Surviving the Workday

Spring Cleaning Tips (from a graphic designer) seem more realistic than other tips we’ve seen. Still…I’m not inspired to clean.

Here’s some Advice for freelance workers on dressing for success. I can’t say I follow any of this advice, except for the suit part. I do have a suit that I own and wear and like. I also try not to smell bad.

Here’s another story about a surge protector and electrical smouldering after a power surge. You’ll recall that after oral surgery, our power went out and when it came back on the surge was so significant that a ball of flames shot out the back of Jim’s computer. And, yes, it was plugged into a surge protector though not particularly a new one. Read more tips about surge protectors here.

5 Useful Things You Could Do Tomorrow has some tips for being more “productive”. You probably can’t use the first one (get up earlier) right now, but as the title suggests, these tips are for tomorrow.

Colleen at Arbitrary Marks writes about generational values in her Generation Y classroom, which got me thinking about generational differences in the workplace again.

One of the best overviews of generational differences at work is Mixing and Managing Four Generations of Employees, which, as the title suggests, incorporates all four generations (not just the Baby Boomers and Generation X).

This table is from the article. And while we know that generalizations always leave some people out, I’ve found this information helpful, if only in understanding my parents’ attitudes (Veterans) to my generation (Generation X) about work.

Finding Your Valentine at Work devotes considerable attention to how to hide your relationship with a co-worker from other co-workers. This amused me to no end, possibly because it reads like an episode of The Office.

A few tips from the article:

 1. Don’t sit or stand too close.

2. Don’t spend time with each other during the workday (e.g., coffee breaks and lunches).

3. Don’t arrive or leave at the same time.

I suppose if you did those three things consistently people probably wouldn’t suspect a thing. Now why exactly might you want to hide your relationship from co-workers? I think new relationships need nurturing and often public critique does not seem particularly helpful. And, of course, depending on your workplace, relationships may not be allowed.

I’m so glad it’s February, because I enjoy the barrage of green sex tips from every environmental blog and newsletter that I read. I’m not quite sure why I find the notion of green sex tips and toys so funny, but it may be because this is one of those very upper middle class first world problems while, say, much of the world struggles to eat. This isn’t to minimize pthalates in dildos and the endocrine-disruptors in lube or the pursuit of fair-trade condoms, some of which I’ve written about before. It’s just to say that I’m not sure this is the best use of time to devote quite as much energy and enthusiasm to this as much of these environmental publications seem to….

Nevertheless, I give you Green Valentine 2008, Let’s Talk about Green Sex, Baby, How to Green Your Sex Life, How to Buy a Green Sex Toy, Tips for Greener Sex, and Ideal Byte’s green sex tip library.

I started thinking about the extreme cost of workshops and conferences when I read Jacqueline’s Missing Out on Spirituality. It seems a worthy topic to explore. Many of us hope to expand our lives in some fashion with an enriching workshop, retreat, or conference, but they are often very expensive.

This past weekend I was in Chico with a group of women that I met originally at Squaw, which is a writing conference in the Sierras. We met to workshop new poems over the course of three days. We congregated in one woman’s home on a lake, cooked for ourselves, and cleaned for ourselves. It cost me a plane ticket (which I feel guilty about) and $40 for food, and, most importantly, provided a community of like-minded supportive people. We did this on our own, sort of taking the authority to do so into our own hands.

I mention authority, because I think we tend to place far too much value on it for workshops, retreats, and conferences, as if the only way to learn meditation is from the Dalai Lama and not our neighbor Joe who has meditated for twenty years or we can workshop poetry only with Mary Oliver and not with our own quite well published poet-friends. We get caught in thinking we have to operate within the bounds of a conventional experience when that may not suit our needs. (Enter bar camp for unconventional thinking about conferences and authority.) Please note that there is nothing wrong with a conventional experience, but it often leaves lots of people out due to cost and logistical issues. Furthermore, I sense that many of us are starved for community, so it seems a shame that we may be missing out. There is no reason you can’t create a small workshop or retreat on your own. We did it in LRY/YRUU. We can do it now too.

