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  • A Primer On Productivity

    I’ve been visiting my family for the last few days and I’ve been thinking a lot about productivity.  My father and I were discussing deadlines (this pseudo vacation happens to be full of them) of the physical vs. intellectual variety and the usefulness of putting conditions on work that normally requires creativity and inspiration to fuel it. This conversation, plus a recent reader question about increasing one’s writing output, convinced me that this is a fine time to share with you my own productivity secrets, which boil down to getting yourself to sack up and do work when you’d rather do just about anything else. They’re not glamorous, but they keep slackerdom at bay, at least in my world.

    Photo by jazzmasterson

    Accountability

    Willpower is overrated. It might help you to gut out the last five miles of the Boston Marathon, but it won’t take you from the couch to actually qualifying for next year’s Marathon in the first place.  We romanticize grit and stick-to-it determination as being hallmarks of strong character and gloss over the fact that we’re social creatures and that willpower often requires us to isolate ourselves from people or situations we fear might be a challenge to it in order to toil in a vacuum.  Better that we should focus on accountability – both to ourselves and our values and to others who are depending on us.  Whether it be the buddy system to get in your training runs or volunteering at your grandmother’s nursing home or a group project for one of your marketing classes, we are less likely to slack off when we know that doing so would publicly let others down and not simply disappoint ourselves. This is part of the logic behind the Virtual Brain Trust and part of the impetus that recently allowed me to bang out 24 consecutive think pieces on the Gen Y experience in modern America for Bitch Magazine*. Believe me, willpower and divine inspiration had nothing to do with those columns.

    Environment

    I’d love to be one of those people who can drag their laptops to a coffee shop to happily work or study for hours. I am not.  Too nosy curious about fellow patrons and their conversations, relationships and drink orders.  I know that I work best alone in the quiet (maybe with my headphones on, but never when editing) and that trying to produce a quality effort in cacophonous surroundings is a losing battle.  While most of us likely don’t have perfect control over our environment (especially if you live with others), knowing the context in which you are best able to focus and to be productive goes a long way in helping you to minimize the distractions (that’s why God made noise-canceling headphones!) within your control and to adjust your expectations as to your output under less than ideal conditions and the type of tasks that you shouldn’t tackle (hint: expecting to finish your MA thesis over Thanksgiving with your 35-person extended family might not be entirely realistic) in that environment.

    Incentives and Consequences

    Although it’s not the only example, money works particularly well in this context, especially for those who are conscientious about accruing/saving it and squeamish about wasting it. The need to eat and pay rent forces you to hustle to land clients or to sell more cars or houses. You leave yourself no choice but to be productive. Inaction is a luxury you can’t afford. Literally.  Or the fact that you’re coughing up almost $50/month in gym fees is a heckuva motivation to squeeze in as many fitness classes as possible each week (it also decreases the per-class cost and makes you feel all virtuously thrifty!).

    *If you haven’t read them, you should. That was some hardcore productivity right there.

  • Don’t Let The Haters Get You Down: Rejection + the Audition Mentality

    Guest post alert! Today’s post comes to you from Alexandra Franzen. We connected via Twitter where I heard word of her recent resume contest. And we decided that our mutual awesomeness necessitated a blogging collaboration. Her contribution, in the form of a guest post, is below. Consider it a no-holds barred look at what life as full-time freelancer truly entails.

    I recently spent some time in New York City with an old high-school chum. She’s now a successful Broadway performer, with glittery dreams of TV stardom. The woman is a walking tub of talent. She’s gorgeous, driven, well-spoken and well-dressed. And every single day — sometimes twice or thrice a day — she gets flat-out rejected.

    Photo by arimoore

    Like most actors, my friend is constantly auditioning. She gets all dolled up, takes the subway halfway across town, walks into a room full of strangers, reads her cue card, and waltzes out to her next appointment. It’s a schedule that most job-hunters would find emotionally and physically exhausting. And 99% of the time, she doesn’t book the gig. No explanation. No follow-up. No “thanks for trying.”

    Does she cry, wail and whine about every missed opportunity? Heck no. Hustling up jobs is her job. She’s a professional hustler.

