Xenofact’s Job Hacks #1

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Layoffs are in the news as the tech sector bigwigs jump on the cut-people-at-random bandwagon.  We weirdos, mutants, and mystics are trying to survive in a slack-draining, soul-crushing post-post-Crapitalist hellscape.  So your reverend, who has spent some thirty YEARS in the job world, is going to share tips he and others use to survive and prosper on the job – not necessarily DOING the job, just being on it.

This is part One Of Many. 

Your Employer Doesn’t Love You – Assume your employer has no emotional attachment or commitment to you at the start.  There ARE places that aren’t like this (some nonprofits, education, government, etc.)  but assume it’s the norm until proven otherwise.

Work Is Work – Be careful of putting too much into your job.  Even in the best conditions a job is still a job.  It can be part of who you are, but should not be all of who you are, or someday you won’t quite be yourself.

You Owe Your Employer What They Pay For.  Make Them Earn The Rest – You didn’t ask for this system, you’re probably underpaid, and you needed a job or you’d starve.  You owe your employer what they pay for and no more.  If they earn the rest, GOOD, you’re lucky – or maybe they’re lucky.

Have A Life – Even if your work fits you well (and I am fortunate enough to know what that’s like), have a life.  A job is still a job, and in our current economy it’s not enough to have a job to be a happy person.  A Life also gives you a fallback when the job gets painful or vanishes, so you have joys and people to call on.

Make It A Game – Surviving on the job can be a pain, so make a game of it.  Imagine yourself as a spy or rebel, scavenger or scholar.  Find “wins” to rack up.  If you’re stuck on a shit job, find a way to make it exciting by choosing how YOU engage in it.

Design Your Cover – As long as it’s not too much work, decide on what your image should be at work.  Pick something that lets you be you and lets you get away with it.  Be the brilliant curmudgeon, the eccentric do-gooder, the “clueless” genius or whatever.  It can even be fun!

Follow The News – You should ANYWAY, but it also helps you see trends that can affect your job.  It also lets you see ones to take advantage of.  Plus if your employer is about to do something boneheaded you might get advanced warning.

Learn To Make A Resume – Sorry, it’s a survival skill these days.  It’s not hard to pick up, but well worth it.  You can also help people out on their job searches which means you all have more money, less stress, and a greater chance to turn the system to your ends.

Update Your Resume – Update your Resume regularly – about every 6 months, Just In Case.  It also lets you advocate for raises and such at work, or get ideas for training.

Learn To Job Search – Efficiently – Sadly you need to know how to look for a job, so I recommend getting good at it.  There are books that may help, but mostly I learned from trial and error, news articles, and others.  Once you’re good at it, it takes less TIME and pays off better so you can chill.

Constant Job Searches – Having been through buyouts, layoffs, and more I can say you want to do a regular job search.  If your job sucks, do it widely and weekly.  If your job is great, only apply to positions elsewhere in your organization (discreetly).  Have a buffer Just In Case.

Line Up References – Cultivate references to use on the job and in searches.  Also, hey, you can track friends you made on the job.  Yes it happens.

Be A Reference – Be a reference for all your co-workers trying to escape the crappy job they work with YOU on. They’ll be grateful, do the same for you, and might help you go somewhere better.

Use Hobbies On Your Resume – They show skill, they show community interest and they make you look more human.  People love getting the idea of who you are (or who you want them to think they are).

More to come. Much more to come – I’m breaking this into chunks for now.

– Xenofact

Projects Are Magic

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The world isn’t what it should be.  We want to change it for the better.  What is the key, the spell, the magic that will help us do that?  Or at least make stuff suck less?

And I answer, “Project Management,” which might not be the answer people want.

Workboards and flowcharts aren’t exciting to most people.  Market research sounds boring at best and manipulative at worst.  We want to act and get things done cleanly and honestly (at least honestly).  No one wants to be like some chart-obsessed office drone from a sitcom.

As a professional project and program manager, I feel otherwise most strongly.  Project Management is power.

