Managing the Gray – Positive Advice That Everyone Can Use to Succeed

Managing the Gray #38 Transcript
“Idle Well and Book Reviews”
(original post & podcast)

C.C. Chapman: Sure, I’ll try to help you. Hey, it’s C.C. Chapman here at Managing the Gray, episode #38. Getting it right out of the way, if you ever want to call in questions, comments, concerns, any of that stuff, the number is 206-309-4729. I’ll say it again later. I’ll put it in the show notes, but I just want to get that out of the way because everyone’s always saying, “C.C., you forget to say the number.” I apologize.

So, how are you guys doing? I’m really jazzed this morning. Show notes work good for Managing the Gray, but sometimes it’s just better just to have topics. I’ve got all these papers, just a couple of topics today I want to talk about. I’ve got a great call in from Whitney Hoffman, lots of things going on. So, what was really exciting, what I want to talk about today is something I’m watching happen quite a bit. There are new tools coming out everyday. I swear everyday or at least once a week, I’m getting a new invite to some new tool. Last week seem to be a really crazy week. I mean it was insanity. It seems like there was a bunch — I mean MrWong, 8apps, Pownce, Demonoid, Skitch, Stitch? No, Skitch. I’m trying to think what else. It was a crazy week and things are blowing up and people are getting very, very busy trying to stay on top of all these new tools. Now, it’s exciting to try these new tools, but I think what’s key is you’ve got to figure out what works for you and what’s important to you. I mean what are you going to do with these? It ties into the whole social media burnout thing I was talking about and it’s funny because I’ve started changing my opinion a little bit.

One of the things I always talk about is the fact that I think you need to be on every one of these, to at least have a presence so people can find you. Now, I think that’s still true with the social networks, things like the Facebook and the MySpace and whatnot where it’s setting up an account, but now things like Twitter and Pownce and all the copycats that are going to come for those, I’m not so sure that you need to be on all of those. Granted, try them out, figure out what works for you, especially if you’re a company. You need to at least check them out so you understand what you would recommend to a client. “Hey, this is why I think this one is the right one for you.”

I have a Pownce account. I don’t use it very often. I use it every so often. I go out there to look at it, but it’s not what’s being used right now. Twitter seems to be the microblogging tool of choice for me personally and the people that I want to follow and pay attention to. Pownce is out there. It’s still being used and I go in there every so often, but I find I go in there once a day, maybe twice a week. Twitter, I’m in there all the time. I tried them both and I figured out which one I like. Same thing goes with all these other sites. I trashed Facebook left and right, trashed it, just totally trashed it, but what’s interesting is after the initially wave of everybody just having to do stuff, now I’m seeing it started to take shape. I see people leaving groups or people who are joining these massive groups and now everyday I see people who have left groups or they have created groups, very fine tuning what they’re using Facebook for and I think that’s very interesting because I’m watching it and I’m seeing it become a little bit useful. I like the homepage that shows you what your friends are doing. It’s very interesting to see photos and what people are doing. Still, it tells me a little more information I need on things. I’m seeing it for event promotion working very well. We’re doing a Missing Pages movie premiere on Crayonville on Thursday. I know Mark Forman posted something there. So, it takes this Second Life event and makes it way outside of Second Life. It’s pitched as a movie premier. The Second Life location is a secondary aspect of it, which I thought was great, so people who may not even have ever seen Second Life are excited because it’s a movie premier and they get to come to it. The fact that it’s in Second Life is just — it will be a barrier for some, but it will just be a quick barrier for most hopefully and they’ll come in and they’ll take part in it. So, Facebook is working with that.

This 8apps thing, the thing that excites me about 8apps — it’s the number 8, 8apps.com. What excites me about that is I like the collaboration part of it. It’s not really there yet. Somebody called it it’s like part Facebook, part Basecamp, but doesn’t have the project management pieces in it that Basecamp does. What I do like about it is the instant collaboration idea in it. It’s got kind of a neat brainstorming tool like virtual sticky notes page I thought was pretty cool, but guys, it’s brand new. I’m already seeing people trash it, but I’m more of those let’s-wait-and-see, let’s-let-it-evolve-a-little-bit. I don’t even know if it’s officially beta or alpha, whatever it is, but that excites me, a social network where people are working together. 8apps is one of those things where I haven’t given in yet to just let anybody be my friend. I’m only kind of acting with people that I actually want to work on projects with. It’s only got — what is it? Three apps in there now and the fourth one is coming. I’m curious what the other four apps are going to be. It’s an interesting concept and I’m going to keep watch of that space because I think it’s going to be interesting and I’m excited by it.

