What’s wrong with my web site?

If you’re not getting a lot of traffic, and you’ve invested in a solid, reasonably attractive, well-organized design, and basic search engine optimization, the problem is most likely that your site is static, not dynamic. In other words, it’s the same furniture arrangement each time - the content never changes, so it’s not going to draw much of an audience.

That’s the outdated web site thinking from some years ago when people put up web sites and figured there were only a few thousand or so on the web that matter, so if you have one at all, people will come. Remember the dot com bust? But everything has changed. New sites that do well are dynamic sites - their written content is always changing. Not the style and colors - changing that often confuses and alienates the very clients who are interested in dynamic sites - it’s the written content that needs to be continually fresh and new. In fact, one of the rookie mistakes is investing a ton in fancy visual and graphic content, flash animations, etc. while dynamic sites with fairly simple design, fast load, and efficient lay out kick your butt in search engine rankings, inbound traffic, and the viral factor (people you don’t know sharing links to your site posts with other people you don’t know, generating exponentially high traffic).

In the past couple of years, blogs for instance (sites on which the content changes every day or two) have overtaken the static sites of major news organizations in terms of both Google rankings and number of visitors (plus the viral factor is all about dynamic sites - just doesn’t happen with static content), so that those large corporations are in a panic to create their own blogs. But of course their blogs come off as corporate speak a lot of the time and are just taking up space - they just don’t get it. Small businesses, free agents, independents, and volunteers are kicking their arses. On the web, the blogosphere rules and, in the blogosphere, this is the era of the small entrepreneur.

If you have a static site, you need to either add on a blog, pair it closely with a blog,  or embed a blog so that your front page content changes constantly. Your blog as the most important part of your xsite. If you’re looking for overnight results, there’s nothing instant about it, because there’s no such thing as a push-button instant climb to the top method (if there was, I’d be a multi-billionaire selling it).

But if your blog or your site hasn’t moved since you built it, there’s really no reason for people to interact with your site on a wide scale, because there’s nothing new, fresh, and regularly (every day or two) updated so they have a reason to take interest. Anyone can hang out an online business card that says “I want your business” -  but so what? Ultimately - in the mind of the client, what have you given them to interest them beyond the billboard?

That’s where you come in. Yes you. There’s just no substitute for involving yourself in your own business. 5-minutes a day is all you need - it will take some time to see results, and you’ll need to be consistent to generate interest. But even the big hooplah (justified with truly dynamic sites) about social networking to improve search engine optimization simply won’t work with your site static or changing only seldom - for one simple reason - social networking works on dynamic sites, not static ones. It’s blog posts that get picked up and credited and linked back to and become traffic drivers and, if you’re lucky, go viral and ultimately generate significant interested business traffic from social networking.

And remember the key rule of blog posts: Don’t paste in other people’s writing or links to other writing. There’s no short cut like OPM (other people’s money) - there’s no benefit and significant drawbacks to relying on other people’s content. For one things, search engines will lower your ranking for it, because it’s duplicate content. It’s ‘web-spam’. So copying news articles to paste into your blog would just make your site even less effective, not to mention less interesting - besides which, if you didn’t get explicit permission for each piece from the copyright holder, you’re liable to get sued - especially if you make a dime off of it as a business.

Instead, you write what’s on *your* mind, just like you would an e-mail to someone who’d be interested in what you’re thinking about relative to your line of work, your region of the country, etc. That’s what you post. Surely you don’t make it through an entire work day without a single work-related thought or idea or observation running through your head. If so, what are you doing? You can post common misconceptions, frustrating policies that affect your industry, an outlook on your local market, or just comments on the weather and how it’s too nice to be stuck in the office. Five minutes a day. If you can’t spare that to market your business, it’s either hopeless, or you’ve got plenty of business already - be happy.

Blogging is basically like journaling, except it’s public. That’s also why hiring a blogger is not a particularly good idea. It won’t sound like  you, or reflect your thoughts, people have no reason to contact you (they’d contact him), and that person won’t have the interest and industry or regional expertise in what they’re doing that you do - it’d be like putting a $5/hr person in front of your phones - do you really want that person representing your business? They don’t have enough emotional stake in it, and you don’t know if they’re being effective, unless you watch over their every move anyway, and really there’s a good chance it won’t come across as authentic to any readers. Remember, the corporate sites are busy hiring bloggers to do exactly this kind of thing and they’re still really not making a huge dent in it all. Thing small, think personal, and think about what you know, what you do, and what advice or expertise you can give away to other people.

The key to drawing business with blogging is give something away. Tips, tricks, insight, advice, coaching, guidance, inside information, an inside look… things they can’t just pick up easily anywhere. But the key is just talk. Talk about what interests you, and you’ll be twice as authentic. You’re giving away this writing and, in exchange, you hope to build a readership and interested visitors (over time, mind you), that generate primary and secondary referrals.

There’s more to it than this, of course. If you want to build an overall marketing plan for your small business. But this is where you start. If you can’t get this going, it’s questionable what else you can do.

Owners of static sites: You have to think about the fact that if you have a building with great office furniture, and a professionally-produced sign, and a spotless parking lot, in a great area of town, but your lights were off all the time, and no one seemed to be alive inside… how much business are you going to get? Your web site is like that. If you leave it sitting there like furniture and don’t touch it - if it doesn’t live, change, etc (again, speaking of the written content) - it’s not going to draw a lot of interest. There are people who don’t believe this, and that’s fine. There are indeed other marketing methods that also generate business (like mailing out cards or running a contest). And I won’t knock these; I will just say that these work best as part of an overall marketing plan where the pieces fit and interact together.

If you’re with me this far, a couple of articles may interest you:

Automated Marketing: A Lay Gospel

Marketing to Stan & Fran & Jan and…

– Daniel DiGriz

www.editgeek.com

www.mixmysite.com

A Blog about Work

Look, here’s the point: I have more than a couple of jobs, but I limit what I discuss to two, so we don’t have to waste time with the “you’re a freak” discussion. I often hear people talk of: “putting in long hours”. As oppose to what? I was going to work anyway. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing as work. People talk of “work-life balance” but why does work need to be balanced? Work *is* life. Work is balance. “Work and play?” Work is the way that I play. People say, “You do what you have to, so you can do what you want to do.” But work *is* what I want to do. I don’t get it.

Work is supposed to be the source of meaning. That’s the whole point of this blog. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing as work. It’s worth, in other words, taking seriously, making the work of your hands, the work of your life.

A fundamentalist lecturer who spoke extensively about work has said “the good things are the enemies of the best things, for lack of time”. We have so little time, so little life left to us in our mortality, to establish what it is we’re supposed to be doing with our lives. If you’re reading this and you’re over 30, your life is half over, statistically. Maybe you’re optimistic - ok, so even if you’re life is 1/3 over with, and you’ve only got 2/3 left, if you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing, then when?

I used to teach a class in which I’d begin with a bonding exercise - asking each participant to answer a seemingly simple question. If we paid all your bills, alleviated all your debts, met all your obligations, and gave you the car you want, the home you want, the job you want, etc. - what would you do with the rest of your life?

It’s amazing how few people spoke of something resembling work. Some spoke of traveling or of learning/studying (both of which represent the search for meaning) - a small minority spoke of engaging in some particular profession or launching a business. There’s more to the exercise, but suffice it to say that answers broke down into either “I have no idea what my life means, so I would search for meaning” or “I know exactly what I’m supposed to do, and it’s work”. The final question in the series - either way - was, “So, even given limited resources and time, what steps are you taking, on a constant or daily basis, in that direction?”

