Telepatik

La semana pasada fue un proceso de colaboraciones intensas y sabrosas. De conversaciones largas con amigos que siempre están dispuestos a estar un paso más allá que todos los demás, personas que sólo nacieron para pensar y actuar en grande! Realmente una semana inspiradora, que sólo hubiera podido ser mejor si la gripe no me hubiera dejado tirado como lo hizo por dos días consecutivos.

Los chicos de +pop se enamoraron de mi artículo “The 10 Walk The Line Tips for Good Marketing“, lo tradujeron y lo colgaron en su blog conversaciones +pop.

Entre otras cosas de las que pudimos hablar +Andrea (Andrea Hoare) y +Carlitos (Carlos Sánchez) fue la de la posibilidad de hacer una pequeña presentación para la Escuela de Comunicación Social de la Universidad Central de venezuela sobre el uso de Twitter como una herramienta para Mercadeo en el seminario de Lógica Digital que lleva a cabo la prof Hoare en la mencionada Universidad. A mí particularmente me parece un tema super interesante y es muy probable que desarrollemos esta idea para contaminar a la Escuela de Comunicación durante mi visita este año a Venezuela entre el 8 y el 30 de Junio.

Por cierto, que no sé si +pop ya tiene twitter, pero sino tiene, ¡Los voy a evangelizar de una vez!

I’ve just saw Walk The Line again. Walk the line is a movie showing the story of two lovers, each of them pretty famous during the port war era in the USA. We are talking on (musician) Johnny Cash life and the love of his life, June Carter. Johnny was interpreted by Joaquin Phoenix, a very admirable performer, specially in this movie.

Jhonny Cash is as famous as Elvis, but less pretentious. All in all, a guy who didn’t really want to be in the mainstream, but honestly wanted to make a living out of music.

Below the 10-list you coul find the extract from the script that illustrates perfectly why to walk the line in marketing you need to NOT walk the line of the market.

10 Walk The Line Points in Marketing

The 10 ‘Walk The Line’ Points for Good Marketing
1. You ask your market and accept the answers. You deal good with reality. Whether is it good or bad, you accept it and try to understand it.
2. You don’t go by the last trend, you invent it.
3. You don’t try to cheat your audience. Never.
4. You don’t talk about things you don’t know or feel or care about. eg. Don’t try to sell your PR story saying that you care about the CO2 footprint if you don’t just to get your name on it.
5. You don’t imitate.
6. You believe in you, your product, your method.
7. You are honest and truly involved with your product /method /etc.
8. You bring it home before someone tells you, just in case you don’t get another opportunity. Jhonny was just lucky.
9. You have sense of humor, and you share it even with those you think you shouldn’t.
10. You don’t walk the line (of mainstream, established codes, what has been done, etc.), you walk your line.

To understand better how I came to this conclusions, please check the following dialogue, it happens between the boss at the record label and Johnny during their first (and only) audition.

Record Label Guy
Hold on. Hold on. I hate to interrupt… but do you guys got something else? I can’t market gospel. No more.

Jhonny Cash
So that’s it?

Record Label Guy
I don’t record material that doesn’t sell, Mr. Cash…and gospel like that doesn’t sell.

Jhonny Cash
Was it the gospel or the way I sing it?

Record Label Guy
Both.

Jhonny Cash
Well, what’s wrong with the way I sing it?

Record Label Guy
I don’t believe you. We’ve already heard that song a hundred times…just like that, just like how you sang it.

Jhonny Cash
Well, you didn’t let us bring it home.

Jhonny Cash
Bring… bring it home? All right, let’s bring it home. If you was hit by a truck and you were lying out in that gutter dying… and you had time to sing one song, huh, one song…people would remember before you’re dirt… one song that would let God know what you felt about
your time here on earth…one song that would sum you up… you telling me that’s the song you’d sing? That same Jimmie Davis tune we hear on the radio all day? About your peace within and how it’s real and how you’re gonna shout it? Or would you sing something different? Something real, something you felt? Because I’m telling you right now… that’s the kind of song people want to hear. That’s the kind of song that truly saves people. It ain’t got nothing to do with believing in God, Mr. Cash. It has to do with believing in yourself.

Jhonny Cash
Well, I’ve got a couple songs I wrote in the Air Force. You got anything against the Air Force?

Record Label Guy
No.

Jhonny Cash
I do.

ps. If somebody can rip this dialogue from the movie to web, it would be really appreciate

Para quién es ésta guía? Para freelancers (autónomos) y oficinistas improductivos. Y para cualquier persona que piensa que la semana no le alcanza para lo que tiene que hacer.

