I recently went on holiday. To Spain. It was good.

Apart from it took me about four days to switch out of work mode. Constantly worrying about checking my mail. Has Basecamp been updated? What’s happening on Twitter? Given that I was only away for seven days, four days in work mode was not the best.

I made up my mind to try and keep things under control from now on. After a day of work, switch off. No reading blog entries, no checking emails, no tweets. Do something else, talk to a person who is physically present, watch the TV (OK, maybe that’s pushing it), play the guitar, get mauled by the cat. Just stop thinking about work!

Then, on my return, I was faced with the prospect of opening my FeedReader.

I remembered how my heart would sink when, opening it on a morning would reveal a red badge with a three digit number in it. “500 unread articles? I’ve only been asleep for six hours. It will take me that long to plough through those articles!” Imagine the unread count after being away for a week

I didn’t want to go back there.

So I made the choice not to open it. Ever.

Two weeks in and I don’t miss it.

I’ve got podcasts for the car through iTunes (yeah yeah, a glorified feed reader, but with six or seven “unread” items, not thousands).

I’ve got Northpack.

I’ve got the Geekup mailing list.

And I’ve got Twitter.

Thank buggery for Twitter.

People are always posting links in their tweets. I don’t have to read them. I use Twitterific, so it pops up on-screen for a couple of seconds. If I miss it, I miss it. If I see it I can choose to look at the link or ignore it. Decision made in less than five seconds.

No stress about the stuff I’ve not yet looked at. No stress about the stuff I’ve missed. In fact, no stress at all.

That’s how I’ve been dealing with the overload. How do you manage it?

Taken from Shane and Peter.

What’s your personal mission statement?

No Regrets. So far that’s pretty true.  Or maybe “I’m glad I have tasted fantastical places” (which I am and I have).

What’s the biggest mess you’ve dealt with this year?

The application I was working on at my previous employer. Over the years it had fallen in to a really bad state (and I fully take the blame for part of how it got that way). We folded the company, took the time to restructure a lot of the basic code and turned the product around. Then the company restructured and a lot of the good work (and staff good will) was lost.

What current entrepreneurial efforts consume your time?

3hv of course. I am a bit obsessed by it at the minute. I won’t stop until I feel like I know enough about business (whatever that may be). The same happened to me with coding - I devoured information on how to be the best developer until I reached a point where I felt that I couldn’t get much better. The same process has now started about business in general.

Why do you do what you do? What inspires you? When do you get most excited?

Because I’m good at it, because I hate being told what to do, because I hate living a 9-5. And I love writing Ruby code and watching my tests pass (sad I know). Business-wise, 37signals is an inspiration. Life-wise, Nottingham Forest gets me shouting.  And annoying my wife with my, frankly ridiculous, haircut.

Boxers or Briefs? or as Naomi says, Bikini or Thong, duh?!?

Boxers

What do you do when you’re not [designing | programming | managing | writing | toiling for the wo/man]?

Spending time with the wife, kids, dog, cat and rabbit. Watching the spectacular shambles that is Nottingham Forest.

What one thing made the biggest difference when getting started?

My wife.

What’s your exit strategy?

Product Development.

What is the last thing that made you belly laugh?

Kath and Kim. It’s not really my kind of thing (I’m much more into stuff like the Mighty Boosh) but there was a line about “Koala Lumpar” that made me laugh out loud.

Have you ever been in business before?

Yes - when I was a kid, my friend and I ran “JORB Enterprises”. We wrote a magazine and came up with a subscription plan for it that would double our money. We were 12.

At what point do you consider yourself successful?

When I can afford to pick and choose for whom and when I work. And when my hair is so big I can’t fit through doorways.

What was your first experience with a computer?

ZX Spectrum. The power pack overheated and produced a load of smoke. It was soon replaced by a Vic-20 and I never looked back.

Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates in a jello wrestling match, where’s your money?

Bill Gates. He fights dirty.

Where do you do your best thinking?

In front of the TV on an evening.

What does your average daily work / life balance look like? How much time do you work, play and sleep?

Up between 5:30 and 6:30. Get the kids ready, drop everyone of at their various destinations. Back home by 9-9:30 to start work proper (sometimes cooking as I go). Off to get Lizzie at around 4 and back for dinner by 6. Lizzie in bed by 8, so either an hour or two of work in front of the TV or switch the computer off and chat to the wife.

If I could introduce you to anyone, who would it be?

Business-wise - Steve Jobs (boring I know). Otherwise Ian Brown, Terry Hall or Bez.

What stops you from giving up when you are frustrated?

I don’t like losing.

If Chuck Norris and Steven Hawking had a baby (hey it’s my damn interview), would you vote for her for president?

No

And my own special question: what did you dream of doing when you were younger?

Record producer.  Collect a load of prima-donnas, hear their ideas, pick of the best ones and then push them into a situation where they can transform those into a classic.  Hmm, sounds familiar.

Update: added the bit about my hair. You always forget the important stuff.

Updated again: added my own question to the end.

I’ve taken the decision to split my blogging activities into two (three if you count my infrequently updated Nottingham Forest Football Club blog).

From now on, 3hv (that’s here) will be the place to find out about business (strategies, tactics and stuff I learn along the way). In other words, the perfect place to find out more about 3hv as a company.

And made of stone will be the place to find out about the intricacies of Ruby on Rails and software development in general. The perfect place for your inner geek (or the geek that lives in your basement and is afraid of sunlight and soap).

Of course, you can subscribe to both blogs - 3hv here and made of stone here.

I have just spent the last two days in the company of Euan Semple discussing online communications. Some interesting points were raised, but the thing that stuck in my mind was when Euan said

I hate it when people moan about the amount of email they get

- which is certainly an idea a lot of people have at the minute. Personally, I have little trouble with email - my personal inbox has one mail in it, my business inbox eight. Because it is a psuedo-to-do list and I clear it out as often as possible (reply, archive or delete - a decision that only takes a fraction of a second per mail).

Where I do have a problem is my RSS feeds. When you switch on in the morning and see a thousand unread items that scanning is likely to take some time (I’ve got 181 to look at at the minute)

But Euan got me thinking.

A few years back Direct Line revolutionised insurance (if such a thing is possible in that type of industry). Instead of paying a broker to choose your insurance for you, why not go direct and pocket the difference? Of course, to compete, every other insurance firm had to open up their own direct sales channel. Which means, when it comes to choosing your insurance provider, you have to hunt through tens of sites, repeating your personal information over and over, getting unwanted spam and eventually settling on the first quote you got because you are so sick of the whole process.

So what has happened now? You get “price comparison” sites that “take the legwork out of choosing your insurance”. Of course, these are free to you - they make their money by taking a commission on each sale. Sound familiar? That’s right, it’s the return of the broker, only this time on the web - and you pay the extra for the convenience.

How does this apply to RSS? Well, if this feed-overload continues (and it will take a while as there are still a sizable population that is not even aware of feeds) then what’s the betting that there will soon be the equivalent of “information brokers” - you specify your interests and they give you the latest news and updates without all that tedious scanning and searching.

In other words, the return of the portal, only this time in NetNewsWire.

I’ve mentioned before how helpful Kevin Clark has been to me. I’ve also mentioned that sometimes DHH comes across very badly. So I think I should link to Kevin’s excellent post about the “Twitter Controversy”. In these days of “civility enforced” blogs it’s worth remembering that day to day civility is less about death threats and swearing and more about listening and respect.