I suggest you consider the following elements:

• What is our purpose (e.g., to learn meditation, to build a community, to write new work)? 
• Where can we best meet our purpose (e.g., campground, vacation rental, conference center, someone’s home)?
• How can we best structure our time (e.g., an opening prayer, workshops or silence, and closing ceremony of sorts)?
• What sorts of spaces are available (e.g., private rooms, public spaces, outdoors)?
• What do we want to do about food and sleeping arrangements (e.g., bring food, cook for ourselves, have it catered, sleep in sleeping bags, bring mattresses, etc.)?
• Who will lead? And when? And what are the expectations for leadership?

Most of us who have done a bit of event planning (e.g., your own wedding, parents’ anniversary brunch, parties for others) understand some of the logistical and cost issues, and I think there are good ways to keep these to a minimum with small intimate gatherings at home and outdoors rather than large meetings at corporate facilities. 

Resources

Making a Retreat

Start Your Own Writers Workshop

Yes, I’m sorry, but it appears to be time for Tips for Surviving a Recession. I know we don’t want to hear this or think about this, but I sincerely believe it is still happening.

Tips include:

• Build your emergency fund.
• Pay off your credit cards.
• Increase your income, if at all possible.
• Don’t buy a new home without selling the old home.
• Don’t quit your job without finding a new one.

That’s my summary, but there is more at Tips for Surviving a Recession, including things to tighten in the family budget.

My favorite quote from the article deserves to be called out with a snarky reply:

“I have a friend who just lost her job. She is having a ball selling a whole bunch of stuff on eBay, everything from a gold Cartier watch to smaller things,” says Kit Yarrow a marketing and psychology professor at Golden Gate University.

Oh, Kit, I’m sure your friend is “having a ball” selling her possessions on ebay. Perhaps the words just came out wrong? Say it’s so. Please.

Resources
Recession? Maybe.
Recession Proof Financing
Recession Ready Advice: Careers
The Brazen Careerist

You might read Work, Computer: Neck Stretches which includes a bunch of small stretches. I liked the last wrist stretch the best (please insert the word “gently” at each step):

Wrist Stretch

1. hold arm (gently!) straight out in front of you
2. pull the hand backwards (gently!) with the other hand, then pull downward
3. hold for 20 seconds (gently!) 
4. relax
5. repeat 3 times each (gently!)

Now yoga postures at work is from Ladies Home Journal, and you may have to click past the ad, but the slideshow of the entirely normal looking folks doing desk-side yoga is worth it because not everyone who does yoga looks like Rodney Yee. And don’t stay in the last pose for too long or a coworker may call an ambulance.

I wish there were tips for surviving a miscarriage, but, honestly, I’m surprised anyone survives at all. To me, it feels akin to rape in that once it happens you should immediately get a Do Over card to come back in the next life in a more protected and innocent form for a while. (more…)

Charting Your Way Into a Career that You Really Want is help for those of us seeking a career change. You’re not alone! This is a peak hiring month and, inspired by a New Year’s resolution, many of us are thinking that perhaps we need a career change in the near future.

Here are a few tips from the article:

* Interview people who know you well. Friends, relatives and colleagues can help you sort out what truly engages you and turns you off. They may have insights about vocations you never imagined, and they could remind you of some important truths about yourself.

* Investigate jobs you think would suit you. Don’t imagine that you would enjoy being a paralegal; talk to a paralegal.

* Intern or volunteer to test your conclusions. Internships aren’t only for the young, and if those positions aren’t available companies are sometimes happy to take on unpaid workers for special assignments. Or the paralegal you called might let you shadow her for a day.

All of that said, perhaps the most important tip of all: Set realistic expectations. Finding the career path that’s right for you could easily take six months.

Or longer. I’m partial to Tip #1. I’ve tried that a few times and it’s always interesting to see how others perceive what you enjoy in your work life.

Periodically, someone will write in about a really awful job. And while there are all sorts of small strategies for dealing with awful jobs, Good Tips for Surviving Intrinsically Stressful Jobs reminds us:

Employers have no obligation to make jobs pleasant or rewarding. Some jobs are intrinsically unpleasant. If you do not like your current job, then the best thing may be to find a job that brings you the pleasure and the rewards you need.

It’s advice that should be listened to.  All the meditating, deep breathing, counseling, and strategizing won’t work in a meaningful way in some of these jobs. Sometimes you just have to move on. The rest of the article is quite helpful too.

