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How To Feel Left Out In A Conference About Community

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Don’t let the post title fool you, VidCon was truly a blast. I did get to go with friends @writetoreach @freeandflawed and @phampants so I wasn’t necessarily lonely, I did get to meet some YouTube and interweb celebrities, and some of the presentations were straight up hilarious.

As one might expect from me by now, I went for the sake of work. While Phampants convinced me to attend because the conference itself would be fun, I came with a notepad and some pens planning to walk out of it with some material for quantitative and qualitative analysis.

The “learnings,” ~~or tidbits of statistical and/or qualitative information that inform and influence decisions when deployed in the realm of strategic consultation and execution~~ as they’re known in corporate jargon, were largely overshadowed by the wholly disparate intention of the conference. That is a long way to say: taking notes might not have been the point. By and large, this conference was supposed to celebrate the YouTube community — a community made up mostly of people under 21, but still, a community.

Community is something to which I’m no stranger. Having a blog has connected me to lots of people, and while I am always saying that I still need to work on reconnecting with everyone even after all this time, the readers and writers who keep up with me no matter how drowned in work I get really remind me that they’re friends who care, not just screen names. It’s a good reminder that there are, after all, real people on the other side of the screen.

Back to the ‘Con: The YouTube community — it’s different than others. Of course, this might be somewhat expected as the medium itself is fundamentally different from that of blogging, but it’s so tightly knit that when I met some people and revealed to them that I came for work purposes and explained what it was exactly I do for a living, I noticed their eyes wander in boredom. It’s not because they’re assholes, or at least I hope not, but it’s because was very obviously an outsider.

Until this conference, I really didn’t know much about the likes of Is Charlie So Cool Like? and Volgvetica and the shining beacon of the music industry’s future, DFTBA records (and really the list goes on).

Had I been creating content and engaging with the existing YouTube community before VidCon, I might have.

Why hadn’t I participated before? First, a good place to start is the situation with trolls. Before I shaped a persona on the interweb, I didn’t have very much confidence in myself to withstand being trolled. But now that I’ve been blogging for a while, and getting some ample evidence that the internet is as equally frightening as it is fulfilling, I realize I don’t give a flying fuck about being judged by strangers, so I’m probably in a pretty good place to learn to participate in user generated video.

Maybe it’s time for me to join this community, too. Phampants has been singing the praises for a long time, he’d even help me get started; I am a huge fan of the social part before the media part; and I would love to learn how to do something new.

Of course, engagement (or at least an attempt) is a minimal requirement. While I can’t guarantee much, especially if my blog-to-engagement ratio is any indication, I can at least make a valiant effort.

But at the end of all of this, towards the end of the conference, one moment stands out. I was hanging out by the hotel lobby ashtray with a bunch of smokers who were mid-level content creators with established, albeit small, audiences. They were here at the conference not to learn or to promote, but simply to connect with viewers and other video creators they have known and loved from afar for a while. They aren’t viral video superstars. They just love that being their respective selves on camera has led them to meet really worthwhile people who would eventually become friends.

One of the guys reacted strongly to one of my comments, that I do research and development because I’m interested in how people use social networks, and seeing such a tightly-knit community makes me to want to become part of it but I don’t know how to begin. He put his hand on my shoulder, and while swaying somewhat drunkenly, he impressively articulated: “Bro, if you’re here at VidCon, even as an observer, you already bought a ticket so you helped fund it, and while you were here, you paid attention. You’re already a part of the community.”

I guess this means I should start making videos.

Tags: 2010, community, conference, free and flawed, phampants, vidcon, writing to reach you, youtube
Posted in Blogging, Internet, Research & Development, Social Media | 13 Comments »

Morale, and the Importance of Alcohol

Friday, January 8th, 2010

Alright. I’m at a point in my day where people like me promise themselves that they won’t ever drink that much ever again, but seeing as how I’m still in my 20′s, this feeling will likely clear as soon as nightfall.

What was the occasion for drinking, Nico? you ask.

I’d answer, a long overdue company outing in downtown LA. I’m not really going to talk about my job here on this blog, but a night out with my agency did teach me something I’m surprised I hadn’t known previously.

Most, if not all, professionals in my age group (heretofore referred as Generation Y) are a part of some kind of drinking culture, and I say “some kind” being fully aware that different drinking cultures exist even among one age demographic. Moreover, socializing over drinks is a character trait of many a previous generation — I’m not saying that social drinking makes Generation Y unique. What I am saying is that social drinking, from what I’ve experienced in being part of Gen Y, is increasingly becoming important for morale like I’ve not seen it before.

