Now that the tree's going crispy around the edges, rubber fish on plaques singing "take me to the river" are being re-gifted, and the salutation on every email and phone message is still 'Happy New Year", I've been reflecting on the need for a global greening of Christmas.
What's this to do with work/life? Unless you seal yourself in a tomb for the holidays, Christmas is a whole lotta work, and an inescapable part of life.
Santa comes but once a year (poor sod), but leaves a massive of carbon footprint in his sleigh-stream. All this buying, moving, eating, drinking, helloing, goodbyeing, air-kissing in exotic places ...
They tell us people bought less this year, less ka-chingle bells ringing at the tills of seasonal stalwarts like Coach and Target. (Mind you, I've never understood how a company like Coach can turn over those purses like cans of Trader Joe's black beans. How many of those C-backward-C beige jacquard bags can you tolerate in a year?)
To be fair, Santa's sleigh is still old skool and reindeer-powered, judging from all the advertising. I'm surprised I didn't see him in a Smartcar to avoid parking fines while making his deliveries, or an SUV to keep up with the soccer moms, or a Hyundai to get him from chimney to chimney faster, or a Prius to do it cleaner.
Fake Christmas trees, once par for the course for those with even less taste than money, are now sustainably hip, just like my Martin Pergo flooring guitar will be when Brazilian rosewood and mahogany become extinct.
In Eugene, Oregon, someone started a campaign to give only gifts that are pre-owned, meaning, pre-loved. It's a wonderful way to reduce your stuff while increasing that of others, maintaining The Universal Law of Conservation of Stuff. The exquisite taste and hard-earned cash with which you adopted that Lladro figurine of the shepherd boy with the long staff and the little lost lamb does not depreciate with age. If anything, it matures like a fine wine. So pack it up and pass it on.
One tradition I trashed long ago, is that of sending Christmas cards.
I'm not talking about a lovingly hand made, hand drawn card containing a personal poem or even better, a $50 note concealed inside. I'm not even talking about those tedious "Dear all", family update letters, which wax nauseatingly lyrical about the Me, Myself I, and my Dean's-listed offspring, while your Chad or Britney languishes on the other d-list or mugs a hapless train commuter.
Spurn the generic: I commissioned an illustrator friend, Justin Winslow, to commemorate the time I blackened peppers in the impeccable studio of a friend, threatening smoke damage to his valuable collection of architectural tomes. Nothing like an original card to say you're sorry!
I'm talking about the banal, once-a-year "Dear X, [insert Hallmark platitude here], from the Y family" hiding behind a bad picture of a candle, tree, sprig of holly or other cliché.
It would be far more honest and original to write, "Once again, I don't have any more time in my year for you than the 24 seconds it will take me to scribble, stamp and send this and even then I'm rushing to make the 5pm post. USPS you next year."
Instead, I want to promote an idea I call IP or "Impromptu Postcarding". Carry a small stack of 3x5 blank note cards, the kind from Staples, pre-postage stamped by you, in your bag. When you think of someone, scribble a quick note:
"Hey. Thought of you just now. Saw Rainier cherries on special and remembered your pie of Thanksgiving '67. What's new?"
Then fling it in the mailbox.
I carry a gluestick as well, because I read little snippets that make me think, "I should send that to X" I tear them out, stick it on an IP, and send it. It could be a Tootsie Roll wrapper that reminds me of the big party you threw with the giant piñata … so glue the wrapper to the card and say, "When are we going to do the piñata thing again?"
It could be a real estate ad that makes think, "Hey, move over near us so we can see each other more!" Tear it out, stick it down, write your truth and toss it in the mailbox.
It will create delight at the receiving end, because you are genuinely thinking of that person without a trite tradition to guilt you into it. The card will be kept as a bookmark, I guarantee it.
At work, we were faced with the onerous task of sending cards. I voted against the corporate Christmas card with staff signatures all over it. You couldn't be more impersonal and uninspiring, and it actually sends out the reverse message - unless the message includes a $50 note or the illustration vies with a Larson.
I'll let you in on an ABC (Australian Born Chinese) custom I had pummeled into me when I was a kid. It's called, "Give a gift, send a card."
Blame the Asian merchant mentality, but under no circumstance does one give a store-bought card, unless it has money in it. It says you're too cheap and the recipient is unworthy of a real gift, even if trees are becoming a scarce resource. You send a card, or go emit a large amount of carbon by buying something.
Just another reason to stop giving or sending generic and perfunctory Christmas cards, and start re-gifting your stuff.
I can't leave without taking another dig at those photocopied family letters: face it, you can't help but sound self-congratulatory unless you're a canny copywriter. Instead, why not scare the hell out of your recipients just ... well ... for the hell of it.
I'm waiting to receive a letter that reads: "... Noah has 6 piercings now, and a second nipple ring to match the first. The police let him go after the owner of the pizza place he graffitied decided his latest mural - depicting the Last Supper with pizza slices and root beer instead of a bison and vino - can stay. He's now been hired as a marketing assistant graffitiing pizza boxes all day …
I'll keep that letter as a bookmark.
The Galfromdownunder is reducing her carbon footprint over Christmas by cat-sitting in Berkeley and feeding them Chinese leftovers.
It's fitting that my latest experiment relates to the "/" in work/life – the sliver of time spent getting to and from the carpeted cubicle, counter or cockpit.
I've been conducting a test with the tikit, a new kind of folding bike, one that collapses in 5 seconds and looks like an incognito French Horn when required. If I can weasel it past the glum gatekeepers of NY's toughest and stuffiest office buildings – including those claiming to be 'green' - I can pronounce a folding bike to be a true adjunct/alternative to the mass transit system.
