One thing, two things, three things, 27

Why is it that stuff is so clustered?

For example, I have been very busy working on batBack and the MAT over the last few months, but the work load has been fairly even. There are a couple of things I'd like to be doing some more of: writing technical articles, picking up some consulting time, talking to Venture Capitalists, developing more IP for my company.

So in the last couple of days opportunties for all of these things happened at the same time. On Thursday, I got a contact from a Venture Capitalist, I got a call to pick up some consulting work, I got an email to do some technical writing for an upcoming AJAX book, and I realized that I need to file another provisional patent application. All of this happened within about 4 hours.

I wonder why things are so clustered like that? Much of your time in life you spend getting ready: going to school, learning new skills, gettng the right experience. Your goal is to position yourself and prepare for opportunities when they occur. But durn! Nobody ever tells you that they usually happen all at once.

Even bad news is like that. Most times, when we think of successful people, we think they went on a straight line from obscurity to greatness. A reality check says that isn't the case at all. Most truly productive people had some awful failures. I remember reading one CEO commenting "when they introduce you at an awards banquet, they don't mention all the failures you've had. Nobody wants to hear that. They gloss over the real lessons in your life and make it into one big soundbite"

Everybody wants the long view of your life -- what business deals you made, how much money you have, how big your house is. Nobody wants to hear about the days you heard your granmother was dying and you had a flat tire and your kid got in trouble at school. But once we get the preparation part down in life, it's handling these clusters -- big and small, that make the real difference. Whether good or bad, it seems a lot of stuff in life comes at you in clusters. You'd better be ready for it.