Archive for June, 2014
People underestimate the importance of their work environments
Is it just me, or does anyone else find a picture of a person with their laptop and their feet in the sand disturbing? The glare from the sun, specks of sand getting on the keyboard, wind and bugs. And why not get your work done first and then go outside on the beach?
I’ve heard people say to knowledge workers, “you should be able to work anywhere.”
Sometimes this is said to employees who sit in ugly, gray cubicles with bad lighting and lots of noisy distractions. Or to temps and consultants who are asked to be productive in cramped vendor bays with six other workers and slivers of desk space, with chairs and desks that don’t adjust in height. One team that I worked with asked a vendor to do his work from a table squeezed in a narrow hallway until the fire marshal said he had to move.
It is true that you can take your laptop anywhere with a wireless connection and be able to send email, and work on documents, spreadsheets and PowerPoints. But there’s more to it than that.
I’ve met many consultants, writers and entrepreneurs who love to work out of coffee shops. Some of them hunker down in their favorite café, day after day, until they are so familiar with the staff and other regulars that they are almost like coworkers.
Other people I know – the writers especially – have a series of hangouts that they’ll visit throughout the day. They’ll write for a couple of hours at one spot, then move to the next.
For me, my home office is the best place for me to work. I constantly refer to the marked up printed pages of my manuscript on my bookshelf. The sticky notes that outline my chapters are in rows on my filing cabinet. Each time I make a change to the order or content of each chapter, I update the notes. Technically, these things are paper and I could move them from place to place. Psychologically they’re the structure of my book and I need them in order and easy to reach.
For my consulting work, I also have hard copies of files that I refer to frequently. I have headphones for conference calls, a smart card reader, backup drives and my printer/scanner. Plus, an ergonomic mouse, keyboard and footrest. Anyone who’s had carpal tunnel, tennis elbow or wrist injuries from overusing a regular keyboard and mouse will understand how non-trivial these things are. Non-trivial and not very portable.
Beyond the physical elements that make me productive in my own office, there is the benefit of a consistent routine. When I sit down at my desk, my brain knows it is time to get to work. It’s where I’m able to focus most consistently and repeatedly, day after day.
So while technically it is possible to work almost anywhere with a laptop and wireless connection, how effective is it? And more importantly, do you want to?
Employee Stress vs. Entrepreneur Stress
I had stress when I worked a full-time corporate job. I have stress now. What’s the difference?
Corporate stress came from unrealistic workloads, office politics and being asked to participate in business decisions that I disagreed with. Working in a stressful environment is like breathing in low levels of poisonous air every day. It won’t kill you all at once. It is a long, slow decline.
Entrepreneur stress is completely different. It is the flip side of the positives parts of working on my own. It comes from the pressure I put on myself to spend more time on my projects. It’s learning Quickbooks and all kinds of marketing and operational tasks that I used to have corporate resources to help me execute. It’s the uncertainty of not having a scripted career path.
This kind of stress is much easier to live with. I can decide how many hours to spend on my business and writing projects. I can outsource tasks that aren’t my strong points and that I don’t enjoy doing. I can tame my thoughts when I worry.
All stress is not created equal.
Making Progress
I recently completed my first month of the Chain Habit. It was so easy that I wish I started a long time ago. It’s as simple as making a commitment to take a specific action every day, no matter what. My commitments are “one book sentence, one blog sentence.” Small and achievable.
Admittedly, some days are easier than others. My best days are when I get out of bed around 6AM and get right to work on revising my manuscript or writing a blog post. Other days, like yesterday, I feel such resistance that I didn’t open my word document until late in the evening. I’m working on a chapter about being financially prepared before quitting a job, and the individual topics aren’t flowing together easily. All day instead of working on this chapter, I imagined myself staring at the pages, not knowing how to fix them. It was overwhelming.
That reluctance carried over into everything on my to-do list. I felt immobilized all day, unsure of which project or task to work on from one moment to the next. I didn’t feel like doing anything, yet was propelled by anxiety to do something. Finally, at 9:30PM last night, I opened my word document and worked on my manuscript. I deleted some sentences, moved paragraphs around, and created a completely new worksheet to help people estimate their current and future expenses. Progress.