It's my small effort to be part of the 20% solution to global warming, when 80% of the first world still thinks of it as "bonus beach weather" – admittedly good for property values at chilly altitudes as long as the water isn't lapping at your Leger like in Venezia.
Some consider the proposed NY congestion pricing program
a well-meaning joke – $8 to bring your car below 86th Street between 6am and 6pm is a lunching lady or hedge fund manager's Joe for the first minute. And I bet it's tax deductible. When it's $100 you're getting serious, and it's still tax deductible. I wonder how many times I'll be side-swiped by yet another black Beemer in retaliation to all this …
One interesting building trial was at the home of FastCompany itself, the 7 World Trade Center. This glassy polyhedron proudly displays a frosted wreath at the entrance that says, "US BUILDING COUNCIL, LEED GOLD 2006". I showed up for an appointment with FC riding my "daft pink bike" a few months ago. Based on some verbal exchanges, I mistakenly thought I was welcome to bring it up unfolded to the 29th floor. I parked the bike against the building, went in, and politely double checked with the desk. Not only was I treated like Borat wearing his pants around his knees in that hotel reception scene, I was told to "get the bike of the building because it would damage the surface."
That was in June 2007, and I had to lock it up in front of Jeff Koons' giant red teratoma. To be fair, a change of guard led to a change of tune when I checked at the desk after the interview – but that's hardly a reliable building policy.
Many buildings have a "no bikes" policy, creatively interpreted by the guard at the desk. It's a bit like immigration procedures – you can stamp and sign on the dotted line all you like, but the airport official perched on that unusually high bar stool – the guy who asks you what relevance your ancient degree in medieval studies has to do with your current position as a operations research manager of a tattoo removal company - gets to direct your immediate future movements.
Now baby strollers are always allowed in buildings, no matter how big or bulky.
"It's different," said a guard at the NY Central Library. "A baby can't ride a bike, and an adult doesn't ride a stroller." I'm still trying to figure that one out.
"No one rides a bike to an office!" said another Man in Black as he waved through suited individuals carrying all kinds of strange packages.
"Lock it up outside, no one steals bikes!" said a third behind the velveteen rope.
So, almost 6 months later, I returned to 7 World Trade Center with my "french horn". Success! I got waved through, the guard jokingly asked if it was "some kind of weapon." Note that you are not entitled to make those jokes.
I might as well tell you what I was doing loitering with intent at the offices of FastCompany. I was invited to an Inc.com party called "30 under 30", a bash for "America's coolest and youngest entrepreneurs".
Check out the clip below.
Normally, the tikit gets a lot of attention when it enters a room. Understandably, it barely registered with this crowd – future captains of industry and at an age where a black BMW is de rigeur, not a goofy little bicycle that collapses like an umbrella.
When some of the young stars asked me about my shtick, I announced I was one of the "30 Over 30's" and had spent my week trying to break and enter secure buildings with my umbrella bike. Blink, blink.
An executive from VISA gave a short pep talk that diplomatically encouraged all and sundry to "go for it" at whatever age – he was a shade over 30 himself.
I watched a rotating slide show of the young turks, who were ranked according to a formula everyone assumed was based on revenue, but was more 'organic', said an organizer.
It was fun deciphering the various oeuvres over the hors d'oeuvres based on their URLs, without thumbing the Crackberry to look it up.
Granola. Parking. Shoes. Selling domain names with a twist. "Hole in the web" markets, if you like, creating a need and fully frontally attacking it with a sharpened URL. It reminded me of the Skymall catalog in the seat pocket in front of you – I once scorned the notion of a bagel slicer until I nearly sliced my finger off while attacking a particularly rubbery bagel with a pathetically blunt knife. I'm still not sure about the dog ramp ...
The backdrop to this evening was the 270-degree panorama of the Ground Zero reconstruction zone far below, a ghostly, floodlit well of concrete, scaffolding and debris. Like the arid center of Australia after a storm, I could see little tufts of industry sprouting and stirring in the gloom, and the trunk of a new tower aiming for the sky, just like the careers of these 30 well-under 30's.
Enjoy the rest of 2007, and while nurturing that fledgling dot com, don't forget the planet that makes it all possible. Leave the 4-wheeled Beamer at home, go ride to the office on a bike.
The Galfromdownunder is now headed for California where, despite enlightened attitudes to sustainable transport, people are still being run off the rails. Let's see if we can't fix that!
It's the ultimate irony that the handiwork of this former grade school vandal is probably gracing the wet bar of celebs like Angelina Jolie (who apparently spent $400,000 on 3 pieces at the LA show), Brad Pitt and Jude Law. He's been called 'the next Warhol' by people in black suits on white backgrounds.
For readers cruising in the fast lane, it's worth glancing in the rear vision mirror now and then because Banksy isn't in it – he's taken a side alley directly past GO. It seems he's done it by simply living his line with 100% conviction, and letting the PR (and riches) follow.
For example …
Nike offered asked him to collaborate on an ad campaign, he refused.
He was commissioned to paint a wall in Liverpool, and he accepted.
At any opening or event associated with his work, he makes sure he's absolutely, positively, never there. The moderately famous Brad Pitt says, "he does all this and he stays anonymous. I think that's great. These days everyone is trying to be famous. But he has anonymity."
Wow, here's a guy that can't do anything wrong, even when he does his damnedest to!
One of his efforts just sold at Sotheby's for $600,000; you could once get a poster of his for $150, now they're $5000 – unsigned.
A spokesman for Virgin Megastores said staff were searching for affected CDs but it was proving hard to find them all. That's because staff have probably hidden them under the bed - they're worth $2000 a piece, according to the catalog of the current Banksy NY show. Another person who is probably squirreling them away for his retirement is the astute HMV spokesman who said, "Often people might have a view on something but feel they can't always express it, but it's down to the likes of Banksy to say often what people think about things."
