Buzzoo

I’ve recently noticed that lately it has been hard for me to get things done. It seems that I always running out of time. My list of things to do keeps growing, I started to keep several lists. I feel like being in a race between scratching things off the to-do lists and filling them up again.

I’ve also noticed that most of the items in my list are small things. These are things like replying to emails, setting up a meetings, sending birthday greetings, paying bills, house cleaning, calling up my parents, doing laundry, etc. They are mostly tasks that I should be able to finish in five to fifteen minutes, or at most an hour each, but they are pesky and annoying. They are pesky because although they are small, they need my full attention. And its hard to keep switching contexts between those little tasks. Because they are many, I tend to multitask. Soon things start to jumble up, and I begin to forget what I started to do earlier.

So in the last week or so, I have spent some time thinking about these Pesky Little Things (PLTs). I observed that they are two ways these PLTs can reduce the quality of our lives, and there are at least five ways to deal with them.

Ways we let PLTs to destroy our lives:

1. Overlooking PLTs.
Usually PLTs are tasks that are not too critical to our lives. We tend to easily overlook them. Some of us procrastinate, and take our time in dealing with them. For the ignorant bunch, these little things are just too small to care about. Some others are just outright too busy with other higher priority tasks, they push back these PLTs to the last minute.

Initially overlooking the little things do not pose major threat(sp) to our lives, as they are things of lower priority. However they do accumulate. Some actually carry some significant consequences if forgotten. Being constantly tardy with our bills can easily destroy our credit ratings, they can effect our lives in much bigger ways. Forgetting important birthdays or anniversaries can be detrimental too.

2. Over-sweating PLTs.
Another nature of PLTs are that they are easy to finish. When we are faced with something difficult, we tend to work on the easy things first. Often we defend our acts that finishing PLTs first will allow us to have long continuous hours to work on the big things.

The problem is that some of these PLTs keep coming. These are things that we do periodically; like checking our emails, visiting CNN or digg sites, or checking the stock market. When we are faced with big things, we need to watch ourselves not to increase the frequency of doing these routines. Before we know it, we’d spend so much time on them, we don’t have time for the big task.

If you, like me, fall into this trap often, you have to discipline yourself not to get distracted while finishing the main things. Otherwise you will be doing little things forever, and never achieve anything.

We see that dealing with PLTs is really an act of balancing priorities and time allocation. I have gathered 5 ways that will help us deal with PLTs:

1. Allocate time to manage them.
If you have many PLTs, you have to carve out a little bit of your time to manage them. This can simply be a 5 minute slot at the beginning or the end your days. You need to comprehensively list them down so that nothing is overlooked, and then roughly order them based on due dates and priorities.

Based on this master list, create a small list of things that you need to finish during the day, or during the next day. Your daily list should have all the things that are due or critical. Finish items in this daily list, and nothing else. Use the rest of your time to work on the big things.

2. Use reminders.
Some of these PLTs are periodical items, or items with strict due date. For this things, some sort of date book is going to help you tremendously. I don’t carry any paper based book personally, but I use Evolution calender, which is just like Microsoft Outlook.

For other tasks in the daily list, I simply use sticky notes that I keep on my desk. I found that sticky notes are better suited for me than PDAs. I like to be able to see them all the time while I am working, and I like to be able to scratch things off from the notes.

If you are always on the go, maybe PDAs are better for you.

3. Use the right technologies.
There are many web-based to do list or calendering tools. I have used both Tada list and RememberTheMilk. They are both great and free tools. The first is very simple and easy to use, and the second is a much more complete tool. If you have constant access to the Internet, you may want to consider them.

See if you can automate some of your routine PLTs, like paying rent or car payment. Many banks allow you to do scheduled bill pay, or electronic transfers. The items that you automate are off of your to do list, they do not scream for attention anymore.

As for getting news that you need, you can use aggregators, like Buzzoo, Popurls, Bloglines, google homepage, etc. Find tools that narrow down the scope of the work, not to increase it. It takes a lot of time to check all your favorite news sources once. It takes even more time if you check them frequently.

4. Delegate.
Some highly demanded people hire secretaries or personal assistants to work on their PLTs. For the rest of us who are far from that luxury, we can still get some help with these items.

Sometime your friends or co-workers can help you with a thing or two; sometimes your spouse or your kids can help with house chores. One thing that we should not do is to be too proud to ask for help, or to receive them if someone offers a hand.

