Ryan Carson » Enjoying life

Doing something memorable

Ryan Carson — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 10:51:13 +0000

We were heading into town on Friday and I wanted to make it memorable. There’s so many times when someone says “What did you do over the weekend?” and I answer “You know, I can’t really remember. Just hung out, I guess.”

With that in mind, I decided to bring our camera and my mission was to try to spot unusual things in Bath that I hadn’t seen before. It was amazing the amount of detail that jumped out at me.

Hope you enjoy the photos.

Three things to make your work meaningful

Ryan Carson — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 10:20:51 +0000

I’ve really been enjoying Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers. There is a particularily interesting section from the chapter The Three Lessons of Joe Flom that I’d like to share:

Those three things – autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward – are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying. It is not how much money we make that ultimately make us happy between nine and five. It’s whether our work fulfills us. If I offered you a choice of being an architect for $75,000 a year and working in a tollbooth every day for the rest of your life for $100,000 a year, which would you take? I’m guessing the former, because there is complexity, autonomy, and a relationship between effort and reward in doing creative work, and that’s worth more to most of us than money.

Work that fulfills those three criteria is meaningful.

I really enjoy running Carsonified because it meets those three criteria. One of the main reasons I quit my last job as Lead Web Developer at Fingal Design, was because there was no connection between effort and reward. I remember we worked 48 hours straight to launch barF1.com (now defunct) and my boss handed me a beer at the end and a pat on the back. That’s when I knew I was going to leave. I didn’t want money, I just wanted to be appreciated.

Is your work meaningful? Why or why not?

Holiday at Home

Ryan Carson — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 18:35:13 +0000

Gill and I decided to spend a week of holiday at home instead of flying somewhere. Gill got the idea from watching 1940′s House, a show about what it was like during World War II in Britain. It wasn’t safe or affordable to travel for holidays during the war, so the government encouraged people to stay at home.

How it works

Chores and all normal duties are off-limits (great excuse to dodge household tasks).
Make a list of ideas for each day. This keeps you from sitting around in your pants and browsing the web all day.
Plan your meals ahead of time and buy all the food you need (this is where grocery shopping online makes perfect sense). This makes it more fun as you have gorgeous food all around during the week.

Why it’s great

It’s cheap.
It encourages you to explore new things around the area where you live.
It’s much less stressful than flying to a holiday location.

What we did

Day One: Exploring Bath and Geocaching (photos)
Day Two: Day trip to Glastonbury
Day Three: Movie Day at home
Day Four: Pig Hunt in Bath (photos)
Day Five: Trip to Blenheim Palace
Day Six: Boat trip from Bath to outlying villages
Day Seven: Walking on the canal and swimming at the Bath Thermae Spa
Day Eight: Movie and PJs day (I know we’re too old for Harry Potter but I don’t care)

If you’ve done anything similar or have ideas, please share with us in the comments.