My goal is to help you find meaningful work, enjoy the heck out of it, and earn more money.
Bad bosses are pretty common. I don’t think I’ve ever had a truly amazing boss, but get closer with every position. As you learn how you enjoy working, and what you are good at, you become better and better at finding the right people to work with. In the meantime, hop on over to US News and read up on six strategies you can use to manage up. Read it here.
At some point, working on vacation came to be expected. Did you notice? Work goes on without you, however, and no one is so important that you can’t take two weeks off (if you are, you’re doing it wrong). Over at US News & World Report today, I discuss ten reasons why you shouldn’t work on vacation. Read it here and give yourself permission to take a break.
Finding your career purpose is tough. If you come up empty after journaling, quizzes and vision boards, it may be time to take real action. Over at US News and World Report today, I talk about the three steps you can take to gain immediate clarity around discovering your dream job. Read it here.
Lord, do people do some strange things when they network. To make sure you’re not one of them, hop on over to US News and World Report today where I talk about the eight networking don’ts to build the best possible relationships for your career. Read it here and then share your best tips on networking.
In her cover story in the Atlantic, “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All,” Anne-Marie Slaughter proposes workplace changes in an effort to balance the impossible juggle of career, life, and motherhood.
The problem is, there’s still a lot more up in the air.
Slaughter argues women can have it all – assuming that America’s economy, society, and men just get their heads on straight. She proposes we change the culture of face-time in business, integrate family values into the workplace, and regain work/life balance. Such policies, she says, would enable women to find some sanity.
And she’s right, women can have it all, but we can’t do it all. And that’s where Slaughter and other advice from high-powered women executives falls short.
We need to rethink the workplace, but more importantly, we need to rethink motherhood. Women in the workplace is a relatively new phenomenon, and as such, we assess the system’s flaws freely. We safely point out all sorts of places where workplace culture can help us, but no one goes as far to say that we should request help with motherhood. While work woes are considered modern and new, and thus, up for debate and change, motherhood is considered old and sacred, and despite the context of modern times, we still believe motherhood should be practiced in a singular and specific way – alone.
Presumably, we’ve got motherhood down pat if only we could find enough time to do it. But motherhood does not live in a bubble and as work changes, it pushes the definitions of family life. Instead of responding and changing our views of motherhood, we insist on holding onto impossible Madonna-like ideals. Case in point, Slaughter poo-poos rich, career women who rely on round-the-clock nannies, implying that those who use nannies have failed in combining “professional success and satisfaction with a real commitment to family.”
My own mother didn’t have a choice. As a single mom, she worked full-time outside the home to pay the mortgage, put food on the table and provide me an upbringing that wasn’t rooted in poverty. While I do consider my mom a superwoman, she too had her own set of nannies in the form of daycare, after-school activities, and my babysitter Peggy, the neighbor across the street. In contrast, Ryan was raised by two loving parents, dual-incomes, and a bevy of nannies. Incidentally, we both grew up to be pretty amazing people.
The simple fact is that no matter how much you make, what you marry into or the level of your career success, you cannot do it all. Every woman, regardless of class or choices, needs help. The old adage, “it takes a village” often gets paid lip service, but unfortunately we live in an increasingly insular and disconnected society that holds onto the notion that women shouldn’t just have it all, but should do it all as well.
Women are not superhumans, however, and despite trying to do everything ourselves, it’s just not possible. We’re human. Not superhuman, but prone to make mistakes, imperfect, devoid of energy, even love at times. We have feelings and our sole purpose in life is not always to take care of everybody else. Sometimes we need to take care of ourselves.
While we openly discuss the policies that need to happen at a government and career level, we need to openly discuss the changes that need to happen in our family lives as well. We no longer live in a society that allows you to go-it-alone, despite the strongly independent roots of the American Dream, if you want to have any semblance of sanity.
We need to talk about the realities of motherhood, our changing relationships with our partners, and the fact that it’s completely okay to have help – from your nanny or your neighbor, husband or daycare, cleaning person or assistant. Modern life cannot support private nuclear families or picture-perfect lives. Let’s return to our real roots of kinship and community while we advocate for flexible work hours.
You need help, no matter who you are. And the sooner we let go of the ridiculous Madonna-like ideals and notions of motherhood, the better off all women will be, those who want to have it all and those who just want to put dinner on the table.
Men don’t often get a lot of respect in these conversations, and that sucks. Slaughter begins her piece in the Atlantic with a successful career and an unhappy adolescent son, along with a husband who has a career and the flexibility to be at home with their son as needed. She closes the article with a less successful career (by her standards) and a happy adolescent son, along with a husband that presumably has more free time now that she’s home more.
