If you’re keen enough to have noticed, this is a resource to learn about me and to act as my ‘home’ on the web. My old blog (devinreams.com) has moved to Mind Averse. If you’ve made it this far, congratulations, you’re extremely observant.
Now that I have a few spare minutes to collect my thoughts I figured I’d share a little about my professional life as of late:
If you’re not aware, I left my job of 11 months and 3 weeks (just barely a year) this past July 18th. I had been working at Ernst & Young* and made a quick decision to move on to my passion: the internet. The firm itself is awesome; they’ve definitely earned the many awards and recognitions (a top 25 employer for a decade according to Fortune). I learned a lot, worked with great people and clients, and I don’t really regret anything about my time spent at E&Y.
I’ve learned plenty from my other experiences and jobs but this one is a bit different. It was my first full-time job out of college (not an internship, not a part-time job); one where I had bosses, business cards, a phone number, responsibilities, performance reviews, etc. Some things may be obvious or things you’ve read about before–but this is the kind of stuff I finally learned from experience.
…and I could go on and on.
I’m now working for Crowd Favorite which is an internet company specializing in WordPress (the software that powers this website), custom web development and design, consulting, and builds some web products. Surprise surprise, I’m working on the web!
I suppose this isn’t new: I’ve moved around a lot and some people might look at that as being scattered or unfocused. But, guess what: all that moving around and dabbling paid off! I found something I really enjoy (and I think I’m good at it, too). How do I know? For starters, I’ve been excited to go to work all 10 days these last two weeks (and enjoy checking / responding to business e-mails during some of my spare time)!
My job is a mixture of things but I think we could describe it as a mix of the following:
So, that sums up what I’ve been doing and what I’ll be working on. Everyone I work with is great, I’m happy, excited and learning plenty each and every day.
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* Note: this is the first and only time the firm name was used on my site (for employment / search engine / opinion purposes). They were aware of devinreams.com and I was aware of their awareness.
I’m sure you’ve heard of it already. If not, a bunch of people have vowed to give up everything in their life except for 100 “things” (loosely defined). This isn’t a new idea, Leo from Zen Habits talked about it almost a year ago and it’s been circulating around the web in blogs and forums before that (but thank goodness we have TIME around to popularize it).
I started cataloging all the items I have around the house and was quite surprised; I think you would be, too. But first, here are some of my initial thoughts:
Now the point isn’t to simply remove things from your life (even though that’s a big part of it). The point of the (arbitrary) number, 100, is to keep a sense of value in mind. What is it that makes it into my top 100? What can I limit myself to? How do I prioritize the “stuff” that is tied to my name?
After a couple hours of rummaging around this morning I easily dropped my list down to 108 items. Thaaats right. There are only 108 things in my house. These things include:
Once you get into it, 100 is a very reasonable number. What are some of the things I’ve done to minimize my “thing footprint”?
Now its nice becuase, no, I don’t own my own place. My roommate is the owner of the plates, knives, forks, etc. But that’s fine, if you use the ‘collection rule’ you’ll see you’ve only got a dozen more things than I do.
I’m staring at my list. These eight things aren’t going to go without a fight.
Have you tried minimizing the ‘stuff’ in your life? How do you declutter?
I’ve been keeping another secret from you guys. I have a genius way to keep track of my ‘todo’ list. GMail is so powerful I don’t know if people really realize it. Thus, my mini-guide to making your own todo list in GMail. (Hmm, before posting this I realized someone else has done this same thing, but hey, I still thought of it and it’s still worth sharing).
Create a new ‘todo’ filter for your todo email address
Simply click “Create a filter” to the right of the search bar in GMail. The only field you need to define is the “To:” field which should be your email address with a +todo appended to the left side of the email address. In other words, [email protected] or even [email protected] (if you’re using Google for Domains). Click ‘Next Step’
Create a ‘todo’ label to tag all your todo items
This is simple, click the ‘Apply the label…’ check box and create a new label called ‘Todo’. You can also choose to do something like set the filter to ‘Skip the inbox’ in order to do some clever categorization. For example, all new todos will go straight into the archive as ‘unread’, thus you’ll have number next to the Todo label. You could use this to let you know how many total todo items you have. You could also use unread items to mean todos that haven’t been started. Or, they could represent the high priority todos you have. Anyway, those are just some ideas..
Send emails to yourself
Now if you ever need to add an item, just compose a new message to ‘Todo’ and off you go! What’s nice is I can now send items to my list from my cellphone and they’ll be available wherever.
