The Open that Gradually Closes

The Open that Gradually ClosesAre we hiding from reality, living in an abstract dream world of what could be our future?

A couple of weeks ago, I finished reading the formidable A Heart So White by Javier Marías, a haunting and slow novel about an interpreter who, as he gets married, dives into his own biography and the history of his family. As he gets deeper into it, he encounters confusing memories – and some dark secrets in the earlier life of his father that give him some riddles to solve.
The interpreter is the narrator of the novel, and as such, a character of reflection and constant mental inquiry, obsessed with words and language, and especially the impact that a simple word, spoken at the right moment, might or might not have.

At one point in the novel, he remembers a girl that worked in a paper store he used to frequent as a schoolboy. The interpreter fell childishly in love with her, visiting the store day after day, just to look at her, but without ever exchanging more than a couple of words, without ever letting her know of his feelings. In the present of the novel, the store still exists. But the once lovely and intruiguing girl has become what appears to be a boring and poorly dressed woman that “nobody admires anymore” – not even the narrator himself, who now sees her in a disillusioned way: Her once beautiful eyes appear tired, her clothes look boring, her fingernails are broken.

He asks himself if things could have been different if only had he confessed her his love at that time of his childhood; if it would have helped her to leave the “comfortable abstract future” in favor of making real choices, taking action, seizing the opportunity presented in “the open that gradually closes”.

While you may ask if the narrator doesn’t have a psychological problem himself, showing what may well be an pathological inflated ego, I found this quote to be particularly beautiful – and useful in a context of time philosophy. “The open that gradually closes” is what we call the present, the point where what once was a dream of the future can become something real and tangible – or its moment can slip, maybe forever.

Of course, this is another area of our lives where we have to create an equilibrium, like Michael J. Gagnon pointed out so thoughtfully in his comment to my post on balance: Human condition leaves us at an intermediate position between what we perceive as past, and what we perceive as future.* We have to find a balance between living like it was our last day on Earth and preparing for a future life that may well last another couple of decades. We even should consider the future that’s farther away, giving a fair opportunity to our descendants to live on a planet that’s not totally polluted and destroyed.

But what’s necessary in any case is what Javier Marías outlines so powerful in just a couple of words: We have to leave the “comfortable abstract future” that only exists on our imagination – in order to enjoy both the moment and to build something worth living for in times to come. If we don’t do that, the opportunities that still are open in our lives may close sooner than we’d like to believe.

*) I say “perceive” because the factuality of this perception can be debated. For reference, take a moment to read my post on time independence.

The (Un)Productive Night Owl: An Experiment

Your Friendly Anarchist on a Nightshift (Symbolic Representation)If the early bird catches the worm, the best thing the worm can do is to sleep in, and leave his home late in the evening – until he gets caught by a night owl, that is. Yet although there are probably more people that prefer staying up late over getting up early, our society isn’t ready to accept that just yet. This is not only true for the typical office environment, but also for us web workers and micropreneurs: While there are a myriad of free and paid resources available online on “how to become an early riser”, information on “how to become a night owl” is surprisingly thin.

As a semi-professional idler, I have always been more on the night owl side of life. Still, evenings generally were reserved for, well, idling, meeting friends, going to cinema or having some drinks. But as I’d like to increase my output a little, I thought that there might be some value in experimenting with a lifestyle of late-evening productivity: Is it possible to get up whenever I like, spend the day doing fun and relaxing things, and then, when sun sets, start working and get more things done than David Allen on coke?