It's interesting to compare Paris Hilton with Banksy. They're both achieving the kind of publicity no PR firm could easily garner, for free. They're simply "doing their wrong", not caring who knows it, and whether you like their style or not, it pays off. Note that they're also living a seamless work/life, starting at opposite ends of the wealth spectrum, with Banksy slowly but surely closing the gap.
Museum vandal? Unfit mother? Ka-ching!
So if you want extreme publicity, be extreme, it will cost you nothing but your own self consciousness about what people might think. If you're prepared to settle for less, there are plenty of PR agencies ready to take your hard earned cash.
Banksy's website contains a number of hi-resolution prints you can download and make your own t-shirts, prints, mugs and so forth. It's ironic that even with this generous offer, the value of his work is skyrocketing.
I'd like to see him sell stickers, temporary tattoos, iron-ons and other items right beside his high priced works. How about a book of stencils to vandalize our own walls, perhaps?
I'd like to see him start his own art school for blocked kids with overdeveloped math talent, landscape watercolorists and middle managers in carpeted cubicles all dying to cut loose. He's already doing a show in Europe where all proceeds will go to a worthy cause, said Richard, owner of Artificial Gallery, who is staging the NY exhibition.
Then, after he's made enough cash to buy a brownstone in Knightsbridge, an island in the Caribbean, an entire building to graffiti in the Bronx, and his messages have stopped wars from erupting across the globe, he could make the ultimate artistic statement, and pull the pin on everything.
Yep, just when his name is put up in fine frosted letters on the glass walls of the Guggenheim and the party invites to the White House start flowing, he could attempt to render all his art, bought by the "morons" at Sotheby's and the like, worthless – perhaps have signed and numbered editions pour out in the zillions from a factory in China, or collaborate with McDonald's to sell soda pop in glasses graffiti'd with a defecating rat …
Then, kill himself off in an alley somewhere and create a whole new identity.
We the public, languishing in the fat part of the bell curve, won't let him fail. We'll eat up whatever he does, and every print he sells will put him further out of our league.
What might happen to your fortunes if you injected a bit of Banksy "wrong" into your waking, working day?
The naughtiest little prank Lynette Chiang did was to sneak into bookstores and insert flyers for The Handsomest Man in Cuba into books about Cuba. She could learn a lot from Banksy - her book still sells $14.95.
Spotted on a train this morning, on my way to work/life:
For those using a Crackberry on a slow connection, the poster shows Mr Met, a Disney-esque character with a large baseball for a head, pointing to a bag on the seat of a train. The headline reads:
"Please don't let good manners slide,
Keep your stuff off seats for a better ride."
I call this "under-writing". It's not quite there, and it doesn't make me at all guilty about not wanting to park the filthy underside of my bag on my lap, or parking it on the seat rather than the filthy floor.
And just who gets "the better ride?"
It looks like someone either spent 2 seconds dashing off the headline, or 2 weeks over-thinking it with several committees on the finer points of tone and political correctness.
What the poster really wants to say is this:
"PLEASE DON'T LET YOUR MANNERS SLIDE
GET YOUR STUFF OFF SEATS SO OTHERS CAN RIDE."
I'd like to see Mr Met about to go for an almighty strike at the bag with a baseball bat. What a fun TV that would make, broken window and all. Or, how about about picturing a girl chatting on a cellphone with a little triangular pink purse occupying four buttcheek's worth of real estate beside her, glared at by a Mr Met with his arms around 100 baseball bats bursting out of a paper sack, clinging desperately to the pole with one hand while losing his footing?
Why use the goofy Mr Met at all? There doesn't seem to be any organic connection between baseball and trains other than a convenient pun on 'Met'.
Here's another poster in the same carriage:
It reads, "TO YOU. Stranger, if you, passing, meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?"
I'm told this is called "Poetry in Motion".
The concept here isn't bad; there's a subtle attempt at social service. (I'm surprised no-one committed the original sin of using the world 'Met' in place of 'meet').
The problem with this poster is simply lazy art direction. It's got a bit of decoration like the border on cheap boxed stationary.
All together now, what's a more compelling way to illustrate this little sonnet about loneliness and disconnect? How about a shot of two people sitting at opposite ends of a train seat ignoring each other, with the poem separating them? Make one person black, the other white and add an extra layer of discussion. Make one person in middle Eastern dress and you've really got people yammering.
Or, how about printing the poem in vinyl letters on the actual train seat backs, and the floor itself where people look, so the words separate real people?
How about a poster inviting interaction: "The person next to you might know a great sushi bar. Ask them now." This might stimulate commerce and conversation.
Here's a third poster, just across the aisle.
The headline in Spanish, basically says in a roundabout way, "mind the gap".
So why not show a pair of shoes wedged between the train and platform rather than one doing the right thing? How about some hands clinging to the edge of the platform? How about a cross mounted at the edge of the platform like they do on busy roads where pedestrians have died?
OK, I'm being dramatic now, but the the point of all of this is about striking past first base and driving an idea all the way home.
A million people sit captive every morning and evening on their way to wherever. You've got them for 20, 30 minutes or more, especially when there's no room to sit or grapple with a newspaper (and has anyone thought of making a transit newspaper the size of a small novel so we can read it with one hand and cling to the pole with another?)
So if you're going to assault us with your poster, make it good and you might sell something - you paid for it.
There's a huge opportunity in the smallest of places, but transit posters are often seen as hum drum by overpaid copywriters, who dash them off while clawing to work on a blockbuster TV ad they think will make them rockstars, and during which we get up to raid the fridge anyway.
There was no remote control, no bathroom and no Ben & Jerry's close at hand in this train carriage, I was stuck staring at these posters.
