Scott Lilly – Agile .Net Developer

Although it may not appear like it on the blog, I’ve been very busy lately.

I recently decided to leave the company I was working for and get back into contracting. Right now, the market in Houston is just too hot to stay at a place that was not moving in the direction I’m looking for. This should leave me with more time to work on some personal projects that I’ve had sitting on the back-burner for far too long.

You should also notice some more stability and speed with the website. The host I was at was performing a little bit worse every day. I’m just about done moving everything over to the new host, and things are looking very nice right now. I also bought a new desktop computer for development. It’s a quad-core machine with Vista Ultimate on it. I’ve been spending the last couple of days updating that computer and moving everything over from my three other (outdated) desktops.

I have finished up the first version of my code library, with a mail server factory that can be used for production and testing (including unit testing). Once I get my new machine set up, I’m going to give it a final test and post it here.

If you have an entrepreneurial spirit, then you’ll want to get a copy of this book. For those of you worried about trying to save up those million dollars so that you can retire at 65 (and hopefully not have a heart attack the week after you retire), this book will show you how to think differently about work, income, and retirement.

The basic idea is for you to figure out what you enjoy in life, what it will take for you to get that now, and how you can get the largest return on your labor investment.

Once you’ve defined your goals, and figured out what you will do to achieve them, the book shows you how to focus on the small percentage of work that gives you the greatest yield. It’s the old Pareto Principle, where 20% of your efforts give you 80% of your benefits. In one of his examples, the author talks about a company of his. Out of 120 customers, the top 5 were bringing in 95% of his revenue. By concentrating on those five, he was able to reduce the amount of time he spent managing his company without losing money (he actually started making more money, by focusing on his biggest customers). I really like the idea of outsourcing and off-shoring your personal tasks.

This flies in the face of the common attitudes of growing a business, but not every business needs to be in the Fortune 500 to be successful. Success is defined as getting closer to your goals, and this book makes you apply Socratic methods and keep asking yourself, “Why am I doing this activity?” Is what you’re doing getting you closer to your goals, or is it just what you think you should be doing because that’s what businesses do?

Look at what you really want in life. Is working 40-50 hours a week for the next 30-40 years going to leave you in any shape to enjoy it? Why not figure out what it will take for you to create enough income now, so that you can live the life you want now?

Even if you don’t plan on leaving your job and starting your own company, there is plenty to learn from this book. What if you became so productive at work that you accomplished a week’s worth of work in two days? What if you were doing that while working at home? Would you like that extra time to spend with your kids, or write that novel you have inside?

I highly recommend getting The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss.

No, not this Scott, but another one. Scott Hanselman has posted the latest version of his list of development tools.