The answers to that lest ranged from “You’re right. I will (or I am)” to the challenge, “What about you? Are you doing what you’re meant to do?” - to which I would always answer yes. And without belaboring the details, that’s still true. As much as I can, and trying to make more “can”.

What I can’t bring myself to do is just whittle away the hours. Even reading a book is work. The best quotation on reading I’ve read is “When you read, make to do lists instead of notes - if you can’t do that, you’re reading the wrong books.” Your work is holistic - it involves the whole person - what you put in and what you put out.

Your work, the work of your life, the work of your hands, is too important to leave to the merely adequate, to a placeholder, to be in fact anything other than the source of meaning in your life. Even in religion, the word “liturgy” (the Christian worship service) means “the work of the people”.

In fact, Christianity provides a very useful fork for attitudes about work: one attitude views work as a curse - a kind of necessary evil - a blight upon one’s life that one should rather escape if one can. This view has generated a generation of slackers - decades, in fact, of drop-outs, and beatniks on the Kerouak model. Work is the source of frustration, in this experience, not the locus of joy, much less the means of salvation. And this is often thought to be the Christian model.

Historically, it is anything but. For one thing, the Christian view is that when God pronounces a curse it is an act of love which is actually designed for the salvation of the individual - for union with God, rather than alienation from God and all things. The idea of a curse in the occult sense of a malevolent force of destruction is foreign to Christian tradition. Secondly, the tradition is that all things blighted with death - with frailty and frustration - all things deprived or distorted of meaning - be redeemed, deified, transformed into vessels of meaning, conveyors of salvation. Work, in the Christian view, while it is uncomfortable because of the death inflicted on mankind, is meant to be a means of overcoming death. In fact, without one’s work, one cannot be saved, according to the Christian gospels. We’re talking “weeping, outer darkness, and gnashing of teeth” here. If one reads the parables of the talents and of the minas and of the vineyard and the other Christian teachings on the mystery of work, it is a primary means of union with God.

A common misconception is that the Christian scriptures say that work is a curse. Far from it; they say that the ground is cursed - not work itself.

Cursed is the ground because of you, In sorrow you shall eat of it all your days. It will bring forth thorns and thistles, and you shall eat the grain of the field: by the sweat of your brow you will get your bread, unil you return to the ground, for you were taken from it. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

In fact, the curse is that things will frustrate your work (e.g. “thorns and thistles”) - the implication is that work itself is a holy thing confronted by disaster which it and we must overcome for rightful ends. We’re not much on proof texts here, but that’s what the words actually say and that’s the attitude that Christian tradition actually preserves, pop-religion aside.

There is, in our culture, a certain audacity in “bringing religion into” a discussion on work; it’s a faux pas - and I don’t violate it because I’m unaware of it. I’m a pretty smart guy - when I break a social rule, it’s intentional - I just have a reason that’s discreet and not readily apparent, or I’ve weighed the cost against a more desirable object and acted accordingly. I’m breaking this rule, because the rule itself - the separation of religion from work is, in part, based upon the very separation of work from meaning, and indeed upon the historical misunderstanding of the Christian view of work which is embedded in contemporary Western culture. Obviously, if work is thought of as a curse, the resultant “religious” ideas are not really smoothly compatible with an effective workplace. Keep in mind, I’m suggesting that’s part of the reason for the social taboo. So here’s kicking it.

The other causes for which I’m violating the norms of a professional blog are that: I find Faith to be the richest and most powerful and widely familiar source of metaphor to augment a discussion about meaning, and also because we’re talking here about history. Historically, sociologically, anthropologically, these ideas have shaped our society in one way or another and are still latent within its cultural assumptions. What economist or historian or student of work completely throws Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism - read “work ethic”) - over his shoulder? It’s required reading in the academies for any such professional, and ignorance of its thesis is a basic failure of general education. One could cite other such discussions, but the point is, the faux pas is only that where we are not conversant in the breadth of discussion that is happening in most other places in our culture and in the world. The world is bigger than that rule, bigger than that supposed norm - and, frankly, this blogger feels free to use ideas from anywhere.

The primary subject matter of this blog is a synthesis of collective wisdom and individual insight on work. If Christendom had nothing significant to say, that in itself would be a profound commentary, and worth examining in that light.

In any case, that’s the deal with the blog: the dialectical opposition of work with the various avenues of life we consider brimming with meaning is, in my opinion, and for this author, a false construct. Work *is* the vehicle of meaning. Work isn’t opposed to family, to Faith, or to fun. One person commented on an earlier post that “hobbies” were invented, more or less, as attempts to survive the dualism that occurs when you oppose work with life in the mind. As reasonable and meaningful reactions to conflicting internal-mental and external-societal and cultural demands, I can’t speak against them quite so vehemently. But I can say, in my experience, they fade away when you find yourself doing what you’re meant to do with your life. Someone might say, “Well, I’m meant to play.” Perhaps you are - go play; I’m not - me, well, I’ve got to go to work.

Marketing to Stan & Fran & Jan and…

You’re a billion dollar firm putting out a web site to position your company before the entire English-speaking public. Your marketing people are armed with formidable demographic research that, after weeks of culling and analysis, is oriented into a dozen “models” - virtual consumers that will be users of your web site.

Another 25% of your audience is detail driven, motivated by facts, and likely to read every page. If you don’t give them sufficient information to make a decision , they may not even contact you.They’re sketched, named, and pasted like wanted posters on the walls of your project team’s workplace. Joan the single mother of three. Tommy the single welder. Jim the jetsetter… The goal is to understand their expectations and design the site accordingly. Frequently, for example, there are several ways to access the same material, multiple contact methods, and content targeting each audience.

A million dollars later, you’ve got a web site. Well - THEY’ve got a web site.

You and I, statistically speaking, are unlikely to have that kind of scratch to throw around for an internet presence which, frankly, if you’re smart, is only one component in your internet marketing plan. So what do we do, if we want to market to a wide audience, but not shoot so wide we hit nothing? What if selling to people who are like us isn’t enough, and we don’t want to leave anyone out in the cold?

What we do is take stock of the four classic personality types - the four temperaments that have been utilized to discuss diversity in human personalities from the ancient Chinese and Greeks to Jung, Keirsey, the DISC system, and so many other approaches to the same basic data.

Most of us are familiar with them (or have at least come across them as):

Usually, presentations of these types are done badly, and end up becoming a touchy-feely exercise in feeling good about oneself and passing some corporate training time. In other venues, they’re given religious significance. And often they’re misunderstood as boxes in which you put people. But really, they describe fundamental directions we personalities tend to take when approaching problems or making decisions.

For our purposes, lacking a high dollar marketing team, we put these directions to use, creating our content and designing our navigation and style for the four broad paths that human personalities tend to take when we market them. If you like, give them names, like some of these:

Or John, Paul, George, and Ringo. See? It’s “demographically”-based marketing on a budget. Just a brief set of examples:

About 25% of your audience is bottom line rather than detail oriented, goal-driven rather than information driven. You have to give this type everything they need to make a decision on the first page - the page leads from goal to close in the space of a 2 minute conversation. You have to give them multiple options (like email, call, or fill out a brief form), otherwise they’re not getting to make the decision - you are. And you can’t bog them down with too much data - make it available, but give just enough that an effective choice can be made. Also, if your business model supports it, give them the ability to buy right now, 24/7, right on the front page. Often the key to a sale here is letting them give you the money now.