If you remember how various sources characterize Generation Y, you’ll recall that they call us “peer oriented.” If that means that interaction with others is important enough to influence our respective individual sentiments, it means that in the professional sphere, a high level of communication is a key factor.

Okay, so that last sentence sounds like corporate gibberish, but that doesn’t make it any less true. And if that is indeed true, then consider the social lubricant that is alcohol.

My simple conclusion from this simple ramble:

If you have a workforce with a large segment from my generation, and a morale that’s been hit by this damned recession, you might want to take a cue from my bosses.

Go out drinking with your employees. It’s good for morale, and thus, good for your company.

And who knows? Maybe knocking back a few might grease up the brainstorm gears.

Tags: company, downtown, drinking, generation Y, la, los angeles, morale
Posted in Life As A Nico, Research & Development | 12 Comments »

Overblog?

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

Series of Tubes
by ritingon

How many blogs is too many?

Like a lot of my peers, I'm interested in talking aimlessly and ad nauseam* on more than one subject.

Right, ok so why should that be a topic for an entire blog post? This has already been well established.

For some exposition, I already partitioned off my posts pertaining to musicianship and have placed them here, and that has turned out to be a good thing because it seems that as much as people like the idea of musicians, they don't care to hear about what it's like to be a musician -- or maybe more specifically, they don't care to hear me talk about it. Moving my musicianship posts to a sub-blog has worked out for me surprisingly well, in that my online world got more organized but also it turns out there were listeners who didn't care to sort through my daily life to find what music I've written.

I'll probably reference musicianship here like I do since that actually is a part of my everyday life, but that's not necessarily the point of this blog. Besides, the more that I stuck with writing in this blog about life in general, or the internet in general, or general life on the internet, the more people were inclined to stick around.

Hypothesis: Talking about musicianship is niche, and writing entries that are more general can engage more people because slice-of-life stories are far more identifiable for the average blog reader than talking about how it took me hours to find a snare drum.

Moving on to talking about work: When I talk about the industry in which I work (interwebs - or specifically, social media), it sometimes interrupts the momentum of anecdotal story-telling, even if that is by and large a string of reminders to myself of what has happened in my social life amidst the fucking craziness of agency life (the kind of life where work follows you home).

The thing is, the anecdotes about working on the internet is its own set of stories, too. I chose social media as a career because it is, in fact, another thing about which I can rattle on and on for hours. However, I didn't need that to take over my entire personality, and in the same way, I probably shouldn't let it overrun this blog.

Enter the Research & Development Clippings blog.

Ah, that feels good to get out of the way. All of my career-related musings can now be found there unless I'll call it universal enough to drop in this main blog.

But this brings up a question I'd like to ask my fellow bloggers:

Do you try to keep life facets distinct from each other or do you mash it all up into one destination? And what are the other things in your life you do with enough passion to start another blog / site for it?

*Yes, that's how you spell it.

Tags: blog, Blogging, blogs, development, Musicianship, new, researh, web, wpmu
Posted in Blogging, Life As A Nico, Musicianship, Research & Development, Social Media | 9 Comments »

Get Brazen

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Click on an image to enlarge

Today is the day that one of my favorite sites, Brazen Careerist, launches!

But wait, you say, how can a site that hasn't yet launched be one of your favorites? To be clear, the site and its community have been around for a while, so this is why it already had a place in my bookmarks. But this site launch is more than just getting a tricked out sleek look. The mission has changed, and for the uninitiated, BC was kind enough to give me some copy to share with you:

What is the new Brazen Careerist all about?
Brazen Careerist is the career management tool for next-generation professionals. In the online career space where experienced professionals win, we’ve created a network that helps young professionals level the playing field.

Instead of just a traditional résumé, at the core of the new Brazen Careerist profile is an idea-based feed that showcases your knowledge, opinions and thoughts. In other words: Your potential.

We all know there are pools of new talent coming into the market, but no career site showcases the most critical thing that talent should be sharing: Ideas.

What’s new? And what has changed?
Although you will still be able to easily access your favorite posts from the bloggers on Brazen Careerist, the current blog-driven homepage is being retired. Our goal is to give you—the member—control over the content you see when you log on. So immediately after you log in, you will be directed to your personal Fan Feed where you can follow real-time updates of the ideas your favorite members are sharing.

