Career

False Work and False Leisure

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

I was reading this depressingly brilliant Cracked article on BS inspirational stories. Short form many of them are about people in horrible circumstances managing to survive (ignoring many who dont), or they’re people of means who we’ll never be. Somewhere in the article it also mentioned how we’ve idealized work and working ourselves to death.

I write on careers and jobs and all that. I am a careerist in that I like what I do and its part of me. But I don’t believe in idealizing work.

Why? Work is a neutral thing. Amount of work, hours put in, and so on – is no measure of value.

Why? People need to relax. You can’t work all the time.

Why? Because we have to goddamn stop expecting people to work all the time in America.

At the same time all this workaholism in America is paired with a weird kind of hedonism. We’re supposed to have the right clothes, eat the right food, take vacations, and keep up with the Kardashians. We’re supposed to work all the time and also relax, we’re supposed to be Inspirational Poor People pulling themselves up and also Beautiful Rich People.

This hedonism thing bullshit as well.

Why? Buying something doesn’t mean its good for you or what you want; sometimes someone is selling you something.

Why? A lot of what gets sold to us is to make up for a void in our life or show other people – we’re not really enjoining it.

Why? Because a lot of this is not about what we really want – which is probably to work goddamn less.

We’re Calvinist Hedonists. Sounds like an oxymoron? That’s the point.

Work, leisure, and everything else is highly messed up in our culture. But down deep I think they come from the same problem; a lack of meaning and larger context.

We don’t build a sustainable society, but a stratified one of haves and have-nots (read Twilight Of The Elites). It’s a society that’s meaningless, grubbing for money, trying to tweak that next tax bracket. It’s one where work means nothing except trying to scrape by or trying to show up the next person with a bunch of money.

We build a society on selling people B.S., things they don’t need. Ask yourself how much of our economy is really just a bunch of bullshit anyway. how many things don’t mean anything, aren’t practical or aren’t fun. But if we slow down our hedonism, we might realize how pointless our work is and how much our society abandons its members.

Look I write on work. I love doing it. I also write on cool stuff. But I write on what has meaning to me and to people.

Maybe we need to slow down and ask what’s important. Or maybe we’re scared because we’ll realize how much we’ve done wrong.

– Steve

Why Incompetence Is Something We All Choose

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)

Some thoughts for all the people out there that follow me for career and creative advice . . .

Improving our skills and abilities, learning new things, is something we all develop.  Most of us do it consciously, sometimes with a great deal of planning.  It may even obsess some of us as our jobs and lives require us to learn at a rapid pace. However there’s a shadow side to what we choose to become competent in – a choice to learn something means there’s a lot else we choose not to learn at that time.

Every choice to educate ourselves means we’re spending time and resources that aren’t used learn a different subject.  Each competency is paid for in not learning something else. For all you are good at, there’s a large amount of things you don’t know and can’t do, and you chose these “incompetencies” willingly or not.

We probably don’t look at learning as “choosing an incompetency” as a form of defense because there’ so much we don’t know and it scares us.  We’re taught to think only of being good (or acceptable) at something, not bad at something.  We’re taught not to admit failure or lack of ability because we seem weak, but to ignore it or pretend we’re good at everything.

But we have to accept the truth – choosing a competency is also choosing incompetencies. If we accept the we choose our ignorance and lack of ability, we can choose wisely.  If we’ve decided we can’t truly know or learn something, then we’re prepared for that gap in our lives.

We can develop that valuable competency of knowing what we don’t know – and why we don’t know it.

We can bring an innocent attitude to learning so those that know something we do not (that we may choose not to educate ourselves on) can teach us.

We can stop worrying about not knowing.  We’re all fools at one point, so let’s be fools consciously.

Exercise: List ten things you know nothing about that affect your life.  Why didn’t you learn them? What did you learn in their place?

– Steve

Q&A: Your Career In The Age Of Trump

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

OK Donald Trump is President-Elect. So I’m going to discuss what that means for your career, in a helpful Q&A format inspired by John Scalzi.

Why the hell are you writing about careers right now?

It is kind of what I do.  Geek Job Guru thing and all.

OK.  Uh, you know I didn’t vote for Trump.

I’m kind of guessing you didn’t if you’re reading my writings.  I don’t think I attract a lot of modern “conservatives.” But hey, whatever.

Fine.  Sure.  OK, what do you think Trump means for careers and the economy?