Clients are as much to blame. They'll crack up at Seinfeld or Monty Python, but go all (b)anal when it comes to promoting their own products.
I say forget paying market researchers millions to have people rock up to focus groups and say all kinds of irrelevant stuff because you're paying them $30 to fantasize about being self-styled marketing pros for an hour.
Put yourself deep into in the shoes of your viewers, be your own ethnographer, you shower, s*** and shave too - you're one of them.
If you listen to your gut and have the confidence they're paying you the big bucks for, you'll be 99% right.
Few people take that step. I don't drink Coke, but I'll never forget the ad with the polar bears admiring the northern lights. When challenged about the "campaignability" of this ad, an exec said something along the lines of, "That's eighties thinking. We're looking for something truly out there."
You can be "out there" in the most "in here" of places.
Who was it that once proposed a carriage on the train just for singles, or auditioning musicians for the subway, or those little art happenings like the mosaic eyes and bronze figures in the halls of the NY subway? They should be writing these ads.
They're actually thinking like a customer evangelist, thinking at all times about the space, time and community that surrounds them, the messages that pass back and forth, how they land, how they take root ... and just letting the commerce follow.
Bike Friday Customer Evangelist Lynette Chiang only does ads that tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth - and which hopefully don't bore the bejaysus out of people. It's known in the trade as "Say it straight, then say it great."
OK, let's be serious: does anyone really care about your forthcoming volume of slam haiku?
Google alerts, the online narcissist's favorite tool, can help with all but the first three (but give it time). A Google alert tells you when someone noted or quoted you on the web, seemingly in the last 5 nanoseconds. You know instantly if someone found your bleat about something you liked or hated useful, or if you've butchered a sacred cow on the way to making a point.
I'm sure Google alerts aren't new to the fast folks reading this, yet I meet business owners every day with websites who draw a blank when I mention it. So this post is for them.
"People will never tell you what they really think about you – they'll let you keep on making the same mistakes," my dad would say back in 30 B.G. (30 years Before Google). As in, "every time a friend succeeds I die a little."
Google alerts spell it out so your fair-weather friends don't have to.
One alert led me to a page where I was quoted out of normal context on a site with a religious bent, an audience I wouldn't have thought I'd cross paths with in the blogosphere. Fascinating.
Another alert led to an exchange with a career counselor about my ideas on constructing a Work/Life job by writing your own duty statement. Just I was starting to wonder if my ideas were useful to anyone except customer evangelists on bicycles.
It's not all useful. You'll get anonymous web cammers 'n' spammers pointing you to their dreary disrobing sites. (Funny how we've all "got one", but we wanna look at someone else's …)
And then, there are the flamers.
A high flying comrade insists it's vital to protect one's personal brand, and that means getting rid of any negative press.
"I vet everything remotely alluding to my name before, during and after it's made public," he says. When bloggers flamed him on a site announcing his new appointment, he threatened to sue the site owners for defamation unless they deleted the comments.
On the Bike Friday customer reviews site, we publish all reviews, but of course, we try to rectify the problem before posting the review unaltered. Readers can decide for themselves whether to believe the 10% negative or 90% positive.
We FC bloggers can't remove comments. They're moderated by an unseen eye and magically or tragically appear sometime after you post.
YouTube avoids getting into defamation strife because it lets you remove comments, and it can also take down offensive videos. I had a video removed - someone must have had an issue with it and done the typical neighborly thing, and asked YouTube to remove it rather than me.
I'm on the fence about censorship, as in, removing inflammatory or character assassinating comments. On one hand, I can see that a false or misleading statement can be given life in the media – people have died or been locked up for years over hearsay.
On the other hand, there's value in full disclosure. Putting the ugly statement out there and letting it stand - and wither - of it's own accord. Corporations faced with a slur on their reputation often choose to approach it that way; stay silent, let things pass, then it's business as usual. They don't realize that people never forget, just like men complain of women remembering some seriously cobwebby antecedents.
Celebs and other charismatic individuals seem to get off lighter with the public's elephant-like memory. I don't recall Hugh Grant muttering much about being caught with his pants down. I suspect it was merely the gutsiest personal PR stunt of the decade, as his career's hardly suffered. That's PR power.
Clinton had a bit more to say about his gaff, so the conversation about it dragged on while half the world was quietly starving or killing itself. Again, the public seems to have forgiven him - along with the routine starving millions. A few jokes translated into 100 dialects are all that remain for the follies of these two men, and there's no better PR than ascending into the vernacular or the limelight of comedy. Like 'em or not, Hugh, Bill and Clinton show true PR resilience. We can learn from them.
On the galfromdownunder videos I got a raft of flames licking at my ankles, like 'ugly Asian @#$% talk too much on all her video please shut up.'
Some of you will think, that's pretty obnoxious. But if you've grown up a minority, believe me, sticks and stones ...
I was about to delete this comment, along with several others criticizing the Asian female anatomy, Asian accent and anything Asian in general then took a closer look.
The comment is essentially saying 'please talk less'. I have often thought about toning down my commentary on my videos, but get over-enthused once I press the "rolling" button. This is a reminder to put that improvement in action.
The "ugly Asian" part, I can't do much about, other than not train the camera on myself so much, but that's the fun of being a no-frills, one-gal production crew.
Finally, left it there and posted a comment:
"She no make video for you, she make video for deaf customer."
So I got some advice to use or refuse, and a bit of a chuckle out of this clown.
Keep your fair-weather friends happy, and set up a Google Alert or three.
"IT'S ALL very well for you, I'd love to travel, but I can't leave my job because because because …"
I hear you. Books, life-coaches and Oprah articles abound on 'cutting loose', how people have gone from actuary to Aeolian harp restorer, cabinet minister to cabinet maker or weekend gardener to orchard owner in Vermont.
