I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
Jerome K. Jerome
Your email inbox is a bit like a Las Vegas roulette machine. You know, you just check it and check it, and every once in a while there's some juicy little tidbit of reward, like the three quarters that pop down on a one-armed bandit. And that keeps you coming back for more.
Douglas Rushkoff
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.
Samuel Johnson
Nine signs that you’re overworked
1. You’re making small mistakes
2. You feel overwhelmed
3. You’re tired all the time
4. You’re irritable
5. You suffer from insomnia
6. You can’t focus
7. You begin neglecting other things
8. You don’t have any motivation
9. You don’t have ambition
If you have a job without any aggravations, you don't have a job.
Malcolm S. Forbes
Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called everybody, and they meet at the bar.
Drew Carey
Matthew Henry
I want to put a Ding in the Universe
Steve Jobs
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
Thomas A. Edison
Thanks for the lead Gary
In the George Lucas movie, THX-1138 (the name of the main character was "THX-1138"), everyone's choices are removed and they all live underground because above ground is "radioactive." Finally THX decides it would be better to die above ground than suffer forever underground where he wasn't allowed to love. He wasn't free.
He makes his way above ground, evading all the guards and police. And when he gets there, it's sunny, everyone above ground is beautiful, and they are waiting for him with open arms and kisses. The excuse, "But it's radioactive out there!" was just there to keep him down.
Another day on the job…
Don't believe me. Stay with a boss that hates you. A job that is keeping you locked on a chain around your neck, tantalizing you with incremental increases in pay and job title.
Stay in a culture that is quietly replacing the entire middle class. This is not anyone's fault. This is the tectonic plates of economics destroying an entire suburban culture that has lasted for almost 100 years.
From James Altucher. Worth reading. Even more important check out Choose Yourself! If you are bold (smart) enough to check it out and read it, Please let me know what you think.
10 Signs:
A) You can’t wake up. You need 10 extra minutes to get up. Then another 10.
B) You get physically hurt while on the job for no real reason (subconscious at work)
C) You don’t feel like returning emails or phone calls. When the number of unreturned emails or calls hits 20, you need to leave.
D) You are unsure about your compensation (with the private equity firm above my compensation was very unclear)
E) You are afraid to run into people in the office for no real reason.
F) You are not creating any additional value for yourself. View yourself as a business. Is the value of “your business” going up. When I was at the fund of funds, the fact that I could only sell my fund of funds if I signed a six year employment agreement, showed me that I had not been creating any additional value in my business.
G) You are thinking about selling diet pills. Tim Ferris aside, nobody in their right mind should sell diet pills.
H) Someone yells at you. You’re not a kid. Yelling is abusive. Nobody should ever yell at you. Ever. But that’s a hard habit to break if you are used to people yelling at you.
I) You think about office politics more than you think about how to do well at your job. Never gossip at work. Ever.
J) You date a girl at work. One of you needs to leave. Pronto. Else, work, relationships, life, gets ruined. Don’t shit where you eat.
http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/04/10-reasons-you-need-to-quit-your-job/
Are you engaged? Not engaged? Or actively disengaged? Note that there are about 300 million people in America. Of that there are about 100 million working people. 1/3 of the US population works.
Working = 100 million
Disability = 10.9 million
Unemployment = 5.6 million (11.8 million are unemployed)
SNAP = 47.7 million
Welfare = 4.3 million
SS and SSI = 47.3 million
Under 21 = 73.1 million
Other = 24.1 million
Total = 313 million
Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do.
Oscar Wilde
The [Gallup] survey classifies three types of employees among the 100 million people in America who hold full-time jobs.
The first is actively engaged, which represents about 30 million workers.
The second type of worker is "not engaged," which accounts for 50 million. These employees are going through the motions at work.
The third type, labeled "actively disengaged," hates going to work. These workers -- about 20 million -- undermine their companies with their attitude, according to the report.
Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar.
Drew Carey
They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that . . . that doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. That’s right… You know what they want? They want obedient workers . . . Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. … And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.
