Defining “Success”

June 19, 2009 at 10:02 pm · Filed under business, career, creativity, life ·Tagged , ,

Have you succeeded in life?

The only position from which I could answer “yes” unequivocally is six feet underground (or, more likely, as a cloud of gritty ash). After all, what is life’s only viable outcome? Death. So perhaps a better question is,

Have you succeeded in doing what you’ve set out to do so far?

On Wednesday night I went to see a talk by Lauren Bacon of Raised Eyebrow Web Studio about defining success for your small business. The thrust of the talk was moving away from revenue as a success marker and looking more deeply at the reasons you do what you do, in order to define success on your own terms. Her very useful homework assignment (also found in the book she and her business partner Emira Mears wrote, The Boss of You) was to finish the sentence “I will know I am successful when…”, in as many ways as possible.

And so I did.

In doing so, I discovered the one major key to my definition of success that has been missing from my work life and career identity. I want to be paid primarily for my creative output. I will know I’m successful when I am spending 80% of my work time actively engaged in creative production AND can make my target salary. This revelation is not really a surprise, but it is daunting. I have conditioned to deeply believe that creative work cannot pay well. Of course, this isn’t true. Still, conditioning is conditioning, and it will be hard to resist the urge to fall back into a non-creative role that feels comfortable and familiar.

But if I do that, no matter how financially stable and comfortable I am, I will never succeed.

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the 11 most important habits to form

June 10, 2009 at 8:56 pm · Filed under life ·Tagged

Forming new habits can be one of the most frustrating and most fulfilling pursuits in life. We all have habits, good and bad, that form the foundation of our lives. They either support or get in the way of our dreams, goals, and overall satisfaction. They flavor our days and trouble our sleep. Even though they may seem like small things, their impact is enormous.

Each person has different habits and different needs for shifting them. This is a personal thing, and the list to follow represents my personal needs and priorities, but I do think that all of these habits could benefit most people.

Changing habits is not something that can be rushed. The best advice I’ve heard on the subject is to tackle one at a time, for a month, before adding a second. It is easy to get impatient, but it is better to form a habit slowly and keep it than to try to do too much and give up. Try tracking one habit on a daily basis. Start with something easy, that you like to do and does not take much time.

  1. Breathe. There is nothing more fundamentally vital to life than breathing, and I can say with great confidence that it is something that everyone does. But do you do it well? Stress, poor posture, lack of exercise, and allergies can all cause short, shallow, incomplete breaths. Whenever you feel overwhelmed or anxious, stop and breathe.
  2. Move. All of that fresh oxygen doesn’t do much good if it is not circulated through the body. Regular exercise is one of the best ways to improve your mood and energy level. Walking, Running, Yoga, Dancing, and Swimming are my favorite forms of movement.
  3. Hydrate. Besides air what the body needs most is water. Stay away from sugary drinks (don’t drink anything with high fructose corn syrup OR artificial sweetener if you ask me) and stick with pure water. Alcohol and coffee dehydrate.
  4. Eat. You want to give your body a lot of fresh, organic, high nutrient foods prepared in ways that are delicious and healthy. It is almost impossible to eat a healthy diet of prepared foods. Many people have sensitivities to foods like dairy, soy, and wheat that are just mild enough to make you feel crappy without any more serious symptoms. Find out what leaves you feeling bad and avoid it. Save sugar for the rare treat.
  5. Meditate. More and more research is showing that some form of daily meditation or mindfulness practice can reduce anxiety and depression better than current prescription medications. This is not a religious practice, it is mental exercise. Learn to quiet your mind and observe your own thoughts and you can begin to uncover your own unconscious patterns that weigh you down.
  6. Journal. Journaling is better than therapy. There’s no right or wrong form for this practice. Some use it as an uninhibited brain dump, others more formally track progress toward certain goals. Either way, writing for yourself can be liberating and informative.
  7. Focus. We live in an age of distraction, and learning to focus your mind and energy on a single activity for long period of time can be both empowering and productive.
  8. Connect. Keep in touch with people you care about.
  9. Give. Charity and volunteer work can bring a strong sense of meaning to life.
  10. Sleep. Getting the right amount of sleep every night is crucial to maintaining sanity and health. Some people are OK with six hours, others need ten. Listen to your body, and try to make lights-out the same time every night.
  11. Play. Play is active and creative, not passive entertainment. It is exploratory and fun. Play alone or with friends, but play every day!

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Unstructured Time… it’s a Bad Thing, right?