The insidious conclusion, albeit unconscious I’m sure, is that a woman needs to be home for the full-growth and success of her child. A man with a less demanding career is not enough.
If women are going to successfully change the notions of motherhood, we need to accept that men can help us and that they will be really good at it. Fair’s fair.
When you’re laid off, is there anything worse than the feeling that nothing is in your control anymore? Over at U.S. News and World Report today (hey, I write a weekly column there now!), I talk about the five actions you can take to help you regain control, move on with your life and find a new job. Just in case you were thinking of climbing back into your bed permanently. Read it here.
It’s hard out there for a career. If only you had more challenge, more money, more responsibility. While you can and should ask for all of these things (going direct seldom fails), it’s not always that easy.
Here are three ways to build your self-confidence on the road to being one of those annoyingly awesome people who light up when they talk about what they do.
1. Get a side job. If you’re not ready to quit your job that sucks, get a side job consulting or freelancing. More cash means you’re able to create financial padding if and when you do decide to leave. But more importantly, getting distance between you and your current job is essential for creativity. When you stretch your muscles, your new job will stimulate ideas for your old job, and vice versa. Everybody wins.
(Sidebar: Should you tell your boss? Yes. No need to get fired over something silly. And no need to make it a big deal either. Just say you’re doing work for a company/friend/non-profit on the side, and of course, you will put your current position first. If there are any concerns whatsoever, you’re happy to address them. Easy peasy. And if it freaks you out to even think about another job, try blogging, volunteering, or taking a class. Don’t cop-out.)
2. Try being nice. If you’re not too happy, chances are it shows at your desk. When we start to feel like we’re “owed” a better position, resentment builds. Let it go. Be extra nice to your co-workers and boss. Get an attitude adjustment and move on. Being the bigger person isn’t easy, but no one is noticing you huff and puff anyway (and if they are, they don’t enjoy it), but they will notice a bit of extra sunshine.
Making other people’s jobs easier will not only make you feel good, but it is also the quickest way to advance your career. Being likeable is relationships is everything.
3. Reject another job offer. There’s nothing more powerful than rejecting a job offer. This works because it reminds you that you have a choice. Especially in today’s economy, we’re being conditioned to believe you should be grateful for whatever job you have. But who wants to be unhappy? Rejecting an offer lets your brain and heart know that you still have a choice. Your skills are in demand. If something were to happen at your current position, you’d be okay.
Of course, you may discover you’re stoked about a new opportunity and move on. That’s okay too. The point is to get some grease under your behind and start moving. It’s easier to show potential employers you’re amazing when you don’t need a job tomorrow.
Each of these ideas are designed to help you realize, how you choose to spend your time, how you make your money, how you give value to the world – those are all up to you. It’s up to you to love what you do.
Do you love your job? Tell me in the comments whether or not you enjoy your current position, and why.
Student debt is being compared to the housing crisis. Catastrophe? Imminent. We’re thrusting our kids into vast amounts of financial turmoil, and for what? Disaster. And while that may be true (education does need a transformation), debt is not the main issue on a young person’s mind.
“You would think that student loans are young people’s only priority,” argues New York Times columnist Charles Blow. “They’re not. In fact, a cleverly designed survey released this week by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics asked respondents ages 18 to 29 to choose between pairings of issues to determine which ones they felt were more important. Among domestic issues, creating jobs always won.”
Student debt wouldn’t be such a big deal if recent grads could find a job. Because the problem isn’t the loan, but the job to pay off the loan to start living life. You only care about paying off student debt if you’re ready to settle down, buy a house, get married, and have kids. But young people delay adulthood. We buy houses later. We get married later. We have kids later. So it doesn’t matter that paying off loans comes later too — if you have a job.
While there has been much ado about the cost of tuition – college debt has reportedly tripled since 1981 – students rarely pay the full tuition cost because scholarships and financial aid have risen as well. “For the current school year, the average sticker price for tuition and fees at a private, nonprofit college is $28,500,” reports NPR writer Jacob Goldstein. “And yet, the average price students actually pay is less than half that — $12,970. That’s almost identical to the $12,650 that students paid, on average, in the 2001-2002 school year.”
Not to mention, college debt is a deliberate choice young people make. I’m from Illinois, but went out-of-state for school. My mother pleaded with me to go in-state. Same education, lower cost. Of course I knew she was right, but every college student knows the price of higher education doesn’t simply include courses, room and board, but the experience of stepping out and being on your own. An experience I simply didn’t want to have in my hometown.
