Invent Yourself. Forget the “Re”
August 22, 2007
Well, folks, August is inventor’s month, according to various web sites that I Googled dutifully as I researched the veracity of this fact before posting it here, just to be sure. Even if it weren’t, I think now would be as good a time as any to talk about invention.
But not just any invention. Your own personal invention. Yep. Inventing you.
Here’s why: I’ve hear a lot of young professionals talking about trying to figure things out. Life things. Job things. Career things. Future things. You know, things. As twentysomethings, thirtysomethings, we’re all in the thick of it.
And we’re a bit impatient. It seems the process of “discovering yourself” just takes too long. Young professionals don’t want to look back on life at fifty and say “I wish I’d known this then.” We don’t want to live our lives, form our careers, all to get to a place where we need to “reinvent” ourselves mid-life just to become what we always wanted to be. No thanks. So we reflect now, in our twenties, with our options open. But that, as it turns out, is a lot of pressure. So much, it can get a little overwhelming.
That’s where the quarter life crisis comes in. As a generation, we job hop. Even as we enter the workforce, we wonder about a career change, about grad school, about options. Waiting to discover yourself? It’s too passive. We won’t put up with it. We want to take action now, that’s the cry, the call. . . So where to begin?
It’s really a matter of dropping the “re” out of your picture of the future and inventing yourself now. You have the power. So, go for it. Pick something. Pursue it. Invent you. Because the truth is, you can invent yourself now or reinvent yourself later. Either way, reinvention is always an option. . . So, really, what do you have to lose?
In this spirit, I’m going to be highlighting some people who are great at personal invention. Many of them are young, not even twentysomethings yet themselves. Many are inventing themselves through blogs, start-up businesses and books. They’re not waiting to figure things out later, they’re inventing themselves now.
They’re Heroes of Personal Invention. Stay tuned!
Positive Change in a New Media World
August 18, 2007
At Jibber Jobbber, Jason Alba recently wrote a great post about having a positive influence in the world. He asked how his readers could create positive change. That got me thinking. Of course, we can have positive change online and offline. But today, there is a real crisis of positive change through personal interaction that deepens the issue somewhat.
Think about it. In our digital age, it’s more time-effective to shoot an e-mail than to walk into the boss’s office. We don’t have enough time for anything, so we rely on MySpace to see photos of our friends’ children and get updates on their lives.
Studies show that many plugged in Americans are suffering from isolation and loneliness (link found via Modite). This is a real, emerging issue for the plugged in generations. Actually, I think it’s an issue for generations across the board.
Millennial bloggers are writing about the importance of spending time with people in real life. Marci Alboher recently touched on the immense value of the simple act of picking up the phone to call someone rather than to chat online or via e-mail. This simple act was so meaningful that the reporter she called wrote about it on her blog.
Essentially, it seems, the more wired we get, the more value we place on communication and interaction of more “traditional” forms. Think about how much you value dinner with a friend, an hour-long phone chat, or more impressive still, a hand-written letter. Something “real” in the non-digital sense of the world just seems to have so much meaning these days.
So all this has me thinking about some ways that I can have a positive effect on the people in my life – whether I know them online or offline – in ways that touch their unplugged life. Here are some ideas.
- Call or write (an actual note) to a college or career mentor you’ve lost touch with and let them know what you’re up to and how they helped get you where you are today.
- Step in to your boss’s office and take a few minutes to tell them what you appreciate about them. No brownnosing here, just an honest, in-person thank you.
- Call your dad some evening and just catch up. Better yet, meet him for dinner.
- Nominate a deserving friend or associate for an award whether at an online site or in your professional world.
- Send your mom flowers, and not on a holiday.
- Message an old high school friend you’ve reconnected to on MySpace and get their mailing address or phone number. You know what to do from there.
I’m not sure how to close this post. I want to say, this stuff should be simple, and maybe some people will tell me that it’s a “duh” thing and not worth writing about. But to them I’d say – I can tell you the last time someone did any of these to me. It meant that much. Because it happens so rarely. So there you have it.
Unplug, get real, change someone’s life.
As I start writing this post, I’m also brainstorming, talking to a friend, adding to my to-do list, outlining a project, remembering what groceries I need to pick up and eating lunch. Chances are, I’ll finish this post later, while I’m watching the news or catching up with my sister or a friend on the phone.
Young workers today are accustomed to the always-on-go, do-several-things-at-once mode. Growing up, Gen Y had schedules so full, weekdays lost their names and became things like “Soccer Day” and “Piano Lesson Day.” Post-high-school was no different, and we’re still going strong as we begin our careers. We can eat, write, watch TV and have a conversation all at the same time without a giving it a second thought.
In popular terms, we are expert multitaskers. We’re by no means alone, but it’s a skill we bear proudly as a badge of honor. But, as we enter the workforce, we face some interesting challenges – work isn’t exactly the same as catching up with our MySpace friends while watching the latest episode of Lost and eating dinner. Each time an e-mail pops up, a new idea hits us, the phone rings, a boss or co-worker wants to chat, or a training opportunity comes up, we quickly turn our attentions to it.
The problem with this is, to the typical office worker, it seems like the distractions and interruptions never end. You don’t seem to have time to even start that project your boss gave you three weeks ago and said, “let’s meet once you’ve had time to work on this,” never to mention it again. Even though we are great at multitasking, it seems almost impossible to get everything done because of all the interruptions. And there are a lot of them. According to a report from Time on research at the University of California, the typical worker can be interrupted every 11 minutes.
The other problem is, most of these daily distractions fall under the umbrella of “work,” but that simple fact doesn’t make them easy to manage. Sure, we can check our e-mail while typing up a memo and reminding our co-worker that word he’s thinking of. We are doing a lot at one time. But, for some reason, the work always seems to keep piling up. So, does the “skill” of multitasking actually help us better manage our time?
Read the rest at Employee Evolution.
