Talking with a friend today about Ed McMahon’s passing got me thinking how even though we’re not all talk show hosts we can use a sidekick. I’ve always thought that Conan O’Brien was funnier with Andy Richter back in the day and now that the two are working together again I find myself watching late night television again. Let’s not forget Paul Shaffer and David Letterman. All these guys are stars in their own right and can be successful on their own but when they team up, the creative result is television ratings gold. So why does my brian think that us little guys having a sidekick would be great? I know your thinking “If I wanted a middle aged man to sit at the end of my sofa and laugh at my jokes I would’ve let my unemployed brother in law move in” While that is a nice charitable act it’s not what I’m seeing in a sidekick. Chances are you already have a sidekick or even multiple sidekicks be it your spouse, best friend, barber that kid who live in the apartment down the hall.. These people you see during your daily routines, you chat with them about this and that and through conversation ideas are generated, a new perspective is seen or the solution to a sticky problem is revealed. This is what makes having and also being a sidekick such an awesome cool thing. We take for granted that these people help us out all the time and don’t notice how hopeless our endeavors are without them. Everyone want to be the hot shot star but it doesn’t matter what you do trying to do it alone is the recipe for mediocrity. So let’s make room at the end of the sofa and get that conversation rolling who knows what greatness will come from it.
More fun than… something
Question: What could be more fun than walking into a room and shouting the names of a bunch of strangers?
Answer: A video fight!
Quite a few people on Twitter do this thing called followfriday and I’m not going to bash them for it since it’s the way they like to play Candyland. Being the daredevil I am, I’m going to try playing a bit different. Youtube music video fights, it’s more fun than a monkey knife fight.. except there are no knives and monkeys. The rules are simple @ reply someone with a video from youtube and they will do the same while trying to use the song to have a wacky conversation, double points if you can break their brain in the process.
Yes it is one of those Fridays, every one has been wound too tight lately and something snapped, I’ll see all you normal people on Monday…
Whatever happened to asking nicely?
So in Michigan it is being debated again in the state government about a ban on public smoking, mainly a ban in businesses (ie work place including bars and restaurants.) I have the stance that any formal public decree on the banning of something is usually a very bad thing or at very least will set a bad precedent.
Now, I hate going to a bar for a night and the next morning I can still taste the smoke in the back of my throat. It is disgusting and all. But I don’t think my opinion in this has enough right to stand and overtake the desires of others. And having the Government coming in and controlling what you can and cannot do is equally improper. So I ask “Whatever happened to asking nicely?”
What do I mean? Well, why aren’t you walking up to the owner, manager or other head of your favorite bar or place to frequant and ask them to make the place non-smoking? Why aren’t you asking them to place notice on the door if they are friendly to smoking or not? If enough people took their time to ask nicely, I bet many places would go non-smoking without the need of the Government. If you make your voice heard to the people that can actually make the change, I bet all would be happier in the end. If it is stated what a business has chose, then I can make the decision if my time there is worth smelling like an ashtray.
Why am I so vocal on this one, because I worry what would be next. If we can banning smoking, currently a legal substance, what is next? Will some small very vocal group come along in the name of public safety ban alcohol again? What about the practice of other non-safe activities say skydiving? Life is filled with dangerous activities including visiting a bar……killing of the liver anyone?
So I say, get off your bums and ask nicely and see what happens.
It’s about not being there…
These days it seems most people are looking for a shortcut, that product or service they can buy that will make it so they don’t have to work and be the next big celebrity. The fallout from this sort of pie in the sky dreaming of your big break being just around the corner is that you allow yourself to fall into a trap of inefficiency. You tell yourself “If I only work a few more hours this week I can pay enough off my credit card so I can buy this new designer product” How is working hard inefficient? Most of the time it’s not, but when your always looking for a shortcut longer hours aren’t always productive hours plus it’s made worse when your not passionate about what you are doing. Now some jobs are all about hanging around waiting for something to happen but office work is not. Everyone has that person in there office who spends more time telling everyone how much work they have to do and how much of there personal life they have to give up for the good of the company than time actually working. This very same person will also be the one who wishes they could afford this or that object. I’ve even seen this person given the opportunity to shift their work schedule and have more of that personal time they said they so desperately needed, guess what happened? Thats right they fought it because what they saw was not a way to become more efficient but a loss of overtime pay. As a member of the marketing machine I feel as though we have done a disservice to the workforce of our country. We produce the dreams that everyone is bombarded with everywhere, we tell them buy this and you too will be one of the beautiful people. The Media is telling us that there is a shortcut to riches and we can find it if we just spend more. The big secret though is you don’t have to work endless hours and have huge mountains of debt to have a comfortable life. The other part of this secret is, yes you do have to work hard, there is no magic piece of software of gadget that’ll do the hard bits for you. But working hard doe not correlate to working long hours, sure you may have the occasion when you need that 60 hour week but it’s the exception not the rule. Also it’s not about big paychecks, it’s about how you manage the resources you have access too. Of course all this stuff is easier when your an entrepreneur and not working for the man. Managers who think anything other than you chained to your desk 40+ hours a week are rare but when your calling the shots and decided that today is the day your going to work from the local coffee shop who is going to tell you no?
