by Walter Naeslund on March 9, 2010
Man, it feels like I’m flying back and forth to Gothenburg like a ping pong ball. It’s really a nice city though, so I can’t complain. Now I’m back down here again, and I’m stealing a few minutes from my beauty sleep to hang out with you, dear reader, before heading off to bed. And today, I thought I should share with you a new efficiency trick that I’ve fallen in love with. Ready? Here we go:
Sail When There is Wind
There are really two periods of the day when I write: in the morning, or late at night. I rarely find inspiration in the afternoon. What I realized though, is that my whole life is built a little bit like that. There are parts of the day when I’m really really pumped to take on whatever comes my way, and there are parts when I’m pretty darn slow. And I have a feeling that you, dear reader, may perhaps share this experience?
When I started asking around what people thought of these phases of the day, I realized that we’re all built a little bit like that, and that I (and perhaps you?) should start planning my day around it. It all started out as something of a joke, but I soon realized that there was amazing power in this way of structuring my life.
Euforia Day Planning 101 – This is How It Works
I wake up at 6.30-ish and head out for a morning run. I then have until about noon to get the most demanding tasks of the day, mostly creative work, done. This is when I have my V8 running at top RPM. I also try to make check my task lists and add tasks to them (Google Tasks kick ass).
After lunch I get noticeably slower and try do get routine stuff done and check off all the easy stuff from my lists. At around 3 in the afternoon I’m more or less ready to pass out, and therefore I do! A fifteen minute powernap here gets me back to sync and up to speed for a pretty effective couple of hours before leaving the office at around 6. After dinner I do most of my reading and occasionally write stuff – like now.
This may all sound pretty obvious and straightforward, but the trick is to say no to attractive but non-demanding stuff that wants to enter my 8-12 sweet spot. And there is A LOT OF STUFF that wants to claim that sweet spot! Saying no here can be quite tricky, but it’s really where the power comes from.
And that’s it. A short and dead simple piece of advice, but one that actually works. Simple things often do.
Similar Posts:
by Walter Naeslund on February 26, 2010
There are hotel rooms and there are Hotel Rooms. This is a Hotel Room. Last night I checked in to Scandic Opalen’s brand new top floor to work for a couple of days. The view from up here over Gothenburg is just stunning, and the room is brand spanking new. They have also placed the desk in front of the window which I love. This would be my perfect office – beds and everything. Give me one.
Similar Posts:
by Walter Naeslund on February 23, 2010
You can have all the talent in the world, all the education and the rich dad. You can have a ton of friends, two dogs, and a boyfriend/girlfriend who’s CEO of whatever important company. You can have lottery luck, social skills, 1/4000 Twitter ratio and 3000 “friends” on Facebook, you can have rock star background and killer legs. But whoever works the hardest will always win in business. Always.
What a great way to start off a Tuesday!
Similar Posts:
by Walter Naeslund on February 21, 2010
On sundays I often go for a walk with a good old friend of mine. We drink coffee and talk about life, and today we even danced around in the snow and jumped in snowbanks. (Yeah, I know, we are like kids when we get together sometimes). As we danced down Götgatan some guy went by us filming with a video camera. I would never have noticed this hadn’t it been for my friend commenting on it “oops, now we’re on film”. This got me thinking.
My friend doesn’t have a very open web presence. I do. Could this be why I didn’t even notice the camera? I’m on Twitter, I have two blogs, my Facebook profile is pretty open, and my LinkedIn-profile is detailed. If you search for me, you get a pretty well fed Google response. If another video goes up there of me dancing in the streets? Big deal. I have thousands of pieces of information up there showing me, and this will represent 1/1000 of my total image. It really doesn’t matter.
But what if you only have 10 pieces of information up there? Well – then the dancing video will suddenly make up 10% of your Internet grand total. Each piece of information up there then counts for much more! Anxiety attack!
Perhaps the obvious logic of cautious people being more impervious to for example slander is incorrect in the Internet age? Perhaps it is precisely the other way around – that openness actually acts as a shield? Let’s do an experiment. Brace yourselves for anxiety attack on my behalf! Here comes the pictures you get back of me from the first 10 SERPs on Google image search for “Walter Naeslund”:
This is me. This is my history. Would I put all of these in my CV? Probably not. Do they represent a true image of who I am? Nope. But even so, if one “less-than-wonderful” picture of me would hit a strong blog, these other images would all act as a shield showing that “ok, he may have danced around naked with bunny ears in a Tokyo Kareoke bar in this pic, but besides that he seems to a) at least be fairly social b) lecture quite a bit (can’t be complete nut), c) does have friends d) travels (guess you got that from the Tokyo-bunny-ear-kareoke pic too), e) enjoys good food, f) has some form of serious side, g) enjoys music…” and so on and so on.
