One thing we’ve definitely learned is to keep moving forward, and in that vein, we’re super excited to announce the first monthly Menuism Food Fight! You might have heard about it on the Menuism Blog, but a good thing bears repeating: Eat PANCAKES and win prizes! In honor of National Pancake Week (Feb 18-24), we’re looking for the BEST pancake in Seattle, Chicago, New York and San Francisco, and you can win by just eating pancakes and reviewing them on Menuism. You can win even if you’re not a pancake fan – just refer a winner and you’ll win as well. So get out there and spread the word, or check the press release or contest page for more details!

Publicity in all forms is great, and we’re really excited to be getting Food Fight coverage from the awesome guys at Tech Cocktail and WindyBits. However, you know you’ve really made it when your name shows up on a banana, courtesy of the fine folks at BananaName:

This is proof positive that Menuism’s Food Fight is something to go “bananas” over… sorry, couldn’t resist.

- John & Justin

Pros:

• Traveling can be an interesting mental exercise to train yourself to adapt to change (and everyone knows that adapting to change is good…).  It forces you to break or adapt your regular routine and constantly encounter new things and scenarios.
• It’s a great way to keep networking in different locations.
• You get to visit with friends and family.
• It breaks the monotony of working at home.
• You get a lot of work and reading done.  Once you start realizing how productive you can be at the airport, you’ll start wanting to go early.  I think it’s good that most airports don’t have free wi-fi since it forces me to work offline.
• Even a working trip can be a mini-vacation.

Cons:

• Change can be mentally draining.
• Too much travel can just make you feel dirty and blah.  It usually takes me a day or two to recover.  In some cases you may come down with pneumonia.
• Sleeping can be difficult with changing sleep environments and times – ranging from different beds to couches to sleeping at 6am.
• Without a car, local travel becomes it’s own planning activity.
• Too much eating out.

Some Tips on Southwest:

• I think Southwest is one of the better ways to fly.  The A-B-C seating priority lines used to be annoying for those of us with carry-on luggage, but now that pretty much everyone has to check-in their bags (because of the liquid restriction), the open seating is nice since you don’t need to find a seat with overhead space.  If you get A seating you have a pretty good shot at getting that emergency row.
• You better check-in online beforehand (24 hours ahead) at southwest.com.  Even if you don’t have a printer, just check-in then go to any of the kiosks at the airport and print out your boarding pass.  Checking in early is the only way to guarantee a decent seating priority.
• Southwest is great for flexible travel.  It’s generally the same price to buy each leg individually or part of a larger round trip and any leg you don’t fly automatically turns into credit.  Keep the confirmation code and next time you fly you can apply that flight credit to your next ticket. 

General Travel Tips:

• Get some good headphones. I’ve got the Sennheiser HD 280 Pro.  Foldable, good sound and you’ll barely hear the engine noise or crying babies.  I love it.
• Fall sleep before take off and before landing if you those transitions make you nauseous. 
• 24-hour fitness membership is a great way to have a consistent place to workout.
• Get a good laptop backpack with easy laptop access for the security checkpoint.
• Don’t wear a belt.  Wear shoes that are easy to take off and put on.  Wear socks.

Got any other tips or observations to share?

- JC

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- JC

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• How to become an early riser
• 10 ways to optimize your normal days
• 10 ways to relaxify your workspace

I figured a new start deserved a new workspace.  I haven’t really changed it since my telecommuting days at HP, so this seemed like a good time to mix it up.  I rearranged my office space to be in a more comfortable corner of my condo – right next to the window so I can get some nice natural light and enjoy the summer view.  The moving, cleaning and organizing also served as a much needed reboot to clear some junk off my desk and take care of some overdue items.

A renewed start also seems like a good time to try a new schedule.  Today I woke-up at 6:30 and then did a good 45 min of cardio.  Now, I’m wide awake (partially due to the coffee) and chomping at the bit to get back to coding and it’s only 8 am!  Hmm, I guess that’s when normal people go to work anyways  

-JC

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It started ten days ago with sinus pressure, fever, and a headache – classic signs of a sinus infection.  Having had them in the past, I decided I would let it run its course – a viral infection might last just a few short days.  Of course, the real reason was that the insurance plan I had chosen when we started the business (when I was feeling on top of the world and invincible) had a high deductible and didn’t cover office visits, so I’d have to pay for everything out-of-pocket.  That brings us to the first lesson learned:

Two-Bit health lesson #1: Choose health insurance very carefully, making sure not to overlook things like office visits and prescriptions.