You can do that, but the reality is, the majority of you won't be quitting or switching careers - nor need you.
I'm talking about transforming your 'real' job unto an 'unreal job'. I hesitate to use the cliche 'dream job' - if you're dreaming you're sleeping, and that's not the 8 hours that are causing you grief.
I was sitting in Italy wondering, in between bites of pecorino and sips of wine, what right I had to be sitting there on the clock anyway, when a customer said to me: "Lynette, you don't need to be rich, you just need to hang around rich people having fun."
This got me thinking about something other than my perilous future for a change. If you remove the 'rich', the 'people having fun' part is key. Why do you go on vacation? To have fun. Why do you agree to have dinner with friends? Because it's fun. You get away from work so you can have fun. That's an expensive two week vacation you're talking there, and it's all over in a blink. So why not see how you can make that 8-12 hours of your waking day fun?
Think about your office. Is it fun? Is part of the reason you dread going in there because it's just not fun? It's probably because the people aren't having fun.
I once worked at an ad agency in Ireland. I confess I soon became far more interested about improving their work environment than writing ads for what was then a very creatively conservative marketplace. The office atmosphere was dreary and cautious, in my mind, the work reflected it.
Have you ever been 'flavor the month' or 'the golden haired boy'? When a new person enters a work environment they're often bestowed with that 'do no wrong' halo at least for the first couple of months. If that's you, use the time wisely. In Ireland I saw that people didn't go home after work, they went straight to the pub to drink Guinness, play pool, indulge in great craic.
Somehow I got the boss to agree on putting a pool table in the middle of the office. What I fraud I am … I don't even play pool.
Meetings started taking place around the pool table. They place started to loosen up. The craic started to trickle. They got less offended by my headlines.
Then, after reading about how a fish tank is good for the psyche, I got one installed. Soon, the office had named each fish. The dark overlordy one that popped up from behind boulders to scare the tetras - he was the boss, unbeknownst to the boss. (Whenever he came in the room one of the designers played the famous Darth Vader theme on his computer. The fish wobbled.). There were the garish, pushy fish, fast swimmers that flitted just out of sight behind the boss fish, and sullen bottom feeders - everyone knew who someone's alter-fish.
For the first time in a long time, we got some kudos in the local advertising awards that year, I hope it was because people were having 10% more fun. Not bad for a 800 Irish pound investment in motivational office furniture.
A friend took up a night job as a courier truck packer because he desperately needed the money for college. He cringed at the thought doing this "lowest of the low" job. The manager was embarrassed at the minimal wage mandated by corporate, so took it upon himself to to supply a 3am hot breakfast he'd whip up on a stove he brought from home. "All of a sudden the job seemed better," said my friend. "And we got into a kind of rhythm tossing those boxes to cool music, fueled by a hot breakfast … we got really upper-body fit; after a while it seemed "like a really good gig". The only reason he quit was because his friends needled him about never being available, and the visionary egg-flipping manager was moved onwards and upwards. That's all too common – when things are functioning, they're liable to break. You have to be vigilent. The egg flipper took responsibility for changing the environment, and my friend allowed himself to appreciate it.
You can also misfire. I once interned at an place where the office was one gigantic room painted like a basketball court. There was a hoop at each end. Nice idea, but after a few days I wondered who, aside from the coolest cat in the office and the boss, actually played basketball. The others just hunched over their desks on the sidelines, like can-clutching wallflowers around a pulsating dance floor. Forced cool is cruel – it can alienate and intimidate. 'Never out-cool your customer,' says my super sales woman (at 70!) mother.
By the way, if there are any of those 'motivational posters' with pictures of people rowing saying'Teamwork' or gazing off into the sunset saying 'Creativity' hanging in earnest in your office, slip them in the recycle bin when no-one is looking and you know nothing, nothing about what happened to them at all ….
So far I've talked about being a catalyst for change by finagling with furniture.
Now what finagling with the live furniture – you and your co-workers.
People talk about having friends vs co-workers. Why separate the two? Your friends were once total strangers - you met them by chance. Your colleagues started out the same way, and at least you're some way along the acquaintanceship path with them. Perhaps you've never seen them as potential friends just because you work together. The same argument can be said for neighbors. How inconvenient is it to fly half way around the world to hang out with friends while assiduously avoiding potential friendships right across the street? If the fossil fuel runs out you'll be stuck.
I'm not saying you have to be in each other's laps, but try looking at the people who are actually in your life in a new light – unscrew the bulb and put in something softer. If you fear your co-workers and neighbors as potential friends, there's possibly something you fear about the work environment. In a seamless work/life, there is no distinction, and therefore no fear, between work and life.
What about intolerable people? We all know there's always at least one person in the office who makes life miserable for everyone else. Hey, it might even be you, so read the following replacing 'they' with 'you'. These people are basically a pain in the brain. You collectively roll your eyes when talking about them behind their backs. They obstruct or play pitiful politics. Everyone steers a path around them, no-one has the guts to confront them or get rid of them – especially when they've got status – they're a rung or three above you. Oh, you could tolerate your mundane job and middling pay if only that person would get up in the morning and head for a desk in another building.
Guess what. Buying into their game is making you (they) miserable.
Try cutting them slack, like you do your friends. They're clearly unhappy, otherwise they wouldn't be so miserable. Be the first to approach them differently, especially if they're standing guard over your career path, and face it – everyone in your environment can influence your path, people gossip and take sides. Stop talking negatively about them. But don't be a phony, because that's as obvious as being defensive and insecure and twice as unattractive.
