Thursday, November 20, 2008

Job Interview (Deferring because I don't have autoincome)

One hour telephone interview with a very nice person. At best this person will offer me a job in which I sit in an open office during timeclock hours, receive work assignments from a software program, make changes to a software program, load the results into a software program, and check off my work in a software program.

Oh. It is good to have options. I know this.

There were two elevators in a dorm where I lived in college, one was called "Darth" ("Vator") and the other was "Elly" ("Vator").

I'd like to get in the one now called "Moti".

OT: Illuminati

My friend M just emailed. Being fearless, and curious, she ends up some interesting places. The latest is an Illuminati meeting. When I asked if the robes were red or black, she noted that the folks wore blue pinstriped suits. Interesting. I asked if that meant there were no candles and instead she wrote that there were marble sconces on wood-paneled walls.

I want marble sconces on wood-paneled walls. And not a cheesy version.

Friday, November 14, 2008

From "Being" to "Doing"

So If-I-Couldn't-Fail list came up with 11 items. I realize I've had most of this list in my head most of my life. Now it's on paper. Or at least the Internet.

The next step is to reframe each "being" wish into a "doing" wish.

Wish 1) Autopilot 250k/y and trip the folks to Taj Mahal. That's pretty quantified already. I'd like it to be a three week trip, so we can take the cool restoration in Darjeeling first and accustom ourselves to the time and culture, then give these older, less mobile, harder of hearing folks a comfortable able tour of all the sites they want to see. OK that one will be simple to determine whether it has been met or not.

Wish 2) Fear of water/learn scuba --> twenty minute open water dive with a camera to photograph fish and coral; post the photos and the trip report on this blog.

Wish 3) Personality -> go a month without panicking (ok to panic if really in danger)

Wish 4) Languages -> telephone the newspaper archives in Russia and ask for information on how to receive back issues - and understand the response

Wish 5) Writings -> publish one article of nonfiction in a print publication for payment

Wish 6) Pub T -> taste-test and review the ten most popular British brews

Wish 7) Orphanage autopilot-> attempt after 1, 4 & 6.

Wish 8) Climb a mountain -> hike a local trail I can do with my kid

Wish 9, 10 and 11 -> start with 3).

As seen on eHarmony



1. Hello we all have strengths and weaknesses. What is your main strength and weakness. Please do not give a strength for a weakness.

Page 54, continued

So pretend I'm all golden and returned from a fantastic trip to Palau with the family and the dive photos and I am now completely at home at 75 feet depth and breathing from a pack.

See what I mean about how the list matures as you think about it?

My number one priority, other than basic competency, is to develop an autopilot income. You're reading about those efforts in this blog. Everything else is feelgood crap if it won't enable me to consistently live the lifestyle I want and need.

If I couldn't fail, I'd develop an autopilot income of $250,000 per year and fly my mom and her friends to the Taj Mahal for the trip they think they are too old to make.

If I couldn't fail, I would change certain things about my personality. I've been remarkably lucky and successful in my life despite being a really nervous person. Imagine what else I could do, more comfortably, and imagine how much more confidence I could instill in dear daughter.

If I couldn't fail, I would speak, read, write, and listen expertly in a dozen languages.

If I couldn't fail, I would submit my writings for publication and payment and earn lots of money.

If I couldn't fail, I would visit every pub in Britain and make the t-shirt saying so.

If I couldn't fail, I would put an orphanage on an autopilot income and make sure every kid had ice cream and a party on his or her birthday.

If I couldn't fail, I would climb a mountain.

If I couldn't fail, I would be a wonderful mother.

If I couldn't fail, I would be a dear friend.

If I couldn't fail, I would be an amazing mate.

Amen.

Page 54: "If You Couldn't Fail"

To help identify your dreams, Tim takes away the limitations with the four (ok five if you count the uncontracted words) words: "If you couldn't fail"

Good thing I didn't blog my initial response, or even my first read through the book: awkward, stilting, tripping, crippled, adolescent. You may still find my blog that way :)

It surprised me how fluidly answers came after a few days of reading other things, and scampering after a dataset with elements with "different" coverage than expected.

I'd scuba dive.

Not because I actually care about scuba diving, or that there is anything under the ocean that I'd like to see, or that there is anything particularly enchanting to me about cold dark suffocating and claustrophobic places -- but because I hate to be scared.

And, because, if I blow this fear into shreds, I'm counting on the collateral destruction of several thousand more minor fears. So I'm going to atomize the big daddy of all my fears and take out legions and legions of others in this one task.

I think I know I can do this because Tim (whom I do not actually worship, yet, I just say his name when he is due the credit for a concept) advises to convert the "overcome fear of being underwater without a machine"(I'll go almost anywhere in a machine, go figure) into a concrete achievable goal. For me "attaining a scuba license" is not enough -- I've done that, it was hell, I'm still nearly paralyzed when under water. Nope. Mine is going to involve a nice warm clear water dive. I'm not sure yet what I'll do with daughter, man, job, income, time and expenses, but I now have a yardstick to show my progress and when I've succeeded.

