LivingCheaply.net » Careers

Review: The Other 8 Hours

jos — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 19:00:07 +0000

Every Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance or other book of interest. A while back, I reviewed Robert Pagliarini’s The Six-Day Financial Makeover and concluded that there was some very good advice buried inside a lot of marketing gloss. The core of that advice was strong enough that I kept an eye out for future books by Mr. Pagliarini, and now The Other 8 Hours has come down the pike. This time around, Pags has written an interesting personal productivity book that doesn’t focus on workplace productivity. Instead, it focuses on your free time. How can you channel the time each day when you’re not working and sleeping to create new wealth and purpose in life (ideally with some leisure time, too, so you don’t go insane)? I’ll be honest, though: the idea really strikes a chord with me. After all, I launched The Simple Dollar and grew it for two years in my spare time. Does Pagliarini lay out a good game plan for that kind of application of one’s spare time? Let’s dig in. 1 | Life Begins at 5:00 PM For most of us, the time outside of work is the important part of our life. It’s where we spend time with our families and loved ones and engage in activities that are enjoyable to us. We work so that we can enjoy these moments. Pagliarini’s central argument is that if you seek out enjoyable and personally fulfilling activities that also have a second benefit – building skills, producing income, building connections – then your other eight hours can go to productive use as well. 2 | The Living Dead and the Dead Broke Why do this? What’s the motivation for seeking out a better way to spend our “other eight hours”? Frankly, people are working more, experiencing more stress, and have more financial problems than ever before. Adding personal growth to one’s spare time goes a long way towards solving all of those problems while still being quite fun. 3 | Getting the Other 8 The first (and biggest) problem is that many people feel that they barely have eight minutes to themselves in a given day, let alone eight hours. “How are you supposed to find the time to do anything like launch something like The Simple Dollar?” one reader once asked me. The key is prioritizing . In order to have free time, you have to prioritize what you spend your time on and just chuck some of the lower priority stuff. You simply can’t fit it all in. And, yes, the things you do in your spare time do have different priorities. Some of them do need to remain in place while others can easily be chucked. This chapter walks through some basic time management tactics that mostly revolve around figuring out what fits and what doesn’t. 4 | Lifeleeches From there, Pagliarini moves on to things that commonly “suck time” for people – television is an obvious one, but so are news, the internet, perfectionism, gossip, video games – even answering the phone. The more of these distractions you can eliminate from your life (or at least successfully cage into a limited time and space), the better off you are. 5 | Shift from Consumer to Cre8tor “Cre8tor” is Pagliarini’s term for people who devote their extra “8″ hours – or at least some of that time – to creating things of value for others as opposed to just consuming. Even more challenging, you almost always win if you give it away . The Simple Dollar has 81,000 subscribers who get the content by email or RSS every day and just shy of a million visitors to the website each month. I got those by giving away almost everything I create. 6 | The Big List of FAQs Obviously, ideas like this one almost always bring about lots of questions, so this chapter serves as a big FAQ (frequently asked questions) document. What do you do if you’re not creative, for example? Pagliarini’s solution is simple: partner with someone who is creative and put what skills you have to bear. So, for example, if you’ve got skills at marketing something someone else has created and you have a friend who makes stunningly good furniture in his woodshop, team up together so you can both make some cash. 7 | The Cre8tor Rules Here, Pagliarini lays out several rules for being a “creator” (or “cre8tor”) in your spare time. Keep your day job. Focus on minimizing your effort to maximize results. Limit your risk. Take lots of swings – in other words, try lots of different things to see what works. Put effort into marketing what you create, simply so others are at least aware of it. Always have a plan for making money in the long run, even if you give things away for free. 8 | The Top 10 Cre8tor Channels These are ten short “startup kits” for ten different types of businesses: blogging, invesnting, writing, starting a company, reselling things, taking advantage of fads, working for stock, freelancing, pure career advancement, or turning hobbies into income. Most of the things a person can invest their found free time into falls into one of these ten categories, but the specifics vary widely from person to person. 9 | Could’ve, Should’ve, Would’ve Every day you sit idly by with an idea in the back of your head is a day you’ll regret later on. I’m thirty one and there are already big things that I passed on that I regret. I had a great opportunity to get some of my fiction published in 2003 and I missed the boat on it, mostly because of my own fears. That’s perhaps my greatest regret, but there are many others that litter the path to my life today. In fact, I’m only where I’m AT today because I kept chasing those side opportunities and, after a lot of failures, one of them worked (you’re reading it). 10 | Find Your Pulse So, what makes you tick? What makes you jump out of bed in the morning and tackle things? If you can find what makes you passionate, then you’ve found a source of energy that you can channel into making your “other eight” more exciting and profitable. In short, it can be your engine for creating things, creating value, and putting money in your pocket. There are a lot of suggestions and ideas here for seeking out what you’re passionate about. Is The Other 8 Hours Worth Reading? The Other 8 Hours combines a lot of different elements into one package, drawing from career development, lifestyle design, and even a bit of time management. If you’re finding yourself struggling in your current career and can’t help but wonder what else there is out there, The Other 8 Hours is a great read. I’d also say The Other 8 Hours is a much better read than Pagliarini’s first book, The Six-Day Financial Makeover , because he cut out the marketing-speak and actually focused on real topics, which is where his strengths lie.

