Ryan A Graves.com

Aren’t you getting tired of hearing people talk about the Work – Life balance? I am, and it’s mostly because I don’t understand the concept. It’s not that I work 80 hours a week, or than I don’t have a social life, because I do, I have a great one. The confusion is derived from my confusion around what we are balancing. Things need balancing when they are opposites right? Black and white have grey; good and evil have, well, humans. But why do work and life need balancing? If your work and you’re life are such polar opposites you are definitely in the wrong line of work. If you hate your job so much that you don’t consider it part of your life then we have issues.

People wonder why they’re not performing well at work, Peter Berner, author of Career Moments would tell you, “You’re in the wrong job!” Somebody can do a job without actually doing anything, but nobody can do work without doing anything. If you find a career or work that you enjoy it can become your life and that is OK! Believe it or not you don’t actually have to hate your job.

So, forget trying to balance your work and your life. Let your work become a part of your life and something you enjoy. Enjoy your life. I guarantee that when you find work that becomes your life and that is enjoyable the rewards will be exponential. The largest of those rewards may even be financial rewards which can also improve other aspects of your life. All of a sudden when you begin to enjoy your work the need to balance is gone.

post from Ryan’s Blog.

Milwaukee skyline

On December 10 & 11 I will be moving my bed from Chicago to the lovely city of Milwaukee.  My first night living in Milwaukee with be in January as I begin my new job (much more to come on that later).  I will be sad to leave Chicago as I have had a wonderful year here but I’m very excited for the new stage of my life that will begin in Milwaukee.  There are many new and exciting opportunities to come.

Of all the folks out in Silicon Valley rolling in the cash the ‘Googlers’ are now among the wealthiest.  Michael Arrington wrote on TechCrunch recently about how there are 1,000 Google employees who’s stock grants and options are worth, now with the recent increase in price, over $5 million.

See said increase:

There are other Google employees who haven’t made millions but think about this…those who joined Google just one year ago, when I joined the workforce, are doing just fine also.  Those hired one year ago, on avg. received 685 optioned shares and are now worth on avg. $276,000 or $662 per share. Also they received 230 shares outright.  Decent huh?

 Would you accept a job that pays $276k + $50k = $316k a year right out of college? I might.

If you are familiar with Lifehack.com’s “Mind Hack” posts this is the first Mind Hack post for ActionsTalk.com.  I hope that this changes the way that you approach decision making and benefits you in you career and your life.

Decision making is one of the most important skills an individual can learn.  People say that life is just a series of decisions and they’re right!  Every situation you encounter in life is going to present a different set of opportunities and your ability to decipher what the right decision is can literally make or break you.  This applies to ones personal life as well as ones career.  My method of decision making is very helpful but a little different than most peoples.  It is very common to just list the pros and cons and whichever list is longer go with that choice.  We’ll I go a step further and I apply a weight or a degree of importance to each pro and each con. Then I add the numbers up and that is my choice.  It is a very simple and logical way to help you make up your mind with big decisions.  For this example I will use the decision to move away from San Diego (awesome) and come to Chicago (pretty sweet). 

First the PROS… (Always start positive):

·         Friends  weight: (9)

·         Girlfriend (9)

·         Job opportunities (6)

·         Great social life (4)

·         New experiences (8)

·         Challenge & Out of comfort zone (4) – yes this is a positive

Total: 40

Then the CONS…

·         No more surfing (4)

·         Away from Family (7)

·         The slight (very slight) possibility that I would ever life in SD again (10)

·         Leaving SD friends (8)

·         Leaving a solid network of job opps (2)

·         Chi-towns beach vs. beaches in SD (3)

Total: 34

40 points to move to Chicago, 34 to stay in San Diego…thus, my decision to move to

Q: What is your great opportunity Ryan…

A: Well, I can’t go into it in detail… for very un-obvious reasons, how every I think that if a person our age is presented a great opportunity it is foolish for that person to not take FULL advantage of it…

I’ll expand on this later, when I feel comfortable…

I understand this is a vague and somewhat awkward post, but you’ll understand soon enough.

The only thing I can say now is if a person is in the position I am in (youth) that person always needs to remember to keep their eyes and options open… chat soon…

If it takes more than this poster to motivate you, try this…

Yossi Vardi, (an original investor in ICQ) quoted a Theodore Roosevelt speech from 1910 in a discussion held a TechCrunch40 last month to draw a parallel to today’s entrepreneur.

            “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Michael Arrington had some very inspiring words regarding entrepreneurship on his blog TechCrunch and he also discussed when Vardi gave the speech here.  If you’d like to see the entire speech you can read it here.

How productive is it to have one place that you go to work everyday.  I sit in the same place everyday as many people do during their work day and I’m actually in a very good situation. I work on the 29^th floor of a building in

Today we had a full building evacuation fire drill that everyone obviously found out about early. In preparation we went to a local Starbucks (standard!) to work during the chaos.  I loved it.  It was so refreshing to be in a different environment event though I was still doing the same work. I was much more productive and motivated to do the same old work. 

It seems to me that this is the life of the work from home programmer or internet business guru.  You know that guy Craig, who started that list? Yea, that was this guy.  He got up each morning knowing that the only thing he needed to operate was an internet connection. He could make his cup of coffee, sit at his table or couch in his boxers and have a very productive day of work.  Must be nice.

I don’t think that an office is so necessary these days. Working from home is becoming a much more viable option with the availability of internet at coffee shops and the like.  Face to face interaction will always be needed from the client but at the same time as long as people get the results that they expect both on-time and on budget they don’t really need to see who delivers those results.

I’m in the very early stages of a career and I think I’m going through something that many people go through. I’ve entered a period of stagnation.  I go to work everyday but I’m rarely excited to go or excited about the work I’m doing. I don’t want to give up but I question all the time just how long I should “hang in there” before I start looking for more exciting work and a more exciting business. 

I just don’t know if I’m actually in a great company and just need to deal with it or if there actually are some much better options out there.  I’m guessing the later but with only one job (this one) to compare it to it’s hard to tell.  What is the right decision? Maybe a more difficult question, when is the right decision made. Decisions like this are the ones that shape your life and knowing that makes it that much more difficult to make. Whats signs do I look for? What decision should I make? I guess right now I’ll just continue to try and make as many opptions available as possible.

For those of us struggling to figure out just how we’ll “do it on our own”, the largest struggle is that in the mean time you have to work. It’s not all bad, the training is good, the experience is good, the money (relative to starting your own business) is easy. However, it’s just not as satisfying. I woke up this morning with a very simple metaphor for comparing a job to a start-up or your own business. A job is like Renting. You get out of it exactly what you put it. When renting you pay your check (hopefully) and you are allowed to sleep under that roof for the next month, in your job you go…everyday…and in return you get a paycheck every 2 weeks. Seems like a fair trade right? We’ll when you start your own company you go…everyday…maybe the entire day, but in return you get more than just a pay check. Just as in home ownership you get not only a roof over your head but you get the appreciation on your house and you get the satisfaction of ownership. Same in business, you have something growing under you that maybe if you’re one of the lucky ones will continue to grow without you; you get the satisfaction and the reward of ownership and knowing that you are providing jobs for others, that you are providing a product or service that other people enjoy, need, want and gladly part with their money for. Just as renting is somewhat of a black hole…well maybe a job is also?