I have been free from my corporate shackles for over six months now, and one of the biggest challenges I have come across is focus. When I left Avanade my immediate goal was to get to work on Visual Studio Hacks, as well as consulting. With the book done I find myself thinking about where I want to be as an independent in five years. I see the folllowing options:
1) Writing - This is something I definitely want to continue. To put it simply I love writing and books in general. The downsides are that it is time-consuming and is on the low end of the scale for monetary compensation.
2) Consulting - Consulting is the big money maker as well as being the one thing that keeps me in touch with the real world. When you drop consulting you quickly loose touch with what it is like out there, and start sounding like the Microsoft docs.
3) Software Development - This is what I have been thinking about lately. I want to create a product. I have been making lists of software ideas and hope to choose something in the next couple months and then start working on it in my spare time. I think this has the potential to be very time-consuming, and is also risky since it is impossible to tell what the monetary gains will be if anything.
4) Training - This is something I have been thinking about, but I don't have alot of experience with. I did some training while with Dell, but it has been quite a few years. I have been working with a local training company to do a one day seminar so I can try it out and see what I think. I think the nice thing about training is that I could do a couple weeks here or there without the long-term commitment of these other areas.
5) Speaking - This is almost expected of authors. Speak at conferences, user groups, and such. I have done some speaking, but I am not sure if it is something I want to do a ton more of.
So, over the last couple months I have been thinking about how I want to balance all of these things and what I want to focus on, and it has not been easy. I think trying to do all of these things would only result in being mediocre in all of them. Instead I want to try and pick 2-3 of them to focus on. I think I will have a better idea on what I want to do after trying my hand at software development, the key is just to find the time to do that between all the rest.
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