So, there’s good news and bad news, when it comes to making our lives more rewarding, sane, and happy. The good news is, humans are incredibly adaptable. If you change life circumstances on us, we may fear that we won’t be able to handle it or adapt, but the truth is, we adapt far better than we think we will. The bad news is … we also adapt to circumstances that aren’t happy, healthy, or good for us in the long run.
In this sense, we may be in worse shape than the iconic frog in hot water. As my friend Jim Fallows at The Atlantic has strenuously and repeatedly argued, the story about the frog in water that is slowly heated, who reportedly will stay in that water until the frog is boiled (as opposed to when it’s abruptly dumped into already hot water) … IS NOT TRUE. As soon as the water gets uncomfortably warm, the frog will, instinctively, jump out.
Humans, on the other hand, have this great ability to overcome instinct, and adapt to changing circumstances. If we didn’t, we probably wouldn’t have survived this long or built such vast and complex civilizations. But, as my mother always used to tell me, every strength has a flip side. And our adaptability also makes us more likely to adapt to unhealthy circumstances. They become our new “normal,” and we almost forget what healthy feels like.
I found myself thinking about this a lot recently, because I took my first extended, “disconnected,” real and true vacation in … well, if you count the four days in Hawaii that I didn’t work out of an eight day trip, it would be five years. If you mean a complete trip where I left the work at home and wasn’t writing about the adventure for an assignment … it would be 1997.
I went to an remote spot on a remote island surrounded by a whole lot of water for nine days. The computer stayed home. The cell phone, which had intermittent connection because of the island’s mountains, came along for emergencies but only got turned on to check to see if anyone died once a day. [click to continue…]
Guest Post
I have noticed that I’m most productive when I’m about to go on a trip. I abandon all of my complex “productivity tools” (Outlook, an online collaboration tool called Basecamp, some really cool apps on my iPhone) and just scribble down a quick list of all the things that I have to do before I leave, on a single piece of paper. With the deadline of a booked flight looming and no time to mess around, I carry that piece of paper with me everywhere … and I get things done.
As I buckle myself into my seat on the plane and finally relax, I always find myself thinking: “Wow, I actually got all that done in the last few days. Why can’t I be that productive all the time?”
I got some unexpected insight into this recently when I went to hear Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger speak at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. In case you’ve forgotten, Sully’s the guy who successfully put an Airbus A320 down in the Hudson River after a bird strike killed both engines on that fateful day last year, saving the lives of all 155 people on board.
I’d seen Sully in interviews on TV, and what had struck me most was his cool, calm manner. Sully was airline captain material through and through. His presentation at the museum was no different. In fact, it had the quality of a speech he’d given hundreds of times, and not in a bad way. His words were carefully chosen, carefully stated, and the whole affair was as polished as the wings on his uniform probably were throughout his career (he retired on March 3rd after 30 years with U.S. Airways).
What, you may be wondering, does Captain Sullenberger’s adventure have to do with productivity? Everything, as you’ll see in a moment. [click to continue…]
Necessity, it is said, is the mother of invention. It’s also apparently the mother of entrepreneurship.
The New York Times ran an article last week noting that one of the fastest-growing segment of entrepreneurs is people aged 55-64. The number of people in that age group who are self-employed has grown 52% from 2000 to 2007. Part of that increase is due to a basic increase in Americans who fit in that age group—percentage-wise, the number of entrepreneurs among the post-55 set has increased a far smaller amount. But part of the increase reflects the increasing number of workers who are being laid off, or are taking pre-emptive buy-outs, and are starting businesses because they can’t find another job.
Just as there are “missionary” and “mercenary” entrepreneurs (missionaries being those with a transformative vision, as opposed to just a good idea to make money), there are also, increasingly, “voluntary” and “necessity” entrepreneurs.
Voluntary entrepreneurs have an advantage, in that someone who chooses an uncharted career path probably has the right personality for the particular challenges involved (income fluctuations and uncertainty, no support organization, delays and frustrations getting critical mass or traction, and having no clear path or “right” solution for how to proceed).
However, as the Times article noted, taking control of your own destiny—especially after an involuntary lay-off—can be incredibly energizing and empowering. [click to continue…]
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(Photo by Michele Schwartz)
A few weeks ago, I was introduced to a man named Jeremy Constant, who’d just made the first flight on an experimental airplane he’d built himself. “You know, he’s also the first violinist of the San Francisco symphony,” a man sitting next to me said, as the builder/pilot walked away.
