5 Ways to make telecommuting better

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I have this idea that I am going to start working from home. I tried to go into the office. But the only alone time I have in my day is the time I'm not with the kids, and if I spend my alone time with other people, then I don't have alone time and I start to panic, and I do things like tell the guy in the cube next to me that he can't talk to me.

1. Get a spot where you can concentrate.
So I tried working from home, but then I started feeling like I am the most alone person in the world. So I thought I'd change it up a little; I'd work from home, but the farmer's home.

I call him to tell him I'm coming to his house early.

“How early?” he asks.

“Now.”

“Don't you have to work today?”

“I'm not going to the office any more. I don't want to talk to people.”

There is a beat of silence, and I think the farmer is going to say something. Or maybe the silence is long enough that he is thinking I am going to talk. He has asked me to not talk over him, but I have a hard time telling if it is his turn to talk or mine. I start to panic because the rhythm of conversation is getting irregular, so I say, “Okay. Bye.” And I hang up before he can say anything else. I note to myself that this is the fourth conversation in a row that I did not talk over him. Read more

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The nuts and bolts of building a brand

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I am switching up the blog a bit. It’s time to take the Brazen Careerist part off of my blog. It’s time for the blog to just be Penelope Trunk, and only my company should use the name Brazen Careerist.

We have been saying this in Brazen Careerist board meetings for about five months. The conversation goes something like this:

Board member: How is the blog redesign going?

Me: Um. I’m thinking.

Board member: That’s what you said two months ago.

Me: Yeah. That’s true. I’ll get some bids.

Board member: It’s important the we differentiate the Brazen Careerist brand of the company from the brand of you.

Me: Yeah. I get it.

Then we have a pause in the meeting while everyone is silently frustrated with my inability to make changes. Read more

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Mindfulness makes you more productive

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I'm in the midst of dumping my happiness obsession for something else, but I wonder what is the key to a good life if I'm giving up on happiness? I thought maybe it was interestingness, but I am a little worried because I confess that I'd rather fall asleep in the farmer's arms than solve the meaning of life. Or maybe I am doing them both at the same time? I don't know. I just know that ideas overwhelm me sometimes, and until I go to a doctor to get medication to calm my head down, I'm not convinced I need more interestingness in my life than my already-spinning head.

Then I thought maybe I needed expertise: striving to be an expert would be my obsession. Which it might be. But I don't think it replaces happiness. It sort of sits next to it. Like, obsessing about being an expert comes naturally to me, but I'm not sure why.

So I'm still looking for what can replace happiness as my what-am-I-doing-here thing. And I'm thinking that maybe it's mindfulness. It kills me to even write the word, because for the last decade, while I was busy turning Ashtanga yoga into a competitive sport, my teachers kept talking about mindfulness. I kept thinking to myself, I wish they'd shut up and just rank us so I know if I'm best. Read more

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How to be more creative at work

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My current favorite blogger is Dave Portnoy at Barstool Sports. (Not safe for work.) His topic, as far as I can tell, is smut and snobbery. I think that even though my blog is pointed at the intersection of life and work, I wish it were at the intersection of smut and snobbery. Because I am an aficionado of smut, and I could use a place to show off.

This is my favorite blog post ever by Dave: The Thong is Dead. (Maybe not safe for work.) He does so many great things in that post. He has genuine social commentary about who decides what is fashionable underwear. He shows us a glimpse into his personal life because he has an underwear discussion with his wife. And he provides a great photo of a girls's ass, in boyshorts. All this in 500 words.

For me to get all of that into one post would take about 1000 words. Seth Godin writes posts like that—dependably dense: really short but packed with value—but never as scintillatingly smutty as Dave. Where Seth makes a living as a high-paid speaker by republishing a compendium of blog posts every two years, Dave can make a living as the intelligentsia by repackaging other peoples' soft porn. Read more

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Test: Is your life happy or interesting?

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The culmination of my four-year obsession with happiness research is that I think people need to choose between an interesting life or happy life. (Note: This does not mean you are interesting or not interesting. I am talking about what values guide your decision making.) I think the things that make life happy have to do with complacency, and the things that make life interesting have to do with lack of complacency. If you want to read more about this, search on my sidebar “happiness” and “interesting” and you’ll get a bazillion posts because I’ve been obsessed with the topic.

I have discovered that I would rather be interesting than happy. The good news is that even though I'm punting on the quest for happiness, I do have a good sense of how to know if you should be seeking happiness yourself, or if your quest for interesting makes happiness a lost cause.

Here's the test:

1. Did you relocate away from family for a better job or another more interesting experience? Minus one

You would have to earn $150,000 more from a job if you were doing it far away from family, according to economist Nattavudh Powdthavee of University of York.

2. Did you relocate to be near family? Plus one

Happiness does not come from a job, or from being revered by your peers. It comes from personal relationships. Read more

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Almost a review of Seth Godin’s book, Linchpin

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Seth Godin's new book, Linchpin, has arrived. I read it on the farmer's sofa.

