Warning: helpfulness can be inspiring and contagious.  I’ve been hit with the bug since our star designer and PM, Reid Peifer, launched his beautiful new project, REMAKERS.

REMAKERS is a center dedicated to bringing new media to non-profit organizations.  As Reid puts it in his mission:

REMAKERS strives to be a resource, sounding board, and source of inspiration to groups and individuals working to make the world a better place.

Besides the massive effort that Reid’s put into building the website, he’s also been hard at work opensourcing the REMAKERS Wordpress Theme so that non-profits from all corners of the earth can benefit from his work.  Additionally, he’s funding the whole project through the sales of his hand printed shirts and posters (I highly recommend grabbing one while you can… Shane and I are getting the “e is for Elephant shirts“).

Ultimately this project reflects one of Reids great strenghts… helpfulness.  With his latest project, Reid transends common consideration to reach the needs of people he’s never met who are suffering grief that he’s never had to bare.  Being a creative and passionate character, he has identified a need that he’s ideally suited to fill.  Above all, where many dreamers may dream only to awaken to the realities of personal time commitments, Reid’s actually managed to completed his vision.

I find Reid’s drive to build a better world inspiring.  This is especially the case because he has found a way to apply his technological prowess as well as his artistic creativity.  I look forward to seeing Reid’s dream realized as REMAKERS begins to build a community.  You can help by talking to folks at your favorite non-profits and having them sign up: http://theremakers.com/directory/

Often I find that when pressures mount my first reaction is to defend myself.  Take, for example, a recent conversation between me and Reid.

Reid: Peter, when you have a moment, I could really use some dev support to spec out a small plugin for one of our clients.  It’ll only take an hour tops and would really help me a bunch.

Peter: I’ll get you some dev support as soon as our dev projects calm down in a couple of months.  We’re working as hard as we can and you’re not the only one who has need you know?  I mean I’ve barely slept in like 5 months and have started to BUY laundry and dishes instead of cleaning them because of these deadlines that we have to meet and oh my god you’re totally STRESSING ME OUT WITH YOUR INCESSANT DEMANDS!  CAN’T YOU SEE THAT WE’RE DOING EVERYTHING WE CAN? AHHHHHHHHH!

Reid: Um…  I’m sensing that this is not the best time to ask you about this.  When can we talk about this again?

Peter: I’m sorry Reid, I don’t mean to be wigging out so much.  I’m really not that stressed.  But I don’t know when I’ll be able to help more.  I appear to be double booked for every appointment i have over the next 6 weeks and I just can’t think about this right now.  I know it might not seem like it but I’m working really hard and you should know that I’m working hard, can’t you see that I’m working hard?  What more do you need from me?  AHHHHHHHHH!

Obviously this slightly dramatized interaction could be improved.  There are any number of ways to better address Reid’s request, but one stands out to me in particular: an open call for help (possibly paired with some anti-psychotics).

The Jedi Force

It’s a funny thing how people can transform when you invite them to join your side.  It’s the basis of Jujitsu (not that i’m any sort of expert on martial arts).  It’s a founding principal in any long lasting relationship.  It’s a fundamental approach to any conflict.  And above all, it’s my favorite tactic in addressing crowds of surfers.

In the conversation above, Reid makes a reasonable request.  I hear it as a threat to my already limited resources and defend myself.  Reid, with his supreme tact, sees through my defense and continues to approach from a helpful stand point.  If I was talking to anyone else and acting that defensive they would probably also become intensely defensive and we would start a fight.

This could have all been avoided and have a favorable outcome if I simply responded with something like this:

Peter: Reid, I’m under a lot of pressure to meet a bunch of dev deadlines right now.  For me to secure a resource for you I think I’m going to need some help.

At this point I’ve invited Reid to be on my side and work with me to find a solution. He’s on my team now so we’ll both work to find a mutually beneficial positive outcome

Realizing that this is a relatively silly example, I’d like to point out that this scenario can manifest in any number more significant situations.  Shane and I recently defended our contractual expectations against one of our clients at the expense of an otherwise mutually supportive dynamic.  As it turned out, all we really needed to do was to ask for help.  In my personal life, Lindsey and I have to relearn this lesson again and again with each other.

