Wind back 6 months ago when I was noticed myself having the same problem (it’s definitely a common recurring theme for me, but its been especially bad over the last couple of weeks), and I was thinking about what I was doing back then to try and improve the situation.  I spent a few minutes trawling google earlier yesterday for some answers to curing motivation/concentration issues, and the common theme seemed to be depression and other mental health issues.  This is nonsense of course, I’m just as happy and laid back ask I’ve always been though I definitely feel the stress of money and financial situations a hell of a lot more than I used to.  If anything being motivationless is depressing, but not so much vice versa, I don’t think.

Money is definitely an ingredient of motivation though, I can usually push out required work with ease if theres an instant reward at the end, but this seems to fade when the money is not bankable within a month or so!

So, I’ve spent a few days just thinking about what I’m going to do about the situation, and i’m noticing (obviously) that some of the things I’m figuring out, I worked out last time I felt this way, so like a viscious cycle, I’m once again learning from past mistakes

I’ll attack it this way, and like a childish game give myself a score of 1 – 10 for my percieved moto-rating.

Thinking about:

• Being positive at all times, despite what s*#t the day throws
• Systematic approach to get a job done by cutting down everything into miniscule tasks
• Attempt to fight laziness and apathy by not checking email/forums every two seconds, just because
• At work, Insist (unless its important) that communication is carried out via email/IM, as being interrupted 30 times an hour is a recipe for mind blocks and mental muddle

Now the question one might pose to me, is why on Earth am I posting this?!? I answer in one way, if this I.T jig falls through but my self motivation is successful, coach the other 87.3% of corporate/business workers in my way of thinking.

I’m going to be the next Anthony Robbins… Bitch!

There’s obviously a new keyword in there I’d never heard of before, ture, which looks just like a dyslexic true.  Amazingly enough (it’s PHP), this has been in and working as expected (correctly), and gone unoticed for the better part of a year.

Madness.

As part of the build process we’ve done a recent refactor which improves performance and security and aims to generally make our service easier to consume by every device that uses it.  This process has taken the better part of six weeks next to full time work by four of us and at least two weeks work from a fifth person that left recently.  I don’t want to say I’ve poured my heart and soul into it, that would be lieing, but its definitely been something that we’ve become immensely proud of.

Anyway, today the decision was made to drop all the work completed toward the new version, and continue where we forked off on the previous release, which really is a huge shame.  Now I feel like we’ve taken a step backward, erasing a bunch of work that would have ultimately made the project a lot more stable and laid a few of the foundations for future-proofivity, if thats even a word.  I shouldn’t get too aread of myself though, in reality it was months away from the final goal, but at least there was move towards that goal.

I shouldn’t be surprised though, there seems to be many examples of this and far worse (mal)practices in the IT industry around the web, and it seems to me to often be the way the things work, especially in smaller Software Development situations.  I’ve even seen it before at previous jobs, and its never pretty.

The thing that gets me though, is the absolute waste of resources and man-hours that goes into a mistake such as this.  Assuming we worked two thirds of the week each, I’d put the time spent at:

4.5 staff x 27 hours x 6 weeks  = 729 man hours

By my crude calculations this is just about enough man hours to build a small skyscraper, or the Titanic if you will, but… That’s Life, after all!

Who knows, in another month, the project will probaly take another path altogether requiring a complete rewrite, refactor or perhaps disbanded altogether!

What the hell happened?

Falling into a rythym, out of rythym

As I said, for a period (probably a lot shorter than I actually remember), I felt like I was getting things done, and working towards some goals.  The last 2 months has shattered this, and I’ve now managed to fall into a new rythym or being completely out of the previous beat I was following.  I shouldn’t blame myself too much, there’s been a lot of time consuming, money draining things going:

• the Wedding (enough said),
• the quasi HoneyMoon,
• the 3 different visits of different groups of family and friends, spanning now over the past 6 weeks; and
• the 4 holidays (of various lengths coming up to Paris, Southern England and of course Russia)

With all the interruptions, I’ve managed to lose a fantastic work oppurtunity (don’t ask, big project, stake in company, yada, yada….), eat and drink (badly) constantly and quite frankly waste a metric f$#kload of money.  And with things not paid for, such as the holidays I mentioned above, I can’t see any easy way out of immediate debt.

