Priorities, Scheduling, Running, Etc.

I've been under tons of stress for, well, six years now. Every year, month, week and day seems to be more urgent and more stressful than the last. I've had blog explosions. Things have gotten a lot worse since then but I don't want to burden my friends and family too much with my whining.

I've been in a rut for a few months. It's driving me nuts. When I saw the Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule piece I almost cried (note: manly tears.) As the Maker of way too many things who's trying to Manage the business development of those made things I find myself caught in the perfect storm between these two types of time management.

When you're operating on the maker's schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in.

With both pingFit and dNeero I've been working towards what I see as critical Maker's milestones. With pingFit it's a private labeling capability and general 2.0-ness. With dNeero it's an embed widget supporting video, audio and better controls. Each has been a many month Making process. Each is critical to the product and I can't move the business side forward without them.

But the reality of my life is that I can't afford to just Make stuff. I need to promote it, work on sales, tie down partnerships, etc. These are all on the Manager's schedule. Coffee here. Meeting there. Lunch around the corner.

And since I'm not in any sort of position of power I'm completely at the mercy of everybody else. I don't have any employees so the people kind enough to help with things dictate schedule. I beg and plead for meetings with important people and when they agree I must go on their schedule.

At any point in time I've got 15 - 25 feelers out trying to set up meetings and 2 - 3 meetings that are tentatively planned for one of three days (meaning six to nine of my next fourteen days are usually quasi blocked.)

Speculative meetings are terribly costly if you're on the maker's schedule, though. Which puts us in something of a bind. Everyone assumes that, like other investors, we run on the manager's schedule. So they introduce us to someone they think we ought to meet, or send us an email proposing we grab coffee. At this point we have two options, neither of them good: we can meet with them, and lose half a day's work; or we can try to avoid meeting them, and probably offend them.

Part of me needs to play the manager's schedule... grab coffee with anybody and everybody. But there's a high cost for me to do so.

I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meeting commonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning or afternoon. But in addition there's sometimes a cascading effect. If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I'm slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning.

It's been impossible for me to get seriously into the two Making projects that need to be made. For the past two months it's been stop and go, stop and go. Meetings here, there, everywhere. Rescheduling.

Then you layer on maintenance of stuff already made. Critical bug fixes in any of the, what, seven technologies I've Made and operate. Most days start out full of promise and end up a smoking pile of crap.

Which only ups the urgency. I'm broke, no secret. Cars are about to be repossessed (well, mine is, Heather's good.) Collectors call constantly and I feel some idiotic duty to actually answer because I owe them money. So I need to do some consulting to make a little cash now and then. Which adds even more stress to the schedule and prevents me from finding the contiguous days to get my two key projects built.

I try to group meetings on certain days. It always fails.

Today on my run I spent a lot of time with no music just thinking about where I'm at with these things. With life. My runs are always such a great chance to prioritize. To look at the big picture.

I solved a technical architecture issue with pingFit. How to handle a certain situation. It's been on paper sketches for about a week. I've started to build a couple times on half-baked thinking of how to handle the architecture, each time being interrupted and backing out of what I had built. I'm enthusiastic that I'll be able to get over that hurdle and be closer to the goal of launching the private labeling 2.0-ish capabilities soon.

I also spent a bunch of time thinking about the dNeero widget. What I realized is this: it's almost done. Sometimes these things sneak up on me. While I am worried about a couple issues what I saw on today's run is that those things may not be as high a priority as I thought they were. I need to move quickly towards final testing and initial deployment of the widget.

Also made a pretty big decision about the direction of dNeero too. Something that's been rumbling around my gut for about a year now but I wasn't quite ready to pull the trigger. I think I am now. More on that in a couple weeks.

Running is a great time for me and if I ever have a salary I plan on paying myself bonuses based on the mileage I turn. It helps me get a handle on my life. Put things into perspective. Make better decisions.

I can't accomplish my goals until I can get onto the Manager's schedule. Until I can put myself 100000% into sales and business development, fundraising, etc. But I'm held up right now by two features that could probably be completed in a few weeks if I could just get devoted time. So far I've invested many months trying to Make these things happen only to be interrupted daily. Fail.

I should turn off my phone and email, go into a hole, get it done and emerge into 100% sales mode. I'm riding bikes with MetaMarshall next Tuesday. He's an UberSalesman and I'm hoping that it'll motivate me to get into sales mode. I'm actually embarrassed that I was talkin' smack about going into 100% sales mode the last time we rode together. That was about a year ago. I suck.

It's go time. I need to turn all of this Made stuff into real businesses that can be Managed. If I don't I will be homeless and divorced. Losing my kids is not an option. I've got to make it into 100% sales mode.

Add to this stress the exciting new element of perceived heart disease (remember my heart palpitations from a few months ago?) I seem to notice people dying all around me now and am starting to have negative thoughts about the stress I'm putting myself under in an attempt to accomplish business goals. It's not worth it. I want to see my daughters grow up and live their lives. I want to help them along the way. I can't do that if I'm dead.

I always think that just a little more pushing... a little more stress... and thing'll break through and start to get better. Six years and that has yet to happen. I blame myself.

Although lately I no longer blame my ability. I now feel that I have many/most of the skills I need to get the job done. I don't think I've prioritized my time properly. Which I can deal with. That's fixable. Being an idiot isn't fixable.

Of course my fears of heart disease are completely irrational. I was checked out. I'm fit. But stress really is a bad thing for the human body and once I do turn the ship around even a little I need to structure my life for less stress.

That's where I'm at Jack. I'm taking my daughter out for a ride on her new bike. Because this afternoon I have a meeting and I know there's no way I'll be able to dig into my Making between now and then. Instead of banging my head against it like I normally would I'm just gonna declare FAIL and do something that's actually important. This small decision alone is payoff enough for today's thinking.