This isn't about fixing what's broke, about whipping myself for being a coward and weakling (it's cold down there) and forcemarching myself into proper behavior. I've tried that so many times. The resulting proper behavior has limited the damage or held steady in a situation until I could do something else, but has never brought me satisfaction about where I was heading or what I was doing - and being.

This is about confronting a fear in a stepwise doable way and glorying in the expansion of all horizons when the limitation of fear is obliterated.

Not laughed out yet

At least the 'bot didn't dump me. It's a very polite 'bot too. Maybe it knows Rudy.

Hi Bobi,

Thank you for your interest in Brickwork. We have received your inquiry and will get back to you soon.

Sincerely,

Brickwork

(This is an auto-generated message. Your response is not mandatory.)

Waiting for Laughter From India

From Brickworks' web site and pricing options, I suspect that I am a tiny tiny fish and not one of those 20% of the customers that provide 80% of the revenue.

I expect that I'm probably too much work and too insignificant for them. Or that Tim has vaulted them into international superstar status and they now command $25/hour -- which is out of my ballpark for the moment.

Several other options for finding a virtual assistant exist. I chose to try Brickwork first

a) they were already credible and that's good for me to learn the ropes;

b) they offer a variety of services that will cover my future diabolical plans, so I can grow there if it works out;

c) getting dumped when you sort of expect to be dumped isn't so bad.



DreamLine Items to Task to A Personal Assistant

Well, until I have my income on autopilot, a regular income stream would be handy. That's that traditional job thing, for those of you NRs who have forgotten. Tim told me to use my strengths, so I'll try to keep it in the field of forensically typing mitochondrial DNA sequences. I mean I do know more about it than most people. Later, Tim says to find a deep niche. Not sure if this niche meets all the qualifications, but it sure is a deep narrow niche. And I'm in it, professionally speaking.

I hate looking for jobs, does anyone like it, and according to the reports, you can outsource a job search. Well that will be my highest priority task.

But that is an awfully big task, and a lot rides on it. I haven't worked out this remote work assignment relationship thing, so I'll try a different, almost throwaway task as a training run. Tim's book suggests pushing comfort levels, so I'm going to blow away (hopefully) my greatest physical fear - scuba diving. For a simple task that doesn't involve trashing any job opportunities or anything else of real value, I will ask for a report of the certifications available to scuba divers and instructors, and a comparison of certain features of each of them. I stay safely out of the water while tiptoeing nearer the real scuba dive, and I get to practice specifying and guiding a remote assistant.

My autopilot income needs muse candidates. One that comes to mind is a how-to book for software developers who like to travel -- while keeping their jobs. Tim gives steps to identify markets. Given that I have had yet another cup of coffee and I know where they are in the book, I'm not really able to exactly read let alone follow them. I know -- I'll break out one of the steps and list it to a personal assistant to try.

Lastly, my time is best spent making our lifestyle better and this means the autopilot money is going to go to freeing my time up to spend with my daughter and on our dreams. The laundry, however, will still need to get done. My daughter will still need to go to the park more times than I can standdddddd. My fourth requested task is to identify and, with my instructions, vet local help for our household.

Personal note: when I've tried to improve my life, before, I've not added a comfort challenge and I've had no one to whom to delegate the tasks I'm not good at and don't enjoy. I can have someone check references for me -- and they'll use my list of questions and report to me the answers? What a great pre-screen this is. The idea of trying scuba (again) certain invigorates my metabolism -- tempting yet horrifying. Fascinating like an impending train wreck.

To other moms: we defer because we care, to paraphrase the company motto from Monster's Inc. Since my daughter joined me at 9 months of age, I have been away from her only for work and for two Valentine's Dinners. No mom's day out here. I feel compelled to be with her all the rest of the time because I missed out on her first nine months of life; you feel compelled even if you were with her from the start.

I've served two masters, my child and my employer, and tried to do my best for both and never feel successful. I have had a few times when I could do both, and on travel. But most of the time it is an unending treadmill - my job ending just gives me a crazier responsibility to find another job, and so on.

After a reading session (yes, daughter was in the tub and I read seated on the closed toilet), I was so excited at being 'required' (for my blog of course) to test my comfort zone and try scuba, that I emailed a certain male and told him to get appointments with a sitter and a restaurant for Saturday night.

Remarkably, even facing the prospect of putting out a hundred of our last 2008 pre-crash dollars, and having to face me alone for an evening, he got excited! Now my daughter has two happy, energized grownups instead of the regular drones!

So not only have I listed dreams, I have listed little doable steps toward achieving them. Stay tuned...

My Very Own Virtual Assistant - Baby Step

Reading the Rules

Ok, Tim you lost me here. Not that I didn't understand what you were saying, of course that was clear, but that I apparently have ingested so much coffee in my life that I can't make sense out of rules when I read them. My eyeballs just bounce. (Guess what...Tim even takes care of me here in a few more pages...but we're not there yet)

Trial and error is not so cheap, and that little experiment I did with Lucent stock about ten years ago really can't be salvaged. You're right. You're one hundred percent right.

