The Daily Procrastinator

In my life, it seems like Saturday is all business — errands and responsibilities — but Sunday is the day for fun. That’s the day I head out for a hike or day trip to the beach, activities made easier by packing a picnic lunch.

I have a local gourmet grocery store that makes fantastic sandwiches, but they don’t open until 9:00, and we’re often on the road by then. This leaves my Sunday lunch in the hands of the Safeway deli.

Now, I have to say that Safeway has some really great selections at their deli. A particular favorite is the Hollywood Cobb. It has grilled chicken, bacon (hey, nobody said it was healthy) and blue cheese crumbles.

When you go to Safeway, there is a touch-screen ordering system. You pick the sandwich that you like, choose your size, customize your condiments and pay with a swipe of the credit card. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. So far, in five attempts, they’ve only gotten the order right one time.

Now, keep in mind the parameters that we’re working with here. It’s usually 8:30 AM. Mine is the only sandwich being made. I ask for only one customization: no vinaigrette, because it makes the roll soggy by lunchtime. It’s very simple. Yet I’ve had it made with extra vinaigrette, no blue cheese (twice!) and no lettuce/tomato. I can understand forgetting a single ingredient during a hectic lunch rush, but not in the early morning. The worst part is that I never know it until hours have passed and I’m miles away.

The errors blow my mind. After all, the sandwich info pops out on a little slip of paper. You’re not subject to poor handwriting or a verbal miscommunication. I know exactly what I ask for. So I’ve learned my lesson (or so I thought). Today, when I picked up my completed sandwich, I compared their little slip of paper with what I input on the screen. Ah, a perfect match. I thought that all of the problems had been resolved.

But this sandwich took the cake. Today I sat down for lunch and opened the sandwich to discover, to my horror, that instead of grilled chicken breast with blue cheese, I had deli turkey with avocado, half a quart of mayo and bacon that appeared to be uncooked. I fail to understand how this can happen. One missing ingredient? Weird, but maybe understandable. An entirely different sandwich? Mind-blowing.

So short of finding a new sandwich shop that’s open before 9:00 AM, I have to resort to the old-fashioned method of leaning over the counter and scrutinizing their every move. Because as this experience has taught me, sometimes even the best technology ideas can’t trump plain old human contact.

Of course, there’s a business parallel in this story. So often we rely on technology to do our communicating: email, IM, text. When was the last time we picked up the phone? Perhaps more importantly, when was the last time you saw that contact in person?

The fact is that sometimes all of the whiz-bang communication tools that we have at our disposal can’t trump a face-to-face meeting. I’m as guilty as everyone else, and possibly even more so. I’m a writer. I do my best communicating in writing. I like to be able to look back and have a record of the conversation for my project file. But when I meet someone for coffee, I get all of that and more. I get to see the nuance of the project and the client. I get to hear about challenges that they face, challenges that I can sometimes help them to address.

Of course, it’s easy to say that I’m too busy to do it. It’s easy to fire off an email and wait for a reply. But sometimes, there’s just no replacement for the human touch.

Hi, I’m TallGirl, and I’m a workaholic.

(You’re supposed to say, “Hi, TallGirl!” in unison. Thank you.)

I wasn’t always this way. There was a time when I was out the door at 5:00, thank you very much. I can remember it, and yet I have a hard time believing it.

Yet it makes sense. I didn’t have a work-issued laptop to take home with me. I didn’t have Wi-Fi in my house. I didn’t have an iPhone that automatically delivered my email to the left pocket of my jeans. I didn’t work for myself, or write for a blog, or volunteer my time to write the annual report for a nonprofit, or… well, you get the idea.

Still working after 10 PM? Oh, happiness!

It was this past week when I realized that I needed a support group — not that I had the time to go out and meet with them. I didn’t have a single day where I wasn’t scheduled to the hilt during business hours, with conference calls being conducted in the car on the way to on-site client meetings. As a result, there was no time to actually get work done, and I worked until at least 11 PM each night of the week and, barring two pre-scheduled commitments, the entire weekend. When did this happen to me? When did I decide that life was not complete without my MacBook in tow?

I probably should have realized that the balance of power was shifting in favor of workaholic when I moved four years ago. I had already set up my DirecTV and TiVo, but due to some sort of major snafu with the local provider, my DSL order was delayed and then cancelled without my knowledge or consent. I lost my mind. No amount of Food Network or Discovery Channel was going to console me. I needed my Internet and needed it immediately. By the time I finally got some connectivity, I realized that I had no time for my TV. Dozens of hours of shows backed up, unwatched, before I finally cancelled my service.

At first, it was liberating. I’d been feeling a little bit oppressed by my “to-watch” list, and it was great to not have the pressure. Even now, I don’t really miss it. Anything I want to watch can be found online. Just another reason for me to be attached to my MacBook.

And so, as I wonder what happened to my weekend, I have nothing but myself to blame. Combine ubiquitous connectivity with an inability to say no, and you find yourself where I am, searching for an online support group for people who can’t let go of their work.

Now, do we have coffee and donuts at this meeting?

Back when I was in college, everyone was heralding the end of paper. Offices would become paperless. Newspapers would be published exclusively online. Books would become a thing of the past. It all sounded so bright, shiny and futuristic, like an exhibit in Tomorrowland.

Years have passed, and where are we? I don’t know anyone whose office isn’t overwhelmed by paper. Barring the recent news from the Christian Science Monitor, most newspapers continue to sustain a printed edition. Amazon’s Kindle is a cool gadget, but hasn’t yet turned the book market upside down. And I, perhaps more than ever, remain in love with paper.

