The View From The Crow's Nest

Romeo Crow
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@RomeoCrow | RomeoCrow.me Distracting my monkey brain by sharing the thoughts, ideas, strategies and tools as they go through my head each day! They could be related to my current projects in music, fiction, film or photography, or my business interests, family and worldschooling our kids, travelling or anything else that springs to mind!

  1. 14/02/2021

    The View From The Crow's Nest | 21-02-14

    Welcome to Episode 218 of my podcasts The view from the crow's nest and it is Sunday the 14th Valentine's Day is may 14 February 2021. And today I wanted to share with you an idea that kind of stems from, do what you can with what you have right now which is a motto that I have that I've tried to stick to over the years. And in this particular example it's about something really simple, go home for a walk and effectively what it's about is, we often want to do things with our lives in our lives and I'm sure you felt this way about many things, but you just don't have the time and you know you'd like to fit that in at some point, if we imagine our future perfect lives or where we're heading to, we think yes and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that and blah blah blah. And the problem is, it never happens. And the reason it never happens is because we don't make it a habit. Now, by doing what we can with what we have right now so if one habit is, or if you want to have the life in the future where you think it will be lovely and then, you know, in this particular case, we'll go out to lovely walks in the countryside etc etc. You may not live in the countryside maybe only they have a park near you. Maybe you don't even have that maybe, you know, there's just, you know, just houses near you blocks or whatever. But it's no it's almost never the case that one transitions from not doing something ever to it being a permanent fixture of their life normally it's steps to get there, and a case in point was today you know we were saying, Be nice go for a walk and blah blah blah but they said the other. And then it just came in after lunch and say, Look, let us go out for a walk. Now, let's get in the car drove five minutes, 10 minutes maybe tops and just go for a walk like off a side road kind of thing so we did and we went up a side street or side road and that kind of led us into the foothills of the mountains, and we had a really nice walk and it was blowing snow into us it was icy icy cold, but the four of us had a really nice walk. And again, it didn't have to be a big thing we only went in the end it was probably about an hour and tops, but we're only planning to go for about 20 minutes one way 20 minutes walk the other way and soon enough. It was an hour. But the point being, rather than thinking some big expedition or it's got to be this big thing or it's got to be there or we have to pick the route or this study other, it was simply a case of just find a place nearby a gun, have a walk. Now we're fortunate because we live in Castroville Erie where we're very close to the mountains but when we're in London, we were right in the centre of London and there's no countryside there you know so you go for a walk in the park. And we were missing, not having a park near us when we were in sa Ischia for seven months to the lockdown. But then you walk through the streets and actually there are some nice streets in Ischia so the point being that you find whatever you can. You do what you can with what you have right now. And you start building, whatever it is that you want to do, into, you know, a proper portion of your life into a habit into a routine. And from there, of course, as you move as your circumstances change you can expand on that habit you can expand on that part of your routine in your schedule. But if it's not already there it's going to be very difficult to start it. Just overnight and make it a substantial part of what you're doing. So the whole point I guess of today's podcast is think about the things that you're not doing that you'd like to do, and consider how can you start them even, even if it's just 10 minutes in a day. How can you start them in the smallest viable way the minimum viable product, something which we'll talk about in another podcast but that's an idea from the Lean Startup side of business but basically it pretty much just means, what's the least the smallest thing simplest thing you can do to