Now, one of the things I wanted to talk about is I’ve got some giveaways for you today. Thoughtout.biz is a very cool company. They’re mainly known for the PED stands, the PED2, the FlexPEd. What these are, they’re iPod stands, but they’re not just for iPods. What’s cool about them is they are these heavy metal stands. I have one for my iPod, but it expands. I’ve seen people put their Treos in it. Does an iPhone fit in it? I bet you it does. I haven’t tried it because I don’t have an iPhone. Anybody want to give me one? No, I don’t want an iPhone because I don’t want to pay — what I hate about — I won’t rant on the iPhone right now. Thoughtout.biz does a lot of very cool things and one of the neat things they make is a MagStay Pro and when I got the MacBook Pro, Mike sent me over some of them. He said, “Dude, you’re gonna want one of these and I’ll give you a few for your Managing the Gray listeners.” I’ve heard people slam these. What it is, you know how you’ve got the magnetic thing for your MacBook Pro? If you have one of the new Macs, it’s a magnetic power cable. It just pops out. It’s a magnet. So, that way, if someone trips over the cable, it doesn’t pull the whole laptop off the desk, but what I found and it’s funny what this is. It’s just a little plastic contraption that works with your MacBook Pro and what it does is it keeps it in there and in the tagline is “Sometimes, a magnet is not enough,” and I asked myself, “Doesn’t that kind of go against the reason of why the magnet’s there?” He’s like, “Yeah,” but they’ve seen these to be very popular for people who have to leave their laptop on like when it’s rendering. If it’s rendering video or something, the last thing you wanted to do is get unplugged if you leave it overnight or leave it for a few hours. I’ve had that happen where it’s come unplugged and I didn’t know it and the battery started draining on me, so I can understand what these are and I’ve got a few of them, so if you want them.. You can go to Thoughtout.biz and check it out and see what they’re all about, but drop me an email at managingthegray@gmail.com and I’ll give away a few of these. I think I’ve got three or four of them I can give away for you and I’m more than happy to give those away because I love Thoughtout.biz. They do a lot for the community I know for the longest time. They may still be running this. When you bought a PED2 iPod stand, you get to pick a free podsafe CD that they actually bought from the artist. I think that’s great. They’re doing great stuff for the community. I’m more than happy to give these away.

So, hey, one of my favorite women in the world called in and left me an audio comment, so let’s get right over to Whitney Hoffman.

Whitney Hoffman: Hey, C.C. It’s Whitney Hoffman from the LD Podcast. I just read your recent blog post on what it’s like to start working remotely and how it can be difficult sometimes. One of the things that is really interesting, Alex Hillman from We Know HTML around here in Philadelphia has this thing called Independence Hall and he has a bunch of different people even working on different projects sit together at a coffee shop or some other place that they can kind of do this co-working thing where everybody who is doing independent projects can kind of work in one atmosphere and keep themselves on track because sometimes the distractions of home can really lead to a lot of procrastination or just it’s hard to put yourself in that same sort of see-I-am-at-work mode sometimes. So, sometimes going to a different place and sitting down and doing concentrated work for a fixed period of time really works, but maybe some of that kind of co-working environment stuff might be good, get together and try doing things remotely now that you have that new fancy laptop and see how it goes. If you want to learn more, you could look up Alex’s Cream Cheese Sessions after the Jelly Sessions, which I think are very similar in New York City where people get together and do this co-working thing together. It might help everybody out, so just an idea. Take care and I’ll talk to you soon.

C.C. Chapman: So, I think it’s a really neat idea. I’ll find the link and put it in the show notes over at managingthegray.com, but I understand what she’s talking about. Working at home is difficult. You’re by yourself. You don’t have that human interaction. I mean I’m using video tools to talk to my coworkers everyday, but it’s not the same and I think it would be kind of cool to get — I like the concept of all these people who happen to be working on independent projects just happen to get together so they’re in a work environment and they can socialize a little bit. I would love to do one of these out in the MetroWest area. I think it would be very cool, get together in a coffee shop. It would be great to meet some other people. In a cross spectrum, get out of just the podcasting and blogging community, just people working on independent projects, whatever they may be. If anybody’s interested, email me. I’d love to chat about it because I think it would be pretty cool and I would love to get out of the house. God, would I love to get out of the house because it does get to you. One of the neat things is I’m moving in a month and I cannot wait because my office right now is — it is an office, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not cut off from the rest of the house, so it’s got foot traffic and it’s my wife’s office too, so when we move, I actually have my own office with doors on it that shut so I can actually sort of separate that office-home time. Shut the door and just cut off the rest of the world and I’m looking forward to that because I think it will help separate things.

