My Dad once told me that at a job interview you should interview them just as much as they interview you. I think that’s a sound piece of advice and it’s something that I have been able to apply to my consulting business when looking at new projects.

My Criteria For Choosing Projects

When choosing projects at Animikii, I generally think about the following things when looking for new projects and client work. In no particular order:

Personal Connection

Answers The Question: Do I connect on a personal level to the goals of this project?

When a project directly impacts your personal life then you will take ownership over the success of it. Does this project relate to your personal interests or your community? Adding your passion to the mix ensures a certain amount of dedication that your client will pick up on and appreciate.

Professional Development

Answers The Question: Am I going to learn things that will help me in future projects?

There’s no sense doing anything unless you are going to get a good learning experience out of it. This may mean doing something that you’ve never done before or improving upon skills that you’ve been building as a strategic advantage.

The Client

Answers The Question: Do I like the person I will be working with?

This is what one of my mentors would call rule number one of working with people. In his words “don’t work with assholes” — or perhaps in my words “only work with people you like”.

Making A Difference

Answers The Question: Will completing this project make the world a better place or improve the life of people I care about?

I have always been lucky in this regard and have been able to take on work that not only impacts me personally and/or my community but also improves the lives of others.

Time

Answers The Question: Do I have enough time for this project?

And not only do I have enough time, but will it take time away from already existing projects, my business or most importantly: my family!

Money

Answers The Question: Can I take this project on and pay my bills next month?

I’m running a business and I need to include money as an important deciding factor for choosing work. I can’t forget that I am in fact running a business here. At the most basic level, a business means ensuring that at the end of the day more money came in the door than went out. There’s no shame in doing great work, working with great people, making the world better place AND getting paid while doing it.

High Scoring Projects Win!

In taking into account all of these principles when evaluating whether or not a project is worthwhile, if a project scores well in each category then it’s going to be very hard for me to say no.

How Do You Choose Projects?

I should note that this whole blog post was inspired from several discussions I’ve had with my good friend Jo Hund at ClearCove on this very topic. Luckily we have a lot of the same criteria which makes it easy for us to work together on so many projects but I’m always curious to know how other consultants choose their clients and projects. Please post your thoughts in the comments below.

Here is a timelapse video of a graphic facilitation session I did with Susan Low from pictureyourmeeting.com. We talked about the YikeSite Reseller Program and the upcoming revamp of the messaging/positioning for the YikeSite marketing site.

I’ve been into rock carving for years but recently I’ve picked it back up again. It’s a good creative outlet that is physical and provides a good venue to get some thinking done.

I am very excited to announce that I have received a National Aboriginal Role Model award from the National Aboriginal Health Organization.

I am looking forward to visiting communities across Canada throughout 2009/10 with the role model program where I hope to inspire youth to get into business & technology.

About The Role Model Program

“Each year, 12 Aboriginal role models are nominated by their peers. They are selected for their achievements, leadership, and innovation. Throughout the year, the role models will attend celebrations, school functions, workshops, and conferences to share their stories with other Aboriginal youth.”

Video From The Awards Night

Writing down and recognizing your gifts is just as important as writing down your goals. Goals can change over time and so can your gifts but what successful individuals have in common is that they focus on their gifts and not their faults. They focus on their assets, but not their deficits.

Successful companies and communities become so by connecting individual gifts that weren’t connected before.

Recently I’ve been asking people about their gifts have been humbled by some of the responses:

• “I’m a good listener.”
• “I’m a good singer.”
• “I’m good at dealing with different types of people.”
• “I’m a good public speaker.”
• “I’m good at baking.”
• “I’m good at selling things.”
• “I’m good at sports.”
• “I’m good at working with youth.”

How many people would I have to ask before hearing the same gift twice?

My Gifts

The first one is a new one I just discovered about myself and the second one I’ve survived off of for quite some time.

• I like to connect people’s gifts together.
• I’m good at figuring stuff out if I don’t know it.

I’m going to try harder to focus on my gifts and not my faults.

What Are Your Gifts?

If you are inspired, please share your gifts with me by adding a comment. I really really want to know! If you’re feeling modest just ask your friends and family what you’re good at and go from there.

In Canada, we have a few mobile phone companies and only one of them uses GSM technology. For us iPhone lovers, our only choice was to go with Rogers.

This morning, news of a joint effort by Bell and Telus was announced and we learned that they will be working to offer 4G GSM technologies as early as 2010.

A shared network will mean that they can extend each other’s national coverage and compete heavily with Rogers. For the tech-savvy rural business travellers that I know, all hopes have been lost to use an iPhone since Rogers’ GSM network is not available in all areas.

Competition is a good thing and we seriously need this from mobile providers in Canada. I think this is a great move for mobile in Canada and is very exciting for me as a web developer to know that we can build some great things on these faster networks (and reach more people).

“How can I find time to…?”
“If I could just find some time to…?”
“Could you find time to…?”