    6 min

  2. 13/02/2021

    The View From The Crow's Nest | 21-02-13

    I was just thinking about work and taking time off, and that, you know, constant chase to have balance in one's doing. So we've sheduled recently we've scheduled every Friday nights family movie night. And now we also doing every Saturday night is family games No, and I had. It's Friday now and I had a couple of client calls this afternoon, and I was really adamant that I was needed to get off the phone because it's family movie night. And so, I put that limitation in with the client I said, Look, I've got to get off at this time blah blah blah I didn't exactly tell him why but, you know, make this happen. And it was making me think about Parkinson's Law, and if you've not heard of Parkinson's Law before it's an adage that work expands to fill the available time for its completion. And it basically means that, you know, you use it if anybody's ever studied anything and you've got exams you generally cram, you know, right to the end of your exam time or, you know, if you've got four weeks to do a project, then you'll still be working on that project right up to the end of the fourth week, whereas if you've got two weeks to do probably exactly the same project you get it done in two weeks. And we've all done that you know when you've. When we had to pack our house. Remember when we had to move, you know, we knew we were moving at least I know a month or more months before that we're moving but we literally the night before we move and we found ourselves doing most of the packing, and we were still packing on the day we were moving. Equally, when we only had kind of 24 hours 48 hours to do the packing we did it, you know we got it done it was haphazard and also over tip, but we got it done. So, it's made really making me think, well, what is Parkinson's Law suggests, it suggests that the less time that you have, you're still going to get the stuff done the less, the more time constraints you put on yourself, you'll still get the work done or at least the important stuff. It might be rough around the edges. It might not be as smooth as you'd like but it will be done, and recently I've been thinking a lot about you know Seth Godin talks about shipping, you know, you've got to crate and ship the work it's no good just creating it you've got to get it out there. And it's better to get it out and get it done. Then, you know, get it perfect. And today, I was listening to a podcast of the co founder of Netflix and he was talking about how originally they were doing a B testing, which is where you have an idea that something might work better so you create an experiment to test that against what you've already got so A is what you've got beers what you're testing against. And they said, he said at the beginning, it would take them two weeks to design an A B split test a split test on something, because they made it really perfect. And then they got that down to one week and then they got it down to, you know, a few days Then one day, and then in the end they were doing four or five tests a day. And he absolutely, you know credits that with one of their major reasons why they became successful, and he was said that the tests that they were doing were terrible in the punctuation the grammar would be wrong they'd have watermarks on photos and have the wrong photos. And he said, but what it allowed them to do is, it didn't matter how bad the, the periphery was, it was the crux of the idea and getting out there it's the same principle. So when they gave themselves less time to do the split testing they actually got far better results because they got to the point much more quickly, and one of his ideas was you know as soon as you've got an idea to do something get out there however rough it is you know test it, test it in the real world, straight away. And this is really making me think, you know, protecting these this work life balance trying to, for me personally trying to find more time for the family and whatnot. I'm not getting through a

    12 min

  3. 12/02/2021

    The View From The Crow's Nest | 21-02-12 | Complain, Comply or Crusade

    In our building in Castroville Hurry, it's a communal apartment block. And there are very set times to put different types of rubbish out different types of trash. And there are like three or four different bins of maybe five bins you know glass paper, etc. And you have to put them out certain times, and if you don't put them out at the, at the right times then letters come through people complain. It's really annoying, but that's fair enough. And then, the problem is the who that the bins the communal bins are really, really small. So they like they're not big enough for blocks of apartments with lots of people living in them. And the person in charge of the apartment block would say that if you can't leave rubbish in bags outside of the bins, next to the bins they have to fit in the bins or you don't leave them there at all. And if you have rubbish outside then the council will find him. And when we said to him, why don't you get bigger bins he says I can't because the council supply the bins. So this is ridiculously stupid situation you know the bins are too small, they don't get all the rubbish but you can't leave the rubbish outside and if you're not quick enough to get there when the bins, when it's the right thing day for that particular bin, then everybody else has filled it up and you've got no chance. And it was just making me think about this idea this concept of crusade or comply, because you get really annoyed about it, and it's very easy to get annoyed about situations like this or other situations. And at the end of the day, you really actually only have two choices, you can either comply with it and do what you're meant to be doing. Or you can actually crusade against it and I don't mean complain because this was three choices really it's crusade complain or comply comply. You just fit in with what has to be done you know it's the cost of living wherever you're living it's the cost of doing business wherever you're doing business complaining gets you absolutely nowhere but annoys you and really takes it on board and gives you you know changes your mood and changes your viewpoint on on where you're feeling at the moment and he's just a complete waste of energy. But the other one is crusade. If you care about it enough, then you must do something about it but not complain actually do something about it, you know, be that person that makes the change in the council be that person that makes the change in the community, or whatever it is that you're that you're, you know that you're fighting against so to speak, whatever it is that you want to make better. So, it just made me think there's yeah three choices actually not to really, I just automatically discount complaining but it's crusade complain, or comply. Or maybe complain comply Crusade, maybe put it that way. There's just no thought that came to me and I wanted to share it with you, you know, when next time something bothers you decide which of those three that you really want to do complaining i think is useless complying might be the best option because at the end of the day it might not just be worth hassling about just, you know, fall into line and get on with it. And in other ways you might want a crusade. And that is, you know, that could be your own art you know making a career out something you really care about, or you know whatever it is the new product that you're building within your company or whatever it is. So, comply complain, or crusade. So that idea for you. Hope you find that useful.

