Stormy's Corner

Do you know what you would love most to do?

Finding your dream job is more than just identifying what you love most and finding a job where you do that. I love doing puzzles, would I want to do them eight hours a day, everyday? No way.

Last night at a party I met a woman who loves what she does. (She collects money for charities.) She'd heard a quote that said that 80% of Americans hated their jobs so she was on a mission to have us all identify what we loved to do and figure out a job doing that.

I think you need to:

• Figure out what types of things you love doing.
• Find a job that has meaning to you: a mission, purpose, ... (I suspect this woman didn't used to love asking people for money - but she loves helping out the people that need the money.)
• Make sure you are good at the things you love. This will probably just happen as you get good at anything you work at but you won't be happy if you find a job that you love and adds meaning but you are terrible at.

Why do working moms always feel guilty?

I am supposed to be excited that I'm going to the French Quarter Festival in New Orleans this weekend. But I'm not. Because right now I'm sitting in a hotel room for the 3rd week in a row and I have another business trip next week. So instead of being excited, I'm feeling guilty that I will only see the kids on Thursday this week. It's a good thing we had a good weekend together last week!

I read this article in the Washington Post today about moms who go back 60% or 80% in order to spend more time with their kids. After a Baby, Full Time or Part?

It all makes me wonder how you even measure it. I suppose what I'm really measuring is how much enjoyment I'm missing. Because I'm sure Caleb is ok and happy. He loves day care and he loves Daddy. And while I'm sure he misses me, when I get home, we always have to reiterate that we don't have cookies for breakfast. (Frank says they never have cookies for breakfast but Caleb lets me know that's what he expects!)

And do Dads feel guilty? Because 99% of them go back full time! (I actually think women are lucky that it's more acceptable for them to work part-time or stay at home.)

Luckily for me, I don't usually travel this much and my normal work/life balance - work Mon-Thurs with an occasional business trip - is one I enjoy and Frank and the kids seem to do alright with.

The book that changed my life the day I read it

I had just finished reading the The Art of Possibility when I ran into a work acquaintance in the lobby of the hotel I was staying at. He introduced me to someone and said "and Stormy's on maternity leave." Surprised, I said "no I'm not!" (Why would I be at a conference if I was??) He went on to tell me that so-and-so had said that I wasn't really truly back to work, that I worked from home a lot and didn't work full time. I was furious. I thought I knew what was up and it made me mad. I work from home a couple of days a week - and I'm not sure everyone is happy with that - and I don't officially work Fridays. (I do some work on Fridays but I don't get paid for them so that I don't have to work them.)

My first response was to call so-and-so and demand an explanation. However, just having read the The Art of Possibility and thinking the authors had made a lot of good points, I felt like if I called in anger, I would not have learned anything from the book. So I thought about it and tried to apply the ideas from the book to my situation. (Well, first I griped to someone I trusted to handle it well, and twittered about it, then I thought about it.) I tried to think about the interactions between the three of us as a game. I wasn't just a player - I was the one deciding what game I was playing. I realized that I didn't know what so-and-so's motivations were. What I did know was that:

• So-and-so had said something about my work hours or habits to at least one person. For unknown reasons. (Idle conversation, jealousy, excuses, as a good example, ... I had no idea.)
• It was likely that so-and-so would continue to talk about my work hours to people. Confronting him was likely to make him talk about the confrontation and my work hours even more. Not to mention that if his intentions were good I would look petty.
• I work 80% for 80% of my full time salary - I don't on Fridays.
• I don't (or didn't) tell people I don't work Fridays because I was afraid it might hurt my career.
• I had no proof that it would hurt my career.
• My career is going really well in spite of the fact that I don't work Fridays.

So I changed the rules of my own game (part time might hurt my career, keep part time a secret, etc.) and blogged about it. On my work blog. Now everyone knows that I don't work Fridays (most of the time), they know how I feel about it and why. So even if so-and-so continues to talk about my hours in ways that are misinterpreted, my version is out there and has been read by a lot of people. People that I care about and people that are interested in my career and what I have to say. (At least I assume that's why they subscribe to my work blog!)

I think the The Art of Possibility is one of those books you could read again and again and still get new things out of it, so I'm keeping it on my book shelf. It's a short read and I recommend taking the time to read it.

Cynical people care

Ever known someone who tries to kill every good idea you have? Maybe it's because they're passionate and they've been burned. From The Art of Possibility:

A cynic, after all, is a passionate person who does not want to be disappointed again.

I'm betting every cynical person you know listens to you anyway. Why? Because they do care. They just might not really believe anymore - but they'd like to.

And way too often cynical people get laid off before someone figures out that they really care and shows them that they can make a difference.