La procrastinación (del latín: pro, adelante, y crastinus, referente al futuro) es la acción de postergar actividades o situaciones que uno debe atender, por otras situaciones más irrelevantes y agradables.
Fuente Wikipedia

La procrastinación afecta cada día a más y más personas, las empresas pierden dinero, y los empleados sienten que no tienen tiempo para hacer todas sus tareas.

Tras varias semanas sin hacer varias tareas simultáneamente, yo concluyo que gran parte del problema de la procrastinación se debe a la sobrevaloración (las empresas tienen varios años valorando a las personas que puedan hacer varias tareas al mismo tiempo) del multitasking en nuestras vidas. Afecta nuestro poder de concentración y definitivamente desviamos nuestra atención de lo importante repartiéndola en tonterías como chequear las noticias, revisar el email para ver qué cosa importante nueva hay (casi nunca hay nada urgente o importante), chatear sobre supuestas cosas de trabajo, etc.

Sin más preámbulos, he aquí la lista de 10 formas de matar a la procrastinación.

1. Acepta el problema, y decídete a eliminar la procrastinación de tu vida de una vez por todas.

2. Haz listas de cosas que hacer para tu día a día, con horas y minutos estimados de las labores que tienes que realizar y síguelos al pie de la letra. Eso sí, que tu tope en la lista sean primero las cosas que más te disgusta hacer, ya que éstas generalmente son las que conllevan a la procrastinación.

3. No sucumbas a la tentación de abrir algún software de chat “un momento” mientras trabajas.

4. De ser posible, trabaja totalmente desconectad@.

5. Usa Internet SOLO cuando sea estrictamente necesario.

6. Siempre es posible que te pilles a ti mismo procrastinando inconscientemente, cuando reconozcas esta conducta, deja de hacer INMEDIATAMENTE lo que estás haciendo y vuelve a tus tareas.

7. Recuerda siempre que mientras menos procrastines, más tiempo tendrás.

8. Si te llaman por teléfono, deja que caiga el contestador o responde diciendo que estás ocupad@. Rara vez se trata de una emergencia.

9. Revisa tu email 2 o 3 veces al día. No más.

10. Como te va a sobrar MUCHO tiempo libre con las recomendaciones anteriores, dedícate a adelantar trabajo y a planificar tus prioridades para el día siguiente.

Uf, ¡ya era hora de escribir un post en español! Es impresionante lo que hace hablar inglés todos los días. Aunque para ser sincero no hablo inglés todos los días, pues en la casa hablamos español todo el tiempo, y como trabajo en casa no salgo siempre. Pero ciertamente el contexto y la practicidad del inglés me pone a recortar palabras y a hacer un mix todo el tiempo. Por lo general no me doy cuent,a y cuando reparo sí me aco***o un poco.

Por ejemplo, en la casa ya no decimos ajoporro, sino lik (leek), y generalmente olvidamos verbos en español y conjugamos en inglés, y me refiero a verbos que van más allá de la tecnología, que eso ya lo hacía en Venezuela: decía linkear en vez de enlazar, decía taggear en vez de etiquetar, y así.

Pero aquí, aquí la cosa se pone más peluda, pues para cosas normales como “vamos a llamar a los panas”, decimos “let’s call los panas”.

Ja! Mentira!

Tampoco llegamos a tanto pero si decimos cosas como “look” o “check” o “improve”, entre otras palabras que podrían ser muy sencillas en español y que sencillamente quedan guardadas en un baulito hasta nuevo aviso.

Y es que sencillamente a uno se le van perdiendo las palabras en un mar de vocabulario nuevo, traducciones y performance under stress, así llamo yo a estar bajo presión tratando de pensar en otro idioma (una entrevista de trabajo, una cola para comprar tickets, etc.). Los peores casos son cuando te quedas pensando en cómo decir la palabra y no la encuentras, ni en inglés ni en español, la impotencia que se siente en tales momentos es difícil de describir.

Las consecuencias sólo se van sumando cada vez: es muy fácil cometer éstas atrocidades y maltratar a nuestro querido español pues toda la interacción con el exterior está hecha en inglés. Además de eso, uno se va encontrando libros anglosajones por ahí que por qué no leer. Yo por ejemplo en lo que va de año ya me he leído dos libros en inglés. Recomendables, por cierto: High Fidelity de Nick Hornby, que es mil veces más genial en libro que en peli, y Four Hour Work Week de Tim Ferriss, el libro culpable de mi exageración ahora con el tema de la productividad y cuyas consecuencias pueden verse en mis posts anteriores (nota mental: de hecho, creo que le debo una reseña a ese libro). Eso sí, intercalando siempre con libros en español que voy consiguiendo y que me van trayendo los distintos viajeros del mundo o yo mismo en mis periplos europeos.

