Yes, it is December 31 and it is that time of year..or that day of the year… when everyone one of us should take a moment to look back at what went on this year in an effort to highlight the memories of all of the awesomeness and find closure to everything that really did not go so well.
As a professional operations manager I find this review of what goes on in my life easy since it is what I do a number of times a year as part of my way of staying on track to accomplishing everything I am out to accomplish before the day comes when retrospection is moot.
As I look back on 2014 I remember a large number of the days filled with me doing nearly the same thing everyday. I view this is good since it means a pattern was developed so to spend time doing everything I want and need to do to feel I am accomplishing something.
However, I remember a number of times where sitting on my hands was a better option than coming out swinging at the less exciting things that life as a partner of a start-up digital marketing agency can throw at you.
Fortunately, this review of 2014 did reveal that the patterns of awesomeness were constructed around me doing just about the same thing everyday. For many that would sound like my life is boring, but for me, getting to structure my time so as to be able to go forward instead of running backwards is very comforting.
With that said, I thought maybe this blog would better explained how nearly everyday of the last 12 years has gone. So, I’ll start with a typical day I had this year and outline the awesomeness that takes place in One Day of My Life.
How I Get After It!
4:30AM
Eyes opened from a short sleep..more like a two hour nap. Sleep has not come easy over the past 12 years not out of having any disease per say, but out of the fact my mine is running like the fine tuned engine of a race car come out of the pits to take ten more laps in the race of life before returning to pit row to recharge for another day.
I roll out of bed and stagger the 43 steps to the kitchen where I go through the daily ritual of making a extra large pot of fresh ground coffee. Since I am about four hours ahead of when my wife wakes up I have the house and coffee pot to myself.
I then make the trip back to the other side of the house to go through an array of other morning rituals which include remembering to take all the RX my Dr gives me to keep me healthy and turning on at least one of the three computers I have in my home studio. As I listen to all of the pinging and humming of all the i7 processors waking up to another day I get dressed and since this morning it is in the low 40’s means putting on more close including my woolly socks.
5:00AM
The bell on the coffeemaker goes off and distract me for a second from clicking on all for the system checks and opening of browsers. It appears this morning I will be using my Mac Mini to drive what I do for the first part of my day.
I get up,make the 32 steps to the coffee pot. As I stroll through the den I look outside to see the morning newspaper has again been delivered to my front steps by one of my many neighbors who take their morning ‘walk-about’ (rain or snow) at 5AM. I go out..get the paper..hit the coffeepot and BAM, the ping on my Mac tells me my day just started.
5:15AM
As I sit down and I take my first look at my day as it is unfolds on one of my 24″ monitors. The Chrome browser has all of my tools opened, tabbed and ready for me to Rock -n-Roll. Speaking of Rock-n-Roll..as I glance of to my PC monitor I see it has brought up the Chrome browser featuring my internet radio station Square Groove Radio.
I glance to my right to see if my studio mixers are online and then up to my audio console to see if all my pre-amps, compressor/gates and power conditions are on Green.
I slip on my studio headphones and there they are…by buddies Chris Kulturides’s and Lee Brewer’s voices in the recorded Sweepers promoting the station just before the high quality classic Rock music starts streaming. My day is starting to come alive.
5:25AM
I lean to my right to go back to my MAC system and instinctively open my Gmail tab where I see Google has dazzled me again with separating out all of my communications into those PPT (People, Places and Things) who send me messages to all of my different email address and the Social alerts from nearly every social space every created by every Geek in the world.
Yep..there is my usual 100 or so notifications from people I don’t know who got picked up by my Spam Blocks and the 50 or so emails from people I do know from either their late night ‘Email Catch Up Session” they had or from being in a timezone where they are asleep when I am awake.
I do my quick review on who needs to be contacted back later, then my ‘A List’ of people I will read immediately while taking my third sip of coffee, and then those I will send over to Google+ HangOuts to Chat live with in a few minutes.
The music from Square Groove Radio is now starting to Rock…
5:30AM
I hit the Social Email tap and there they are…my Plussers (real live people who use Google+) intermingled with the lame notifications from Facebook and Twitter telling me I have notifications to review. I hit the email with Facebook Notifications and BAM..there they are..the posts from the hundred or so PPT I have no idea who they are, posting something they are trying to sell or telling the three people they have remaining in their Facebook Friend list how the stripes in their parking lot are needing to be repainted.
Of course the notifications from Twitter are even worse since nearly 100% of them are some encrypted posted filled nearly entirely of Hashtags made by the trillion or so Social Media people who still feel there real live people using Twitter.