Humans were not made to work in groups of a 1000

I read an interesting essay by Paul Graham today, You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss. Paul theorizes that humans are meant to work in groups of 8-20. So when you put more than that in an organization, you start to lose freedom in order to keep organization.

A group of 10 managers is not merely a group of 10 people working together in the usual way.  It's really a group of groups.  Which means for a group of 10 managers to work together as if they were simply a group of 10 individuals, the group working for each manager would have to work as if they were a single person—the workers and manager would each share only one person's worth of freedom between them.

He then goes on to explain that working for a large organization is like eating junk food.

The average MIT graduate wants to work at Google or Microsoft, because it's a recognized brand, it's safe, and they'll get paid a good salary right away.  It's the job equivalent of the pizza they had for lunch.  The drawbacks will only become apparent later, and then only in a vague sense of malaise.

Anyone who has watched a big company struggle to make a decision, or been part of that struggle!, will find themselves nodding at some point. Something to think about.

Multiple personalities are good for you

I often feel like there are multiple Stormy's. Each one has her own set of friends and interests that the other friends don't know much about. There's my open source personality, my mom personality, my massage school personality, my raise guide dog puppies personality, my ombudsman personality, my ice hockey playing personality, my karate personality, my emergency medical technician personality, ... (Although lately the first two have been taking over the others - unfortunately as I like each of them!)

So it's a good thing that multiple groups of friends and multiple personalities might be good for you. I had heard that having more than six social groups makes you healthier but today I read that having multiple personalities keeps you stress free:

People who report they are more "multiple" suffer less from stress-related conditions. Say "Judy" has a sporty personality, A, and an academic personality, B. If A loses a tennis match, A is annoyed, which results in tensed muscles and a backache. If A was the only personality Judy had she would be tense all day. But if she goes off to college, switching to Judy B, her muscles relax because B doesn't care about the tennis match. So Judy suffers less than if she was only personality A.                                                                                   

It looks as if normal multiplicity could prove useful in helping people function in an increasingly complex world.

You Can't Convince an Idiot

You can't convince an idiot of anything.  If you think someone is an idiot, two things will will work against you as you argue with them.  First off, they'll know how you feel and they'll think you're an idiot for thinking they are an idiot. (And maybe you're smarter than 90% of the population but that doesn't really make all of them idiots.)  More importantly, you'll be framing your arguments for idiots, not for the person standing in front of you.

"If I were you, I'd make the same decision you did."

The way I see it, if I were you, and had been born with the same gifts, lived the same life, had the same values, then at any given moment I'd make the same decision you did.  So the fact that you made the "wrong" decision, means that you are missing some piece of information, some story, some anecdote that would let you see the problem the same way I do.  Maybe you really are an idiot, and I need to dumb down my reasoning - but chances are you are a relatively smart person and you have good reasons for the choices you've made whether it's voting for Obama or supporting the Iraq war.  To change your mind, I have to respect who you are, understand that if I were like you, I'd feel the same way, and then figure out what piece of information or what story I can tell you to make you a little more like me.

Most people try to convince people by stating their side of the argument over and over, but what you really need to do is find out what they are missing (or what they've experienced) that makes them see the world that way and give them more information, preferably a new experience or a new story.  Once their experiences match yours, they'll be more likely to make the same decisions you make.

Why in person, verbal talks are still better than email

From Mission Minded Management:

This sentence is interesting in that if you say the sentence seven times, each time placing the emphasis on a different word, the meaning of the sentence shifts.

Try it…

1. I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money.
2. I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money.
3. I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money.
4. I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money.
5. I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money.
6. I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money.
7. I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money.

Bad leaders need unquestioning obedience

Bad leaders need unquestioning obedience. They don't just want obedience - they actually need unquestioning obedience in order to maintain their power. From A Just Determination:

A good leader doesn't need unquestioning obedience. People follow that leader because they choose to, because that leader has their trust. A poor leader requires unquestioning obedience, because without that, a poor leader will lose all meaningful ability to exercise command.

Think about that the next time you feel yourself becoming defensive.

The same passage (it's a fiction book, BTW) talks about how poor leaders need better followers.

They're only crayons

From gapingvoid:

6. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.

[...]

They're only crayons. You didn't fear them in kindergarten, why fear them now?

I think that's so true.  We are all sure our art won't be good enough.  Like it'll be judged.  We're afraid to draw!  Did it happen in first grade or fifth?

Book Review: The Company

If you ever worked for or with a big company, you'll find this book Company hilarious.  Things like these will actually make you laugh:

• Endless voicemail forwards: "This is Greg Smith, Gretchen, can you please forward this to my staff.  <beep> This is Mike Jones, Mary, can you please forward this to my direct reports. <beep> This is ..."
• Nobody really knows what the company does or wants to have to explain it to someone else.
• All your "customers" are internal customers.  (I remember a big campaign ... nobody was allowed to call a company team a customer even though we made tools for other teams.)

