The Mind is a Double Edged Sword - Getting in to the Zone

Honestly, it's been too long since my last post here. I've actually wanted to post here since the weekend, but the last couple of days have sort of built upon what I was going to write here, so I guess it all worked out in the end. So today's post is about what I'll call "Getting in to the Zone". So a bit of background on the situation, I had taken it easy for about a week since I finished my job with the call center. I spent the time pretty much just hanging out with friends, working out and of course playing some games on the side.

It wasn't till about Saturday night, when I was chilling at my computer having a look at what was going on Facebook. I recognized quite a few friends talking about their recent endevours and what they had been getting up to. To my surprise, especially as the last time I had seen them was during high school or when they started uni. They were quite different people back then and they have really moved forward.

That's all it took really, I sort of felt a spark in the back of my mind and I felt like I was ready to get back into moving forward and working on something productive. I'm honestly a pretty competitive person, there's not much that drives me like a good challenge. When life stagnates and there aren't many goals to focus on I feel that life loses a lot of it's meaning to me.

Interestingly enough during the same night I got the motivation to work on projects again. I was contacted about a business idea from friend of mine. We arranged a time to meet up later in the week to discuss. Also the next day, family called to consult about some future investments. In no time at all, I was back to making calls, sending emails and creating plans again. I felt really good to be in the middle of all that busyiness again.

I'm not a particularly spiritual person, but I do believe sometimes there's a greater force in the universe. Sometimes that force will put some vague opportunities or motivations in front of you, I say when that happens jump on board and ride that positive momentum. You'll be more efficient, more effective and will more likely attract the types of people and opportunities to keep going.

I think that will be it for this post now. It's shorter than some previous posts, I'll talk more about my reasoning in the next post.

The Mind is a Double Edged Sword - Demotivational Work

So for the last week or so, I've made very little progress with any events or projects. It's also been an entire week since I last posted on this blog. I've started to write quite a couple of posts but they just didn't come out the way I wanted, so I saved them as drafts and I may come back and look at them one day. Most of them had something to start them off but didn't seem like fleshed out ideas.

I noticed that ever since I first started my new temporary job that my motivation to do anything dropped significantly. Going to a job that you hate was one of the worst experiences that I've had on the Gold Coast. The work wasn't laborious and paid reasonably, but the work was something that I could barely bring myself to doing. I was working for Bond University's Annual Fund Calling Campaign. In short we were calling up Alumni and asking for donations. I actually have no problem in regards to this, but what really killed me inside was how we were going about it. We would talk with them initially for a few minutes regarding their career and lives to build a rapport. But ultimately this was really just a front to soften them up and get them to donate. I personally hate operating like that. I don't ever intend to use such superficial tactics to persuade people. I don't believe business or human interactions should ever drop to that level. But perhaps I'm holding too much of a moral integrity to the situation.

But anyways, I really hated my job. It was a job where you are forced to annoy people, act superficial to them and  receive regular abuse. Most of the days, I didn't feel like doing anything after work and literally just ate and slept. I was barely in the mood to hang out with friends or play videogames, let alone work on any projects.

So today was the last day of the calling campaign, and I honestly feel quite relieved. But looking back, I was so much less productive outside work for the last couple of weeks. When I think about it now, I can understand how some people can really start losing motivation in their work and eventually go on to hate it. The work that we do regularly is something we attach value and our own personal lives to. Working on something that we really enjoy and want to see happen can inspire great motivation and creativity in people, whereas a terrible work environment can not only reduce one's capacity but also spill over into other areas of life. So I suppose the first lesson that I should take away from this is that one's work, business or job is so influential to the rest of their life. Here's a short video to sum up what I mean.

Further exploring this point, I can see it's important to create this positive mindset for not only yourself but for all those that work with you. When you consider what places like Apple, Google and Valve do for their employees, it makes sense that they are really trying to help their employees enjoy what they do. I'm no psychologist, but I can sense that my mind works at a much higher level when I'm doing something I truly enjoy or believe in. I think getting the best out of people really depends on encouraging them to awaken their mind's potential. As for the details of how to do this, I'll think about it some more and talk about it in the future.

To summarize today's post
- a bad work environment destroys you and will flow into other areas of life
- you're worth more than a crappy job, change things if you feel like you're in this rut
- make work something your employees or team mates look forward or believe in to get the best out of them

PS: I think "The Mind is a Double Edged Sword" is the final category of posts that I'll be making. I was really inspired  to call it this because it seems that many of the struggles that an entrepreneur faces is not in regards to money or business but their own mind.

A Day in the Life - Location, Location, Location

Well I can't keep posting small life lessons and expect people to take me seriously as an entrepreneur. Today I'll be posting a short update on some work that I did for Gamer's Life Convention. I think I'll be posting updates under the title "A Day in the Life". So today, I arranged a time to have a look at a potential venue for GLC2013 with Lachlan, my head tech guy for GLC. The venue we were checking out was Southport community centre.