The farmer is going through a midlife crisis. It's not really a midlife crisis, though. As an expert on the process of coming of age in one's twenties, I'd have to say that the farmer is actually going through a quarterlife crisis.

Typically, one's twenties, a period now called emerging adulthood, looks something like this:

Learning to separate from parents.
Figuring out where one fits in the world of work.
Getting ready to be married and have kids.

The farmer is doing those things in compressed time: the two years since I have known him. Many people think it was totally crazy that he sent an email to me, out of the blue. But in hindsight it's clear that he knew he needed something to kick-start his quarterlife crisis. And when you are already forty and have not had one, you need something as cataclysmic as a girl from New York coming to the farm and shaking things up.

The farmer is on the sofa. I had to convince him to let me come here because there is a snowstorm coming. The snow is a big deal if you have a thousand animals out in freezing weather and can't get food to them. I am not going to go into all the details of the stresses of winter farming. Mostly because I don't know them. But I do know that every time there is a lot of snow, something freezes and it always seems to be life threatening: Like water for the pigs. Read more

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How to write about your life

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Agents contact me on a regular basis to ask me if I want to do a book about my life.

I say no.

I say no because I have no idea how to do a book about my life. I'm sure I have no idea because I already have had a six-figure book deal to write about my life that I'm not delivering on, and the editor has dumped me. (Read: Phone calls to collect on the large advance I've already spent.) So my qualifications to tell you advice about how to write about one’s life are questionable. But whatever; I have never stood on ceremony over qualifications.

Maybe the problem is that my life story needs a redemptive moment. This is what my agent-who-is-no-longer-my-agent tells me. And this is a warning to any agent who thinks they might want to be my agent: My past agent dumped me because (even though I did deliver on my first book deal) I am terrible at writing book proposals and I am terrible at following publishing industry rules. And her number one rule is that if you write about your life there must be a redemptive moment because people like that. “That's what sells,” is my not-my-agent's way of saying “That's what people like to read.” Read more

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Twitter can save your life

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It’s safe to say that the majority of the world thinks Twitter is a waste of time. Yes, Twitter is a darling of the New York Times and frequents front pages of mainstream media. But Twitter gets coverage not because the intelligentsia loves Twitter, but because the intelligentsia hates feeling like it’s falling behind.

This post is for all the people who think Twitter is stupid but wish they didn’t. Here are five ways Twitter can save your life:

1. Twitter lets you find people like you.
The core of every career problem is actually loneliness. You don’t change jobs because you don’t have faith in yourself.You don’t ask for more money because you don’t believe in your own value. You don’t quit because you worry about not being associated with a company. Believing in ourselves is the only thing that keeps us going and if we stop believing in ourselves, we get stuck.

Twitter helps solve this problem because you can find people like you. That voice inside your head telling you that no one has your problem? Do a search. Every problem you can imagine is tweeted about somewhere. You can find someone talking about it. The most important reason to be on Twitter is to connect with people, so if one person is there, talking about the problem you have, then they want to talk with you about it.

The more people you find who are like you, the more you can connect with others and feel okay with who you are, and then you believe in yourself and you start to move on. Twitter is a live index of people and the weirdness we harbor, which is a gift to the world of loneliness. Read more

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Check-up for self-delusion

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It's unbelievable to me that everyone continues to watch football when we know that men are getting genuinely, permanently, brain damaged. The game is tantamount to cockfighting, only with people instead of animals.

The NFL has finally admitted the problem, to the extent it is poised to be the largest funding source for research about trauma to the brain. But still, the game encourages brain trauma. And people cheer.

I can understand if it's like smoking. You're addicted, you can't stop. But what about bringing your kids to the game? What about all the people who make the Superbowl a family TV event? Kids who play football in high school are more likely to die from that than drunk driving or guns. And parents encourage their kids to play this sport?

The culture of football amazes to me — the incredible level of denial. So what I’m thinking is that people are delusional. And they know it, but they keep going. They cultivate delusion.

That’s what I think of when I hear about the HBO documentary about Temple Grandin. She’s a total freak. This is why she's interesting. Because people love an underdog—people love seeing weirdness succeed because most people feel weird and they worry it's going to hold them back. Read more

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Chat with me tonight, live, via video.

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Is this even a good headline for a blog post? I don’t know. Do you want to know what I’m like unedited? Read this blog post. I never post unedited, but my editor has a day job, and he has no time to deal with manufactured emergencies like this one, so I’m just posting this post as is.

I’m supposed to be doing a web chat thing tonight. I had this idea that this would be a good format for me. And I had this idea that I could stick to a schedule. But look. It’s the day of my video chat and I have not even announced it. Because I’m nervous.

I’m nervous about a new format. I did a radio show and I hated it. That does not bode well for video. But I like speaking in front of groups. (I do it a lot.) And I like having conversations with blog readers. So it seems like maybe this video discussion or whatever it is might work. Read more

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