I've been busy, organising the new decade.  I have a new email (me [at] markedmondson.me ) due to installing Google Apps on the new markedmondson.me domain ( I'll put something sensible up at www.markedmondson.me soon) , which will also help organise my plan to create some automated income; or "muse" as it is called by my current inspiration, "The 4 Hour Work Week", which although is frankly terribly written, is one of those wanky self help books that do look to give more practical advice than most. 

As an example, even the title of the book itself was tested using Adwords to select that title which would elicit the most click through's.  Clever clever.  Anyway, I've been recommended to read it by several people who know what I do and my ambition to not work very hard, so took the gift of a Kindle this Christmas as an excuse to pick it up for £4.

The "muse" is an online business (in most cases) which takes advantage of tools and automation now available to provide a passive income that frees you up to pursue your more ambitious dreams. 

It talks of ways to negotiate quitting working at the office by being so efficient out of it it'll be ridiculous to be refused - a point also raised by the Basecamp CEO Jason Fried in a recent TED talk - a workplace office is actually one of the worst places to get a job done due to the CONSTANT INTERRUPTIONS.  

The route to efficiency given in the book mirror a lot of things that I seem to have picked up already - focusing on one or two important things to do a day and finish those - everything else is minor.  Its true - all those seemingly urgent calls and emails melt away if you're not available, and not just because you're more irresponsible :) , but because people take responsibility.  I was without my phone for a month and it meant a quiet, peaceful life where everything still got done on time.   You can imagine how life as a consultant can get pretty heavy with the amount of requests coming in, which to date I've coped with via email filters and GTD , but it gets even more manageable when you train people not to trouble you unless it really is an emergency :)  And what kudos you lose for not being on hand at people's beck and call you gain back tenfold by being productive on awesome projects that make a longer term difference, rather than fire-fighting all the time.

The book also talks of an information free diet, meaning don't waste time with email, twitter, social networking etc at work.  This is a lot harder for me to achieve, since I'm so hooked on it, but like this blog I hope that making it count via quality not quantity will mean I can hold onto this regime also - I can think of no better quality time to spend on social web than to contribute.

And now, to my main point!  How the medium of the web is allowing such ways of working to evolve, and how the medium affects our life and thoughts.

• We are in a situation where information is disseminated everywhere - evidenced by my recognising already a lot of the points made in the book above by reading blogs of people who had already read it.
• We have too much information - I need email filters and regimes to try and only receive the important tasks to be productive in a work day.
• In a similar style, I'm addicted to this information and interaction.  The fear of missing an event too late, or to not have anyone respond to you, is crippling.  I both loathe Facebook and check it twice a day.
• The same information network allows people to work from anywhere in the world that has a connection.  The book also talked about using virtual assistants and automation to take care of the monotonous parts of your daily routine, giving examples of a virtual PA from India doing everything from booking airline tickets to researching new job opportunities for you.
• There are several studies showing that kids these days are being affected by the hyper-links of the web to have improved lateral thinking, but being less able to concentrate on one task at a time.
• Its impossible for corporations to keep things secret any more, one leak and everyone knows (Wikileaks, Egypt Revolution)
• If you attempt to block the web for one group, everyone else knows about it - check out this Google service showing Egypt's closure of the web and how it affected Google searches

I've tried to keep away from describing what the medium is actually broadcasting, since that is almost irrelevant - its how that medium affects us overall that is the focus.  I think I'm a pretty good case study for this since I gave up TV 5 years ago and get most of my information from the Web.  In a nutshell, after probably putting in 100 hours a week on the web for the past five years (maybe 25,000 hours) I would say it has made me:

• Less tied to one location
• Less able to concentrate
• More selective in what I read/watch/listen
• More diverse in what I read/watch/listen to
• Less trusting of traditional media
• More appreciative of meeting people face to face
• More sure that we are not just a sum of our like's and interests
• Able to become an expert (or more expert than most) in any subject of interest within a day
• Less likely to become an expert in a subject
• The more accountable a person is on-line, the more they present Superegos.

I wonder when I hit that 100,000 hour mark, what this list will be.  Maybe it'll be like Tron, and I'll control the matrix or summit :)