The Start-Up of You - Good but not fresh advice

When I reserved this audio book, The Start-Up of You from my local library, I hadn't realized that one of the authors, Reid Hoffman, was also the co-founder of Linkedin. Had I known that, I would have readjusted my expectations for the book.

I use Linkedin (Here's my profile) and I advocate its use, but much of the dispensed advice is focused on expanding the user base of this social networking site. So reader beware. There's overt and covert shilling between the pages. If you can get beyond that, there are a few nuggets of useful career wisdom.

One great point the authors make is that all of us should see ourselves in permanent beta. Just like software companies (at least the good ones) are always improving their products which are dubbed beta versions when in these testing/trial phases, we should also always be learning and improving ourselves.

Some people erroneously believe that with four years of a college education you're set for a fruitful and meaningful life-time career. Not only does that assume a static economy with a static workforce--and you should never assume either--it also assumes that YOU will never change. That mindset has all the trappings of a mid-life crisis. People DO change and learning new things helps keep you open to other options that might not have occurred to your eighteen-year-old self when you thumbed or clicked through the college catalog to pick a college major.

Pivoting into a new career is called A to B to Z planning, and it's another one of the books take-away points. Plan A is what its name implies. This is the career that you believe you want to be in. Plan B is a similar career and one that you could pivot into if you simply reframed your thinking--say moving from accounting to finance or web page design to search engine optimization. Plan Z is your fallback plan. What can you do should all else fail? Move back in with parents? Draw down a 401k? Those answers vary depending on where you are in your career, but having a Plan Z gives you a hedge that allows you to take calculated risks.

Finally, a lot of emphasis, and rightfully so, is placed on building and growing a professional network. That is, after all, the purpose of Linkedin. Successful people know they must nurture their professional connections because they understand the value of helping others in order to help themselves.  You never know when you'll want or need to find another position, tap into someone's expertise, or seek advice. If you are willing to offer your assistance to others, they will be more willing to offer it to you. The Golden Rule applies to business too.

None of what's in this book is hardly the fresh advice that is conjured up with the word "Start-Up." I would hope that anyone who's at least mid-career would have already learned all of it. But for recent college graduates and/or twenty-somethings, it's definitely worth reading. It might save you ten years trying to figure this out on your own.

Copyright © Deborah A. Ayers - All rights reserved.

AOL and Apple - Technology for the masses who don't know any better

I’m not usually one to judge people, but when it comes to their choice of technology, I’m prejudiced. Apple users drive me nuts. 

I’ve tried to be open-minded. As Apple introduced more products and increased its computing share of the market from miniscule to marginal, I kept an open mind.  After all, Mac users, or Tooty-fruity Mac users as I call them in a nod to Jason Fox, the nerdy kid in the comic strip Fox Trot who frequently makes reference to the iFruit, insist they love their machines even if they can barely use them. 

The most recent use case, and I have hundreds of other examples, happened on a trip to a designer’s office. There perched on the desk was a mammoth-sized MacBook Pro. Inwardly, I groaned while privately congratulating myself on having the forethought to bring along my own PC.  

Sure enough, at one point during the meeting, the designer swiveled over to her stylish behemoth and attempted to locate some photographs from a previous project. She couldn’t find them.  A few minutes later, she couldn’t retrieve some images that had been emailed to her, and still later she couldn’t connect to a basic web conference. This designer will tell you that she LOVES her Mac even if it is useless to her during a client consultation. 

And so it is, starry-eyed Mac users swear allegiance to Apple with an absolute conviction that their devices are far superior to any other piece of equipment even as they bumble about trying to use them. 

From my vantage, Apple is using the same trick that landed AOL into virtual obsolescence. It charges exorbitant prices and reaps monopoly profits by targeting low-tech users who have limited computing needs. For a while, this business strategy worked well for AOL.  In 1995, AOL cost $2.95 an hour for Internet access after a $9.95 monthly base fee and five free hours. 