I said I would follow the instructions word for word. I think I already may have already goofed up. Since I am my only reader at this point (blog is not live, that's my excuse), I don't have to fess everything. Yet.

OK so I have a hard time reading rules. I can read the book. Page 30 starts explaining the traditional rules of the grown-up (to distinguish from the "adult") lifestyle -- and differentiating.

My brain really began spinning on "Emphasize Strengths, Don't Fix Weaknesses". What a great flipping idea! Yes, when I'm cleaning or coding, I do look for the negatives, and remove them. But I'm never going to be as shiny clean as the kitchen counter or even any of my (not necessarily sparkling) software. I'm me. Yay. (Group-of-one group hug).

Since I am in the resume market, selling the strengths really seems like it's going to make a lot more powerful and positive impact than, um, noting that I am not the best Java programmer or statistician in the world. I'm not. Never will be, don't want to be. I want to be good enough at those skills.

Besides even though those skills always show up on job requirements, they're not really what makes a person successful at a job. I show up (a lot of the time), I get along with my coworkers (most of the time), I learn deeply the problem space, I can do a standup routine in front of customers at a moment's notice and look reasonable, and I care. Oh yea, and I can code in couple of languages and use a bunch of software engineering tools and practices. Blah blah blah.

Leave the resume market. Real life. What are my strengths? I am interested in the world and traveling, I am smart enough, I can read some situations pretty well ... I have a great kid, a prime-plus mortgage, reasonable health, and a social worker who thinks I am competent enough to adopt again.

Ah, but wait -- I also have Tim Ferriss' book. BWAHAHAHA...

The Instructions

Decide if you want to be a Deferrer or a New Rich.

You probably have the book if you are reading this and you know have read the list on p.22 about how the values differ between the traditional wisdom of waiting-until-retirement or getting to live your life every (pay) day.

I learned the hard way. I'm "Only 47", and was informed by a life insurer that some program predicted I would live until 93. That's a lot of years to live on dialysis and Ramen, cold and lonely. But it's alive.

My father passed at 57; his brother at 53; my uncle at 43. Each one made a beautiful corpse, vibrant, healthy, laughing and thriving only hours before his heart wall ruptured. No Alzheimers, no bad hips, no worries about outliving the money or your friends and loved ones.

I was just starting my work life when my Dad passed. He would have worked another ten years, and then already had his eye on a post at the local university. He would have worked in his woodshop and rocked his grandchildren.

He would have traveled.

He never got to retire. He never got to bring his optimism and power to a university team. He did get to work in his woodshop a bit.

He never saw his grandchildren.

But -- he did travel. He traveled every opportunity he got, and we went with him. It was a glorious time where we all shared one goal - the experience. We learned, shared, laughed. We had a ball when the huge bus went nose to nose in a French back alley with an old lady on a scooter -- and she backed the bus down. We splashed on beaches in Hawaii- even though neither of my parents could swim or liked the water. We went to meetings at resorts with dad and stayed with the old emeritus someone who taught us to order Canadian Club and Dr. Pepper from room service. When my folks traveled without us, we learned about "International Operator". Not like Skype.

He traveled because he loved it. He didn't wait. He went to American Samoa and New Orleans for work. When the Soviet Union opened up, he and my mother and their friends went at once. When the People's Republic of China opened up, he and my mother and their friends went at once.

These were ordinary working people who made their dreams come true. They showed me I should make mine come true too.

I'm glad my father didn't wait. And I'll be damned if I do. No more deferring for me.

OT: Hello from 1970


Anyone have any Clackers? Send those to me too.

Follow the Instructions, You Rogue Elf -- for once

Many years ago (many) my brother and I agreed on one thing: A Rudy The Robot for Christmas.

Three things make this a vivid memory:
* we agreed on something, which happened only one other time, and we're not talking about
* there was no Rudy The Robot under the tree on Christmas morning
* some months later, we found the dismantled robot - and its box - tucked away in the storeroom

Yup, Dad couldn't resist. Not sure what he did and can't ask him now, but whatever it was, Rudy left the world of real toys and entered the world of Den Hartog Family Legend.

I feel good about it, a certain solidarity with my pop for liking the same things...and for wanting to take them apart and do them my way.

No Bobi no no no. Your job is to follow Tim's directions. Not to pick and choose the easy vs. the hard parts.

Or else you will have to wait in the storeroom until spring.

Note: Please send your old Rudy The Robots to me [ you will be acknowledged in the blog; post to contact me]

I like the idea of income autopilot but will it work for me?

So Timothy Ferriss has either really pulled off a fine piece of fiction and has us all panting to become New Rich just so he makes more money, or else his book is more than just a pipe-dream or a pep talk. Being rather desperate, I decided to a) try him out and b) blog about it. Hopefully he will be pleased with both results. When this little blog is out of its infant stage, let's ask him to review it. I don't think he's shy.