I have male friend who is smart and attractive but feels thwarted by a couple of layers of what he believes are unhappy female supervisors. I got tired of hearing him complain daily about them, while being nice to their faces. other colleagues have moved on or away. He's still there. His unhappiness and thinly veiled displeasure is probably contributing to the unhappiness of the entire office – never mind the women. I feel he should either leave, shut up, or do something about it. Like this man:
He was attractive and charming and knew it, yet was smart about it. He used it as just another skill in his armory. He'd book appointments, then come back to the office and make notes. One note I saw under a female potential client was 'she's attracted to me.' I observed how any subtle manipulation by him was recognized, reciprocated, and enjoyed by both parties, be they colleagues or clients. This is called people having fun. It's a kind of authenticity that removes the need for political correctness, rules and fear of saying 'the wrong thing' or harrassment. In that environment, even saying the wrong thing can be quickly forgiven.
Life tends to work like that, if you just get out of the way and let authenticity do its work. My friend leveraged off life, and made great friends who genuinely liked and respected him even if they never did business with them. He is now very successful, in all areas of his life. And from a one man show with a notebook, he's now worth almost 30 million, but even long before that, everyone in his life was having fun.
So if you're not going anywhere soon, what could you do to make your job exactly where you want to be for the next few hours, and ideally, the rest of your working life?
The Galfromdownunder upset everyone at the office yesterday by pointing out yet another glaring typo in a newsletter headline, and proposed a solution. Some thought she was trying to make a fellow colleague look bad. Some thought she was making out she was superior. Some thought she was sucking up to the boss. Others attacked her for being a pot calling the kettle black. She didn't take any of it personally. The moment passed, and no one has moved her to an office without a window to spite her. Business as usual, and she's having fun, blogging here for FC on a sunny Tuesday in New York. Now if we could just find a solution to that constant typo problem ...
Ok, so you and I missed the boat on being a child prodigy*.
You want a job that pays well enough, one you'll get up for without smashing the alarm clock.
People ask me, how did you convince that company to hire you?
(We're talking here about my job which pays very modestly but for some reason many people want it. I'm trying to fathom why.)
I tell them to turn the question around: How did the company convince me they were worth spending hours of my life on that I'm not going to get back?
So here's an unconventional approach to finding a seamless work/life job - one where you're working without feeling like it's work - that you might not have tried.
Start by finding a company who makes a product you use and like, and – very important - with a personality you like. You don't want to spend 8 hours sleeping beside someone you don't like, why feel same for the next 8 hours?
Next, think about what you like to do, because if you do more of that, you will eventually get good at it and like it even more. It's not leisure, because that can get boring. It's an activity where you feel 'comfortably challenged'.
I know what I like to do, because I do it unasked, 24/7. I like to bring people together, in person and in writing, making sure there's a win-win-win all round. You win, I win, and at least someone else wins. They Inc. call this networking, I call it smalltalking. We all love to small talk better than big talk, presidents and royalty make special trips to ranches and fishing resorts to do precisely that. So develop the art of smalltalking. Blogging is just smalltalking in cyberspace, and you don't have to dress up or buy a fancy meal to do it.
So you've identified a company you like, and the kind of activity you like to do.
Now approach the company, and say, I like you, this is what I like to do, and how I think it will benefit you. If you think this is useful to you, pay me for it. If not, please find someone else.
That's basically what I did. I call it writing your own duty statement and seeing if anyone buys it, rather that looking for an existing duty statement to try and shoehorn yourself into. If the company buys it, you are on your way to having an unreal job, a seamless work/life that you enjoy.
About job titles. Like a lot of companies, the company that was interested in my self-supplied duty statement wanted to give me a title. Marketing Director or something.
I didn't want a job with a title, because I might end up having to do things I am lousy at. I'm not talking about being lazy and unwilling to learn and grow, I just know there are some things I want to leave to the born naturals.
In many jobs, no matter how good you are at part A, the part B you're not good at will come under scrutiny and scotch all your kudos from Part A. This is called reaching your level of incompetence. It's a danger with volunteer work. Volunteers get loaded with more and more expectations, so they end up bitter and burned out and there goes your free charity worker. Know what you like, what you relish doing over and over, unasked, unbegged, unthreatened - and go write that personal duty statement.
Once you write your duty statement, try awarding yourself with a cheeky title.
I gave myself a title of Customer Evangelist, largely as a joke. The funny thing is, people accepted that title as readily as if I'd called myself Certified Practicing Accountant or Structural Engineer, only they burst out laughing when they read my business card. Laughter is good - it's up to me to decide if they're laughing with me or at me, or if even care. Only in America can you give yourself a fun title and people don't scoff or blink. They egg you on, cut you slack and say 'go for it!' I enjoy that part of being in America so much more than receiving the cynical opposite in the UK and to a lesser extent, Australia.
So the steps:
Find a company you like.
Identify what you like to.
Think about how you will benefit the company doing what you like to do.
Write yourself a duty statement.
Give yourself a title.
Package it all up and call them.
Ask them if they can use your package.
If they can't, go elsewhere.
I'm not just sitting on my cushion here preaching, my USA work visa expires soon and I'll have to put the above in practice. I'll soon be reporting from the top of a glassy tower overlooking the Hudson, or from behind an apron, or somewhere in between or beyond. At least I'll know I wrote the duty statement, I have no one else to thank.
Next week: Not going anywhere? Make your place of work a place to stay.
Lynette Chiang spent last night eating at Peter Luger's with customers at their invitation and she doesn't even eat meat.
When people ask me what I do, I use to fumble around trying to describe my dilettantish existence. Nowadays, I say I ride a bike for a living.
Before an image of a female Lance Armstrong enters their head, I quickly add that I don't ride fast; sometimes I don't ride at all. I tell them I had a couple of "real jobs" before which paid way better.