AOL claimed to be easy to use, had proprietary content, and a plethora of devout low-tech users who thought AOL and the Internet were one and the same. However, AOL couldn’t keep pace with the free-wheeling development that was going on outside of its closed-in domain. Eventually, people caught on that there was a lot more worth having at a much lower price than what AOL had to offer. 

Fast-forward to today. Apple claims its computers are easy to use although I find most Mac users completely flummoxed by the technology. It also has proprietary content, and most people believe that all smartphones are iPhones. Although there's no question that the company has been wildly successful in putting expensive media devices into the hands of the masses, there are fissures appearing in its carefully crafted landscape.

Unlike other so-called messier platforms like Android or Windows, Apple's applications seamlessly work with one another because Apple has maintained a stranglehold on what it allows to run on its systems. That reason alone is why Apple will never be taken seriously in the business computing market.  And as lower-priced technologies emerge that allow people to do exactly what THEY want to do instead of only what Apple believes they should do, Mac users are going to look more and more like AOL'ers.

Copyright © Deborah A. Ayers - All rights reserved.

No work on Christmas? Bah humbug!

It's Norman Rockwell's fault.

Yesterday, I was chatting with a nurse practitioner about the upcoming holidays, and she said rather proudly that she would be working in the emergency room at Tucson Medical Center on Christmas day just as she had done the last 20 years.

Her comment stood out in sharp contrast to the sappy sentiments that I often hear about how horrible it is that people have to work on holidays. Well, actually not all holidays come under fire. It's usually only Thanksgiving and Christmas that conjure up the farcical and romanticized renderings of so-called American life that Norman Rockwell became so famous for.

And that's why I blame him.

Even Charles Dickens, champion of the working class, who penned A Christmas Carol in 1843 depicted the hustle and bustle of buying and selling on Christmas Day. The large goose that Ebeneezer Scrooge bought for the family of Bob Cratchit was both bought and delivered on Christmas Day. In fact Dickens made it very clear that buying and selling was part of what made Christmas a special day.

Thankfully, many people don't buy into this "no work" on holidays nonsense. Fire fighters, police officers, EMTs, utility workers, ranchers, IT specialists (to keep all of those servers running so you can continue to like your friends' Facebook posts...) broadcast workers, farmers, etc. all work on Christmas so our lives peacefully go on uninterrupted.

The next time you hear someone squawk about how no one should have to work on Christmas day, remind them how very fortunate we are that not everyone shares those beliefs.
Photo credit: Merry Christmas Grandma. We came in our new Chevy. Norman Rockwell
Copyright © Deborah A. Ayers - All rights reserved.

Zig Ziglar - RIP

"It's your attitude, not your aptitude, that determines your ultimate altitude."

That's just one of the catchy slogans coined by motivational speaker and writer Zig Ziglar who passed away last week at the age of 86.

I first heard Zig Ziglar when he was a guest on a radio program when I was in my early twenties. He had a deep confident voice laced with a folksy southern drawl that made him well suited for a career in public speaking. I never saw him speak in person, but a couple of books he authored are still on my bookshelf and a quick search in a desk drawer unearthed his "See You At the Top" presentation on cassette tape.(I no longer own a device that will play it, but I still couldn't part with the tape.)

He was deinitely one of the first of what became a long litany of positive attitude disciples that I've heard or read in the ensuing years. Although there are many similarities between Zig Ziglar, Wayne Dyer, Tony Robbins, Brian Tracey, et al., Zig always struck me as being guided by a bigger moral compass. He remains one of the very few people I have ever encountered who expressed a Christian belief AND who did not spout doom, gloom, hell and damnation. In those years, he had a virtual monopoly on that perspective.

When I taught freshman microeconomics, I used one of his quotes to summarize how capitalism and the profit motive works.

"You can get everything you want out of life, if you just help enough other people get what they want."

(I'll forego the entire lecture that accompanied it, but I can assure you it was riveting.)

A student of human nature, Zig Ziglar also observed that people often went to work and worried about family only to return home to worry about work so that "they ain't never nowhere." Wrapping up that segment he would ask,

"Are you a meaningful specific or a wandering generality?"

