We’re announcing a free intensive today, especially for people who are finding their college journey disrupted right now.
If you know someone in that situation, I hope you’ll forward this on to them.
We’re looking for some students ready to leap forward. To shift from education to learning, from following to leading, from holding back to leaning in.
The months and years after school are often fragile. The pressure is on, trajectories are being set, and most of us were probably without a clue. Doing that in the middle of this disruption has to be significantly harder, and we’re trying to help.
The typical reader of this blog skews older than that, but you might know precisely the right people for this program.
It’s a five-day sprint, a virtual program with daily zoom calls, an insane amount of group work and a shift toward a posture of possibility.
You can see all the details and the application here.
Please share.
And if this program is not a fit for you, please check out the realskillsconference.com.
April 7, 2020
What does it mean that for forty years you’ve been a steadfast and true fan of a team? The Red Sox, perhaps, or even the Montreal Expos.
Over time, every player has changed. Every coach. Perhaps the logo, the stadium, the city and even the name.
So, what, exactly, are you a fan of?
The same is true for car brands, political parties and just about anything where affiliation drives our sense of self and community.
People like us do things like this.
This instinct is so strong that we suspend disbelief (and create belief) based on something as shallow as what logo is on the box. We confuse our rational understanding of what’s important with our emotional connection to a logo or a team name. It turns out that the name of the team (and the other fans) are a much more important part of our narrative than we realize.
Part of being a fan isn’t insisting that your team win every game–in fact, being a fan is defined as showing up even when you’re losing, even when the leaders are wrong, even when logic dictates that this makes no sense at all.
Once you realize that being a fan is an important part of your self-worth, the most generous thing you can do is speak up when management is about to do something stupid. Because when the fans speak up, it’s possible that leadership listens.
April 6, 2020
We rarely have complete control over the big issues.
But the way we interact with each other, the small kindnesses, the extra effort–it adds up.
One after another, day by day.
It might be enough to change someone’s day. And then the ripple continues.
April 5, 2020
Authors get to put a page in their book thanking people who have quietly and persistently and generously helped.
But the page is rarely read, and it comes out infrequently and it’s not so timely.
It’s worth taking a second to think about people who are doing more than expected, more than they have to do, more than we can imagine.
I’m filled with gratitude for the healthcare workers who have shown up to do the jobs that they never hoped to have to do, risking so much to help people. From docs like Jodi who are beginning their career in the middle of this, to retired nurses who are putting on their scrubs to help out again.
And thank you to the frontline workers and volunteers in my town and yours, from the food market to the fire department, from the gas station to the police. They’re showing up and doing it with grace.
Thanks to Zoom for dealing with a 20x increase in traffic and not missing a beat. Just like so many other tech companies that are quietly doing what they said they would do.
Thank you to the non-profit leaders, entrepreneurs and project managers who have figured out how to pivot on a dime, protecting the jobs of their teams and serving their customers in new and powerful ways.
Thanks to every parent who is at home with kids, balancing competing priorities and still being there for the ones who need them. And thanks to resilient and patient therapists, teachers and spiritual leaders who are figuring out how to be there, fully present, even if it’s on a video screen.
I’m grateful for the unseen but not anonymous people who are delivering packages, maintaining webservers, fixing the things that break and showing up every single day.
And I’m glad that so many people are ignoring the charlatans who are trying to profit from panic and untested remedies, preying on the fear that comes with a pandemic. And proud of anyone who stops clicking on a media channel that’s in the business of profiting from the attention that comes with amplifying that same fear.
I’m inspired by the team at Akimbo, working remotely from dozens of locations, shipping important work and connecting our extraordinary community of tens of thousands of people.
Thanks to my colleagues at Random Penguin and the rest of the book industry, for focusing on sharing insight and wisdom, simply because they know it’s important, not because it’s lucrative. And to my friends from all over, who are sheltering in place but sharing good vibes in so many ways.
And I’m grateful to you, loyal reader, for taking the long view, for leading, for spreading ideas that matter and showing up and doing work that you’re proud of. We wouldn’t have it any other way.
If you’re leading despite/because of what’s going on around us, thank you.
[This is such a tiny fraction of the people I was hoping to be able to acknowledge. If you’ve got a list to share, I hope you’ll post it somewhere.]