View original here:
Review: The Other 8 Hours

Review: 48 Days to the Work You Love

jos — Sun, 30 May 2010 19:00:46 +0000

Every Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance book or other book of interest. 48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller keeps getting recommended to me over and over again by readers. Initially, I had filed it right next to Margin in my mind as a “great career advice book with heavy Christian overtones,” but so many readers clamored for me to read and review 48 Days that I had to give it a reading. I’m glad I did. 48 Days to the Work You Love does a great job of laying out the full case for seeking a job that you’re passionate about as opposed to one that merely pays the bills. 48 Days to the Work You Love has some significant Christian themes running through it, often using Biblical quotes and stories as part of the motivation and reasoning behind some of the principles. I believe that most of the ideas in this book can stand completely on their own without any faith-based backing, but for some Christians, the religious material will be a boon and for some non-Christians it will be a hindrance. It doesn’t overwhelm the book, but it is certainly a theme throughout. If that’s not an issue for you, then 48 Days to the Work You Love is an extremely worthwhile read. Let’s dig in. 1 | What Is Work? Why do we work? Most people answer with reasons related to paying the bills. They’re either working at or seeking jobs that are secure or are in demand because these things create or secure a healthy income. Yet such jobs are often the source of deep unhappiness because it ignores the natural gifts and drives each of us has. We all love doing certain things (though it’s different for each person) and we all have things that we’re very good at (again, different for each person). Yet in that chase for money, we shoehorn ourselves into jobs that don’t utilize the things we love to do or the things we’re good at, and that (unsurprisingly) leaves us unhappy or at least less fulfilled than we might otherwise be. 2 | The Challenge of Change: React, Respond, or Get Trampled The world is always changing. In order to succeed, you have to be strongly on board with that change. Seek out areas of change that fascinate and enthrall you. Focus on them, learn about them, and bring every transferable skill (yes, my old hobby horse) to the table with you. The more you toss yourself into areas of change that match your skills and passions, the more valuable you become very quickly . 3 | Creating a Life Plan Your work is not your life. It is simply part of a well-rounded and successful life. What elements do you want in your ideal life? Most of those elements probably won’t involve work – they’ll involve leisure, play, community, relationships with others, and so on. Work you love fills in the gaps between “work” and those other areas so seamlessly that it all flows together and makes you whole. 4 | Wheels, Goals, and Clear Action What is your overall mission in life? Do you have one? Spending the time to figure one out really helps put everything else in context. Me? I’m a writer who simply wants to help others grow. That’s my mission. Within that mission, Miller identifies seven areas of achievement: financial, physical, personal development, family, spiritual, social, and career. These should roughly be in balance and they should all help you achieve your overall mission in life. 5 | Am I an Eagle or an Owl? What are your gifts? Quite often, for expediency or convenience, people are stuck in roles that do not match their gifts at all. They’re uncomfortable in those roles and their required skills are far from their strengths. I was once in this position; I had to travel and meet with lots of different groups. Not only was I uncomfortable with the meetings, I often felt that the topic area was outside of my expertise. 6 | 6 Job Offers in 10 Days How do you get this job? This chapter covers resumes, cover letters, and “elevator pitches” – but mostly resumes. There’s a ton of great advice on here, but the key to all of it is that you need to be assertive. People don’t owe you a job. Don’t believe that a great resume will win you the job alone – it’s just the first step. You have to follow up. Call them. Chase the job you want or else someone else will be the one who chases it down. 7 | Finding Your Unique Path So, self-promotion is one key to finding the job of your dreams. What other keys are there? One big key is finding out where the jobs are in the field that you’re interested in. What basic things are required to get your foot in the door in those fields? Another big element is deciding when the right time to switch career paths is, and that requires some significant introspection. 8 | Do They Like Me? Do I Like Them? Here, Miller talks about interviews – and again, the key to getting the job you’ve dreamed of is selling yourself. Can you describe your strongest area of expertise? Another interesting part: it’s often useful to ask about the company during the interview – in effect, you’re interviewing each other to make sure the match is right. This not only helps you figure out if this is right for you, but also puts more confidence in your pocket. 9 | Show Me the Money Almost every salary is negotiable. Miller spends this chapter talking about salary negotiation – and also the value of sometimes jumping ship to a similar job at another firm for a lot more pay than you’re getting now. The key (as before) is self-confidence and communication skills – you have to be willing to stand up for what you want. 10 | Do You Have What It Takes? Another avenue many people take (and I’m in this group) is entrepreneurship – in effect, creating your own dream job. This is obviously a harder path starting out because there’s no guarantees, but once you get it going, you really do get to define your job however you like. This usually requires a ton of self-motivation. 11 | Skunks, Rags, and Candy Bars Here, Miller collects several thoughts together under one umbrella. The big one (for me) was an emphasis on taking the time to think about what you’re doing, because almost every task can be done far more efficiently with some careful thought. Also, don’t get trapped in your past. Everyone fails – a failure in your past doesn’t mean a thing about whether you can succeed now. Is 48 Days to the Work You Love Worth Reading? This is the best all around book I’ve read on job hunting, bar none. I genuinely believe it eclipses What Color Is Your Paracute? (my previous pick for “best career book”) unless you’re completely alienated by a small amount of Christian theme to the book. So, read this if you’re thinking at all about the next professional step in your life. If that statement doesn’t apply to you, then you’re probably not going to get much value from 48 Days to the Work You Love .

