I am a busy guy. I probably always will be. We all have our own stories of busyness, and since this is my blog, I will tell you about mine: I have a lovely fiance who I love to hang out with! I work 25+ hours a week at Milsoft. I have eight hours of upper level computer science courses at ACU (who randomly made Engadget today), which easily translates to another eight hours of outside homework. I am active in intramurals with my fraternity, Gamma Sigma Phi. I am the acting Treasurer of my fraternity. My business partner, Jon Hinson, and I have been staying up until 2 or 3am every night and getting up at 6am in the morning trying to complete everything that needs to be completed for our various activities we are involved with. (I feel like I have mentioned all this before…) The list goes on…
So how do I make time for the two business ventures I am working on? It is a simple concept, but tough to carry out sometimes. I constantly find ways to combine what I want to do with the work that I have to do. Get creative with it. For example, in two of my computer science courses this semester I have managed to convince the professors that I should be working on my business ventures as the final projects of the classes. TeacherHubs and my other venture happen to work well with the course work, and with a little smooth talking, I am able to be working on what I want, while accomplishing the goals of my classes. There are also plenty of ways this can apply to the jobs you might be working at. I have always wanted to dabble with the Google Maps API. It just so happens Milsoft needs a map-like tool to visualize and interact with their customers. So, I suggested we use Google Maps on the project and away we go. Now, I get to learn something about Google Maps’ API and help out the company. Making time for fun new ventures is all about finding ways to combine what I want to do with the work that I have to do.
You might say, “well my boss/professor would never let me do that.” Have you asked? You don’t know what he/she will say until you ask. You have nothing to lose, only time and freedom to gain. Even if your first time of asking your boss/professor doesn’t work out, shape your idea a little differently to fit more with the goals of your business/class and ask again. It took me three go-arounds to convince my Object-Oriented Design professor to let me work on my own project. Go ahead, give it a try. You won’t know until you ask.
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