Work - alas

Great quote:

“Opportunity is missed by most because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” Thomas Edison

Work & Television

A study in the NY Times shows how people use their time over the course of a day. Click on the link and notice that the area for Television is about as big as the area for Work. So, obviously not every individual spends as much time watching TV as working, but for this group of people surveyed, they did.

That is a major underutilization of talent.

Happiness in Business

This was developed for entrepreneurs building their companies, but I think it is applicable for everyone.

I'm applying!

Could it get better than this?

An Australian state is offering internationally what it calls "the best job in the world" -- earning a top salary for lazing around a beautiful tropical island for six months.

The job pays 150,000 Australian dollars (105,000 US dollars) and includes free airfares from the winner's home country to Hamilton Island on the Great Barrier Reef, Queensland's state government announced on Tuesday.

In return, the "island caretaker" will be expected to stroll the white sands, snorkel the reef, take care of "a few minor tasks" -- and report to a global audience via weekly blogs, photo diaries and video updates.

The successful applicant, who will stay rent-free in a three-bedroom beach home complete with plunge pool and golf buggy, must be a good swimmer, excellent communicator and be able to speak and write English.

New Projects

Today is a big day!
I gave my notice 2 weeks ago to the job that was sapping my strength and energy. Today is my first (week) day of freedom.
Part of my reason for leaving was that there are so many other things I want to get done which were impossible when my day was filled with doing things I didn't want to do.

So, the new mission:
Get a capital campaign going for my charter school
Write some articles exploring energy and policy
Explore some options of what I want to do in the next chapter of life
Get the body into shape - it's not getting any younger

And the difference is that all of these things sound exciting, interesting, like they'll give me energy rather than draining it all.

Confidence over Competence

I was always taught that if you don't know something that the best response is, "I don't know, but I'll look into it for you." And on the other hand, I've recently been told by my boss that I don't come across to the client with enough certitude about our solutions. I know enough to know that I don't know everything.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the crisis of too-much-confidence in our country and culture. It seeps into every corner of life, from business culture to politics.

Perhaps the greatest manifestation of this is George W. Bush, who didn't need to ask questions, get intelligence or see the other angle because of absolute confidence. Sarah Palin perhaps took this to such an extreme of Confidence over Competence that we'll pull back from this madness. When did confidence become the supreme virtue?

Well, here are a few words from a BBC news article, as well.

[L]ife's not like that and people know that. We know in our heart that it's not black and white ... and yet we pretend with the public that it's absolutely this policy and it will deliver what we want. Politics needs to change in that respect." But will it? Is it imaginable that a prime minister could stand up one day and say: "Look, I think this will work, and I'm going to give it a try, but frankly, I'm not sure."

Some parts of public life also function, less noisily, with subtlety and honesty about the real dilemmas. But we tend to hear less of them than the trumpet blasts of self-assurance. Is it the public that demands certainty, craving bedtime stories to help us sleep soundly rather than face up to the rather obvious fact that the future - and to some extent the present - is unknown? Or is it the fault of journalists who would rip into any minister who confessed to being unsure?

Some years ago, the former Archbishop of York John Hapgood suggested - with one eye on the politics of the time - that the lust for certainty could be a sin.

Power can make you a jerk

This is a great article in Business Week talking about 1) how we start to behave like the people around us - so surround yourself with good and happy people, and 2) how power can make people into jerks. This sounds exactly like some people I work with. Hits the nail precisely on the head:

A growing body of research—notably by professors Dachner Keltner at University of California, Berkeley, Deborah Gruenfeld at Stanford, and their students—documents that three things happen when people are put in positions of power:

1. They focus more on satisfying their own needs;

2. They focus less on the needs of their underlings;

3. They act like "the rules" others are expected to follow don't apply to them.

A particularly amusing study—undertaken by Keltner, Gruenfeld, and another colleague—shows that giving people just a little more power than their colleagues causes them to eat more cookies, chew with their mouths open, and leave more crumbs. Keltner also cites research showing that power leads people to process information in shallower ways and to make decisions that are less carefully reasoned.

Net-Net

In a conversation with Bonnie today, she told me her company's worst biz-glish offender is "Net-Net". I'd never even heard of that before. It means, "and the result was...."

Example: We implemented X, Y and Z. Net-net: we signed the client.

Seize the Day - the Bell May Toll for You

Yesterday while I was on my way to work the bus passed an apartment building with yellow police tape around it. I glanced out of the window and saw a heavy body bag being put onto a gurney. My heart thudded. Someone right here died, not long ago, in some bad or mysterious way. What was I doing at the time, living life normally, casually, taking life for granted at the time when someone was in fear?

Later in the day, I checked the website of the Chicago Tribune and found out that a 46 year old man who had lived in a studio apartment for 10 years fell, or was pushed from his 10th story window, and was found dead at about 6 a.m.

My point in writing this is not to be morbid. Perhaps my point is trite: Carpe Diem. I found that yesterday was one of the most productive days I've had at work in ages. I was busy, happy, engaged. And in the back of my mind was this awareness of death, of the finite time we have on this plane. Even at that, our time may be much shorter than we think. So, live! Find the work that you are meant to do, whether that is teaching or cooking or parenting or being the best account manager you can possibly be.

Happiness, and how to achieve it

Happiness, perhaps it's a trite topic. On the other hand, maybe we talk about it because we experience such a lack of it. Can you aim for happiness? Or should you shoot for satisfaction? Meaning? Accomplishment? and hope that happiness comes along as a side benefit?

I'm contemplating this because of a conversation I had last night with my darling, George. He loves his work. He's a chaired professor, so his motivation is not tenure. He simply loves what he does. He works for at least half the day each day of the weekend because he love it. He doesn't actually talk about his work much, but if he's away from it for too long he starts to miss it.

I wish I loved my work that much. Don't get me wrong, I like my job. In fact, just this week I turned down an offer from a big company you've all heard of to stay where I am, in a tiny little consulting company. But, I wish I loved it as much as George loves his. I suppose most of the people I know work to pay the rent, hopefully in something they don't find too objectionable, but to be faced with someone who loves his work makes me realize there could be more.

Is it a matter of creating it? Is it a matter of being busy enough that I don't have time to think about happiness? I recognize that I'm always happiest at work when I've got a deadline and I'm juggling stuff. Is that just because I don't have time to navel-gaze?