📣 Here’s to the hustle
Ep 40: Lookout for burnout, what happens after you breathe life into your ideas, and completing the FLRC Challenge.
Another Monday has arrived? I’m afraid it’s true. May your week ahead be whatever you need it to be.
A Tip for the Modern Worker
Be wary of burnout. According to the World Health Organization, burnout is "a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed." Watch for signs of burnout in yourself or on your team. Feel exhausted or depleted? Disconnected from your work? Cynical? Not performing well? Do not ignore these signs if you see them. Gallup cites five key causes, and they all have prescriptions for resolution: unfair treatment, unmanageable workload, unclear top-down communication, lack of manager support, and unreasonable deadlines and pressure.
This tip is one of 365 in my Handbook for the Modern Worker. We’ve all been here in some fashion at some point in our careers, haven’t we? When you see it, take care of it. Be well, my professional friends.
#365DayDraw
I drew this and wrote the accompanying annotation as part of my #365DayDraw project 7 years ago today.
When I was younger, all I wanted was a Kicker in my car. How priorities have changed!
Apparently, Kicker is celebrating fifty years this year, too! I think it would have been rather incongruent in my early driving years, having a modest white Honda Civic with a blue interior with a persistent growl of bass emanating from the trunk. Or maybe not? I did upgrade the rear speakers in that first car, but even with that midrange upgrade, it would have been no match for the audio in today’s new cars.
Commentary
“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.”
— Howard Aiken
This quote came to me this week in Tim Ferriss’ 5-Bullet Friday. Although Howard died the year I was born, the quote rings as true today as it ever did.
If I were to chart the amount of time I spend executing an idea vs. marketing it, this is not far from the truth.
Ideas are fun! Bringing ideas to life is even more fun and personally satisfying. But, if you want to see the manifestation of your ideas flourish in the world, to have as many other people experience them as possible, well… it’s daunting.
My wife and I created Lunchtaker together when our kids were younger. Heck, we even had the term trademarked! We spent nights and weekends in creative mode: coding the site, thinking up recipes and combinations of healthy foods, combing through the USDA database to calculate nutrition, and sharing information on social media. It was difficult to get traction in such a noisy space. And, we’re not the greatest self-marketers. We got tired of pushing that boulder up the hill after a few years of concerted effort.
In 2009, I designed and developed Mini Golfer for iPhone. Great experience working in XCode and Objective-C, and even greater to use it while mini-golfing with my family. After I built it, the challenge was letting people know about it. I spent so much time calling mini golf places just to see if they’d put up a sign. Generally, they wouldn’t. I got this screenshot from archive.org since I removed the app from the store a long time ago. The memories have faded, but I did get $400 in revenue for my trouble!
Other examples abound:
Hey, I wrote a book about working remotely! I published The Art of Working Remotely just 6 months before a global pandemic that’d have a significant part of the planet’s workforce becoming my target market. That didn’t do a thing to juice sales, and my efforts to keep the word out there through blog posts, social sharing, and running a weekly chat on Twitter weren’t good enough to cut through the noise. The book is still out there, still relevant, and still full of really great advice and anecdotes.
Hey, I wrote ANOTHER book about remote work! This one’s a different format than the first, with a ton of new content from publishing a unique remote work tip every single day for a year. My Handbook for the Modern Worker performed just as admirably as the first. Hard to compete in a space where the noise becomes deafening. Seems anyone with a decent platform became an expert on all things remote work after doing it for a year (spoiler: I’ve worked on distributed teams since 1998).
Hey, I wrote a novel! Undo is my debut fiction piece. It’s a contemporary adventure featuring magical realism, set in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Beta readers enjoyed it, and I incorporated their fantastic feedback. I’ve queried 44 literary agents. I’m still looking for that special someone who sees potential in the work.
Hey, I’m drawing cartoons and publishing them every Friday here on Substack! Y’all can access 24 of them in my Funny Friday series (check the archive), 2 of them are in the cannon ready to fire in the coming weeks, and 20 of them are sitting in the New Yorker’s proposal queue. I submitted to them in February, March, and May. No answer yet, but yeah… any day now.
It’s also the same deal at work. I have great ideas, I flesh out the details, and I convince a core group that it’s a good idea. Then I have to convince a broader group that it’s a good idea, with an assist from some of that core group. Then I keep on going until my idea has enough breath in it that it lives. Rinse, and repeat. These efforts are measured in months, and progress is measured in inches, not miles. It’s hard.
My Dad, a woodworker, was a vendor at a craft sale recently. He didn’t sell much that day, likely due to the beautiful weather and the poor location of the venue. I love how he summarized the day: “If compliments were money, I’d be a rich man.” His work is beautiful, but he’s right: sales are where the rubber meets the road.
Hustling is hard! But, I keep hustling.
Here’s to the hustle.
Miscellanea
🍭 With Sunday’s running of the Dryden Lake Lollipop, Amy and I completed the 2023 FLRC Challenge. I may try to get a few more runs in to get average times on the courses, but the pressure is off now to get the finisher medal.
🌱 After the smoke cleared somewhat last week (thanks to Canadian wildfires) the weather was conducive for landscaping, so last week I got motivated enough to transplant a barberry bush around the corner, clear out the beds in front of the house, plant some lavender, and sow some perennial seeds (see picture above). Looking forward to seeing it all grow!
📺 Finished: Ted Lasso. Almost finished: Succession. Who can share something they’re really into at the moment?