[CLICK THE IMAGE TO COMPLETELY BLOW YOUR MIND]
I worked with a girl who sent an email to an office of almost two-hundred people about sneaking out early to go shopping with a friend. Any time I hear of someone losing a job, I always ask if it was a Homicide or a Suicide. Career Limiting Manoeuvres (CLMs) cuts somewhere in between. Whether you're blowing your nose in your food on film or putting fairy photos of yourself on Facbook after telling the boss you're sick, Darwin has a list for you.
I recently read that four out of five recruiters run web search to screen job applicants. Same goes for college recruiters. Same goes for dating. Oops. Resume Bear did a dead simple search for different CLMs and here is an excerpt (the rest are found here, enjoy).
Here are a few things you needs to know: 
And if worst comes to worst, be creative about it. When New England Patriots cheerleader Caitlin Davis was fired for a facebook photo of her drawing dongs and swastikas all over a drunk guy at a party, her legal defense became: "the kid in the picture was a 'drunk guy who passed out and was written on,' as his costume for the night."
A while ago I wrote an article about my friend Jan and his too-late-to-the-race Tauntaun Sleeping Bag idea that someone else produced before him. Broke his heart.
I pointed out that he'd have to take his dreams behind the shed with the rifle and followed with an screed about getting over personal failure, picking yourself up, dusting yourself off, and tips to get back in the game. Today I received an email with the above t-shirt image and I think you could hear my heart actually break through my shirt.
We live in a distracting world, and making that amazing gadget, story, or totally original dick shirt idea you had into a reality is only as likely as your attention span will allow. We are overloaded with information and demands on our time, and the little things are increasingly left behind. Being too busy or too lazy explains away the death of my deflated dick shirt ambitions, so we're getting off that and talking about rage.
There are lots of great reasons to blow a fuse, and so many great places you really shouldn't do it (at work, in front of the family, during court). You don't have to be a parent to watch someone lose their cool in a theatrical way and equate them to little children who don't have emotional maturity. Every doctor in the world will tell you regular exercise increases your ability to de-stress. Well it's too late now. Forget exercise, here's the one thing you can do in the moment to save yourself filling out all those lengthy unemployment insurance or divorce papers: STOP. Immediately.
Whatever it is you think you're going to say or do, you're wrong. Reacting while you're angry is like handing your car keys to a monkey. Anger shuts down the reasoning part of the brain, and misdirected anger is going to turn a pet peeve or misunderstanding into a full-on verbal skirmish. You've seen it before. Before you say anything, count to three, refocus your thought, walk away, whatever it takes. The second you realize you're getting dragged into an argument you have to stop and check your head. Keep your voice down and start over. Oh, and while you're at it, take a breath. Sounds dumb, but you don't breath enough. Your body runs on oxygen, but when was the last time you just took a really deep breath and exhaled slowly. You'll feel your whole body relax. I was told you should mouth the word "relax" as you exhale, which is great for buying yourself some time to think while those around you look at you like a psychopath.
Anger is the death of intelligence, and multi-tasking might be evil, but if you can learn to control one or the other, even to a small degree, you'll be better off.
P.S. Multi-tasking is the devil. Switching gears from one assignment to the next and back again is inefficient. Your brain is only so elastic, and can only refocus so fast, or so well. The complication of multi-tasking leads to stress, and stress leads to errors. You'll also find it leads to a whirling dirvish of half-completed tasks and pulsing temples. You've been warned.
I've written before about this kind of thing before. When I first saw this, I was told it was a South African Gaviscon ad written by someone who's first language wasn't english. Unless the entire agency was populated by people who's first language wasn't english, and unless the tagline is South African slang for "did their duty to the best of their ability" or something, or unless the whole sentence is a series of unfortunate typos, then I just don't know what to say. I think this was done on purpose, and is either the best or worst copywriting ever, depending on your point of view.
Be warned, the boundaries between work and pleasure can blur for freelancers. What begins as a laziness in the pre-frontal lobe quickly spreads to the extremities. Pretty soon you're calling soap operas "your stories" and your brain has become damaged.First things first, the brain is an idiot. How many incredible and noteworthy thoughts have come and gone because I mistakenly thought I would remember them later? How many times have I wandered grocery stores or worse, just driven right past it like I'm suffering from dimensia? I probably know the answer and can't remember. Memory can't be trusted. If you need to remember something, write it down.
The brain is unorganized. As I said in a previous post, the simplest organizational trick in the world is to make a physical list of everything you need to get done. Seeing it makes it real. Every time you cross an item off that list, it psychologically energizes you and gives you the energy to tackle the next task. Try it, I think you'll agree.
Once you have your ability to remember things, give it something to remember. Try setting a routine or schedule. Mondays are client feedback. Wednesdays are all about acounting and invoices. Fridays are new business development days. Sounds boring, but you did it back in the real world, and it's a soundtrack for discipline. AND it's the one thing that helps you keep your work week from flowing into and devouring your weekend unnecessarily.