Cheers In the Sea

When I go surfing I’ve come to adopt a strategy of cheering people on and openly offering waves to people sitting next to me.  The effect is that I become a friend.  When a wave comes my way, I don’t feel like I have to fight for it.  People turn and flag me in and cheer me on in turn.  My life is better when I can help people feel good and maintaining transparency.

Love without Arms

Lindsey and I have had our share of relationship challenges.  From day 1 until now, 11 years later, we’ve overcome our biggest and smallest challenges alike by asking each other for help.

Recently I was growing frustrated by an increasing share of responsibility in our family.  My calls for help were buried in aggressive and disparaging comments.  At some point I got really upset and in the process set Lindsey’s defenses off.  At that point we are fighting each other all the time.  Life sucks when we’re always upset.

I wish it had occurred to me earlier.  All I needed to do was to ask for help; to appeal to Lindsey’s compassionate side.  The moment I let her know that all I needed was some help, she jumped onto my team and we launched into a coordinated effort to breath joy and passion into our lives.

Wanna be Right or Happy?

Maybe you can be both right AND happy.  Try asking for help, spreading some cheer, or commenting in my blog post.

Hopefully you brush your teeth. You floss. You use anti-bacterial mouth rinse. You chew sugar free gum between meals. But if you don’t go to the dentist, you might end up having to get gum surgery like me. Go to the dentist regularly, it is worth the money even if you don’t have insurance.

As I did not have dental insurance, and personally have no love for the experience of visiting my dentist, I let it go for the first few years of running my business. I was broke after all. When I finally did get dental insurance last year and popped in for a visit, the hygienist looked at me with an aghast expression and asked how long it had been since my last visit. FIVE AND A HALF YEARS, WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!? Needless to say, it wasn’t pretty. Two gum surgeries later, I am doing better. In retrospect, a $50-75 teeth cleaning visit, even just once a year, would probably have been wise.

Short blog, important thought. If you are running a small business or an independent contractor, make sure you fit in a few small preventative health care visits.

From the horses mouth.

Wow. I’m hosed!

I spent the last 6 days phonecall-coding-QAing-designing-fatigueing. I probably gained a few pounds. Think i may have lost some eye sight. Definitely got some gray hairs. After a week like that, I’m sitting here trying to remember why I wanted to work independently in the first place.

Well, let’s see.

1. Location. Location. Location. I did a lot of the work over the last few days from my favorite places on earth: coffee shops and bed
2. Security: I feel safe when I control my opportunity flow. I especially feel secure working with Shane because in spite of his leaps and bounds, I know him to be extraordinarily level headed regarding business matters.
3. Satisfaction: I have an underlying sense of gratification that I am running my show and that I have actually chosen and planned to be this busy right now. How cool is it that my business allows for me to go on a vacation to Germany (although i will be online and sporting an iphone with international calling enabled)
4. Thrill: Every day is a new adventure. I can’t believe the people and opportunities that we run across on a daily basis. Just the other day, some folks in Santa Cruz held the first Santa Cruz Geek Dinner. I though it was going to be another lame local mixer. WRONG. It was awesome! Literally. I am in awe of the great people that we met and the interactions that are now unfolding.
5. Growth: I’ve never been challenged so thoroughly, stretched so tightly, and beaten so hard, but honestly, it’s an amazing feeling knowing that you’re growing. Even at 2am.
6. Community: There is no community like the nomadic freelancers that share my journey with me. Shane, Aaron, Brandon, Eric, Ben, Kelsey the list goes on… (shane, we need a blogroll, don’t we – i have this chilling sensation that all the people that i can possibly imagine fitting in my nomadic freelancer list will be leaving comments about how i excluded them… and i just want to thank my mother for this award, and my second grade teacher, Mrs. Singermeir, and all the little people that made this happen…)

Well I feel better now.

What’s your take? Has the independence liberated you? Or are you confined by your lifestyle?