Expressions like these are commonplace in today’s busy world. The frustrating part is not the actual “doing” of the thing you’re supposed to be finding time for, it’s the actual act of… finding the time!

I’ve been playing with a little life hack that I like to call: Recognizing and Maximizing “Found Time” (or RAMFT™).

So what is “Found Time”?

Found Time™ can be recognized in the moments where we realize that we’ve just saved a bunch of time.

Examples where small amounts of time can be found:

1. You’re standing in line at the grocery store and the customer in front of you pulls out a huge wallet of pennies. Another till magically opens up and you’re spared at least 5 minutes of counting and recounting change.
2. You’re on a conference call and it gets cut short by 20 minutes because the client had a bad tuna fish sandwich and needed to go.
3. You’re in stop-and-go traffic and at the last second you see a shortcut which saves you at least 10 minutes.

Total Found Time: 35 minutes
(Go clean the bathroom!)

Examples where larger amounts of time can be found:

1. You’re given an hour to research something on the interwebs and your mate taps you on the shoulder to give you the exact answer you were looking for.
2. Kid goes to bed a couple of hours early
   (Hey, I wrote this blog post didn’t I?).
3. You’ve writing a contract and then discover that you can reuse a previous contract and change the names around. Possible savings of up to 6 hours!

Total Found Time: 9 Hours
(Add a new feature to your web-app!)

Maybe not the best examples, but you get the idea (I hope?).

Templates, systems and other productivity tricks can help maximize the opportunities for Found Time™.

What works for you?

“The Jeffio Show” will be a short-format video podcast (under 5 minutes) featuring 3-4 guests per episode all answering the same 2-3 questions with responses taking no longer than 30 seconds for each response. I’ll introduce the episode but we’ll focus mainly on the people I interview.

This format should be quick and concise with little fluff, just-the-facts kind of thing. Easy for viewers/listeners to get tidbits of advice from tech professionals and other entrepreneurs without having to invest with a huge time commitment.

Possible Episode Ideas:

Money and Business

1. You’ve decided you want to take Angel investment over VC though you don’t know any investors, what’s the next step?
2. As an Angel investor, how do you find companies to invest in?
3. What is the most important thing to think about when you are selling your company?

Blogging Basics

1. How do you find things to write about so you’re not just blogging for the sake of blogging?
2. What is the best way to get traffic to your blog?
3. Name 3 blogs that you read daily and why.

Productivity

1. What is your system for keeping track of to-dos?
2. What are your most productive times of day and why?
3. How do you keep time-wasting meetings to a minimum?

Networking/People

1. How do you make the most of going to conferences?
2. What tips can you share for making chit chat with somebody you just meet.
3. If you ever have to present your ideas or company to a group, what speaking tips can you share?

Personal Interest

1. What fun stuff keeps you busy outside of work?
2. What are the 3 secret weapons in your book collection?
3. What is on your to-do list that keeps getting put off?

Coming Soon

I’m going to try and sort out the technical details on how I’m going to put this together. I’ve been having fun with wireless lapel mics, video cameras, final cut pro and iMovie.

Here’s a video of me testing microphones:

Let me know what you think!

3G iPhone? Who needs it. I just picked me up a sweet 3G bPhone!

I encourage you to post your own videos of YOUR 3G bPhone!

I’m really loving the whole notion around Micro-Apps. There’s something about the idea of sitting down for a short period of time and just launching something that really gets me excited.

Some define characteristics of a Micro-App as the following:

• Built in one (or two) sittings.
• Very narrow focus. Few features. Solves one or two things.
• Just get something launched.

For me, it gives me a renewed hope that it is possible to get things launched. It’s just a great feeling and inspires the other larger projects I am working on.

There are certainly no shortage of people building micro-apps. A couple of friends here in Victoria have created some very successful apps and seem to always be pushing out things on a regular basis. Very inspiring.

I also went to Eric Kastner’s talk about Micro-Apps at RailsConf recently and got inspired to build my own.

Are you being heard? Or ovrheard?

This weekend I put together a little app that scans the Twitter public timeline for anything pre-pended with abbreviation “OH:” which of course is short for “Overheard”. People use this when they quote something funny that another person has said and is especially funny when taken out of context.

The app took me a few hours to build on the weekend and is available at Ovrheard.us. It doesn’t look pretty (yet) but it is launched and collecting people’s funny quotes.

It is based on an application I built about 9 years ago that displays a random quote that somebody has entered. We’ve got over 100,000 entries over there which is pretty neat since it was built in a few hours as well and just kept the domain name active all these years. The plan is to re-do this app as well.

Apricado is a great way for independent artists to sell their music online. In this video I’ll show you how easy it is to set up an Apricado store if you’re an indie musician. This is the sneak preview. We will be launching in summer ’08.

Like it? Digg it!