Many other young people have made similar choices. Kelsey Griffith, 23, attended Ohio Northern, a private college that costed her nearly $50,000 a year. “As an 18-year-old, it sounded like a good fit to me, and the school really sold it,” Ms. Griffith, a marketing major, told the New York Times. “I knew a private school would cost a lot of money. But when I graduate, I’m going to owe like $900 a month. No one told me that.”
You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t sympathize with Ms. Griffith. Smart enough to go to a private school, but can’t do basic math? I pity the marketing budget she’ll soon manage.
We deliberately choose to take on debt to get the best possible education. And while the same could be said of mortgage debt and our pursuit of the American Dream, unlike the the housing crisis, student loan interest rates are low, and the forgiveness level is high. If you don’t have a job, you can delay payments. If you’re experiencing economic hardship, you can delay payments. God forbid you want to go back to school and incur more debt, you can once again delay payments. The system does everything it can to help you get on your feet.
Personally, I went to a public school trading the corn of Illinois for the cows of Wisconsin. At the time, University of Wisconsin-Madison’s out-of-state tuition was the highest among Big Ten schools. The University of Illinois-Champaign-Urbana (located in my hometown) was the lowest. My debt totaled around $12,300 (the average per borrower is $23,300, not the $60,000-$100,000 outliers often strut out in news stories). I paid it off earlier this year, in part, because I’ve been continuously employed since graduation.
Many other young people aren’t so lucky. A whopping fifty-three percent of recent college grads are jobless or underemployed, and that’s why we care eighty percent more about creating jobs over addressing social security, lowering the tax burden on Americans, income inequality, combatting climate change, reducing the role of big money in elections, or developing an immigration policy.
Not a generation to be down on our luck, we’ll take a paycheck where we can get it. Recent graduates are now more likely to work as waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined. Steve King of New Communications Research argues “the grim job market is another key reason more young Americans are pursuing work as independents (temps, freelancers, etc.).”
Gen Y just wants to work. So let us. Provide jobs that could change the educational system, the economy, the world, instead of fussing about student loans. Then Gen Y could pay our debts, and that would be energy well-spent.
When I started writing on Kontrary, I wanted to update the site’s branding right away, but I decided to commit to writing first. If I could commit to a weekly schedule, a redesign would be my reward. And oh, how satisfying it has been.
The old design was reflective of my mood at the time – a bit serious, but also clean and modern. For the new site, I wanted to keep the clean and modern, but dial up the happy factor. And in fact, this is the most color I’ve had on my site. Ever. And I love it, because it’s so much more reflective of who I am right now. Plus, the new site matches our couch pillows. How awesome is that?
I am not a web designer, but I’ve always worked on my site myself because I enjoy the heck out of it. Except when trying to get the placement of an element just right, Ryan says to me, “Babe, I love you” and I turn around with a voice reminiscent of Gollum and exclaim, “Don’t talk to me!” Because that’s just how the process goes. (Thank you, baby, for always being so understanding.)
(Also, if you use Internet Explorer to read my site, I hate you.)
Of course, the site is always be a work in progress, and you’ll continue to see changes and updates over the next few weeks and months. But I’m super pumped to throw open the curtains today. I hope you’ll agree that it’s not just some new paint on the walls; there’s a lot of great functionality on the site as well –
First and foremost, I want to stay in touch with my readers. Back in the day, bloggers encouraged readers to subscribe via their RSS feed, but that never really caught on with the non-techies out there (although I still swear by my Google Reader). Today, email remains the preferred way to communicate, and I made sure to strategically place email opt-in forms throughout my site to reflect this.
Mobile is kind of a big deal, so I created a site that is responsive. That means not only will the site look good on your computer, but it is also optimized for mobile and will look good on your iPhone, iPad, and so on. I’ll admit, the responsive versions could still use some finesse, but this is my first try at it, and I’m stoked to be at the forefront of how we experience the web today.
My primary goal is always to be extremely useful and valuable to you, but the site’s layout and organization hasn’t always reflected that. The new site has topics and highlights organized so you can find and discover your favorite content fast. Over time, I’ll continue to organize my old content (there’s a lot of it!) to make sure these resources are even more valuable.
Please do let me know if you see any odd layouts or broken links via email, especially if you’re looking at the site on your mobile phone or tablet. I don’t have access to every device to test so your help is most appreciated.
If you want to go ahead and let me know what you love most about the new design, or just say great job, leave a comment below.