Company is a funny book and a fast read.  Good entertainment.

More on freedom to work

From Seth Godin's Workaholics:

A new class of jobs (and workers) is creating a different sort of worker, though. This is the person who works out of passion and curiosity, not fear.

The passionate worker doesn't show up because she's afraid of getting in trouble, she shows up because it's a hobby that pays.

Is the passionate worker new?  Or is it just there's a new type of web related job that people are now passionate about?  I'm guessing the latter.  I think there has always been people passionate about their jobs.  There may be more creative type jobs these days though ... more jobs for people to be passionate about.

Freedom to work

From Polly, one of the Mavericks at Work authors:

Old version: work hard (for a very long time), achieve success, earn freedom (to retire and do all the things you missed out on while you were working)

New version: find work that affords you freedom = success

I would argue that the organizations and leaders that find a way to build freedom (freedom from the time clock, freedom from the cube, freedom from the org chart, freedom to create) into work will be the winners in the future.

There is no point in doing something that makes you miserable all day so you can be happy later.  We (including me) spend too much time planning our retirement.  We should be planning our life today.  Find work you enjoy!  Work that gives you freedom, not work that will give you a retirement.

Is your free time boring? Or spent watching TV?

It's probably because you think you need to relax during your free time.  Most people divide all time into either work or free time.  Scott Young, the author of Why Your Free Time is Boring says:

But the subtle message contained in this split is that work and leisure shouldn’t resemble each other. Your work needs to be productive, efficient and challenging. Therefore leisure should be relaxing, accomplish nothing and be free of pressures.

The problem?  We have the most fun when we are most engaged, challenged or using our skills.

I'm working on a Nobel Prize

According to Optimum Strategies for Creativity and Longevity, Nobel prize winners made their discoveries and innovations at an average age of 32.  So I figure I better hurry up and get with it, if it's not too late already!

You don't want money. Really.

You don't want money.  You want the things money can bring.  Most likely you want happiness or joy.  You want money so that you can do more of the things that bring you happiness or joy.

What would the world look like if we concentrated on what brought us joy instead of what brought us money?

And you don't really need money to do what brings you joy.  If I wanted to go spend a month or a year sailing around the Caribbean , I could make that happen.  (Um, once I convinced Frank that is.)  If I wanted to be a professional student, I could do that too.  (Wait, I already am a lifelong student.)

Pursue what brings you joy, not what brings you money.  So if you don't want money, what do you really want?

Thanks to Steve Pavlina's podcast for expressing this idea this way.

Separate health insurance from employment status

Health insurance should not depend on your employment status.  What kind of health insurance you can get should not depend on who you work for.  (I have a friend who can't even insure his young son unless he works for a company that offers health insurance!)  This New York Times article argues that separating health insurance from employers would enable more people to work more flexible hours and in flexible locations:

But if workers’ benefits weren’t tied to employers, then they could transition into independent status without fear of losing their health care or pensions, and more employers would gladly oblige, since they could move costly benefits packages off their books.

Many jobs, especially those that are computer based, don't require people to be in an office or even to work fixed hours.  It would be easier to work on an "as needed" basis if those people didn't depend on one fixed employer for health insurance.

Are you one of the working dead?

I just read an interesting article about the Working Dead - people who get paid to do nothing.  (Or who are getting paid and do nothing, mostly by choice.)  I think the working dead are caused by two things:

• People haven't found their passion.  (If you are willing to take a nap for two hours during the work day, either you really don't get enough sleep or you aren't too excited about what you are doing.)
• Corporations aren't managing them effectively.  (I know somebody who doesn't always have stuff do do and yet he's not allowed to do anything but sit there when he doesn't have work.)

For a while in college I had a job where I would occasionally spend a couple of hours babysitting the copy machine.   (I got so good that I could tell where it was jammed just by the sound it made.)  I got a lot of homework and reading done and I've often wondered if I would enjoy a job where I could work on something else (programming, reading, etc) while I occupied space at work.  I don't think I'd turn it down if it paid enough but I don't think it would be very satisfying.

40 hour work week is made up

Did you know that the 40 hour work week is totally made up.  From Groovy Green - The 4 Day Work Week:

The notion of our standard work week here in America has remained largely the same since 1938.   That was the year the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed, standardizing the eight hour work day and the 40 hour work week.

So when you consider alternate work schedules and hours, keep in mind that there's no real reason you are supposed to work 5 days a week, 8 hours a day.

Someone who is happy with their job

It's nice to hear from someone (famous) that they are happy with their job and not looking to climb any corporate ladder or start a company. Finding something you love to do and then realizing that you love doing it makes for the perfect career and a much happier life. There aren't too many people that realize that society's call to climb the management ladder or start a company might not be their dream.  This is Linus Torvalds:

First off, I'm actually perfectly well off. I live in a good-sized house, with a nice yard, with deer occasionally showing up and eating the roses (my wife likes the roses more, I like the deer more, so we don't really mind). I've got three kids, and I know I can pay for their education. What more do I need? 

