I normally hate linking to the same article that everyone else is linking to, as you can easily stumble across them elsewhere in the blogosphere, but this one is just damn good:

Open letter to CEOs, COOs, CIOs and CFOs across the corporate world

Explains nicely why I could never imagine a normal office career. Definitely will print it out and post it on desk when hiring my own people.

Overheard on a Monday morning: “I wish I had my own business. If I was my own boss I could take the morning off to go fishing and start work for myself at noon.”

That’s one of the entrepreneurial dreams isn’t it? Play first and work later. Sleep in a little. Have more time for the family. It’s quite the dream and like with most dreams reality is very different. There are at least two major flaws in this way of thinking, but the good news is they aren’t completely insurmountable.

Flexible Hours - You Get to Pick Which 12 You Work

Running a business, especially when starting up (at which time you are the business) is hard work. There is everything and anything to do, and if you have run out of work then you aren’t trying very hard. To an extent you can’t really avoid this and if you are starting a company because you want to be lazy then you are doing it for the wrong reasons.

Here’s a thought though. You can get a big leg up on the competition, improve the quality of your work life, and have your business grow faster towards that point where a little time off is OK. The secret is cliche and you are welcome to go read something with a fancier answer. If you want go home earlier then read on.

Let’s say that you have to dig a hole. Would you use a shovel or dig with your hands? I’m hoping you chose shovel. But what if to use a shovel you first have to go to the department store and buy one? Unless your store is very far away, the correct answer is almost always to buy the shovel. It will provide an insane amount of value by allowing you to dig many holes quickly and whenever you want. It will also last you a very long time. You are working smart and getting the most out of your time, but while this may be obvious for digging holes, people are using their hands instead of shovels in many more complex and non-obvious tasks.

Time management and efficiency really are your keys. Time management is a concept that isn’t taught in school to any real effect and yet it makes the ultimate difference between somebody that can use their time to create $100 in value and $1000 in value. It’s not as simple as wasting less time doing nothing (although this is a good start), it’s also about knowing how to choose the most abundantly fruitful tasks and accomplishing your work in the most effective way.

Digging a hole is a simple, but how do you extend the principle to “making a business succeed”, or even “getting the promotion I want in 6 months instead of a year”? It turns out that its a complex field, like many of the softer life success topics that are convienently ignored in favor of stuffing in more trig identities. I always recommend Getting Things Done by David Allen as a start because not only is it a terrific book, it approaches the topic with a very concrete system that you can immediately begin applying. Parts of the system can be used or it can be applied as a whole. David also does a great job of identifying common flaws of time management attempts and ties the importance of goal setting and looking at the big picture back into getting things done effectively today.

It’s Too Easy to Neglect the Work When No One Breathes Down Your Neck

I have a strong suspicion that saying “you are your own boss” doesn’t really ever sink in until you are actually in this situation. Furthermore it’s only half true. When you own the business it is just as accurate to say that you don’t have a boss. There are few external deadlines to keep you on track and no fear of losing your job to keep you going. Then you give yourself flextime and decide when you work. What happens? Procrastination!

I’ve been in this situation many times, where I kept putting off the start of my work or even worst - pausing it in the middle - to do something else. The day would tick by and in the end I would be exhausted and scrambling to fit in some marginal amount of work before hitting the sack. There really is something like too much freedom and if you allow yourself to get into the position of work getting the remainder of your time then you’ll have a great time and a lousy company.

Lately I’ve been leaning towards the theory that in a situation where you are your own boss it’s actually your discipline that is the boss. There’s no external force to drive you so you must seek an internal one, and that kind of self-discipline is something that must be nurtured and cultivated over years. I propose then that when you are first starting off as your own boss you do not have flexible working hours. You should be working on your business the same amount of time every day at the same time and sticking to it. As you learn to balance this new work and life you are able to shift time around and enjoy new-found flexibility only after you have earned it and internalized the proper discipline.

Whether you’re running a business, club, or simply marking assignments it’s likely that you will have available to you some level of personal data. In the business case this may be quite a bit of data. You are hopefully aware of the importance of storing and securing such information. However you should also be cautious in how you work with it as this little tale shows.

A few years ago I piloted a new venture concept that had been rattling around my head for a couple months. It shall remain nameless only because the idea is experiencing a major overhaul. I spent quite a bit of time making updates and improving features based on the customer feedback I was receiving and often went through filling out web forms over and over to test features. Needless to say testing was tedious at times.

One lovely day I made some really cool changes to the mass mailer tool that customers would be able to use to mail their members. It had been debugged and was ready to make live. Of course I had made it a policy to test everything on the live product to make sure it had been integrated correctly. That’s just good practice.

Being an efficient developer I included a special admin-only checkbox on the mail form which when checked would go through the entire mail creation process but not actually mail anyone. I didn’t take into account user error though.

My first test didn’t work, prompting me to fix a minor detail and refresh. I then went through the entire mail send process using a quick ‘lol’ as my message text and other nonsense for subject and from. Thankfully none of it offensive as hitting send showed a peculiar result. The screen I received was the actual mail sent screen instead of the normal debug notice. My stomach tried to flip inside out.

1000 people were now the receivers of a completely nonsensical e-mail with my business name in the reply-to field. Even as I set about writing a paniced apology mail I had begun receiving replies ranging from confusion to anger to accusations of spam (what they thought this ’spam’ was trying to sell them I’m not too sure but I never received any of the cheques).

Needless to say this wasn’t the greatest experience for my new business and the effect it might have had on company reputation kept me worried for a good week. The story does have a happy ending though. Most people were surprisingly understanding and with no actual harm done even the most infuriated users quickly forgot. I did rewrite the test function though.

It’s a good idea to pay careful attention when a little user error could lead to embarrasing or devastating results.