    I went 100% freelance two months ago, and started plotting my cubicle escape route six months prior to that. So you might say, I’ve been thinking like a professional hustler for eight months straight. It’s a shark-like mindset — you never stop swimming.

    To keep my copywriting career afloat, I e-mail out six or seven query letters to editors and agencies every week. To keep my stream of resume design clients pouring in, I’m constantly following up with past clients, requesting testimonials, seeking referrals and inquiring about new projects. I spend a hefty chunk of my day brainstorming high-impact / low-cost self-promotion tactics. I update my blog four – five times a week, and rummage up guest-blog-portunities (hello, Generation Meh). Sometimes — as with my recent “Spruce Up Yo’ Resume Scholarship Contest” — I give away the milk for free, all in the name of professional development and guerrilla marketing.

    For every 10 query letters I send out, I might hear back from one editor. For every 20 vaguely-interested resume clients that contact me, I might lock in a design package with three. For every 100 contracted writing positions that I apply for, I might land five. For every 1000 casual conversations with friends, family members, colleagues, cab drivers and coffee shop baristas about my career goals, 10 might lead to lucrative positions.

    Those statistics might make a traditional job-hunter shudder. So much work! So little pay-off! And — worst of all — so much rejection!

    Thing is, it’s not rejection — it’s just the audition process. The more you pound the pavement, the broader your footprint.

    My biggest lesson from the past eight months of hustlerdom? Stop thinking like a secure 9-to-5-er (because honestly, no one is ever “secure”) and start thinking like my friend, the Broadway actress. Audition your little tush off. Tell your story. Send out your resume, headshots or portfolio. Make that coffee date. Reconnect with that former employer, professor or agent. You never know who needs you, until you poke your smiling face back into their orbit.

    Oh, and most importantly? Don’t let the haters get you down. Especially if the hater is you.

    ALEXANDRA FRANZEN is a freelance copywriter specializing in resume design, public broadcasting and corporate branding — with a kick. You can find her blogging up a storm at Unicorns for Socialism and tweeting away @alex_franzen.

  • Is Gen Y Forever Young?

    I know I’m almost 30, but I’m still too young to be a dad.  Definitely not old enough for kids.

    So said the all-American stranger in a polo and khaki shorts to his female companion. I was merely eavesdropping from a discreet distance.

    Photo by Dianna Narotski

    30? Too young?  Tell that to Swaziland, where the life expectancy is less than 32. While it’s more than likely that Mr. All-American was referring to his intellectual readiness to be a father (and kudos to considering this vs. blithely signing up for babydaddy duty), it struck me as interesting that he didn’t say that he wasn’t ready, or that he felt unprepared. No, he said he was too young. Fodder for a JMH theory at the very least…

    It  points to a strange arrested development state of mind that seems to permeate much of Gen Y. I look young*, I act young, I feel young, therefore, I am young. Except, if we’re young at 26 or 28 or 32, what does that make eight year-olds? Other than competition, of course.

    There’s a weird cultural force at work when you have the co-existence of high heels for babies and teenage Miley Cyrus on the cover of Vanity Fair wrapped in a sheet and 30 year-old men saying that they’re not old enough to procreate (And yes, there’s a definite gender dimension to this; stay tuned for more on that topic).  It’s like a cafeteria approach to chronology – we pick and choose the aspects of being adult that we feel comforting adopting or participating in (sex, earning power, being the boss of us, etc.) and eschew the rest.  This would be a fine strategy if there wasn’t the sneaking suspicion that it’s an evasive maneuver  instead of a purposeful choice to reject (and seek out an alternative to) historical expectations of adulthood in the form of  the house/car/kids/corporate job. And that we’re still actually measuring ourselves against these benchmarks, but instead of grappling with the substance of them (Do I want this? If so, how should I go about pursing it?), we’re simply waiting for the grown-up gene to kick in of its own accord and do the heavy lifting for us. Go to sleep in the white, wake up in the black and skip all the strenuous gray in between.

    Its bound to happen one of these days.  By 40 for sure. Right, Mr. All-American?