So did I improve after a few days?  No; on the contrary, I picked up an annoying cough to go with my other fine symptoms.  At this point I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, and utterly frustrated that I wasn’t able to be productive with the business.  However, I was still concerned about the costs of a full-blown office visit, so after some digging I found a number of great local resources, like free nurse hotlines and local clinics.   Ultimately I found a local Minute Clinic where the nurses confirmed my sinus infection and prescribed antibiotics to treat it.  I was really pleased with my experience at the clinic – it’s a great concept that I hope becomes more widely accessible.  This leads to my second lesson learned:

Two-Bit health lesson #2: Learn about your local health resources, such as community health clinics, free 24-hour nurse hotlines, and low-cost quick clinics.  Make use of them.

Now that I had the antibiotics, all was well, right?  Not quite; otherwise I’d have posted this sooner.   Once I started taking the antibiotics some of my symptoms disappeared, but unfortunately not all of them.  Of particular annoyance was the hacking cough, which over the next few days got stronger and more frequent, finally keeping me awake all night and turning me into a tired, hacking zombie during the day.  After six days on the antibiotics I decided it was time to see a real doctor, so I went to the local urgent care clinic.  After an afternoon full of poking, prodding, and x-raying, I got the news that congratulations, my sinus infection had developed into pneumonia.  Yes, the same pneumonia that took out our dear President William Henry Harrison.  This time I was prescribed even stronger antibiotics, which I’m glad to report seem to be doing the trick.  Due to lesson #1 above, I’ll have to pay for the costs out of pocket, but that’s preferred over letting the illness linger on.  Which brings me to the third and final lesson learned from this painful saga:

Two-Bit health lesson #3: Health trumps wealth.  Don’t cut corners when it could cost you (and your business) a lot more in the long run.

And that’s the story of how the past ~2 weeks have passed, where my only productivity has been the form of phlegm.   Sometimes it takes a sharp reset to bring new perspective and renewed focus towards an ongoing project, and I think this definitely did the trick.  As you can see I also learned a number of lessons which, had I applied them in this case, would have saved me both time and money. Hopefully some of these lessons will help keep you and your small business healthy and productive. 

-JL

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Quote from “The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of American’s Wealthy” excerpt:

About two-thirds of us who are working are self-employed. Interestingly, self-employed people make up less than 20 percent of the workers in America but account for two-thirds of the millionaires. Also, three out of four of us who are self-employed consider ourselves to be entrepreneurs. Most of the others are self-employed professionals, such as doctors and accountants.

Interesting quote from Paul Graham:

So why do I spend so much time thinking about startups? I’ll tell you why. Economically, a startup is best seen not as a way to get rich, but as a way to work faster. You have to make a living, and a startup is a way to get that done quickly, instead of letting it drag on through your whole life. [9]

We take it for granted most of the time, but human life is fairly miraculous. It is also palpably short. You’re given this marvellous thing, and then poof, it’s taken away. You can see why people invent gods to explain it. But even to people who don’t believe in gods, life commands respect. There are times in most of our lives when the days go by in a blur, and almost everyone has a sense, when this happens, of wasting something precious. As Ben Franklin said, if you love life, don’t waste time, because time is what life is made of.

So no, there’s nothing particularly grand about making money. That’s not what makes startups worth the trouble. What’s important about startups is the speed. By compressing the dull but necessary task of making a living into the smallest possible time, you show respect for life, and there is something grand about that.

So what’s the takeaway here? Well, I guess that depends on your goals. As I personally went through the thought process to go down the path of entrepreneurship, I thought about all the different things I wanted in life and wanted to accomplish. While I can ramble on and on about those thoughts, let’s just say they didn’t involve being stuck at a large corporation. The 2 things that stuck out in my mind:

1. I wanted more control over my life and financial well-being.
2. At this point in my life, I have the passion and energy to aggressively attack “making a living”. Why spread the working evenly across life? I’d rather try to get the hard lifting out of the way…

I hope everything goes according to plan

- JC

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Here’s where breaks come in handy… Breaks from work. Breaks from each other Breaks from thinking. Breaks from typing. Whatever it takes to get rejuvenated and refocused. But it’s not even that simple because how do you know how long a break you need? And without the pressure of an actual boss and job will you be able to reign yourself back in?

I suppose it’s all part of the learning experience. We’ve taken a decent break after 4 months of intense development and a big internal milestone, had some fun with friends and I think we’re ready to get back on track. It’s a marathon and hopefully we can continue at a good brisk pace now. After all, we’re not pursuing some magical end game buyout (although it would be nice), we’re trying to make a lifestyle change to become self-sufficient small business owners that are only accountable to ourselves and our customers. To echo the Carpenters’ song: “We’ve only just begun”!