I had found the venue while looking online for various types of venues for the event such community centres, sporting venues, school / university venues. Amongst state owned community centres, Southport seemed the best venue sizewise so we went to check it out. The manager for the venue, Trev seemed like a nice guy and took us around. The venue was a really suitable venue for our event, it had good space, electricity, projectors, location, parking, public transport and as a big plus the venue came with plenty of trestle tables and chairs (saves us having to hire). Downside, no internet connection and having to deal with a ton of paperwork from Gold Coast City Council.

The paper work wasn't an issue at all, I've been trained well from all the paperwork and bureacracy that I had to deal with while at Bond University. Internet was essential, but there is always a solution. Good thing the solution to the problem looks to be financially reasonable. It looks like we might have to use some Telstra 4G dongles for the event, which is typically not a cost effective option for most homes, but is a cheap solution in context of a large event.

From our long venue search we've noticed that no venue is perfect, each venue has it's own weaknesses, whether it cooling, internet, date availability or venue hire cost. But I guess that's where the entrepreneurial mind comes in. To find something that has potential and using your ability to make it capable of doing something amazing (and hopefully at a feasible cost).

Mistakes and Lessons - Side Quests Are Good

So I woke up this morning and was somewhat not looking forward to it. It happens to be one of the days that I'm scheduled to work. I currently have a job that I don't particularly like, I'm working for Bond University as a caller for their Annual Fund Campaign. Something that I've noticed is that an unfulfilling job really drains all the creativity and motivation out of a person. I don't hate work, but it's not something that I enjoy doing. There are other reasons why I'm doing the job, but the main reason is money.

Which lead me to reflect on the last couple of weeks. Those last couple of weeks have honestly been pretty unproductive and it's really been annoying me. So today, I got up a little earlier and decided to work on my blog a bit. Although, honestly I'm writing this blog mainly for myself rather than for anyone else to read, I decided that if you're going to do something, you might as well do it well. So I played around with some of the other  functions and settings of my blog to see what would happen.

After playing around with the blog a bit, I realized that I could link it to my Facebook and Google+ as well as some other cool things with comments. After playing around with my blog, Facebook and Google+ for a while, I realized I had learnt quite a bit. I had forgotten that sense of creativity, discovery and especially enjoyment that you can have while doing something new.

I realized that working on your own little projects outside of work is really quite rewarding. It seems like as long as you put effort into doing something on the side, it will pay off rewards. Just me spending a little bit of time on this blog, I'm starting to learn more about the web, how things work, how things connect. This experience and knowledge may not be something that I regularly rely on, but it's something that I now have and may use in the future. I then thought back of all the times when I got really excited and worked on something, I had gotten something positive out of each experience. Even my teenage days playing Yugioh and Pokemon cards helped me learn game culture dynamics which I applied to building of the Bond Casual Gaming Society.

I suppose what I'm ultimately trying to say is don't let work drain all your energy, keep some to work on something you are personally interested in and enjoy, the rewards are definitely there.

PS. I found it really quite hard to keep this post short. There's so much related stuff to talk about such as improving life skills, moving forward in your career and achieving something great. Sorry if it seems like I didn't fully flesh out the topic, it's definitely something we'll come back to another day.

Mistakes and Lessons - Communication in Decentralized Teams

So earlier today, I good friend of mine that is working with me on Gamer's Life Convention 2013 sent me a message to catch up about GLC2013 again. Although GLC is about as much as from Lachlan as it is from me, I felt that I was probably doing something wrong for him to specifically arrange to meet up with me to get updates regarding our plans for the event.

Since the last time we had chat, there have been a few developments. Although these developments were clear to me as I regularly update my notes in my GLC notebook, these developments were unknown to my team members. I had forgotten to keep a clear and regular chain of updates and information to my own team. I had made a mistake with how informed I should keep my team.

Almost everyone in my team was specifically chosen because they contribute a specific set of skills, connections and experience.We were a team with me acting as the team leader to guide the actions of the group. I made a mistake in that I believed I was the only one that needed all the information as I would be making many of the fundamental decisions to the event. Although true for the organisation of the first Gamer's Life Convention I had wanted GLC2013 to have a greater contribution from my team and the community. This one message from a good friend of mine highlighted the fact that when working in an increasingly decentralized team there becomes a need for a greater flow of information between members.

So to solve this problem, I have decided it that I need to include a time during my daily procedure to forward on any updates from that day to some centralized information hub (in this case, posting it in a private Facebook group). Additionally, I've decided to create a list of relevant questions and points of discussion (such as what new activities should we add to the event) on to the central information hub. A to-do list is another good function that should be included as well.