Terms and Conditions of Nightowlism

  • No coke. (I had to write this as you guys know I’m in Colombia and I just mentioned it. I will do fine without it, thanks, yet YMMV, Paris.)
  • A night owl doesn’t have to hunt from dusk til dawn. While, again, YMMV, I just don’t see the need to be working 10 or even 12 hours each day. I prefer to be really productive for three or four hours, just like many great writers do, and use the rest of my day for other things, like getting inspired while having a Cuba Libre cup of coffee at the beach or preparing a delicious plate of pasta with shrimps.
  • Thus, nightowlism doesn’t have to be about getting up at 4pm and staying awake until other’s people’s breakfasts. I better don’t even say YMMV anymore, but my approach to nightowlism is this: I tend to love mornings, but I suck when when it comes to working early. Thus, I’ll try to get the best of two worlds: Get up in the morning whenever I feel like it and enjoy the early hours. Do beautiful things. Take a nap in the afternoon. Get working at 7 or 8 or 9pm and get stuff done until midnight or whenever I feel it’s enough.
  • This experiment starts officially today, September 14th, and should last 30 days for starters. (If it totally sucks, I might end it earlier, but after some preliminary tests, that’s not very likely. Rather, I might want to expand it thanks to incredible success.)
  • I will keep you updated on how it goes here on the blog.

Issues

My biggest potential issue with nightowlism is its social awkwardness. I really wouldn’t want to be some kind of nerd who only sees people when buying frozen pizza at 3 o’clock in the morning in the 24 hour store. Thus, this issue should better get addressed: Let’s have the nightowlism without the nerdism.
The problem comes down to this: “Normal” people get up early and work from 9am to 5pm. They’ll then have a cocktail to feel alive again after a day of boring meetings and sour office coffee, and be ready to go. If you join them to have a couple of drinks immediately before your start working, you’re doomed already. And as a night owl, you will die of hunger.

My ideas to solve this issue are the following:

  • Reserve some days for meeting “normal” people. This is a no-brainer and not too hard to do for someone who manages to work both less and (thanks to nightowlism) more efficiently than the average citizen: You don’t have to work each evening, but may have a four-day work week. That’s three days to hang out with the early birds.
  • Communicate what you’re up to. Be it gender reassignment or engaging in an experiment of nightowlism, talking to your peers about your plans will always help to prevent misunderstandings. Thus, I’ll try to make it clear to everyone around that I’ll be weird some nights of the week when it comes to Bacardi and beach parties opposed to hacking stuff into my computer.
  • Beach parties might be fine, but skip the Bacardi. Depending on the hours, it might still be fine to go out to some after-work party or stuff like that. Just skip the drinks, unless you’re up to writing some weird stream-of-consciousness stuff. The Buke could do it, and so might you. Yet if the plan is getting something serious done, as in my case, then the rule is to stay sober so you’re ready to work when the time comes.
  • And no, I don’t attend too many beach parties, really. I hope I would.
  • They don’t even drink Bacardi here. Much better rum available!
  • I’m disgressing, sorry.

Energy Management

That’s the last thing to consider for now, and it’s a real biggie. Now, I know, you all have heard about managing your energy rather than your time and stuff. (At least if you’re addicted to productivity blogs. You’re probably not. You’ll get it anyway. I know, because you’re smart.) But this becomes so much more important when we’re talking about nightowlism!

While the theory was pretty clear to me (“Save your energy for when you need it”), I never, ever put this into practice (“Oh well, I ran around all day long and I myself got a nice sun burn hanging out at the beach and I swam until exhaustion and now I really want to work but, nah, fuck it, I’ll just go to bed.”). Until I read the Dojo guide, that is. The authors make a clear point concerning this, and I am really, really thankful for that: If you rise (kinda) early, say 10am, and want to work (kinda) late, say 7pm, then you better make sure you don’t waste your precious energy during the day.

That doesn’t mean you have to sit idly, or meditate, or eat salad and gorp and drink green tea all day long. But it does mean that running around like crazy and filling your day with non-stop action isn’t good advice. Rather, make the day a combination of different kinds of enjoyable activity and passivity. For me, this comes down to reading stuff on the web and in books, walking around the city, taking some photos, staying hydrated, meeting friends, having good coffee, painting a picture, preparing and eating tasty but not too heavy food, taking a nap, watching a movie, stuff like that. A decent combination of these things and I’m pretty much ready to go, that is, to write. Writing is the main thing I want to do in the evenings, and it will be my main output as a night owl, if everything goes fine.

And You Guys (and Gals)?

So, my experiment starts here and now. (It actually already did, with the writing of this post.) What about you? Anyone of you has got any experiences to share about being a productive night owl without turning nerdy and losing all your real-life buddies? I’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions, so please leave a comment or shoot me a mail! Also, if this post was entertaining or interesting for you, help me spread the word by sharing it on Twitter!