In addition to the Fan Feed update, your user profile is going to be more idea-centric than it ever was before. A quick visit to your profile will reveal that the main focus is the important things you have to say. Accompanying your personal Ideas Feed is a new resume section that tells other members where you’ve been.

The rest of the Brazen Careerist you’ve come to know and love is pretty similar. We just gave it a facelift!

Essentially, that copy appeals to my peers and fellow members of Generation Y. But if you're on the outside looking in, this accommodates for a specific need unique to Generation Y. And before anyone gives us grief by stereotyping us as entitled, consider how out of a group of 5, 1 will be out of a job and 2 will return to school and accrue even more debt. When so much of hiring hinges on experience while there are no experiences (read: jobs) to apportion, employers put Gen Y in a kind of Catch 22.

Brazen Careerist is evidence that we as a generation realize no matter what kind of knowledge we have, it's our personalities that will connect us to opportunities. This is why we spend so much time on social networking sites, blogging, tweeting, txting, and emailing. We need to be extroverted to meet as many people as we can. We were introduced to a professional world built in a way where it's not what you know, it's who you know. So we are banking on safety in numbers.

And moreover, employers are speaking our language more and more (Oh, you want evidence?). We're one of the largest demographic segments to appear in a long time and we will probably make up a huge portion of the workforce if we don't already*. So it only makes sense that Brazen Careerist should come around with a mission to gather up the go-getters.

But enough hype.

Get down to Brazen Careerist if you're so inclined to check it out, employer and employee alike.

And get to work.

____
*Interestingly, that article also mentions Brazen Careerist. Go figure.

Tags: brazen, careerist, launch, site
Posted in Research & Development, Social Media | 4 Comments »

Social Networking – UR Doin It Rong

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Sometimes when I am doing field research at work, I stumble upon some items of real curiosity.

Take, for instance, the site MyBookFace.net. No, I will not be so kind as to link that because I believe this site has ‘fail’ scrawled all over its 60% quality JPGs. At first glance, it seems this domain is striving to ride on the coattails of its namesakes, MySpace and Facebook, but the only thing it is likely doing is reeling in those that are unfamiliar with social networking. Even the name is a glaring attempt to obscure social networking for the uninitiated.

Don’t even get me started on the aesthetics and lack thereof. But nice logo. [/sarcasm]

If you’re curious about who exactly are the social networking uninitiated, you can check out the Quantcast data revealing that affluent, educated males over the age of 35, with children, are the target market.

I would peg “parents” as their target suckers, but we all know that mombloggers are some of the most net savvy people in the web. And it isn’t unheard of for business professionals of the target age demographic to head over to LinkedIn, female and male alike.

Essentially, their real target demographics are probably those who are just slightly out of touch — or at least out of touch enough so that they’d butcher the household names of MySpace and/or Facebook and go to this network.

It claims to be the “friendly” alternative to MySpace and Facebook, but really isn’t the gripe we usually have about MySpace and Facebook is that they’re exorbitantly friendly? They are social networks, after all.

Ok, so maybe mybookface can be friendlier than the two social networking behemoths. I am yet to find evidence to support this, but I’ll give them the benefit if of the doubt.

What I would really like to draw to your attention is the main splash page graphic:

Okay. mybookface is trying to tell us 3 things:

Americans move to Paraguay to become detectives.
White businessmen who live in the city of Lhasa move to Perth to become Elvis impersonators.
Chinese people live in Africa, which is actually true about Angola, but this guy seems to be based in Cameroon.

…

Did anyone *facepalm* yet?

Tags: facebook, fail, mybookface, myspace, social networking, wtf
Posted in Internet, Random, Research & Development | 18 Comments »

Freelancing In 3 Easy (read: Oversimplified) Steps

Monday, July 20th, 2009

twitter_erinichristine_freelancing

Why, yes, @erinichristine, I believe that you are!

A lot of people I know do, in fact, have the hustle to figure out this kind of lifestyle. But at the same time, a lot of us sometimes get so caught up in doing the actual work that we forget some of the main tenets to make sure the process moves smoothly. Yes, even those of us who have been doing this for years. But when you explain the “formal” steps to the uninitiated, you remember, “Oh, yeah! That’s how it goes.” And it’s always good to get a reminder.

Step 1: Biz Dev

The initial task is a simple one: network, network, network. Don’t delete ANY numbers you might save on your phone. Be socially extroverted. Respond to emails. Your portfolio doesn’t have to be done (though it does help), you just have to know what you can do.