    7 min

  4. 11/02/2021

    The View From The Crow's Nest | 21-02-11

    Welcome to Episode 215 of my podcast The view from crow's nest, and it is Thursday. The something of something. Thursday the 11th of February, 2021. Today was an enforced day off from the point of view, we had to take Mina to get dental X ray, but the if we without waiting one month to get one in the local hospital. We had to travel to the main city in the region, which is an hour and a half away. And it also happens to be the main city where my driving licence is in the process of being changed over from British to an Italian one. And we did that in November. And they were like, yep, come back and see us we give you a piece of paper that will let you drive for the next couple of months, come back and see us at the end of that. Can you tell us if the licence is ready, no no no you just have to come and see us. Okay, so we queued there for an hour and a half at the motor place and they said no, it's not not been done. So we'll give you another extension for a month and then you come back and see us again and see if it's been done, classic Italian stylee. Fortunately, the guy was very kind and actually gave us a three month, piece of paper. So now we can go anytime next three months that was good, then we took Mina to the hospital and or the the scanning clinic, and she was very anxious very worried about having a scan that she hasn't had an X ray done before. And she's had a couple of experiences with doctors, or such that has meant that she's, she's rather fearful of the situation so it took us nigh on three hours to kind of get her to into the room and then get her to take the scan and blah blah and then she conquered her fear, and that was really really cool because, you know, it's easy for me it's a lesson for myself as well you know it's easy to look at something and say well that's just simple or easy just get on with it. But of course, whatever that is, if one is fearful of it, then that's it, they're fearful of it there's not a problem there. What's the challenge is, can that person overcome that fear and get it done anyway and, you know, and do it, not, not you know get not ignore the fear not get rid of the fear fear is good to healthy in a lot of places, but to conquer it, you know, to overcome it is a real boost to self and we can really see that Mina really was pleased with our achievement once you kind of got over it and obviously you know anyone who's ever had an X ray knows that there is nothing to it. So she was never in any danger from our point of view, but from her point of view, you know, it was a scary thing. So that was good and Leonardo was very very patient the whole way through. Despite it being boring as can be. We played whilst we're waiting and it was all good. The net result was that by the time we got back home it was like three in the afternoon or something for nearly three I think, and I did some work for an hour or so a couple hours for a client, as mid speed to it, five, and then we couldn't, but that's basically was my day. But there was something that I read today that has really resonated with me. And I just finished reading yesterday I just finished reading a book called The magic of thinking big by somebody I can't remember. I think it's Dr. Schwartz but I could be completely wrong there. And this is I think it's 1959 book, I'd heard of it. I'd never come across it particularly or read it but I read it. I think brilliant book, and well worth everybody reading it, it goes straight up to one of the best books I think I've read, full of practical advice, but no fluff and No. You know no over egging the pot. Just a really good book it I think it really lays out some, some good wisdom, basically and age old wisdom about the magic of thinking big but you know just about how to improve oneself so I highly recommend that book. The next book I started reading last night was Seth Golden's new newish or new book, I think, called things called the practice, create and ship work, or something like tha