Planning…

So here I am, preaching to Google crawl bot (possibly this posts only audience, given its less than exciting nature), and getting my thoughts down on paper (we’ll call it, the interscroll), to come to a quick as possible solution to the problem.

I’ve spent the last hour updating the C&S Income/Expenditure budget (yet another thing, I’ve lost track of), and whilst things ain’t as glum as I thought they might be, it seems something has to give:

• stop on the spot purchases (easy, I’ll stop scouring internet shops in downtime at work)
• cut back on drinking/going out (should be fine, now that the visitors have moved on)
• borrow more money (read debt) from the bank, not a good idea.  The way things are going at the moment, I’m probably one of their favourite small-time customers.
• cut back on one of the holidays (kind of hard as it was booked months in advance (not with our money, at the time).

I find myself in the money pickle again, something I’m no stranger to.  I’m comfortable enough that I know I can be clear and mostly debt free again by say… September, but its the now that I can’t handle.

Completely off topic, but the book I’m reading at the moment, Tripwire (my 6th novel since April!), starts with a CEO of a faltering U.S electronics business going to a loan shark for a large loan.  In borrowing 1.1 million dollars, he falls into the trap of paying back a high interest rate, and giving a rather large proportion of his fledgling companies shares to the shark who sells them all instantly for nothing causing the banks to freak and dump his enourmous loans off on a large mortgage recovery operation (ftonted in the Cayman islands, by the loan shark himself).  This has nothing to do with my situation at all, but geez, show’s what debt and stupidity can do in times of desperation.

Recoupling on the rail to success….

I’ve got a 7 point plan to rectify this little situation of mine, firstly:

• enjoy the holiday to Russia, no point in stressing about that
• get all debts on the way to be being repaid by September 2008, this includes costs for the wedding, the previous personal loan, and credit card debt
• write at least two posts a week to HD911, content is the key
• continue reading novels, but branch out into some different authors, 4 books by one author (Lee Child) and 2 by another (Harlen Coben) is proving a little too much
• continue good things at the office
• get off my ass and get this work started and flowing again; and
• and keep exercising as much as possible, the 15 mile week (counted 4 trips from the office to Waterloo station (3.5miles) and smaller trips between work and Trafalgar Square) was a step in the right direction.

Let’s do this thing…. Yea!

It was one morning this week and said colleague had been asked by the big wigs over at Ché Le Corporate to get a list of all employees and their accompanying Job Titles from the Nike Wallet Processing Plant (that is, my office).  The conversation went a little like this:

“Hey, what do you want your job title to be, I’ve been asked to get a list of everyone and their job titles.  I’ve put down System Administrator for you for the time being”

Hearing this stopped me dead in my tracks, “System Administrator I thought, What have I got myself into?”.  By no fault of my colleague at all, he’d pointed out something that was now blatently clear to me.  My recent change in jobs has changed me from a budding developer (working on a relatively deadend project, but still a developer nonetheless), to kind of a Network/Tech/Administrator guy.

Now, the Network and Tech part of that, I don’t mind, the server hardware & network and linux setup part of the computer world is something I’ve always been interested in.  But the Systems and Administrator part is what scares me, for no one worth their grain of salt (I hope thats me) aspires to be a System Administrator, it really is a glorified helpdesk position, and now I have to watch my step carefully, so as not to fall into the role that is the scorn of the whole IT profession.  I continue down this parth, and soon enough, I’ll be the general office go to guy:

• the guy who handles helpdesk and support requests
• the guy who manages such petty things as network and email accounts
• the guy who answers the phone… often; and worst of all
• the guy who is expected to order stationary, water and toilet paper

Thankfully, none of these things can or will ever apply to me, I’d sooner quit my job, move back to Australia and hammer my tongue/foot/penis flat enough to fit into a standard paper shredder if only for the joy of it.