Another 25% of your audience is detail driven, motivated by facts, and knowledge-focused. They’re likely to read every page on your site before they make a decision and, if you don’t give them sufficient information to make that decision, they may not even contact you, let alone buy. You’ll hear from them if they feel you’ve done your part, and they either need more info that, reasonably, is available through a direct contact, or they’re ready to go forward. Contact methods are important here, too - you need to give them an email address or non-invasive form, as well as a phone number. They may be up late at night looking at information, comparing answers, and may contact you during your off hours. Give them the means: in your content, tell them what the process is, from start to finish. Navigation is everything here: make sure your information is laid out in a logical, orderly fashion, and is easily accessible from anywhere on the site.

About 25% of your audience is bottom line rather than detail oriented, goal-driven rather than information driven. You have to give this type everything they need to make a decision on the first page.The other two personality types (50% of your audience) are driven more by personality and personal contact than by a cognitive approach. They differ between them over how they make decisions (you didn’t expect me to give away everything here, did you?), but to give a simple example: have photos on your site with human beings in them. If you don’t look good, you can get stock photos of models - what they’re wearing and where they’re standing is important, too, mind you, and there’s more than one issue there. But don’t make the mistake of making your site all information and tools, because that’s what YOU are interested in. Without a handshake, without a sense that the lights are on and someone’s home, and that real people run this business, you’re going to lose half your audience half the time.

We should distinguish this, of course, from targeted-marketing (aiming at, for example, luxury property buyers in Ft. Meyers, Florida or new home buyers in Charlotte, North Carolina). That’s certainly an important direction, too. But regardless of whether you’re doing targeted marketing or making a single web home to attract and service all your clients, being certain to cultivate the interest of diverse personality types, and avoiding alienating any of them, is certainly important.

There are many benefits of being conversant in the personality types, for anyone interested in sales, marketing, persuasion, or business in general. But in short, you don’t have to have a fancy (and expensive) team of demographic data gurus to know how you need to market your business and design your marketing tools, like your web site and your newsletter. Draw on the ancient knowledge that corporations all over the world use to understand and accomodate diverse personalities, and you’ll be on the right track.

Boycotting as Business

One of the most helpful things about both the David Ramsey method and running one’s own business (imo), is that you begin to see everything as business. Who you do business with, what your business can afford, when your business is open for business, and so on. And along with that, for me, comes a reinvigorated sense of refusing to do business with swindlers, exploiters, and dishonorable betrayers of my fellow human beings. We don’t spend our money there.

I’m talking about Boycotts. And not the big ones driven by left-wing newsletters, evangelical radio, or celebrities. I mean the decision that one’s own family, family business, or other assets makes, in the regular course of its life, to shun other businesses, for the betterment of mankind. Boycotting as daily life. Of course, you don’ have to be an entrepreneur to cut off Blockbuster, give the finger to Walmart, or dump any service remotely tied to Yahoo. It’s not about big numbers or big money - it’s not even about “success” - it’s about you, being or not being the kind of person that feeds the monster, whatever the monster may be.

I was at a particular Asian bistro, and I witnessed a manager screaming at a worker and hurling insults at him, taunting and threatening him. I went back to the counter, cancelled my order, and explained that I don’t do business with companies that mistreat their workers. “You can’t do that,” I explained. “You can’t talk to people that way, and expect honorable people to do business with you.” Of course, the rest of the people waiting for their orders looked away but, frankly, they don’t matter. They don’t matter, because things like this, and people like those workers, don’t matter to them. Their opinions no longer count.

Recently, I was in a health food supermarket, and the manager was at the front of the store, pacing with a cell phone, and loudly telling someone (who couldn’t be there that day) that she was terminating them. I stopped at the cashier and informed them that this behavior is illegal, besides being wrong. It isn’t just a failure of “professionalism”. Screw professionalism - it’s a moral failure. And unless these things are addressed, then we’ve made a decision to separate business from questions of ethics and morality. And frankly, if I know that about you, I don’t want to do business with you, either.

Not long ago, the Chinese government demanded that Yahoo turn over information that would be used to discover the identities of dissidents posting views critical to the government to blogs and internet discussion forums. Yahoo did it without flinching - without a second glance. And those men were taken from their families and imprisoned and deprived of any means to support their dependents. Yahoo thought nothing of it. Google, by contrast, was given the same demand and not only refused, but moved their server operations offshore, where the information couldn’t be taken even by force. Google’s mentality? ‘There are some things companies just don’t do. This is about what kind of organization you want to be.’

Needless to say, I have lots of friends and associates who use Yahoo. I tell them about this, if the topic arises, and they make their own decisions. For us, it’s a no-brainer. My business doesn’t do business with organizations that deprive people of basic liberties, destroy families, and punish criticism with injury to life, limb, or freedom. We don’t want dirty business. Neither my household, nor my people, nor my tribe, nor my enterprise.

I’ve taken some flack for this attitude. There are those moral midgets who say that everything is dirty, so nothing you do about it is rational. We’ve addressed those already in an earlier post - they’re not worthy of consideration, when it comes to one’s life’s work. There are those who encourage you to go along with the tide, be normal, be mainstream, live your life and don’t try to change things. Again - they just aren’t as articulate as the aforementioned midgets. But we also get flack for those who look at this as some sort of kooky, antisocial behavior. And yes, we think they can’t really get up the ladder far enough to have discussions even with the aforementioned midgets. But the point here is, either you care about what kind of person you are, and what kind of enterprise you build, and what kind of community you create and contribute to and prop up, or you don’t. You can’t talk to people who don’t - they don’t have the tools for this kind of conversation. For the rest of us, though, normalcy is not in being like those chittering in their ethical ignorance - it’s about being consistent and thoughtful in what we do.

If we’re going to care, let’s care, and make it a regular part of our lives. Boycotting is as natural as buying a loaf of bred at one place because it’s cheaper, or another place because we like Mrs. Donogan; it’s just letting the ethical component remain a part of that decision-making process, and refusing to stunt ourselves or lobotomize the fullness of our humanity.

When in doubt, Blog.

I’ve spoken with a number of people over the past couple of weeks that are searching for their work-lives - for what to do with themselves and, typically, like a Bordertown, they’re drawn to the internet. Partly by stories of heady profits made by people who don’t treat work as a source of meaning - they’re in it for the fast buck, quick hustle, in and out and retire in Aruba. Partly, it’s the knowledge that some people really do find meaningful, fulfilling work on the internet, and free themselves from an increasingly oppressive corporate millieu. One senses a great swell of interest with much less direction.

The problem, as I presented it to one client, is that you need either a unique idea, a specialized niche, or a supremacy of passion about what you do. You ask yourselves questions:

• What are you good at? So good at that you know you’re better at it than almost everyone else?
• What are you so passionate about, not that you’d throw down work if you could and do just that, but that you’d do all the work every day needed to make a business related to that? [You always hear someone say “I could golf all day, and do nothing else, easily.” Sure, but are you willing to work all day at a golf-related business? If not, then that’s not your thing, not really.]
• What niche can you occupy - where can you squat in the market - that no one, or almost no one else is really addressing?
• Is your idea unique, or are there hundreds of other people doing it, and you just “hope” to tap into some of that free flowing sap from the main trunk line? [Have you looked? Often, the very thing that shows you people are making money - “I found 200 web sites of people selling web sites” - shows you that it’s a serious gamble to hang out yet another shingle on that street]. Search the discussion groups - how many of those people are struggling to earn a living wage from what they do - and that’s what you want to take on as a new business? The question is really: What is your idea that’s, in an economically significant way, different than theirs?