The rest is here:
Review: 48 Days to the Work You Love

The Cost of Negativity

LivingCheaply — Mon, 24 May 2010 19:00:45 +0000

Several years ago, at my first post-college job, I worked in a small office with three other people. One of them (who I’ll call Campbell) was probably the best co-worker I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with. The other (who I’ll call Kathy) made the office environment so poisonous through her constant negativity that I considered quitting after six months. Every day, Campbell and I were faced with criticisms without suggestions for improvement. We also were tasked on a nearly-daily basis with dealing with perceived quality faults in her work environment. During our weekly meetings with our supervisor, she would announce that she hadn’t completed tasks for the week because of her “unhospitable” coworkers, blaming us for nearly everything under the sun. Eventually, Campbell and I came to an understanding that we would tackle the project as a two person team. At our weekly meetings, one of the two of us volunteered for every task that needed to be done. We began to ignore her complaints and criticisms. In the final three months of our nine month “startup” period, our two person team completed an order of magnitude more progress on the overall project than the three person team had completed in the first six months of the project. Campbell and I often criticized each other’s work. But with that criticism came a reason for why it was a problem and a suggestion or an idea for how to improve things. Campbell and I were often extremely disgruntled at Kathy but we learned quickly that it was a waste of our time to dwell on those negative thoughts. Rather than “venting” or pouring out negative feelings onto each other or onto society in general, we made it a point of pride to channel those sentiments into our work. The best “revenge” I ever got on Kathy was presenting a great project at the end of the nine month period with her name slapped right on the cover along with mine. All negativity would have done was make the project worse and that would have reflected poorly on me. What happened? Follow-up discussions on the project demonstrated very quickly that Kathy had no idea whatsoever what was going on with our project. She was let go within a week and several months later, Kathy had been replaced with perhaps the second best coworker I’ve ever had. I learned a few huge lessons from this. Dwelling on negative thoughts is a waste of time and energy that makes your performance worse. Every moment you spend thinking negatively about someone, making negative comments about someone, writing negative emails or forum posts, and so on, you’re wholly wasting your own energy. They don’t improve you, your own performance, or your own success in any way. The negative impact of others will eventually be discovered if you maximize your own competence. If you do the best job you can possibly do, the incompetence of those around you will eventually become clear on its own. Patience and persistence is the key here. You have to simply stop dwelling on your negative feelings towards others. Spreading negative thoughts around usually just reflects poorly on you, not on the person you’re deriding. Almost always, the person who spreads caustic thoughts about someone else looks bad, particularly when the person in question is obviously working hard in a positive, friendly fashion. Thus, the best antidote to negativity is to work as positively and effectively as possible. The best “revenge” is succeeding on your own merits regardless of the source of negativity. If you truly want to seek some form of “revenge” on someone else, use that feeling as a motivator for your own success. Rather than spreading around caustic comments and behavior, channel that feeling into your own productivity, making it so that your own success outshines them. Channel short term negativity into something else. If I’m feeling very negative to the point that it’s affecting my work, I channel it into something personal. I’ll go exercise vigorously. I’ll play an action video game. I’ll go shopping for groceries (weirdly, this is really therapeutic for me when I’m upset). If your short term emotional rush is making it difficult for you to do what you need to be doing, channel it into something private and physical – exercise is perhaps the best overall solution. Negativity doesn’t help you and it doesn’t help those around you. The best use for negative feelings is to burn them as the fuel for something positive without dumping that negativity out onto others.

See original here:
The Cost of Negativity

The Love and Hate of Work

LivingCheaply — Fri, 14 May 2010 13:00:39 +0000

I recently had a conversation with a 66 year old woman who had retired from a fairly lucrative career, only to take on a completely surprising job as her “retirement job.” She’s a grade school lunch lady . Why did she choose to take on such a job? The reason was simple, she told me. Her grandchildren, her grandchildren’s friends, and the grandchildren of some of her friends attended that school. She had a lot of experience working with food over the years working at soup kitchens and the like and she really wanted to put her skills to work making great meals for the little kids she cared about. To put it simply, she loves her job. She really, really enjoys doing this, and I could tell by some of the stories she told me. I told her that her job seemed like it could be pretty thankless – the kind of job that Mike Rowe might shadow . She thought about that for a minute and said something pretty profound. If you hate your job, a good situation can become a bad one. If you love your job, you can turn a bad situation into a good one. What do you do if you hate your job, I asked her. She dropped another piece of wisdom on me. If you hate your job, stop doing the parts you don’t like and spend more time doing the parts you do like. The worst that can happen is that you get fired from a job you hate, and is that really a loss? The best that can happen is that you start producing much better work that helps you move up the food chain. She told me that her job was to put healthy, tasty, and fun meals on the table for the kids. She knew what guidelines she had to follow and she followed the health-related ones, but she would often spend her food budget in creative ways to get healthy and fun food out there. She also didn’t “waste time” on unnecessary paperwork and meetings, stating that if there’s something important, they’ll find her in the kitchen actually doing her job. I think every job benefits from a bit of her perspective. At my previous job, I loathed the bureaucracy and paperwork aspects of the job. Eventually, I reached a point where I pretty much ignored them until there happened to be downtime – in other words, I moved the aspects I didn’t value to the lowest possible priority. I missed a few minor deadlines, to be sure, but it made my job a lot more enjoyable and, unsurprisingly, more productive, too. I keep this same philosophy in my writing work. If I’m not enjoying the work, I do something else, and almost always, it works. Why? Because if I move to something that’s fun within the range of stuff that I do professionally, I usually produce something great. If I grind against the boring stuff, I hate it and produce stuff that’s poor. This is true of almost any job, from flipping hamburgers (some people are better in the kitchen and some people are better at service) to office work. If you hate your job, find out what you hate about it and do less of that. Figure out what you like about it (or at least hate less) and do more of that. You might miss out on a few details, but you’ll produce much better stuff in the areas that matter. Any boss worth his salt will see that and reward you for it (or at least overlook the little things that you miss). I’ll leave you with one final anecdote from a friend of mine who manages a convenience store. One of her high school aged employees seemed really down, so she took him aside and asked him what the problem was. “I hate working the counter. I hate talking to all these people.” She made a deal with him – if he turned it up a notch with the other tasks, she’d take him off the counter completely. He brightened up quickly. Now, the bathrooms are spotless, the floor is mopped, the products are stocked, and the other employee working the counter is happier, too, because she likes dealing with the customers. Everyone wins when you don’t hate your job. Find the parts you like and do more of that instead. The happier you are with your work, the better you’ll produce. If you’re worried about how it’ll go over, talk it over with your boss first, but give it a go. You’ll do better in your career, go home happier at night, and be much more likely to receive better pay.