    *I’m honest enough to admit that passing for sub- 22 makes me giggle. Girlishly.

  • An 80s Ode to Community

    Today’s piece, brought to you by Kate Lucas, marks the first in GenMeh’s American Dream guest essay series. More info on the project and details on contributing can be found here.

    My TV viewing time has been hijacked the past several months by one show: the 1980s hit thirtysomething, which recently came out on DVD. I tore through the first two seasons and since then, I have been anxiously awaiting the leap of season three to the “active” section of my Netflix queue. (Hello, Netflix: you do know season three was released on May 11, don’t you? I know I called already, but I just thought another reminder couldn’t hurt.) While there are many things that are very dated about the show—pleated pants, feathered hair, oversized tortoise shell glasses, you get the idea—I have been surprised by how many things have struck a chord with me as I near the end of my twenties.

    It’s not that I have found my life mirrored in any real way, barring a handful of moments, particularly those involving the two single women characters in the show. (Although even then, one must stretch the mind to, for example, substitute online dating for video dating in a storefront downtown.) It’s more so the emotional tenor of the show that has struck a chord. One element of this was described well by Porochista Khakpour in her recent New York Times piece about the show, what she describes as “that no-man’s-land paralysis … that cold-sweat-panic moment when youthful rebellion runs headlong into the responsibilities, pains and joys of full-blown adulthood.” Whether it is balancing work with friends and family, single friends coming to terms with friends who are married, or redefining adult relationships with parents, the show continually bumps up against these kinds of tensions.

    But I think the most interesting and poignant emotional undercurrent is the characters’ search for community and belonging, and I am particularly taken with the way they find it. An easy shorthand to describing it is the photograph on the DVD case for season two: a cozy, intimate jumble of legs, arms, dog, and the heads of the main characters, on the front stoop of one of their houses. Indeed, it is a cozy, intimate, jumbled life they live. They are forever stopping over unannounced at each others’ houses or apartments or studios, letting themselves in and opening the fridge. They know the good, bad, and ugly in each others’ lives. Marriage and parenthood have not created a curtain behind which Hope and Michael, or Elliot and Nancy, shrink. Hope and Michael’s house is in a constant state of disrepair, but they don’t seem to mind, and it doesn’t keep them from providing the hangout of choice for their friends.

    This all seems beautiful to me. And yet it is a lifestyle that has found scant existence in reality, or at least any reality I have brushed against. In my experience, marriage and parenthood have created profound differences in the makeup of friendships, and home ownership seems to garner expectations of a much higher level of perfection. I think American culture is still very wedded to the nuclear family and the continual striving to make our daily lives just a little bit better … which most often means the latest gadget or the highest quality granite countertop. (How far the lives of thirtysomething seem from this consumerist beltway makes me particularly surprised that the show was criticized for highlighting yuppie culture. Perhaps this simply shows how much more materialistic we’ve all become?)

    And yet, pop culture seems to have a certain fetish with this idea of a New Extended Family, a quirky conglomeration of friends, next-door neighbors, co-workers, etc. The final, sepia-tone scenes of Nick Hornby’s About a Boy and Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain are just two of many examples. It almost seems to me that we have two American Dreams. Our more base desires long for the latest gadgets and the perfect HGTV abode, while our higher selves long for a more enduring, persistent, albeit messy, sense of community.


    Kate Lucas is a writer in Minneapolis, MN. In addition to thirtysomething, she is a big fan of The Gilmore Girls and The West Wing. You can find more of her writing at the blog From the Pews in the Back.

  • The American Dream: A Call To Action

    I’m very pleased to introduce a new addition to GenMeh – a guest essay series focused on the youth/Gen Y/Millennial perspective on the traditional American Dream. What sort of visions does this term conjure up for members of our generation? Is it relevant to our lives? To our interpretation of success? Does it tangibly exist out there in the world or is it simply a quaint myth? This project has been in the works for a few months now, but timing seemed to conspire against its launch. No more. The first essay will be published next week and future contributions will appear on a regular/semi-regular basis thereafter.

    Interested in getting involved?