George Carlin
Marilyn Monroe
Your outlook upon life, your estimate of yourself, your estimate of your value are largely colored by your environment. Your whole career will be modified, shaped, molded by your surroundings, by the character of the people with whom you come in contact every day.
Orison Swett Marden
Gaping Void – Hugh MacLeod
Throughout my career, I fed off the fuel of people not being able to understand me.
Eminem
Good executives create senseless rules, then don’t explain them to anyone. Keep ‘em guessing.
Piers T. Benjamin
Remember, if you’re not solving a problem, you’re not making anyone angry. Another day you get to keep your job.
This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men.
John Perkins
James Altucher has an insightful article on what was known as the middle class. It’s over. Welcome to jail, and robots and maipulation.
Stay with a boss that hates you. A job that is keeping you locked on a chain around your neck, tantalizing you with incremental increases in pay and job title. Stay in a culture that is quietly replacing the entire middle class. This is not anyone’s fault. This is the tectonic plates of economics destroying an entire suburban culture that has lasted for almost 100 years.
Until you choose yourself for success, and all that choice entails, you will be locked into the prison. You will stare into your lover’s eyes looking for a sign that he or she loves you back. But slowly the lights will fade, the warmth of another body will grow cold, and you will go to sleep dreamless in the dark once again.
James Altucher
The 10 reasons to quit your job this year.
1) The middle class is dead.
2) You’ve been replaced.
3) Corporations don’t like you.
4) Money is not happiness.
5) Count right now how many people can make a major decision that can ruin your life.
6) Is your job satisfying your needs?
7) Your Retirement Plan is For Shit.
8) Excuses.
9) Its ok to take baby steps.
10) Abundance will never come from your job.
Read the whole story here: jamesaltucher.com/
The professional idealist is a hollow man. A soulless man who is tasked with convincing everyone of the existence of the thing that he does not have. The left has created an endless number of professional openings for such soulless men, for paid liars and faithless tricksters, who live only to convince the world that they believe just long enough for them to sell out one more time.
Daniel Greenfield
Confucius
I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.
Charles Lamb
The disabled are part of the far larger number of Americans who have left the labor force altogether since the recession, and who don’t seem to be coming back. About 88.9 million people in the U.S. are now out of the labor force, 2.4 million more than a year ago and 11.4 million more than in 2006. Thirty years ago, there was a 40-to-1 ratio between the total labor force and those workers receiving Social Security disability payments. Today that ratio is less than 18-to-1.
Eleven percent of Americans over age 12 take antidepressants according to a report released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control. The study, compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics, looked at data from 2005 to 2008. Among the other key findings:
- Women are two-and-a-half times more likely to take antidepressants than men.
- People over 40 are more likely to take antidepressants than younger people.
- Non-Hispanic whites are more likely to take antidepressants than minorities.
But it was another finding that surprised lead study author, Laura Pratt, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control. Only one-third of people with severe depression take antidepressants. "That means many people with severe depression are not getting treated," says Pratt.
Yeah, I just stare at my desk but it looks like I'm working. I do that for uh, probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.
Office Space
Joanna: So, where do you uh, work, Peter?
Peter Gibbons: Initech.
Joanna: In...yeah, what do you do there?
Peter Gibbons: I sit in a cubicle and I update bank software for the 2000 switch.
Joanna: What's that?
Peter Gibbons: Well see, they wrote all this bank software, and, uh, to save space, they used two digits for the date instead of four. So, like, 98 instead of 1998? Uh, so I go through these thousands of lines of code and, uh...it doesn't really matter. I uh, I don't like my job, and, uh, I don't think I'm gonna go anymore.
Joanna: You're just not gonna go?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
Joanna: Won't you get fired?
Peter Gibbons: I don't know, but I really don't like it, and, uh, I'm not gonna go.
Joanna: So you're gonna quit?
Peter Gibbons: Nuh-uh. Not really. Uh...I'm just gonna stop going.