Sure, I tried to go paperless. I had all the best intentions. I did all of my writing and editing on-screen. I was an early adopter of the Palm Pilot. I did most of my news gathering and even some recreational reading online. But then I started to realize something interesting. Even though I do very well with thinking through rewrites and edits on the computer screen, I don’t catch nearly as many typos and formatting errors as I do when I work with a red pen and a printout. While I loved my Palm, and later my gorgeous metallic red Handspring Visor Edge, I began to rely more heavily on a Day-Timer as the PDA batteries became increasingly unreliable. I still do most of my news reading online, but for me there’s nothing quite like holding a book in my hands and feeling the texture of the pages against my fingers.

In 2000 and 2001, I worked for a dotcom. Everything we did was online content, and when the company inevitably burned itself out, an entire year’s worth of work was lost. Sure, I had a handful of printouts of web pages, but I realized that, for the most part, I had absolutely nothing to show for all of the long hours and creativity of that year. This, more than anything, made me appreciate the permanence of paper even more.

I have gone to a bookstore and chosen one book over another for the feel of the paper in my hand. I have spent hours gazing longingly at beautiful Moleskine notebooks which I always swear will house my deepest insights, yet end up filled with phone numbers and notes from product launch meetings. I have hard-bound copies of dictionaries and medical references lining my desk, even though the same information available online; in my mind, they are the same, but not equal.

Don’t get me wrong: I adore my old-school black MacBook and couldn’t live without it. I blog. I Twitter. I use Facebook. I conduct endless amounts of research online. I email at all hours of the day and night. But at a fundamental level, I remain deeply committed to paper.

If you were to look at my office now, you’d find little difference between my desk in 1995 and my desk in 2008. You’ll see printouts marked with red ink; a Day-Timer filled with every last bit of important information in my life; notebooks and folders of every size, shape and color (including two that I purchased just this week); and books. Oh so many books. Too many to fit into the bookshelves. I am surrounded by paper, entire forests of knowledge, experience and creativity. And I realize that I couldn’t live any other way.

I found a fantastic speech that discusses the role of television and our collective available time as a society. People often ask me where I find the hours in the day all that I do. The answer is that I don’t watch TV. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as much a fan of Mythbusters as the next person, but it’s a rare week when the television turns on more than twice.

It appears that in the time that we spend watching TV, we could create roughly 2,000 Wikipedia-sized projects. If that’s anywhere even close to true, isn’t it time that we scale back our watching and start doing something? Come to think of it, that’s how I found myself writing here.

So this month, just once, record American Idol on your TiVo, watch it in fast forward mode, and use that extra time to do something useful.

In Silicon Valley, the pace of layoffs seems to be increasing dramatically.  Grab lunch in San Jose or coffee in Sunnyvale, and you’ll notice that all conversation around you will be about layoffs. 

On Monday, I was contacted by three friends or former colleagues letting me know that they just got word of their layoff, and they called to begin networking as they waited for their turn in the HR office.  They wanted to know if I knew of any jobs in finance, engineering or product management.

It wasn’t like this when my layoff announcement came in 2006.  The economy was vastly different, and because it was a site shutdown, there was a sense of camaraderie that comes with standing together on the deck of the sinking ship.  The departures were staggered to avoid overloading HR, and so we watched every two weeks as wave after wave of coworkers drifted off into the workforce, landing at companies around the valley.  ”It’s for the best,” we would say to each other.  ”Look at how well things turned out for so-and-so, getting more money and a better commute.”

But the platitudes aren’t going to work this time around.  When I get the frantic calls, there’s no amount of pep-talking that’s going to comfort these people.  They know that nobody is hiring, and they’re in a blind panic about their ability to pay for their mortgage and health insurance.  

I’ve been doing a lot of research to figure out just what to say to these people.  Time magazine had an article about this last September, and US News ran an article last week.  The consistent themes: empathy and assistance.

So far, I’ve offered editorial review of resumes, in the hope that it will help the person craft something that’s eye-catching and helps them to stand out from the crowd.  I’ve also suggested allowing coworkers to review their resumes as well; human nature indicates that a colleague will be more likely to highlight your accomplishments than you will.  

I’ve also offered them access to my network of contacts.  Being a freelancer, I have contacts at a dozen companies vs. their single-company mentality, so with any luck I’ll be able to match the right employee with the right fit.  I wish I could do more, something that will help these people to sleep at night.

The turmoil in financial markets has left everyone panicked. It’s hard not to look at your IRA statement without freaking out just a bit. Jobs are less secure and freelance work will likely be harder to come by as we dive deeper into 2009. 

The lessons of the financial crisis parallel the lessons learned in managing my freelance business.

1. Diversify. It’s very easy to rely on one or two major clients as your primary sources of income. But the safest option for you and your business is to work with a diverse group of clients, preferably spanning more than one industry in the event that a particular sector is hit hard. I peek at my active client list shows that I have an equal number of agencies and direct clients across three industries. While I prefer to have the opportunity to work with a client directly and see a project from start to finish, It’s immensely helpful to know that my agency partners are out these hustling for business, alleviating some of my burden of selling.

2. Market yourself. Take advantage of the downtime that you find in this slowing economy and use it to revamp your marketing. Try a new logo. Re-evaluate your positioning. Retool your website. Have networking lunches with colleagues. Get out of the house. The more isolated you are, the more worry you’ll feel.

3. Cut back on the caffeine. It’s not helping your anxiety level.

4. Come up with one big, crazy idea. Maybe it’s an end-of-year mailer to clients and prospective clients, showing them how unique and interesting you really are. Maybe it’s a collaborative project with another freelancer, designed to be a portfolio builder for both of you. Don’t underestimate the value of an eye-catching reminder.

5. Think long-term. Freelance work has its ups and downs. Try to remember that it’s part of the natural cycle of business. Don’t get depressed when things are slow, any more than you should be overconfident when things are hot. Like the stock market, things tend to average out and even improve with time.