Bronwen Reid

Advice on personal productivity from Marc Andreessen (co-founder of Netscape):

… don’t keep a schedule … By not keeping a schedule, I mean: refuse to commit to meetings, appointments, or activities at any set time in any future day.

When someone emails or calls to say, “Let’s meet on Tuesday at 3″, the appropriate response is: “I’m not keeping a schedule for 2007, so I can’t commit to that, but give me a call on Tuesday at 2:45 and if I’m available, I’ll meet with you.”

Of course, this advice comes with lots of caveats, and apparently it doesn’t work for everyone (you don’t say), although it does work for that well-known guru of business productivity, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I’m still boggling.

Trying to decide on a business name is a an incredible distraction, especially when you’re looking for the accompanying domain name. There seem to be three general approaches:

1. The acronym or the abbreviation. I could become WebAppDevelopers.com or WADCS.com (although I would have to invent a name to fit that last acronym).
2. Names which can be pronounced but doesn’t mean anything (yet). I could become Beyaro.com, Tashlin.com or Noydart.com
3. Names made by stringing several words together and hoping for the best. These can be vaguely business-like (e.g. knowledgesolutions.com), or have dubious techie ambitions (e.g. colourfreezone.com, validatedspace.com) or just be plain silly. HappyGreenFerret.com, RealTurtleSoup.com and GorgeousCat.com are all available.

For the moment I’ve knocked this on the head, I’m starting up as BronwenReid. Six months down the line I can revisit this, perhaps if I spend too much time spelling out my name to people on the phone.

At the moment I’m looking at every resource I can find on on freelancing. And Anil Dash has some wonderful advice for freelancers who are wondering how much they should charge for their time.

1. Slap the client in face.
2. Tell the client your hourly rate.

If the client was more shocked, horrified, offended, hurt, saddened, or wounded by the slap in the face than by the hourly rate, then you are still pricing yourself too low.