Part of the desperation that can lead people to make bad choices is in not yet having the answers to these questions. These are not small questions - they’re part of the hero’s quest. They are the classic questions: “Who am I?” and “What should I do?” They are right up there with “How should I live?” They’re questions of religious import, and too important to be left to “faith”. They’re questions that, if you’re going to ask them at all, you need to know that you know the answers to, even if you’re building the answers over time.

When it’s no desperation, it can be despair. Paralysis. Doing nothing, because we don’t know what to do. That too is a mistake because, sooner or later, you drift farther and farther from that shore, and the genuine voice that asked those questions in the first place begins to be incomprehensible. The true despair, the permanent kind for the not-to-be-redeemed, is the nihilism that has given up, that no longer believes there are answers to ultimate questions.

I usually have a standard piece of advice for people that don’t know what to do next, and have been tempted to leap without looking, to jump based on hope, or else give up based on despair:

BLOG. Blogging will tell you who you are. Start a blog. Start three blogs. Don’t worry about what they’re about - that’s the point. Blog whatever you’re thinking about, every day. If you’re thinking about it in the shower, and you’re not blogging it, why not? If you’re considering it, pondering it, laughing about it, raging against it, for Christ’s sake why aren’t you blogging it?

There’s no instant cure in blogging, though there can be instant relief. Over time, though, you’ll begin to see patterns in your many blog posts. Don’t look too soon. Hold out, persist, don’t try to move the Ouiji - let it happen for real, or you’ll get made up answers from the bewilderment of your subconscious. But eventually, re-read everything you’ve written, and make notes on the patterns. Do meta-blogging (it’s a kind of meta-cognition): think about thinking - about your thinking in particular - and blog about that too. This will begin to fill in some of the raw material out of which answers to some of those important life questions will come. Not all the answers are within, but some very important ones are.

It’s a hard thing, even with help, to decipher. This culture tends to confuse person (who you are) with operations (what you do) with nature (what we all are), and that fundamental error, rooted in ancient theological mistakes, queers the attempt and the journey. But ask those questions separately, and don’t confuse them, and you’ll do all right.

And you can’t be a perfectionist if you want this to work. That’s about what you demand right now, and not about what you need to accomplish what you’re talking about. Be willing to write drivel. Be willing to break all the rules, when you blog. Be inconsistent. And eventually, be prepared to scrap it and start a new blog, or completely revamp (which happens over time anyway). Entrepreneurs prepare for failure and, in fact, count on it; most of their initial ventures will be replaced with later ones, and some of them all along won’t pan out. If that weren’t true of you, you wouldn’t be setting out on this journey.

Blogging will tell you who you are, what you think, what you want, what’s important to you and, ultimately, it will help you gain insight into what you should do. As far as how you should live, that questions comes from out there… and blogging, as a social instrument, can help with that too. It doesn’t always, but it sometimes does.

See you in the blogosphere.

The Joy of Postage

This article has several key points that are barely but still related - despite recent criticism that this is not an acceptable approach to composition.

The poor pay more for everything. Walmart isn’t really mitigating this: First off, there’s the obvious fact that Walmart shoppers are propping up a work model that keeps their wages low, their benefits inadequate, their health in jeopardy, and their standards non-existent - ostensibly to save a few bucks on the front end. This is like mortgage selling, where sure, you can get in with zero down (the front end), but you’ll pay for it on the back end (e.g. points and higher interest rates), and from now on (in the form of higher monthly payments). One of the reasons the poor remain poor (speaking now of the ‘wealthy poor’ - the poor of the US) is “front end only” thinking. Philosophy and awareness impact existence, on a continual, often permanent basis, even among those who don’t like that idea and would simply fart and go back to their TV sets. You don’t have to work at Walmart to work at Walmart, so to speak. Regis Salons, and other companies that utilize wage slavery and nominal, overpriced, inadequate insurance and laughable benefits are only able to get away with what they do, because of companies like Walmart. If you shop at Walmart, you’re either signing the sentence of poverty, ill-health, malnutrition, and premature death for yourself, or you’re signing the sentence for other people. Perhaps they won’t get around to you in your lifetime, in a Martin Neimoller way (”They came first for the trade unionists, then for the communists, then for the Jews…”), and maybe your children will be immune, but that’s hardly the point - the point is what kind of person you are and choose to be.

The other reason Walmart doesn’t work, even on the front end, is an error of perception. One of the key shopping habits of the Yuppie middle class is buying the right quantity - buying in bulk. Don’t buy the 32oz toiletry at $3.95, buy the 64oz at $5.95. Sure, having more money to spend up front can remove that option, in the short term, but so you buy shampoo one paycheck and conditioner the next. On the whole, the middle class shopper is better equipped, cognitively, to make a wiser deal. The poor are led to the flashy “sale” displays, and enticed into doing gorilla math - $3.95 is “cheaper”, after all. If you don’t believe this, spend some time in a Walmart - not shopping, but as a sociological experiment. Listen to the conversations in the aisles and in checkout lines. The whole principle, in fact, is faulty. Walmart sells clothes from the Dominican Republic with low threadcount - clothes that typically survive a few washings before the colors bleed, the joints are thin, the seams threadbare, and you’re buying the same thing again. Don’t get me wrong: super-size IS the name of the game at Walmart - but only in respect to pseudo-food. You’ll find 40% more bags of cheese puffs, and yes that math isn’t lost on the average lower class consumer, but the point being missed is that you’re not getting 2lbs of food for $3.95, you’re getting 2lbs of air, chemicals, and fried crap that you’ll pay for, over not so long a stretch of time, in obesity, mental health issues, and other problems of malnutrition and chemical use. Again, you’re getting a flashy deal up front, and getting robbed on the back end.

Significant sociological work has been done studying how the poor are exploited, focusing on, for example, the furniture industry in New York City, or used car finance dealerships. But it’s day in and day out - the daily purchases - not just the ‘big’ things, that whittle down the weak and less perceptive one nickel at a time. And, in cyclical fashion, it makes them weaker and less and less perceptive. The poor live in a fog of hoodwinkery and massive corporate and workplace exploitation.

This is where the internet can really help. There are any number of useful techniques, and I won’t belabour them all here. But tracking expenses (online spreadsheets), online price comparisons (including all major in-store outlets) - and plenty of information on truly helpful things like the Dave Ramsey method. The point is not just more useful information and perspective (that’s part of it), but also a fundamental shift of principle in how and with whom you do business. Would you rather take 20 minutes, go to PriceGrabber and find the best price on a digital camera, buy it from amazon, and have it on the way to your doorstep w/o ever having to go shopping - or would you rather go down to Walmart and spend a couple of hours looking over a selection of nearly obsolete models that cost about the same $10 more or less? If you’d rather do the shopping, then your problem is recreational shopping, and it’s not a matter of rational discussion anyway. This piece isn’t for you. But also, the internet gives you the opportunity to purchase with justice, from companies that aren’t destroying the world to the degree that Walmart is. Yes, you’ll pay postage. At amazon.com postage is free when you buy at least $25 directly from them. At ebay, postage is part of the price consideration, so you know what you’re comparing and bid or buy accordingly - and yes, a lot of us use it for buying brand new items w/o bidding at all, via the “buy now” feature. I can get that camera brand new, right now, for less money, and in less time than it takes to drive 2 miles to the Walmart.