P.S. For those following the Two-Bit Bios, #2 is running a bit behind schedule – it should be posted on Monday or so.

- JC

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• Practice makes perfect. Trite, but actually true.
• Deliberate practice is best. This naturally includes repetition, but also requires goal setting, feedback and an increased focus on proper technique.
• Do what you love. This is an extension of the first two points; most people won’t put in the time to get good at something they don’t truly love.

I find this article really encouraging on a number of fronts. First, it’s heartening to know that there’s little stopping you from excelling at something you really want to get good at. And secondly, even if you’re not the type to know what you really want to excel at, it makes sense to keep doing what you enjoy and love. Who knows, maybe someday your little two-bit hobby could end up paying the bills (and then some).

-JL

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While browsing Lifehacker I found this AllBusiness blog post about a topic near and dear to our hearts: how to work from home. One of the biggest adjustments I had to make after leaving Microsoft 3 months ago was adapting to the drastic change in my work environment. Making your home a place of productivity in addition to one of rest and relaxation requires a lot of changes, both around the house and in your own actions and perspectives. For most people (that means me) trying to be more productive at home is a never ending battle, but with the right motivation and dedication you can definitely make it work. Here’s a list of the more successful things that have helped me. I’ll save the list of unsuccessful things for a future post.

• Establish a dedicated office. Keep the stuff in the area strictly work-related; no bills, leisure books, tv, etc. to distract you from what you should be doing when you’re there. Making your entire home the “office” does not work.
• Make lists. You should know what you must accomplish that day, and additionally things you’d like to get done if there’s time. Finishing the must list means you can call it a day – this helps you avoid burnout, as starting a business is a marathon, not a sprint. Work on the like list if you’re feeling particularly energetic.
• Stay accountable. Relying on others is really effective here. If you’re lucky enough to have business partners, set up regular status checks, and make sure to share not only what you have done but what you will by the next checkpoint. If you’re flying solo, you can still leverage the pressure of being accountable to others by setting up situations where others expect something from you, like scheduling lunch or coffee where you’ll give a demo of your latest stuff to a friend. Having paying customers helps a lot in this regard too.
• Take the right breaks. Taking a break between tasks helps you unwind from and process the previous work and refocus your energies fully on the next task. There have been too many times where I’ve “finished” one task only to find myself disengaged on the next one because my mind was still thinking about what I was just working on.
• Stop taking the wrong breaks. My personal Achilles’ heel. Your home, by nature, is your most comfortable and distracting place on the planet. Add to that a high-speed internet connection with email, IM, and sites like Youtube and Myspace, along with zero parental supervision, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. One thing that’s worked for me is turning the wrong breaks into the right breaks; by promising myself time to browse/chat after each task, I’m better able to keep my focus on where it should be. If that’s not enough, you can try using two browsers like the AllBusiness article mentions, or better yet, two computers, with one dedicated to work. If all else fails, disconnect your internet. Seriously.
• Get out of the house. Coming from an office environment where I was used to seeing lots of people every day, it was disheartening to suddenly find myself home alone all day. Now I try to find a reason to get out of the house each day. This can be as simple as going to the gym or running, but I’ve found that just being around people helps. What also works well, if your work lets you, is working at a cafe or library every once in a while. The change of pace is refreshing, and oftentimes helps you focus better on your work.
• Be regular. And I’m not talking about Metamucil here. In our first working session, Justin and I worked ourselves to exhaustion. We were so passionate about getting stuff done that we would work til we passed out, shifting our schedules later and later in the day. After two weeks of that we finally learned that it’s not the way you train for a marathon. Since we’re all creatures of habit, it helps productivity to have regular work hours and to stick to them. There’ll definitely be the days when work demands much more from you, but even in those cases it’s important to have a normal “pace” of work that you can return to.

These are the top things that have worked for me (or that I’m working on) to help me actually “work” from home. What kinds of things have worked well for you?

-JL

]]> http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/how-to-actually-work-when-youre-working-from-home/feed/ 5 http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/those-cool-gmail-web-clips/ http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/those-cool-gmail-web-clips/#comments Fri, 28 Apr 2006 23:45:12 +0000 Justin http://twobitoperation.com/blog/2006/04/28/those-cool-gmail-web-clips/ When I first saw them, I thought they were sort of lame – who wants ads cycling on the top of their gmail? But since they cycle interesting stories as well, I’ve become a big fan of those 1-liners. I sometimes find myself bored and just clicking through them. Here’s a cool one I saw today for Beeramisu today. I’ll definitely have to try making that someday.

-JC