Look at the state of the world.  The bad people are organized and productive, and there’s often more method to madness than you think.  Sure, they may not realize the ultimate results of their bad ideas, but they’re certainly getting them implemented.  If you want to make it in this world, change it, work your mystic and mutant strageness, you need to know how to get things to happen.

If you want to do something you need to know how to make it into a project and get it done – often with other people.

The “secrets” of Project Manager and easy to find – they’re not really secrets.  David Allen has written a bunch of great stuff under his “Getting Things Done” brand, and yeah he’s commercial, but he knows what he’s talking about (take it from me).  David Marquet does great stuff on leadership that explores language, management, and mindset.  For that matter, grab the Scrum Guide to check out a light way to organize projects from the “Agile” movement, or go to the Project Management Institute to go old-school.

The power is out there to get stuff accomplished.

I can say, personally, when you dive into Project Management and productivity in general, it turns out to be magical.  I mean this near-literally; it reminds me of occult and meditative systems.

You learn how to see the things you need to accomplish in a new way.  You see how goals are something deep and meaningful, not buzzwords (or shouldn’t be).  You understand breaking down work and how a project is a network of causality.  You get a vision of how things can happen and get done – and make it happen.  When you know Project Management the world becomes different because you can make things happen..

Project Management gives you a bunch of tools, techniques, and ceremonies (meetings and events) to bring some project to completion.  Once you see your work differently, you can apply these tools to get a goal achieved.  There’s vision and action, as long as you make an effort to learn it.  In fact once you learn it, it’s easier to learn from other organizers using the same language.

I invite you to take a look at various Project and Productivity tools.  Here’s a few to try:

  • Getting Things Done by David Allen.  A simple guide to personal productivity, not technically Project Management, but pretty much project managemnet.
  • The Scrum Guide.  Free, online, a fast project management method in the Agile vein, and so quick you can do it with sticky notes or an online document.
  • Project Management All-in-One for Dummies.  A combined guide for traditional and Agile methods, I’ve had decent results from the Dummies series.
  • If you want to go hardcore, you can even dig up serious traditional “Waterfall” project management guides at the Project Management Institute, This is the serious stuff, mostly flowcharts and breakdowns despite the organization being open to lighter methods.

Let’s change the world – and get organized.  What, do you want to leave all this knowledge in the hands of the people currently running the world into the ground?

– Xenofact

A Pamphlet Of Rebellion

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Recently I created a pamphlet for the Dobbstown Mirror, a SubGenius* newsletter. This simple c-fold creation had the best quotes of the Church founder J.R. “Bob” Dobbs so my fellow members had easy access to them.  What was a simple creative effort became more when I held the print run in my hands.

Here was something published made for love, not money – in fact I spent money on it.  I write as part of my career, but also write as a kind of side business/hobby where I do charge for books.  But here was something I deliberately “lost” money on as opposed to losing it on writing something no one wanted.

Here was something that was what I wanted to do.  There were no requests, no market calculations, nothing separate from my own creative drive.  It was what I wanted to do, to share with others – they didn’t even have to like it in a way.

Finally, this pamphlet was created to be distributed with a newsletter.  It was not thrown up on a website or entered into a marketing stream. It was part of something intimate, a newsletter that was part of a community.  You tossed it into an envelope and sent it to folks.

I felt many things, but one that stood out was a sense of rebellion.

I’m so used to things being written for money, hearing about audience calculations, and reading about distribution optimization.  Instead, here was something I spent money on in a giant “what the hell, this seems fun.”  Creativity that’s not part of the endless cycle of acquisition and capitalism we’re all too used to (and trapped in).

Such an experience is making me think about creativity outside of the profit motive, creativity for fun, for community.  I had been missing something, and this helped me understand how rebellious it can feel to just do something for people for fun.

Now I should note that in no way am I against people making a profit from creative works.  I want people to be able to make a living on their creative efforts.  I want artists of all kinds supported – and am glad to support them.  It’s just nice to get out of the endless cycle of profit-seeking and optimization.

Oh and you can print your own – get it and other Dobbsaganda here.

– Xenofact

* If you don’t know what the church of the SubGenius is, visit http://subgenius.com/ or just buy The Book of the SubGenius.  Trust me.