It’s amazing too, that people who complain about shipping out of principle, have no problem with serving as their own shipping company - gassing up, across the spectrum of their various shopping stops, to transport goods from one place to another. I’d rather have more time at home or the coffee shop, and let the postman or UPS drop it off. I’m not paying with my fuel costs, vehicle wear, or time what the Walmart waddlers would be paying in postage. Postage is a working class joy just waiting to be exploited. Retail is your grandparents’ way of buying. It’s a afternoon drive and a trip to the Woolworth’s or Sears.

And I’m not saying the same thing about mom and pop businesses. Those are worth it, because you get something that doesn’t come with internet shopping, despite the hooplah - community. But corporate retail has worked itself out so that we’re in a post-retail economy, as far as mom and pop go - in the US, that is. When most of the shopping time is spent in conglomerates, you really might as well be driving a Packard. Mom and Pop are online now, and so are many of the better economic choices. From the moment you step inside a Walmart, you’re pecking through the rubble and rubbish of civilization for cheaper cheese puffs. One key to getting out of the ghetto is shopping outside the ghetto. Not to be seen, like those fur-sporting crones in their 4-wheeled boats at the high-end mall. Nope, dump Walmart, get on the internet, eat healthy, and perhaps even engage in the commerce yourself. I’ll see you there.

When it has to be there Tomorrow

You’re filling a sudden order to bang out a Powerpoint presentation for 500 people by morning, and need to walk in looking rested and in control. You need to launch a web site yesterday, because your new client already mailed out their secondary marketing, and their own servers just died. The mobile headquarters of your social action group has twelve hours to get an underground newsletter together and get it into key places before the start of business in the morning.

You’re doing rapid prototyping. Frankly, I love this stuff. Combine virtuosity, brainstorming, and fingers flying so fast on the keyboard that they’re invisible, with a near impossible deadline, bragging rights at the end, and showing off the next day (which consists in just being done and effective), and I’m so there. The sense of accomplishment is immense.

Some key helpers for rapid prototyping:

• Go lean - if twelve slides can be one, make it one. The genius is in the layout and arrangement.
• Gang up - work fast and furious with a symbiotic team - some of the best stuff is clabbered together in smoke filled rooms with papers spread out on the floor, someone at the keyboard, someone at the whiteboard, and someone making the coffee runs, making notes, and giving things another eye.
• Focus on the big picture - get a working model up and running - if the broadstrokes are wrong, you’ll just end up starting over - the details can be nitpicked afterward, and it’s amazing how many opinions that get absolutized when you’ve got lots of time (which word, which phrase, which color arrow to use) don’t seem so contentious when you’ve got a reasonable time frame left to flesh out the details. Again… at the risk of being redundant… if the concept is wrong, you’ll be starting over - know what you want to deliver and why - don’t get sidetracked by tweaks.
• Everyone matters - don’t underestimate any of your team members. Often, the one who’s got his feet up and only refills the coffee pot now and then ends up having the key idea that’s responsible for the most successful chunk of your work. Everyone should be operational, but not necessarily doing what we think - besides, remember the Pareto Principle. 20% of the people will seem to be doing 80% of the work. It doesn’t matter.
• Have organized messes - sometimes it’s cut and paste and two or three mockups before you get it right, and the trash bags in the corner are your best friend. Make a mess, but have piles, and keep your ideas up on the whiteboard. If you don’t have a whiteboard, write on the wall. It’s faster to re-paint later than be at Walmart for 30-minutes with that one cashier they have left at night.
• Take micro-breaks - don’t try to justify 15 minute breaks for two cigarettes, video games, and bags of Cheetos. If you’re doing that, you’re not serious. A break is a 3-minute walk away to pee. You keep your momentum, but there is where you have some of your best summary ideas. If you take 15-minutes, you lose 35, so don’t.

What if you’re doing it alone?: Then you have to stop periodically, and become your audience, and look at that way. Then again, and become your stakeholders, and look at it that way. If you’re doing it alone, you have to be ingenious. And, you may need to set an absolute drop-dead time for sleep, based on the minimum that will sustain you, because very likely that’s what you’ll get. If you’ve got a friend or colleague that can grasp the immediate needs, deal with what (for some people) feels like pressure, and contribute to rather than drain your productivity, make the call. If your friends are just as likely to slow you down or distract you or need tons of looking after on mundane tasks, do it alone. Create the team in your head.

This isn’t meant to be a master-guide to rapid prototyping, just a few comments. If there were more to say, there’d be less to do. The key points: it’s fun, there are some good tips, and you can do it alone if you have to. Happy trails.

Business phone under $40

The Motofone F3. For one thing, it’s an act of dissidence, like entrepreneurship, so I like it a lot in that way: it’s been called the anti-iPhone. It’s the opposite of the culture obsessed with texting and constantly communicating with little of substance to say beyond the kind of thing we all hate when someone hits reply-all: “thx” - “yw” - “c-ya” - “k” . . . [”Unsubscribe!!!”]

1. High durability - no glass and it’s practically armored, but scalpel-thin. You can drop it, throw it, stand on it, run over it repeatedly on gravel, toss it off a roof, then pick it up and make a call. No joke. Youtube videos abound putting it through just such abusive paces. It’s like the old 20-pound Bell phones (which were great for clobbering burglars), but this is the shuriken of phones.
2. High visibility (read it in direct sunlight). It reads like writing on paper. Shine one of those Homeland Security lights in your eyes and at least you can call your lawyer.
3. High battery life (if you get the GSM model - if you’re stuck in a CDMA contract, I’m sorry, but at least there’s a version for you). The battery life is due to the same reason (it’s got a display based on e-paper*, which only uses battery when the screen changes, so it’s always on, but with no video drain)
4. High call clarity - the best there is - sounds like you’re next door (I don’t need my clients and I to pay more attention to reception than to each other)
5. Flexibility - I got the unlocked version, so it’ll work on nearly any sim card provider in my part of the world (either a plan like AT&T or T-Mobile or pay as you go, in case you’re on the lam - or just prefer to live like it - no ties, ready to drop and go at any time)
6. Economic justice: it’s under $40 - it runs what a decent landline phone might cost in a discount store. It costs less than a month of service from most providers, and you own it. After all, why should I carry around the crown jewels, or have my equity, debt, or wealth tied up in telephone? Why should a phone cost as much as a mortgage payment, and need a contract to secure? Live light where you can - not to is a grave thing.

The Chickens are Finally Here!

I’ve been watching with interest the discussions in real estate news of the suburbs drying up, with vast numbers projected for empty homes and developments going into the future, and little market to fill them. This will be called overbuilding, and there is that, but I think it’s something else.

Similar news for rural communities goes something like this: “This family was spending $800/mo in gasoline to commute to the city for their jobs, while living in a sprawling house in this idyllic rural community, with schools they like, and a down home feeling. Now they’re spending $1600/mo in gas, and are having to abandon their home and move to the city to be closer to their jobs.”

The first question I have is: you were spending what?!? $800/mo on gasoline? And you were OK with that? How can you justify something like that? That’s just decadent, and morally wrong.

The mortgage and gasoline issues tend to get overblown to make news or underblown because of people’s unbelief about change, but what’s not being talked about is the level of decadence we were comfortable with until now. Living an hour or more from our jobs in the country, or 45min in the suburbs, consuming vast amounts of fuel to compensate, living in gymnasium-sized homes in a sedentary, fast-food, big-box store, media-entertainment culture.