That leads to the next sub-step: Capabilities. Once you have someone interested in what you can do, be sure to explain to them what is possible from your end of things. You don’t want a client requesting something way outlandish from the get-go, even though that’s what you’re going to shoot for (you overachiever, you). If they really need something you can’t do like Flash, consider cutting one of your buddies in on the deal. Don’t say “that’s not in my skillset”, just say “yes, I know someone that can do that.” Because chances are, you do.

Once you and your respective clients know what are your services to be rendered, you need to send everyone something that is called an SOW. A Statement of Work contains the timelines, milestones, services, overhead, and bottom-line costs to hire you for the job. These sometimes go through a number of drafts before everyone settles on an agreement, but it’s important to be meticulous about this because this is essentially your contract, and yes, that includes signatures.

As a useful note, an SOW guarantees that you don’t have to do anymore than you are asked to do. Being asked to do something outside of the scope of work warrants an additional fee. I know from experience that sometimes I take this for granted and have been ROYALLY SCREWED for not calculating for additional work in the first place. So, please, do this before setting to any kind of work.

And now… to work!

Step 2: Execution

Do what you promised to do, but when you report in, try to translate what you’re doing into plain English for your client. Use metaphors and analogies to explain technical processes, use figures and graphs where applicable. They don’t need to know the step-by-step process, they just need to know what they’re spending their money on.

Step 3: Invoicing

Ok! All done? All the revisions are cleared the approval process?

Ok. It’s time to get paid.

I hope you logged your hours because now is the time you tabulate them. If you negotiated a flat fee per service (which is my style, personally) then you need to match those services against timelines. If you agreed on an hourly / daily rate, you’ll need to tabulate all of this.

It’s also polite to include a postmortem report for everything that happened during the execution period, and the results that ensued.

Incessantly Frequently Asked Questions

“But what does invoicing look like?” Well, I’m not going to send you one of my own invoices, but you might want to consider using a free invoicing service like Curdbee or Billing Boss if you’re unsure about how to invoice properly. Ah, to live in the future.

“How much should I charge?” It’s different for everyone, really. Chat up your fellow freelancers and see what they charge for their services. Don’t undercut them too harshly because you don’t want to be working for peanuts. Unless you’ve found some sort of peanut-barter-black-market. (Heh. “Peanut barter”…)

“How do I find new business contacts?” …Oh, I dunno, the internet is a good place to start. But also, and not surprisingly, going out for drinks for various reasons. You don’t even need to drink, you just have to be social. You’d be surprised how many people have pet projects swimming around in their heads. These ideas gain buoyancy from alcohol, for some reason. It’s either that, or my industry is saturated with very industrious drunks.

Tags: biz dev, capabilities, freelance, invoicing, SOW, statment of work
Posted in Freelancing, Research & Development | 23 Comments »

Chi Town, Parts 2 and 3

Saturday, July 4th, 2009

As it turns out, the New York lifestyle (where I am currently) does not lend itself to lots of free time at night. Fortunately, I had saved these two parts as a draft. I’ll post the 4th and final installment in a bit.

Anchors

So, I’ve already covered how blogging in an active community sense will land you in a city you’ve never been, will drop an excess of 25 (give or take) BFFs into your life, and will make you perpetually a drinker. But what was really nice an unexpected until about a couple of days or so before I got here was to discover that one of my best friends from college was willing to make a 3 hour road trip to this city just to be able to hang out. After all, it’s so rare that I’m in this part of the world that an opportunity to connect in meat-space with old friends.

And even that much planning was spur-of-the-moment.

Essentially, the conversation over email was:

Maren: Hey! What have you been up to lately?
Nico: I’m going to Chicago!
Maren: No way! When?
Nico: June x to June y
Maren: Cool! That’s really close to where Shaun and I live! We’ll meet you there!
Nico: What? Really? Awesome!

I believe that may be paraphrased but there’s little more to it than that. And as a result, my college friends got to witness firsthand how close people get to each other from simply owning blogs.

And it is always great to see people from the past if you’d spent a significant amount of time with them. It makes sure that they don’t get swallowed by the past, and always stay in the present.

This, of course, means my next mission is to visit Fred in the land of the Rising Sun like Stuart did not long ago. I’ll think about that when my bank account recovers from this series of trips.

And I fully intend to, and have no idea when, but I’d honestly like to see Halifax, D. C., Johannesburg, Florida, Nashville, among many, many others.

My point is, this generation is able and probably more willing than that of others’ to drop anchors in many parts of the world, and more quickly and efficiently than given credit. And it’s not even for any practical reasons. It’s just a side effect of living life publicly on the internet.