Organizing your workday based on tasks instead of time is a huge part in living a better personal life. Life at least to me is about celebrating your victories, doubly so on the small ones. When your workday is task based it’s so easy to say “I got that project done so tonight I’m going to celebrate by grilling a steak and opening that bottle of wine I bought last week for a special occasion”. When your office is time based, well every evening is “whew! I made it through another day, let’s hope tomorrow doesn’t suck as bad”. It can make all the difference between how successful you feel which in turn actually helps you be more successful and we all know people like to be on the winning team and when your winning you work better so you’ll keep winning. The second part of the puzzle is to not run off promising things to your customers that even under optimal conditions would be difficult. Yes you want to be the hero and deliver what everyone said can’t be done, but you need to honestly accept your limitations. The surefire way to destroy your productivity is if your spending all your time cleaning up the mess because you could not make a deadline or shipped a shoddy product. All too often making a promise that wasn’t followed through on is the biggest killer in a company I’ve seen it first hand damage customer confidence which then destroyed employee morale and with it productivity. When your task based it becomes easier to know what you can do and allows you to set realistic goals and deliver the quality product your customers want.
It’s a hard sell but the accepted practice of working a 40 hour work week is a bad idea. Even harder is selling the point that letting employees set their own hours gets better results and makes for a happier employee. When I have to punch the time clock, I lose incentive to work on problems after 5 because of the delineation between “my time” and “company time” I’ve found that if one can do their work anywhere and are allowed to do so they will complete more tasks than if they are coming into the office everyday. It’s where things need to go if people want to have happy full lives.
A pox on the tyrant…
This article is just a stream of consciousness rant thats been bugging me for awhile.. I must have started and restarted it 4-6 different times over the past month and today I decided that I’ll just dump whats been on my brain as it came out.
There is a sickness in the land, I don’t know what it is called and the signs are both elusive and right in your face. I don’t know how far beyond mid Michigan its dangerous grip extends but I can assure you that here its roots have taken hold deep into our culture. The disease I’m speaking of is this notion that as an adult one must work tremendous hours for another receiving little in satisfaction and usually also in wages. Yes the world does need these hard dirty jobs but what I’m talking about is the whole culture of mental abuse found in some workplaces. While it’s normal to tell an individual they need to be present at their job from 8 to 5 all week, it’s not normal to then make them feel guilty and less of a person because they aren’t coming in earlier and staying later every day. Somehow people have bought into believing that the you can only measure their worth to a company by how many hours they are seen sitting behind the desk in the office, that if they are not there they obvious are not caring about the company’s well being. Employees are believing this and employers are exploiting it. Beyond the mental stresses this is causing for our workforce it is even worse for our economy. These same employees who feel they must been seen “giving a shit” about the company are also becoming more resentful and less productive. Having less time outside of their working hours each day they do an ever increasing amount of their personal business at their desk, sure it starts out with scheduling appointments and making holiday purchases online but it doesn’t stay at that for long. The more you tell your employees “just be thankful you have a job in this economy” and the more “reasons” you give them to give more of their limited time to you the greater they’ll resent where they work. Sure many of these workers will still love what they do, they’ll just dislike who they are doing it for because just getting an ever decreasing paycheck has never been proper investment in a company. I’ve seen a lot of companies both large and small act this way I’ve also seen companies who’ve treated their employees well and not only allowed for personal growth but encouraged it, guess which type of companies are hurting or gone?