    15 min

  5. 10/02/2021

    The View From The Crow's Nest | 21-02-10

    Welcome to Episode 214 of my podcasts The view from the crow's nest. It is Wednesday the 10th of February, 2021. For the second night in a row. I fell asleep around about midnight. And I was so tired, yesterday. Because midnight now is late late for me, whereas it might have been normal. A little while ago now though, waking it sort of six and getting up 630 to seven midnight is now starting to be late. And last night I was in bed at 930 really tired, just falling asleep and the next door neighbor's making a racket until basically like 11 or whatever and couldn't sleep. And, which was really frustrating. So I woke up this morning and I was just I had zero motivation and no energy I just couldn't face, doing stuff. It took me a good while to get out of bed. And then our training this morning with Abdel he'd put it back a couple hours which isn't like him but that's fine. So it was going to be at 10 o'clock rather than eight o'clock, which meant that kind of the whole morning is, you know, it was easy to kind of just not really do much this morning so the morning disappeared although we did train so that was good, and then a bit of energy after that had lunch, as much energy after that. And then as I really must do some work so I've plotted myself and got a few bits done stuff for clients, predominantly. So it was a pretty nothing, a day, really. And tomorrow we are out more or less for the day. We have to go and then go to travel to the main city in the region to get some admin stuff done because Italy is kind of another day which can be frustrating but equally. I realised this morning, aside from the late night last night. Really, I think it's because again I've done a kind of like 1014 or days or whatever of working. And though I've taken much more time off in the last couple of weeks in terms of resting in the afternoons. I've had really intense mornings. And, again, just not left the house not gone out and I think my body was saying well you need some, some time off dude you need to kind of just chill. Ideally, leave the house and go somewhere but there's not really too many places to go the minute actually that's that's a cop out there are places we can go into the mountains or whatever. Well, I can't get there my licence but my driver's licence but that's part of where we're going tomorrow, maybe I'll get my driver's licence or maybe I'll get a piece of paper telling me I have to come back within a month. And they might have it ready by then, so we'll soon find out. But yeah, again, I think just time off, so important, it's just a reminder, you gotta chill out a few times. Occasionally, apparently, so they say. So that's it, not really much to report. I did do my vocal practice today and then again played the set through the. My EP they come and go I rain play those six songs through, and I'm trying to get them up to being able to perform live as a set because they'll probably be the first kind of set that I stopped playing. Certainly, to try and get me out performing again but also I'm intending to do sort of online concert, concerts, and since this is the EP that I've got out at the moment. This is the one that I'll make sense to be concentrating on. So, I will recorded that did try to play them all through in Mongo and Leonardo came in the plasma track and was dancing about in front of them. So that's, whether I do anything with that video or not it's definitely a lovely video at least for us. So it's nice to have a fan. So yeah, that's the view from the crow's nest, not much to report. If you've got anything to report then you can find me on Twitter at Romeo Crow, or you can go to Romeo crow.com slash podcast and leave a voicemail on the show. short and sweet today thanks for listening and I will be back tomorrow Toodle Pip.