We are world class networkers.

Which makes me wonder why our modern aristocracy doesn’t take up blogging more often. At least they’d have the money to visit the friends they might make.

Incidentally

I will admit that I almost pooped myself a little in reaction to see how excited phampants would get that, without me really being a part of his intricate and very-different-from-the-blogosphere video editing community that exists on YouTube, I had inadvertently seen one of his videos. Many high-fives ensued upon this discovery.

There’s a logical progression for this. As you probably might know, we all have friends who pass us links to videos. Out of force of habit, I tend to click on every-goddam-link that comes to me even if it means I’m getting rickroll’d. Why? Because I’m an information junkie. I can handle lots of video links, articles, and music.

If you’re in your 20s, there’s a good chance you’re an information junkie, too.

And if you get along with other information junkies, you know that one video leads to another. And one brief quip about Easter will inevitably lead to Wiki’ing the pagan holiday Ēostre, Googling for the craziest decorated eggs you can find, and of course, YouTube searching the term “Peeps”, because we all know about how we’d like to see peeps in a microwave but we’d rather someone else did the work for us and so kindly uploaded that video to the internet.

Okay I got a little of track there.

The point of this was more along the themes of “we live in the future” as I say almost on a daily basis. It was Katie Cat that identified that phampants’s excitement is probably natural, if you think about it. As a photographer and graphic designer, she would be just as stoked if someone she didn’t know, who had flown across the country in the name of the internet, had also said, “Oh, wait, I’ve seen that work at [x].”

And it’s probably the same for my bloggy-musician friends as well.

And this is the importance of incidence to bloggers.

Alright, I’ll start from the top:

I am under the impression that there are two kinds of blogs. There are the blogs created to be journals or news feeds or editorial, to detail things of themed ideas (eg., the gaming industry, celebrities, human rights, blogs about blogging, etc.). And then, there are what I am heretofore calling the escribitionists.

As you might expect from this form of journaling, there’s a strengthened sense of self-awareness that comes from blogging. It’s not like we’re rattling on about our lives oblivious to the idea that we might be a little self-indulgent. Popular techniques to diffuse this perceived self-indulgence include but are not limited to self-deprecation or hyperbolic megalomania (you know, because it’s funny).

So because of this self-awareness, there’s a strong need to diffuse it. Having long been trying to be an escribitionst myself, I get the feeling that escribitionists’ interests span much further than simply blogging. Just a hunch.

If I had known all along that peoples’ interests span much further than what they appear to write about, and my company is constantly looking for new ways to organize and classify blogger research, then why had I not considered building a semantic tool for tagging blogs? Or better yet, just open up an account on a semantic bookmarking site from a company that already exists? Which are free? And private? And integrate with my web browser?

Oh, fuck me, this shit is easier than I thought. I guess I just realized I have suddenly created some work for myself.

Anyway, here comes the point:

The way to connect to with the blogger that is an escribitionist is fairly simple — we give you resources to get in touch with us all over the damn place. But, if you really want to connect with us as people and loyal resources, it certainly helps if can provide that incidence. There may be some caveats as far as what lines you should and should not cross so as not to be creepy. But on the whole escribitionists, especially in a group, are more powerful voices than they first appear. And once you get that trust, you get to participate in our economy mentioned in my last post.

This isn’t a trend. This is basic addition.

Tags: anchors, coincidence, friends, incidents
Posted in Blogging, Internet, Life As A Nico, Research & Development, Social Media | 8 Comments »

Chi Town, Part 1

Friday, June 26th, 2009

The New Economy

It’s interesting that even though I hadn’t caught up reading all of the 20SB Meetup Attendees’ blogs before I got here, I knew from previous various networking events that bloggers are the type of people to never let me down. That is, in getting some well anticipated pizza, being surprised at how much people knew about each other without having actually yet met in person, being fully mindful of recent news (here, here, here, and of course here), and the whole-drinking-while-doing-everything aspect; it’s weird to feel like you “belong” in a place you’ve never stepped foot; and instantaneously, no less. You’d think that one would have to work really hard to make these kinds of connections. Maybe the work is being done for us now.

We live in the future, after all.

Proof of this is in the fact that in the early evening last night I basically wandered alone around downtown Chicago last night, really goddam fairly drunk the entire time, reassured that when the sun was good and gone that I’d have new friends by the time I passed out needed to get to bed. And I was totally right. These people whose phone numbers I did not have, whom I had never met in person, whose voices I could not discern (except maybe that of Courtney‘s), welcomed me with open arms.