Aunque esta búsqueda de literatura en español cada día influencia más nuestras maneras venezolanas, por lo que vamos reemplazando cosas del vocabulario normal para usar frases españoletas que son como más práctiva en un contexto de español internacional: “vale” funciona mejor que “chévere”, “buenísimo” mejor que “depinga” y así.

Creo que intercalar en una relación de 3:1 o menos será un buen remedio para estimular el cerebro en el idioma materno. Y éste post, es parte de ésa tarea.

So here I am. A year and a half ago I left my country Venezuela to have a little taste on the adventurer side of me. I went to New York and Phildelphia in USA, Brighton & London in UK, revisited Lisbon, Porto & Madrid in Portugal and Spain and then took a step back to “settle” in Brighton, UK.

Why I wanted to settle? Because I knew money was running through the sew and I would need more sooner or later. And actually I didn’t have a plan, so I had to made one for myself. Then I wanted to look for a job and “settle”. What a joke of plan. Then I found a job. But my internal adventurer spirit didn’t want to let me alone. I asked for permission in my crappy job and fled to Portugal to solve some things for almost two months, went back, stayed one more month in the bloody job I used to have and then quit.

If you sum all of my flights, short and long stays, you’ll find out that I am a kind of heroo. When you let go the fear of owning a life (that actually owns you with all its material world), then you are free to do whatever you want. When fear’s gone, your options are infinite. And when you have options, you don’t have fear. It’s a really good spiral to enlightenment.

But, I don’t really consider myself like a hero. The reason? I’m not one for the simple reason that I haven’t made something worthy in the last six months -anything that I would have loved to, like learn some new skills, etc-. And besides that, I don’t have yet and automated source of money that works without me, which will make me more than a superhero. Probably the lack of focus has distracted me from a real inspiration to accomplish my mission.

A while ago, I use to talk with Gaby, a dear friend of mine, to go around the world discovering new places, people and idiosyncrasies. The way I though I was going to make a living was by selling photographs and articles. And somehow I came to do it that way. I have been doing some freelance works for Terra Colombia during 2008, as well as other publications in Latin America. But yet is not enough to live out of that.

Would I be able to do it? I’ve no idea. By the moment I am working on the automation of money, hopefully my plans will do for that matter.

But, now I know I want to do next, in 6 months from now on:
- Move to Lisbon
- To have an automated source of money
- Learn to sail
- Be able to run a marathon (hence, running one)

Don’t miss the next episode!

Have a good life procrastination, but not with me. Not anymore.

I can’t believe what a life changing experience it is to have cut the time used checking email (now just twice a day) and not check at all facebook. This has to be the most productive week of my life.

Cheaters Incompatible
We were cheated: all this years being sell the whole mulstitasking stuff as a good thing. I declare it now: multitasking sucks and so do its consequences.

There’s always a fight between genders about this topic, because it is supposed that women are more effective multitasking than we men do. And I completely agree. My work experience was just about going task after task without really achieving a thing. The only moments when I really did accomplished any projects were when I wasn’t multitasking. But I kept fooling myself, reiterating me that I was able to perform while chatting, phoning, txt messaging, reading the news, putting the kettle on, and so on and onandonandon.

And I am just realizing how incompatible is multitasking with what I want in life. I don’t want to spend hours and hours behind a desk trying to do something while actually doing nothing. I’d rather prefer to do what I need to do in the bloody computer, and then get some fresh air up in the Swiss Alps. A Surf Ride in the Portuguese coast. Or wherever.

I call it a day. It’s over. So my first week e-detox included a killing. The killing of the procrastination. Have a good life my evil old friend.

If you see yesterday’s post, you’ll see that I was really really happy for how the day went and how fast I worked. Today wasn’t quite the same, but I’m not far from my achievements yesterday. I would have to blame my bank because they made me waste like an hour of my precious and superb productive day asking lot of stuff they’ve already should’ve known but they don’t.

Also, I did had to check my email more than I really wanted, due to some clients materials that went sent through, but that’s the way is it and that’s the only rule you have to check email out of fixed time: if the client calls and asks you to check your email. I had to go in there and checked it and follow the input in a website I am working on. SO it was more like a ping pong game. Not the more effective way to work, but it went quite well!

I’ll probably post something tomorrow.