    We have some great content in the works, but I’d be delighted to have more (and more and more) folks come aboard. I’m using the term “essay” very loosely – could be straight ahead narrative pieces, photography,  audio, video, a song, a sketch of a bald eagle perched on a foreclosure sign, etc. The sky and your creativity are the only limits and I’m pretty open-minded when it comes to how broad this topic can be (hint: very, very broad). If you have an idea or don’t get have an idea but are interested in coming up with one (I’m pretty savvy at linking people’s interests with the overall theme), please get in touch and we can discuss. And if you know others who might be interested, please point them this way. My hope is that this project will grow into a robust and encompassing picture of how a diverse cross-section of young Americans envision their future, define their place in society and pursue their goals and aspirations. Look out, NPR and PBS, I’m totally going to sell you on this.

  • If You Could Read My Mind, We Wouldn’t Be Having This Conversation

    Hate To Break It To You is a recurring feature wherein we dispense succinct home truths that everyone could benefit from facing up to, unpleasant as they may be.

    The rest of the world aren’t mind readers. We frequently take it for granted that people can figure out when we’re happy or disappointed or absolutely furious, but, unless we verbalize these feelings or type them out in a 32-pt bullet list (comic sans only, please), they likely can’t (but what else could my death glare mean but I want to shank you for stealing my parking spot?). Very few folks have the skills, time or inclination for picking up on subtlety. You think a two-week embargo on all email and texts will communicate how hurt you are, he thinks your silence is just an indication that you’re buried under work. You think pretending to be absorbed in stapling will indicate that you’re both busy and disinterested and keep your coworker from hovering in your doorway regaling you with details of her custody battle, but she takes your monosyllabic responses as an invitation to vent her spleen sans interruption. You see how it is. We think we’re being crystal clear and all too often we take the inability of the other party to decode our message as a direct reflection of their feelings for or understanding of us. If my parents really loved me, they’d know I wanted a pony for Christmas and not a stupid trampoline*!

    Photo by no heroes in my SkY.

    But it’s not you and it’s not them, it’s the nature of communication and the complexity of the world and the fact that we’re bombarded with billions of bits of information, involved in dozens of interactions and interpersonal exchanges a day and possessed of the tendency of human nature toward utter self absorption. Just as others are missing our signs, signals and dramatic sighs, we’re overlooking theirs. Two-way street, my friends. Think about that the next time your best friend from high school doesn’t return your calls for a month and you chalk it up to the world’s longest bout of stomach flu.

    And even more than those in our sphere, the world at large has no time for subtlety, for hand-holding you through the rough parts, for calling a timeout in the fourth quarter so you can catch your breath. The world has a lot of other kids to worry about, so if you want something from it, you better pipe up. And loudly. You have to show it that you’re worth the space you occupy (lest one of your global siblings squeezes you out) and that your voice deserves to be heard. Demurring doesn’t cut it.

    I’ve said it before, but you don’t get the help you don’t ask for. The same often goes for respect, for consideration of your feelings, for time and attention. There’s no shame in asking for these things and your relationships aren’t inherently flawed or inadequate because you have to express your needs rather than the utterly unrealistic expectation of having them recognized and met without you having to make a peep (unless your entire social circle is made up of fawning sycophants or perhaps old English butlers). Don’t make mind reading into a test of your importance to another and don’t assume that someone has accurately interpreted your message unless you’ve spelled it out and possibly furnished them with a color-coded diagram. And for God’s sake, close your office door if you don’t want to be disturbed.

    *Please send me all of your unwanted trampolines.

  • Permission To Pace Yourself

    Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of time-based talk floating around – people anxious that others are getting the jump on them, that they should have done more and done it earlier, lamentations about growing older, etc. The clock is ticking after all. Of course, this fretting over age-related accomplishments saddens me. It’s both exhausting and unnecessary (and downright laughable in some cases). And not only that, it doesn’t motivate you to get a jump on your own priorities, so much as it leads you to mourn what hasn’t yet been achieved (and likely never will be).