The thing is, being a good programmer actually pays pretty well; being acknowledged as being world-class pays even better. I simply didn't need to start a commercial company. And it's just about the least interesting thing I can even imagine. I absolutely hate paperwork. I couldn't take care of employees if I tried. A company that I started would never have succeeded -- it's simply not what I'm interested in! So instead, I have a very good life, doing something that I think is really interesting, and something that I think actually matters for people, not just me. And that makes me feel good.

For those that haven't heard of Linus - he's the guy that originally wrote Linux.

There is no writer's block

scottberkun.com #54 - Writing Hacks, Part 1: Starting:

It’s not the fear of writing that blocks people, it’s its fear of not writing well; something quite different.

A cool coffee shop created by a guy who believes businesses shouldn't exploit people

My parents have found a really neat coffee shop in Brookings, South Dakota.  They not only serve good coffee and food but they've created a welcoming and fun ambiance with local art on the walls, live music and interesting books.  (I stumbled across D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself there and any place that introduces me to an interesting book is a good place!)

The owner Jacob Limmer is featured in this video explaining why he didn't like businesses - because he thought they exploited people - and how he's gone about creating his own fun, very successful, not exploitative business.

Ira Glass on Storytelling

CurrentTV has a great video of Ira Glass on story telling.  (Ira Glass is the creator and producer of This American Life.)  In the video Ira talks about telling stories, finding good stories and "good taste."  It was the good taste section that I found really interesting.  You get into something because you enjoy it and appreciate it - you have good taste and you can tell what's good and what's bad.  Unfortunately, your taste is good enough for you to realize that what you are producing is not great.  Ira says you have to work through that - keep producing - and eventually you'll get better.  He says most people quit at that point because their taste is good enough to realize that their product is terrible.  He then shared a radio segment he made eight years after he got into radio and he explained how terrible it was.  And yet he stuck with it and now he's one of the most famous radio story tellers of our time.

Bill Gates' thoughts on why we don't give more to charity: we don't know what to do

Bill Gates' graduation speech at Harvard is well worth reading.  He uses it as a call to arms.  As his mother said, "From those to whom much is given, much is expected."  We all need to work on the world's inequalities.  In his opinion the biggest obstacle to giving is complexity, "To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact" and we can't see the solution and when we do we don't measure the impact.  It's not that we don't want to help the dying children of the world - we just don't know how to save them.

Market forces aren't going to solve the world's inequalities - we have to do it.

So we began our work in the same way anyone here would begin it.   We asked:  "How could the world let these children die?"

The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. So the children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.

His advice is to spend a few hours every week learning about a problem, meeting others who want to fix it and working on solutions.  So - go save the world! 

The Changing American Dream: Generations and Values

I've always been fascinated by the difference in generations. Generations at Work held so true to me that I recommended it to many friends.  This blog article talks about how the American Dream varies over the generations.  According to the article, Generation X and Generation Y value time, family and personal development way above money.  It rang really true to me! 

The article is about how those changes in values are changing the work place.  People are getting new jobs every two years, dropping lucrative careers to spend time with the family and much less willing to work 60 hour work weeks.  All of this is helping family and personal development:

We are spending more time with our kids, and we are keeping our marriages together more than twice as effectively as our parents did. And Generation Y is doing better than their parents, too: They refuse to waste their time on meaningless entry level work because they value their time and their ability to grow more than that.

Generation X values family more than money (and distrusts large corporations to take care of them) - Generation Y has taken it one step further and they are developing themselves.  Building a personal brand.  Every Generation Y'er I've ever interviewed has impressed me to no end about all the things they've done - on their own.   And the rest of us are learning from them - just check out all those blogs!

Are you happy at work?

According to the Chiumento Happiness at Work Index the top ten things that make us happy at work are (in order):

• Friendly, supportive colleagues
• Enjoyable work
• Good boss or line manager
• Good work/life balance
• Varied work
• Belief that we’re doing something worthwhile
• Feeling that what we do makes a difference
• Being part of a successful team
• Recognition for our achievements
• Competitive salary

I've heard that having a best friend at work is the best way to make sure you are happy at work!

Interestingly enough, the things that make us unhappy are not quite the opposite of that:

• Lack of communication from the top
• Uncompetitive salary
• No recognition for achievements
• Poor boss/line manager
• Little personal development
• Ideas being ignored
• Lack of opportunity for good performers
• Lack of benefits Work not enjoyable
• Not feeling that what I do makes a difference

So, for example, making a good salary won't necessarily make you happy but making a bad salary is likely to make you unhappy.  So a good salary is necessary in order to be happy but it doesn't make you happy in and of itself.