This all makes sense to me now, that people produce and work exceedingly better than average when paired up with tasks and jobs which truly interest and motivate them. In a team that wants to be increasingly more decentralized it's important to keep team members informed so they can more actively choose and determine what task they can do, and do well. It also happens to be how great creative organisations tend to be from what I've heard, places such as Valve, Apple and Google.

Anyways, I'm thinking I might keep these "Mistakes and Lessons" short and not elaborate too much more than this much. Long enough to know some background, but short enough to keep it as a concise note. So in summary.

When moving from Centralized -> Decentralized organization

- free up the flow of information by keeping people informed
- build updating team mates into a part of regular routine
- use technology as a way to

• inform team mates
• gather opinions and feedback
• assist with allocation of tasks

So What Sort of Projects Do I Want To Work On?

So being an aspiring entrepreneur, the question that comes to mind is, what sort of businesses and projects am I and want to be involved in. The short answer, is that I am currently involved with community relations and event management within gaming and interactive media. As for what I want to do in the future, I hope that the work that I am doing now will eventually lead into larger projects within the interactive media, entertainment and information technology fields. I don't know what I will specifically do, but I hope that work is dynamic and full of problems to solve as well as very people focused.

As for the long answer, the type of projects that I have been involved in the last 3 or so years have been surrounding video game communities. My main focus during this time was a university student club that I founded at Bond University, called the Bond Casual Gaming Society. Terrible name, I know. We started out being a small student club that would together once a week every Sunday afternoon.

Ahhh... Nostalgia

The club expanded, grew a following and became a well known club amongst the student population. Unilan, a larger scale lan event that the club held once a semester grew from 26 people to over 70 attendees in 2011. The club also implemented a fortnightly poker event late within it's first year, this was extremely successful and even built a strong following of it's own. We also tried to establish regular board game meet ups, but this failed pretty quickly and was scrapped.

One of my best friends, Gary Lee dealing at Poker Night

With the club overall succeeding and with only about a year left to my degree, I started dreaming of a final event that would celebrate all that I had accomplished with the BCGS and push it into the future. So during February 2011 came the idea of Gamer's Life Convention. Based loosely on Adelaide's Avcon, GLC was intended to be a gaming and anime related event to be held at Bond University. The journey with Gamer's Life Convention is a long one and one that I will save for later, the background picture of this blog is actually a picture of me and friends at the end of the convention. The event was held in January 21st and 22nd 2012 and ran quite well, there were certainly many areas which it could have improved. Whether another event was to be run in future was questionable. The event received little local sponsorship and commercial support, it was also a financial loss. But we had nailed the community and social atmosphere perfectly from what attendees said. Ultimately it was the encouraging words of the fans that have spurred me to want to run another event.

So as I finished my studies in April, I began setting my sights on organizing the next Gamer's Life Convention and so this is my main project at the moment. Another project that I am also thinking about is a way to bring the Australian gaming community together. This other project will be drawing heavily upon my time and experiences as the president of the Bond Casual Gaming Society and is intended to rectify common problems with gaming communities and encourage positive social behavior. I'm keeping tabs on how I would start this project, but Gamer's Life Convention 2013 is my main project for the next 7 or so months.

Again, although I've tried to answer questions, It seems like I've only opened up more stories and questions. I've also yet to begin documenting down this thousand day journey as well. But everything on my entrepreneurial journal will be recorded here, so hopefully if you bear with me I will have the opportunity to share more of my life with you. Thank you for reading and until next time.

An Explanation For What This All Means

So for those of you who have stumbled onto my blog, I thank you for the time you are taking to read this. I decided to write this blog to record what has and will happen within these next thousand days. But first I'll give you a bit of background of what these thousand days mean.

For a long, long time I've wanted to become an entrepreneur. I've wanted to be an entrepreneur longer than anything I've wanted to be in my entire life. But up till now, I've been preoccupied with academic studies and subsequently university life. Once I finished my degree, I decided that I would follow my dream of becoming an entrepreneur. But at the same time, I didn't want to blindly and hopelessly follow a dream for the rest of my life. 

So I decided for myself that since the day of my final university exam on the 20th of April 2012 I would give myself 1000 days to prove that I can become a successful entrepreneur. If not, I would do further study, find a secure job and just work a conventional job for the rest of my life. So until the 15th of January 2015 I will take you with me on this journey and document the struggles, decisions and hardships that I face. If you take the time to read this, I will take the time to be completely honest and let you know exactly what I think.

So even though I've explained the title of this blog, no doubt there will be many more questions that this unveils, such as why I want to become an entrepreneur, why I don't want to get a job, who am I and what has caused me to do what I'm doing now. All these questions, I will explain as this journey progresses. I thank you for taking the time to read my first blog and I hope our paths cross in the future.

- Jason Zhe