    Photo by h. koppdelaney

    You have time. You have time to write a novel, to see the Great Wall of China, to learn Spanish or Ashtanga yoga, to get married, to buy a house, to start a business. As long as you’re making your own idiosyncratic version of forward progress, what does it really matter if you haven’t accomplished all of this by 25? By 40? The truth is, no matter how early you strike your success, there will always be someone who made it there first. 13 year-olds are climbing Everest and graduating from Harvard with PhDs, so unless you’re planning to travel back in time to tell your seven year-old self to step away from the Pokemon or the Ninja Turtles action figures and pick up a neurobiology textbook, you’re already “too late.” Hell, you were too late as soon as you hit double digits. That’s not meant to be depressing; it’s liberating. You aren’t a wunderkind. You’re never going to be a wunderkind. And really, why would you want to be? Look at child actors. For every Jodie Foster who found long-term career success and grew up to be a well-adjusted and highly-regarded Oscar winner, the pop cultural landscape is littered with scores of Lindsay Lohan or Corey Feldman types who hit it big young and never fully recovered from their early exposure to fame.

    Life isn’t like Logan’s Run, y’all. You don’t have to frontload all of your accomplishments because you’ll be blotted out (I’m talking figuratively here) at the big 3-0. And why should your success mean less if it comes later? I find this attitude particularly common among folks who’ve finally figured out what they want to do with their working lives. Their enthusiasm at arriving at this decision is tempered by self recrimination for not having solved this riddle at 18. Never mind that it was likely the intervening years and the experiences that filled and shaped them that led you to your current career epiphany, an epiphany that would have meant nothing to the 18 year-old you who wasn’t in a place to recognize or respond to it.

    There are precious few things that are timebound. Having kids is one of them (I wrote extensively about that here) and beginning to save for retirement (probably shouldn’t leave that until you’re 58) is another. For everything else? All in good time.

  • And Now For Something Completely Different

    Lately, I’ve been working on some other writing.  Writing that’s more in the vein of literary non-fiction essays and writing that I plan to pull together into a something. Maybe a something with a cover and pages and page numbers, dig? I thought I would share a little excerpt of it with you. Reactions via the usual means (Twitter, email, telepathy, hand-written notes, etc.) are, of course, welcome.

    Sometimes, I walk through the rich neighborhood. Private schools, trees overhanging the sidewalk, the greenest, brightest grass. I like to guess the price of the houses that are for sale and then look them up when I get home to see how close my guesses are. Today, I wanted fresh air. Fresh air and sorbet and quiet, shady avenues, no stoplights. It always takes a few blocks for my mind to unwind. It took almost to the door of the ice cream stand this time, until I saw three uniformed girls wobbling on bikes in the middle of the street, pedaling slowing and laughing self-consciously as they test-drive their spring legs. And if not young again myself, I at least feel hopeful. For them? For me? For the possibilities that such a tableau represents. I’m very fond of possibilities, especially if you catch them before anyone else does, coax them into the jar and screw the cap on tight before they can escape.

    Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography

    Even though it’s 2:00 PM, the ice cream stand is empty. The radio is playing in the background and the boy behind the counter is softly singing Let It Be under his breath and the whole world smells like lilacs and sunscreen. I don’t know if the moment expands or everything else shrinks, but right then, there is no other place and time but standing alone in this tiny ice cream shack, tracing my finger in the condensation on the cooler, waiting for two scoops of raspberry sorbet. Right then, I am in love. In love with the boy behind the counter, with the smell of lilacs and sunscreen, with The Beatles. In love with the moment. It’s a lonely kind of love, because you are in love with the insubstantial and the unable-to-be-replicated  and even if you’re sharing the moment with someone else, you are, at the heart of it, in love with the view of the world as frozen through your own eyes. One per customer.

    I collect these moments. I clutch them in my sticky little fist and when I get home to the quiet, I store them away for safe-keeping. But I know better than to try to recapture them. A girl could waste a whole life on that. As I walk back, I lean into an imposing yard to smell its just-blossomed lilac bush. But I don’t pick any to take with me. Same principle.

  • I Don’t Wanna And You Can’t Make Me

    Last week, I stumbled upon an interesting little discussion (with different strands appearing here and there) about the essential nature of blogging for the go-getting, job-seeking twentysomething. I couldn’t resist adding my two cents in one venue. And the response I wrote doesn’t just apply to blogging, it applies to any damn thing people tell you that should/must/have to do.

