Blogging and traveling, a golden combination

Written on 24th November 2008                                                                                                              2 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

As you might have noticed, I wrote a post last week about my three-week stay in Kathmandu, Nepal. After describing the beautiful country and its not so beautiful political problems, I invited every reader to drop me a line if he or she knew somebody in Kathmandu. Two people did.

Kathmandu Koding

One of them was Mark Townsend. He introduced me to Ayush Bajracharya, a 26-year old PHP developer from Patan, a gorgeous satellite city of Kathmandu. Ayush works for Samma Ajiva Limited, a company involved in several outsourcing projects. When I told Ayush about my Dutch nationality, he told me he functions as a cupid in my country since he developed a dating site called Zullenwij.nl.

Alternative to India and China

After spending a week here I got to know a lot of people like Ayush who are working on outsourcing projects. So while Tim Ferriss advises you to give your developer work a spin in India and Chinese companies desperately try to catch up with the outsourcing giant – Nepal might be an interesting alternative. One minor side note, it seems like the best way of finding a developer is actually visiting the country (which is no punishment at all).

Meeting locals through blogging

If outsourcing doesn’t concern you, then please learn one thing from this post. Traveling and blogging is one fine combination. When I went to Berlin earlier this year, I met up with some great music 2.0 fellows thanks to a post on this blog. And now it turns out that this strategy also works in more exotic places like Nepal. I realized this when drinking tea with Ayush and his younger brother Raz in a house that doesn’t even look a bit like mine. Our languages, habits, and religious beliefs are all different, but it was blogging that connected us. Pretty cool, eh?

[Photo credit: Sacha Post]

berlin, blogging, India, kathmandu, nepal, outsourcing, tim ferriss, travel

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Tips for web workers from lifehacker Gina Trapani

Written on 17th March 2008                                                                                                              4 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Bestselling-author Tim Ferriss from The 4-hour Workweek has interviewed the founding editor of Lifehacker.com, Gina Trapani. The result is an interesting article that contains some useful tips for web workers. Since this is a Web 2.0 blog, I assume quite a lot of guys would call yourself a web worker. So I highlighted some of the best advices, for the other tips I gladly refer to the man we owe this interview to.

Trapani wants us to forget about the ‘2read’ tag:

“One simple but powerful habit is this: To act immediately on things as they come up. (…) If I see a web page that looks like it might be a good Lifehacker post at some point, instead of just bookmarking it for later, creating a draft post in Lifehacker’s publishing system on the spot. This practice requires some discipline to develop, especially when you’re feeling lazy or distracted, but it can make a huge difference.”

Monkey minds swinging from branch to branch

To some degree, I reject the super-structured, old school of time management thought, (..) From 10:45 to 11:15 check email,” etc. As a “web worker,” by nature I embrace serendipity and tangents, and like to keep myself open to working on unexpected things that excite me, even if they’re not in the plan. (..) At the same time, I think a lot of web workers like me can take this to the extreme, and need a dose of structure and limits in their day.

Open/ closed mindsets

Basically I’ve got two modes of work: loose/open, and focused/closed. When I’m in “open” mode, my instant messenger status is set to available, I’m surfing, writing, checking email, coding, listening to music with lyrics—getting things done, but in a multitasking way, open to interruptions and tangents. When I’m in focused/closed mode,I shut down IM, stop checking email, close any windows I’m not using, switch to my ambient music playlist, set a timer, and plow through whatever I’ve got to get done. Typically I go into closed mode when I’m on deadline.

Some other useful lifehacks for Web Workers/ bloggers

• LifeRemix: How to Work Like the Masters
• Matt Huggins : 55 essential articles every serious blogger should read
• Web Worker Daily: GTD for Bloggers: The Art of Stress-free Blogging
• To-Done: Be A More Productive Blogger
• And on my personal blog: How to process blog-related email Getting Things Done-style

By the way, if you think lifehacking is just a superficial buzzword, drop a line in the comments. In a time that everybody seems excited about ‘geek to live’, some critical thoughts about hacking your life.

gina trapani, howto, lifehack, tim ferriss, tips

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