And now the chickens are coming home to roost, and everyone’s sad.

In a hundred years, we’ll look more like India.You can’t live this way forever - it’s not sustainable. It’s silly to live long distances from the place you work. It’s silly to demand so much space that you have to drive until dark to get there. It’s silly to create “communities” out in the middle of nowhere that aren’t sustained by industry or a purpose. And they’re NOT communities, not really - they’re recreational leisure villas.

An associate whose ideas I admire says that the future of how people will live is concentrated urban environments. Other countries already evidence the model - we’re twisting and turning and whining about it because we think we’re special. But just the type of industry that’s growing in the US tells you that work will be centered around large facilities or large urban communities, where the critical mass of brains (the workforce) and the easy flow of money (facilities and finance) are. The days of settling in Nowhere, Idaho are as gone as the farming industry, which isn’t exactly multiplying. In a hundred years, says my friend, we’ll look more like India.

So what we’re seeing is the ‘karmic’ outcome of ideology over rationality, and priviledge over ethics, and the tendency of systems to seek balance — like the human body, striving to repair itself, and deal with excess, foolishness, and abuse.

What does this have to do with a blog about work? Well, work isn’t an isolated part of the system; it’s an integral organ. What we’re seeing is that it affects where and how we live, even if we play the rebel for a long time. And interestingly enough, it holds us by the balls of our economy. Mess with it, and it starts to squeeze.

Swerving into Reality

Half of fearing something will fail is the fear. But fear *is* failure. Fear convinces us to chart a course so devoid of adventure, of risk, of originality, that success is replaced with mere survival. I don’t mean success as in living in the right neighborhood, driving the right car, and having the right job. Excuse me while I vomit. I mean when a particular project succeeds according to its goals and ideals. A real project, not a meaningless project of masturbatory self-improvement - improving the self for its own sake.

Swerve into the oncoming reality. Swerve and be alive.The other half of fearing something will fail is the actual failure, creeping up, not because it’s a bogeyman, but precisely because it’s a real thing that waits for those who don’t plan sufficiently to succeed - who are inattentive. All it takes for a ship to fail to make shore is an inattentive crew. So much of failure is predicated on the predictable, understandable, and forseeable, even if it’s a matter of forseeing that the unforseen will happen. You know, in the movies, when someone watches the monster turn, and stalk toward them, while they’re paralyzed with fright? It’s almost as if they find it a relief to be caught and eaten. That’s how failure creeps up on the hopeless, the fearful, those who refuse to take risk.

It’s a risk to hit the thing with a pipe and run, because you don’t know that it’ll succeed. It’s a guaranteed thing to watch yourself fail. Imagine the skipper, staring at the rocks up ahead, unwilling to swerve, because it’s off course and uncharted. The course has changed. The new course is adventure. Swerve into freedom from fear. Swerve into the oncoming reality. Swerve and be alive.

The News of Snooze

The biggest non-issue of the day, using up millions of dollars of airwaves and bandwidth in chatter, is whether or not we’re in a recession. Does x=y? Is this thing that thing and vice versa? It’s an exercise in absurd tautologies, and the single clearest example of masturbatory pseudo-news currently at hand.

The real question is not whether we are in a recession but whether you are in one.It doesn’t even measure up to sitting around debating what’s a beer and what’s a lager, or whether something qualifies as irony. Like so many of the electoral questions up for debate, it’s just tedious filler, designed to convince us that something is going on.

After all, the news outlets don’t get it: they’ve been working on the old “sell some papers today” model that requires a certain amount of daily content, regardless of whether it’s useful or just wasting your time. This is one of the many reasons bloggers are kicking their asses. Bloggers haven’t promised a certain number of paper or screen columns, a certain broadcast time of business or weather or politics as a setting for their advertisers. Bloggers have to have a freaking point, even if a lot of them do have sponsors.

True, you’ll read posts containing manufactured issues - excuses to sound off that are stretching to fill a page. Mostly, though, you can tell it’s crap, because it doesn’t even manage a catchy title, a decent photo, or a poignant quotation. And if it’s lengthy, on top of that, it usually doesn’t get read. We should be prepared to turn off “the news” as quickly as clicking off of a blog. Often, it isn’t news at all - it’s just “the news” - just your pre-portioned, TV-dinner plate of information-product, propped up with stabilizers and filler.

Besides, the real question is not whether WE are in a recession but whether YOU are in one. Only you and your financial advisor can answer that; the rest is bullshNews.

The 10-minute $2 “business” meal

A sound criterion for busy meals is: fast and few steps, few courses, inexpensive (consistently sensible), and few but complete and healthy components. Components are not the same thing as ingredients, mind you, and steps done simultaneously, I count as one. Among them, is this favorite:

Follow the directions for a bag of steam-in-the-microwave frozen mixed vegetables - usually a mixture of zucchini, squash, broccoli, peppers, and long beans, often includes noodles. Typical cost is $1.29-$1.69. - serves two. Meanwhile heat a teaspoon of oil and a moderate amount of precooked frozen chicken or shrimp in a pan. Usual cost is $6.20-$9 for an average of 5 dinners for two. When ready, combine in the pan with seasonings (especially sweet basil - try paprika, coriander, etc) and cook a little longer (until the vegetable broth is absorbed). Two components, two steps, $2/person, and something like a dozen healthy ingredients, and It’s under 10 minutes. Low carb, high protein, and always tastes fantastic. If you have to have a side (I usually don’t), add a few pennies worth of steamed rice (also available in steamable microwave pouches, if you don’t have a rice cooker). Goes nicely with large quantities of cold barley tea.

Vegetarian tip: substitute firm tofu for the chicken. Check out the local Vietnamese or Chinese grocer for the home-made variety. It doesn’t last as long, but it’s better.

It’s not perhaps the cheapest meal, but it’s not expensive, and it ensures that I eat right more often than not. Makes me feel energetic and lean. Of course, this is just one of several I keep up my sleeve. Most times, if you’re working, you need to be smart without letting food dominate your life. I need to knock out meals with hardly any effort, minimal planning, but a significant payoff with consistent health benefits, and conserve funds because, even if I could afford not to, it’s just and wise to do so.

I watch people spend hours in the AM pondering lunch, only to fill it with fast food, or over-priced sit-down fast food disguised as high-end fare (TGI Fridays, the Chinese buffet, Tex Mex) - same as if they’d put NO thought into it. Then either they make a production out of cooking at night, or else eat expensive, unhealthy, prepared garbage, similarly full of brain-killers like MSG and other glutamates - or else it’s back to the yuppy fern bar for the same set of ingredients you find in frozen entrees.

If you’re a gourmet, or just love cooking, or are doing it as a mitvah, perhaps it’s worth it to devote time and money, but it’s almost never worth it to consistently short your health. I can’t rightly do any of these things. Recently got a knock on the noggin from the doc about some bad eating she caught me doing these past couple of years. Now it’s no more cheating. Bad eating is bad for the brain, bad for the mood, and bad business.

Friends are not Food

Never sell your friends, despite what the network marketers say. For one thing, if they’re smart, they know you’re doing it and, either way, it shows a lack of respect. Likewise don’t feed the perpetual salesman, by affecting that bewildered sheep nod that they like so well. Let your body language indicate that you’re not that dumb. I’m about to utter sales heresy here: ABC (always be closing) is not the “key” to relationships. Outside of the day’s business negotiations, it’s a form of narcissism and the sure ticket to a shallow reduction of all relationships to a gratification of self. It ends in the deprivation of the fullness of meaningful connections with others. You never really find out what a life with others could be like without the barrier of one-sided goals.