Book review: The 4-Hour Workweek

Tim Ferriss' new book The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich isn't for everyone but I thought he made some really good points. 

• We work from 9-5 because we are supposed to work 40 hours a week from 9-5.
• We are very unproductive at work.  How many hours did you spend this week in meetings, answering emails or surfing the web?
• We are busy working hard and saving for retirement when we should be figuring out how to do what we want to do now.
• We have way too much information to digest from blogs to news to email.

What he suggests, among many other things, is:

• Be more productive.  Figure out what you do when you are not working (like blogging emailing or reading blogs and news) and cut it out.
• Get lots done in a little time so you have lots more time for things you enjoy.  He suggest working just an hour a day.
• Outsource anything and everything possible including all your errands.
• Figure out what excites you so you know what you want to be doing.  (He stresses excitement over enjoyment.  Like I've said, too much hanging out on the beach can get boring.)
• Work towards a positive monthly cash flow instead of a large sum of money you'll use during retirement.
• Take lots of mini-retirements or mini-vacations - so save up for those and then do them.
• He advocates lots of travel and lots of learning - especially other languages.

In order to accomplish all this, he suggests starting a business selling a product.  Then outsource everything from creating the product to marketing to order fulfillment to others.

I bet if you read the book, you'd get at least one really good idea out of it.  I bet most people that read the book don't end up quitting their job and starting an outsourced product company, but you never know!

Wisdom from Steve Jobs

Some interesting quotes from Steve Jobs about how to live your life.  Here are the ones I liked:

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”  This one seemed appropriate given my earlier post about trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up.

“There’s a phrase in Buddhism, ‘Beginner’s mind.’ It’s wonderful to have a beginner’s mind.”  Learn!

“We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on.”

“I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year…. It’s very character-building.”  Don't be afraid to make mistakes!

“We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise why else even be here?”  Make a difference!

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Everybody else knows what you should do with your life

Do you know what you want to do with the rest of your life?  No? Well I bet everybody else could tell you what you should do!  I've got a great career in the computer software field and I'm about to graduate from massage school.  I'm getting really tired of people assuming that I should do one thing or the other.   Their assumptions are particularly frustrating because I could use some good conversation and feedback.

There's the majority of people that assume that I should keep my high paying, visible, successful career.  They seem to be focused on the salary and the fact that it's a "successful" career.  Then there's the group of people that assume because I went to school and I'm graduating, I should do that for a career.

My problem is that I don't know what I want to do and I want to talk to people about it but it's really hard to have a productive conversation when they've already decided what I should do without even knowing how I feel!

For example here's a conversation I had on Sunday:

Friend: I think it's so great that you've put all this time into school and you're about to graduate, start a business, have flexible hours and be able to spend more time with your kids.  What a great thing you are doing.
Me: I'm not planning on quitting my job and going into massage.
Friend: Stormy! You've got to. You can do. You'll be able to spend more time with your kids!
Me: Quitting work and starting a massage business wasn't really ever the plan. 
Friend: It's tough to start a massage business but you can do it!

And the conversation I want to be having is about what do I want to do.  Not how I can do it.  I'm completely confident I can work out the details of whatever I want to do, if I could only figure out what that was!

Luckily, I live in a time when we are all going to live long enough to have three or four careers so I don't just have to pick just one!  I can be a software geek and then a massage therapist and then a doctor and then a librarian.  Or maybe a book scout.   Or I could just try to do them all at once!

Selling used books online

I love books so when I stumbled across a blog post about creating your own online used bookstore, I read it and then googled some more and then read some more.  Supposedly there are people that scout for books at estate sales, thrift stores and used bookstores and then sell those books online.  Sounds kind of fun.  Spend all day looking at books, find treasures and sell them.

What I can't figure out is how they make much money.  Let's assume you want to make $50K/yr.  You'd have to make $2K/wk which means you'd have to sell 20 books a week at $100 profit (how many of those can there be??) or 200 books at $10 profit (still not a lot) or 400 books at $5 profit (most likely.)  That means you'd have to find 400 books/week!! 

How many estate sales and garage sales would you have to go to to find 400 books worth $5 used?  Even if you found two $100 books and 100 $10 books, you'd still have to find another 160 books that were being undersold by $5.  That's a lot of books.

It sounds like a better hobby than a career.

