Long before I got paid for writing, I spent my time writing at work. I relished my time answering “too many” emails with unnecessarily thoughtful responses. I wrote treatises when memos would have sufficed. I followed up on meetings and conversations with tirades I should have saved for my journal. I know I’m not the only one. Born managers reorganize systems when their job is just to file. Natural counselors drift away from their desks to coach coworkers over lunch or coffee.

The trick is not necessarily to find a job that has the same title as the one you’d use to label your passion. It’s simply to find something that doesn’t leave you playing mental tug-of-war between what you’re expected to do and what you are compelled to do.

Sometimes being my own IT person kinda sucks.

A big-box office retailer that shall remain nameless has a big sign: $50 dollars off on select [weasel word!] printers costing $199 or more when you recycle your old printer. On the bottom of the sign are logos for Brother, HP, Canon, Epson, and Lexmark.

I ask the tech guy for a recommendation, and he suggests I go with a $199 HP LaserJet. It prints only in black & white, but he says part of the reason color printers break so often is that when you don’t use the color much, the ink dries out and damages the print head.

We go to ring it up, and the discount SKU doesn’t work. He calls the manager over, and he tries several different codes. He walks out and looks at the sign, confirms that I should get $50 off, and tries again.

You know what’s coming.

In fine print, the discount flyer the sales clerks use at the register say that Brother, Canon, Epson, and Lexmark printers are $50 off for a $199 printer. HP printers: $299! Not even $249, which would at least let you get the presumably better HP printer for the price of the lesser, cheaper brands.

The original clerk, who is also the install guy, takes me back to look at the $199 printers but says people have much more trouble with the software, use, install, etc. on the other brands because HP’s software is much better. (He seemed honest, and they’d have to have serious con man training to have developed a fake discount-upsell routine so elaborate.)

So, I spent more than I intended to. I hope this damned printer will last!

I did not travel to see family this holiday week, so I’m hanging around in my usual neighborhoods, looking for things to do and places to dine with my friends. With so many shops and restaurants closed at unusual times, businesses with long holiday hours had a great opportunity to make money picking up the slack, and even to gain new regulars or fans.

Unfortunately many businesses lost this opportunity. Some simple tips:

1. Put your phone number on a prominent place on your home page. This is a good idea year round: many prospective customers can call you with a tap to a mobile phone screen. During the holidays, there are probably people roaming around near your storefront whose original destination was unexpectedly closed.

2. Make a special Web banner or post about your holiday hours. On Christmas Eve, I wanted to eat at my favorite local restaurant. The phone message had not changed; it gave only their regular hours. Nothing on the Web site about holiday hours either. If they were open, they lost me. If not, they annoyed me.

3. The holidays are a great time to offer promotions. Publicize these on your Web site. These don’t have to be expensive. Develop co-branded offerings with other businesses that are close or simply post reciprocal banners like, “Shopping all day? Tired feet? Get 10% off of a reflexology massage at MyHappyBody between December 23 and January 1st with $100 purchase from ShoesShoesShoes.” and “$10 off your purchase at ShoesShoesShoes with a receipt from any spa service at MyHappyBody the same day.”

Just a little forethought can make for a more prosperous year’s end.

My blog is feeling lonely, as my efforts have been diverted to ghost blogging in a very different kind of venue, feeding a big content-hungry monster.

A byline would be nice, but I guess that will come!

Just enjoyed a really fun linguistic thread on Facebook with some old-school Deadheads.

Once upon a time, there were no texts and cell phones. If you wanted to meet up with someone at a general admission concert, you had to make a plan to find your way to a particular location within a relatively specific timeframe.

At Dead shows, there were a few general location indicators, among them “at the rail,” “near the Spinners,” “with the Wharf Rats at set break,” and “on the Jerry side” (stage left) or “on the Phil side” (stage right.)

In Furthur shows now, Jerry Garcia’s lead guitar job is occupied by John Kadlecik, and for a time, he and Phil switched sides.

Consensus: “Jerry’s side will always be Jerry’s side.”

Is everyone creative? The debate rages. Let’s stipulate that everyone is … or can be.

So, why do companies have trouble getting employees to be “creative,” and why do so many people feel stifled at work?

