[Robotgroup] A robotgroup challange

[David Nunez]

This has been a really, really sore point for me, personally for a while.

I had/have this self-delusion that being a freelancer means "setting
your own rules" and "having all the time in the world to work on the
projects you care about."

Yet, I've had some really hard months where I let the "day job"
(freelance software / web development) take over pretty much all
aspects of my life.

My eyes turned into cartoon dollar signs when I saw these jobs appear,
kind of raining from the sky, "12 projects at once?  SURE! Cha-ching."

Those of you who have been around the block more times than I know the
only possible ending to that story:

* All the projects went overschedule and overbudget.  ALL of them.
One was so bad I'm mathematically working for less than $1/hr.  Others
I had to flat out cancel and return down payments.
* Lost all ability to estimate realistically: We only have one CPU in
our heads: multitasking is physically impossible and the switching
overhead exponentially increases w/ each new project.  Things that
should have taken 1 hour took 12.
* Several clients pissed off beyond any salvageable repair.  Forget
the possibility of future work-- forget the recommendations.
* All-nighters, poor diet and exercise, living like a hermit --
sometimes 4 or 5 days going by w/o seeing another human being
* Never-ending working weekends -- sundays felt like wednesdays
* killing myself over work I not only did not care about but actually
ended up DESPISING.

This is not how a free-thinking human is supposed to live, no matter
you slice it.

The absolute worst thing:
* All the stuff I wanted to be working on, for profit or for
otherwise, went on hold.  Notice we didn't have a dorkbot this month?

The kick-myself-in-my-pants moment:  I listed out all my active
billable projects, the actual hours put into them, and what I was
being compensated for those hours.

It was the 80/20% rule, almost exactly:  79% of my income was coming
from just 20% of my projects.  This meant I could have worked less
than 2 days a week, been done on time with the most valuable projects
(which, probably not coincidentally, were the most interesting), and
made more than enough $$ to be really satisfied.

But the far worse consequence: it means I squandered at least 5 days a
week x 5 months where I could have been building really cool robots...
Imagine getting 100 days to work on a robot project?  I traded that
for a measly $0.20 on the dollar.

The thought swirling in my head that's slowly turning into a mantra:

"It's not that you don't have time to work on the cool projects... You
don't have time _because_ you're not working on the cool projects."

substitute "eat right and exercise" for "work on cool projects" and
it's more obvious.

</cautionary tale>


On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 3:08 PM, Vern Graner <vern at txis.com> wrote:
> brooksdesign wrote:
> <snip>
>> I get bogged down in the day to day survival mode and never get anything done
> <snip>
>
> Unfortunately, we all do this to some extent. Sadly, ideas (even really,
> really good ones!) are effectively a "dime a dozen". On the other hand,
> capable people with time and resources to expend are extremely scarce
> resources.
>
> I'm not saying that some of the ideas aren't intriguing or
> thought-provoking, but its not the availability, presentation or
> viability of the ideas that prevents them from being advanced. Its lack
> of available time. :(
>
> Vern
>
> --
> Vern Graner CNE/CNA/SSE    | "If the network is down, then you're
> Senior Systems Engineer    | obviously incompetent so why are we
> Texas Information Services | paying you? Of course, if the network
> http://www.txis.com        | is up, then we obviously don't need
> Austin Office 512 328-8947 | you, so why are we paying you?" (c)VLG
> _______________________________________________
> Robotgroup mailing list
> Robotgroup at puremagic.com
> http://lists.puremagic.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/robotgroup
>