It was from Matthew Milan, back in the day. I loved the concept then, and I love it just as much now.

Start at the end and work your way back to the beginning. I think what I love the most about it is that the process that you go through helps you recognize signs of success and signs of trouble, before you even start. And, it helps you to think ahead and ask “If we’re three weeks in and we haven’t seen X or done Y, then here’s what we’ll do to get back on track to our most desirable outcome…”

Planning for your own failures ahead of time so that you can ultimately succeed. Love it.

The living contradiction is a concept I first encountered in my days as a teacher. Through my professor and friend Tom Russell I learned of Jack Whitehead, who was very interested in action research, reflective practice and living educational theory.

Jack talks about experiencing oneself as a living contradiction — when we experience our actions being at odds with our beliefs and values — as the impetus to improve. When we experience that feeling, we are motivated to act. To change. To iterate.

This is different than hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is the when we pretend to have certain beliefs and values, when we don’t really have them. With hypocrisy, we are lying.

A living contradiction, however, is about the truth. Finding a way to live true to what we believe — both personally and professionally.

Feeling the Pain

In the final two months of 2009, I did precisely the opposite of what I should have been doing. In October, I wrote two posts “What Gives?” and “Needs More Whitespace” — both of which explored the need to give things up, to slow down, to create space in our personal and professional lives in order to achieve a better balance between the personal and professional parts of our lives as part of long term “success” and happiness.

I wrote the words, but I couldn’t live the ideals. I slept less per night than I had for the last 2.5 years. I didn’t log my hours of sleep, but I know that more often than not, my alarm woke me only 3 or 4 hours after my head hit the pillow. Not healthy.

I believe, like Jack, that I can make a positive change after feeling and experiencing this dissonance. Feeling it so acutely is certainly more than enough to provoke me. I need to reflect, plan, act and evaluate. I am a living contradiction, and I’m okay with that, as long as I do something about it.

What are you doing — right now — that shows you are a living contradiction? What are you going to do to make a change to bring your actions in line with your ideals and beliefs?

We both need to change this now, while we’re still in the tone-setting, habit-building infancy of 2010.

That is part of the reason that I signed up for Project 52. It isn’t just a kick start to get me writing more. I’m using Project 52 as a means for me to understand myself and others more deeply and thoroughly.

In processing the past year of triathlon training and racing, I came to the realization that last year’s activities were focused entirely on the long haul. My wife and I competed in two races: IronMan Lake Placid, and IronMan Muskoka 70.3. Both are long distance races, and are spaced such that they ended up being the only races we trained for. And ultimately, that hurt us. We resented training. We weren’t having fun. We just didn’t want to do it any more.

Mentally reliving the experiences of the past 12 months while kicking off 2010, connected our world of triathlon racing to my world of work. Last year’s long-haul-only tri pain was that of 2008 in business — where we worked almost exclusively on one project for one client for the entire year. That singular focus for an entire year nearly burnt us out completely (ask Jeff Smith — he’ll tell you!), and I’m determined to never let that happen again.

Just as we need variety in our training and competitions in triathlon, so too, do we need variety in the projects we take on in business. It can’t just be the long haul.

It seems to me that in many ways, my ideal year in triathlon would be very similar to an ideal year of business. For the company to be healthy, and for us to maintain our passion, to feel good about what we’re doing, we need a well-balanced mixture of activity. Mix some short term projects — the sprint distance triathlons where we push our limits to go fast and furious — with some longer term projects — the long haul, IronMan and IronMan 70.3 races that take long, slow preparation and lots of endurance building — and a good dose of fun — projects where we experiment and scratch our own itches, doing things just for us.

Now, more than ever, I’m looking forward to the year 2010 — with a clear path forward for the right variety — in business, and in health.

What’s the right mix for you for 2010? How are you going to maintain variety so that you don’t burn out and keep the passion for what you do alive and well?

Know your banker. That kind of changed in the era of electronic banking. I didn’t need to actually go into the bank did I? We have drive thru banking/ATMs everywhere. Just let me stay in my car, drive thru and carry on with my day — I’m extremely busy, dontcha know?

The Inconvenience of Convenience

It all worked well. Until ATM deposits started having a hold on the funds until they could actually be verified.

This bothered me to no end — the electronic transactions that are supposed to travel at the speed of electrons were actually slowing things down. It meant that I got access to money later rather than sooner.

So I talked to my bank’s manager about it one day, and she explained to me how it worked. And now, every time I have a cheque, I take in to see the real, live people that work at the bank. Because they know who I am. They can see my banking history. They can ask me if I’ve had cheques from that particular client before or if they are a new account. They can look me in the eyes and we can TALK.

That’s something that a machine can’t do.

Going Backward to Move Forward

The electronic has become (or maybe always has been) impersonal.