5/1/07

So I thought about this some more and realized that I was wrong because I forgot about inventory.  From what I've read, you can assume 30% of the books you list sell in the first month and that each month you sell 10% of your inventory.  That makes $50K/year much more realistic.  Here's the logic:

• To make $50K/year, you have to make $1K/week.
• Assume 4 weeks/month for simplicity reasons.
• If you find $4K/month (in profits, regardless of what the books sell for), you'll sell $1200/month of that.
• You'll put the remaining $2800 into your inventory.
• Assuming your inventory has $28K in profit, and you sell 10% a month, you'll sell $2800/month of that.  And the stuff you found this month that didn't sell will replenish that.
• So you:
  • found $4000
  • sold $4000 ($1200 of what you found plus $2800 from your inventory)
  • maintain an inventory of $28000

So all is good.  And finding $1000/week in profits sounds hard but much more doable than my original assumptions.  Assuming you work five days a week, you can find 20 books a day for a dollar that will sell for $11 or you can find 2 for a dollar that will sell for $101.  Not easy but perhaps possible.

 

Is life too easy in the Peace Corps?

My cousin Kelsi is in the Peace Corps and people have been giving her a hard time that she's got it easy.  She's really been enjoying the Domican Republic and writing some great stories about the country and the people there.  Having been in third world countries and a lot of Carribean countries, I don't think it she has it easy.  I'm really glad she's enjoying the good parts.  In her email today she shared one of the negative sides for the first time:

The first thing I saw when I got to my house in La Cienega was the hugest rat I had ever seen being chased by the family dog.  I about started freaking out on the spot, but since it was the family´s first impression of me, I held it together as much as I could.  They reassure me that there are no rats in the house, but I have the dog and cat sleep in my room just in case.

It reminded me of a hotel in Honduras where I was sitting at the pool and two rats tried to climb up on my chair.  I pulled up my feet and let my friend continue to sleep in the other lounger.  What else could you do?  I certainly wasn't going to go anywhere while they were there!  I wish I'd had a dog!

Worst first day ever

This 17 year old plumber torched a $12 million dollar mansion on his first day of work.  60 firefighters couldn't keep it from burning to the ground.  He's going to have a hard time living that one down!

Do you have a worst day ever story to share?

Five Easy Ways to (Maybe) Discover What You Are Meant to Do With Your Life

Pamela from Escape from Cubicle Nation has these five questions she recommends answering to find out what you should do with your life.  I answered them for fun and then I debated posting them here as they could be a bit personal but I thought it would be fun to see if you guys can figure out what I'm passionate about by reading them.  Your ideas are welcome!

What is your favorite movie?  Pelican Brief – she solves a mystery, writes a brief, it gets noticed by important people, she’s in New Orleans – my second favorite city, trying to hide – I like the challenge of how you would hide, trying to right a wrong.   My next favorite would be an action movie - any of the Tom Clancy movies with Harrison Ford, or that one where Harrison Ford proves he’s innocent of murdering his wife because a one man arm did it or the Saint or that one where they track nuclear weapons to New York City.  Action all the way.  With a challenging mystery that the main character solves.

What are your favorite channels on television?  Channels?  Frank tapes all the shows with the DVR.  All I know are the names of my favorite shows – not even what day they come on!  ER and Gray’s Anatomy would be my favorites although they tend to get a bit soap opera-ish.  I also enjoy watching CSI with Frank.  If there’s anything else on … well, I’ll never know if I like it unless Frank tapes it and says I should watch it.

What kind of art museums are you attracted to?  Art.  Hmm.  I liked seeing all the dinosaurs at the Smithsonian.  Does that count as art?  If I had to pick an art form, it would be photography.  There’s a photographer here in Colorado who has studios at the airport and in Broomfield and he takes amazing pictures of wildlife.  But I like pictures of people best.  They don’t have to be people I know but those are the best ones.

What kind of music do you love? Country music.  Time Marches On and Any Man of Mine and the one about the girl (as the boy grows up) are probably my favorites.

What kind of outdoor environment makes you the most happy?  Summer.  Sitting outside at a restaurant in downtown Fort Collins.  Preferably with friends but alone is still fun as long as there’s lots of people around and lots going on.  Sitting on the Ramblas in Barcelona rates pretty high too.  As does the River Walk in New Orleans.  And parts of New York City and San Francisco.  Busy, hot cities in the summer.

So what do you think?  Do you know what I should do now?

Are you passionate about your ideas?

As this inventor of a toothpaste squeezer tube says in the NYT:

“If you’re not boring the pants off people,” Mr. Robertson said, “you don’t have enough passion.”

I'm not sure I'm boring the pants off people but I've definitely gotten some strange looks.

Will our current corporate culture change?

Escape from the Cubicle Nation by Pamela Slim has a podcast by Dr. Srikumar Rao, Columbia and London Business Schools, author of Are You Ready to Succeed?  My favorite quote was:

I don't have a work life and a personal life.  I have one life and either it's working or it's not.

If you are the same person at work and at home and if you are unhappy at work or at home, you'll likely be unhappy both at work and at home.