In other news, I am glad to announce the winner of the Paid to Exist give-away: The amazing Anne Archista! It was a tough decision, and I really, really hope I could give a spot to everybody who applied. You certainly deserve it all! That said, I think that Anne is on the right track when it comes to getting her word out, and that’s why I ultimately decided to give her the spot. I’ll get in touch with you soon, Anne!

Sales for Paid to Exist are open now. If you want to buy it through my affiliate link, please go ahead. The commission I get supports my work here on The Friendly Anarchist!

Amazing photo CC (BY-NC-SA) saharsh.

Interview with Jonathan Mead on Getting Paid to Exist

This was probably the first time that Jonathan Mead got interviewed while a tropical thunderstorm was going on in the background. The result: No electricity in my barrio (3G wireless plus a fully charged laptop battery saved the day!), three dropped calls, a tiny little bit of white noise, and a lot of fun.

This is, then, the perfect excuse for the mediocre sound quality and some harsh cuts in my first audio interview – but we managed to get it done, and that’s what matters most! In 11 minutes, Jonathan talks about the third round of Paid to Exist, the coaching-tested road map, and what to do when you get hit by an overwhelming “WTF moment” while starting out with your business:

[wpaudio url=”http://www.friendlyanarchist.com/wp-content/uploads/Interview_Jonathan_Mead_Paid_to_Exist_Review.mp3″ text=”Interview with Jonathan Mead – Paid to Exist”]

A short reminder: There are still a couple of hours left to get a free spot in the third round of Jonathan’s program! Just jump over to my review of Paid to Exist and leave a comment on why you are the person who needs to get paid to exist – beware, comments are only open until today, Monday 13th, 6pm CST!

Review Paid To Exist – and a (Life-Changing) Give-Away!

Paid to Exist ReviewMonday mornings can suck. Oh hell, they can. And I’m not just bitching because I currently experiment with a lifestyle of nightowlism (more on that in my next post!) – Monday mornings can suck big time, and we’ve all have experienced it. Really bad Monday mornings start with an alarm clock. They are nearly always doomed, and there’s only one thing that makes them worse: A boring job being the reason you have to get up early in the first place.

The good news is, we’re living in internet wonderland and we might as well liberate ourselves from that boring job. (Plus, that alarm clock.) And while most minds around the planet still are strongholds of the corporate forces, there’s a growing virtual village whose inhabitants fight the status quo and won’t rent out their brains anymore. It’s exactly this village that’s inviting you to spend an eight-week bootcamp on their soil and prepare yourself for getting paid to exist.

What’s Paid to Exist all about?

In a nutshell, Paid to Exist is an online course by Jonathan Mead, teaching you to build a business based on your passion. As such, it has two inherent limitations: First of all, it’s not for people wanting to create passive income and building anonymous niche sites for a living. Rather, it’s for people who have a “thing” they like to do (or are willing to find one, probably based on their hobbies or interests) and want to learn how to make a living with it. Secondly, Paid to Exist is directed to people who would like to use internet tools of some sort in the creation of their business (though it’s by no means limited to aspiring pro bloggers).

Paid to Exist basically outlines the whole process of business creation and further business development – and that’s why it’s so useful. Instead of handing bits and pieces, Jonathan gives you the whole enchilada: He begins with the creation of the right mindset and explains how to discover your passion, before showing you how to connect this with ways of making a living. Once you’re on the right track, you can begin to create value on a blog or other kind of web presence, connect with an audience, and start to design an offer based on their necessities. From then on, you are free to grow, and specialize in the areas that stick with both you and your people.

The technical aspects of Paid to Exist

The core of the program is an audio/slides lesson for each week, ranging in length from 40 to 60 minutes, accompanied by a sheet of practical tasks that you should work on during that week. Apart from that, you are granted access to a private forum where you can exchange your results and any related issues with the other people taking the course. Depending on the package you buy, there will also be an accompanying part of weekly group coaching calls.