Continued here:
The Love and Hate of Work

Seven Easy Steps to Your Dream Job

jos — Fri, 07 May 2010 13:00:04 +0000

A few days ago, I was reading an article in ESPN Magazine (I started getting a subscription to it a while back after I signed up to play fantasy baseball at ESPN.com) by Vivian Chum that talked about what you would need to do to get a job as an NFL coach (you can read the article online if you’re a subscriber). After reading the article and letting it ruminate in my mind for a while, I began to realize that the article actually had pretty good advice for any “dream job” a person might have. In fact, I used most of the advice in the article on my own path to becoming a full-time writer (a “dream job” for me that seemed totally unrealistic five years ago). The ESPN article had six tips, but while thinking about them and remixing them a bit, I stretched them into seven distinct steps. Here they are, along with my own application of them while moving from office work to a stay-at-home writer and dad. 1. Work for free. Internships. Taking on projects without pay. Volunteer work. What do these all have in common? They’re great ways to gain experience in competitive fields, but you’re trading pay for a deeper level of experience than you might get otherwise. Almost every field under the sun has some avenue to build experience through internships and volunteerism, from coaching and computer programming to office work and trades. Such situations allow you to gain incredibly valuable experience, the kind of experience that will launch you into real work in that field. Of course, you’ll need to put food on the table while doing this, so I usually suggest working at another job first and saving every possible dime so you can live off of your savings while doing the internship or volunteer job. As a writer, “working for free” largely meant blogging, especially at first when I didn’t have many readers. I spent a lot of time writing articles for The Simple Dollar (and for earlier blogs of mine, including a parenting blog) and not earning anything from them aside for perhaps enough pocket change to buy a cup of coffee. I kept plugging away. What happened? I became a better writer. I learned what my audience wanted to read. And, gradually, readers started coming. 2. Have some unusual resume elements. What experiences or knowledge can you bring to the table that differentiates you from the others? You’d be surprised how often something “outside of the box” can get the attention of others, even if some of the other candidates have better “ordinary” resumes. This often goes hand-in-hand with the internship/volunteer suggestion above – if you’re plying your trade in an unusual and challenging situation, you’re going to immediately win some respect from potential employers or clients. Always seek out the unusual and challenging in your life experiences, whether directly tied to your dreams or not. Such life experiences build both character and adaptability, which are invaluable at almost any career. What did I do that was unusual? In terms of the obvious , I think I did two things differently. First, I openly admit that I flunked (badly) the early personal finance tests in my life (and still fail some) and, second and more importantly, I was willing to admit that while also writing about personal finance. I have never, ever tried to create a sense that I am some sort of personal finance guru or expert. That’s different, and I think that’s why the most popular personal finance blogs have succeeded – they’re not afraid to admit failure in a field where everyone seems to constantly talk about the “big win” and how much money they’re making. 3. Keep those unusual elements to yourself. You don’t need to go around bragging about your great experiences. Keep them quiet and under the vest and just let your walking do the talking. You’re almost always better off to under state what you’ve experienced and what your skills are than to brag about them or overstate them. Yes, bring them out when you’re shipping a resume, but don’t bring them up when you’re working. Keep them in your back pocket until you can bring those great elements to actual use. It’s a lot more impressive (and demand-creating) if you can slap together a computer network quickly out of whatever equipment is lying around out of the blue than if you spend some time each week bragging about how you set up networking in an African village. There are some elements of my own life that I don’t discuss that somewhat shape my perspective on here and make it “unique” in some ways. I occasionally mention them, but I don’t use them as a red badge of courage. I don’t need to. The end result is that when such an issue comes up and I do actaully mention some of those issues, it makes much more of an impact. Here’s an example of this, when I talked about the deep value of $4 prescriptions for me personally. 4. Ask your biggest doubter to be your mentor. The person you should be asking for help and for mentoring is the person whose skill set is far beyond yours. Tell that person flat-out that you are woefully inexperienced, but that you want to learn from them because of the respect you have for their work. Ask them what it takes to make it. There’s no reason not to swing for the fences here. It’s only rarely that a person gets a sincere face-to-face request to be a mentor from a person humble enough to admit their faults but ambitious enough to actually ask for help and smart enough to actually seek that help. The traits of a person willing to do this are the traits that most people recognize as ones needed for success in any field. I’ve had three major mentors in my life. When I first met each of them, I was barely on their radar screen. Each time, I found an opportunity to talk with them, explain where I was, explain the respect I had for their work, and simply ask for help. Each time, they happily offered it, for my own benefit. What did they get in return? There are three people out there who will always have my help if they ask for it, period. 5. Learn some tricks, practice them, and keep them to yourself. Every career path has skills and tactics that are the basis for impressive work. It can be anything from incredibly fast collation or some great programming or writing techniques to mad skills with Photoshop or playing the piano. Even some skills that aren’t necessarily related to one’s career path can be a huge virtue, as they can often be the tie-breaker between similar candidates. Which candidate would you hire – the ordinary one or the one who is such a good piano player that they’ve made money doing it in their past? Learning such skills teaches you discipline and patience. Even better, these skills can often burst out at incredibly fortunate times – I witnessed someone open up to a colleague due to a piano duet before. The more skills and tricks you have – particularly well-practiced ones you can pick up at any time – the better off you are. My “secret skills” include some strong programming experience and the ability to write very good first drafts, which minimizes the amount of time I have to spend revising (at least for blog postings). My programming experience came from a previous career, while my solid first drafts came from my high school English teacher. 6. Be a nerd. The more you enjoy obsessing about the minutiae of your work, the better off you’ll be in the long run. Revel in learning more about your work. Dig deep into the details, even the trivial ones. Hang out with other people who similarly love the details. Great politicians (think Bill Clinton) obsess about politics and congregate with other political nerds. Great computer programmers (think Richard Stallman) obsess about programming and congregate with other programming nerds. The list goes on and on – the top people obsess over and practice the details and love congregating with other nerds about the same topic. I love to read and write. I participate in a lot of different writer’s forums, particularly those that focus on a lot of the “nerd” details of writing. It’s not about just throwing down words on a page, after all. I often “practice” this nerdery by trying writing experiments and digging into specific skills (like better metaphors, etc.). 7. Read. Read more. Read even more. Whatever you want to be doing, you should be reading about. Spend at least an hour reading about your topic of focus every day. Read technical books on your area. Read books that connect your area to others. Read books that round out your learning in other areas. Read. Reading is learning. Reading makes you grow not only in your field, but as a person. I read three books a week, minimum. One of them is usually related to The Simple Dollar. Once a month or so, I read a book strictly related to writing. You can do this. It takes time and passion, but almost everyone on Earth can have a job they dream about if they’re willing to invest the time and make the sacrifices needed to get there. Just throwing your resume out there will just mean rejections – you have to go beyond that.