Now, one of the things I want to do here, I like doing book reviews so I do it. I’ve been reading a lot lately. I’ve been trying to unwind and one of the things I think is very important for people is to learn how to unplug and unwind or like I call it, idle well. My dad and I last summer when we went camping, we said, “We idle very well.” What I mean is we would just be lying around the campfire or lying around on the hillside for hours on end, not even reading. We’d read a little bit, we’d write in our journal, but then we’d just lay and your mind just wanders and the creative juices, which are just the nothingness juices, are great and I think one of the things that new media is doing right now is it’s making it so people don’t do that. They’re afraid to do it. “I can’t get offline. I’m gonna miss something.” Yeah. Yeah, you are going to miss something, but guess what? It’s the web. It will still be there. This past weekend, I unplugged for the whole weekend. I unplugged all technology on Friday morning and I didn’t turn it back on until Monday morning and you know what? It was okay. It was all right. There was no emergencies, no fires, nothing blew up. It was okay and you need to do that and I cannot stress how much that reinvigorates you and get you excited. Trust me. As I always talk about, it’s rebalancing. I have to get back out in nature quite often to rebalance myself because if I don’t get out there, I go insane. Trust me. I came back Monday morning yesterday. I was all excited and I said, “You know what? No one’s gonna suck this energy out of me. I refuse to let it happen,” and I didn’t let it happen. That kind of translates — book review, C.C., idling, where did you go with that?

It transitions into the book that I think a lot of people are reading right now called The 4 Hour Workweek. It’s funny when a book gets hot and gets trendy and where it teaches you life lessons and teaches you different strategies. It’s funny. You can start telling who — like there’s a philosophy in there about checking your email twice a day and setting an out of office message, an automated response, that says, “Hey, I only check my email at noon and 4:00,” blah, blah, blah. I’ve seen this from two of my friends already. I got the response, I’m like, “They reading the book.” I know they’re reading the book because it teaches you that philosophy. What I think is interesting about The 4 Hour Workweek, and this is my personal opinion on it, I think it’s a great book, but what I will tell you is like just like every other book out there — it’s the same advice I give new parents. Anytime a buddy of mine is going to be a parent for the first time and they’re freaking out about what book should they read, da-da-da, I give the same advice and I will do the same in new media, read everything you can, read it all, consume it all because everyday’s got different tactics, then figure out what works for you. Take little bits from getting things done. Take little bits from The 4 Hour Workweek, take the bits that work for you and leverage them fully, use them all the way for you. Don’t think you have to take a whole philosophy and use it totally.

That’s one of the reasons that I haven’t found the right religion for me because I take bits and pieces from all sorts of different religions and mush them together and that’s sort of my spirituality. I haven’t found one religion that contains everything for me. Everybody’s got something good in their religion and I like that and I pull it together and I make it mine. Same thing with The 4 Hour Workweek, I love the concept of it. I think he’s totally right. He talks about the new rich. I don’t necessarily know that term, but the fact that you can work from anywhere, you can get it done. You don’t have to always be connected. Things will survive with you no matter who you are. If you surround yourself with great people to do the great work, things will get done. You do not have to be there watching and hovering over every little thing. He hasn’t really said this, but it’s something I believe. You hire the very best people and then you let them run with stuff. It’s a painful lesson. It hurts to let go and delegate, but if you’ve hired the best possible team or in The 4 Hour Workweek he talked about outsourcing it, as long as you’ve got people who are capable of doing the task, step the hell back and let it happen. Let it happen. Do your thing. Let these other people do the things and then it will all work out. Trust me. I like a lot of things of it. I started reading his blog. I like his philosophy. He’s a little cocky, but that’s all right. He can be cocky. He’s earned it I guess. But The 4 Hour Workweek I definitely suggest reading. It’s a very interesting book. It’s worth consuming. It’s worth going through. Warning, it could be dangerous to some people out there. It’s one of those books I honestly think you could sit down and read and go, “Oh. Uh, honey? I need to make some changes.” Warning. I’m warning you now. If me telling you to read this book causes you to get divorced or scare your spouse, not my fault, not my fault! All right? It’s definitely worth checking out. I will link to it in the show notes, of course. You can buy it anywhere. It’s all over the place. It’s a very interesting book, a good read, and definitely a different way of life.