Thanks for helping me celebrate my new digs! We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming this week.
Quick background: I spoke at the meetup DC Tech earlier this week, which is a monthly event that rivals the NY Tech scene with more than 1000 attendees. My brief talk was about how you can “fake it until you make it” when learning how to code. It was so well received, and so many people requested the presentation notes, I thought I would share a special screencast version of the presentation created just for this blog.
Also, the sound on this video seems loud to me, so you may want to turn down your volume a bit before watching.
Transcript of this video:
I am not a developer. No one would ever hire me as an engineer. But I do love to tinker.
I believe that anyone can build a site and in the process, begin to learn how to code. And I’m going to share with you how I’ve done that today.
For many of you, this will seem too simplistic, but I wanted to show the non-techies out there how easy it is to create a minimum viable product with little to no knowledge of code.
Last year, I tested several of my start-up ideas. One of the last ideas I explored was for a site called Design Pluck – a sort of Pinterest meets Craigslist. The idea was to help design enthusiasts discover design one-of-a-finds in their local neighborhoods. It’s not something I’m pursuing, so feel free to steal the idea. It’s gotten great feedback.
I used three different approaches to “fake” my way into building Design Pluck with only rudimentary knowledge of code:
1. The Search Approach.
I used Google to find a pre-made theme that I could just download and install on my WordPress site. WordPress only takes a quick ten minutes to set up and allows you to change and interact with your site without looking at or touching the code.
Now if you’re not familiar, WordPress themes are completely useable out-of-the-box, but I specifically searched for a theme that was fairly plain and simple, so that I could treat it more like a paint-by-number canvas and customize it the way I wanted.
Most of the differences between the original theme and my site are purely stylistic, or what the web world calls CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). If you had a set of boxes in your living room, you could fairly easy paint them different colors, and that’s exactly what I did.
What was once mostly white and pink on the original theme is now mostly gray and blue on Design Pluck.
CSS isn’t difficult. You just replace one color code with another, and like switching out lipsticks, you’ve just given your site a makeover.
2. The Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V approach (i.e., Copy-And-Paste).
When I wanted to have the search bar functionality follow the user as they scrolled down the site, similar to how Pinterest’s navigation bar follows you, I found a Java code snippet via search that I copied and pasted into the site’s documents. And let me back up and say, I had no idea what I was doing or where to put this Java snippet. I just tried many different places until it worked.
The lesson here is that you’re allowed to experiment. You won’t break anything. A voice in your head may tell you, “no, don’t touch that!” but you can and you should. Your site is your sandbox.
(Just make sure to copy or back-up the existing code before you do anything so you can go back and reference the original if need be.)
So as you’re browsing, the Java snippet allows the search bar to follow you, so when get overwhelmed and decide there are too many choices and you only want to see red items, you can tell the search bar just show me red items in my neighborhood, and voila!
Now, the Java snippet allowed me to have this search bar follow the user, but it didn’t create the custom search in the first place. The way I created my custom search was through my third and final approach.
3. The Download/Upload Approach.
It’s very easy to find different plugins that again, similar to themes, allow you to create the functionality you want on your site out-of-the-box. You simply download them from the many repositories out there, and upload them to your site.
Plugins are modules that allow you to completely bypass the overwhelming process of coding everything from scratch.
Like legos, plugins are out-of-the-box blocks that play nicely with others, and as you fit more and more together, you can create something very complex and very powerful.
The plugins on the Design Pluck site include the custom search boxes, the sign-up form, custom fields, custom posts, the like button, which allows users to like their favorites which will then show up on a favorites page – also a plugin – location maps, an email plugin and more.
All of that functionality is as easy as clicking download, and then clicking upload.
Learn to Code
Of course, eventually you will hit a wall, and will want to do more than these three approaches will allow. In the process, you’ll begin to learn how to code. For this site, I learned a ton about PHP, a bit about JQuery Masonry, and a whole lot more.
I ended up writing some simple code, but what I’m most proud of is that I wrote several of my first functions simply by mirroring the code I saw in other places.
Just one example of those functions is on the individual store pages. I wanted a store’s products to show up below their store information, and wrote a function to make that happen.
So if you click on a store page like Miss Pixies on 14th St, you would be able to see their store information at the top of the page, and at the bottom, you’d find all of their current inventory to shop.
To you, it may seem like a minor win, but to me, when I figured this out, it felt like I had literally changed the world.
I hope you enjoy changing the world in your own way with these approaches.
Have you ever used any “fake-it” approaches in building a website, or just in business and life?