The rest is here:
Seven Easy Steps to Your Dream Job

The Zen State of Slog Work

jos — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 19:00:26 +0000

The people that succeed at any job are the people who get the job done effectively, even if the work happens to be incredibly boring. At one of my (many) college jobs, I would spend hours upon hours sifting dirt. I’d scoop a big pile of dirt onto a box with a screen on the bottom, pick up that screen box, and shake it back and forth, allowing the fine dirt to come out and the rocks and large clumps to stay behind. I’d discard the lumps and rocks and repeat. Some days, I would go through more than a thousand pounds of dirt in this way, as I would fill up a hundred pound tub with the dirt, then haul it elsewhere. I usually worked in tandem with a guy who was constantly horsing around. He’d work in spurts, then start fidgeting and finding ways to goof off. He’d try to get me involved with it, but I usually wouldn’t. In fact, most of the time, I didn’t hear him. I would simply “zone out” during the work, not really being aware of anything at all. The time would seem to pass very quickly and I’d be finished with my dirt while he had barely filled up a bin. It wasn’t long before I got a raise and he was fired. Later on, I noticed the same phenomena when I was a computer programmer. For several months, I was involved in writing a giant database API. Some of the code was interesting and required me to think. Most of it was not – it was just very simple stuff that had to be done. I would often find myself “zoning out” while writing this simple code. Again, there were ample opportunities here to hit the water cooler. One of my other coworkers did pretty much everything possible to distract and interrupt my focus. Six months later, the project shipped, she had contributed only a small fraction of what had been accomplished, and she was out looking for another job. The same exact phenomenon happens today, with my writing job. Some of my tasks – researching topics, writing posts – requires focus. Some other tasks – sifting through comments, separating spam emails from real ones – require very little focus. Sometimes, I’ll dread doing those mindless tasks and I’ll find anything else to do. Other days, I’ll turn off Skype, turn off the phone ringer, put my favorite iTunes playlist on repeat, and dig in. Three or four hours later, I’ll find that the slog work is done – and my situation is much better off because of it. There are two lessons here. First, for most of us, it’s the successful, repeated completion of the slog work that makes the difference. In each of those cases above, the boring, grinding work felt like the last thing on Earth I wanted to be doing. Yet, by just bucking down and heading right for the boring, repetitive work, I got through it. Even more important, it was the completion of that slog work – often over and over again – that laid the groundwork for success in other areas. It built trust in those around me. It built the foundation for further work. It enabled a greater array of communications. Each of these things enabled me to succeed in areas that were much more personally valuable to me. Second, if you just throw yourself at that work and let your mind go , slog work is often completed more quickly and more easily than you expect. Just turn off the distractions and stop with the excuses. Sit down and get to work on those mindless tasks you’ve been avoiding. Turn off all of your potential distractions, hit the boring task hard, and just let your mind go with it. What you’ll find is that if you’re not distracted away, time passes quickly and you’re done with the task surprisingly fast. Even better, the task is now done and it’s likely created the foundation for much greater success – building the respect of your coworkers, enabling you to move forward on a project, or something else. As you’re reading this, you probably have a few hours left in your day. Why not spend that time taking care of some mindless task that, if you completed it, would make tomorrow a lot easier? Turn off the distractions, hunker down, and complete something – it’ll do wonders for your career.

