[Robotgroup] A robotgroup challange

[Def Egge]

At 16:37  2008-05-20, David Nunez wrote:
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 >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."



The obvious point here being that you have the same 24 hours per day 
and 7 days per week that the rest of us have ... the only real 
difference is that we each allocate those days and hours differently.



[trimmed]



 >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.



Lesson learned (admittedly, that hard way) and unlikely to be soon- 
forgotten.  I hope that you have cultivated some decent relationships 
with hungry, motivated, talented subcontractors.



 >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...



Self-education is not time squandered, David!



[trimmed]


Been there.  Done that.  Got both the t-shirts to prove it.

At one point, way back in graduate school, I was putting in about 20 
hours of research time (mostly business hours and exclusive of my 
teaching duties and my own classwork).  I saw that I could milk 
another 30 hours by spending my evenings working in the lab.

My productivity increased markedly.  Fantastic!  Instead of X I was 
now getting something closer to 2X instead of the theoretical yield 
of 2.5X.  Then I realized that I could easily grab another 20 hours 
on the weekends.

Initially, my productivity increased marginally but, through time, I 
was getting something more like 0.8X done.

Fortunately, I learned my lesson before I augered into the ground.  I 
cut my time back to a mere 25 hours of so ... 5 hours per day during 
business hours ... obtained productivity closer to the theoretical 
yield ... got a life with the evening and weekend hours and relearned 
what it meant to be happy.

I hope that you can do the same, my friend.  Life is too short to 
drink cheap beer!

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-- 

All the best....

Mike