nathan bentley's personal playground...

I’ve left this one kinda late to be honest… If I hadn’t been so darned busy with other, less fun stuff, like work, the gym and lugging bags up and down stairs for my flatmate (we live 4 flights up - no lift - Peter owes me big time for helping him move), I’d have gotten my act together and probably have had a better chance at getting 25 comments to allow me to enter the Carsonified Golden Ticket competition.

The Golden Ticket for those of you that don’t know, is a Willy Wonka style offering from Ryan Carson over at the ever awesome Carsonified - write a blog post about why you want to win the Golden Ticket, get 25  or more comments and enter the prize draw.

Anyway, being that I’ve left it so long, I’ll cut straight to the point… Why I’m craving the Golden Ticket.

I’ve worked in the t’interweb business for 10 years now, and have managed to keep it a passion (if anything, it’s become more of a passion - I guess I’m lucky that I’ve got a job I enjoy so much). However, for as long as I can remember, I’ve been surrounded by people who, despite working in this awesome industry, just seem to lack the passion for it. When I dashed over to FOWA London last year, I felt at home in a sea of people passionate about what they do - and better still, what the possiblities that lay ahead are.

To be fair, in my time I’ve been lucky enough to work with some wonderful passionate people - but those individuals are few and far between. Maybe, just maybe, with the chance to get amongst others who feel the same way as I do, the smile on my face that I bring back at the end of the day (not to mention the photos, videos and mountains of goodies), may inspire some of the other I work with to consider this wonderful web as more than just a 9 til 5. (*ahem* 9 til 6 if you’re a Londoner like myself).

There’s a small and slightly personal note to this post - my intentions aren’t completely selfless… For the past few months I’ve been working on a side project that will hopefully one day soon blossom into a fully fledged webapp. Work has been flagging with the torrent of stuff that has taken my time up over the past 4 weeks, but I’m hoping that with a bit of inspiration, some serious networking, and of course, a few friendly faces to bounce ideas of, it may just come to fruition.

Spare a second to comment if you can. I’ll be eternally grateful!

Nath.

Things have been a bit hectic of recent.  In the past month, I’ve changed jobs, been to 5 leaving do’s, moved my flatmate out my house, moved a new flatmate in, joined and consistantly visited the gym, and even managed to cram in a paintballing session (for which I have the bruises to prove).

Of course, something has had to have given in the midst of this - and the two biggest victims of this have been my blog and my 365 photo gallery - both of which are looking decidedly neglected.  Spurred on by a recent twitter by Mel Kirk I’ve decided to try an rectify this…  Hopefully over the next few weeks you’ll see a marked increase in my t’interweb related output.

Like a New Years resolution, I feel this might be a bit of a pipe dream, however, I’m determined to give it a go… wish me luck!

Having only recently changed jobs, it occurred to me that now would be an ideal time to post about a topic that’s been on my mind for a long time - stress in the workplace.

After 10 years of working in the web-industry, I’ve come to realise that a lot of factors can contribute to stress levels.  From personal experience, I’ve worked the 80 - 120 hours a week to get projects live, sat in offices that are almost arctic (once in a datacentre where the manager would turn the air con to polar settings, and once for a company that worked in a warehouse with no real heating), and have even experienced stress being caused by not having enough work to do (boredom can be a surprising stress inducer).

I thought long and hard about how I could distill the above down to a concise point…  Thankfully, it turns out I didn’t have to.  About 3 months ago, during a conversation with Paul Lomax about the stresses and strains of daily life, he came out with a line that struck a perfect chord.

“Stress for me is caused by the inability for one to change their environment.”

I’m paraphrasing the above by the way.  My poor stress addled brain wasn’t up to much on that day (hence the conversation), but you get the gist.  The more I thought about it, the more it made sense.  If I was cold, I’d turn the heating on - problem solved.  Of course, if I couldn’t, then my concerns about one day being excavated out of a block of ice would have added to my daily stress.

The theory works well in almost any situation.  Today for instance, I spent hours trying to get a DNS change sorted - something that I once would have done myself in minutes, now has to be handled by another part of the company, emails sent, red tape ploughed through, taking time, effort and having a knock on effect to my working day.  By lunchtime, I was ready to stab someone with a fork.

Stress affects us all in different ways - I’ve seen numerous people (including myself) have stress manifest itself in rashes, IBS, heart palpitations, all the way through to full blown rage attacks and nervous breakdowns.  It’s not a pretty sight - and is a situation that could so easily be prevented.

Empower your staff to change the environment they work in - whether it be something little like decorating the office so they feel comfortable, or something major, like letting them have a say in how the business is run.  After all, few people actively want to make life harder for themselves - you may find that the recommendation someone makes about how to make their life easier makes your life easier too - it might even make you more profitable.

In the course of writing this post, I was interrupted a stack of times by the ringing of my phone, and numerous times by people asking me “a quick question”.  Tomorrow, I’ll be turning off my phone for lunch, and enjoying the park, weather permitting.