Pamela thinks the corporate environment is so broken that so many people will start leaving to start their own business that corporations will have to change in order to keep people.  Maybe I'm a cynic but I think it's much easier for people to go into work everyday and collect a paycheck than it is for them to dream up a business model, quit and run a business.   I think corporations and the current corporate culture is around to stay for a while.

One of the reasons that many small business owners are not successful is because they want to do what they love, not run a business.  For example, massage therapists go into massage because they like massage therapy and want to help people and then they discover that you have to run your own business.   Giving massages is not the same as advertising, making business cards, renting an office, scheduling clients, etc.  Running a business is a lot of work.  If you just like writing code or giving massages or fixing cars, you might not be willing to quit your job to start a business of your own.  You might spend a lot less time actually writing code or giving massages.

Which would you prefer, more money or more friends?

I just read a very thought provoking article, Why Having More No Longer Makes Us Happy by Bill McKibben.  The author argues that pursuing more wealth worked well in the past when we didn't have much material wealth but now that we are a relatively wealthy nation, pursuing more and more wealth is making us less happy not happier.   His main points are:

1. We are pursuing more and more wealth because it worked in the past,
2. We are spending less and less time with family and friends,
3. We are busier and more isolated,
4. And it isn't working anymore.

He points out that if you are rich in relationships and poor, more money might make you happy, but if you are poor in relationships and have plenty of money, a new friend will make you much happier than more money.  If you are a peasant in China with lots of relationships and no money, a little money can go a long way towards making you happier but a sixth person living in your house won't.  On the flip side, if you are an American living in a 2000 square foot house, another friend might make you a lot happier than the money for another coffee maker.

He argues that in the pursuit of wealth, we've lost our community.  We spend less and less time with family and friends and more and more time isolated: commuting, working, watching tv, surfing the internet.  And yet studies show that it's social networks (the real ones, not the virtual ones) that keep us happy and even healthy.  Robert E. Lane, a Yale political science professor writes that "evidence shows that companionship ... contributes more to well-being than does income."

One point he made that really struck me because I can't tell you how many people told me that college was going to be the best years of my life and I kept asking, "Why?  Does it go downhill from there?"  Apparently it does if you look at the quality of your relationships.

Why do people so often look back on their college days as the best years of their lives? Because their classes were so fascinating? Or because in college, we live more closely and intensely with a community than most of us ever do before or after?

Something I read recently said that the number of friends we have drops off dramatically after our 20s.  Recently, I've realized that I really miss the number of friends I had in my teens and 20s.  I did things with large groups of friends several times a week if not every day.  Now we are lucky if we squeeze something in once a week.  And even when you have time (like when I was on maternity leave), your friends likely won't have time!

So think about it.  Increasing the time you spend with your friends and extended family will do more to make you happy than a raise at work.  And I'd even argue it'd make you happier than winning the lottery!

Would you save 2500 kids?

I sit around and wonder what to do with my life.  What's my purpose in life?  And then I read about someone like Irena Sendler.  This amazing woman saved the lives of 2500 children!  Can you imagine?  She helped 2500 Jewish children in Poland find homes with Catholic families so they would escape the concentration camp.  She herself was tortured but she didn't give away any information about the children.

I'm sure she didn't go out looking for ways to save the world but when the opportunity presented itself, she stepped up to the plate.  She saw a need and stepped in to help at great cost and expense to herself.

How do we make sure that if the opportunity presents itself to us, that we recognize it?  And how do we find these opportunities?  My first response is "well, we all won't get the opportunity to save children from the Nazis" but then my next thought is "no, but there's probably even bigger opportunities today." 

Irena Sendler is now 97 years old and her only regret is that she didn't do more. 

Winning the lottery isn't all it's cut out to be

Why do we all play the lottery when it's been proven that winning the lottery won't make us any happier?  Lottery winners are no happier six months after they win the lottery than they were before they one.  Many of them are considerably unhappier.

I wrote a few days ago about how money isn't evil.  The flip side is also true - money won't solve all your problems.   I think we play the lottery because we don't want to go to work everyday and we think we want a new car, maybe a new house and fancier vacations.  The real problem is that we don't know what we want - we don't know what would make us happy.  While money is certainly an enabler and I believe having money is a good thing, it won't help you figure out the purpose of your life.  Money won't help you figure out what makes you happy.  It won't tell you how to spend your day. 

The key to happiness isn't winning the lottery, it's figuring out what makes you happy.  I guarantee that if you know what makes you happy, what you enjoy doing every day, you can find a way to do that and pay the bills.   But no matter how big the jackpot is, it won't tell you what to do with the rest of your life.

