Probably, It is because I get distracted really fast and jump from one task to another. This approach doesn’t let me complete any work. At the end of the day, I have tons of incomplete work waiting to haunt me. I think it is going to require some work. Small but sure steps towards instilling a type of discipline and work habit.

I have always been the free flow kind. I don’t like dead lines. I work at my own will. But slowly this approach is working against me. In the time i spend being moody, work is getting accumulated. At the moment, the work load is at a very critical level and needs to be dealt with urgent attention.

Lets see how it goes.

I told all my family and mates about the site and got tons of referrals. I got points every time they filled a survey. It was wonderful. I reached my 100 point threshold pretty fast.

I think I am going to be filling more surveys and would advice others to do the same and milk the cash cow. I am already 82 points and should get the rest 18 soon.

The problem of working from home is that no one takes you seriously. Sitting at home all day does not mean your sitting idle and neither does it mean your work is less important than people working on a 9-5. But people just don’t get it. Apparently, going to a office is much more glorified. My work may involve less physical labor, stress and dead lines. But at the end of the day its work and brings home the money. Just because you go to office and bring money home doesn’t make your money any more important than mine. Its pretty funny how people are just so used to the conventional. ( Now the next step is to figure out how can we monetize that ? )

It kinda freaks my mom out that I might not end up doing a normal job and might do something sitting at home. But, it is the way it is. I am lazy and I like it out here on the internet. I rather be here than any where else

You get much better perspective of things when you start questioning people around you about it. Most of the people I know are not happy with their job. But they continue working because they have responsibilities and there is no other way they can think of. You have one short life and you really want to do something you are not fond of for a living ? Second thing that startles me is the fact that most of them shy away from starting up. If you really good at some thing or know ins and outs of a industry, go out there and make some coin.

To be honest, I think its high time people get out of the ‘get a job’ jargon and think out of the box. There are tons of things you can do to make money except a job. They might be a little volatile source of income but at the end of the day you are your own boss. Life is too short to kill your dreams and do something you don’t like.

Ok, So here is the story. In last 3 months three of my sites got hit by Google’s panda update.  Initial 2 hits could be justified but the last hit which happened 2 days a go pissed the living shit out of me. As a consequence of the panda hit, the daily traffic count dropped substantially. Traffic dropped, revenue dropped. These were sites that made me decent income with little or no effort. Decent Income ? It made me 1 grand AED a month.  Can I fight the Panda back ? Yes, I can. But the first two sites were just not worth the whole effort. The third site is well worth the fight and I’ll take this freaking panda head on.

The basic thing you can notice is that my business is dependent on one basic resource called the ‘Google’. If  ‘Google’ gets cranky, I am f*cked in the ass.  Just FYI, getting f*cked in the ass pains. There are very few things I can do on internet without getting ‘Google’ involved in it. Lets think of it this way, Its more like a transportation business. You business is directly related to the petrol prices and petrol prices are volatile. It is difficult to control something that is not really under your control.

Now let me go around blaming my self. Once my sites get established and the money starts pouring in, I tend to get a little lazy. I tend to focus on other things. I don’t update my site often and don’t do things which I need to do on a regular basis. My five sites got hacked yesterday just because I never got around to update the software I was using. Luckily, there was a back up. Remember, I don’t update my sites often ? So that allowed me to use some really old back up without much trouble.

Cribbing about a problem doesn’t really help you in anyway. So WTF am I gonna do ? I’ll be working on this sites regularly to get the sites where they were initially. Is it the worth the trouble ? I don’t know. I wanna see how far I can push my self.  Plus, I ll be completing other projects which I am lagging behind on and taking backups every 30 days. In short, I’ll be working on a far more regular basis. I’ll try blogging daily or every other day. Easy money, is not really that easy and passive money is not really that passive.

So how do we deal with such Mo-Fos ?

Avoidance : If you have another option, go for it. Try not to come in their way and keep them away from yours. Simple neat trick and works all the time. But some times its just not so easy.

