ben.hamilton.id.au

Exercise this morning was riding the mountain bike, while riding I kept hitting rocks.

I found that I was focused on the section of path just ahead of me, the next 1-4 metres.

Once I started looking forward further, 30-80 metres ahead, I began to avoid the rocks, my perhipheral vision was working for me, avoiding the bigger rocks, picking which smaller ones to ride over, the ride became much much easier.

It was at this point that I realised that life is the same. The more I focus on the immediate problems, all I can see are the immediate problems. Once I start focusing on my goals, the problems become smaller, more manageable.

I’m quite sure this thought is not new, but it really got me inspired this morning, gave me some renewed energy.

One of my goals is to become a better blogger, more active, with better quality of content. It does mean my spelling will have to improve, my grammer also. But more importantly, the frequency with which I post and the focus of the topics on which I post.

So rather than continue to be inspired by myself, I thought this would be ideal to share with everyone. 

I’m looking forward to doing more, and would love to hear from others what they are looking forward to doing more of.

Take care, Ben.

Just spotted this great article from Jason Nethercott on creating your own Business Process Video – interesting stuff.

I can see using this info to document a process, then see where to improve those processes.

Yes – I signed up to Becomeablogger.com – after reading the free road map PDF and watching the 10 free Howto videos.

Even tho I’ve been blogging since 2002, in the last 24 hours I’ve already learnt stuff. Plus I’ve got access to a private forum (ie no trolls) where like minded ‘students’ and experts like Yaro and Gideon answer questions.

What it means for my readers is improved quality from here on in.

Saw a tweet from Lee Hopkins pointing to this free report on Innovation Strategies for the Global Recession. Good stuff.

I recall watching my mother make caramel by boiling a can of condensed milk, but do you think I can find ANYWHERE on the ‘net that tells me how to do so? nope. Seems everyone is afraid of exploding cans. Managed to find some stories of cans having exploded and the resultant mess.

Thusly, here are two links to making caramel with condensed milk that doesn’t involve boiling the can.

Do you love your job? I do. Let me tell you why. I get to change ‘someones’ world on a daily basis. And I love it. 

I do technical support for a small marketing firm, all of our clients use ACT!, which is a contact management application. When you show someone how they can improve their productivity, improve their bottom line they get excited, and by extenstion, so do I. 

Just this week we demo’ed a customisation that will totally change the clients ability to track the jobs they do, the items associated with those jobs, the people and all the rest of it. The client was literally getting out of his chair, walking around “of course”, “WOW!”, “does that mean…” – “yes it does”. It was a the HIGHLIGHT of my week. To have spent the time delving into their business to work out what they do, how they do it so as to figure out what they needed was fun, it was truely enjoyable, but to see the reaction, the excitement, the realisations for what would now be possible – that was GOLD.

I love my job.

[note: the title "Changing the world one ACT at a time!" is a hat tip to an insightful guy with a Blue Monster]

[note: edited to fix a typo and add URL for www.evolutionmarketing.com.au]

Hey, this is cool, I’ve just realised that Chome will open the web interface of VMWare Server 2.0 – it didn’t last week. Neato.

I use LinkedIn and find it useful to keep in touch with the business people I deal with. Also it has enabled me to find key people in companies so that I can get the information I need quicker, for example I needed some technical help with an IBM product, I was able to find a contact on LinkedIn that had close contacts with IBM technical people – shortcut to the answer I was looking for.

Thus, if you use LinkedIn, link to me. What goes round comes round. I’ve found others useful, other have found me useful – my LinkedIn profile is here: www.linkedin.com/in/benhamilton

Here are some lists that others have compiled of ways you can use LinkedIn to benefit yourself:

• Guy Kawasaki on ways to use LinkedIn
• A short slideshow on why LinkedIn is useful
• HUGE list of 100+ ways to use LinkedIN

Also worth reading is Mitch Joels take on Facebook, Myspace and LinkedIn and the difference between them.

The rate of change in the world is immense. Take a look at this to put a few facts into perspective. Amazing. Scary. Exciting.

Ok, I’m not accepting any Facebook invites. All Facebook does for me is consume my time and I’ve got work to do.

LinkedIn on the other hand is my online resume, it does keep me in touch with other working professionals. I often get asked “Why LinkedIn?” – well I’ve found this slideshow that details what and how you can use LinkedIn, go check it out.

If you want to connect to me via LinkedIn there are two questions I need to be able to answer first before I’ll accept:

• Are you (or your company) someone I know or deal with or about to deal with?
• Is there any value in us being connected?

If your invite answers those, all is good. You can find my LinkedIn Profile here.