April 24, 2009 at 6:06 pm · Filed under life, productivity

My business partner and seemingly most other people are in Paris right now (cheap airfare – the world is on sale, people!), so for a week and a half I have 100% unstructured time (barring a few social plans). It feels luxurious, sitting around in my comfies and thinking about productivity systems without actually being very productive.

So this is bad. This is how I get stuck.

And yet, the alternative is to force some sort of rigid schedule on myself, and I know from years of experience that this simply doesn’t work. Yes, I want to get up early and exercise, meditate, write morning pages, do yoga, make breakfast… but when I’m lying there in my comfy bed, that all sounds like hard work. And who’s gonna make me? No one but me.

And therein lies the problem. In order to get past my procrastination and avoidance blockages I have to really want to do the things that I say I want to do. I know I’ll be glad I did. Intellectually, it’s an easy equation. But emotionally it’s a whole lot of resistance.

Here’s what I have found to be my best bet for dealing with unstructured time: do exactly what I want to do. Sounds irresponsible? Not so much. If I can take away distraction and really focus on whatever is most appealing to me, the momentum carries me to another task, and then another, and I end up getting a lot more done than if I block out my schedule to do specific tasks. And certainly it works better than sitting around hating myself for being lethargic.

Most people end up living within fairly structured time, because they work, they have meetings and appointments, they may have kids to shuttle around. It takes a stern approach to time management to keep things on track for many people, but I believe this can lead to one of the greatest wastes of time, which is NOT following that flow of energy and doing exactly whatever you want at a given moment.

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money is not a thing

April 18, 2009 at 7:16 pm · Filed under business, money ·Tagged

Money. Currency. Cash. Bank balances. These are merely ideas and concepts we use instead of direct barter. It makes things convenient, but it is no more real than a piece of paper with the word “egg” written on it is an actual egg. And yet most of us think more money is what we need or want. Owning money is like owning potential energy. In its current state it doesn’t have any value at all.

But of course we exchange money for goods and services and “real” property. What would change if these things were not valued in terms of a pricetag, but in terms of intrinsic value? Putting aside the chaos and panic this would cause, would we learn to understand the world differently? What would each person consider to be most valuable if nothing had a cost attached? Would a really good blueberry have more or less value than a new pair of shoes, if neither had a monetary value? The shoes turn out to pinch, but the berry was perfect.

One of the most challenging things my business partner and I are tackling is coming up with a clear and concise way of expressing the value of what we do to potential clients and investors. The elevator pitch. And so we have to ask what makes us worth more than a really good blueberry. We know our value, but when we are dealing in the monetary world there is a pressure to prove a monetary value.

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now is not the time to stay in bed and watch tv

March 23, 2009 at 10:11 pm · Filed under business, career, life, productivity ·Tagged ,

More people than usual are unemployed right now. I not only lost my day-job, but I seem to have a cold. Which is totally uncool (the virus part, that is). The urge is strong to wrap myself around a bottle of Nyquil and hide. I am resting and drinking water and taking vitamins and hot baths. But I’m also working. Starting a business involves a lot of work, not the least of which is trying to get some funding for a couple of our flagship projects. So I spent my morning writing a grant application, until my brain melted.

It’s tempting to spend some time just being unemployed, but alas I don’t have time – even if I can live on unemployment for six months. There are things I want to to with my life (run a successful business, become a published author) and I know those things can only happen if I’m vigilant about pushing them forward. There is no fairy-god-person out there to hand me a life on a platter (or turn a gourd into a method of transport for that matter).

This is a great time to make some new connections. People want to come together in difficult times. Last week my business partner and I went to a small business “lab” on smart growth and marketing. There were probably 100 people there to share ideas and stories. Even if you’re not starting a business, there are excellent opportunities to join or form groups of people with common interests. Being unemployed is a great opportunity for taking classes.

My point is: I’m not staying in bed watching tv, and you shouldn’t either. Ok, three days… but that’s it. There’s so much living to do, even if you’re dead broke, and time is a gift.

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social media is making my head explode

March 16, 2009 at 9:41 pm · Filed under business, career, marketing, productivity ·Tagged , ,

So yeah, I twitter. I actually enjoy twittering as a creative mini-exercise. What is fascinating in life, and how do I write it in under 140 characters? It can be quite an exercise in concision, and also a good way to determine what is relevant. Not that everything I tweet is relevant, by any stretch of the imagination. I suppose it’s all relevant to me, but does anyone else care? I certainly hope not.