The other book I read recently is called “Rule the Web” by Mark — I’m not even going to try his last name, not going to do it. Fr — no, I’m not. I’ll put it in the show notes. He’s one of the founders of Boing Boing. I got sent a copy of this book because I thought it’s something pretty cool. It’s called “Rule the Web: How to do anything and everything on the internet – better, faster, easier.” It’s a really good book. It’s more basic than I was imagining to be honest with you because it’s really bare — I’m going to give this to either my dad or my mother-in-law because it explains — it’s very well organized, tips and tricks. It’s like “how do I find an address on the web?” A lot of people don’t know that. How do you find the address of someone you’re really looking for? Lots of tips like that, tips on maintaining your computer, tips on web pages, email, all the basic stuff or questions that — the way I would answer is — it’s all of the questions that a lot of people are afraid to ask because they know they’re going to be giggled at for asking it. There are some new +1 level stuff. What I like is there’s one section where he went out and asked a bunch of other people for their one best — Ask Cory Doctorow His One Best Tip, and I thought that was very cool. It’s a neat book. It’s paperback. It’s trade paperback I guess what you call it. I really enjoyed the book. I read it really fast. I’m more skimmed it more than anything because I knew a lot of the answers already, but I wanted to see what he had to say about things. Definitely one of those things for if you’re trying to get somebody involved in the web, maybe you need to buy it for your executive, I don’t know. I shouldn’t say that. I’m generalizing. That’s kind of mean. For someone who thinks they know the web and they’re getting into the web and they’re getting excited by it, this could be a great book to get them to the next step because I guarantee you — warning though, they’re going to read the book and go, “Dude, did you know?” “Yeah, I knew that.” “Oh, wow!” You’re going to get a lot of those moments and that’s okay. Just embrace it. Roll with it. It’s definitely a book to get people excited about the web. I think it’s another one of those books that could change people. They’ve read it and just get all giddy and excited and try to do more things.

So, those are the things I wanted to talk about today. I wanted to get in touch with you. I hadn’t talked to you a little while. I’ve been doing some interviews lately. I’ve got a great one coming. I’ve got some more interviews coming up. I’m doing more of them. I tell you. Thank you again to all Managing the Gray listeners and readers who helped me figure out getting a MacBook Pro. The Mac has definitely been a great investment. I haven’t gone totally Mac yet. I mean I’m recording this right now in CastBlaster on my PC. PC is still my main computer, but the laptop is rocking, really getting used to it, really excited. Audio Hijack Pro, that alone, if you’re into any sort of audio production makes the Mac almost worth it because it makes the Internet — I don’t know if it’s worth spending a couple of grand for this $30 program, but it’s very cool. A program that simple and that cheap does such an effective job of recording audio. It’s very exciting to me on that.

Hey, if you haven’t seen yet, one of the things I’m going to start doing is — I’ve been doing One Guy’s Thoughts, which is my video podcast. It’s sort of my personal podcast that kind of catches all things, but one of the things I’m going to start doing on that is making sure I record — now that I’ve got my workflow going and I’ve got the camera and I got everything going the way I want to, I’m going to start doing interviews with people at these conferences I’ve got upcoming. I’ve got the Second Life Community Conference coming up and a PodCamp Philly is coming up, PodCamp Boston, PodCruise Miami, lots of things coming up, Virtual Worlds 2007 Fall, lots of things coming up and I want to start videotaping the interviews and doing more than just me speaking head stuff. So, I’m going to be looking for that so if I stick a video camera in your face next time we meet, warning. Hey, if anybody knows where I can find a Zoom H2. I want to put this out to the listeners. I’m seeing all these reviews about it. My Edirol is pissing me off and so I’m thinking about getting one of these Zoom H2 recorders. I don’t know if they’re necessarily for sale yet because I can’t seem to find them anywhere, but hey, if anyone’s got a tip on where I can find them, let me know because I want to buy one. They seem very cool and I want to use one. I want to definitely try them. I like the fact that they’re made to record 360 degrees, so I want to try it with a table discussion or some other things.

So, that’s going to wrap up Managing the Gray. Again, you can email me at managingthegray@gmail.com or you can call in the comment line, 206-309-4729. Of course, managingthegray.com, it’s got more than just a podcast going on. I’m writing content up there, linking the stuff, transcripts go up there. Hey, thank you guys for listening. Thank you for telling your friends. I’ve been getting some really nice emails from new folks who are just discovering Managing the Gray and discovering me and I’m having a great time meeting you and getting to know you. Please, you can find me in all the networks. My About page links to almost all of them and cc-chapman.com is my regular blog if you want to swing on over there. You never know what you’re going to get there. So, take care. Have a great day and get out there and play on the new media playground. All right? I will talk to you very, very soon.

- Originally posted on ManagingTheGray.com in case you see this scrapped onto another site -

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