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The first time I ever talked to Peter was on the phone. He was interviewing me to work on a project already in development. I generally like interviews. It’s a chance to meet a new person, learn about what they do and show them what you’ve done. I was happy after talking to Peter. Not only because I was going to work with him, but from my answer to one of his first questions: “If you could do anything in life what would it be?”. I answered immediately: “I’m doing it”. Peter repeated my answer out loud. He was trying to come up with another question that would encourage me to be more descriptive. As we continued to talk, I realized Peter wasn’t only interested in my professional abilities, but was genuinely interested in my hopes and dreams.

In the Beginning…

Growing up I loved computers, learning new things, being outdoors and sports (like skiing, Mt. biking, and surfing). My love of computers turned into a love of software engineering and I wanted a life where I could progress as a engineer while working on fun projects with fun people, be heavily involved in my sports and learn new things.

After graduating from college I had some great jobs that helped progress my engineering skills, but the rest of my life was almost non-existent. I mostly just commuted to work and returned home very tired. Much of my time was spent doing work or recuperating from work, everything else was secondary. My life seemed horribly inefficient. I would go to work and work no matter what. Whether tired, stressed or burnt out – work, work, work. I despised this way of life, but it felt normal and maybe even respected. I began to get burnt out on life and software started to be a burden. So I decided to try something new.

Making the Change: Freelance

I moved from the bay area to Oregon with the plan of being a consultant. I did it without much research or thought of where I would find work. I was ready to make software a hobby if it didn’t work out. Being a flash/flex developer I immediately found that it was the right time to become a consultant. I have not yet gone looking for work and have been able to find great jobs from the contacts and friends I made while living in the bay area the last three years.

My life is very different now. I don’t commute (or drive anywhere) and I schedule 100% of my time. When it’s a nice day I can take a few hours and go for a bike ride or rock climbing. I can ski on the less crowded weekdays. I’ve started guitar lessons and took a marine biology class in Baja. I find that when I work, I am more focused and get much more done. And I love to work. I have to pull myself away from work to do other things, then pull myself away from other things to do work.

Living the Dream

When I told Peter I was living the life I dreamed, a chill ran down my spine. I still wasn’t sure if I would make enough money, find insurance or even how to make a proper invoice. Do I register a business name? Will I be able to communicate effectively remotely? Although these questions were stressful, I found the stress was insignificant compared to the excitement. I am having fun. Many things are new and unknown, but everything I am doing is in pursuit of a better lifestyle. Now that I’ve found a better lifestyle, my dreams have not stopped. They keep me going and doing new things. Here are few of them:

• Get Masters degree
• Teach
• Learn guitar
• Perform
• Complete Spice (personal software project)
• Win a XC bike race at expert level
• Climb Mt. Shasta in 4 hours
• Publish article
• Write a book
• Travel South America for 4 months (include lots of surfing)
• Climb a 5.13
• Surf all over the world
• Multi day big wall rock climbing trip
• Learn a new language
• …

Franky, if you have already made the leap, you know what I mean. For all of you with your toes on the precipice, peering hesitantly over the edge. Jump. It’s scary. It can be tough. But it is so worth it.

Come Join Us.

The Commute

Each and every day, I would wake up to go to work. The routine was familiar. Alarm, shower, dress, coffee, then hop in the car to sit in 40 minutes of traffic on my way to work. If there’s an accident on the freeway (which is an unpleasantly common occurrence in LA), that 40 minutes could easily jump to an hour or more. I’d spend the day at work, then hop back in the car for the same drive home.

For a 50 mile round trip commute, I was averaging 90 minutes a day on the road. I’ll spare you the math, but that translates to 1000 miles a month and a whopping 30 hours of drive time. 30 hours! Heck, you might say that I spent a week’s worth of labor sitting in my car every month. Take that scale to a full year and you have the staggering numbers of 12,000 miles and 360 hours.

On a personal level, the commute was obviously costing me a great deal of both time and money. If I carry those same numbers over to calculate my
carbon footprint, I get the frightening number of 5.5 tons of CO2 a year that were directly connected to my daily commute. Frightening, I know, but I’d venture a guess that my case was about the norm. I can’t speak for other major cities, but I know that within LA, a good portion of my own friends and family spend at least that much time on the road during their own commutes. When you start doing the math, the impact that commuting has on the environment is enormous.