Compare that to what would have happened to my friend. The naked-with-bunny-ears-kareoke pic would have hit the front page along with one or maybe two other images. It would make up 1/3 of his web presence image-wise. He needs to be much more cautious than me about precisely what goes up there, because each piece matters much more. This, of course, also explains why newbie bloggers experience so much performance anxiety. One crappy post feels like DEATH for them, but only in the vicinity of 0.001% death for me. I have others that I’m proud of.
A minute ago, my beautiful girlfriend came in the room and asked me if it was really such a good idea to post this picture experiment in the blog since there are, after all, a whole lot of semi weird party pics in that mix. But really, it’s not like you can’t simply do that Google search for yourselves. It’s all up there already, and besides, this is who I am! Perhaps it’s not a mistake to post this at all. Perhaps the mistake is really on the part of the cautious non-posters? Perhaps the real security is actually in the numbers and in making your mark before somebody else does it for you? I believe so. And I believe that this goes for videos and text as well.
So, get out there now to protect your turf! Just remember one thing – never lie.
Similar Posts:
by Walter Naeslund on February 17, 2010
I always speak of my advertising agency Honesty as a place where New York meets California, or more specifically, where Madison Avenue meets Silicon Valley, or EVEN MORE specifically, where Mad Men meets Mad Geeks. Today I saw this illustration in an excellent article on Read Write Web which I thought illustrated this beautifully. I think I’m might get a poster for the lunch room. 
Similar Posts:
by Walter Naeslund on February 17, 2010
Let me translate this ad to English for you:
“Pripps new 45 cl disposable beer packaging is really ideal for the sailing trip. It takes up little room, weighs less, are easy to cool and last but not least – there is no recycling and no empty bottles to bring home. Now, both Pripps Pilsner and ripps Special is available in 45 cl glass bottle and 45 cl can.
Ans a little extra tip, making a hole in the bottom of the empty can makes it sink faster.”
WTF?
Similar Posts:
by Walter Naeslund on February 16, 2010
Here is a video that I’m posting simply because I want more people to see it. And listen to what Jamie Oliver has to say. And do something.
I can’t believe how stupid we humans are sometimes, but at the same time, I can’t believe how easy this situation really is to turn around. Sure, there are millions of small decisions that need to be made and as many actions that need to be taken, but they’re small decisions and simple actions. My TED Prize wish is that Nike would have the courtesy do donate their tagline to Jamie Oliver. He deserves it.
Similar Posts:
by Walter Naeslund on February 16, 2010
There are certainly drawbacks with the Swedish winter, but walking to Grand Hotel from Södermalm at 07.15 am for a meeting is not one of them. Beautiful. (Click for a larger image).
Similar Posts:
by Walter Naeslund on February 15, 2010
After a hard night out on the town me and my beautiful (albeit occasionally hot tempered) girlfriend Katja went out for a cozy Valentine’s day walk on Södermalm. We started out with pizza (hey, we were out until 6 in the morning last night, give us a break), and went on to pick up a couple of semlor (if you ever go to Sweden, make sure you grab a semla!).
But as we walk past the bakery, we see this huge commotion on the other side of the street. There are policemen, police cordons, a police car and an army of aliens. Yes aliens! Wearing strange but awesomely put together outfits with bows in the hair, bright colors, and extremely advanced fingernails and make up. WTF?
As we get closer we realize that they are also quite small – about the size of 9-12 year old humanoids.
We work up our courage to walk into the rowdy crowd and find out what’s going on.
It turns out that the aliens are not aliens at all, but fans of the seventeen year old blogger Foki, who is visiting the jewelry shop Cocoo to meet her readers and sign autographs for Valentine’s day. Awesome!
I think that it is good to show stuff like this to marketing managers every now and again. Blogs are real. Blogger celebrities are real celebrities. When I was a kid, television was the hub around which celebrity and conversation spun. Blogs are the television of our time.I also got some interviews with some of these aliens, which I’ll edit and post later.
Stay tuned!
Similar Posts:
