With any plan, you set goals.

Well, I do anyway. Not sure about you.

In fact, every day when I wake up and swing into action (i.e. making the kids lunches, getting them breakfast and then taking them to school) I come back to our apartment and start my 5 hours of work before I set off to pick the kids back up from school again. 

I have a very short 5 hour window of 'getting stuff done'.

As soon as I sit down with coffee on hand, I print out my daily task list and write down my daily tasks that need to be accomplished that will get me closer to my medium and long term goals.

If you like you can download my task list here. It's not particularly interesting nor high tech, but it works for me and has been a successful 'habit' for many years. It keeps...

Today was my last visit to Yowa in Shenzen for a little while. Hopefully I'll be back again early in the New Year - it's a really fun and dynamic place.

Raymond and I spent a couple of hours working through some of the shipping details so NRR (the freight forwarding company) will receive the cargo properly in Hong Kong before it's exported to Amazon FBA in the United States and my colleague Paula, Australia.

While Raymond worked the phones to NRR in Hong Kong (Raymond speaks and reads 5 languages fluently, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, English and Portuguese - amazing!) I went to the warehouse with Sunny and Danny to inspect the shipments and make sure everything is going where it's supposed to.

It's looking good. We're on schedule.

Here are some photos of today's visit.

Above: Just some of the cartons ready to ship to Amazon...

This morning I got up quite early and caught the MTR (Mass Transit Railway) from Hong Kong to the Shenzen border-crossing at Lo Wu. I caught up with Raymond (who owns the factory where the Hibermate is being assembled and packaged) and then went across into Shenzen.

It was a really fun day where we finalised everything concerning shipments to Amazon's FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon) warehouses/centers in the United States.

Our Amazon Shipping Plan will see about 2,400 Hibermates in 6 colours go to 3 different FBA warehouses in California, Indiana and Pennsylvania. The balance of the production run will be shipped to Melbourne, Australia which will handle the domestic (Australian) and international orders from this website for the next few months at least.

I have no idea whether the Hibermate will be a success on Amazon so we've sent a small amount from this production run to 'test the waters' and see.

I've been very lucky this year.

Late last year my wife accepted a new role with a large Australian telecommunications company in Hong Kong. After nearly 8 years, I resigned from my full time day job as the General Manager of a digital search agency in Melbourne, Australia.

We packed up the house, the kids and ourselves and relocated to one of the most amazing cities in the world.

The best thing about being here in Hong Kong as a "trailing spouse" meant that for the first time, for as long as I can remember, I actually had enough quality time on my hands to focus solely on 2 things, 1. my family 2. my own business, and by extension, the product itself, doing my utmost to make it better.

The other great thing was that while most of the Hibermate components were manufactured...

When you're designing and building a new product from scratch, you hit some bumps along the way...

Shortly after we had completed manufacturing the new Hibermate in November 2013 and started sending them out to thousands of expectant Kickstarter backers the feedback came flying in thick and fast. In the first 24 - 48 hours the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. But soon afterwards much of the feedback turned really negative and the negativity began to feed on itself. It made for pretty tough reading.

Kickstarter backers can be pretty harsh! It's a wonderful platform, but it's also a double edged sword. If you try and kickstart your idea and you fail to meet some people's expectations, they'll come after you with a vengence.

I think many backers forget, Kickstarter is not Amazon.

Personally I didn't handle it well at all, I'd worked very hard to bring a brand new product to market and, if you've ever...

By Chris Thomas

The wearable craze show no sign of slowing down. In fact it may be just the beginning. Sales of activity tracking 'wearables' are tipped to exceed $US1.5 Billion this year according Kevin Tillmann, senior research analyst for the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA); this is up 35% on last year.

Looking at Google trends, I'd say it might have a bit further to run:

And of course, when it comes to sleep there are no shortage of gadgets and sleep wearables designed to help you record and understand your sleeping patterns every night of the week.

Whilst I haven't personally tried any yet, I'm looking at the Jawbone Up, Misfit Shine and the Continue Reading »

By Chris Thomas

It's an age-old question, why do we sleep? It is an odd phenomenon, especially when you consider how vulnerable we are when we're sleeping. From an evolutionary perspective it doesn't really make a lot of sense! There have been countless theories over the years as to why we sleep. However, several news outlets have recently reported a new 'sleep theory' which concludes that we sleep simply to allow the brain to cleanse itself of toxins built up from a day of activity (thinking!).

Just like our bodies' Lymphatic System cleans waste from the by-products of exercise, the theory is that the brain also cleans itself during sleep, so we wake up with a clear head ready for normal waking activity.

What scientists have discovered is that the fluid-filled spaces between brain-cells swell from about 5% during awake...

By Chris Thomas

We like sleep. A lot. and we do a lot of research about sleep.

Here's one of the best compilations of interesting facts about sleep we've stumbled across...

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/science/sleep/facts.htm

• The average human will spend 1/3 or their life sleeping, which equates to about 20 - 25 years over 75 Year life span
• The record for the longest period without sleep is 18 days, 21 hours, 40 minutes during a rocking chair marathon. The record holder reported hallucinations, paranoia, blurred vision, slurred speech and memory and concentration lapses.
• It's impossible to tell if someone is really awake without close medical supervision. People can take cat naps with their eyes open without even being aware of it.
• Anything less than five minutes to fall asleep at night means you're sleep deprived. The ideal is between 10 and 15 minutes,...