Save the World, Work from Home

Enter my independent contractor phase. The first month that I felt brave enough to quit my job and freelance full time marked a dramatic change in my life for many reasons. Most of them were obvious: being my own boss, the freedom to work on my own schedule and the satisfaction of running my own business. That and the immediate cessation of my daily commute. Sure, I still drove around town on errands and appointments a couple times a week, but it was minuscule compared to my mammoth 30 hour monthly commute from before. Even with me driving out to coffee shops a couple times a week to escape cabin fever, my average monthly drive time (as a result of work) had gone from 30 hours to under 6 hours. You don’t have to be a statistician to know that that is a a relatively dramatic change.

From the environmental perspective, I shaved my carbon imprint from 5.5 tons of CO2 to just a hair above 1.1. That’s just one person though. The National Transportation Board estimates that only 3.4% of workers do their work from home right now.

NEPI has calculated that if 10 percent of the nation’s workforce telecommuted one day a week, they would avoid the frustration of driving 24.4 million miles, breathe air with 12,963 tons less air pollution, and conserve more than 1.2 million gallons of fuel each week

Want to help the environment, there’s a good place to start.

The Trend & The Lifestyle

We talk a lot about efficiency, balance, and general quality of life issues here at S&P. As a team of contractors we’re all incredibly grateful that the things that we’re passionate about in life allow us the freedom to work from home. Certainly this isn’t the case for everyone, but as Internet based technologies are altering the economic landscape of many aspects of the workplace, it seems only natural that more of this work can be done remotely. I already know of several non-contractors that are allowed to complete work at home and only visit offices a couple days a week. Obviously your plumber can’t work from home, but it’s our belief that this trend can and should become the standard for relevant jobs. Not only would this reduce congestion on the roadways, enhance the worker’s quality of life, and increase efficiency. The environment would reap the benefits from the lower emissions from fewer cars on the road, making a happier world all around. That and you can add low mileage to your car insurance and save a few bucks.

I should add a caveat here. Working remotely has it’s own set of responsibilities and rules: Remote work is still work. You still have to wake up and get it done. If you spend your day playing online poker you’ll get fired. Despite popular beliefs, most remote workers don’t work in their PJ’s because we find ourselves more productive if we dress properly. Remote workers also still have to regularly meet at the office to maintain good channels of communication, so don’t plan on kissing the office goodbye completely. There’s many more things to take into account, but the bottom line is this: working remotely takes discipline, focus and, more than anything, the right habits to be successful at it. Having said all that, if you treat remote work with the same amount of respect and responsibility that you would normally treat your on-site work, you’ll do just fine and there are plenty of great tools to assist you.

So, want to take action? Measure up how much time and distance you spend on the road. Determine whether or not you have a reasonable argument for requesting the ability to work remotely, then take the issue to your boss. You might have your request denied, but chances are that over time more companies will see the benefit in having more work done remotely.

Already doing this? Then share your experience below. We don’t have a prize for the reader who’s saves the most mileage, but it’s a good way to encorouge others to make this happen.

More Resources and Articles on this:

Companies Cut Pollution Through E-commuting

Bureau of Transportation stats

How do you get to work? US commuting statistics

Poll: Traffic in the United States

Climate Calculator

The Myth of Remote Work

Recently, I found myself sympathizing with the plight of the proverbial smoker when I came under heavy fire from my friends for answering my iPhone email in front of them. So I left the company of friends to go outside and communicate with people by myself.

Having skipped many of Shane’s important emails in my attempts to skim read, I came to realize that I need a better system for checking my email in social settings. Checking my email while in the presence of my friends, my family, or especially my wife is a great way to misread emails AND piss off the people I’m with. It’s like missing two birds with one stone.

So I asked my wife, Lindsey, how she thinks I can approach consistently checking my email while not annoying the people around me. She suggested that I go on “iPhone smoke breaks”, occasionally leaving the group to check my email.

Brilliant! In the same counter intuitive way that I can improve my life by writing a “hate list”, I can consistently check my email AND avoid annoying everyone around me by modeling my iPhone habits on those of a smoker.

