24 Things I have in my mobile office - how I stayed productive during a hospital visit

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Local anaesthetic, hopefully routine. The people waiting with me are, generally, older. One sits making small talk with their husband, another sits reading the paper with their daughter.

I'm working. Not just 'a bit of work' full on UX work, wireframes in Omnigraffle. In my small InCase rucksack I've brought every single thing that I have available to me at home except my A3 sketchpad and my 27" monitor.

My productivity is surprisingly portable, with a little forward planning I have an entire office with me and with some judicious use of hospital furniture I've built a tiny office in the corner of the ward.

In my bag I have:

  • MacBook Pro - mid 2011 model (2.5Ghz, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD)
  • Mac power supply, importantly including the long extension that you can pull on and off. This means I can sit somewhere comfortable and still plug into hard to reach plug sockets. I also have the regular plug that just slots onto the PSU for convenient power sockets.
  • iPad (3rd generation, 64GB, 3G), with all of my reading material. Although 95% of use is over WiFi I opted for a 3G model, not only because the price bump was small but because using tethering it serves as a back up internet connection should there be an issue with my phone. This is essential - use a different provider from your regular phone, should Tmobile (my phone provider) have bad signal, it's possible that 3 (my ipad 3G provider) has a good signal. Less chance of losing connectivity.
  • Bose QuietComfort 15 noise cancelling headphones. I find it hard to concentrate at the best of times, these help by filtering out background noise, they're also very very good at playing me music.
  • A4 lined notepad, ring bound. For planning Pomodoros, making quick action lists, quick sketches etc. I favour Europa Notemakers - as they have nice rounded corners.
  • 2 USB cables - one for my phone and one for my ipad. The ones for my ipad was a cheap 99p ebay job, the one for the phone came in the box.
  • An iphone 5, 64GB. I use this as my primary internet connection as there is rarely WiFi available. I'm using Tmobile and paying for unlimited fair use tethering (£36 a month for unlimited calls and texts as well)
  • A plain black pencil case with 3 compartments.
  • Pens - many. There are 9 Mitsubishi Uniball - fine, 9 different colours. Used for some sketching but mainly for adding colour to ketches drawn with the 5 Mitsubishi Uni Pin - Fine Line black pens in 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.5 and 0.8. I have to be honest I only really use 0.8 and 0.1.
  • Pencils - some. 2 Propelling pencils from Pental, 0.5mm, B.
  • Spare leads, 12, to match the pencils.
  • Rubber - Staedtler Rasoplast Combi. Yes, the propelling pencils have rubbers built in, no they aren't any good.
  • 2 nail files & a pot of "Stop 'n Grow". If I forget to put this stuff on for a day I fall back to old habits and start biting my nails. At least I worry I will so I keep this with me!
  • A5 sketch pad, plain. Doesn't get the use I expected it to as I tend to just use the A4 pad.
  • Sun glasses, prescription, in a hard case. Including a large polishing cloth.
  • Glasses, as above.
  • Sinus pain killers and decongestant, Ibuprofen & Heartburn tablets. Always be prepared.
  • A Thunderbolt to DVI adaptor.
  • Glasses polish spray, small 35ml bottle from vision express. Helps clean the laptop screen as well as the glasses.
  • USB Battery charger, excellent model from Energiser, cost £4 and included 2 AAA rechargeable batteries.
  • In addition to the AAA from above, another 2 AA batteries that also fit in the fantastic USB charger.
  • A 10cm USB extension cable in case things get crowded around the 2 USB slots my mac has.
  • a pitifully small 512MB USB memory stick just in case I need to transfer files and we have no network access.
  • I also have, although I carry it everywhere rather than it being part of my mobile office, a Swiss Army Cybertool 41 which covers any tool related tasks I've ever needed to do.

I think that's about it.

My ruck sack is small, comfortable and totally portable - got a really happy place with me.

Ten reasons you shouldn't take up freelance contracting (and three reasons you should)

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Recently I had a bit of a back and forth with a recruitment consultant, he passed a junior, £150 a day, web front end position past me on the off chance I knew anyone who was suitable. The job was looking for CSS3, HTML5, PHP, Jquery & experience. Not so junior then. When I pointed out that paying peanuts is disrespectful and pointless (you only get monkeys) he said

Although £3,000 a month isn’t too bad for a Grad living at home with mum and dad!

Missing I feel some salient points - never one to turn down a free blog post, here's my reply.

I presume you mean £3,000 minus

  1. Accountancy Fees

    A professional accountant, the sort that will stop you paying too much but make sure you're paying enough will cost you around £1000 a year. This is money very well spent.

  2. Taxes

    Before you get your paws on any of the cash the government wants it's share. In the UK right now that's 21%, 21% of your profit, before you've even paid yourself (also taxed...)

  3. Unpaid training hours

    You're a freelancer, you're expensive, you'd better be damn good. That means spending at least 20% extra, unpaid time on research, reading the latest book, figuring out that cool bit of Jquery, just what changes happened in Jquery 1.8.2? Who built the Boston Globe site & how?

  4. Training budget (your pocket)

    Nobody pays for your training, nobody buys you books - except yourself. A typical print book might cost £30 and you should probably read 8-12 a year, that could be £400 you have to find. Ebooks make it cheaper and they are all tax deductible but they still come out of your pocket. Do you want to go to Dconstruct this year? Then you'll need £500 to cover the ticket, the day's pay you missed out on & all your travel and food expenses - still want to go?