I worked faster than ever today. The secret? I’ve only checked three times my email account today. Nobody died. Wow, actually I can’t believe how fast I manage to work today with all this email detox stuff.

I worked for around 7 hours in a row (well, having half hour break for lunch) accomplishing almost all of the duties planned for today, I delayed the calls to the bank and stuff because those require so many time. But it is a priority now. Top on the list. Probably I’ll do it now while having a small stroll around before my daily run or going and buying some bread or something. Or first thing morning tomorrow.

Ah! amazing! To be honest, I am aiming to work only 4-6 hours daily with all this prioritization stuff. I think I can make it, for real.

Sara, I saw your comment. Why don’t you write me an email with exactly what would you like to know. remember: flavorfla at gmail

F*ck, do it, don’t check your email that often, you will note how productive you could become!

It’s 2009.

10 years ago I was struggling trying to find out what to do with my life while binge-drinking in “La Llanera” Bar after modern languages classes, and fighting with my mom because of my heavy use of Internet. She paid for the phone. If I tell you the amounts, you would hit me straight in the face. How come I did my mom waste so much money on Internet? But the thing paid for itself. I started then making money out of the Internet while working for loquesea.com, then freelancing as a web designer/coder, then creating pareonone (a dating website) or elflojo (a students website) with Oscar.

It’s 2009 and I’m still working on the Internet. I work from home. I am doing a PR work for a client in London and my duties are all related to contacting people in Spain and report to the guys in London. I found the job on the internet. I use the internet for this job. I call locally and internationally, answer emails, and use loads of tools on the Internet to accomplish my work. I can do this anywhere in the world.

I want, as well, an automated source of money, but that one is a secret right now.

I remember that 10 years ago people were saying how Internet was going to change our lives, how we were going to be all home-based offices doing our work. I always thought that was crap, and it is somehow if you want to enter the formal world. But I’ve been living that reality at least half of this period 99-09. And to be honest I have my virtual office all here in my laptop. Where is my office? well, is all on my IP.

So, 10 years to realize that actually you can convert Internet in your very source of money.

The advantages are huge. I can travel and keep working. But I have to correct some things in my head. I mean, it’s no use that I travel if I want to keep checking my email every 5 minutes. And it’s for real, I become anxious.

I think the goal now is to reduce the amount of time I use online. It’s absurd. I’m a junkie, and I have to make a big big effort to keep my Internet use to the minimal. But I’m becoming really aware of this right now, 10 years later. And I hope to get a grasps fast with this one, as I don’t want to spend the next 10 years ONline.

Things I know: I waste too much time looking if something’s new arrived to my email. Even tho I know nothing urgent is gonna come through. That no one’s life would depend on me checking that. Conclusion: check email only TWICE a day. Once first thing morning. And after noon. Or maybe three, with one check at tea hour or so. So, from now on, if you ever need to contact me urgently, call me.

My junkiness with the msn has pass away since I came first to the UK. The reason? there’s no reason, or maybe there is it. I now I want to keep in touch with a large amount of people that I love back in my country, but somehow we’ve managed to keep in touch even if I’m not online. I think Gtalk and my addiction to checking email has helped. I don’t chat as much as I did, but still speak with the important ones. And -good stuff- now I know I have a really really good tool to replace the msn and keep in touch (whenever I want) with those darling persons. The skypephone.

Facebook. most. stupid. addiction. ever. You go in there, there’s nothing in there. Just had a peek in there. I’m selecting a random status update so you could see how pointless it is: “S. H. Need a stroll to the beach” (S. H. necesita playita!!!!!!!!). Common people. Go and do whatever you want, if need company call some friends! If people were consistent… But probably this person would end next week going to Madrid, and not to “la playita”. So, honestly, it’s no use. I’ll keep that to a maximum of 1 check per week. More if I’m commuting brighton-london and have nothing better to do with my phone.

Tumblr. I’m not gonna explain this one because is a new addiction and I don’t really understand it, but it’s gonna me a mamixum of 1 per day.

Just to recap. All of this is so you people can now that if you truly want to talk with me give me a call or write me an email. I will answer I swear. Don’t expect the lottery of Internet to put me in front of you so you can have a few words with me. I’ll do the same for you. While more time passes, it is more unlikely that we will be meeting onlineas I am less and less using those timewaster tools. Also, you can skype me during after office hours (10-18) and on weekends.

Achievements 2008:

- I loved my 2008. I had like 3 months or more vacation.
- I quitted my job.
- I started freelancing.
- I had my first contract signed.

Coming next 2009:

- More contracts.
- Moving to Lisbon (hopefully)
- Having another 3 months vacations lol.