    4 min

  6. 09/02/2021

    The View From The Crow's Nest | 21-02-09

    Welcome to Episode 213 of my podcasts The view from the crow's nest. And it is Tuesday ninth of February 2021. Today was good, because I actually managed to start work I think it's seven o'clock and woke up around six and then go I bet half six started work at seven o'clock, and actually managed to fit in the first hour was writing. So working on my screenplay one night in Soho the second draft of my screenplay. And it's a bit of a psychological barrier to get started as it often is you know starting the hardest thing restarting. And I noticed the last time I opened it was 25th of September last year so it's taken me like four months just to open the script, but I did it, and I spent an hour and it was good I made good progress I went through about a third of the script, doing the edits that I wanted to do, basically just the dialogue really capital plot points I need to just move, I could make better. Yeah, made the pay off a bit better later in the film, or in the script but yeah that was good and then after that, I was on music. And finally, I discovered something so exciting for me at least. There's a thing in music so I'm working on a song called take what you want, I think, from my album, a blind eye to love. And there's, there's two types of entry for music, if you will. One of them is analogue or acoustic instruments which you might plug in and play and they're recorded as like waveforms you might have seen them they're the kind of things that go up and like a wave that goes up and down showing the sound, and the other type is called MIDI and MIDI is just all it is is information basically on or off and media itself doesn't make any noise but the information in it, and triggers sounds in other things that are usually digital can be analogue as well but. So with MIDI you have huge control over where you place those notes and you can make the computer divide up in a bar of music perfectly into whatever divisions you want and place those notes exactly etc. And there's a thing called quantize, which is where you basically just press a button on the computer and it will automatically move the MIDI notes to the timings that you want so all of a sudden if you play a bit sloppy as I often do with things like piano. If I've done it in MIDI, then I can straighten it up so it sounds more rhythmically correct. Today I discovered. There's a same functionality for audio for like, if I plugged in a guitar and I'm playing something I can basically just press a button and it will move it into time. And that's a bit of a revelation for me I never knew I could do that. I don't know what version of the software I use they started that it might have been six years ago and I didn't even realise, but said that was very exciting because basically what it means is, I can take the bass guitar, the electric guitars, and the MIDI parts cables etc and I can make them all really locked together. So they sound much more tight, is exactly the word. So, that was a great discovery huge discovery, I cannot over overstate the discovery of hugeness that that was basically finished the drums, so more or less now I've got the, the bed track. The original bed track done. And now I'm going to with the next couple of sections sessions add other sounds and instruments into it to give you a bit more depth and width and interest and whatnot. But that should be fairly swift now so hopefully that track will be done pretty soon ready for the vocals, and then I'll only have I think one or two more tracks on the album to do. And then the vocals for the wall, but, you know, it's getting there. So again, my process one hour on the writing was great one hour on the music that was great. Then I had a tonne of where the time went actually but then I had, you know, client work and stuff. And I worked through till two o'clock. Didn't get as far into the work as I'd want to you know there's still stuff that's pressing client stuff. And I feel like it's just a constant thing w

    7 min

  7. 08/02/2021

    The View From The Crow's Nest | 21-02-08

    Welcome to Episode 212 of my podcasts review from the crow's nest and it is Monday the eighth of February, 2021, at about five to 10 in the evening. Today Monday first day of the week but also very importantly, another day, kind of trying to work towards our new structure our new. It wasn't perfect today but it was better than yesterday and I think my gut says we actually Finally I think finding something that's going to work, to tick all the boxes home, family, work, etc. and started the day off with training with Abdel. And it was, it was actually a bit of an easier session for me but it was, I think a bit easier because someone has not had like a week and a half off or so so we're gonna ease back into it, but nonetheless I had a good sweat on so it wasn't so easy, but it's a good way to start the day had a shower. One of the things that we've we've done. I've been doing for about I guess a week or so is instead of dressing in, you know, jogging trousers and cheap t shirts from Primark I've actually put on jeans nice enough trousers and a nice shirt and actually kind of dressed up for the day put on a bit of aftershave, even though I know that I'm not going to see anybody other than the family because they don't leave the house and they're the only people here. You know, part of this kind of, I think. Recently, I mean it's been happening for about six months or so but certainly in the last month it's really accelerated this focus on planning for the future and you know new goals and whatnot. And what we realised is 10, years ago, we sumana and I were working together towards these goals we were both striving towards them and we pretty much achieved it achieve what was the main goal that we set out to, which was to be able to live anywhere because our income wasn't dependent on where we were living, and to be able to travel, bring up our kids homeschool them, and pretty much, you know we'd achieved that last year, then coronavirus came and destroyed our income stream so that was a bit of an annoyance. But, you know, we will get around that, that's fine. But we had kind of achieved it. And although we discussed some you know tentatively some other ideas for the future. We realised that, you know, middle of last year, whenever we really hadn't actually come up with what we're going to do for the next 510 years because that plan, more or less took us 10 years. So, this time around, I'd been thinking about the plan but Simona hadn't been so much because she was basically chronically sleep deprived because she puts so much time into the children and gets up multiple times during the night for the kids and gets up first thing in the morning for the kids, and had been staying up late spend time with me so it's a recipe for disaster and she didn't have the energy that she had previously. And a couple of weeks ago we had a discussion about it and it was that, that moment when, you know, not saying at all. She's an alcoholic, non alcoholic but that moment when you know you can't tell an alcoholic you need to sort yourself out. You need to stop drinking, there has to be the aha moment when they finally think and a few weeks ago so when I finally had the aha moment about needing to sleep more as simple as it sounds, and since then it's been a real switch. She's getting to bed earlier. She's getting more sleep she's more energetic she's more vivacious. And as a consequence, now we're more balanced we're thinking about the future. You know it's not just me trying to pull in one direction now it's the two of us working towards it and as a consequence, we've, I've definitely felt this renewed push towards you know making changes in it, and going after the new goal and the new goal. The next 10 year goal though, I would do it quicker than 10 years but the next big goal is to buy rather ambitious, it's a lifetime goal really but to buy our first house, which will be. I probably in or hopefully in Tuscany. In Italy, and the Tuscany region and b