It took a moment for that one to sink in. And even then, I didn’t believe it until I checked with Jeremy himself. What on earth, I wondered, would the first violinist of the San Francisco symphony be doing in a world so distant from the sophistication of Davies Symphony Hall?
In part, my disbelief was the result of a visceral understanding of the work and time involved. Building your own airplane, like building your own house, boat, business, or any other creative and painstaking pursuit, is an impressive achievement. So is being talented and dedicated enough to become the first violinist (actually, assistant concertmaster, Jeremy corrected me later) of one of the leading symphony orchestras in the world.
But accomplishing both of those feats, given how much passion, dedication, time and effort each one of them requires, is kind of amazing. Aviation and music are also very different worlds. It’s not like being a carpenter and building furniture in your spare time. How does someone from such an intense and high center of the music world find himself not only learning to be a pilot, but building his own airplane, as well?
Is there some link that’s not obvious between the worlds? Is there some drive that leads to both ends? Does one passion feed the other, or require the other for balance? Or are there simply those people who are attracted to passionate pursuits, no matter how separate those pursuits might be?
In search of answers to those questions, I tracked Jeremy down, and we spent three delightful hours talking about music, flight, passion, and how to find balance and fulfillment in a life path. I think it’s well worth taking a half hour to enjoy the excerpts of the interview I’ve included here.
A few of the many intriguing points Jeremy makes: [click to continue…]
Being an entrepreneur, or trailblazer of any kind, requires—above all else—a relentless kind of persistence. New ventures almost always take a lot longer than anyone imagines they will, and the road to any kind of change—changing a career, changing the world, creating a new business, or exploring uncharted territory of any kind-will always include some really rough patches.
Different people have different thresholds for hanging in there against the odds, of course. Certainly, the greater your passion for a pursuit, the longer you’re likely to persevere. But a few days ago, I spent eight hours talking to a man who possesses more tenacity than almost any inventor or entrepreneur I’ve ever met. Some people, looking at his situation from the outside, might deem him crazy, or obsessed. But I came out of my conversation with him with the impression that his task was far more noble than crazy. And that the rest of us could learn something—I’m not even sure exactly what, but something of value—from his example.
William Miller was finishing up a Masters’ degree at Princeton University Seminary when he met a guy who was trying to raise money to build an airship capable of carrying cargo into remote areas for missionary work. Miller invested some funds in the company, ended up on the Board of Directors, and then, when the company ran into trouble, ended up as its President. That was in the mid-1960s. Over the next few years, Miller got the company out of trouble, and actually oversaw the development and manned test flight of a prototype hybrid airship—a story popularized by the writer John McPhee in three New Yorker articles and a book called The Deltoid Pumpkinseed. (The title of the book came from the shape of the hybrid—a deltoid (triangle) lifting body shape that was designed to be filled with helium for extra lift.)
That was 1971. Unfortunately, no contracts or funds could be found to develop the vehicle from the experimental stage. So, one would think, the company must have folded soon afterwards. But not so. In fact, the Aereon corporation is still in existence today. [click to continue…]
My friend Nell Merlino is a powerhouse of a woman. She was the creative force behind “Take Our Daughters to Work Day” and now runs a non-profit organization called “Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence.” She’s also recently come out with a great book for anyone considering an independent career or life path.
The book is titled Stepping Out of Line and, while it’s geared toward encouraging women to take bolder steps to control their own destinies and lives, it’s a good manual for anyone tired of waiting for life to magically deliver a more perfect job/career/life.
The book contains many good ideas, but the section that struck me most was her section on how to cultivate a more active imagination, in order to envision what doesn’t yet exist. Envisioning what doesn’t yet exist, of course, is the key ingredient that entrepreneurs must have to succeed. But how do you get that vision? This past week, for not the first time, I encountered someone who asked me, “but how do you know what you’re passionate about?” At the time, I didn’t have a good answer. How could you not know what you’re passionate about? It’s the stuff that gets you fired up and excited!
But Nell has pulled together a much more practical response to that question. The best way to discover your passion, if that passion is not inherently obvious to you, is to hone your imagination skills. How do you do that? Lots of ways. Here are just a few she offers: [click to continue…]
An old friend of mine from high school wrote me recently and said that although she didn’t have a very adventurous life, she had taken over putting on dramatic productions at her kids’ school. I would beg to differ, on the adventurous part. Adventure is stepping out into the unknown, and figuring out how to get through it without a clear map or predictable outcomes. And putting on a play with students is nothing if unpredictable. Creative endeavors are also always fraught with risk. Those risks may not typically be physical or life-threatening, but they certainly include failure and public embarrassment—which is, as a friend said to me recently, “a death you then have to live with.”
