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At work today, a fellow consultant expressed amazement that I was planning to take Thursday off after having taken Monday off. He couldn’t understand how I was able to afford to take two days off in an average week - let alone two weeks before I plan on going on vacation.

photo credit: Jay Dugger

The simple truth is that I have certain rules that, if anyone follows them, makes taking time off a snap.  I have five, off the top of my head:

1.  Pay yourself first. I save money every month before it hits our bank account.  It’s gone and saved before I even realize it exists.  That makes digging into savings tricky.  It also means that I’m not worried about grubbing for a dollar at the end of the year.

2.  Consider whether you need it. Bubelah and I make dopey purchases - we are not ultra frugal.  At the same time, we do not buy useless things on a regular basis.  It doesn’t take much - try not buying overpromoted fashion and consumer electronics for a while and voila, savings.  A little time off is worth passing on the iPhone, isn’t it?

3.  Pay in cash. I use a credit card, for the sake of cash back bonuses, but for all intents and purposes I pay cash; we wait until we have cash in hand to buy anything.  I mean anything.  We paid cash for a new Honda this year.  I paid cash for new rechargeable batteries today.  We don’t buy anything without the means to pay for it.  We never have to worry about the upcoming credit card bill.

4.  Diversify your income. I blog, and I work on a couple of other income streams.  My “other” streams make up maybe 5% of my income, but at the same time that means I’m making 105% of what I would be making on consulting income alone.  Better than nothing, I think.  But that 5% away from work means I can take 5% off my normal work and still come out even, right?

5.  Pick your battles. I have never understood people who won’t take off a beautiful day in summer.  Listen, 20 years from now that extra $100 for a day’s work won’t make a difference.  A day in the sun making a stab at accomplishing that wee bitty thing called life will be worth it.  Maybe it’s better to stay late in the office in February and ditch in summer.

I feel sorry for so many of the employees and consultants I see around me who will complain about “needing” to work one minute and then about their new plasma TV the next minute. Not because I think they made a bad choice - because it’s not my place to judge - but because they seem unhappy with their choices.  Nobody is every happy trading their time for crap.  Put yourself in a position where you can forgo money for time and you’ll be a happier person.

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I remember once being at a conference in Indonesia, of all places. I had dragged myself down there from Moscow, suffering (as I would later find out) from pneumonia.  The semi-tropical climate was nice, and I felt much better - but I was still suffering.  I knew that the return flight (Surabaya-Jakarta-Kuala Lumpur-Frankfurt) would be excruciating.  Traveling on Lufthansa on the way to the conference I had been placed in the smoking section, which was - as you can imagine - tortuous for someone suffering from a lung ailment.   I dreaded the return flight, and called my partner to prostrate myself via an international phone connection.

“Please let me upgrade to business class,” I asked.  “I am very sick and I’m headed to the doctor the second I get back.”

“It’s not in policy,” he responded.  I was a mere manager, and managers traveled coach, and didn’t get to complain when they were shoved in seat 76B of the smoking section.  “Take Monday off when you get back.  You’ll be fine.”

Of course I was tortured on the return trip by Dieter and Friedrich’s filterless cancer sticks. My pneumonia tripped and tra-la-la’d into double pneumonia and I passed out at work before being told by my doctor that I was in serious, serious health trouble.  The end result?  I packed it in, quit the firm and left Moscow a year before my contract was up.

I had an extremely good relationship with one of the clients of the firm; this client happened to be one of the biggest and most prestigious clients the firm had. They quit the firm soon after I quit (not solely because of me, of course, but I’m sure it didn’t help). Other than that, of course, life continued on for both me and the firm.

Companies need to realize that it’s not always just about the “big things” like salary and titles. Little perks can make a big difference, and they aren’t always just perks. Letting employees take time off for doctor’s appointments, or letting people come in a hour later and leave an hour later if that suits their lifestyle better. I think in today’s business world, the idea is that you can treat people like dogs (or worse than dogs - dogs have gourmet organic food these days). You can charge airlines passengers for tap water. And in my opinion soon you’ll see the final “perks” start to go as more and more companies decide not to offer health insurance.

Treating people (employees OR customers) like this won’t be sustainable. The human spirit can only take so much abuse. People get tired of feeling like their company’s only recognition of them as human is the biweekly paycheck. Small things don’t cost companies much in comparison to the constant turnover of key employees (or loss of customers). Somehow it all became about the bottom line, but maximizing the bottom line is only going to go so far.

photo credit: WTL photos

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Today’s post is another guest post from my wife, Bubelah. She is one of a tiny handful of people I know who actually worked at a job she enjoyed once in her life (one of the few other people I know who does something he loves is a baseball beat writer; another is a youth minister).   I find inspiration in the fact that there are people who are truly energized by working at a job - not just engaging in entrepreneurial activities, but working at a job.  Decide for yourself:

Are you lucky enough to have a job that you really enjoy? Great! Some people go through life without having had a job that they enjoyed, loved and cherished. I was lucky that I had at least one job I truly liked. I had five jobs from the time I came to the US till the time I quit my last job to stay with kids at home. My first job, as a waitress, lasted about one month. The longest period of time I held a job was four years. I still remember it as a wonderful job, even though the pay was dreadful.