Joanna: Uh...when did you decide all that?
Peter Gibbons: About an hour ago.
Joanna: Oh, really?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
Joanna: About an hour ago. So you're gonna get another job?
Peter Gibbons: I don't think I'd like another job.
Joanna: Well, what are you going to do about money and bills and...
Peter Gibbons: You know, I've never really liked paying bills. I don't think I'm gonna do that, either.
Office Space
Seven Deadly Sins
Wealth without work
Pleasure without conscience
Science without humanity
Knowledge without character
Politics without principle
Commerce without morality
Worship without sacrifice.
Mahatma Gandhi
I have never liked working. To me a job is an invasion of privacy.
Danny McGoorty
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
For example, I was discussing the use of email and how impersonal it can be, how people will now email someone across the room rather than go and talk to them. But I don't think this is laziness, I think it is a conscious decision people are making to save time.
Margaret J. Wheatley
Or maybe…I email because…I don’t like people…
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669094/should-you-send-that-email-heres-a-flowchart-for-deciding
Frida Kahlo
Cranking out widgets is one thing; deciding which widgets need cranking first, and in what quantity, is quite another — especially if you are now charged with continually improving the system, or determining whether you should even be cranking out those widgets at all.
David Allen
From his NYT article:
“I’m overwhelmed, and with all the changes going on here, it’s getting worse. There aren’t enough hours in the day to do my job.”
“I have new responsibilities that demand creative and strategic thought, but I’m not getting to them.”
“I have too many meetings to attend, and I can’t get any ‘real’ work done.”
“I have too many e-mails, and, given day-to-day urgencies, the backlog keeps growing.”
“I feel like I’m not giving the right amount of attention to what’s most important.”
And here’s a common kicker, for those willing to admit it:
“I just can’t keep going like this.”
Sound familiar? Read the rest HERE - NYT Overwhelmed
Directing is: you're overwhelmed the whole time. Your mind never stops. If you care about it. You wake up in the morning and you begin thinking about it and then you go to sleep at night and you're still thinking about it.
Campbell Scott
Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.
Frank Leahy
In a post on Forbes (Forbes - Boiled Down) sent by Gary, people (top talent in large corporations) leave jobs because their boss sucks, the organization is lame, priorities shift constantly, there is no vision, of the organization and management is close-minded. However, the root of the problem comes down to:
Top talent leave an organization when they’re badly managed and the organization is confusing and uninspiring.
Eric Jackson
A sense of humor... is needed armor. Joy in one’s heart and some laughter on one’s lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp of life.
Hugh Sidey
In Case you’re thinking about a new job…Some tips on interviewing.
5 Tips to Ace the Interview – Lifehack
Don’t look back. Don’t be one of those former employees who come to visit once a week. Move on.
In your thirst for knowledge, be sure not to drown in all the information.
Anthony J. D'Angelo
The following excerpt is from a speech by Charlie Munger (Berkshire Hathaway. My recommendation, grab a cup of coffee, hit the link, read the article. Talk a deep breath and print it.
Then read the next day. Then outline a plan and start.
…the first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ‘em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form.
You’ve got to have models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience—both vicarious and direct—on this latticework of models. You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.
What are the models? Well, the first rule is that you’ve got to have multiple models—because if you just have one or two that you’re using, the nature of human psychology is such that you’ll torture reality so that it fits your models, or at least you’ll think it does. You become the equivalent of a chiropractor who, of course, is the great boob in medicine.
It’s like the old saying, “To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” And of course, that’s the way the chiropractor goes about practicing medicine. But that’s a perfectly disastrous way to think and a perfectly disastrous way to operate in the world. So you’ve got to have multiple models.
And the models have to come from multiple disciplines—because all the wisdom of the world is not to be found in one little academic department. That’s why poetry professors, by and large, are so unwise in a worldly sense. They don’t have enough models in their heads. So you’ve got to have models across a fair array of disciplines.
And it’s not that hard to understand.