But twitter has now come to embody something more sinister than the requisite navel gazing. It has become a marketing and networking platform. A captive audience for whatever you might have to say, until they decide to “unfollow” you. I am trying to figure out what (if any) use twitter can have for expanding the reach of my business. I’m thinking very little.

But some people obviously think differently, because they are accumulating followers by the tens of thousands. And I notice a disturbing proliferation of people who say they are “marketing and social media experts.” People follow them, I think, mostly to see if they actually have anything useful to say about social media. And of course they don’t. If they have amazing social media strategies, they will save those for paying clients. But I’m skeptical about the whole concept of a social media strategy.

This online realm of interaction and user-generated-content is developing lightning fast, with lots of startups out there trying to monetize. The problem is, this is not something most people would be willing to pay for yet. I find twitter more of a chore to keep up on than anything else. Don’t get me wrong, I adore many of my twitter friends, but if I had 20,000 instead of 200 I would no longer feel connected to anyone.

And now facebook wants to know what’s on my mind. When I post my response to this question it is then seen by many people I haven’t seen for over 20 years. It is nice to keep up on people, but really isn’t it becoming overkill? I may have to build a portal page just to keep track of my various profiles.

I know social media is a good way to network and make friends, but I wonder if its really a place to build a business? For now I am observing how others use it and what’s successful. I’ll let you know if I have any revelations.

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the inevitable

March 12, 2009 at 7:57 pm · Filed under career, life, money, productivity, projects, writing ·Tagged ,

It was only a matter of time before “the economy” caught up with me. As of Monday, I joined the ranks of the unemployed. And if I’m honest I’m quite glad about it (in betweeen waves of terror). Now is the time for me to push forward plans that have been floating around for some time. The economy will be slow, for a while (possibly years), and the idea of jockeying for a full-time position that probably falls somewhere below my skill level does not appeal to me. So I plan to use this opportunity to pursue several projects/ dreams, including a new business partnership and finishing/ publishing some of my writing projects.

At my job (which was a great job in many ways) I felt like I was pursuing other peoples’ goals while I ignored my own. It was not a good feeling and it caused me to resent my work. Which is never a good way to feel. I struggled to motivate myself. All of my productivity techniques seemed pointless when my heart really wasn’t in the results. From now on I am commited to doing work I care about and enjoy doing. The trick is getting paid for it.

The other trick (well, one of them… there are a lot of tricks involved) is not letting fear suffocate me. If I am operating from a fearful state I will make decisions that won’t help me. I wrote earlier about facing fear, and my challenge now is to take my own advice. I’m also realizing that the physical state of anxiety can prevent me from functioning well, so here are some things I do to moderate that aspect of fear:

  1. Exercise whenever there’s a gap in my day
  2. Stretch.
  3. Take extra B vitamins
  4. Hot baths
  5. Write down my fears so I can see them on paper
  6. Deep breathing
  7. Continue my normal sleep pattern
  8. Minimize alcohol
  9. Take some down-time to read
  10. Eat simple, healthy meals

There are undoubtedly many other panic reduction techniques, and we all need them now and then. Take a Xanax if you need to in order to focus on what is really important.

I’ll tell you what’s not important: All those “what-ifs” we all bat at like a barrage of ping-pong balls of a windy day. The inevitable panic that sets in when you get stuck in the “what-ifs” is a symptom of stepping out of the present moment. Stay in it, and everything will be ok. Or, if not ok, at least it will be what it is and not a figment of your imagination.

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Seattle Moves… or at least half of Seattle

March 9, 2009 at 2:24 am · Filed under career, creativity, money, projects ·Tagged , ,

Yesterday a colleague and I (both of us women) went to a panel discussion on video and motion graphics at Northwest Film Forum, called Seattle Moves. We were intrigued, because we are both involved in motion graphics and video projects from time to time, and they promised to show some of their latest work. It’s always good to see what people in town are working on. Plus, motion work being such an evolving field, it’s nice to get a peek behind the scenes at the technologies involved.

We found a couple of aisle seats in the second row, and sat facing a panel of 8 men. 7 White, 1 Asian. Not really surprising, as both the design field and the video industry are pretty much white male dominated in Seattle. I’ve been working at business owned and run by men… forever. And, hey, I like men…. mostly, so more power to ‘em if they do good work.

All these guys do excellent work. Superfad does crazy 2d-3d animation. Oh, Hello impressed me with their level of work in cell animation, motion graphics, and live video editing – especially since they all appeared to be about twelve years old. Digital Kitchen have been around forever and showed their new tv show open for the HBO series True Blood, which is even more cool for the fact that it was produced entirely with technologies available 30 years ago.