You have the option to listen to this post:
[audio:https://kontrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/shortcuts.mp3|titles=The Quickest Way to a Better Career]I hate meeting people. I would prefer to be holed up in my apartment, lovingly arranged to every last detail purely to make me comfortable, than to present myself to the world. It’s not that I actually dislike people, but the whole process. The getting ready, the logistics, scheduling a time, finding a place – nevermind if you can’t meet me in my preferred five block radius. If it’s raining outside, I will cancel. If I have a blemish on my face, I will cancel. If you want to meet for no reason, I will cancel.
Meeting people is like writing is like exercise. All take convincing. You have to talk yourself into it, hype yourself up. Then things go fine. Great even. Sometimes amazing.
Last week, I was in New York for a media tour. That’s where you pack twelve meetings in two days and meet with anyone – editors, reporters, interns – who will listen. And oh, holy crap, how I loved it.
Sure, we could have saved a couple thousand in expenses, and done the same thing over email, or the phone, over web-ex or even text. But the power of face-to-face, to see these people in person, to meet and speak… to have a conversation. Well, if I could do media tours full-time, I would (except, with my own bed at night).
Technology is supposed to make it easier for us to connect, but it actually makes it worse to have a conversation. That’s the argument of Sherry Turkle, a psychologist and professor at M.I.T. and author, most recently, of Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other.
“We are tempted to think that our little ‘sips’ of online connection add up to a big gulp of real conversation. But they don’t,” Turkle argues. “Human relationships are rich; they’re messy and demanding. We have learned the habit of cleaning them up with technology. And the move from conversation to connection is part of this. But it’s a process in which we shortchange ourselves. Worse, it seems that over time we stop caring, we forget that there is a difference.”
Nowhere is this more important than if you’re trying to do something. Build a company. Launch your career. Get a raise. Do anything but settle. Meeting people is the quickest way to success. I used to say when you put yourself out there, the universe rises to meet you, but really it’s your network.
So if meeting people is like fruit, technology is like candy. And the longer we stay in front of our computers, the more sluggish we feel. The anxiety kicks in. So do the excuses. Then it’s just easier to stay home, send an email, and do absolutely nothing.
We convince ourselves that working works. But it doesn’t. So get up. Talk to someone. Have a conversation. Tell me how it goes. Tell me how things start happening for you. It is single-handedly the best thing you can do for your career, company, life.
(Technology gives us shortcuts. This isn’t one of them.)
You have the option to listen to this post:
[audio:https://kontrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/instagram.mp3|titles=Why Instagram is Art]I love Instagram.
It gives me a great deal of pleasure.
I’m not kidding.
Ryan and I had a big argument about this. He said he felt like a lot of people were on Instagram – including himself – to satiate the human desire to fit in and not be left out. I said it’s because Instagram is art.
Creating is fundamentally part of the human experience. Construction workers report high levels of satisfaction at their jobs (if the project is on time), because they can step back and look and see what they’ve done at the end of the day. And damn, that’s satisfying.
In contrast, a lonely knowledge worker has little to show for herself. Unless you’re a developer, we don’t create much anymore, and we certainly don’t create much with meaning.
But Instagram lets you make art. It’s different, because unlike Facebook or even Flickr where you can mass upload your life, Instagram forces you to make choices, filter, edit. Not all, but most times it makes ugly pretty and pretty ugly. It creates interest and intent.
You make many of the same choices you would in a darkroom. Should you edit the photo? Do you want to crop it? How will you adjust the coloring, the lighting? Do you want to overexpose it? All the principles of art still stand – proportion, balance, rhythm, pattern – you still need those to make a compelling photograph. But Instagram allows you to do so by elevating ordinary life while providing a mechanism to examine life. It accomplishes what street art tried, but never quite achieved: art for the masses.
Instagram helps to define how you see the world, how you move through the world. You begin to realize you have a certain way of seeing and experiencing day-to-day. You develop and refine that. Your collection is there for a reason, to tell a story, a viewpoint, a life.
Art is translating your experience to the world. Instagram is shared experiences. Instagram is art.
It is visceral and short of being there side-by-side with someone it allows you to experience what they experience. This breeds empathy, joy, understanding.
And for those reasons and more, it’s important to note that Instagram’s billion dollar sale to Facebook is not just an investment in a thirty-million person community, but an investment in art. Forget that we may or may not be in a bubble and Instagram has no revenue stream. Forget that everyone thinks Facebook will ruin it. This is a billion investment in our generation’s creative renaissance, plain and simple.
The pictures don’t lie.