They dismiss the money issue. They say they want my job, despite having a superior retirement plan (and while straddling the Pradas of high end bicycle brands). They might not actually take my job if offered, but a sense of "something not quite jiving" with their current life is apparent.
I googled 'money and happiness' on the FC website. According to this 2003 article, $1.5 million net worth is the magic figure where people's feelings of happiness go from nowhere to nirvana in nanoseconds.
Since a handful of us may not be able to rustle up that amount in our lifetimes, can we still be happy without having to eat beans and move to the boonies where rent is cheap? Even if "stuck in a job we hate"?
Assuming you're not grafted to an extremely expensive lifestyle (hello? Have I lost 98% of readers already?) I believe so. And I'm not talking about doing daily affirmations, gratitude prayers or joining a calligraphy class to keep your mind off the political pratt at the office who got you moved to cubicle without a window.
I'm talking about letting happiness buy happiness. Knowing what makes you happy will unlock the guerilla career seeker in you, because you'll be coming from the place that floats your boat – not someone else's. It's a powerful place.
What's a Real Job?
In my book, it's one that someone else wrote the duty statement for. The fundamentals of a real job are already written down in books. Since we're all born with roughly the same size and shape of brain, you can study those books and join the ranks of the also-read, receive a certificate, then get in line for a place in society where there is a duty statement printed out, laid on the desk where you will sit for most of the time.
This is a good life, but it can be very stressful. You face stiff competition: there's a population of diploma-carrying also-reads jammed against your door, and they're as good or better than you at your shtick. To this day I can't quite work out how I passed that Computer Science Artifical Intelligence exam ...
Now and then you see the best of the rest in action: they sail through the work day and drop anchor at a reasonable hour, while you chug along in the swell and pull in at 7,8,9pm. They're happy because they're "comfortably challenged", which I assert is the ideal mental state when on the job, because:
Uncomfortably challenged = stress and an untimely death.
Comfortably unchallenged = numb and stagnant; has a strange habit of morphing into uncomfortably unchallenged over time.
That person you envy seems to be in the right place at the right time of their lives, don't they? They're moving forward with a clear mind, healthy body, a holy grail in sight and a path leading right to it. Of course they have their issues too, but you're not really interested in that. They might even earn less than you … but so what. They're having more fun that you. You want what they've got.
Here's how to swing it.
Take the swing less swung: start with an atypical kidhood
Charlie Bell was the late CEO of McDonalds. Ignore, if you can, that he sold fast food and probably died because of it; focus (if you can) on the example:
He never studied those books at a university. He started flipping burgers, and ended up CEO. If you Google him, you'll see he was definitely a smart kid. "He was ready to tell us how the place should have been run from 15 onwards" (April 21, 2004). Bell was often arrogant and upfront about his ambition, but in a charming, irreverent Australian way. Ritchie saw not a ranting fool but a potential leader. (from Answers.com).
Charlie knew from an early age what made him happy – and had no problem freely expressing it. Of course, youth was on his side – people cut kids slack for being young and undiplomatic. As we age we worry excessively about 'what people think' and 'getting people bent out of shape' and anyone and everyone's primed to be offended.
Here's news: People are going to think what they're going to think. Overthinking their unthinking will not make you happy and you will suffer. Don't get suckered into living this way. Unless you can really stand and accept the heat, move away from those environments. They can make you ill.
Another observation about Charlie: being the smart fish in a "dumb" pond (and I use quotes with intent: there are smart people flipping burgers at Mc Donald's; however, most of them expect to move to what society perceives as a "smarter" options).
If he had gone to law school or engineering school or med school, he would have had to compete with academically smart people all the way through college and into the workplace – just like the rest of us. How many of you know how much fun that wasn't? (former straight High Distinction students can stop reading here).
So if your child exhibits the kind of outspoken streetsmart that Charlie did, consider following his example.
One of the smartest kids I ever met who had a well balanced personality to boot, was a 9-year old traveling the third world with his mother on a low budget. His education consisted of a box of encyclopedias, nature, and exposure to people living extraordinary lives. He was an experienced horseman and birding guide, able to identify over 300 birds of the country. He could converse politely and intelligently on many topics. That's out-of-home schooling with a difference.
I have a friend who was drained by a language school business he ran, having several degrees in the arts and education. His marriage fell apart and she took the beloved dogs. Finally he took an electrician's course, earns a regular $100 an hour and rides his bike whenever he wants.
The corporate world is not captained exclusively by college educated white collars. It's commandeered by people who've never worn one and are well qualified to tell you where you can stick your damn collar. Like Charlie RIP, Steve Jobs, and an Irish tycoon I mentioned in an earlier post who said "I've never studied any books or been to any courses, all my success comes from making decisions quickly and being a man of my word." Plus many others you will never meet but have a serene smile on their faces most of the time.
So you missed the boat on being a child prodigy and you don't want to fix fuses? You can still join the hunt for a high-happiness paying job in your field. All it takes is a different strategy based around happiness.
Next week:
Write your own Duty Statement: one that makes you happy and your boss ecstatic The Galfromdownunder, Customer Evangelist for Bike Friday, is sitting in bed blogging for FastCompany on a Monday afternoon eating home made rice paper rolls and watching the sun set over London Terrace. Don't tell her boss.
I spent all last week bedridden with some kind of bad Manhattan flu. Fast Company likes us to blog at least once a week, so like a faithful reporter I started banging keys to see if anything worthwhile would come out. Thank Bhudda I didn't post it here on Fast Company. It ended up being a delirious rant about a global warming presentation and whether I could care less if a small colored frog in the middle of Costa Rica disappears from the face of the earth. For posterity I posted it here.