If you live in Google products as much as I do (if I suddenly lost GMail and Calendar I’d probably be disconnected from my own life) then this is a great solution. Now I can see, at a glance, I have 5 “priority” Todos and they’re all right there with my email (a todo list in and of itself). I’ve tried a bunch of todo list products out there and this is, by far, the most convenient…
Hopefully this was useful to someone, let me know your thoughts or any other suggestions you have to tweak this…
Update: Be sure to use the RSS feed to it’s fullest potential as shown here.
Update 2 (6/28/08): Look into Remember the Milk as they have a great Firefox plugin to add your todo list to your Gmail page. I use RTM with my iPhone and Gmail and it’s a great way to have my todo lists all in one place.
I keep getting asked a few of the same questions so I thought I’d take a post to gather my thoughts on biphasic sleeping, also known as napping.
1. You sleep… when exactly?
I sleep twice in a day. The first time being sometime in the early evening (around 8:30) and this block of sleep is only for 90 minutes (at least, thats the plan, see #4). After my first block of sleep I’m extremely refreshed and ready to go another few hours. I set myself to be back up by about 6 so I either go to sleep again at 1:30a or 3a. Note these are in 90 minute increments again.
2. What does 90 minutes have to do with anything?
The 90-minute cycle actually refers to one complete sleep cycle. This includes going through REM sleep; the most important part of sleeping. Since I don’t force myself to wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle I’m much more refreshed and it’s much easier to actually get up.
3. Is it hard to get up at 6 every day?
Surprisingly, no. I used to have trouble getting up at 8 or even 9 every day. I’m convinced it was because I was constantly pulling myself up out of the middle of a sleep cycle. Our brains get stuck down in ‘sleep world’ and have a hard time unnaturally coming back up.
4. Do you ever screw up your sleeping schedule?
On occasion, yes. It’s funny but sometimes I’ll mis-set my alarm and find myself taking a 3 or 4.5 hour nap. I actually wake up naturally at 3 or 4.5 hours. I smile because people who thought I’d be ‘back in a few’ or would ‘call them in an few hours’ end up going to sleep that night slightly confused. They know its something nap-related. Oh well. I just adjust my second sleep period. For example, last night I went to bed at 9:30p and woke up at 2a. Oops! I ended up working until 5a, slept until 6:30 and, well, here I am! I had a midterm at 9:30 and have felt fine all day.
5. Do you ever sleep in?
To me, “sleeping in” is anything more than 6 hours. My body is pretty good at waking itself up automatically after a REM cycle (end of a 90 minute increment). On Saturdays I treat myself to 7.5 or 9 hours of sleep. People who advocate 8 hours of sleep are nuts. Seriously.
6. Does this interfere with your (social) life?
Nope. If I’m not in a place where I can’t just decide to take a nap then I simply don’t that day. I will just sleep 6 or 7.5 hours that evening and pick back up the next day. It seems like the simplest solution and hasn’t given me any problems. I do start to yawn quite a bit though as the night wears on..
7. Are there any side effects?
Increased productivity, smaller todo piles, less magazines to read on my bookshelf (hopefully this will carry over to books). But seriously, there have been no medical side effects whatsoever. This is far from anything radical like polyphasic sleeping.
8. Would you try polyphasic sleeping?
I’ll try anything. I don’t see it as something feasable for me at any point in my life. I may be wrong though. If I ever have the ability to control my schedule like that (30m naps every 4h) then sure, I’ll give myself a month or so to try it out.
9. Where did you even hear about this?
I find neat stuff online. This happens to be one of those things…
Ben asked and answered the question, Chris added his two cents, now it’s my turn: Is college really necessary?
Let me be blunt: categorically yes.
Despite the complaining I couldn’t be happier with the college experience. Everyone should do it. The dorms on the other hand… that’s another story. Ben says he loves college becuase he’s met some very smart and capable people. I, too, would cite that as a good reason to go to college: networking.
When you’re in college, odds are you’re not entirely responsible for your own finances. This means you have some freedom as to what you do during this time. Personally, I’ve taken on three (simultanious) jobs, a business fraternity, and a few of my own side projects. If I ever screw any of these things up, that’s okay, I’ll learn from it; I won’t get fired. Well, I might get fired, but my well-being certainly isn’t at stake. Additionally, I don’t have anyone (a family) relying on my actions. As Chris put it, “life will hit you square in the face“, and you’ll (hopefully) figure things out pretty quickly.