They all showed their latest reels (montages of latest work). All three reels were impressive in their production values and all three feature tits and ass. Big surprise? No, of course not. Sex sells. Naked ladies sell. These guys are essentially selling things, so… what else is new? But, really, how lame. We’re stuck with female objectification, and not a single woman on the panel to talk about the work.

It wasn’t surprising, then, that the first question from the audience was, “where are all the women?” Apart from on the screen naked, that is. They all rambled off a few women they work with as designers or animators. They all said Of Course they’d love to see more talented women in the field, and then one of the younger ones said, “they just seem to lean more toward being producers.” And he’s completely right. But it’s not because that’s what they set out to do.

It’s becuase women, historically and currently, are pigeonholed into roles taking care of the details that men can’t be bothered with. Most men don’t realize they’re doing it. And most women don’t really see it, either. They move toward things they feel they are good at, as everyone does. They feel better at things they get more positive reinforcement for doing. Got a creative idea? Gently rejected. Put together a project schedule? Praised and thanked. I notice because I have been getting this for years. And I know I’m not better at creating project schedules than I am at complex creative problem-solving.

So the glass ceiling remains intact, and we keep nudging it higher. Breaking through might cause injury, so we’re going to have to will it to evaporate, somehow. Meanwhile, pay more attention to the roles that attract women, and ask why.

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the essentials

March 4, 2009 at 4:17 am · Filed under life, productivity ·Tagged , , , , ,

So much noise and clutter. It’s surprising we can still function at all, and this is surely much of the reason that suddenly we are seeking out “productivity systems” to help manage our daily lives. We are immersed in tiny decisions about what to look at or think about. And no matter how minuscule the decision may be, simply deciding takes a burst of brain energy. It’s no surprise that many of us feel tired all the time. Or depressed, or overwhelmed, or anxious. It seems to be pandemic.

So we try to fix ourselves. If I could just figure out how to stop being tired, depressed, anxious, overwhelmed, etc, I could surely do everything I want to do! We look for self-help books, for gurus, for blogs. A couple of the most popular productivity blogs around are 43 Folders (Merlin Mann) and Zen Habits (Leo Babuata). I’ve been reading them both fairly regularly for a couple of years, and I’ve seen an interesting thing happen. They have become less about how to get things done and more about discerning what is really essential.

And that’s the key. There’s not something wrong with me because I can’t do 73 things at once. There’s something wrong with the concept that it is either possible or desirable to do so. Accomplishing everything means energy is dispersed and shallow, rather than focused or deep.

So, essentially, it doesn’t matter what system I use to track my lists and my goals. What matters is honing in on the essential tasks and letting go of everything else. This is harder than it sounds. Especially when I have to let go of bad habits that I have had for many years that prevent me from honing in. Habits of distraction, mostly. Distraction that means I have decided to avoid these small, difficult decisions and just watch a tv show or have a drink. Those things are perfectly fine, if they are not getting in the way of the essentials.

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“Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say” – Cheshire Cat

February 26, 2009 at 4:13 am · Filed under career, writing ·Tagged ,

I read a lot of RFPs and Project Briefs and Proposals. These are documents that are meant to define slippery items like “scope” and “deliverables”, but it is alarming to see how often these documents are vaguely and poorly written. Part of this has to do with the fact that they are often written by marketing professionals who believe that “reinforce brand” is a tangible project goal.

Yes, of course your brand will be reinforced. But HOW? and more importantly WHY?

A good project plan starts with some measurable goals. What is this thing (be it a campaign or website or birthday party) supposed to do? What are the top three most important things it will do? Those things should directly relate to the overall goals of the company.

Most companies focus on growth. How can we make more this year than last year? It’s the capitalist way, and to a point it’s an admirable goal – but often people forget to attach numbers and timeslines to it. How many employees? How much revenue? By when? And is growth really a good thing? Sometimes just maintaining stability is a MORE admirable goal than growth.

Out of goals specific requirements can be derived. Maybe one requirement is a blog or a community component. Let me tell you, everyone seems to believe that’s what they need. But is there someone to write this blog? Is there an audience for it? Does it fit your business? I would not say that a blog for a pizza joint is relevant. But hey. If it’s a good blog – people will read it.

All I really want to get across here is: know your goal and describe your requirements clearly and concisely. Vague, jargony language just makes wheels spin. Precise words gain traction.

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