Seasonal work

When I’m making a living without a job I want to have enough projects on the go that I can work seasonally.  My non-salary-days should see me abuzz with ideas about two projects which I have begun working on, but right now in the glorious summer heat we have in the UK at the moment, I just… can’t… be… bothered.  Next year I need to have some outdoorsy projects up my sleeve, or at least ones that don’t mainly involve being at a computer.  I could try and change tack now but I would be clutching at straws with nothing worthwhile to start work on.

New Politics – New You?

Daniel Finkelstein in The Times is discussing the idea of “new politics”, in the light of the very new (well, very hasn’t-happened-for-a-while) political situation in the UK – coalition government.  How can we have new politics when politicians are still just people and are still responding to the same incentives?

But the most useful thing that studying evolutionary psychology has taught me is humility about how much politics can really change us. So much of human behaviour is innate, hard-wired, the result of adaptations made thousands of years ago. It is, in a twisted sort of a way, almost amusing to watch us try to change human nature with a government scheme or the banning of fatty food adverts during Jackanory.

The trick is not to will a change in behaviour, but to change the incentives so as to make it inevitable.  For example, in a flush of post-election enthusiasm the coalition are committing to publishing far more details of government expenditure.  This should remove the incentive for politicians to dissemble and be evasive about how our money is spent – because the information will already be out there.  Therefore there will be more incentive to be frank and admit when their are problems, and address how the problems will be solved.  If information is not in the public domain, with the best will in the world politicians will still find it easier to dissemble and evade.  Change the incentives, change the behaviour.

As with politics, so with you and me.  Do you wish to change your behaviour, how you approach life?  I do.  Have you tried to do this just by willing your self to do do?  I have.  Has it worked?  It hasn’t worked for me.

I’ve changed my incentives.  I’ve given up a day of earning a week and this has forced me to start being productive because otherwise I have reduced my income for nothing.  So I’m writing blogs, writing articles, looking for the next opportunity because if I don’t do this I am losing out for no gain.  I could do these things in my spare time, in the evening and at weekends.  But I have tried this, and for me this does not work.  If you keep trying and it doesn’t work – don’t try the same thing again.  Same situation, same result.  Change your incentives.

Learning Curve

In this post I described how I had reduced my hours to a 4-day week, to allow me to have a day a week in which to pursue various projects, paid or otherwise.  I haven’t been quite as productive as I would have hoped, but it is still early days.  My major accomplishment so far has been a sudden dollop of self-knowledge.

I consider myself a reliable person.  At university, I always got work in on time and to an appropriate standard (not always great, but good enough).  My salaried work is in project-based consultancy – specific deliverables by a specific deadline.  Sure, things get held up sometimes, but that is just the way it goes.

I thought that this would stand me in good stead for working independently.  So far it hasn’t worked out quite as well as I would have hoped but I have worked out why.

I am reliable when other people rely on me.  If I haven’t made a promise to someone else, it may well not get done.

This isn’t as bad as it sounds for someone with aspirations to work independently.  Firstly, if I have clients then they are relying on me so that is not a problem.  It gets tricky around “development” projects, when I am doing something for its own sake or with an indeterminate timescale or uncertain pay-off.  Like this blog!  Now that I have realised this about myself, how do I respond to this new information?  I need a strategy that goes with the grain of my character.  Thinking to myself “Just get on with it” doesn’t work.  I need to make rash promises and commitments to as many people as possible, so that I feel that I would be letting them down (or at least making myself look stupid) if I didn’t deliver.

To this end I promise you, dear reader, to post three times a week here.  If I don’t, tell me how disappointed you are…

Take a deep breath…

I have taken a plunge, which in reality is barely a plunge at all.  Until last week I worked full-time, Monday-Friday.  For a year or so I felt that this was preventing me from going out and exploring other opportunities, money-making or not.  Finally, I decided to take decisive action!  Did I go freelance?  Did I set up my own company?  No and twice no.  Instead, I cut my hours to a four-day week!

In the big scheme of things, this is nothing.  A friend of mine runs a venture capital-funded internet start-up business; another just seems to manage to float from job to job, always landing on her feet.  Me, I’m generally quite risk averse, and appreciate the comfort of a regular salary.  So to give up about a fifth of my earnings feels like a much bigger wrench than it actually is.  All I will have to do is keep more track of my beer and discretionary spending money.

Last week was actually my first four-day week, although I didn’t find that out until Tuesday, having already taken the Monday off to attend a day of mentor training (more of which in a later post).  However, from this week my default working week will be Mon-Tue and Thur-Fri at the salaried coalface, with Wednesdays free for whatever current scheme I have going.  I made a conscious decision to make my non-salary day (not my day-off!!) a mid-week day – if it had been Monday or Friday the would be too much temptation to make it an extension of my weekend.

What will I be doing with my non-salary day?  I will be pursuing some freelance work, although I don’t expect this to make up much of the salary I am foregoing.  The point is more for it to be an exercise in developing and selling my skills.  I will also be spending some time researching some stuff that I have been interested in for a while, but haven’t had the time to do anything about.  A long way down the line this may or may not lead to gainful employment.  This week, I shall be attending Birmingham C21st Innovation Showcase, about local tech start-ups.  I don’t have an invention up my sleeve, but hopefully it will be food for thought.