Although I could argue now that there's a time and a place for being a wandering generality, his message of the importance of setting goals, focusing on the present, and keeping positive in a negative world still resonates. RIP.
Copyright © Deborah A. Ayers - All rights reserved.

Unplugged from work - Day Five - I did it!

I did manage to stay unplugged from work for five days. Part of my success was luck and part of it was timing. Nothing urgent happened…well, at least nothing that anyone has admitted to… And although it didn’t used to be, the span of time during the academic year was a relatively quiet time to be gone. Rescheduling what had been on my calendar was fairly easy, and all of this had weighed in to my decision to take the step back in the first place.

The hardest days were Sunday (remember, I work EVERY day) and Monday. It was as if I was playing an Olympic volleyball game in my head against myself. One part of me would power serve a thought about work across the net of my consciousness. Another part of me would lunge to hit it out of play. During those first couple of days, the serves were relentless, and I often found myself working harder at trying NOT to think about work than I would if I was actually working.

On day two and three, the intensity of the game eased a bit. By the end of the week, my power server had about as much oomph as an aging relative playing a game of sand lot volleyball at the annual family reunion. At that point, it wasn’t hard to claim victory.

The whole point of my week-long mental jousting was to force myself to face a loss. Or more specifically, yet another loss. In a relatively short period of time, I have lost my mother, a close friend who I considered a family member, and a beloved furry companion.

For the first two, I never missed a beat at the office. Who has time to mourn? Besides, it’s so much easier to just slip back into the whirlwind. Finally, the cumulative effect required an acknowledgement.

In the Jewish faith, there is the tradition of “sitting Shiva” after the death of a family member. Shiva literally means seven and during this week, the mourner is not supposed to do any work while family and friends gather for support, remember the deceased, and allow for grieving and healing. I’m not a Jew, but I could see the wisdom in this forced stepping back.

So I did.

I’m not going to wait 11 years to do it again.

Copyright © Deborah A. Ayers - All rights reserved.

Unplugged from work: Day Four

Today has definitely been the "easiest" day to be unplugged. I suppose I've reached the point of WTF. I've made it this long, one or two more days of disconnect won't really matter.

Using my smartphone, I can see how many messages are sitting in my inbox without actually opening it. Right now, there are fewer in there than I expected, and I wasn't the slightest bit tempted to peek.

That's progress!

And for the record, I do not count looking at my inbox tally as "working," but rather a way to monitor my own endurance. Or apathy. Or both.

The past couple of days have been a weird mix of feeling as if time is flying by while at the same time confronting a great yawning expanse of endlessness. That probably reads a bit more melodramatic or poetic than what I'm actually experiencing.

This whole exercise wasn't about doing. It was about simply being. To that end, so far, so good.
Copyright © Deborah A. Ayers - All rights reserved.

Unplugged from work: Day Three

Today I read a Hardy Boy book, The Secret of the Old Mill. I used to read these books as a kid. In fact, the books that I read belonged to my father when HE was a kid. I've read this one before...goodness knows how many years ago. It was one of the originals complete with expressions like "Swell" and "Jeepers."
Copyright © Deborah A. Ayers - All rights reserved.

Unplugged from work: Day Two

I'm sitting on my catio watching the fading glow of a spectacular sunset as the city lights begin to twinkle on. This is my favorite time of the day to be here.

I have successfully avoided checking in to the office for a second day. Admittedly, the day isn't over yet, but I'm confident I can avoid checking in this evening.

Although my mind returns to work frequently throughout the day--er, perhaps every few minutes or so, I find the span of time starting to lengthen.

It's easier to disengage when my surroundings change from the norm. Today, I went exploring more of the nearby trails. My neighborhood, which most people would already say is "out in the middle of nowhere" is surrounded on the northern and eastern side by the Coronado National Forest--or more specifically, even more nowhere. I could walk for miles and not see another living soul. Nirvana!
Copyright © Deborah A. Ayers - All rights reserved.