    Photo by LaurenV.

    The truth? You actually don’t.  You have to have a means of acquiring the necessities of life (food, shelter, etc.). You probably have to pay taxes (unless you’re a Fortune 500 company). You likely want to abide by prevailing rules of law and order and perhaps treat your fellow citizens with the degree of kindness and respect that will prevent you from being an utter pariah. However, you do not have to blog, or read Tolstoy, or shave your legs, or enjoy sports, or know about wine, or learn to golf, or buy organic, or aspire to bench press your body weight, or be in a relationship, or like coffee. You. Do. Not.

    This culture of the imperative, especially as it relates to the workplace and to our pursuit of personal happiness, drives me nuts. It’s one thing to willingly and knowingly comply because of peer pressure, or a belief that this will improve your life or deciding that the blowback from non-compliance isn’t worth the headache to you, but we accept so many musts at face value without ever asking who has the authority to deliver these orders and what the consequence will be if we don’t fall into line. Hint: not anything as dire as what you’ve assumed or been led to fear. We let the imperatives rule us (must join LinkedIn, lose 10 lbs, find a mentor, etc.), but don’t think to question whether we even want to do the things we’re supposed to do or feel and whether the energy we channel into them could be better spent on something we are interested in or whether the resentment or resignation with which we face the imperative actually cancels out the benefits we’re purportedly going to derive from it in the first place.

    These imperatives are not being delivered unto us from Charlton Heston in a fake beard reading off a couple of stone tablets. They’re coming from the media, from tv and movies, from peers, from self-minted “experts” and supposed gurus, from something someone read in a book one time and now preaches as gospel. These sources aren’t infallible and they all have (their) vested interests.  Sure, it would be great if their directives pan out for you, but as long as they increase their prestige, influence and bottom line, that’s what counts. Don’t kid yourself that the musts and shoulds that are raining down on you are born solely of altruism and a desire for you to be a happier,  fulfilled, successful person. There’s always more to the story.

    It’s time to get in touch with our inner toddlers and to regress back to the days when Because I said so or It just is or Everybody wears shoes that match weren’t satisfactory answers. The fact that Mom says that you’re supposed to eat those carrots or that everyone else at daycare would be outfitted in appropriate footwear didn’t mean a damn to us back then. And you know what? It really shouldn’t mean a damn to us today, either.

  • The Truth of C’est La Vie

    Hate To Break It To You is a recurring feature wherein we dispense succinct home truths that everyone could benefit from facing up to, unpleasant as they may be.

    Recently, I had cause to be in a room full of women (ranging in age from early 20s to 50s) discussing their career trajectories. And as they all recounted the different paths that had taken them to the present, one phrase kept being repeated – and then/but, life just happened. Bewildered, resigned, rueful. I wanted to grab each of them by the shoulders and tell them that they damn well didn’t need to feel disappointed in themselves for elements out of their control. That would probably scare them even more, though. Maybe homemade cookies and a pat on the back  instead?

    Photo by Okinawa Soba

    We make the decisions we believe are in our best interests – maximize happiness, minimize unpleasantness, meet a specific need. And sometimes, the outcomes and consequences aren’t what we expected and we have to navigate these new realities. We live and (it’s hoped) learn. But sometimes, life intervenes and through no fault or credit of our own, stuff goes sideways. People die, they get cancer, they get transferred to Akron, they get downsized, they get dumped, they have car accidents, they win the lottery, they meet their soul mate at a square dance for singles. Icelandic volcanoes erupt, condoms break, for better or worse, life happens. And it happens in ways we can’t necessarily anticipate or predict or adequately brace ourselves for. And we shouldn’t condemn ourselves for not being able to see these twists and turns coming and bounce back in record time.

    The best we can do is to do what we believe is best. Forget about micromanaging the vagaries of other people, nature, the universe and apologizing for a lack of omniscience. Life happens – to us, for us and all around us. Recognize this, accept it and don’t apologize.