D. Keith Robinson has some thoughts on how to do something great.
I agree with him in the following points:
1. You need to focus.
2. You need to rid yourself of fear.
3. Sometimes "great" is simply really good.
4. Starting is the hardest part.
5. Doing something great requires a plan.
6. An idea is only as good as its execution.
7. You have to want it.

I hate working in silence. Better said, I'd love working in silence if I had water coolers in my PC. What I can't stand is the noise coming out from my PC. So I turn to music.

The first thing that comes to mind is to listen to electronic music, specifically trance. I'm in a trance group so listening to the newest releases while developing web applications looks like efficient, doesn't it? But it just doesn't work. I've tried this so many times and it turns out that I can't work while listening to any kind of commercial music.

Here comes classical music into the picture. It not only helps me to fight the noise, it doubles or triples my efficiency. And I seem to love it. I even tried chillout and ambient; it doesn't work. Don't ask me about the reason. It might be the violins or even the sound itself, I really have no idea.

Gregory Beaver probably knows the answer. He puts an awesome amount of work into the installer infrastructure of PEAR. He is a member of The Chiara String Quartet. I'm looking forward to see them releasing a CD. Maybe Greg's secret is their own music, who knows :) I'm gonna ask him one day.

"He who every morning plans the transaction of the day and follows out that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the maze of the most busy life. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidence, chaos will soon reign."

by Victor Hugo - French dramatist, novelist, & poet (1802 - 1885)

It is important to define the things that keep you away from working--this helps to recognize and fight against them.

Here are my top 5 distractions that I need to be aware of:
1. Being distracted/disturbed by others. (While working, nothing should get higher priority unless somebody needs life-saving help. Act like you were in an office, thousands of miles away.)
2. On- and off-entrepreneurship, being uncertain of goals, fear of failure etc. (Until you don't believe that you will and need to succeed, you won't.)
3. Not following the well-defined plans. ("Oh, I have some free time now." You don't.)
4. Not having defined plans. ("There are so many things to do that I don't know where to start." You need to define steps to achieve the next goals.)
5. Running out of money. (This is very hard to manage. You need good organizational skills and reliable partners who pay in time.)

After 3 years it's still hard to live with these things. The more I recognize, the more they seem to be similar to "patterns" in software architecture: after recognizing which pattern to apply, they become simple to solve.

The previous entry was about the todo list. I mentioned that one point in having a todo list is "to see that you've finished all tasks for the day". This might become complicated when a project starts to late.

I've experienced many times that it is very easy to spend more than the reasonable amount of time on the delaying project. The sad thing is that this will probably affect your other projects as well. You can either sacrifice your free time (if you have any..) or spend less time with the rest.

Whichever you choose, it should NOT significantly affect your time balance. Be sure to find a way to catch up with the delay as soon as possible but do not give up on your balance. It isn't a benefit for anyone. Not for yourself and not for any of your clients/partners.

Solve the delay ASAP but don't break your lifecycle. It is important to work on all of your projects regularly or they'll never get ready. My tip is to work on all projects every day, regardless of what actually happens. Sometimes it is hard but this is how things get done efficiently. The scope of a project shouldn't affect the others.

The emerging need for a todo list
1. In the beginning I had no todo lists at all. I always forgot what to do.
2. Later I had hand-written todo lists (on a paper). They are hard to manage because todo lists often change (higher priority needs, changing project scope, etc).
3. Now I store my list in dotProject. It's very far from being perfect and user-friendly in the sense of usability, but it is a good tool for the job.

I have companies, companies have projects, projects have tasks (and/or child tasks). Deadlines are assigned to tasks.

Why todo lists are important?
1. to see what you have to do to finish everything in time
2. to see that you've finished all tasks for the day so you can take a rest instead of working continously. This is very important. If you work all day, you might fall into depression. It is also important for establishing a systematic life. You need free time to take care of yourself.

How to work with todo lists?
If you have, let's say, 8 tasks for today, don't think about 8 tasks only. If you do, it is very easy to say "oh, I can do them even if I start working on them in the afternoon". This is not true. You don't have only 8 tasks. You have unlimited tasks to finish. The goal of a todo list should be to keep the "Due In" number of days as high as possible.

This way you will have your tasks finished days before their deadlines. Unexpected things always happen. Don't let them change your plans, finish tasks earlier! (But don't go crazy about it. You'll have tasks in your whole life, don't think you'll ever run out of them.)

One thing I noticed is that I should start working right after getting up because it is very hard to start it later. In the morning there are no other things or thoughts(!) yet which keep you away from doing what's planned.

This will be a long day.

You need a business plan to systematically achieve your goals. Here is what I need to do this Summer to get to the next level.

1. In the past three years I've established 2 great partnerships which bring me PHP development projects continously. I need to work on them in the first place to pay my bills. This is considered to be my "steady job" and I do NOT plan to stop it for a while. I defined a fixed amount of money that I want to earn in the following months. This is one part of my current business; professional PHP development for two great companies.

2. The second important thing this Summer is to come up with a brand new Open Source product written in PHP. I don't want to share anything about it yet; it will help people solve their business problems better, at a lower cost. I will use my international PHP exposure to market this product. This is accepted in Open Source communities. Anyone can join the development after the product is announced and it will hopefully give lots of experiences and improvements back to the community.

