I have been reading the The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss and just finished watching this video, where Tim and Marci Alboher talk about their latest books with Google employees.

I haven’t read Marci’s book One Person/Multiple Careers yet, but am really interested in her perspective on simultaneous interests. I am especially intrigued by her newly coined word ’slash’ and its impact on an individual’s lifestyle.

Being an entrepreneur and someone that becomes obsessively passionate about one thing after the other, I would consider myself to be a ’slash’, often saying I enjoy business/marketing/web development/design/photography/reading/biking/etc.

So, is being a ‘Slash’ a good thing or a bad thing?

Well, I think it depends…

Being A Non-Slash:

Being a non-slash keeps you from spreading too thin and allows you to direct your main focus and attention on one primary interest. This is how specialization came about. Specialization can be good, if the specialist is actually passionate about what they do. But what if they aren’t? What if it’s just part of going with the flow? Not Good. This is why you see people that are really good at what they do but hate it. IMHO specialization puts people in a box. Being a specialist creates an imaginary safe haven, providing a comfortable mold that they can settle into, becoming resistant to growth.

Being A ‘Slash’:

Being a ’slash’, allows you to be creative and gives you several outlets for pursuing your passions. This removes any possibility of becoming bored or feeling stuck in a rut. Their is a possibility of becoming spread too thin, but after a while familiar interests can be set to auto pilot and you can redirect your focus accordingly. I think one of the most obvious benefits of being a ’slash’, is the ability to have constant growth and joy in pursuing new passions. Passion is the key term here. The ’slash’ mentality opens up a whole new world of opportunities and adventure for you to explore.

But I don’t have enough time to pursue all of my passions?

This is where The 4-Hour Workweek and Tim’s technique’s come into play. What really fascinates me about combining Tim’s technique’s and the ’slash’ lifestyle, is you can have total freedom to experience the things you are most passionate about.

Are You A ‘Slash’?

Are you a ’slash’? If not, why? What’s holding you back? If so, how do you find time to pursue all of your passions?

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I have been using LogMeIn for quite a while now. Basically it allows me to access and control any of my computers from a remote location.

Sure comes in handy when you are away on vacation and forgot to email that document you had been working on. Or, want to show your friends some of your latest photos but haven’t uploaded them to Flickr yet.

LogMeIn is totally free and easy to use. Can be used for personal or business purposes. Nothing revolutionary but can be very convenient.

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I ran across this sweet way of using CSS3 to hide an image in your text. Take a look.

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Firefox is by far the best web browser available, no question about it. I could go on and on with its advantages, but here are just a few in case you’re still an unbeliever: tabbed browsing (copied by IE now), built-in spell checker, safer browsing, bookmarks toolbar, custom themes, and (my personal favorite) add-ons for ultimate customization.

There are tons of add-ons out there, some good, some bad, and some that you can’t live without. The following list of add-ons are some I’ve been using for quite a while. I wouldn’t recommend installing too many, just because it can slow down your browser a bit. But don’t let that scare you away from adding a few to your arsenal. Hopefully I have included a few that you haven’t seen before. Enjoy!

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Being a relatively new needle in the blogosphere haystack, I often find myself up against a tremendous amount of pressure to publish something appealing to the masses. It seems as though the “best” way to stand out and receive attention/traffic is by creating provocative content, mastering SEO, and flooding social networking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon with propaganda. There are way to many posts IMHO that encourage this behavior. For example, how many times have you run across a post saying something like this: “How I made it to the front page of Digg”, or “10 effective link building techniques”. Attention grabbers? You bet, wouldn’t it be great if we could all just get the attention we deserve? But do we really deserve the attention?

When we put too much emphasis on these tools and strategies, we are not only assuming we deserve the attention of the masses but we are ignoring the power of the individual. The power to choose, the power to engage, and the power to influence others.

By creating and promoting content for the mass phenomena, we’re becoming more and more invisible to our primary readers. The fact of the matter is, not everyone is part of the “masses” category. Seth does an excellent job of explaining this here.

Attention and more importantly, interaction with your audience, isn’t established by making it to the front page of Digg or blending in with the masses. Building a permission based asset and developing a respect among your readers is a much more effective way of establishing a long-term conversation.

I don’t think we can, or should, totally ignore the advantages of using tools like social networks or link building techniques, but unless we have something of value to offer our readers, the traffic/attention goes to waste and the reader is left with an empty and false perception of what we have to offer. I think we need to reevaluate what our primary focus should be as publishers. Is it our goal to entice readers grouped in the “masses” category in order to receive lots of attention? Or should we be concentrated and focused on starting a conversation, with an individual, exchanging value and developing a relationship?

What are your thoughts?

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Image Credit: Link.

Sometimes the most intelligent design is the simplest.

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Ever since Microsoft came out with their latest and “greatest” 2007 Office Suite, I constantly receive .docx files that I can’t open with the older 2003 Microsoft Office Suite. Extremely frustrating? Yes. Solution? Zamzar.

Zamzar offers free online file conversion with a wide variety of formats available, including .docx to .doc, .pptx to .ppt, and many more.

Main categories include:

• Document formats
• Image formats
• Music formats
• Video formats
• Compressed formats

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I just finished reading Seth Godin’s new book, Meatball Sunday. I absolutely loved it. Seth does it again by explaining how New Marketing is king and whoever sticks to the old “secure” ways of Old Marketing will be left behind.

Basically selling average stuff, at an average price, to as many people as you can, won’t work anymore. As Seth points out in his book and Hugh MacLeod mentions in this article, “too many people are locked into the mass-market, neither-cheap-nor-remarkable bracket” and expect to receive attention. But attention is no longer free and easy to come by. With the wide variety of options available to us wherever we go (TV, Internet, etc) we now have the ability to choose what we watch, what we listen to, and who earns our attention. Yes, earn. The point that Seth makes is if we stick to the Old Marketing habits without embracing the ever changing dynamics of the New Marketing, people will take there attention and give it to someone else that creates something remarkable and worth talking about.

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