The brain is fickle. In the real world, everyone is shoehorned into a remorseless nine to five existence. But in the magical land of freelance and rainbows, I've found my best hours are around five or six in the morning, and I generally come unglued around three in the afternoon. Learn your rythym.
IM, MSN, Facebook and Twitter are all time vampires. Drop your guard for a second and the internet will destroy both lobes of your brain, so keep it in check. Give yourself line breaks, set a time, and stick to it. Don't get caught up no matter how interesting the outside world might seem. Resist temptation.
What do I do? I do my best to do everything I've mentioned. I also take showers, and I work in clothes instead of pyjamas. I only work in my office. I use boring dignity to keep my head up, even though the cool thing is I don't have to. There will be more posts along this thread. I hope you'll save room. Nom nom nom.
[author note: if you google image search brain damage, you'll find Amy Winehouse on every page]
lot of people I talk to are in dark places right now. They see excess office furniture and the people who used it carted out on dollies and they panic. Belt tightening can be inevitable. Even the parades of former co-workers dead-man-walking out the front door seems understandable to a degree.
Hands down the most common concern I hear from people contemplating the jump to freelance work or even just sideline freelance work is how to make contacts. Networking is creepy and makes stalkers of us all. Yesterday I heard an analogy that changed the way I think about networking for business contacts. It was a dating analogy, which blew my mind. Dating is all about prettying yourself up and making as many impressions if you can till someone gives you the time of day. It's so obvious.
Be a good listener
The dating scene seems a little quiet out there, doesn't it? Before the economopocalypse, everyone was shouting from every direction and a dollar spent on advertising was worth a dollar. It's no breaking news that many companies have shrunk or collapsed their marketing budgets lately, or as I now look at it, every other guy at the party voluntarily contracted larengitus. It's an unusal opportunity to shove that better looking guy off his feet and steal market share while your competition sits mute and forgotten. I'd say a dollar is just plain worth more when it doesn't have to work as hard.
You can't be afraid to be a hustler
I'm not proud of this next part, but it's only because the looks bad when using the dating analogy. If your client base shrinks by the numbers due to their own internal budgeting, you don't kick them to the curb; you cheat on them. Same analogy about marketing dollars, now is a great time to mad hustle for more clients. And not just regular clients. Consider married clients too. Some clients might get turned on by the aggressive swagger of an upstart leveraging against their AOR's more conservative, respectful stance.
Grow the relationship organically
All that furniture and deadwood wasn't bringing in clients; self-promotion and sales efforts do. A plant won't grow if the leaves all shrink. It needs to grow new leaves. The leaves in this horticultral analogy are one-off projects to help keep client money flowing. Now is the time to propose brave new areas of branding and promoting businesses, now that social media has removed some of the financial hurdles of traditional media. Presenting creative strategies and aligning partners on a project basis, like bringing a squirrel out of a bush with a peanut is what will grow those leaves.
Try, try again
When you're trying to woo someone and they turn you down flat, you don't crawl back in your car and leave, you step up and try someone else. I always tell the story clubbing with an old friend; it was late and everyone wanted to go but before he'd leave he ran out and hit on about fourteen women, struck out fourteen times, and we were off. He believed in the numbers game, and so should you.
On the surface of it, everything I've said follows the rules of common sense, but I believe people need to hear it some times. Getting noticed is the first step to getting laid. I mean, paid.
Rhett Dashwood may not have the best grasp on what to do with his free time, but he inspired me, so there. Rhett Dashwood is an Australian creative director who used his free time between projects to study Google Maps, trolling for land-formations and buildings that resemble letter forms hoping to recreate the alphabet.
When I first saw Bob Burnquist and Ty Evans's "Feel the Bubbles" video, I wanted to blog about it immediately. Aero's last TV campaign featured the two potted office plants (read: employees) talking about letting bubbles melt on your tongue in a way guys wouldn't understand. JWT in the UK decided enough was enough and created something beautiful and fun to reposition the brand. Here's the commerical.
You may have heard a woman innocently talking about the pain of wearing a snuggli, but to a lot of mothers, they heard a condescending "you're a stupid and insecure fashion victim for wanting to carry your baby" and it was all downhill from there.
Whether you're stealing your inspiration, or just being neglectful of people's feelings, people will always find a way to complain about your work. The rule of thumb used to be for everyone one person who boycotts your product, there are a hundred who wouldn't complain out loud, but would sabotage your brand to friends, and a thousand behind them who wouldn't complain at all. They'd just quietly stop using your brand.
I did work for a bedding company that enjoyed provactive headlines and the backlash they inspired. "The Boss is on Prozac Sale" headline was written thinking the only people who could complain were on Prozac so they wouldn't be interested in complaining. The complaints came from the parents of children on Prozac. My personal feeling is you can't please everyone all the time, so you have to do what feels right and handle any flack with dignity later.
The protest signage was created by Stephanie Syjuco.
Webster's defines Strategy as "a careful plan or method; the art of devising or employing plans toward a goal". Partners are defined as "one associated with another especially in an action".
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