I really haven’t been following Robert Scoble for very long.

Last week I started following all of the top 25 Twitterers found on Twitterholic.

It took a post from Jason Calacanis to even get me to Scoble’s blog today.

On his blog, Scoble basically said that most of the websites showcasing at DEMO 2008 pretty much suck. (DEMO 2008 is a show for startup web companies.) Anyone even remotely interested in marketing on the web needs to read this post right now.

Startups Your Web Site Sucks

Once you’re done, click on to the next post that says “Scoble Sucks“, too. I want you to see the kind of heat Robert Scoble got for speaking his mind. And most importantly — I want you to see how he handles the heat. This is a really great example about how to properly keep the conversation going.

Anyway, alot of the ’startup community’ is pissed at him for saying those sites sucked - some even saying things along the lines of “I thought you were our guy” or “I thought you had our back” or whatever.

Man, the ‘Scoble Haters’ are totally missing the freaking point!

From where I sit — Robert Scoble just did those Startups a huge freaking favor. He pretty much gave them harsh hyper-critical advice that’s probably worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to them if they quickly put it into action. Hell, you can’t even buy this type of criticism.

Alright. Go read those two posts now and when you’re done reading the two Scoble posts, I’d really love to hear what you think. Let me know your thoughts on this.

Harris Fellman
The Weekly Buzz

About a year ago I read 4 Hour Work Week, by Tim Ferris, for the first time. It motivated me to take a look at my business and my life. It truly inspired me to look at the things I was spending my time on and do more fun things. Do things I enjoyed doing, etc., etc.

You can see this video here from 11 months ago where I go to the zoo w/ my kids and talk about taking them to Barcelona for a month. And, yes, as I mentioned in the youtube video above, I’m still a strong believer that you should use your kids as reason, and not as an excuse. A reason to be healthy, a reason to have fun. Not the excuse to stay away from exercise, lay around the house, never travel.

Oh, and you can see some pictures & blog posts of that month-long trip to Barcelona on http://www.havekidsstilltravel.com and there’s even some videos here on the blog somewhere.

At any rate - that’s all good. But let me tell you how 4HWW F&$*#’d me up.

I cut out parts of my business that I actually enjoyed. I viewed them as time consuming for the return and didn’t want to ‘need to do them to survive’. I’ve focused more on income streams that develop recurring income. And I’ve got a great little team of people that I give many of my rote tasks to. Honestly, the recurring income is still under development … but it’s in motion.

This is all good and well, but half the time I’m bored out of my freakin’ mind!!! If it were 100% up to me, I would try to just travel the world for a year; but my wife won’t buy in to the idea right now. She’s 30 and let’s just say I didn’t marry her because of her “Susie Homemaker” qualities. Andrea is great at a lot of things, wants to feel productive, and deserves to be able to pursue whatever she wants to pursue. (Hint: she does not want to pursue a life of following Harris around the world with 2 toddlers in tow.)

Don’t get me wrong, we travel plenty - small trips right now since we just  moved to Scottsdale, AZ from Minneapolis … unpacked, big house, checkin’ out the area, etc. So, we haven’t done any big trips since last October. But that’s fine.

My point is this — what’s the point of lowering your workload, if you don’t do anything <b>FUN</b> with your free time??

I certainly figured out that if you make a BIG GOAL (a mini retirement as described in 4HWW), it certainly does give you energy. But the bigger idea that I missed was this:

If there are things that I truly enjoy doing inside of my business, I should keep doing them! Don’t cut ‘em out just because they’re time consuming or don’t have as big of a direct ROI. Do ‘em for the pure enjoyment of doing them. Sure, a brotha’s gotta pay the bills — but a little while ago, I really was very close to bliss - having fun in my business, making kick-ass money doin’ it, and travelling quite a bit.

So, I’m turning over a new leaf. A year after 4 Hour Work Week, I hereby don’t mind if I have a 40 hour work week as long as I’m enjoying it. (And I think this actually *is* part of what Ferris was trying to say as well — DO WHAT FEEDS YOUR SOUL.) Hell, I don’t care if I’m “working” 80 hours as long as 76 of those hours are fun!

So, those of you that have been following me for a while - thus starts another chapter in Harris Fellman trying to define to himself what works best for him. Maybe some will work for you, maybe not. Thanks for stickin’ around - get ready for some more “Fun Harris” real soon.

Comments always welcome.

Harris Fellman

P.S. I just started on twitter — follow me if ya want: http://twitter.com/harrisfellman