The rest is here:
The Zen State of Slog Work

Teenagers and Careers: Is Apprenticeship an Answer?

cheapo — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 19:00:13 +0000

I’m going to go a bit off the beaten path here… Why Nerds Are Unpopular by Paul Graham is one of the most thought-provoking essays I’ve ever read. I’ve re-read the thing several times over the years, each time realizing how much it actually hit upon some of the fundamental truths of my teenage years. In short, I felt completely lost in most teenage social situations and I felt most useful and happy when I was involved in actually learning elements of a trade from an adult who would teach me (for example, my father integrating me into his fishing business). An excerpt: Teenage kids used to have a more active role in society. In pre-industrial times, they were all apprentices of one sort or another, whether in shops or on farms or even on warships. They weren’t left to create their own societies. They were junior members of adult societies. Teenagers seem to have respected adults more then, because the adults were the visible experts in the skills they were trying to learn. Now most kids have little idea what their parents do in their distant offices, and see no connection (indeed, there is precious little) between schoolwork and the work they’ll do as adults. And if teenagers respected adults more, adults also had more use for teenagers. After a couple years’ training, an apprentice could be a real help. Even the newest apprentice could be made to carry messages or sweep the workshop. Now adults have no immediate use for teenagers. They would be in the way in an office. So they drop them off at school on their way to work, much as they might drop the dog off at a kennel if they were going away for the weekend. What happened? We’re up against a hard one here. The cause of this problem is the same as the cause of so many present ills: specialization. As jobs become more specialized, we have to train longer for them. Kids in pre-industrial times started working at about 14 at the latest; kids on farms, where most people lived, began far earlier. Now kids who go to college don’t start working full-time till 21 or 22. With some degrees, like MDs and PhDs, you may not finish your training till 30. The point here makes sense. Most teenagers have no idea what their parents actually do for a living (at least beyond anything but a vague sense) and they have no idea how the things they learn in the classroom will relate to anything they will ever do. The solution to that, of course, is right at the start of this: apprenticeship . Instead of loading teenagers up with extracurricular activities or menial jobs after school, why not pair them with actual professionals in meaningful relationships that benefit both of them? Here’s an example of what I mean. Let’s say there’s a teenager out there who dreams of being a writer. The school puts out a notice in the community looking for a writer who would take on an apprentice ten hours a week. The apprenticeship would pay something around minimum wage, but would also involve the apprentice building something of value on their own with at least some of that time. So, for example, I might have the apprentice spend five hours a week doing grunt work for me, then I would spend five hours each week with that person helping them to build a blog to share their writing, polish their writing skills, and so forth. The student gets real experience in a field they’re interested in. I get to trade five hours of grunt work a week into five hours of meaningful mentoring a week. You could do this at almost any job. Ten hours of apprenticeship a week. Five hours is spent handling grunt work for the master and five hours is spent doing meaningful work that builds into something more. Even better, in many cases, that meaningful work could be open-ended (like writing), enabling the apprentice to take the bull by the horns in their spare time and go even further. Here are five additional examples of how this might work. A computer programming apprentice might spend five hours doing very basic system support and cleaning of equipment and five hours getting mentored as a contributor to a high-profile open source software project. A park ranger apprentice might spend five hours doing park cleanup and an additional five hours getting intense mentoring, going out on patrols, and setting up and running a large-scale project for park improvement. A basketball coaching apprentice might spend five hours handling managerial grunt work for the team and five hours watching game film and receiving lessons on how to motivate others, culminating with actually coaching lower-level sports. An administrative assistant apprentice might spend five hours collating and five hours involved in actual preparation of documents for the business. A graphic design apprentice might deal with correspondence for five hours and then spend five hours getting mentored on how to create great designs for real-world projects, culminating in handling a few smaller projects all on their own. From there, it’s not hard to see how apprenticeship could work well in many career paths. An apprenticeship, done well, can give a purpose and direction to a teenager that didn’t exist before. It can directly tie their classroom lessons to real-world work and initiate them into the true adult world that they often seek. With that in mind, I am considering doing this very thing with the local high school, seeking out a student who is interested in writing to serve as an “apprentice” starting in the fall.

Rebooting Your Life

jos — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 19:00:58 +0000

Henry writes in (I edited a few minor details to help with privacy issues, because I think without edits it might be possible for people to easily figure out who Henry is): Six months ago, I lost my six figure job as a database administrator. A month after that, just before Christmas, my wife left me, taking the kids with her. She filed for divorce claiming negligence because I didn’t have a job. Soon, I was forced to move out of our home and into an apartment. I got a job working in construction in February. Two days after starting the job, I suffered a broken hip thanks to falling debris. I’m currently in a wheelchair, undergoing therapy, and I hope to walk again by the end of the summer. Needless to say, my life is very different now. I’m not down about it though. I realize that I have a great chance right now to completely restart my life. I received a decent cash settlement from work and will be receiving steady compensation as well, so my financial situation is pretty good. Plus, right now I have all the time in the world to figure out what comes next. If you were in my shoes, where would you start? What would you do with a year’s worth of time and a steady income to build a new future for yourself? Henry, you’ve had a doozy of a six month period. It is absolutely to your credit that you’re still in a positive frame of mind after all of this. That speaks very well for whatever you wind up doing from here. I would suggest doing two things over the next month. First, limit your media intake. Yes, I know it’s easy to just sit there and watch television and surf the internet when you’re laid up, but doing that not only delays the inevitable things you’re going to have to do, it also establishes some pretty awful routines and it just gives away the time you could be using to build the life you want. Instead of sitting there surfing the web or watching the ol’ telly, try doing things . Yes, obviously, keep this within the things you’re capable of doing, but try doing whatever comes to mind. Whatever seems interesting to you. What things have you wanted to try in the past that you’ve never had the time for or that the people around you have resisted? It can be anything. Don’t be ashamed of what it might be – that’s often the echo of people trying to tell you what your limits are. Try some things. Eventually, you’ll find yourself gravitating away from some things that you don’t like and towards some things that you do like. You’ll also notice that some things seem to come easy to you and other things feel difficult. To put it simply, move towards the things that come easy and also excite you. Don’t worry about whether these things can make you money or not yet. What you’re trying to find are things where your passion and your skill meet together, because those are the things where you’ll have the magic touch. You’ll enjoy what you’re doing, you’ll produce great stuff, and people will want to pay you for it. Don’t be afraid to just spend a few months trying new things and seeing where you naturally gravitate. Most people simply don’t have the time in adult life to do this, but doing this can actually point you straight towards the career that you should have – the one you’ll both enjoy and excel at. Once you find the right thing, you’ll know. You’ll find yourself waking up in the morning with an itch to do it. You’ll find yourself creating things left and right. Better yet, those things you create will draw a positive response from others, even if they’re still a bit amateurish. When you find that thing that you love to do, look for how others make money doing that thing. Research your field of interest online and find leaders in the field. How do they make money? What kinds of things do they do? What sort of education do they have? How did they get started? Biographies can help. Wikipedia can help. Sometimes, contacting the person can help. Once you have this information, create a game plan for getting to where you’d like to go with this passion. Will it require schooling? Will it require the formation of a small business? Will it require some apprenticeship? Figure out what it will take to get there and how financially lean things will have to be to reach that point. Hand in hand with this, you should live as cheaply as you reasonably can. You don’t need to live like a hermit, but you should be mindful that such a career switch might be very expensive. As you heal and recover, simply follow through with your game plan. Seek out a mentor to help you refine your plan and to get you on the right page. Get involved in communities that relate to the area you’re seeking, both in your local area and online. If you do these things with sincerity and honesty, you’ll find yourself headed down a great path to a powerful new life. Good luck.