I’ve known pathological sellers - people who get hooked on salesmanship and sell all the time; not necessarily products; they sell a constant stream of perception the way others tell white lies. It’s their besetting vice. Listening to them is like a constant commercial about their preferences. People that waste your time with such things may think they’re being clever or fancy themselves polite, but actually they’re just creating a debt of trust. Who wants to be ‘handled’ all the time?

Unfortunately, most salesmen are bad at it, so when you’re looking bored and put off, they don’t seem to notice or care. They just keep doing their routine, like clueless young men driven by hormones to keep hitting on the same dry well for a date. If you know the person well enough, or barely at all, it’s often sufficient to respond to what they’re doing rather than what they’re saying. If they’ve half an IQ point, they’ll get that you get it. If you get through and they continue, they just want you to play along to save face for them, but it’s better for civilization (theirs and everyone’s) if you don’t put up with it.

Don’t stand in the Sucker Circle

Try hard not to defend yourself when you’re falsely accused. It happens a little more than now and then, or it wouldn’t have merited a commandment. But put yourself in a position, more often than not, tangibly and emotionally, of having little to lose from it. As a general rule, if people can take something from you, sooner or later they’ll try, even if they don’t need to. What did Francis of Assisi say? “If we had possessions, we’d have to worry about thieves.” Never, though, step into the position of needing to prove your innocence; it’s a sucker’s spot. Once you know how not to step there, you can shrug and let people think what they want. Own nothing in a world of someone else’s making.

The Dangers of Perception

“Perception is reality”, is a prevalent claim in business. It’s akin to “the customer is always right” or “I give it 110%”. Everyone knows it’s a bogus claim. Even the true believers - “No, that’s really true! That’s the truth! You’re just misunderstanding it!” - don’t live that way consistently. After all, I perceive them as makers of bad business mythology. Is that reality? But that’s not what they mean at all, is it?

Perception isn’t reality; perception is perception. It’s important, but it isn’t everything. So what is really meant by such statements? Depends. It’s fairly flexible, but it’s usually some version of:

• I have something indefensible to say, but I expect you to accept it anyway.
• I don’t need reasons, only preferences. (Incidentally, preferences have reasons, too.)
• The truth is what I think it is, as long as I have the power to inflict some penalty or else enough people agree with me.
• The views of others are more important than truth.
• Popularity matters more than reality.
• People can hurt you if you don’t treat their ideas as real, no matter how flaky or irrational. So you should be concerned enough (afraid enough) to go along. Go along.

Where you can master perception, it’s when you’re making it agree with reality. If that’s not an option, choose reality, and let the chips fall where they may.Well, you can’t say much to people who think this way. It’s like someone insisting, ardently and wide-eyed, that the comet is coming, they’ll go live with the aliens, and brother so and so is really a great guy. They’re sure that you just don’t see it, and all the evidence backs them, and if you’ll just get four other people to go out and spread that message for you, you can run your own something, or score the magic power points.

In such cases, perception isn’t reality. It’s in contradistinction to reality. It’s a mockery of reality. A denial of the truth.

I was on the panel of a targeted selection interview once and, after the candidate left, one panel member said she just had a “check in her spirit” about the candidate. She just felt something telling her this is the wrong one. But she acknowledged that the candidate was fully qualified, handled the questions well, and was acceptable in all other ways. That particular panel member was an influential person, and it would have been considered unwise to confront her about the inappropriateness of such an approach to candidate selection.

Was perception reality? You true believers are still saying, “yes”. I know, and this blog post isn’t really for you. We hired the girl, and she became the only member of her training class to remain with the company, meet all the standards, and was the singular success of her group hire. Perception was wrong. Perception was myth. In fact, had perception been taken seriously, it would have created more myth: “so and so is really good at spotting people that won’t be successful with our company.” Perception was dangerous to the organization’s health.

I know that perception is important. Sometimes. Really, it can’t be all-important. Is perception more important than who you are? I mean, really, do you want to let everyone but you modify your identity? That’s certainly a recipe for therapy! And what about you? Don’t you get a say?

Screw perception; stick with what’s real - at least where there’s a contradiction. Where you can master perception, it’s when you’re making it agree with reality. If that’s not an option, choose reality, and let the chips fall where they may. In marketing, this means not claiming a sow’s ear is a silk purse; instead, it’s selling the benefits of a sow’s ear over those expensive, sweatshop-made imports.

There’s nothing as refreshing as reality. “Do you offer a guarantee?” I sometimes get asked. “I guarantee I’ll do certain things. I don’t guarantee you’ll get rich off of it. And neither should anyone else.” My sow’s ear kicks arse over a silk purse, and I let them know it. If they still want the silk purse, I don’t pretend - I give them a lead and move on. A lot of them come back for the sow’s ear later.

How’s that for avoiding the word “widget”?

Most of all, perception cannot be allowed to be the reality of your identity. You’ll never be sorry on your deathbed for being yourself; you’ll be sorry if you tried to be everything everyone else wanted you to be, and even sorrier if you succeeded. Never base your personality on consensus. Quotation of the day: “It’s better to apologize than ask permission.” When it comes to who you are, do neither.

Making the Jump to Mazda

Well, I made a decision. It may not be the best decision (I still have mixed feelings), but it’s certainly a decision, and that, at least, pleases me. I traded in my completely debt-free 2003 Dodge Durango (SUV on a truck body), and bought a Mazda3 on credit (with a smidgen of equity).

Previously, I had traded in two vehicles and got the balance of the Durango on credit, because I was spending roughly 350% of a car payment on monthly repairs to one dodgy vehicle and tires for an irreparable one. We got a 6year loan and paid it off in 6 months. Alas, that won’t be happening this time, but it’s got similar logic behind it. I did the best I could - got it at invoice, and got a decent, if disappointing in this market, value on the trade-in.

Fuel economy: I’ll save about 50% on monthly gas costs - roughly half the car payment. For one thing, I got the stick shift, so I can do a bit of hypermiling. With an auto, you stay in gear all the time. With a stick, if you’re smart, you spend a lot of time in neutral, coasting up to lights, coasting on offramps, and you watch the mpg meter soar: 37-55-99… On balance, it’s changing the way I drive. And that leads to the primary reason that I’d do it, even if it was actually cheaper and certainly financially safer to drive my SUV:

Fuel justice: This was actually the biggest tipping factor: a mix of thick shame and the ardent desire to do right. Watching the progress of Africa drying up, species nearing extinction, the tendencies toward starvation, and resource wars breaking out, I realize that every bit of energy I use contributes. I want to minimize my impact.

Smaller footprint: In addition to the carbon footprint, there’s a psychological difference with physically taking up less space. Less parking space, less unneeded room of all kinds. This fits with our current thinking about downsizing from our relatively sprawling home to a condo. More on that some day, perhaps.

Efficiency: An SUV was really a wrong choice for us from the beginning. I looked on it as a replacement for my truck, but you can’t put a full sheet of plywood in the back of an SUV, so from then on it was pretty much like hauling around an extra living room on wheels. It really was a decadent mistake.

Reliability: I was nearing the exit date on the extended warranty and worried about costs. All in all, it seemed very solid, but this was a factor.