(and here’s a list from three years ago)
April 4, 2020
It’s difficult to get adults to wear bicycle helmets. (I wrote about this on the blog 16 years ago).
The reason has nothing to do with comfort or safety. It has to do with signals.
Semiotics is the science of flags, signals and other communications. It studies the very human act of judging something (or someone) based on limited information as we seek the message behind the signal, all in a quest for belonging and social standing.
Even more than helmets, face masks make a statement.
Ten years ago, if you wore a face mask at work, you were either a surgeon, a carpenter or a bank robber.
As they began to spread, mainly in parts of Asia, the mask was interpreted by some non-mask wearers as either a generous act (the wearer doesn’t want to infect others) or something slightly paranoid.
Then, when the pandemic first arrived in the US, masks became the focus of hoarding. Like toilet paper, it was a way to sacrifice time and money to get something scarce and reassuring. People weren’t reading scientific journals, they were grasping. The hoarding had the unfortunate side effect of keeping masks from front-line medical workers who needed them. It also created a sense of false security because many of the people who were using them had no clue how to use them properly, causing them to be worse off than if they hadn’t had them at all.
If you wore a mask on Main Street as you shopped in early March 2020, it was probably not increasing your social standing.
And then, as some newspapers shifted their stance and homemade masks began to appear, the story changes again–worth noting that even fast fashion has never changed this fast.
And so the storytelling continues. “Why is that person wearing a mask,” the non-mask wearer asks themselves. Is it to shame me? To let me know that they’re ill and I should steer far away? Perhaps it’s a way of identifying them as anti-social, because, after all, I’m not wearing one… Or maybe they’re smarter than me and I’m behind?
The narratives may also be shifting from, “how do I protect myself?” which is a self-directed desire, to, “how do I keep others protected?” This is generally a hard sell in the world of the Marlboro Man, bespoke disposable water bottles and the Hummer.
Notice that none of these internal monologues have much to do with epidemiology or public health. The semiotics of social standing and cultural posture happen long before we actively consider the science.
Whether or not you choose to wear a mask, drive a Prius or even a pickup truck, it’s worth remembering that because we’re human, we start with two things: What’s the story I’m telling myself, and what’s the story I’m telling everyone else.
April 3, 2020
We know how things are. How could we not?
And we see the emotional rut that so many have fallen into as well.
The question is: Will you embrace an emotional posture that models how you’d like it to feel instead? Today, this day, we only get it once. How do you want today to feel on an emotional level?
It takes effort.
But it’s a choice.
We can’t change how things are in any given moment, but we can change how we will approach today.
And yes, an attitude can spread. Begin with us.
April 2, 2020
Today, April first, was the day for a particular greeting, the only one except New Year’s that’s simply based on the date. Happy.
It was a day that people on the internet understood that it’s possible to act as if and to do it with a smile. To pretend that we’re not on the brink of apocalypse of one of twenty flavors, that nerds are clever now and then, and that most of all, that it’s worth taking a moment before we believe what we just heard and decide to freak out about it.
Alas, we’ve been fooled too many times for that to work any more.
Fooling has become a business model, and so now, every day is April Fool’s day.
Act accordingly.
April 1, 2020
There’s a tragedy unfolding all around us, unevenly distributed. It’s about health and it’s also about the economy. We are called upon to not panic, to try to focus, to figure out how to make it all work. And many of us are overwhelmed. From health care workers who are burning the candle at both ends to parents with too many demands on their time, it’s been crazy.
And if you’re a freelancer, it can be challenging because the steady gigs or the easy gigs might be on hold.
If you’re fortunate enough to have time on your hands, what to do with the downtime?
If you’re looking for a gig or if you’re hoping for a new client…
It’s easy to get stuck waiting. The alternative is not to wait.
More time spent fretting isn’t going to help.
The alternative is to dig in and build your portfolio.
A portfolio that includes three things:
ONE: What are you good at? You can dramatically increase your skillset (including your attitude about the work you do) in just a few days of focused effort.
TWO: What have you done? You can actually do work, real work, volunteer work, spec work, digital work and you can do it right now.
THREE: How have you expressed 1 and 2? When we look at your portfolio, what do we see?