There are a few folks out there extolling the virtues of a 4 day work week. Personally I think it’s the ideal scenario. But for us service-based companies who whose time-worked is proportional to generated revenue, this blue pill is a harder one to swallow.

Working a four-day week is much harder if you run a service-based company. For instance, design companies will have to really work hard to keep a four-day week, simply because clients will expect you to be in the office five days a week. ¹

Side Products

I keep seeing more and more service-based companies branch out into the world of products. Frankly, it’s what I’m trying to do with YikeSite. Create a great product that people will actually pay you money for and see it provide a good source revenue. Very enticing to small companies and freelancers looking to supplement their client work.

Finding Time

I give myself until noon each day to work on my side projects – be it my blog, side projects or R&D. The mornings are shorter anyways with 3 hours of workable time compared to the typical 5-ish hours in the afternoon. The afternoon is for client work.

Knowing that I have this time constraint makes me want to get my lazy butt out of bed and to work on time or earlier. It also makes me want to grab the fastest lunch possible because I give myself basically until 1pm to start said client work.

Of course, I have to take calls in the morning (I was interrupted by a conference call in the middle of writing this post) and put out any fires that can’t be postponed. And some weeks just don’t fit with this schedule. But overall, this is where I’ve been able to find time to stay focus and keep momentum on the things that get me really excited.

Keeping Momentum

When you break a big project into smaller chunks — into tiny projects — you stand a better chance at maintaining motivation and rekindling interest.²

37Signals had a really interesting article about maintaining motivation and momentum on projects by breaking them down into chunks. As a sound engineer and musician, I’ve spent countless hours looking at sound waves so this illustration really spoke to me.

By only working a couple of hours each day on your side project, this forces you into this methodology which makes total sense to me.

But The Cool Kids Do It!

It’s really hard not to drink the kool-aid with all of the cool kids. And it’s this part that really gets my goat…

Three-day weekends mean people come back extra refreshed on Monday. Three-day weekends mean people come back happier on Monday. Three-day weekends mean people actually work harder and more efficiently during the four-day work week.³

Until then, I look forward to answering your e-mails 5 days per week :)

¹ The Four-Day Week Challenge Ryan Carson

² Tiny projects keep it new Jason Fried

³ Workplace experiments Jason Fried

People considering working at home generally weigh the benefits and challenges but opt for the home office anyways. My guess however is that over time a lot of people will eventually find the opposite and move to an office space outside of the home.

One of the best decisions I’ve made as an entrepreneur was to move my work life outside of my home. It took years before this idea became even remotely something I would consider. I mean, why would I? On paper, it’s a pretty sweet deal.

“Daddy, I Know You’re In There!”

The tipping point for me was having a toddler in the house. When my son was a baby, working from home was great because I could be there for my wife when she needed me. Simple tasks like taking a shower and making food can really become quite difficult when you got a baby strapped to you. I didn’t mind one bit holding my baby throughout the day.

Then he got older, mobile and vocal. He would know when I was behind that closed door. It became impossible to get work done and it felt like I was a bad father sitting there trying to not open the door as he was crying “daaaaaadddyyy!”. That door didn’t stay closed for long. All I wanted to do was hang out with them all day long.

The 3 Hour Family Lunch Break

At least a few times in the day I’d hear the two of them having way too much fun than I was prepared to miss out on. Hearing laughter from the other room made me want to investigate. Maybe it’s the first time he’s discovering bubbles or maybe he’s practicing with his newly discovered walking legs. I just really wanted to be there. A quick lunch break would turn into play time, an outing or a nap (or all three).

Being flexible with my time, I thought I’d just catch up the time in the evening. This rarely happened because nobody can resist a sleepy baby when you yourself are feeling a little drowsy. When I did catch up on work in the evening it felt that this took away from “family time”. This lead to, what felt like, really long and drawn out days.

Kicked Out

It was actually my wife who was the biggest supporter in me having a place to work outside of home. We both needed a good chunk of time out of the day where I was in “Dad Mode” instead of somewhere between “Work Mode” and “Dad Mode”. The in between mode really didn’t serve anybody (family, me, clients).

Having an office has been great. When I’m at work, I’m at work and when I’m at home, I’m home. In general this has solved the issues around the work/home balance and I still have the flexibility to be there for my wife and son if they are really needing me. And I reckon I’ll take advantage of this again with the next baby.

Hey there, my name is Jeff Ward and you have reached my very first blog entry. I’ve procrastinated starting this blog for a lot of reasons. But I finally did start this blog for the following reasons:

1. Use writing as a tool to help me decide how I really feel about what I feel. On business, web-apps, personal growth & family life.
2. Get myself out there in the world a little more and hopefully meet some cool people and do some cool stuff.
3. Share my experiences and maybe help a few people along the way.

Looks like the basis of a blog mission statement. Ugh, off to a bad start already. If I could make mantra all of the above, I would go with – “Jeff, Inside & Out”. Grab the domain name and off we go!