Archive for January, 2009

Moving from an a job in Tokyo to living in Miyakojima (a small island of Okinawa, Japan for those just tuning in) and working for myself has been one of the best decisions I have made in my life. I am enjoying the learning, the challenge, the great weather and relaxed environment. However, I have also made a few mistakes; which I have recently reconciled. One of the biggest mistakes so far has been to let myself be distracted.

By nature I tend to be able to focus well on something once I decide to accomplish it. I think forcing myself to ignore distractions is one of the big factors that helped me get through college. Of course, I didnt really understand the benefits of working in blocks and concentrating my works into intensive block. However, I now realize that that if I focus my work into small intensive sessions, then I can get my work done in less time and have more time to do the things I want to do. At least, that was the plan. So what happened?

The Problem

A few errors in technology mainly. Since I now spend most of my work on the computer, there are a number of way to get distracted. The biggest one has been communication. Since I am now living on a small island and have none of my friends or relatives around, I was more proactive in leaving open forms of communication. I set up skype and pidgin (a messenger client) to start when I turned the computer on. People could contact me at anytime and I would talk to them because I didn’t know when I would have the next chance. In fact, I would even start the conversation many times when I saw someone come online.

Another big factor was that I went back to reading e-mails as they would come in. I did this because sometimes I was waiting for information that I needed for a project I was working on. However, each time I did so I set aside the project that I was working on and would get side tracked. It would then take time to find my place and get back into a rhythm. Not a good way to do things.

The Solution

Make a clear distinction between your work and your personal time. I value my personal time very highly and I don’t want my work time pushing into it. Unfortunately, by cutting reducing my efficiency this is exactly what happened. When you are at work, focus on work. Try and reduce the time you spend doing work and eliminate any outside distractions. I have made the following changes to get back on track.

• Turn off all forms of communication- this includes messenger programs, phones, and e-mail
• Only check e-mail 3 times a day and reduce to 2 if possible
• Listen to music with headphones- This one works for me well, as it allows me to block outside distractions and get sucked into my own world
• Make it clear I am busy and don’t want to be bothered- This one isn’t really an issue for me since there is really no one around to bother me, but is extremely important for anyone in an office or a home environment with a lot of distractions.

I have been making a few changes to the site lately due to the amount of spam I have been getting. One of the changes was to add capture forms to the registration and comments. The capture form won’t be shown to users who are already registered. However, I had to delete most users due to the large number of spam registrations. I apologize and hope that asking everyone to re-register isn’t to big of a problem.

For those who are interested, I have also been reviewing a couple of Japanese language programs to offer on the site. Learning a language can be difficult, but it helps a lot to have the right materials. I have gone through a few so far and looks like I finally found one that I think will be a great learning tool. I will post more on this once I am finished testing.

Thanks to everyone for reading, and please don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions or suggestions to the site or topics you would like to see me write about.