Optimizing Time

We´ve all been there – those situations where you somewhat almost feel confronted by something you´re more than clueless about, yet decide to push your luck…after all, we have the capabilities to learn.  A few hours later, or in the case of Die Hards, days later, we end up with a million pieces of something we can´t remember where it fits in. 

Now I totally agree with doing that, me myself have taken VCR players, radios & computers apart, even attempted modifying my xhtml and also opened the car´s bonnet. I´ve spent so many hours exploring the unknowns, some items I could put back to it´s original conditions and other´s…well, ended up in recycling.

I may have learnt a number of things throughout experimenting with foreign objects or doing things unfamiliar to me, BUT I have learnt one thing in particular that stands out above all and still repeat it to myself whenever I find myself in that moment:

OPTIMIZE YOUR TIME

There´s a very famous expression that has been tweaked recently:

“IF YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING PROPERLY, DO NOT DO IT YOURSELF”.

This basically boils down to the fact of “time” where maximising it is imperative. Successful people all around the world have clearly figured this out, deliberately concentrating on tasks they are most productive in – and outsourcing the ones they are less so. There´s no need to spread ourselves thin.

I have quite a few trades below the belt, however it makes sense to outsource those I´m hopeless at if my time can be better spent focusing on something else. (In this case electronics for instance:-) 

So, my advice would be to save yourself some valuable time so keep calm and phone the professionals!

Stylish Wallpaper!

Before we go on I need to stress one thing: Black wallpaper is remarkably stylish if you choose the right pattern/design, this was a beautiful imported pattern.. However there are a few downsides technically - as well as upsides obviously. Truth is, seeing it´s a solid black, it´s likely to be very possible to see any other colored specs - in most cases only common dust. If you live in a city, be prepared to at least dust off the paper from time to time. The upside is if you´ve got contrast furniture, in this case white or so - it looks spectacular! Ages ago, an interior design shop in Bcn (DOM) had a very similar exhibition and I imagined my place decorated like that :-)
This was a 3x4m job, which I had to strip off the current fibre glass paper, scrape and smooth wall, plaster a few sections (which was obviously the reason why the builders chose to paper in the 1st place) and re-paper the wall. A great choice only doing one wall due to the color, as if more walls had been chosen - it would´ve made the appartment look very small. A record time of less than 3 hours to do everything in proper satisfactory condition.
"inner thought - I want my own wall like this..!"

Wallpaper

If there´s wallpaper involved, well most of the time I get asked to remove it, but recently I had a few projects to remove and re-paper a few places. (Yes, a few places were painted not to make it feel "too much".) With a fair bit of imagination, great subtle results could be achieved and the results were as expected. Here are a few examples!