(Imported from old site; original post: Saturday, August 18, 2012)
Well, today is the day I am leaving for college once more. I’ve learned a lot during the summer. Definitely during my debacle, but also in many other areas. The success of my newest game plan has shown me how important time management is to achieving goals. Even if it seems like you’re moving too slow to accomplish all the goals you’ve set before yourself, it’s most definitely better to develop a realistic timetable and at least see through some of your goals to completion, rather than see all of them dwindle away into the zone of failures.
That being said, I am happy to announce the complete completion of my completely new game plan of completeness…completion has been completed. Okay. I’m done now. Completely done, you may say. Last one. I swear.
Project SvN has been fully tested and has more than proven its success in all the goals I set for it. The next step is a patent, and then I can finally reveal it! I hope that process doesn’t take too long. I’m foaming at the mouth wanting to tell what it is, but I haven’t told anyone yet! And I’m keeping it that way. Guess I’ll finish packing my computer to bring with me.
(Imported from old site; original post: Sunday, July 29, 2012)
“Story time, boys and girls. This is a story of hardships, sleepless nights, and a mind numbing intensity only achieved by never allowing your brain rest. The only tangible piece of success being a picture of a sunset.”
Little Timmy asked, “Does this story have a happy ending?”
“Why, of course,” I replied with a slight smirk. “I didn’t die.”
* * *
Seriously, though, me not dying was the best part about it. As you may have guessed, if you’ve read my previous posts, I’m a workaholic when it comes to my business. I want success. And I want it now (mistake #1: wanting it NOW). This drive has made me succeed at pretty much anything and everything I’ve ever set my mind to in the past. However, those all pale in comparison to what I am currently trying to do.
In the last project update, you may have noticed that I was up to seven projects. And let me tell you, they are all VERY different from one another (mistake #2). This requires me to have a very dynamic way of thinking to be able to switch between the various disciplines instantly, because all these projects are worked on simultaneously (mistake #2, part b).
Also discussed in the last project update was how I was falling behind majorly in Project PHB. Truthfully, the rest weren’t really moving along as much as I would have hoped, either. This just convinced me that I needed to push myself harder to get all of these projects done before I had to go back to college and be separated from my R&D facility (200 miles apart). So instead of cutting certain projects to be worked on at a later date, and focusing on one or two to get finished now, I decided that was crazy and could still get them all done (mistake #3, but also ties in to mistake #1 for the motivation of wanting to do this).
The Past Affects the Future
I used to have an [unofficial] IT business, and was quite good at what I did. I closed shop after deciding to attend college and obtain a degree. The economy was just beginning to really swirl downward, and seeing the effects in various places got me thinking: what happens if I don’t get enough business and have to shut down? What would I do then? Because we all know we get so many opportunities with only a high school diploma… So I decided college was the best decision, even if the money coming in was good at the time. There were no guarantees this would continue.
Why did I digress into that story? Because it paints the picture of a guy that would jump at the chance to do a bit of the same work some years later, and that’s what I did. When you are basically your business (remember, as stated in a previous post, no employees yet), and you are wanting to cut costs in as many areas as possible, you do your own IT work.
I was busy, and knew that I didn’t have time to deal with computer issues during the day. So what did I come up with? “I know! I’ll stay up all Friday night after working the entire day and handle all the computer issues! That’ll work. Who cares if I’ve been working virtually non-stop for nearly a month?! I can do this. I have youth.”
Two things to note here:
1)I swear I have friends, even if it was a Friday night and this is what I planned to do.
2)This was mistake #4.
If it isn’t apparent yet, I’m racking up on mistakes. But hey, experience is the best teacher. So, as if these mistakes weren’t enough, the last definitely broke the camel’s back.
“Hmm. It’s about 5:30am, and I really need to work through today to stay on track. I guess I’ll just stay up and work. I may even watch the sunset with my mom” (Note: my parents house is literally right beside of the R&D facility. Wonder who played a 99% part in getting that facility the way it is…I’m 21 years old. Leave me alone. Business is expensive.)
That was mistake #5.
Reaching My Limit
Apparently, there is a limit written somewhere in the universe by God Himself concerning the number of compounding [simultaneous] mistakes you can make concerning a single area of your life. Genesis, chapter 0, verse 404: “If at least 5 compounding mistakes are made, your mind will not be found. Your body will immediately crash. You will feel as if you are falling apart, seemingly tearing yourself up from the inside.”
And that is exactly what happened.
I reached the point of clinical exhaustion that day (Saturday, at this point). After coming in to my parents’ house from watching the sunset, I sat on the sofa, still feeling pretty good. Suddenly, without warning, about all manner of things that could possibly go wrong with your body occurred. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that no food would be able to enter [and stay] in my body, and I then went into (at least what felt like to me) a near-coma. I collapsed in the living room, and no amount of disturbance could wake me.
I awoke several hours later on the sofa, TV blaring, my parents talking loudly over the TV about business on either side of me (my dad runs his own company), and sunlight pouring in through the windows. None of this, during the hours of my unconsciousness, even slightly affected me. My body went into complete shutdown and repair. I had to take it easy the rest of the day, because I could barely walk on my own.
If you’re wondering why I wasn’t taken to the hospital, my dad has enough medical knowledge to know what to do.
“Now, What Did You Learn?…”
Today I am feeling much better, but I decided to take the day off anyway. And I decided to use this time to re-evaluate both myself and the way I’ve been running my business. I plan to correct my way of thinking appropriately in order to avoid the mistakes listed above, focusing mostly on mistakes #1 and #3, because those are the main mistakes that drove me down the road of exhaustion.
I’ll let success come on its own time. I’ll work hard to get there, but I don’t have to get there right now.
And I plan on cutting down my number of active projects to around two. Three, if one of them is a minor project.
As I said before, experience is the best teacher, and I am definitely learning. We are all students in this world of ours, and if we ever stop learning, the world will leave us behind (or just make us collapse in the living room). These mistakes will only make me a stronger leader. A stronger businessman. And a stronger person in general. I will use this lesson as a way of improving my odds of success, at success. My business will also improve as a result of the changes I make in myself.
I’m not just building a company. I’m building a person–me. And when I finally have the honor of hiring employees, I’ll be building up people other than myself. And that is definitely a privilege I’ll love to experience.