Trump’s thin-skinned, egotistical, easily-distracted, surrounding himself with terrible people, and easily manipulated.

Christ.  So anything good about this?

Trump’s thin-skinned, egotistical, easily-distracted, surrounding himself with terrible people, and easily manipulated.  This means people are going to be trying to control him and hopefully their various agendas will conflict enough to keep this from becoming a disaster.

Yeah, OK, uh . . . let’s talk about careers.  So what’s your basic view of the economy?

First of all, short-term, I think we’re good for about a year.  The economy is going good new, I’m not sure how much it can be screwed up short-term, and the above mentioned conflicts may help us.

In the next two years or so I’ve been expected a mild recession anyway merely because things have been going decently for awhile and I figure some kind of snag is due. There’s a few areas I’m concerned about like student loan debt and areas with continued sub-employment on top of this, so yeah, I figured we have a recession coming up no matter what.

The big issue twofold. First, past a year out I think we’re likely to see a Trump Administration create too much economic and political chaos, and I don’t see any stimulus proposals that create actual stimulus coming out of this. In the next four years I’d expect a serious recession, and it’s probable that mild one I predicted will be far more severe.  I’m also concerned about changes to bank regulations leading to a repeat of something like 2008 in the next four-six years.

So past 1 or 2 years we’re going to have somethig go wrong.

Well that’s depressing.  Are you saying that past one year out we’re going to have something bad happen, maybe twice, and some of the bad might be Voltroned together?

Pretty much, barring some radical changes or good luck.  Now some of this is going to be highly regional, so keep that in mind, but we’ll all feel it.

Uh, so . . . what’s your career advice?

Get your act together in the next year.  If you have a career plan, work on it.  If you don’t, make one. Make sure you have a five-year plan for your career, what you can do, and what you need to learn to make it happen. Get your certifications.

In short, get your s**t together career-wise.

What if I’m just starting college?

Well hopefully you can ride anything nasty out.  Either way, plan accordingly and watch your debt.  That could be a real soul-crusher.

Any specific career advice?

  1. Make sure you research your career and know what to do, what you need, and where best to do it.
  2. Follow all my other job advice.

Basically, this next year or so it’s not just a time to do the right thing for your career but to do the hell out of it.  Up your game.

Sort of turn my career and job search up to 11?

I admire any disembodied questioner who can joke about Spinal Tap.

But seriously, this is the time to follow not just “some” job advice but all of it.  Get your act together – the most important thing I can reccomend if you do not have said act together is make a career plan and review your plan and progress monthly.

OK, I’m thinking of relocating to a different city or state for my job.  Any advice?

Pick carefully.  I’d pick a good “Megaregion” area or one with good connections to such regions.  Make sure there’s a functional economy and a reliable government at least on the City level.  Right now in this political climate local city and state issues are going to be very important – and an area of severe division.

A good guide to me is does the city/state you’re looking at have distinct, healthy identity, economic identity, and idea of itself.  New York is . . . well, New York.  Seattle is Silicon Valley II.  Silicon Valley is itself. Virginia has growing technical areas.

Also make sure you network immediately when you arrive, or have friends and family there.  Get connected, it’ll help you stay.

Act as if your move is probably permanent – but be open to doing it again.

Well I’m thinking of just leaving the country, I mean . . .

Yeah, well if you’re young getting some experience out of the country is a good idea.  However don’t go thinking leaving America is going to solve all your problems. Also don’t you think other countries are tired of being the “second choice” of Americans?

If you’re over 35, if you do want to work overseas, act like any move is permanent.  Because it may be after you’ve stayed out of the country for a few years.

OK, long-term.  Investments and retirement?

First of all I’d consult with financial professionals or train yourself to handle investments. I know enough to do simple investing (I use a portfolio of researched index funds), but you have to find what works for you.

Secondly, save the hell out of things.  I always keep a good buffer of non-invested money.

As for investments, *I* am sticking with my index funds and riding out any changes, but I’m looking very long-term.  Consider your risks when you do your research.

Man you sound pretty positive about all this! Are you?

Actually, no, I think Trump’s going to be a lousy president. I think we’ll get through it, but he’s going to be kind of like Bush II in that Republcians try and forget him.  It’ll then take 4-20 years to undo the damage, but we won’t fix all of it.

Its just my thing is providing advice. So I do what I can!

 

– Steve