It’s like a Weight Watchers program: I can check my mail as regularly as I need. I just have to learn not to do it in the middle of offering my condolences at a funeral. Or not to do it when my Lindsey is in the middle of telling me all about the struggles of her day. And I especially need to remember not to peek at my email while driving or operating heavy machinery.

Basically, I can check my email and talk on my phone all I want as long as I do it somewhere else.

What’s Your Tale Nightingale?

When cigarettes where at the height of their popularity in America in the 50s (at the time when doctors recommended cigarettes and you could just about smoke in any room of any building), there was little or no consideration for non-smokers. Over time, we, as a society, have come to appreciate the fact that smoke can be offensive to non-smokers, and smokers are starting to be outnumbered.

As I see it, hand-held devices are approaching the point that cigarettes were at in the 50s. People are talking everywhere, and checking SMS and email messages at all hours of the day. It’s gotten to a point where theaters, airplanes, and doctor’s offices all ask you to silence your cellphones. Pretty soon there will be laws that prohibit the use of cellphones within 20 feet of any public building… Or, perhaps it won’t go that far, but you know what I’m saying.

Viva La Revolucion!

I am proposing a PDA revolution of etiquette. A revolution where we learn to consider those around us who get tired of wondering if you are schizophrenic or if you are talking into a bluetooth earpiece on the other side of your face. A revolution where we choose to pay attention to the people who are physically close to us, even if they are strangers. A revolution where, like a closet smoker, we hide our habit.

It is so great that my PDA effectively makes me cybernetically telepathic. I can basically “call” my friend on the other side of the planet and no matter where she is, if she is willing to answer, she will be able to share thoughts with me. That’s awesome. Literally… I am in awe of it. And the people sitting next to me at the cafe are in awe of the total disregard I have as I shout into my headset for an hour.

For the sake of my wife, my friends, my clients, my business partner, my colleagues, and the strangers I am standing next to, I’ll be right back. I’m going to go get some fresh air.

It’s over. Word’s out: you can get online at a coffee shop for real cheap – lots cheaper than paying an office rent, and the drinks are better anyway. There are dozens of people with laptops in almost every place with a free wifi connection. Students downloading torrents, guys in suits tethered to their slogging, bandwidth hogging exchange servers, hipsters making music, yoga moms surfing web. I’ve seen homeless-looking guys seem pulling out beaten up old laptops and getting online. Yeah, our local shop Lulu’s is still fun, but you better bring your own cellular internet access if you want to do any real work – the network is too busy. If you can even get a table…

But there are better places to work.

Twenty six miles north of Lulu’s is an empty beach: Waddell Creek. Empty until 2pm when the wind comes up that is. Then dozens of kiteboarders and windsurfers appear, taking advantage of one of the best wind and wave combinations in the world. Work – here?

Someone at Sprint must be a kiteboarder (surfer, slacker, something), because for some reason, at isolated Waddell Creek beach, Sprint has 5-bar EVDO service. There are no people up here – 5 hippies living in the trees maybe, so I never could figure this out. Screaming data speeds of 800 – 1200 kbps, quite comparable to home DSL connection. And with a PDA phone plan Sprint only charges $15 a month for unlimited EVDO access (shhh… don’t tell corporate). Rather affordable.

I’ve been ducking into my camper van for years to check email and return calls, often in my wetsuit. Sometimes I show up before it picks up, get some work done with the stereo cranked, and chat with my buddies when they get there. There’s another guy, an executive at a San Jose chipmaker, that does the same thing. We’ll call him Tim… don’t want to get him in trouble or anything. You see him running to his car with his wetsuit on trying to dry off his hands before grabbing his cell phone and hopping on a call. Closing deals. From Waddell… and then killing a wave to celebrate… This guys is up there every day – EARLY. And late too.

Not bad.