I say, I say, these spammers and solicitors are getting really enterprising.
Not only do I get an email from Fred Smith almost immediately after I send an email to Fred Smith, and they're not the same Fred Smith, I received a long, detailed diatribe showing that the solicitor actually studied my shtick, the shtick of my employer, then proposed her own shtick.
She'd devised an entire PR plan for our product.
The only problem was, it contained so many ?????????????? and !!!!!!!!!! and breathless statements that it was a complete turn off.
I almost instinctively hit DELETE, but instead shot her a quick reply, acknowledging her efforts, pointing out the ?????????'s, saying she'd have more success with us if she talked *to* us rather than *at* us, and remarked that she's clearly got a pretty tough job. After all, this woman made quite an effort. She shot back an apology, and I thanked her.
Hello ... she came back ... softer this time, and now telling me a bit about her life. And she didn't just add me to her environmental concerns spam list either.
Some further exchanges revealed she really did have an interest in the environment, was livid about some toxic dumping near her house, and understood how our bikes might have an impact on the planet, not to mention the fortunes of the Pennysaver in her area she was spruiking, if we took up her lead and bought into her coupon book promotion.
The funny thing was, she thus went from a 'trash can' candidate to a real person. It would be some amazing computer program that could generate a lucid email like that (anyone read that Road Dahl story about the steam-callopie-like machine that pumps out romance novels? Crank up the soft music here, twiddle the knob for some jealousy there, slam down the lever for more foreplay … ). Her grammar, punctuation and apparent naiveté were too poor to be a real con-bot. But hey, maybe she's onto something ...
Which led me to muse about how regardless of all these fancy widgets, twitters, podcasts, RSS feeds and other methods of getting your message across, the message is still what counts. And an eloquent scrawl on a napkin can still close the deal ahead of all the technology on the latest Smartfone.
The NYT recently ran a story on "the clever riposte" – blog commentators who've become so renowned for their pithy posts that they've been invited to parties, offered accommodation, back rubs included, all sight unseen.
This should come as no surprise to anyone who has lamented our society's 'I don't want to get involved' mentality and used email to create their world, then stepped out into real-space to follow up. Yes, you can join a community based on anything at all – blood type, side of the bed you sleep on, you name it ... after absently-mindedly cracking my knuckles I googled it and came across a site called Joincrackers.com (at which I learned that if I had a penis, I could crack that too! But I digress). Now of course, groups like Facebook and LinkedIn attempt to connect you on more professional grounds, as far as I can tell, although one of them insists you can't possibly be in a place for less than a few weeks - no good for the professional homeless like me who bounce around the country ...
I admit I used Craigslist during my book tour not only to see if there were any interesting unmarried guys out there but to also promote The Handsomest Man in Cuba.
I posted both on Men Seeking Women and Women Seeking Men. Unfortunately, no one seems to take the platonics section as seriously as I do; married or single, happy or otherwise, everyone wants to know, to use a great Aussie adage, "who's up who and who hasn't paid."
The essence of the post was this:
Come to my presentation. Why? For the guys, you can observe me from a safe distance and I'll be wearing my best frock. For guys and gals, wear something red, because if I'm not your cup of chai, look around and see if anyone else is wearing red. At least you know they're available. (If you want to buy a car, you don't go down the street asking, 'is that one for sale? Is that one for sale? You go to where they are being sold. Mostly). Note that this is inclusive of both gay and straight possibilities for the attendees. If nothing else, they'd get a good show on my loitering with intent in Cuba. After all, what else were they going to do on a Tuesday night besides eat a microwaved burrito in front of the teev ...? That's right – @#$% nothing!
Well, I got a bunch of folks turning up, and I applaud that act of simply showing up. I like joiners. We all went out for coffee after, and they lamented - and I quote - how San Francisco had become such a hard place to meet people because no one seemed authentic anymore ... that my post was like an outstretched hand.
This is not intended to make me out as some kind of self-styled social working socialite, but to simply point out the power of authenticity when you blog, solicit, spam, flame, whatever.
You just better deliver when people show up at your door, and, well, they all bought my book. One gal was inspired and since went on to write her own successful Cuba book (Google 'Es Cuba'). Another guy showed me around town. Still another introduced me to his strange retail world of 16th century artifacts. Now you wouldn't get goodies like that if you didn't look beyond your same old lovable stuck and whiny friends.
Now you won't impress everyone with your audacious authenticity.
Some people responded, "Are you looking for a date or just trying to drive people to your talk and your website?"
My response: All of the above. You got a problem with that?
Because if you do, step right over me, baby, and have a great life.
Of course, after some lively exchanges with more and more people joining in, the CL community started banning my posts. In fact, I ran several posts with a bit of a fun 'where am I?' picture contest with people, seeing how fast my posts could get banned and we got down to 12 seconds. People hate to see other people getting attention, and banning someone is a very satisfying keystroke to hit, and an authentic one at that. Note, I never got my posts 'banned' in any other city doing this, only San Francisco. Which might give a clue as to what the dozen or so CL folks I had coffee with were experiencing in the town. Or not. All just datapoints ...
That email solicitor I opened this post with, whose name is Sandra, might have more success now, after our few exchanges. And I know more about the toxic environment in Maryland. And I still think CL and all other opportunities to say your piece, anonymously or otherwise, are powerful tools that can really shape your life - if you use them as authentically and intelligently as you use the phone.
Lynette Chiang, aka the Galfromdownunder, managed to get one very long and saccharin-free blog post about her journey through Cuba published by Globe-Pequot as The Handsomest Man in Cuba. It was reviewed in the New York Times Book Review on June 3, 2007.
Strewth, tragic outfit, but worth logging off for an hour to check out the talk ... thanks to Craigslist
