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.

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.

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?

Quality of life is still good in Michigan, finding culture in your backyard on the cheap.

When the idea came to write about the quality of life in Michigan I have to admit I was leaning towards believing that things were worse than the already bad it has been for some time.  Thankfully I’m surprised this is not the case. Sure, to the casual observer, my hometown seems to be in decline, which I’d wager would be the report from other small Michigan towns.  The auto industry is in decline and along with it the scores of manufacturing jobs. For those who haven’t been able to adapt to the change, they have been feeling their lifestyle slipping away for the past decade or two. For others though, Michigan has plenty to offer for great quality life experiences, with the added bonus of it being rather economical to take part in because it’s pretty much in our backyards.

This past weekend a decision was made to get away on a day trip. The rules were simple, one tank of gas and just go.  We choose to head south down highway 52 from home and that shortly found us stopping in Chelsea Home of Jiffy Mix and possibly one of the cutest towns in southeast Michigan. With a downtown full of history and art not forgetting the friendly people, we enjoyed a peaceful walk around, checked out the Purple Rose Theater and all the little shops. Unknown at the time, our stop at the New Chelsea Market set the rest of the days adventure.  I’m can’t claim to be any sort of expert on wine, in fact I’m as close to a newbie as they come, but the staff was so pleasant in helping us select a few bottles the whole experience is one we’ll be repeating again.  After saying goodbye to Chelsea we found ourselves over in Saline and ready for lunch.  The Brecon Grille, modeled after an English pub was the perfect choice for a quiet relaxed lunch for two, with the bonus of serving local, naturally raised beef and buffalo from TMZ Farms that made for some tasty burgers.  After lunch we walked on over to Spotted Dog Winery where we enjoyed tasting some delicious wines. While chatting with the owner and purchasing a few bottles to take home, we knew what the rest of the day was to be.  We decided to back track down US-12 to Tecumseh where we visited the Boulevard Market for some artisan cheeses before heading to the Pentamere Winery.  At Pentamere we tasted more wonderful Michigan wines, my personal favorite being their wonderful Harvest Apple.  Also we received further education on wine tasting and the range of wines Michigan has to offer along with a suggestion to visit the Cherry Creek Winery down the road in Brooklyn, which, of course, we did.  By now it was getting late in the afternoon and when we arrived at the old schoolhouse it was nearly closing time. Hoping for the best we went in and asked if it was alright for us to take a quick look around, not expecting to repeat the experiences we’ve been having throughout the day. We couldn’t have been more wrong, they we super friendly and allowed us all the time we wanted to look around and even asked us if we wanted to taste the wines.  After purchasing a few bottles of the most enjoyable wines we thanked the woman at Cherry Creek for her time and wonderful help, said our goodbyes and headed for home.

Without having any ideas or plans laid out before leaving home we managed to stumble upon one of our most enjoyable, relaxing days in a long time.  We learned about a region of Michigan, more about local wines and the great people producing them.  Even if we had set out at the beginning of the day to do a tour we couldn’t have visited each of the eight wineries found in the southeastern part of Michigan in a single day.  Touring wineries is not about how many you visit in one day, according to http://www.michiganwines.com there are over 60 in the state all together. No, touring is about the time you spend at each one in a relaxed atmosphere and the good people you meet.

Outside of the cost for all the wines we purchased, the expense was nothing more than lunch and a tank of gas, but the quality of the experience just as well could have cost so much more.  It’s obvious to me now that not only are there people in Michigan living a quality life but they are thriving and sharing the best this state has to offer.
This is just a small taste of all that Michigan has to offer someone looking to “live the good life” without the advantage of an investment banker’s salary.  Summer is almost here and I’m already planning future stories about other hidden (or not so hidden) gems our state has for those of us looking for something more than the gloom and doom of a bad economy.  Some links of interest if your wanting to explore the places we visited and Michigan’s wine culture on your own..

http://www.purplerosetheatre.org
http://www.newchelseamarket.com
http://spotteddogwinery.com
http://www.boulevardmarket.com
http://www.pentamerewinery.com
http://www.cherrycreekwine.com
http://www.michiganwines.com