But how does that factor into my sub-headline?

During my last cigarette of last night, dshan and I talked about what you’d expect from people who are really into blogging: social media. Twitter notified us all that Michael Jackson / Ed McMahon / Farrah Fawcett had passed on from this mortal coil before any of us saw any headlines on the television. Facebook status comments make it feel like you’re never too far away from friends’ and acquaintances’ clever quips. But what’s interesting about all of this is it has led to a reputation based economy, whereby proper citations and attributions are really what count in this realm, and simple participation is how you get involved in the game. (But how to translate that to actual currency? That’s probably the next purple cow. I am probably not the best source for figuring that out.)

But it occurs to me today, in brief retrospect and while putting away some web work I planned on doing during this trip, that the reputation-based economy is also as D put it last night: it’s based on trust. Which actually is directly proportional to how real-world finances work (and he should know).

So that means that linking to, replying or RT @, playing in the forums with, commenting on, and subscribing to another person’s net identity; this is how our generation generates trust.

We do live in the future. And in this future, we are apparently participating in a currency exchange where character counts for a lot.

And what can you gain from participating in this economy?

Well, the opportunity to network with some really genuinely good people is a nice start, isn’t it?

Tags: 20sb, chicago, courtney, dshan, economy, new, news, nico gets drunk and wanders chicago alone, reputation, whuffie
Posted in Blogging, Internet, Life As A Nico, Research & Development, Social Media | 11 Comments »

Nicopolitan's Survival Tips: The All-Nighter

Friday, March 13th, 2009

Well, I’m at it again; giving the finger to biology so that I can be more productive. The All-Nighter. The nights where you just skip sleep.

A lot of people, probably the more sane people, will decry this method as an outright crazy means of productivity when they take work home with them. That or they’re just concerned about me (Hi, Cessie!). What they might not know is that I actually have a working method for getting through the all-nighter safely and effectively. And I thought I’d share these methods publicly to 1. possibly help someone, 2. get suggestions and make revisions to my methods or 3. raise more eyebrows.

Okay, young professionals. Here’s how to do it:

Preparing
1. Stimulants: Let’s face it, you can’t do this alone. I’m not saying you should use drugs. There’s a wealth of completely sane (and legal) resources: Sugar in the form of candy or pastries, brewing coffee or tea (or yerba mate if you’re fancy), or energy drinks.
2. Snacks: If you’re going to use any stimulants, being tired will mean you’re going to go through more of those than you ordinarily would. That’s not good for your stomach, so cushion the blow with light snacks. Yeah, you could go with junk food, but you’d be surprised how effective fruit is. Oranges in particular.
3. Clothing: Dress comfortably because your ass is going to slouch for a long time. Try not to wear pajamas, as that’ll encourage you to lie down and possibly totally waste the momentum. Wear what you’d wear in the daytime on a weekend if you’re staying in. Sweatpants are useful.
4. Tunes: You’re going to need lots of them. Don’t prepare playlists, just grab as much as you can and cue it up. I’ll explain why in a bit.
5. Prep Nap: (Optional) Take a short nap, maybe an hour or less, so that at least you can get that much sleep. It’s not like it’ll “throw off your sleep schedule” since you’re doing that on purpose anyway.
Get Down To Business
1. Stretch A Lot: Yeah, just that.
2. Eye Care: You’re going to want to close your eyes, so stand up when you do that to prevent nodding off. Also, if you’re working on a computer, stare at something that is far away frequently so that your pupils don’t cramp. “Woah,” you say, “pupils can cramp?” And to that, I’d respond “Wow, you’re new at this, aren’t you?”
3. Take Frequent Breaks: Watch YouTube, screw around on Facebook, smoke cigarettes if you’re a smoker, do push-ups or jumping jacks, make an origami paper crane, play with a pet if you’ve got one, blog about being awake for an extended period of time, organize playlists and dance to what you’re listening to, just DON’T LIE DOWN.
Watch The Sunrise
1. You most likely have most or all of your work done by now. Here’s your reward.
Prepare For Being Tired
1. You can’t go back to sleep right away or you’ll really throw off your sleep schedule. Tough out the day with the same methods in 1 and 2, and when that’s done, go to bed a time where you’d consider hitting the hay two or three hours early.

Godspeed, nightowls.

Tags: all nighter, awake, crazy, survival, tips
Posted in Life As A Nico, Research & Development | 9 Comments »