Continued here:
Rebooting Your Life

The psychology of making huge career jumps

LivingCheaply — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:10:42 +0000

Some observations on making huge career jumps, your friends, and your own psychology… It’s easy to go through your career taking the same paths others did before you. But small, simple tweaks can make a huge difference in your lifetime. One of my readers, Alexander, writes: “I’m reviewing NIH grant proposals right now and seeing your tweets made me think of something that might interest you — doing the “expected” career progression instead of the one that makes sense. Typically, biologists who want to do research as a career go to grad school ($22K annual stipend; I did this part and learned a tremendous amount) for 5-6 years and then do a postdoctoral fellowship ($40K salary; ridiculously low wages for someone who is now a subject matter expert in their research area) for up to 6 more years before becoming assistant professors ($65-70K or so starting). I skipped that postdoc stage and I’m currently a 33-year-old “senior scientist” with my own research grants, etc (the normal age for that career point is about 42). Although there’s certainly the usual mix of luck and me maximizing my exposure to luck in my having leapfrogged that whole postdoc phase, the thing that I find really jarring is this: When I talk to friends and acquaintances who are going through grad school now, they frequently don’t even want to entertain the possibility of making this kind of “jump” themselves. I’ve tried to pitch them on it, and been told, “It doesn’t work that way.” When I offer myself as proof, I’m told, “You’re a special case.” I though that might interest you, given your appreciation for the psychology of success. I’ve personally found it a little tiring, although I have realized that the set of peers I chose to spend time with in grad school match my outlook, which makes sense — I picked positive, productive friends (who are now doing quite well in positions at consulting firms and major biotech companies). Still, I find it odd that people don’t like the idea of jumping ahead if it’s demonstrably possible.” Few things I’ve noticed: I used to hear friends complain about money, and I would rush to tell them what to do. Even when I knew the objective “right” answer, they never, ever listened to me. Instead, their eyes glazed over and they ignored me. Eventually I started resenting them for not listening (which is a ridiculous reaction on my part). After 1.5 years of this, I decided to implement what I called the Honey Pot Strategy, where I let the right people come to me, via this blog. It has been a miraculous change. People are smart: Only the right people come, and the wrong people realize this site isn’t for them, and leave (that’s why I don’t mind when people say they’re unsubscribing from this site). Read more: Bob Bly, the noted copywriter, writes about why he never gives unsolicited advice . People feel comfortable putting others into buckets. “Oh, you study economics” or “Ah, you’re a product manager.” I do it. You do it. We all do. But when you start doing something “weird” like doing a side job, or earning $1,000 on the side , or even doing a free internship , people generally get uncomfortable. There are a variety of reasons for this, but the most important result is that it makes us question what we’re doing. Yet if you think about it, why would you care what people who are not doing what you want to do say? The reason, of course, is we are profoundly social, and our reference groups are broad. Even if I think your job sucks, you’re still my friend, and I’m still influenced by your judgment. In some of my advanced courses, I teach people how to deal with this. Doing offbeat, “weird” things early in our careers can produce huge rewards. Witness this blog, my comedy blog “ Things I Hate ,” or even the “ You have died of Dysentery ” t-shirt that I created. None were created to make money. Yet each one played a pivotal role in opening up doors. The challenging thing about doing offbeat, weird things is that there’s potentially huge upside, but you don’t know for sure . In general, people don’t like doing things that don’t have a clear ROI, especially as they get older. That’s why people consistently ask, “Can you guarantee I’ll make $1,000 in Earn1k? How do you KNOW that taking people out to lunch will work?” You don’t know. Otherwise everyone would do it. See how Jeff Bezos thinks about doing weird, offbeat things in his regret minimization framework. I cover specific tactics in my writings on entrepreneurship , my entrepreneurship bookmarks , and my Earn1k course .