Indeed, the single funniest episode of This American Life (NPR’s long-running show hosted by Ira Glass) I ever heard was the one titled “Fiasco”—an account of a local high school production of “Peter Pan” that went so awry that it raised the question: exactly when does a failure grow so spectacular that it crosses over into the category of “Fiasco”?
If you’ve never heard it, it’s well worth the 20-25 minutes. I had tears running down my face, I was laughing so hard. Which could be just me, of course, but I’d challenge anyone to listen to it and not laugh at all.
But aside from a good laugh, the episode is an important reminder that one person’s fiasco is another person’s cherished memory of how human and imperfect life can be. And that a sense of humor is an essential weapon to surviving adventure—in life, or on a stage.
Lane Wallace is the Editor and Founder of No Map. No Guide. No Limits.
If the Greek tragedies and hero journey tales endure, it is because the hopes, flaws, triumphs, struggles and failures they catalogue are not Greek, but human. The battles they describe, and the casualties of love and war they bring so vividly and painfully to life, are both universal and eternal.
Anyone who doubts this point should see a segment that ran this week on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS. A segment that ran on February 3rd told of a theater project called “Theater of War,” currently touring Marine and other military bases around the country. Four actors read aloud from Sophecles’ tragedy Ajax, in which a soldier comes loose of his hinges after serving with Achilles and the Greek Army, and ends up killing animals, thinking they’re the enemy, finally committing suicide in his agony of what we would now call post-traumatic stress syndrome. His wife describes him before the suicide as having that “thousand yard stare”—a characteristic well known to any spouse trying to cope with a partner recently returned from, or traumatized by, war.
Theater of War takes that play, and other Greek masterpieces of war and humanity, and has actors perform the lines in a dramatic reading for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan combat theatres. Discussion follows. At one reading, veterans lined up with comments and questions for over three hours, each one quoting a line, or lines, from the plays they had heard.
Despite the fact that the tales were written in the 5th century B.C., the Greek plays still bring soldiers to tears, because they speak so powerfully to the universal journey of a combat soldier. The challenges, the strength, the cost, the pain … it’s all been felt and wrestled with before. And somehow, that realization is able to bring comfort to the soldiers of today. [click to continue…]
I spoke at a session of the Women In Periodical Publishing annual meeting on Friday, in San Francisco, and one of the women in the session (on surviving as a “solopreneur,” which I guess is the current euphemism for a self-employed entrepreneur who has, ummm … no employees) asked how to deal with the loneliness of working and writing alone.
Without question, it’s harder to be creative in a vacuum. And that goes for solving the problems of a start-up, as well as writing the Great American Novel. That’s why few start-ups are solo ventures, even though partnerships that don’t work out are one of the leading causes of start-up failures—a Catch-22 that’s worth discussion, but I’ll get into that another time.
But what do you do to stave off the loneliness, if you are, indeed, working alone? In my own case, I’ve put a lot more effort into creating an active social life outside of my home and office walls. And sometimes, it really has been effort. I also have a network of “thinking buddies” that spans the continent, whom I call when I get stuck on a problem. [click to continue…]
In the spirit of being proactive and not waiting for the big bag of money to fall in my lap, I am once again seeking freelance work around town. I am looking primarily for jobs in commercial production and post-production, since that’s where I’ve built up my contacts in the past 8 years. Even if there are times that my heart isn’t always in it—you know, at those moments when the crisis at hand is where to seat a crew of 50 for a catered lunch in midtown Manhattan, or how we’re going to re-do weeks’ worth of 3D rendering because of an extremely minor and mundane change to the product design of a plastic bag—I believe that I am a really good producer.
I am a good producer for many of the reasons that I think I am also a good director. My head is always in the game. I consider the macro- and the micro-aspects of the project all at once. I have a good memory for and attention to details. I am familiar and comfortable with all stages of production, from development to delivery. I am sensitive to other individuals working with me, and am getting better at managing a team all the time. I can multitask. I don’t give up when things get hard or hours get long (like, unexpectedly-working-all-of-Labor-Day-weekend-without-sleeping kinds of long). I hate to do anything halfway, and I hate to let anyone down.
So, you can imagine my disappointment when I realized that I totally blew it at a job interview last week. It’s been a slow burn, but almost a week has passed now without hearing a word from them in response to my upbeat follow-up email, and reality is starting to set in. [click to continue…]