So now everyone, I am on a journey of rediscovery, to make sure I still continue on the path to greatness, despite my sudden change in job descriptions.  Thus, once again, I’ll ask:

Who/What Am I?

This has me really thinking about exactly what I want from career, as even though I’m still relatively new in this game, I can already see that what I wanted 5 years ago (a job…) is far different than the goal I have now.  But thats the way life should be, if I’d had it the way I wanted it when I was 5 I’d be a cop, an astronaut or a gynaecoligist (ech…) right now, and all three I am not.

But really, whats in a title? It’s what you make of it, and if I don’t want to be the Bastard Operator From Hell, I won’t be, despite how much fun it could be.  So I’ll make what I can of this period, see how it goes.

Today (April 1st) marks the day that I start at my company as a permanent employee, and also that day that I cease to be a full-time contractor, at least for the time being, anyway.  It’s brought about an aura of uncertainty, not because I’m unsure of what I’m doing, but because of that fact that taking a paycut is often hard to justify.

I’ve had the choice though, to stay on contracting and miss out on possible bonus’s, promotions, as well as all the normal benifits like holidays, sick pay (hooray, I can take a day off again) and private health care.  I’m hanging on to the thoguth that whilst I was getting better money contracting (by no means, fantastic money, mind you), with the holiday and sick pay, I’m not that much worse off.  And I found about a fantastic little nasty called Employer’s Natiional Insurance Tax, which for some reason I was stupid enough to have been paying myself, missing out on the grand total of almost £1,000 cleared cash in hand per month.

This is what I’ll be expected to wear to the office, now that I’m permanent

Renewed Motivation

But the worry at the change in career path has renewed my motivation to pursue out of work projects and whilst I’ve had a couple of fairly unproductive months, I think I’m well back on track down the path of success. At least I hope so, anyway.  So far I’ve:

• 75% completed the first of the ShanCo projects, an experiment in collaboration, team work and fighting the good (SEO) fight to thrive for a win in this web world.  I can’t say too much because not only would that ruin the surprise, I’d be sure to dissapoint as well.
• started to draw up plans with an old mate from University;
• and done the same with some friends from work, thinking about a couple of huge ideas one of the guys came up with that could quite likely revolutionise the London Texas Hold’em scene as well as a couple of other ideas as well.  If I can help, that is!

Budgeting & Finance

Another thing I did, whilst fretting about the incoming financial situation was draw up a quick budget for the next few years.  I’m amazed time and time again, just how much money we waste, and how easy it would be to save a fair chunk if you put your mind to it and watch out on the frivilous bar rounds (£36 on five drinks on Saturday night!).  I’ve found in the past if I’ve had something that i’ve needed to save up for, drawing out a budget and clearly working out exactly much we needed to save, and exactly how much we can save if we stick to the money we intend to live on each week.

It’s probably a no brainer for most, and a sign of immaturity, but sticking to my money guide, which took me about 20 minutes to knock up in Excel should help in this matter, especially when I consider all the things we’re going to have to pay for in the next few months, such as the Big Event and the nicely priced Holiday to Russia in July.  Hell I’m going to enjoy my holiday pay though!

The weird thing is within the time span of that morning I’d gone from Shannon, C# extraordinare (not really) to a completey different role, that being to build/commission a group of Redhat/Oracle servers for the new production environment.  I’m not sure if its a step forward, or a step back, but its definitely something new and breaks up the monotony of the last few months work.  The good thing is, it’ll give me an extra insentive to get this ShanCo work up and running, as I feel much more inclined to put in the required hours to get said projects up and running, especially as I don’t want to get rusty.

This afternoon, office politics took over, and the wrath of an over zealous trigger happy manager got a little tacky and crackheaded on my ass.  but thats a story for another day.

I still don’t know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets
Every time I thought I’d got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me
But I’ve never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I’m much too fast to take that test

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Don’t want to be a richer man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)

- Changes

… Only Kiddin, it doesn’t look near this bad.