10 home business ideas that work

For those of you willing to work and still looking for a home business idea, here are ten stories to inspire you.  They all have an online presence and they include:

1. Making charms for charm bracelets ($2.5 milllion/year)
2. Putting beads on tank-tops ($1 million/year)
3. Referral business for home contractors ($100,000/year)
4. Domain naming service ($25/domain name)
5. Baby announcement cards
6. Crocheted underwear (and other stuff)
7. Editing legal transcripts
8. Selling balsam from the trees on your land
9. Selling mannequins
10. Making cuff links ($500,000/year and still has another job)

There's links and descriptions of all the sites in the original post.  And then there's making money by selling ads on your blog: .

So what business are you going to start?

The secret to making money from home

I was working from home last week (sitting on the sofa working on my laptop) when the cleaning people showed up.  When they asked where Caleb was I said "at daycare, I'm working."  To which they replied "is that what you are doing!"

I see a lot of websites with lots of traffic all talking about how to make money working from home, blogging or from an internet business.  Do all those readers realize that to work from home you have to work?  Or are they secretly hoping that they'll make money doing nothing?  The main benefit to working from home is not commuting.  (Yeah!)  And some people think working in your pj's is a benefit.  But in general, you are working - not playing with the baby, doing laundry or watching tv.  (You can do that stuff but you aren't working when you are doing it.)  I think all those people interested in working from home are really looking for a job that isn't any work.

What do you think?  Are you interested in working from home?  If so, why?

What do you want on your tombstone?

What do you want to be remembered by?  James Gray is currently missing at sea and the article in the New York Times (which reads like an obituary!) talks all about what a great researcher he is at Microsoft.  While I'm sure he'd like to be recognized for his work at Microsoft, I'm sure that's not all he is - the article briefly mentions a wife just to say that she's the one that called him in missing.

While I'm proud of my career and hope my work is recognized I hope my obituary (and not my missing at sea notice!) recognizes me for more than just that.

If I am missing at sea, I hope the authorities and media are all focused on information to help find me as opposed to my accomplishments in life!

I hope they find James Gray alive and well soon and he can tell us personally what he's proud of.

Picking lice

Speaking of unusual careers.   This woman picks lice eggs out of (mostly) children's hair.  She charges $100/hr and it can take her 2-3 hours of painstakingly detailed work to completely remove the eggs from a head of hair. 

In case you are wondering why you can't just use one of those shampoos ... the shampoos kill the adult lice but the eggs remain on the hair and hatch later.

If you like detailed work, the market is wide open!

A Career You Love

Career Change � The Two Career Change Inspirational Quotes of the Day for December 28:

“Never continue in a job you don’t enjoy. If you’re happy in what you’re doing, you’ll like yourself, you’ll have inner peace. And if you have that, along with physical health, you’ll have more success than you could possibly have imagined.” — Roger Caras

The Joy of Not Working

While I was on maternity leave I decided I really didn't know what I wanted to do with my life.  Most of my friends work so they weren't available to do things with in the middle of the day and the few that didn't work were pretty busy living their lives.  So what was I supposed to do all day? (Actually, I alternated between not knowing what do do and feeling like all I had time to do was run errands.  How do we get all those errands done when we are working full time?) A lot of the things I normally would have done weren't possible.  For example, I couldn't work out for the first couple of weeks after giving birth.  I couldn't go hiking or bike riding with a two week old infant.  So when I stumbled across a book called The Joy of Not Working:  A Book for the Retired, Unemployed and Overworked- 21st Century Edition, I ordered it.  However, by accident I got How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free: Retirement Wisdom That You Won't Get from Your Financial Advisor.  They both turned out to be pretty interesting.  Since then I've bought another copy of the retirment book and lent them to my in-laws and my 89 year old grandmother - at their request!

Ernie Zelinki's main point is that most of us don't know what to do if we aren't working.  (And to those of you who read my blog who are happily retired, I congratulate you!)  He says we get some of our basic social needs from work:

1. Organization - What time do you wake up?  What are you supposed to do all day?
2. Purpose - What's your purpose in life?  What are you trying to accomplish?
3. Community - Who do you do things with? 

The books are written in a pretty simplistic style but he has a lot of good points.  He strongly encourages people to get interests outside of work and to not be dependent on work for a sense of community and purpose.  He also gives lots of just basic good life advice like maintain your health, make good friends, etc.  In addition, he provides a few exercises and ideas for doing that.  I agreed with a lot of what he said, like making a few good friends instead of lots of casual friends, not watching tv, and participating in lots of different activities.

He also advocated working for yourself at something you enjoy rather than working for somebody else.  I've been listening and reading a lot of self development books and blogs and this seems to be a common theme.  Work for yourself, follow your passions, develop your interests, don't drone on and on at your desk job.  Ernie as well as many others point out that money and/or retirement will not make you happy by themselves.  You have to have a sense of purpose, a group of friends and a set of activities you enjoy in order to be happy in life.