Comparison: I had thought I wanted a Corolla. Corolla and Civic have the highest reliability ratings and best gas mileage in their class. I had considered a Smart Car as well. But I couldn’t get my knees under the steering wheel of a Corolla. I’m over 6′2″, and I was finding that, physically, I’m a mid-sized car person. I’m a truck person, but we don’t have solar trucks right now. So I went on my mid-sized car hunt, meticulously narrowing things down, until, just to be thorough, I drove the Mazda3. It’s a compact car with enough room for a man my size. It’s like a 280z in that respect, or a Volkswagen Beetle - surprisingly roomy for the driver. And once you’ve driven a 3, you know why you have to have one. So, I’m fitting in a compact car after all, and it’s got a really satisfying racy appeal, even when coasting through an intersection.

My 3: Black on black, leather, with moonroof, 2.3L engine and 5-speed stick. A snappy combination. That’s me easing into the space marked “compact” and standing up out of it like a tall man from a clown car. I love the car - it’s made 100% in Hiroshima, Japan, and shipped over. Got that tight, well-engineered feel to it. I can drive like a pocket rocket or a hypermiler - my choice. It feels like a glove.

Regrets?: I don’t like not owning it (the bank owns it ’til it’s paid for), but I’d get another one of these. For next time, I’m also thinking about the Subaru Impreza. It’s AWD, which really really helps in the winter. I haven’t driven one yet, but it’s on my list for some day. I loved my old Subaru Brat, so it’s got a fond place in my heart, and I understand it drives like a 3.

This is my first and hopefully last new car. New cars are just too inefficient to own. Currently, the good used small cars are in hot demand so they’re not priced as reasonably as I’d like, and right now I can’t take on any interest in auto repair, but I’m going to get where I can. Buy them for cash, own them outright, put aside enough to fix them when it makes sense (take all the warranty responsibility on myself), and drive them ’til the wheels fall off. Rinse and repeat. I say that, but there’s a certain piece of mind being relatively certain my car will take me across the country right this minute. It’s just that I’m planning to go where I wouldn’t ever want to do that. Anyway, this was the decision process, it’s done, and now I can concentrate on getting it paid for. I can always sell it, if I decide there’s a better way at a better time.

47 Lawnmowers

Office environments can spawn an odd kind of possessiveness. “Why did you throw that away in my trashcan, not yours?” (One was closer than another). “Those are my paperclips. Why don’t you get your own?” (They all come from the same place). You could attribute it to the personalization of space, but I personalize and yet I still look at all the basic instruments as community property. In fact, they come from the same community supply closet, so how do they become protected possessions on the way to your desk? I think, it’s a general phenomenon in a culture obsessed with personal property.

In a song called “47 Lawnmowers”, a musician critiques the fact that if you drive down an average residential street, you’ll find 47 lawnmowers: stored in 47 little sheds or garages, representing a tremendous investment, and used once a week. There’s no concept of having a community toolshed where expense, storage, and maintenance are shared, and you use what you need when you need it. Each house has to have it’s own box for its own mower for its own lawn, get 47 tuneups, 47 oil changes, fill with 47 gascans, and so on. It’s a commentary on our culture’s attitudes about stuff. True, it’s different in condo living where you share a large public space and split the cost of having one guy mow it. But from the suburban US you have a value system of . . . how did the gulls in Finding Nemo put it? . . . “Mine. Mine? Mine!”

When we start viewing office apparatuses like lawnmowers, we’ll either clutch them as though they represent the dream of personal ownership, or else look at them as tools to be laid aside when idle, shared as needed, and utilized when relevant to the goals of the enterprise, but not sources of meaning in and of themselves. It depends on your values. Mine is work. The work is the thing, and the stuff is just a means of working. Turned on its head, we end up working for paperclips, office supplies, and pretty new tape dispensers - not very enticing incentives in my book.

Stuff. It’s transient, not absolute. It’s made to serve your sense of meaning, not be a source of meaning. Yes, I know art is different; in general, though, stuff is the detritus of life, not life itself. The worst and yet most illustrative equation you can bring to the table is stuff vs. people - or, more accurately, Stuff > People. From there flows all the other ills of property: Stuff > Work, Stuff = Meaning, |Stuff| = ∞. You get the point.

I’m not attacking property rights - though I think they need to be reconceptualized in an era of digital media. It’s not communism I’m suggesting, either. I don’t think someone should come and take away your lawnmower and give you back 1/population of it. I’m simply saying that our attitudes about property can determine and reveal our attitudes about more important things, and frequently get in the way of them.

Addendum 8/8/08: This goes to the issue represented in Google’s office mentality over Microsoft. Google envisions a document as an online object to be shared, mutually contributed to, etc. Or else what is it’s purpose? A diary? One word answer: blogs. Microsoft still thinks of documents as static objects to be sent to one another in e-mail and held on our hard drives. Documents that are not designed to function in the community, or not built on a platform with that in mind, cannot be edited by multiple people without threatening confusion over versions (”Is the one you e-mailed me the one I sent you, or does it have your changes?!?”).

When the primary vehicles of our work are not based on the concept of a collaborative community, is it any wonder we guard our staplers so avidly?We’re working within a business culture that (overall) isn’t yet treating documents as community objects but, in a lot of cases, is still at the stage of using shared network drives and sending a lot of things back and forth in e-mail. We don’t make it a priority to have online project spaces in which to collaborate, though excellent out of the box extranets for that purpose have been available for decades.

The first thing I do, whenever I’ve started a team, is create a shared space for collaboration and communication - for sharing project resources, information, ideas, feedback, and keeping each other’s work on everyone’s radar.

We will evolve, because it just doesn’t make sense not to, and the business forces will push us there. In the meantime, though, when the primary vehicles of our work (documents), and the primary platforms on which we work (computerized offices) are not based on the concept of a collaborative community (for all the rhetoric about “good teams”), is it any wonder we guard our staplers (think Office Space) so avidly?

Calendar Spam

Meetings are the calendar spam of organizational life. People create and distribute them, pulling in others and, like viruses, they distract, disable, or cripple the flow of work. Just as with e-mail, there are good meeting requests and good meetings, so we tend to be hopeful about all the ones we get handed, but so often our calendar inboxes just fill up with things that, because they’re scheduled, demand the highest tangible priority (stoppage of all other work), even if, compared to other work, they deserve lower priority. Managers make this worse, because priority goes up artificially whenever the person wanting the meeting signs your check - even if business needs disagree. Calendar spam makes e-mail spam look cute. The only trick I’ve found is to schedule calendar blocks for the daily, ordinary, but really important work that doesn’t ever get scheduled, and mark yourself unavailable at that time. Sorry… I already have a 3:00, and a 4:00 that lasts two hours. Can this be an e-mail? Of course, if you answer to people who believe meetings are what calendar items make them - “show stopper” important - taking precedence over everything - then you might not get away with it. But I’ve witnessed execs doing it all the time - blocking out 4hrs a day or more of unspecified busy time. Why not everyone else? Calendar spam makes e-mail spam look cute - what takes 10-seconds in e-mail takes an hour on your calendar. Schedule meetings with yourself, and use that time to get your work done.

Paperwork: Triage or Bulldozer

Sometimes, you just have to clear your desk. Pile it all up in one stack and go through it - even if the result is more stacks. Throw away, scan, or file anything that doesn’t need to be in your way. If for no other reason that the psychological benefit, periodically, you need a pristine workspace.

Go one better, though. Anything that can be paperless, make paperless. Invest in two items: a sheet-fed scanner and a shredder. Use them in that order, and clear clutter like a bulldozer on a lint pile.

Pounding out the List