The job was at the International Organization for Migration, a non-profit intergovernmental organization. I was not sitting at a desk in the main office in New York City. I was doing the “field” work at JFK airport. The reason I chose this job was because it had flexible hours (I was in college then) and because I was (and am) obsessed with airports. I love the hustle and bustle and constant comings and goings that surround you at the airport. It’s the ultimate association with traveling. There is something mysterious about an airport.

Could I have made more as a ticket agent? Yes, but a ticket agent is only limited to one airline and one location. I, on the other hand, went everywhere at JFK and LGA airports. I even had access to restricted areas. My job responsibilities included translation (English-Russian), documentation, dealings with INS, Customs and Public Health. And of course, the main part was meeting and greeting immigrants and refugees from all over the world.

The greatest part of the job was meeting so many different and interesting people. There were some real characters out there. Every day I interacted with people from all walks of life and diverse cultures. I wish I recorded all the life stories I heard. It was like geography and sociology advanced classes. It was the closest second best to traveling, which I love.

The job was very tiring. I had to be at different places in short periods of time. The hours were almost always random - I seldom had a set schedule. Sometimes I had to get up at 2 or 3 am, finishing at 8 am and then going to classes after taking a short nap in College library. But at the end of the day I was satisfied that I was doing something good by helping someone escape poverty, or prosecution or other kinds of hardship.

You cannot imagine how touched I was when people hugged and kissed me in gratitude. I almost cried. Nobody ever thanked me so sincerely or so heartily in my corporate environment. I have so many interesting stories to tell about the IOM job. I do not have even a single story to tell from my corporate life.

I had an Armenian family in my charge when the woman went into labor in Delta Terminal right in front of the gate and hundreds of people. Everything progressed so fast that there was no time to move her. Their baby girl was born on the carpet with the help of an undercover cop. It was messy but so memorable. They stayed in New York for a few days, so I visited them in the hospital and brought lots of baby presents from IOM. A couple of days later I put them on the plane to their final destination. I wonder what happened to that family and that little girl. They didn’t even have a name for her yet. Maybe they called her Delta?  She must be in middle school now.

So here I am, thankful for having at least one memorable, satisfying and enjoyable job. I am young and I am sure I will have many chances to do a job like that again. I just need to choose wisely!

photo credit: as737700

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Over the last three months since I’ve gone back on a new contract I’ve struggled. I was working like crazy during my “problogging” stint, but I enjoyed what I was doing and I had little desire to get back to work.  Since I took the contract, things have not gone well - although on the other hand they have.  My client took the time to praise me to the skies to some other contractors (and it got back to me) and I’ve gained the trust of some of the senior execs of this Fortune 10 company.  Lucky me.  At the same time, I’ve been sucked into a morass of corporate politics and dead time.  This contract feels more like a job than any contract I’ve taken in the last three years.  The stench of obligation is overwhelming.  I came up with 5 reasons why this contract sucked and decided that they could be universally applicable as 5 signs your job (or contract, or whatever) sucks:

1.  You can’t get out of bed in the morning. If you wake up in the morning and groan, it’s not a good sign.  During the one year in the last eight years of my working career I was excited about my work, I leapt out of bed every morning.  If the prospect of going to work creates enough dread in your mind that you don’t want to leave bed in the morning, your job sucks.

2. You spend more time on the internet than you do working. I know everyone spends a certain amount of time browsing the internet at work - we’re all human.  At the same time, if you spend more time at gothamist than you do working, it means your job sucks for one of two reasons:  either you have stuff to do and it’s so awful you’re avoiding it, or your job sucks because you have nothing to do.

3.  You’re the first person out the door in the evening. I’m a big work-life balance guy, but I know that when I lead the 5:00 charge out of the door I’m not engaged in my work.  If you’re enjoying your work you’re going to stick around at least past the first exodus every evening - if for no other reason than to see if you can pick up on after-hours gossip.

4.  You don’t think about work after hours. When I was engaged in my work, I thought about it after I left work.  I would go for drinks with co-workers and talk about work.  I got passionate about it, because it was interesting and I was involved.  As I sit here writing this post in the evening, I can barely tell you what I worked on today.  That means I don’t find the work interesting or even worthy of contemplation.

5.  You mock people who enjoy their work. I think this demonstrates that your job sucks worse than anything.  Everyone should enjoy their work.  Even if your work sucks, YOU should be able to find some sense of satisfaction in the paycheck, or the fact that you’re creating something of value or beauty.  If you TELL people your work is awful and mock people who enjoy their own work, your job probably sucks.