The year is winding down. Even if you are Scroogey McAsshole, you should still be trying to get in your charitable donations before the end of the year, for maximum deductions. Here are some of the more interesting ways I have found to donate to those less fortunate:

• Flood the World With Bees: Something Awful is asking people to donate money towards sending bees to Africa. These bees will help pollinate crops (or strike fear in the hearts of Africans, take your pick.)
• Donors Choose: Allows you to fund whatever educational program(s) strike your fancy. Or, you can create a challenge to fund a pet project of your very own.
• Child’s Play: Provides toys and games to children’s wards in hospitals across America. Started by gamers, this is a charity near and dear to my heart.
• Adopt-a-Platoon: Regardless of what you think of the war, the troops deserve a little love. Send a care package or donate money directly. Or, fund one of the many charitable programs they have created, such as toys for kids in Bosnia.

1. Be a writer on strike. You’re to blame for everything. Why can’t you just continue to churn out content without regard to how you’re paid? Honestly. Some people.

2. Have a heart attack, but ignore your symptoms. Apparently there is a death spike on Christmas and New Years because we don’t want to disrupt our holidays for an emergency room visit. Trust me—it disrupts the holiday more if you’re suddenly dead.

Hilarious: Possibly I should not be so delighted by the Sierra Club’s Holiday Survival Guide on how to talk to your family if you’re an environmentalist. Possibly it’s the dorky photographs. Possibly it’s the stereotypes. Possibly it’s just the lamest dialogue possible. Possibly I can talk Jim into acting out one of these scripts with me later.

Equally Enjoyable: 101 Appetizers in 20 minutes or Less. Let the 1970’s memories begin.

More Prosaic: 20 Tips for Holiday Survival on Medicine Net.

Training-oriented: Surviving the Holidays with Your Dog for people who forgot to train their dog earlier in the year

Made me snort outloud: Tips and Tricks for Surviving the Holidays (See Hate cleaning the house for company, invite a friend over to help. GhostGirl? Anne? My house is dirty.)

How to Defang Scary Technology in the NY Times has some interesting tips for teaching and learning about technology in the workplace.  

Tip #1  Learn at the conceptual level (rather than the keystroke level).

I often find that some tech people simply won’t tell me what I’m doing at a conceptual level and will pass out keystroke instructions, which are immediately helpful in my short-term goal, but don’t deepen my understanding any way. Apparently they should not be doing this (though I completely understand why they do—because we, the learners, ask for it):

Fearful learners “want to have a piece of paper that tells them what buttons to push in what order,” she said. This leaves them unprepared for errors and impasses, which are inevitable.

So try to understand what you are doing conceptually before focusing on what to press or click.  

Tip #2  Create Analogies  To Anne P’s credit, she always creates analogies to explain technology to me (often they involve food of some sort….), and that’s apparently ideal (the analogies, not the food):

A good teacher creates analogies that make it easier for nontechnical thinkers to understand how a system works — for example, by comparing a hard drive to a filing cabinet, and directories to the drawers of the cabinet, she said.

So try to think of analogies that make sense to you as you learn or ask for analogies, if at all possible.

Resource

How to Defang Scary Technology

Bob Sutton of No Asshole Rule fame has written some tips for surviving workplace assholes. These are great and very practical. I think the best tip is to escape if you possibly can, because there is no shame in walking away from an asshole in the workplace. He also gives tips for polite confrontation with an asshole, which can be very effective.

One of the reasons I find Sutton’s No Asshole Rule so compelling (and I’ve written about it a lot) is that he acknowledges a huge workplace problem: some people are assholes. I can adopt a more pastoral orientation to try and understand, sympathize, empathize with the asshole and lots of career advice tiptoes around the asshole problem. Certainly if you’ve been in an organization with an asshole who has taken over, you’ll agree that empathy is not necessarily the best (or only) strategy. Sutton knows this.

I thought that Glencoe’s Career Tips were fairly traditional, but I liked the last point a lot:

Respect Yourself
Remember that the ultimate goal of your job is to satisfy your needs—for money, lifestyle, recognition, accomplishment, and advancement. Keep your career goals in mind and keep working toward them. Be the best employee you can, and some day, you’ll have that career you always dreamed of. Don’t stick with a job if it’s not right for you. If you’re not challenged, find a job that challenges you, and keep working for your career goal.

Amen to that.

Jim has been reading out loud from the Top 10 Holiday Party Offenses. It’s pretty funny. Possibly because I’ve never seen anyone krump at work. If you’re planning to attend an office party this month  (or simply want to be amused), you might want to read through.