Anyway, I just worked out, within the last week that the British Home Office was in the process of tightening up their immigration laws, and as of March 1st 2008, its not going to be so easy to get the Highly Skilled Migrant Visa (HSMP) anymore. This sucks for me, as after July 1st this year, I’ll have used up my allowed employment time (12 months out of the 24 month holiday Visa).

I have earned enough, however to apply for the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme, which allows me to work pretty much anywhere, and 5 years in the UK without restriction, and best of all the time counts toward residency. The rules change slightly after Leap Year Day Day (29th Feb, 2008) though, the main causes for concern being that the cost now rises by £400 pounds (from the already expensive £750), and you need to go back to your home country to apply for it. There are many other changes to, like the fact having an MBA doesn’t automatically qualify you for the Visa now, and some of the points for various skills have been reduced somewhat.

But then the story gets worse….

Not only will I have to go back to Australia (if I chose this path after the cut off date), I’ll have to wait 4 months killing time back home until my visa request is processed so I can come back again! So, on current flight costs I’ve worked out the total cost of getting a new visa at:

Cost Of Visa: £1150

Cost of return Flight: £900

Lost income in work time: ~£16,000 (minus £ lost to tax)

Time spent saving up now so I’ve paid my share of the rent and food, and general bills/expenses: at least 2 months

That hurts, it really does. So I’m in a mad rush now, to try and organise all the paper work and cash required for the visa application (I’m willing to pay the £200 person to person interview fee for obvious reasons) by the 28th of February. It just depends how quickly my university can send me over the Proof of Completion of Studies form. I have my degree, and my transcript, I even have my high school transcript. But to the British Commission, that’s just not good enough. You need a letter from the chancellor of your university stating that at the majority of your course work was taught in English.

The fact I went to an Australian university (and have a degree to show for it) doesn’t cut it. They need proof, and solid proof at that.

I will do whatever I can to avoid making the trip back home though, not that i woudn’t mind seeing friends and family, on the contrary. I’d love to, just it is a huge drain on time and money.

Visa time it is….

We had two companies come in for meetings this week in regards to SEO and web marketing, and it was a definite eye opener.  I’ll be truthful here and say that I’ve always scoffed at the amounts these company’s expect for the work they do, and whilst I still believe its not worth as much as they ask, they definitely now what they”re talking about.  Luckily, the site we’re working on I Can Have It, wasn’t too bad and shouldn’t require much work (on our side) in the coding, content placement, keyword and back end areas.  Most of them are superficial changes which wouldn’t take any longer than half a day t implement which is good.  Of course there’s a lot of work over the coming months thats going to be put into Ad placement, Search keyword/Pagerank inflation and the like, so it’ll be interesting to see how much we get from our £x,000 bill.

I’ve also been watching this site, and its related reports on Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools, and have been blown away by how many weeks I’ve been ranked #1 for weird search terms such as double plugger, weird thong, ‘Love all the pain away’ and the sheer amount of hits I’m still getting with the terms Perth Mall, Murray St Mall Webcam, Perth Webcam and many more.

So eventually when Shanco comes online and it’s wares are launched (when this happens, you’ll be the first to know), I’ll be paying close attention to SEO, Search engine friendly URL’s, link placement and affiliate programs/cross promotion.  Hopefully the bits I’ve learnt so far with HD911 will help with this.

I got a nice surprise in my inbox this afternoon, a quick message from the staff at Google Offices in the UK wanting to talk about a possible job offer and relocation in the Sydney Office in Google.  I can’t even remember when I sent my resume in to Google (I think it was just after I got to the UK), but it was nice to get a message anyway.  If I had have been in Perth, I would have jumped at the chance, but I’m not even going to think about relocating back to Australia, as we all know, I’m enjoying the UK too damn much.

I might give them a phone call tomorrow and see if they have any positions for work going in London, as I’d imagine out of all the companies there are to choose from, for the work I’m doing, that would have to be an awesome oppurtunity.  Time will tell!