The problem with changing what you do…

… is that if you want to do a New Thing, you have to choose an Old Thing to stop doing. Otherwise you run out of hours in the day. And that doesn’t work.

I’ve written before how I’m starting a business called Skank Media, and the new Topic 9 website is the first project out of the starting gate. Certainly since the beginning of this year I’ve been spending more time writing too: 133 posts in January 2008 compared with just 16 a year before. I’ve spent more time in dialogues online too, re-establishing links with my community.

What’s the Old Thing that’s stopped?

I’ve been getting less sleep, certainly. And less exercise. But I’ve also been doing less work for my “old” business, Prussia.Net — and therein lies a problem. Prussia.Net is what generates the income.

Oops.

Yes, cashflows are down. And because I wanted to change Prussia.Net itself, that change process takes more time of its own too. Some client projects are running terribly late. I even lost a wonderful long-term client a few weeks ago because I couldn’t dedicate enough time to their change process.

Big Oops.

So for me, today’s the day I start sorting out that chronological challenge. Here’s how I’ll proceed…

Since Prussia.Net pays the bills (and there’s plenty of bills to be paid) I’ll tackle that business first and sort out the timelines for the rest of this month. Then I’ll see how much time that leaves for Topic 9 in the two weeks until the Australia 2020 Summit. Once I know that magic number of X hours, at BarCampSydney 3 this weekend I’ll talk to people and figure out how I can best spend that time doing something about the Summit. I think that’s the right strategy because presumably I should exercise my geek skills as best I can — and fellow geeks can make good suggestions.

That means I’ll definitely be at BarCampSydney on Sunday. I’ve even written an explanation over at Topic 9.

Whaddyareckon, folks?

[Note: This post was very much me "thinking aloud". I figured that if I had to explain it all to you, then I'd be forced to get it clear in my own head. That's been a valuable technique -- but do you want to see this sort of post?]

[Update 17 February 2010: The website at topic9.com.au has been killed. For the moment, I've linked to the pages at the Internet Archive.]

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