5. Learn to say no.
If you have to many PLTs to deal with, the final thing that you need to do is to make sure you don’t get too many more. This means that you may have to say no to things, to other people, and often to yourself. I mentioned in my last post that often we need to close an ear and an eye, otherwise we will be distracted too much.

Sometimes you need to simplify your lifestyle. If you have too many hobbies, then they will eat up your time. Hobbies are fun, and refreshing, but if they become full time jobs, then you will soon be loosing your lives.

There you have it, two reasons why we need to deal with PLTs, and 5 ways to get them done. I hope that these maxims are beneficial for you, as well as for myself. You can see that from how well me and my friends improve Buzzoo overtime :).

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It’s 11:30 p.m. after a long day at work, the dryer is spinning and I am starting a blog entry. There is a strong temptation for me to just drop this blog post and wait for a better time to write it. Such temptations are much too familiar, and have been entertained way too many times. Consequently, this is only the second Buzzoo blog post, a month after the blog launch…

I am sure time management issue is an issue that many people share, especially by other moonlighters like us. (Per Wikipedia, moonlighting is the practice of performing an additional job which is separate from a person’s day job.) People moonlight for many different reasons. For some, the reason can be the much needed money that extends their live lines. For the rest of us, Buzzoo developers including, it is the fulfillment of personal dreams.

In the recent rise of personal entrepreneurship, kindled by Paul Graham and the like, many people took the challenge of starting their own startups. This is manifested clearly by the flood of endless Web 2.0 sites that are still popping out everyday. Many of us run the site as a night jobs, we are the struggling moonlighters.

For whatever it’s worth, I am tempted to share the what I’ve learned about moonlighting to you. If it can inspire one or two moonlighters out there, my day is made.

1. Keep the fire going.
One day I was driving home from a trade show with my career mentor. He was the founder of the company where I work my day job. I shared with him that I was working on something on my own (not buzzoo at that time). While he was excited about my efforts, he painted a gloomy picture saying how unlikely someone can be successful moonlighting a startup.

His argument is harmonious to ideas that Paul Graham said numerous times. To grow a successful startup, founders need to have the killer/animal instinct. Fulltimers who are betting their bread and butter are likely to have this, while moonlighters can easily raise the white flag, and still have a living from their day jobs. Kevin Rose would have a much higher drive to success as he was betting his house payments for Digg. Whereas me, I have to continually push myself to do something for Buzzoo.

Moonlighters, be aware that we are handicapped on this front. It’s not just about how much time we can put in, but how much heart and soul. There will be times when motivation is hard to find. In those days, you have to yield to a strong discipline to keep going. Once you stop, you are in danger to stop forever.

2. As always, it’s possible.
Although my mentor painted a gloomy picture for moonlighters, there are certainly success stories.

One posterchild of Web 2.0 sites was born by a maniac moonlighter. When Joshua Schachter shared his success story about del.icio.us in the Startup School 2006, he mentioned that del.icio.us was not his first project. It was his sixth or seventh. Some of his previous ones failed so miserably, he let the domain name taken by other people. He failed but he kept going, and some unthinkable miracle happened.

The chance of making it while moonlighting is certainly greater than zero. This means that a moonlighter just need to keep on trying. Per probabilistic laws, the chance for success is higher as someone continues to try. Furthermore, good entrepreneurs should learn and grow as they learn from failures. Their chances should grow with that.

3. Work in chunks of time.
One luxury item that moonlighters don’t always have is a span of continuous time to work. If this is the case for you, the first task that you have to do is to reorganize your schedules. You have to strive to have some continuous hours to work. In my experience, working for three straight hours yields much more than working for five sessions one hour each.

4. Close an ear and an eye.
The last thing that moonlighters need is distraction, especially when continuous working hours are rare and few. There are so much noise in the Internet, enough to fill up our heads with endless string of junk thoughts. Worse yet, when we do that, we often justify the effort as ‘planning’ or ‘research.’ While these things are critical for the success of anything, if your plan changes too many times before you can implement anything, then you are obviously distracted. Reduce your intake of noise from the Internet, and spend more time in implementation.

These four thoughts are what I can offer so far. I hope they worth something for someone. I’d share more as I learn more, and I hope you would too… Please share your stories and thoughts with us. We are too, struggling moonlighters.

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