So I need to take it back to the beginning. Talk with my banker. Take an extra 30 minutes to have a face to face chat with clients about new ideas for their businesses and ours. Take 30 minutes to pick up the phone and talk with friends that run other businesses — yes, some will be with friends that in similar businesses to us, but some will be with those that are most definitely NOT in the web design/development or UX business.

As a business owner, as part of my business strategy, one of my big goals for 2010 is simply this: spend more time talking with people face to face or over the telephone instead of via email.

Your life needs more whitespace. You told me so in your comments on “What Gives?” When you have no whitespace in your life — like a design — it doesn’t feel right. Crowded. Sub-optimal. You can get the job done, but something just doesn’t feel right.

To create more whitespace in a design, we take things away. We create margins. Padding. We add more line-spacing. How can we do that in our lives?

Quit working through lunch. I’m not talking about time here. I’m talking about the activity. Stop eating your lunch at your computer. You may need to eat at your computer once in a while, but when it becomes every meal of every day, a vital part of your whitespace is gone.

Meetings take up your whitespace. Get rid of any that you can. Yes, other people have written this before. I write it here because I feel the sharp pains of them being right. And if you can’t get rid of them, work hard to avoid back to back to back meetings.

Boxes must go. You know how you want to draw attention to something in a design? You draw a box around it. Then, you want to draw attention to something else and you draw a box around it too. Pretty soon everything has a box around it. And when everything has a box around it, nothing does. Don’t draw attention to or separate various aspects of your life with boxes. Separate them with whitespace.

The beauty of whitespace is contrast. Whitespace accentuates contrasting elements and allows them to stand out based on what they are and aren’t, rather than what visual treatment they have to make them stand out.

Like the elements of a great design the elements of your life don’t need a visual treatment. They just need some room to stand on their own. The elements of your life need more whitespace.

A few weeks ago I was feeling particularly rough about what direction life was headed between work, friends, our crazy passion for endurance events as a hobby, family, and everything else that needs to find a place in our lives. I actually felt like things might have been unraveling at the seams.

So I asked a very simple question on Twitter — are we all just burning out?

The responses people posted had one common thread: YES. Either people were feeling that they were burning out, or that they were already there, or were actually engaged in achieving multiple burnout.

Like it is normal. An expectation of our industry.

That is not acceptable.

I’m tired of seeing my friends across the globe at the wrong times. I shouldn’t be awake and neither should they! My friends on the west coast of North America? If you’re still awake and working at 3am when I’m waking up at 6 or 7 am, then something is wrong. Those in the UK and Europe? When I’m doing a bit of extra work at 9pm at night and its 3am for you? Not cool. My Kiwi and Aussie friends? Get. To. Bed.

I was honoured to speak at Webstock in Wellington, New Zealand in February this year. I was incredibly motivated by Mike Brown’s words. I’m paraphrasing, but Mike’s  opening address resonated with me:

The work we are doing on the web is critically important. We’re working at building the most important communications network in history. What we do today matters. It matters for today, for tomorrow, forever – and it deserves our very best work. We owe it to each other, to ourselves, to everyone.

Doing our best means not burning out. That should be the accepted norm in our industry.

If you’re burning out (yes, I’m talking to you) something has to give — because if it doesn’t, we won’t be producing our best work. Be conscious in your choice of what gives though — if it is family, personal health and well-being, or our relationships with friends, we’re in a lot of trouble. Those are supposed to be the most important things. It seems that they are the ones that we take for granted or sacrifice first.

Over the past few months I’ve realized that the sacrifices I have made haven’t always been the right ones — partly because I’m conflicted. I’m sure we all feel this pressure in some way: in order to provide for my family I feel more pressure for the business to do more — take on more work, expand what we’re doing, have more income so that I can provide more comfort, more food, more whatever. more. more. more. But at the end of the day, it just feels like less and less and less.

I don’t know what everyone else is feeling right now, but I know where I am. So the question is, what gives? I have no clue. But it can’t be family or me. Those are the wrong things to compromise. I owe family and me, my very best, because what I do with them, matters.

Miles asked to interview me for the book, and I was happy to oblige. In seeing Russ “I like to eat feet” Weakley’s review of the book, he says:

The book also includes interviews with some well-known freelancers such as Derek Featherstone, Mark Boulton, Molly Holzschlag and Stephen Collins.

Now then — I don’t consider myself a freelancer (though I once did, when I first left teaching to go out on my own). The question in my mind though, is “what are we, really?” And by we, I mean my web development and accessibility consultancy company, Further Ahead.

Identity Crisis

We have employees. We have people that work with us on contract. But I’m having a tough time distinguishing whether or not we are actually a company, or something else — like a “freelancer with a support crew.”

I don’t know if there is any difference, actually. We have all the corporate stuff taken care of — insurance, benefits, the corporation itself, office space. But I’m wondering to myself if there is anything that really says “company” about Further Ahead, or if we are really just seen as “freelancer with other people too.”

Either way, does it really matter?