Being my own boss.

I know many people would love to be their own boss. Imagine the flexibility of self scheduling, the luxury of setting your own targets, goals and looking after your own paycheque.... here is where you hear the music end as the record scratches to a stop.

Reality.requires context.

There are as many ways to fail at starting and operating your own business as there are people who try it, it's tough. I happen to be lucky in that I did not start the business that I am in, I sort of fell into it as it was an already  established family business. I have done everything there is to do in the business and now I get to be, for the most part, my own boss. I have been here for over 25 years after all. At one point I could say that I installed enough systems that I doubled our client base... not without other help of course.

The trouble is that sometimes, maybe more often than I know, I would love for someone to say "do this to the exclusion of everything else". You see, I am in a very interrupt driven environment. Alarm systems, installation, monitoring and service. The very nature of alarms and the reasons why people need them makes this interrupt driven. I set a target or goal and I know that I can meet them, just not necessarily on any known timeline. While the cause of an interruption takes a certain length of time to address, the interruption lasts for a lot longer as it takes time to get back into the "groove". This is frustrating and is often cause to drop a project or even a time consuming task that needs to get done.

As a result of the environment I tend to not honour my target timelines even without interruptions, almost as if I assume I will have them so why bother.

I need to be a tougher boss for me in order to get to the end of some of the piles of stuff that I need to get through.

Well, that was a rambling bit of writing.

Jeff.

Technology Woes

I am between computers, in a sense. My older laptop has been relegated to my daughter's use so getting it to do anything is a hassle, unplugging, plugging in (battery is only good fro about 5 minutes... I did say it was older). Then there is the main PC, less than a year old. Kate put a split ergonomic keyboard on it, I don't much care for it due to it's very nature. I also still tend to look at the keys sometimes and the letters have started wearing off already. I just don't like using it unless I have to.

So, I have been away from most blogging and what not. I get emails and do some correspondence on my ipod or at work but neither lends itself well to actually blogging anything more than a sentence or two. Well, work is OK but I just don't take the time as I am quite busy any more. It takes me the better part of the day to whack together my thoughts with a minute here and a minute there. Then I have to re-read to see where I was and where I was going.

I am expecting a newer laptop this week. It's a hand-me-down, like most of my computers are except the one home PC, but it is in great shape, the battery is still good for hours and it has the built in WiFi that is so handy at home. It's a wider screen format, I like those better even though the aspect leads to smaller fonts, they just appear cleaner due to the increased resolution.

There was a time when I had the smallest production laptop that still boasted a full size keyboard, less the number pad. Black and white monitor but was it handy at the time.It used a small trackball instead of a touch pad. Now the laptops are getting bigger and notebooks and tablets are taking over the small catagories.

So, hopefully I can catch up on my blogging in the next little while.

Jeff.