For a very disciplined person, the weekly lessons provided by Jonathan really contain all the information you need to pull that thing through. What was especially valuable for me, though, was the ability to connect with my peers on similar voyages in the forum, and also the personal feedback and inspiration I got from the calls.

Long-term Perspective and Working at Your Own Pace

In the forum of the first installment, a couple of members liked the atmosphere of the course so much that we decided to take it beyond Paid to Exist and create our own brainstorming and mastermind group – it still exists today and I’m always glad to meet up with my peers. As for further long-term impact, I am still coming back to several of the lessons nowadays, as they provide timeless content that keeps getting me back on track whenever I lose myself in the minutiae of building my online presence.

One of the best things about Paid to Exist is that it allows you to work at your own pace: You are free to listen to the new lessons whenever you like, and to download them for later reference. At the same time, the weekly installments keep you coming back at the material instead of just “buying and forgetting about it”, as it sometimes might happen with ebooks.

One big thing to consider is that you have to commit the time to make this real! Eight weeks are by no means enough to really process all the material provided in Paid to Exist. To make things a bit easier, Jonathan created a six-month road map, guiding the participants of this third installment through the course. I have seen the road map myself during a coaching call, and I find it to be incredibly useful. Check out this free video where Jonathan himself presents the road map to you.

Overview

Name: Paid to Exist Unschool – Get Paid to Be Who You Are
Content: Online Course/Phone Coaching: Eight lessons based on Audio and Slides; Work Sheets; Discussion Forum; Coaching Calls
Price: $249-$449
Where to get it: It’s not open for sale yet. Feel free to get some awesome (and free) videos on the course here or through any of the affiliate links on this page.
Where to get it for free: Right here, at the end of this post! Scroll down!

Whom it’s not for:

  • People who already have a thriving (online) business
  • People who hate the internet and social media
  • People who wouldn’t want to create a business connected to their personality and passion
  • People who are not willing to put in some time and effort beyond purchasing the course

Whom it’s for:

  • All kinds of creative people who dream about building a business based on their passion
  • People who want to go self-employed, no matter if you want to take the plunge as fast as possible or start with a side-business
  • Both people who prefer to work alone (forum-only option) and people who want coaching, accountability and closer guidance (all-inclusive option)
  • People who are able to find at least five to ten hours per week to really follow the course and participate in the forum – the more you put in, the more you’ll get out of it!

Conclusion

If you ever dreamt about building your own business, but didn’t know how to connect your passion with an audience and clients, Paid to Exist will help you to make that dream real. The course provides a lot of food for thought, as well as directly actionable steps to creating your own business, and it’s up to you if you prefer doing it slow or fast, staying small or growing big. The only thing that’s indispensable to get it done, is putting the effort in. With Jonathan, you have a great mentor to accompany you in the process and clear your path to success. The horror of Monday mornings might vanish sooner than you think…

Go check out Paid to Exist here.

The Life-Changing Give-Away (Woot!)

As Jonathan loves you guys (and The Friendly Anarchist!), he decided to not only dedicate his time for an interview (that I will publish here in a couple of days), but also give away a free spot in the next installment of Paid to Exist! This is a great opportunity for you to grab your copy.

To enter the contest, just leave a comment below explaining why YOU are the person who needs to get paid to exist. The best comment I receive until September 13th, 6pm CST, wins!

Be sure to subscribe to the friendly anarchistic RSS feed to be updated once the winner is chosen, and to get the exclusive interview I did with Jonathan about this third installment of Paid to Exist.

Secret hint: Unfortunately, I probably won’t be able to give a spot to every great commentor out there. But here you can find a give-away of two more spots! I’m just sayin’…

Disclaimer: The winner will be selected by the totally biased me. I will choose a person who can really show me why she or he needs to get paid to exist. If there is more than one comment I like, I will choose the winner randomly between them.

Even more Disclaimer: Paid to Exist was the start of my personal journey to self-employment, and it helped me a lot during the creation of this site. I believe that Jonathan is a totally awesome person and that he offers value in pretty much everything he does. Thus, from time to time, I offer his products here on TFA, making a commission if someone buys anything through my links.