One model of the creative process suggests that there are 4 stages:
1. Preparation
2. Incubation
3. Illumination
4. Implementation

To my observation, most companies (and many creativity consultants) attempt to push people from stage #1 right to stage #3. The popular technique of brainstorming is a prime example. When a group brainstorms, people throw out ideas without censoring them, and capture them in the hopes that the process will produce rough gems that can be mined for value forthwith.

Contrast that to the idiosyncratic processes employed by productive creative people from artists to entrepreneurs to programmers. After deciding to tackle the project or possibility and before spitting out ideas and proposals, they let things percolate. They get up from the desk and go for a run. They bake. They take naps. They temporarily detach themselves from the problem at hand. Typically they spend some time in solitude. They relax their time frame for coming up with that Great Idea.

Want to help your people be more creative? Shred those copies of Never Eat Alone.

A few years ago, I started a job in a nonprofit. One of the organization’s illustrious volunteers was a local professor and author, respected not just within the cause but in the community at large. My coworkers admired her, put her on a pedestal.

After providing clerical support for her a couple of times, I called her up and invited her to coffee. She accepted, and remarked that no one from the agency had ever asked to meet with her socially. We met in her office, on my day off. Our conversation lasted many hours, galloping from the topic of the cause that brought us together to a general discussion of education to an aside about LSD. We enjoyed one another and kept in touch.

When I moved to another organization, I called upon my new friend for advice on an organizational problem. She offered to give a presentation for a small honorarium, though she commands high speaking fees. Later, she advised me on a family matter. I gave her a primer on Facebook and how she might use it to promote her book.

I am reminded of this story every time someone tells me they believe they cannot get a certain job because they don’t have a degree from an elite university. The dialogue always comes back to:

Job Seeker: “Well, you went to Stanford. You don’t get it.”
Me: “It just doesn’t work the way you think it does.”

Stalemate.

The paradox: the advantage I’ve used to make unusual connections and get great opportunities is something I got at Stanford. It’s not a piece of paper or academic knowledge, but a lesson: accomplished, successful people are human. In very many cases, they got where they are because they were more open, more willing to listen, and more willing to help “nobodies,” than ordinary achievers who don’t understand that one cannot hoard power and use it at the same time.

JUST ASK is a tactic anyone can adopt, regardless of credentials.

I’m reading Susan Orlean’s Rin Tin Tin biography.

The history and trivia is fascinating, as is the biography of Lee Duncan, the rather odd man who found Rinty in a bombed-out German military compound in France during WWI.

I’m still not crazy about the structure: interrupting the story periodically with the author’s reflections about the writing process. This seems to be the style these days. The Henrietta Lacks book and Born to Run both employ it.

I find my attention wandering during the reflection sections.

In his New Yorker article Personal Best, physician Atul Gawande makes an off-hand comment about coaching that (I suspect) some professional coaches would not like.

Self-improvement has always found a ready market, and most of what’s on offer is simply one-on-one instruction to get amateurs through the essentials. It’s teaching with a trendier name.

I share his view. Certainly there are people who need someone to hold them accountable for simple tasks, to give them “homework” just to get them started, and so on. Many high performers who seek coaching want something much more: advanced troubleshooting and reframing of problems to help them make incremental progress once they’ve reached the territory where the path is not clear.

Another day, another sermon to the choir from proponents of positive dog training. If you are not in the dog world, the furious dialogue is probably unfamiliar to you: dog trainers who apply Pavlovian and Skinnerian theory to their craft have harsh criticisms for trainers who rely upon (and teach to their clients) training and handling methods based on pack theory.

Let me be clear: I get that pack theory has been debunked as an explanation of domestic dog behavior. So, why has it won mind share? And what can positive dog trainers do to counter it? A recent article from the Association of Pet Behaviour Counsellors illustrates how not to make the point.

Like almost every article I’ve read on the topic, this one comes across as a condescending scold. Therein lies the problem.

Declarations and insinuations that positive trainers are “more scientific” and better educated than their readers and opponents are not effective as persuasive language. “Pack theory” is rich with metaphors for relationship dynamics that people experience with other people and believe they understand. Whether or not the concepts explain human-human relationships accurately, they evidently do not apply to relationships between human beings and dogs.

The case is strong for spreading the gospel. The messaging, right now, is weak.

What’s the story?