. It’s about all of us heeding the resistance we tip our hand to when we delay, hesitate, waffle, and procrastinate. This is about taking a moment to STOP and rethink our journey before we take even one more step. This is very much about taking the “Last Exit Before Toll” ramp. This is very, very much about not approaching an armed checkpoint without the proper papers. But most of all, this is about looking for—and paying attention to—the many signs that tell us: 1) we’re on the wrong road, and 2) where we can find the right one. Sometimes I stop to find I just need different company for the journey. Other times it’s better shoes! This time, I needed a different map.

Et tu? Are you on the right road? How do you know?