Keep in mind though, you only get out of college the energy you put in. People will not bump into you and introduce themselves; you have to get out and get involved. Join organizations and find people who share similar interests. High school forced you into the same classes with the same people. Friendship was merely by association. In college you’re forced to make decisions: you decide who you are, what classes you’ll take, who you’ll associate with, who you’ll trust, who you’ll emulate, etc. Again, the people play a big role in college.
Sure, you learn a lot but just about anyone can pick up a book and absorb the same information. Heck, you could get a job and gain all the experience you could ever need. But, as I mentioned, college provides that time for you to slow down and make some conscious decisions. For those of you in college I pose the following question:
What is it that you’re best at? What is the one thing you can do better than anyone else on your campus?
College is a perfect time to apply the hedgehog concept. You have 3, 4, maybe even 8 years to find the answer. I suggest, as Chris has so brilliantly demonstrated through GTA and Blind Date, that you spend that time wisely. You’ll never get it back…
[tags]personal, education, college, networking[/tags]
I’ve survived week one of my biphasic sleep schedule. Before I started my new routine I would get probably 8 or 9 hours of sleep per night. Last night I settled with 4.5. Here’s how the last 7 days looked:
| Day | Nap | Sleep | Total |
| 1 | 8:30-12 | 2-6 | 7.5 hours |
| 2 | 6:30-8 | 2-8 | 7.5 hours |
| 3 | 7:30-10 | 2-6 | 6.5 hours |
| 4 | 8:30-4 | * | 7.5 hours |
| 5 | 7-8:30 | 2-6:30 | 6.0 hours |
| 6 | 8:30-10 | 2-6 | 5.5 hours |
| 7 | 1-5:30 | * | 4.5 hours |
As you can see I started to get less sleep… then day 4 hit me. I got back from skiing that day and went to take my nap… and didn’t wake up until 4am. That was fine, I woke up and proceeded to begin my day. I guess I was pretty exhausted, though.
Yesterday (day 7) I was very busy. Up at 6, class at 8 then work until 3:30, group project, meeting, dinner, meeting and I was finally home by 9. The problem was I had not started any homework and it needed to be done. So, I worked through my nap time and just decided to do the one block of sleep. That went pretty well. I woke up this morning but was a little drowsy. I lied down and watched MTV until about 6:30.
…and here I am working through my nap again. Oddly enough with 4.5 hours of sleep and no nap yet I’m feeling great. A little more irritable (thanks computer!) but not tired at all. I intend to repeat last night’s schedule and then go back to naps tomorrow afternoon.
I really recommend trying this sleep schedule. Waking up is easier. My dreams are more memorable, vivid and lucid (I feel like I control them, it’s weird). Working during the peace of night is great, too. I caught up on 12 magazines, I’ve started a new web project (looking forward to sharing that soon) and watched some good movies. Life is good!
I’ve started what I call my ‘PIP’ or ‘Personal Improvement Project’. The new year has sparked a lot of change already. So far I’ve dropped BusinessBits, established my own domain and completely reorganized my workspace.
But now I’m on to bigger things.
As mentioned the other day, I’ve started a biphasic sleep schedule. I went to sleep two nights ago at 1am (in order to ween myself into it) and woke up at 6. Last night I napped from 8:30p-10p … and then again from 10:03-midnight. Oops. I think my body doesn’t yet realize what I’m doing, which is fine… I expected this. Anyway, I got up at midnight, got some things done and went back to bed at 2. This morning I was back up at 6. I plan to try the nap again tonight.
My ultimate goal is to get through four sleep cycles each day. This means I hit REM sleep three times at night and then once during my nap. I wake up immediately after the cycle is complete. Now, I’ve read that most people’s cycles are about 90 minutes long but it looks like mine are only about 75 minutes long. I’ve discovered this now having looked back at the two times I woke up without an alarm. Going back to my goal, four cycles equates to five hours of sleep. From what I’ve read, this could be more than plenty.
So, I’m going to adjust a bit and see how things go. Technically I’m on my second day and I’m not feeling tired or anything.
I admit, I got a little burned out at work today (8 hours in front of the monitor, no lunch, pretty tough). So, I took a break and read a bit about polyphasic sleep on Steve Pavlina’s blog. I then dug around more and more and read some wikis and all sorts of articles. I’ve decided to embark on Glen Rhodes’ bi-phasic sleep pattern and see how it works for me. I’ve never been much for sleeping a lot, but I’ve never really understood why I’m tired one day and just fine another. I’m looking into how I can schedule a routine 90-minute nap every day and then get 6 hours of sleep every night. The sleep cycles seem to make sense. If I get up at 6:30 every morning I could probably get a lot done in a day. Look out breakfast, I’m making a come-back..