I’ve been wrestling with the goose-who-laid-the-golden-egg question for a while. I don’t care the least bit for the contract work I’m doing now, but it pays quite well, the hours are good and because of the structures of the contracts I get health care benefits.  I have found that it’s impossible to rationalize a job that sucks, though.  If you don’t like it, you don’t like it - and it’s hard to change your attitude once that mindset is locked in.

If you see that your job hits one or more nerves in the list above, it’s time to consider a move. I’ve started considering a change for myself.  One of the things you worry about in corporate America is that staying in year after year will kill your drive to create things outside of the normal corporate-paycheck-routine. I know I feel less and less desire to create (blog, other writing, cooking, etc.) every day I slog away at this contract; so the question is do I stay or do I go?  What do you do when a job sucks?

photo credit: suburbanbloke

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photo credit: VideogameVisionary.com

Early in my career one of my manager imparted this little bit of corporate wisdom to me: there are two types of people in the world, “big picture people” and “small picture people”. These two types of people were complimentary but had wildly different skill sets and worldviews.

Big picture people

In a nutshell, big picture people see the world in grand themes. They think of end games, the needs-of-the-many-outweigh-the-needs-of-the-few and goals. Details are swept aside for the sake of progress. They view everything in terms of an overall objective, and facts and opinions are gathered selectively to support the objective.

Small picture people

Small picture people, on the other hand, agonize over facts. They attack every problem related to a project with equal fervor. They make sure all of the staples are at 45 degree angles, and they view every single step forward as a battle to be won. A goal is not as important as the validity of the points supporting its achievement.

This manager told me that big picture people inevitably rose above small picture people in the working world, but at the same time were incapable of functioning without small picture people. Small picture people were the engines; big picture people were the drivers.

How this applies to us

You can extend this far past the corporate world, of course. Politicians are often big picture, ignoring inconvenient details. Soldiers are small picture people, focusing on task management handed down to them by their superiors. Both are necessary, and a big-picture army private will have just as much trouble as a detail-oriented senator - both will be fish out of water.

One of the most apt criticisms you could make of the writing I do on brip blap would be that I’m awfully big picture. I like to think in terms of grand goals (”achieve perfect work/life integration, have a perfect lifestyle, achieve financial independence”) without attention to the detail to support that (”fix your credit score, maximize your tax credits”, etc.). I confess. I’m a big picture person at work. That’s helpful - one of the reasons I’m a corporate consultant is my ability to take huge numbers of small problems and weave them together into a theme and propose overarching solutions. That makes me, of course, annoying to the small picture people who have to create the spreadsheets and forms and widgets to fix problems in accordance with my recommendations, but you know what? Together, we get the job done.

So extend this to your financial life, or relationships, or whatever you’re worried about. I’m a big picture person, and Bubelah’s much more detail oriented. We try to plan a vacation and I worry about how it will affect our capital purchases or whether it fits into the grand scheme of our finances. She worries about whether we’ll be able to book the week we need, or have access to a washer/dryer for the inevitable piles of dirty clothes. I think it’s a nice compliment of skills, but from time to time it creates conflicts. But as much as it may create conflicts between couples, those conflicts are resolvable. The problem really arises when the individual can’t decide whether he’s big picture or small picture.

I know I’m a big picture guy. But if you’re someone who worries about details AND goals you’re going to have trouble. If you like to hammer away at the small things in life, embrace it. Fire up that to-do list and enter everything on it. If you’re a big picture guy or gal, write out a mission statement and forget about clipping coupons. I’ve got to say something terrible here - this is probably the single biggest argument in favor of marriage (other than providing a stable set of parents for kids) that I can make: finding someone who complements your “skill set” - for lack of a better term. You can of course accomplish this with friends or partners as well. The important thing is to recognize how you view the world - and find someone who can provide the yin to your yang, if I can steal a philosophical phrase.

So recognize where you’re coming from, and (at least according to my manager, who I had a lot of respect for), cast your lot. Don’t try and pretend you love detail if you’re a big picture person. Don’t try and pretend that you love goal-setting if your idea of a good time is wringing out an extra 5% savings. Embrace your “type” and use it to your advantage. Don’t try to be something you aren’t.

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As a side note, I’ve continued to have terrible computer AND internet problems - more or less a perfect storm of hardware problems (laptop dies without warning) and high-speed service breakdowns (one service died, and another will be hooked up next week- right now I’m sneaking a neighbor’s unsecured wireless account, and hoping I’m not hurting him while doing it).  I’m hoping for a resolution next week but any irregular posting is probably due to those problems.  Yesterday there was no post because I wrote one, published it, saw the PC crash - and lost the post.  Sleep won out over rewriting

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