Terribly smart people make totally bonkers mistakes.
Charlie Munger
An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the government economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job
COSTELLO: I want to talk about the unemployment rate in America.
ABBOTT: Good Subject. Terrible Times. It's 9%.
COSTELLO: That many people are out of work?
ABBOTT: No, that's 16%.
COSTELLO: You just said 9%.
ABBOTT: 9% unemployed.
COSTELLO: Right, 9% out of work.
ABBOTT: No, that's 16%. [Except according to John Williams, it's about 22%]
COSTELLO: Okay, so it's 16% unemployed.
ABBOTT: No, that's 9%...
COSTELLO: Wait a minute. Is it 9% or 16%?
ABBOTT: 9% are unemployed. 16% are out of work.
COSTELLO: If you are out of work, you are unemployed.
ABBOTT: No, you can't count the "Out of Work" as the unemployed. You have to look for work to be unemployed.
COSTELLO: But they are out of work!!!
ABBOTT: No, you miss my point.
COSTELLO: What point?
ABBOTT: Someone who doesn't look for work can't be counted with those who look for work. It wouldn't be fair.
COSTELLO: To who?
ABBOTT: The unemployed.
COSTELLO: But they are all out of work.
ABBOTT: No, the unemployed are actively looking for work... Those who are out of work stopped looking. They gave up. And if you give up, you are no longer in the ranks of the unemployed.
COSTELLO: So if you're off the unemployment rolls, that would count as less unemployment?
ABBOTT: Unemployment would go down. Absolutely!
COSTELLO: The unemployment just goes down because you don't look for work?
ABBOTT: Absolutely it goes down. That's how you get to 9%. Otherwise it would be 16%. You don't want to read about 16% unemployment, do ya?
COSTELLO: That would be frightening.
ABBOTT: Absolutely.
COSTELLO: Wait, I got a question for you. That means there are two ways to bring down the unemployment number?
ABBOTT: Two ways is correct.
COSTELLO: Unemployment can go down if someone gets a job?
ABBOTT: Correct.
COSTELLO: And unemployment can also go down if you stop looking for a job?
ABBOTT: Bingo.
COSTELLO: So there are two ways to bring unemployment down, and the easier of the two is to just stop looking for work.
ABBOTT: Now you're thinking like an economist.
COSTELLO: I don't even know what the hell I just said.
Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.
E.M. Forster
Albert Einstein
If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?
Sydney J. Harris
You know the feeling. That co-worker of yours has been driving you nuts all day with constant chatting. Or perhaps it's a subordinate who can never get it right. Or maybe that last demand from an unreasonable boss.
So one day, you lose it. You explode in anger and frustration because things just aren't going right.
Tension is running high in workplaces these days as fewer people take on more work, often for less pay. Whether or not you handle that tension gracefully, however, can make or break your career.
He who angers you conquers you.
Elizabeth Kenny
I'm a loner, Dottie. A Rebel.
Pee Wee Herman
The NYT has an article on people who ditched the “working for the man” gig and transitioned to Plan B. Interesting perspective on working solo. Not as glamorous as expected. Especially the surprise of manual labor and an unsteady paycheck. Although the freedom expected when escaping the cubicle isn’t evident. The weight of doing everything yourself is clear, and the loneliness. Come to think of it, it’s a pretty depressing article.
Now, instead of spending his free time absorbed in visions of clay, he spends as much as 70 percent of his day on administration. He is not only his own boss, he is his own accountant, sales director, marketing manager and shipping clerk. That leaves little time to enjoy the hobby he loves.
“There have been many times when I have had oatmeal for dinner and Grey Goose for dessert”
AnnaBelle LaRoque
All of our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone.
Jean de la Bruyere
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!
Shakespeare
Henry V, 1598
Always a good read to start another Monday as we Stand like greyhounds in the slips…
We shall not play the charlatan, and we will declare frankly that nothing is clear in this world. Only fools and charlatans know and understand everything.
Anton Chekhov
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