3. I'm one of the two members of an international trance group which specializes in quality trance music. The plan is to record 3 mixes (1 done), almost completely finish our first 3 productions, improve the website, make photos of us and put them online, publish mixes on websites and get them played on 2 local FM radio stations over here.

4. I have 3 sub-sites on a huge linkportal where I have free ad spaces, 2 on each page. The goal is to sell the 5 available banners on these pages.

5. I've started the development of a long-planned product for djs to help their everyday job by catalogizing their vinyl/cdr/mp3 collection. This is much more than a simple catalog software; it's specialized so much to djs needs that I can't really imagine anyone else than a dj using it. The goal is to create a complete desktop product by the end of the Summer which is almost ready to sell.

6. If I get the money that I'm looking forward to, set up the home-based professional voice over studio which is the beginning of my digital studio setup.

Turned 22 some days ago.

I think I can split my lifetime into 3 parts:
0-16 yrs: being a child, getting to know the world, growing up
16-19 yrs: starting to work, recognizing that a daily job isn't sustainable for me
19-22 yrs: going freelance, getting to know entrepreneurship, trying out different things, getting professional in many areas.

It took 22 years to finally define my life goal. I want to be a successful entrepreneur who is free to do whatever he wants. I want to have the ability to work on whatever I want, whenever I want, without worrying about money.

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do. (Bob Dylan)
There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way. (Christopher Morley)
Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love. (David McCullough)

If you ask me where I see myself in 10 years, I'd say I'll be dealing with the entertainment music industry. Producing, deejaying, playing in bands, performing live, engineering, sponsoring & managing artists & live music events, maybe even starting radio stations.. On the other hand, I doubt I'll ever give up either on Internet or technology/computers. I've spent too much time with them to stop forever. The biggest surprise for me will be my relation to web/software development; I wonder if I'll still do it when I live my in next dream, the life of a successful entrepreneur. Probably yes, at some level.

Thanks to KenChi, I have them on my walls now.

These are my favourites at the moment:

1. Definiteness of Purpose
2. Applied Faith
3. Going the Extra Mile
4. Positive Mental Attitude
5. Enthusiasm
6. Accurate Thinking
7. Controlled Attention
8. Creative Vision

Tahl Raz (reporter at Inc Magazine) interviewed Keith Ferrazzi, a master networker who shares useful tactics in the article written in January 2003.

Rule 1: Don't network just to network. You need to know the right people, for the right reason.
Rule 2: Take names. Have a current contact list and a list of aspirational contacts.
Rule 3: Build it before you need it. People can tell the difference between desperation and an earnest attempt to create a relationship.
Rule 4: Never eat alone. Keep your social and conference and event calendar full.
Rule 5: Be interesting. You have to have something to say to be interesting to people. Being known is one thing, but being known for content is something else entirely--and much better.
Rule 6: Manage the gatekeeper. Artfully.
Rule 7: Always ask.
Rule 8: Don't keep score. Successful networking is never about simply getting what you want. It's about getting what you want and making sure that people who are important to you get what they want, too.
Rule 9: Ping constantly. Eighty percent of networking is just staying in touch. Ferrazzi calls it "pinging."
Rule 10: Find anchor tenants. Feed them. Ferrazzi developed his theory of the anchor tenant. "What you do," he says, "is find somebody in your peer set who has a friend who is two levels above -- the big swinging dick of the group, the anchor tenant. You get them to come and, in all invitations subsequent to that, you use the anchor to pull in people who otherwise wouldn't attend."

The points above are still valid and probably will stay so for a long time so be sure to take the time to read The 10 Secrets of a Master Networker.

We happen to have a regional FM radio station over here and I'm very impressed by their marketing strategy. They worked hard since 1996 to establish their brand--they had numerous campaigns, arranged free give-aways of cold mineral water to people in Summer on the streets, offered free stickers that you had to glue on your car and if they made a photo of your car with the sticker on it, you recevied some money from them instantly and so on.

What they achieved with their efforts is that when you walk on the streets nowadays, you can almost continously listen to their program because its played in every third house. Especially because it's Spring and people spend their freetime in their gardens (well, those who don't blog, at least :). Awesome.

Respect, Kek Duna. (Anyways, Kek Duna means Blue Danube; Danube is a river with its rise in Germany, and there's also this classical tune, you know..)

Great plans in my mind regarding communities for the near future--starting to learn more about them now. Clay Shirky has some interesting thoughts to learn from.

Quote from Group as User: Flaming and the Design of Social Software:

"Interestingly, netiquette came tantalizingly close to addressing group phenomena. Most versions advised, among other techniques, contacting flamers directly, rather than replying to them on the list. Anyone who has tried this technique knows it can be surprisingly effective. Even here, though, the collective drafters of netiquette misinterpreted this technique. Addressing the flamer directly works not because he realizes the error of his ways, but because it deprives him of an audience. Flaming is not just personal expression, it is a kind of performance, brought on in a social context. [..] People behave differently in groups, and while momentarily engaging them one-on-one can have a calming effect, that is a change in social context, rather than some kind of personal conversion. Once the conversation returns to a group setting, the temptation to return to performative outbursts also returns."

Clay has more on communities and I noticed some months ago that Sitepoint hosts some strategy articles too.

Update: Eric A. Meyer, CSS expert who runs a css mailing list with 5000+ subscribers, responds to Clay's thoughts in his blog.