  5. Time to find a new job

    You might change contracts as often as 6 times a year. The time you spend updating your CV, answering the phone to consultants, updating Linked In & searching Job Serve all adds up. You won't get every job you interview for and you'll need to go to a lot of interviews, all unpaid. You might spend 3 solid days, per contract, on admin around that role.

  6. Maintaining your personal brand

    This means keeping a blog & regularly writing useful posts (just like this one). You'll need to keep a stock of ideas and your reminders system had best ding once a week to remind you, no force you to write a post. You should probably have some sort of open source or pet project on the go you can talk about - I have HTML5 Boilerplate For Shopify, if nothing else it's helped me sound enthusiastic in interviews. You should contribute to mailing lists, go to meet ups, chat to other people who work in the same world as you - you want your name to be the one to come up when they have too much work or if they're asked for a recommendation.

  7. Holiday Pay

    Holidays? Well I remember them and sometimes my wife even forces me to go on one but there's always a bit of me that begrudges it. You see, I remember being paid to go on holiday, now if I spent £2,000 on a 2 week holiday to Greece I'd still be mentally recalculating it as costing me £2,000 + 10 days pay. Is it any wonder freelancers work so much?

  8. Sick Pay

    It's just like a holiday except you don't get to go on holiday and you're sick so you can't even write that blog post your reminder system just told you you're late writing. Freelance and sick? Tough luck, you either go into the office and make everyone else sick and nearly kill yourself by not resting or you stay in bed feeling guilty about the money you're not earning. You can call in sick as often as you want as a contractor, when you're not getting paid for it it's funny just how rarely you do.

  9. Job Security

    None. Contracts generally have a notice period, covered in get out clauses, work as if every day was your last. You'd best be good enough nobody wants to get rid of you but if they do you can pick up a job without thinking about it (see 3, and 6).

  10. Mortgages

    You can get one, generally only after 3 years of good quality books from your accountant *or* at hugely inflated prices. See a personal financial advisor to get this sort of thing sorted out.

Where's the light at the end of the tunnel? You promised me reasons to do all this!

  1. Freedom.

    Freedom, enough of the proverbial rope to hang yourself yes, but glorious, uninterrupted freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want with whoever you want. Bored of your contract designing widgets for Bank A? Give the 7 days notice and be on your way, want to learn how to write HTML5 local storage code for mobile? And then do it in your next job? Learn it, put it on your CV and mass email all the consultants you can find asking for a job. Want a holiday? Take one. Whenever you want. Sick? Don't worry that's your choice. Need a duvet day? Take one. Feel like telling your line manager he's got it wrong? Do it without fear of reprisal or damage to your career, you'll be gone in a few months, he'll still be there holding his company back.

  2. Cash.

    In exchange for all these issues, the work is well paid. At a rough estimate, unpaid hours not included, 3 to 4 times more lucrative than a permanent salaried job.

  3. Flexibility to spend time with your family and children.

    Want to spend Wednesdays at home with your family but quite fancy working Sunday afternoons until late? You can probably arrange that. Need to go part time for a bit because you have a toddler and a new born? There will propbably be some work out there to fit you.

I have never regretted becoming a freelancer, I love being my own boss, I love the responsibility. It made me a better worker, more involved in my career, more interested in the outcome of the effort I put in.

Do it, resign.

I'm half way through reading War Of Art & I've deleted my twitter account for a week as an experiment.

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Firstly, go buy a copy of the book, I picked up the epub version for $9.99 which I think is about £6.50 in real money. I'm not sure how I had it recommended, I believe through one of the many productivity blogs I keep tabs on. I'm half way through and I think I've identified my go to destination every time I encounter any Resistance - Twitter.

It's so easy to click; it's always there, on my phone, on my pad, on my laptop. My wife, @charleesays - is a frenetic twitterer, so to keep up with some of her news, I tell myself, I need to check in. All the important web developers, I tell myself, are there, if I don't read Twitter I'll get left behind!

This - is resistance - I think. My wife, well I see her everyday, if something is important I'm pretty sure she'll tell me.

Important web stuff really does happen on Twitter, but to be honest the vast majority is banal tweets about going to the pub, family life and what tablet they just bought - nice if you know them, boring if you don't.

I've set a reminder in OmniFocus for a weeks time to check in on Twitter - maybe in a week I'll miss it, maybe I'll never go back.

Oh a small aside, to make sure I resist temptation, I poked some hidden files inside my mac so Twitter can't even run through a web browser - 30 seconds to change it back but that's 30 seconds to remember what I said here and change my mind.

Cheers.

Digital publishing, proprietary formats & the move to ubiquitous open technologies for Games Workshop & their electronic rulebooks (Codexes)

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As part of a personal life / work life cross over I've recently started examining Games Workshop's digital strategy. They have just started to publish their army books (called 'Codexes') in Apple's proprietary iBook format (an expanded version of ePub), available only on the iTunes store. I can certainly understand why they're doing so - they are a predominantly offline company, if I didn't have a massive forward thinking IT team, I'd do the same. Hell, several major publishers who *do* have massive IT teams are doing the same.

The post is Why haven’t Games Workshop published their digital Codexes on Android as well as IOS/Ipad? and I'd appreciate your thoughts.

I am intending to either present a case study on how GW could profit long terms and bring more users into the system by adopting a HTML based secure subscription model or build an actual working example of how the system could flexible adapt to different user devices.