    11 min

  8. 07/02/2021

    The View From The Crow's Nest | 21-02-07

    Welcome to Episode 211 of my podcasts The view from the crow's nest, and it is Sunday the seventh of February 2021, and it's been about three days since my last podcast, which I guess was would have probably been like Thursday or Friday is what three days is. Why is that why is that well around to it basically I were on a flex of. We're on a permanent flex actually Simona and I have tried to find the right balance. And I guess that's what everybody in life is trying to do trying to find the right balance between work and fat and leisure, or family life, but then within that there's family life being with the family with the kids, there's family life being you as a couple just you and your spouse if you go on or your partner. And then there's individual time, which may be stuff that is to do with work but also maybe stuff that is not to do with work, dare I say, and then work itself, certainly for me is quite a varied thing there's, you know, it goes from music to writing to photography to marketing to working with clients to other stuff. So, there's such a you know overlapping stuff going on that. It's always difficult to find the yeah the right back. I'm sorry, I just got distracted. I won't tell you what I got distracted with. I'm going to keep my eyes on the prize. And so, I'm sorry he's fighting it but I'm gonna have to go in the other room now. I'm walking past the kids bedroom. And they're asleep. Finally, yes. And so it's finding a balance between, you know, between everything and seminar always trying to work out a different way of doing things, a routine this or the other. And the thing that we definitely a weaker at is our routines sheduled sticking to them, etc. And they are so much at the core and more and more I realised how at the core of any kind of success in any kind of endeavour they are. So if you listen to my podcasts of a few days ago in the last week, so I've tried I've tried this new system so system and schedules those I think are the two key things, and the system I've been using is every day. I start working just on my music and then I go on to other things, hopefully after my music it's then marketing my own stuff. And then it's working with clients and other sort of stuff. And to, along with that I've been running a timer for an hour each time and pretty much sticking to it. So do an hour on my music then I'll do an hour on the hour, and I'm finding that this is really enabling me to get through stuff in a satisfactory way like I feel like I'm making progress, even though it's complete false summit mountains like every time I get anywhere. There's another summit to climb ahead and I think certainly thinking about as a creative songwriter or an author or what have you, there's always going to be more work to do, is literally there's no end in sight. But nonetheless, you know, working through stuff like that at least I'm getting through stuff and I'm actually closing in on finishing my album The blind eye to love and this kind of stuff. But that on its own isn't enough. We need the structure so that I can do homeschooling with the kids so that I can play with the kids so that I can spend time with smaller so we can get the housework done so Simona can have time for herself etc etc. So the last few days we've been talking a lot and starting to implement a new you know schedules and hopefully this time round, you know the schedule that we're trying we try once a couple of days and we need to tweak it we're tweaking it. And it's such kind of boring dull stuff and yet it's so fundamental to getting, I think, towards any real goals in life any success. That one wants. So yeah, that's been the last few days. And part of that and I guess we're having done the podcast the last couple of nights is because Friday nights is now family, or has been for few weeks but family movie night. And we watched. Watch Chronicles of Narnia. And on Friday. And then last night we had our inaugural family games night. So, we, w

    10 min
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Informació

@RomeoCrow | RomeoCrow.me Distracting my monkey brain by sharing the thoughts, ideas, strategies and tools as they go through my head each day! They could be related to my current projects in music, fiction, film or photography, or my business interests, family and worldschooling our kids, travelling or anything else that springs to mind!

Fitxa tècnica

  • Creació
    Romeo Crow
  • Anys en actiu
    2020 - 2021
  • Episodis
    218
  • Qualificació
    Apte
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    © Romeo Crow