Revising my manuscript isn’t the hardest thing I’ve done – not even close. I like the process of editing. In fact I recently revised two bulky process documents as part of my consulting work, and enjoyed doing it.
You know what the hard part of reworking my book is? Sitting in my chair, opening my word document and doing it. Finding the inner motivation is the hard work.
As I mentioned, it’s easier when I get started first thing in the morning. It also helps when I take a piece of notepaper and write down what I want to accomplish the night before. And receiving a compliment about my writing is often enough to make me stop whatever else I’m doing and start working on my book or a blog post. Is that a character flaw that external praise makes me get to work? I don’t care if it gets one more page out of me.
As an aside, I took Samuel Delaney’s workshop at the Summer Writing Program last summer. His perspective was that criticism is a better motivator than praise. His reasoning? After one of his books got outstanding reviews, he did nothing but walk around smiling for three days. And then he read a harsh review that was so unsettling to him that he immediately went to his desk and got to work again. He’s one of the most prolific authors I’ve ever heard of, so clearly that worked for him. I’m going to stick to the positive reinforcement.
As another aside, it was in Delaney’s workshop that I started writing my book.
Another character flaw is that it motivates me when I read something that I don’t like from an author who has sold a lot of books or who has great endorsements. It makes me think that my own book doesn’t have to be a masterpiece; it just needs to be published. And then I get back to work.
It took me thirteen hours before I did any writing and editing yesterday. And I suffered needlessly all day while I put it off. But I finally revised a few pages, and worked on a blog post and now I get to make two check marks on the calendar propped up next to my desk. Whatever works.
Multiplying by Zero
Years ago I was working for a company that I cared about enormously. I was loyal and worked hard and really wanted to be there. But during the last year or so of my employment, things got weird.
I would do something very well and it would be ignored. For example, the company used logos that were different sizes and fonts. I changed them to be consistent and not only did it look better, but it eliminated an entire set of decals that were being printed and stored, which saved about $5,000 every month. The reaction was somewhere between a yawn and a blank stare.
Another time I was chastised for not going out to dinner with a group of salespeople the night before a customer event. I skipped the dinner because I was at the office making final preparations late into the night. I prioritized making sure details were in place for a successful event. They prioritized the social aspect of having an evening out with their coworkers. I was told that it seemed like I wasn’t a team player. Huh? The event went well, anyway.
This stuff was so strange to me. I liked most of the people that I worked with and it was confusing to have people that I cared about say and do things that just didn’t make sense.
I will never forget the advice I got during a graduate school leadership class. I was explaining the situation to one of my classmates and he said that he had a job that was like that once. I asked him how he resolved the problem. His answer was “I quit and got a job somewhere else.”
That statement shifted my thinking. I had put all of my energy into trying to understand the situation and fix it because I truly wanted it to work out. I started to realize that no matter how much I wanted it to get better and despite believing that my work benefited the company, I was only part of the equation. Maybe that seems obvious to other people, but until then I kept thinking that if only I could figure out what to say or do, the people around me would act more rationally.
Not long after the conversation with my classmate, one of the vice presidents at the company bought everyone a copy of the book Who Moved My Cheese by Dr. Spencer Johnson. It’s a parable that basically says, “If you’re no longer getting what you need in your current environment, go get it somewhere else.” The minute I put down the book I picked up the phone and called a staffing company. I made the call on a Monday and on Friday I interviewed for a consulting contract. I was hired the next Monday. Eight months after that I took a full time position and spent another twelve years working there.
Most of my thirteen years there were great. The last few were not. Again, I had years invested in the company and there were enough good things about it that I kept looking for jobs on other teams and waiting for the next reorganization to see if it would make things better. None of that worked. I came up with my own analogy: it was like multiplying by zero. It didn’t matter how many hours I worked or what impact my programs had on the business. Everything that I did was cancelled out because where it intersected with the organization was like multiplying by zero. The end result is always the same. Zero.
One year ago today I quit that company. Now my happiness is multiplied each time I find projects that align with my values: working with people I respect, flexibility to work at home, the ability to make an impact through my projects and fair pay.
It isn’t always easy on my own, but the math makes sense.
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