You are not your resume. Your prospects are based on the work you’ve done and the way you do it.
When you do a good job on your skills, your work history and your expression, you’re more likely to get better clients.
Getting better clients is super simple and really difficult. The current environment makes it even harder, which means we need to be prepared for a longer, more difficult process ahead.
The benefit of better clients is pretty clear: They challenge you to do better work, they talk about you and your work, they pay on time, they want you to do work you’re proud of and they’re motivated to do more than most people expect.
The difficult part is becoming the sort of freelancer that better clients seek out.
Because while it’s true that better clients make you a better freelancer, the work is too important to simply wait for them to show up. Particularly during difficult and uncertain times. Maybe this is an opportunity to reset expectations and recommit to the practice.
If you’re seeking better clients, I hope you’ll check out The Freelancer’s Workshop. It launches today. You can save some money by clicking the purple circle, which is at maximum value today.
We considered canceling this scheduled session of our online workshop, but for many, this is a good moment to take a breath, settle in and level up. These are perilous times, and it’s easy to get pessimistic and stuck. Let’s learn together instead.
Here’s to health and peace of mind as we all slog forward together.
[At 11 am ET today, I’ll be taking your questions on working from home, freelancing and resilience. We’ll be on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, tech permitting–LinkedIn gets posted later.]
March 31, 2020
It doesn’t really pay to classify multitudes by their age–every generation is complex and intermingles with all the others.
But it might be a useful way to understand the issues we’ve faced and where we might be heading.
Generation C was inaugurated with the events created by Covid-19, and it is defined by a new form of connection.
There’s a juxtaposition of the physical connection that was lost as we shelter in place, and the digital connection that so many are finding online.
Not just a before and after for the economy, but for culture, for health, for expectations. School and jobs are different now, probably for the long term.
No idea or behavior shift has ever spread more quickly or completely in the history of the planet. In seven weeks, the life of every single person on Earth changed, and the unfolding tragedy and the long slog forward will drive expectations for years. Expectations about being part of a physical community, about the role of government and about what we hope for our future.
If previous cycles of media were about top-down broadcast (from radio, TV and cable), the last few years have been about the long tail, about giving a microphone to anyone who wanted one. But now, the peer to peer power of the internet is dominating. The Kardashians won’t be as important as 3,000 people with a thousand connections each. Never mind a million people with 100 each.
Companies are now competing to see how few employees they have instead of how many. The lattices of the connection economy are racing to replace the edifice complex of the previous one.
And if Covid-19 and Connection are the first two C’s, the third one is going to be Carbon.
Because we’re going to need to pay. All of us. To pay for the dislocations and to pay for the treatment and to pay for the recovery.
Worldwide cataclysms are different from local ones. As we shift gears and seek to revitalize our economy, put people to work and build a resilient future, it might be tempting to drill and burn, and to try to adopt an emergency footing that disregards any long-term future more than a few months ahead. But GenC may be too wise for that. And they may be connected enough to speak up and overrule the baby boomers.
A threat and an enemy will focus public attention. For a long time, that enemy was other people or other nations, and an us-vs-them mindset was a great way to get attention or get elected. But just as we came to understand that you can’t bully a virus, you can’t personalize carbon either.
The worldwide challenge of carbon is not a problem for someone else, it’s a problem for all of us. Using carbon consumption as a way to pay for rebuilding our community brings all three Cs together.
Emergencies are overrated as a response mechanism. Preparation and prevention are about to become a more popular alternative.
My generation was the dominant voice for sixty years. A voice that worried about the next 24 hours, not the next 24 years. That’s about to shift, regardless of what year you were born.
What can we do that matters instead?
March 30, 2020
In the short run, it’s easy to abandon what we believe. Deep down, we assume that once things go back to normal, so will we.
Organizations end up with bullies, predators and bad actors for only one reason: In this moment, it’s easier to keep them. There’s some sort of urgency that makes asking them to leave too difficult right now, so we put it off for a little while. When we make a “just this once” exception, we’ve already made a decision about what’s truly important.
And the same goes for those moments when we’re inclined to be, just for a moment, a bully, a predator or a bad actor as well. Few people decide to be selfish for the long haul.
What makes it a principle is that we do it now, even though (especially though) it’s hard.
March 29, 2020