See more here:
The psychology of making huge career jumps

Review: Linchpin

cheapo — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 18:00:37 +0000

Every Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance book or other book of interest to Simple Dollar readers. The entire argument of Seth Godin’s book Linchpin is that there are no longer any great jobs where someone tells you what to do. That’s not to say there aren’t great jobs out there – there are many – but they now require the ability to basically blaze your own path, creating things and building connections that are indispensable to those around you. That person, in Godin’s terminology, is a linchpin. I think, to a degree, this general argument is spot on. We live in a globalized world where most jobs can be shipped anywhere, from Mexico to Indonesia. Jobs in which people are merely following instructions all day are among the easiest to ship and the few that remain in America aren’t going to be strongly financially rewarding. Success comes from making yourself essential to the operation – and simply following orders, even if you do it well, keeps you firmly in the “replaceable cog” camp. How do you stand out? What kinds of choices can you make to turn yourself into someone indispensable? Let’s dig in and see what the book has to say. The New World of Work Most jobs where you simply follow instructions and do a faceless job demean the real value you provide. They’re faceless jobs, but you’re not a faceless person. You’re not merely a cog in the machine of capitalism – but your job might be. The biggest difference between a follow-the-instructions job and a linchpin is that a linchpin creates his or her own value, whereas an instruction follower doesn’t add any value beyond a specified task that’s completed. A linchpin works in ways that improves those around him or her, while an instruction-follower simply follows the tasks at hand. I like to think of it this way: what’s the difference between a mediocre administrative assistant and the best administrative assistant you can imagine? That’s roughly the difference between a person who is a linchpin and a person who is not. Thinking About Your Choice The choice that’s on your plate is simple: do you keep merely following instructions and counting the days until Friday or do you look for ways to make yourself transcend those roles and become a linchpin? This is an urgent question, because a global marketplace makes the instruction-follower role more dispensable than ever. Some people are content to fill the role of instruction-follower – and that’s fine. However, the career opportunities for such people are simply shrinking – that’s a fact of life. Indoctrination: How We Got Here Most of what we learn in school serves one purpose – to make you an effective person at filling an instruction-follower job. Schools do not encourage creative thinking (which is an invaluable part of being a linchpin) – instead, they encourage lots of rote memorization and repetitive tasks which are scored on standardized tests. It’s a pretty neat trick to make school funding tied to these standardized tests, isn’t it? Becoming the Linchpin Every workplace has a few people that are simply indispensable. They take very challenging situations and make them work. They seem to solve tons and tons of problems. They’re the ones everyone goes to when there are crises. Those people are the indispensable ones – if you’re not one of them, you’re a lot more dispensable than they are. The question really is whether or not you’re willing to work to become one of those indispensable folks. Is It Possible to Do Hard Work in a Cubicle? Being a linchpin means a lot of hard work. The biggest part of it is being willing to give all of what you have to doing a great job. This does not mean just filling your hours with whatever task you’re assigned. It means bringing all of your passion, your ideas, and your creativity to the table whenever you work. It means taking on the hard problems that might scare you a little bit (or more than a little bit). The Resistance Our brains typically work in resistance to those kinds of tasks – we’re biologically wired to look out purely for number one. We avoid risk. We avoid anything that might be perceived as a threat. We avoid generosity. However, all of these things – risk, taking on threats, generosity – are key parts of being a linchpin. We have to work hard to overcome these resistances in order to become something greater. The Powerful Culture of Gifts Giving of yourself to others opens countless doors. Our brains often expect immediate reciprocity – if we give something, we want something in return and soon . The world rarely works that way. Our generosity – going above and beyond the expectations of others – builds a strong reputation for us, one that secures our work and builds positive relationships and interactions for us in ways we often never directly see. Quid pro quos rarely work – but building a strong reputation for great work and generosity certainly does. There Is No Map How do you do this? Unfortunately, there is no road map – and that’s a big part of the difficulty of it. You have to seek out the challenges in your own situation and take them on head first. You have to seek ways to up the quality of whatever it is you’re doing. In other words, you have to go off the instruction sheet – and that’s the real challenge. Making the Choice Linchpin value is created by what you choose to do, not by what you’re born with. Anyone can become a linchpin – it’s not an inborn trait, it’s a sequence of choices to step beyond the instructions and do things that improve everyone around you. It’s a scary choice, but it’s still a choice, one that offers a lot of rewards if you’re willing to take the leap. The Culture of Connection In order to succeed as a linchpin, you have to build a lot of connections with the people around you. Indispensable work is work that’s connected to the work that others do. You build on their work and they thrive on the work you’ve done. A big part of this is personality and attitude and a big first step is to recognize that negativity towards others will never, ever get you to being a linchpin. Positive relationships are the ones upon which you can build great things. The Seven Abilities of the Linchpin Here are the seven abilities, in a nutshell, from page 218: 1. Providing a unique interface between members of the organization 2. Delivering unique creativity 3. Managing a situation or organization of great complexity 4. Leading customers 5. Inspiring staff 6. Providing deep domain knowledge 7. Possessing a unique talent Linchpins provide at least one of the things on this list and often provide more than one. It’s key to remember that these things are there to provide value to the people around you and make their work better, because in doing so you make yourself indispensable. When It Doesn’t Work If you’re trying to be a linchpin and it isn’t working, blind persistence is usually not the way to go. The value of a linchpin isn’t in repeating things that aren’t clicking or working. Instead, they constantly seek out new approaches and ideas and try them, instead. No one has a 100% success rate with their endeavors and ideas, but it is the successful ones that provide so much that they more than make up for the failed attempts. Is Linchpin Worth Reading? If I were to hand a recent graduate or a twentysomething a book on modern careers and how to succed in them today, I’m pretty sure that Linchpin would be the first book that I would grab. The ideas in this book are reflected in virtually every workplace I’ve ever been a part of, from entry-level work to highly technical work. The people that stepped up to help others and solve problems were the ones that were indispensable, while the others merely hoped to hold onto their jobs. I also noticed that the people who stepped up to the challenge tended to be a lot more positive about their job, whereas the people who were dispensable were negative about their job and the people around them. There are a lot of great ideas about the modern workplace in this book. If you’re struggling in your career, Linchpin is probably well worth a read.

Read the rest here:
Review: Linchpin