CLICK..CLICK…BOOM..now those are gone I can get down to the beginning of my quality time of the day which consist of reviewing the Notifications from my Plussers while I outline my Blogs for the next few days.
5:35AM
I finally get to my Google+ stream and click on the Red Bell (or whatever icon Google has put in the Notification Button Field for the today). I see the list of all the people placing me in their Circle..the people who have +1’d a large number of my posts from the previous day and the Comments made to the Posts or Comments I made the previous Day.
BAM..I’m off to get my second cup of coffee.
6:00AM
As I sit back down I see Google has released all my Google Alerts for my review. I go back over to my Gmail tab and there they are…the awesome mechanisms Google created a few years ago that fill my entire day with awesomeness and the latest information on everything from Digital Marketing, Business Operations, Golf and anything anyone posts on the internet with ‘my name’ in it.
This morning it seems Google Alert has found a number of blogs written by my colleague on the nature of the Golf Industry, Golf Struggling in America.
As I open up the blog I lean back to grab my Gibson 64 to strum out a few licks from the Led Zeppelin tune I have been working on the past three weeks while I read how the pace of play of golf is killing the interest in Golf from the golfers who can still afford to play Golf. I quickly post the article to my Mr Business Golf G+ page and BAM..
6:15
I’m off to get my third cup of Coffee and to go through the Breakfast ritual. While I am plowing through the Pots n Pans drawer to get to my favorite professional grade stainless steel omelet skillet I am thinking of the outline to the blog I am going to write for the Mr Business Golf Blog on the state of the world of Business Golf.
As I hit the fridge to get out the eggs I am now thinking of the schedule for the day at SyncLab Media where I have a few meetings lined up with potential investors on the huge project we are working on for 2015.
6:30AM
While walking back to the Bagroom Studio to eat my breakfast I am outlining in my mine the operations spreadsheet for the four big video shoots we have coming up in the next month. I hit the G+ stream..and I am off.
First up is a G+ HangOut Chat from one of ‘first tier’ Plussers alerting me to a comment one of the more influential bloggers here in Dallas made on Google+ to one of the other even more influential mommy bloggers..telling her “Google+ is Lame-O”.
As I scurried over to read the post she made I thought of how negative that is of her to make this statement when she doesn’t use G+ enough…or interact with anyone on G+…to really know if G+ is Lame.
After reading the comment in its context it was clear she is like tens of thousands of other people who see G+ as something less than Facebook. Her expectations are the same as thousands of others.
She feels because she holds a near celebrity status in the other social space she should be getting thousands of comments and +1’s to her G+ posts since that is what she is getting on Facebook and Twitter. Again, another example of the thousands of people who have not realized that over 90% of the interaction they are getting on the other social spaces are from Trolls, Artificial Intelligence software BOT, and other narcissistic attention time bandits. They clearly do not see that Google has filtered all those waste of time out to reveal the Real People on the Internet…and guess what….not all of them interact at the level a computer software can.
6:45AM
As I went back to reviewing more G+ Notifications I noticed my every updating G+ Stream showed I had over 100 new Updates. This made me think. If I am getting this much interaction on G+ everyone else should also…so why would anyone think G+ is Lame? The answer…they are not doing what they should be doing.
My thoughts kept going back to figuring out how I can explain to my colleagues here in Dallas, and around the world, that Google+ is not Lame. If it was, I would not be so concerned. What really get’s me on this issue is how everyone who follows my colleague is going to take her word about G+ and use it to confirm their negative thoughts about G+.
Shaking my head….I clear my mind of this and move on..
I see I have three more G+ Hangout Chats waiting and three invites for G+ Hangouts. I already have 153 more notifications from Plussers who have made comment to my morning greeting I placed in my G+ stream.
While I am shoving my scramble eggs down my neck I keep thinking of all the remarks from my social media colleagues who say ‘Google+ is Lame. Then BINGO…I thought..why not outline my day, highlighting how G+ plays such a major part of it, as my way of proving to them (and you) Google+ is really not LAME.
I picked up my note pad…yes, I am still Old School using a paper pad, but figured making notes of everything I do during the day in a notepad would allow me to gather my complete thoughts later on everything that went on during the timeline for my day.
PING…I look up and it is nearly 7:00AM..time to hit the shower.
7:15AM
While I am getting dressing I reach over to my Mac monitor to Mute a half dozen of the foolish .gifs Google think are so cute. These animated frills just get in the way of me seeing the awesome content people are posting. .Gifs are such a waste of real estate on everyone’s screen.
As I slide my Samsung 5 Active and car keys in my pockets, I grab my coat, Stetson, iPad and I am off to fight the traffic of the North Dallas Tollway on my way over to ‘The Lab’ at SyncLab Media.
to be continued….