Patience : Not every one has this in them and might take a while to cultivate. Always listen what they have to tell you, completely. Never ever interrupt them. Never ever scream back at them, no matter what they tell you. Try to talk as slow and lightly as possible. If its not worth the “talk” , don’t bother. Keep holding it, till you can.

Confrontation : Tell that Mo-Fo what problems you have with him. Don’t scream at him or abuse him. Talk lightly and have the talk. Talking lightly when he is screaming at you will just put him off but screaming back at him will just worsen the situation. Give reasons and evidence wherever possible.  It is very important to make your stand look rational and logical. You don’t want to give the ‘Difficult’ person much to argue with. Spend some time preparing it. Use pen and paper if you have to ( I personally prefer pencil though… ) . Talk when he has ample time, so he can’t run away some where.

God bless difficult people….

I wouldn’t say I completed it all but there was a little progress. Some progress is better than no progress. My To-do list is still 2 page long of a normal notebook with no spaces, so yes still lots of ground to cover. Many of the task are simple but very tedious and hence you tend to get annoyed very soon. But work is work, whatever pays the bills….

Lately, I have been coding. The last major thing I coded was a rapidshare premium link generator. The project didn’t really take off but I am still very proud of my creation. The last 2 days I have been coding for 14 hours a day.  I am working on this Ubercool scraper which tends to lighten my load from all this tedious tasks. Ok, what are scrapers ? Scrapers basically allow me to extract data of my choice from a set of webpages. It can be literally anything. I think, I have kind of got good at it. I’ll be posting detailed tutorials about coding bots on my Webmaster blog at Soulwebworks.

Its funny how you can keep doing something you like for so long without being tired. 14 hours straight is no joke ! Now this gets me to think WTF am I doing in aeronautical engineering ? Its funny how life turns out and how everything does not always go your way.

Second most important thing, my internships are starting from today. Its going to be really hectic and I am looking at 14 hour days for at least 6 weeks. This clearly translates into lot of pending work. I really have to capitalize on the week ends. I don’t know if my internship will change my mind about the course and planes in whole. I have kinda decided to make websites for rest of my life.

Lets see how this goes.

Tackling the unknown is not as easy as it sounds. It requires patience and the drive to reach the end. Currently, it is semester end and the work load is just crazy. I have 3 exams and 1 presentation next week along with a 300 page assignment submission. This by no means is my comfort zone but Like we all know “You gotta do, what you gotta do ” .  As far as I know, I ll make it through. The question is will i sail through with flying colors or just drag my ass from start to the finish for the sake of it ?

Its all in the mind. I think i need to work on strict schedules, smaller sleep times and less leisure time. If i have any hopes of making it through. It has to be done and will be done. Somehow , any how !

Everyone has their own bullshit tolerance threshold (BTT) . BTT in simpler terms can be defined as the amount of bullshit one can tolerate over the period of time. It is basically like a spring which is compressed over a period of time and one day is just let lose. Everyone is gonna breakdown at one point of time. The level of destruction is what varies from person to person.

Some folks are patient and have very high BTT where as some are impatient and break down straight away. There is not much you can do about it. You surely  feel pity for them though.

So at the end of the day, you don’t wanna push someone till that level or want to come close to someone who is almost gonna exceed the threshold. Either ways you are going to be at the losing end.

The interesting part is majority of people fail to go one step further and sit down and rationally solve the problem. I don’t get it how they fail to see that the situation is not gonna change if they keep cribbing about the problem. No one  can solve those problems better than you because noone knows the problem better than you do in the first place.

Problems are not usually solved instantly. Unfortunately, the problem solving process not only tricky but also very time consuming. Initially, the focus should not be merely on solving the problem but to reduce the current impacts of the problem until a effective solution is found. This is what I term damage control mode.  It does require a lot of patience and logical reasoning to be effective at it.

When everything is going wrong, I usually like to slow down the pace of everything around me. So i can catchup with what is going and take the required action.

Problems come and problems go. Its how you deal with them, that makes you who you are.