Optional, but helpful ingredients: 1987 Volkswagon Syncro Westfalia camper, with 2nd battery, cellular amplifier and 1200 watt inverter. And an iPhone. Plenty of room and table space in the camper – it’s not hard to find a good one under $8K. The cellular amp (about $350) means you get signal at the edge of coverage – where I frequently seem to find myself. The inverter gives 120 volt juice and the iPhone means a second phone so you can be online while joining a conference call. Plus if Sprint fails, you can still get and reply to email on the AT&T network, which actually is pretty much everywhere there is anything at all (and that iPhone is damn cool anyway, so I can keep coming up with excuses to have it…).

I added a week to my honeymoon recently – a working week, touring around the southwest with my wife, Melissa. Melissa works in real estate, so having a phone and email for a few hours a day is a big plus. We would work mornings and a bit in the evenings. No problem working at Bryce, Zion, around Sedona, Flagstaff and even near the Grand Canyon. It’s amazing, there is service just about everywhere. We’ve often taken working vacation days in Big Sur, and we’ll be looking for new spots soon. Waiting for Google Earth to add cellular coverage layer… then we might not have to pay rent anymore…

After a bunch of research looking for good prediction data, some math and homework, we realized that reporting the current surfing condition is fairly easy. On the other hand, predicting the future is a whole different story. Through his search for quality information, Peter came across a bunch of great public ocean data resources. If you happen to be as surf obsessed as we are and want to play the amateur oceanographer, here is a list of the sites we found with the help of our associate, Ben Porterfield.

NOAA | Storm Surf | Storm Surfing | Surfline: Pleasure Point | Buoy Weather | Wavewatch | Wetsand | Surfing Santa Cruz

First, the reason it happens: You wake up, spend the first couple hours surfing and answering emails. Then come the phone calls, meetings, lunch, minor project edits, and personal life stuff. None of this can really be avoided, in fact, it’s all very necessary. A guy’s gotta eat, and without those meetings and phone calls you wouldn’t have work to begin with. So by the time the clock strikes 6, you probably feel like you’ve already worked a full day, but you project hasn’t moved an inch yet.

1) Less Distractions: a quiet environment allows us to truly settle into a project and give it our full attention.

2) The Still of the Night: We are mentally unstrung: after spending a full day putting out fires, we’ve assured ourselves that the rest of the business is running fine. We’ve spent time with family, taken a break, and now we’re finally relaxed enough to spend a couple hours working on the important instead of the urgent.

3) Stealing Time: Knowing the rest of the world is sleeping makes us feel like we are “cheating” the 24 hour day. Yes, it’s a little extra work, but the simple knowledge that I’m making progress while everyone else is already down for the day is incredibly motivating.

The end result of a successful all-nighter is usually nothing short of pure gold if it’s done right (and nothing short of heartache and a long day after if it’s done wrong). If you start at 9pm, you know you have a good 3-4 hours to work before getting to bed at an ungodly hour – that’s a huge chunk of time. The key here is to understand and seize the opportunity that this chunk of time provides.

Here are some hints:

Fuel Up: grab a bite to eat and get hopped up on whatever it’s gonna take (caffeine, sugar, or anything else) to keep you alert for the shift.

Plan Ahead: write out a set of objectives for the session before you go to work.

Divide and Conquer: break the objectives down into little, bite-sized goals that can be accomplished in under 15 minutes each.

Find Your Groove: whether you work best in silence or with some beats in the background, create the environment that allows you to truly focus on and lose yourself in the work.

Pace Yourself: setting an insane pace at the start will stump your progress just as much as taking a 2-hour break to surf the net. Ease into the project and keep in line with the bigger picture so you don’t have to fix dumb mistakes.

Track Your Progress: cross off goals on the list as you complete them – there’s nothing more motivating than seeing that you’re actually making a huge dent in your to-do list.

Blood Flow to the Brain: every 3 or 4 goals that you finish, get out of your chair and get the blood pumping. This may not seem like much, but that little bit of physical activity will be enough to keep you sharp and awake. More importantly, walking away from the project for a minute will give you the perspective that you need to stay on task and not travel off on wild tangents.

Accomplish these things and you’ll find yourself satisfied at the end of the night. There’s nothing better than firing off an email at 2am that you know will draw applause the next morning. What’s more is that developing these good habits during the night will ultimately bleed over into your day sessions.