These days, with 4G speeds and a sachet of gadgets including chargers and BlueTooth keyboards, I’ve been able to set up shop in the car at a traffic light when necessary. So, why do so many firms persist on requiring their staff in chairs at desks onsite? Is it so important to the perception of C-level executives to see their Plebeian forces spread across a cubemunity at headquarters? Or don’t these higher-level folks have the capacity to understand the reality of better productivity that comes from giving your employees a little flexibility in their jobs?

First off, what spurred this little discussion (you say diatribe, I say discussion) was the adult and enlightened comment from one of my clients that they didn’t need me in the office EVER, as long as I met deadlines and got my work done. This commentary was further spurred when a friend in Boston told me that his company had informed all salaried employees that there were no ‘agreed-upon’ hours during the work day. And that anyone who was hired as a salaried employee would have to work nights and weekends as part of their contract with the company.

Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but aren’t there employment and slave-labor laws in place to prevent attitudes and actions like this? And is the economy so bad that managers now feel they can ask more of employees without adding any compensation or even comp time?

Don’t get me started on the very real situation of some Massachusetts state jobs where employees have been forced to take successive pay CUTS the past few years because the union employees they work beside would not forgo their agreed-upon raises.

Ultimately, I wonder when we decided that work is all life is about. While I might not get Donut Tuesday at the office or the four paid holidays a year, I also don’t have calluses where the shackles have worn away my skin and my will to the point that all I am is a ‘resource’ that the company depends on to make money.

A few questions before I leave you. And heaven forbid you’re reading this at work…

Are you a free agent? Or are you working for the man? Can you run an errand during the day without having to work extra hours to make up the ‘lost’ productivity? Wouldn’t you rather we were like Europe and took a full month off a couple times a year to spend with family and friends? How do you think your outlook on life would be affected if we had a more open system?

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Post tags: freelance, internet, legacy, off-site, remote, technology

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Here’s my week in a nutshell – add to it my coverage of Greener Gadgets in NYC on Friday – and you’ll understand why I’ve been looking so harried.

Hope to see you at one or all of these events!

Monday…  Skeptics

Tuesday… BU Career Fair and Networking

Wednesday…

Pechaku Boston 8

Webinar on Social Media for Business

Storytelling at MassArt

Harpoon Brewery Tweet-up ($25)

Thursday

#SMB12 at Ryles Jazz Club

Eat-up at WBUR Boston

Forrester Research Tweet-up

What are you doing this week? Please share in the comments.

Keep reading.

© Jeff Cutler for Jeff Cutler - columns, essays and opinions, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: #smb12, @pistachio, Boston, social media

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Mine’s short, but I refuse to refer to it as an ADD or ADHD situation as I believe those are mythical conditions created by a lazy physician and parent base. We’ll explore that opinion in another column…if I have enough where-with-all to remember.

My contention today is that it’s time to simplify. Everything. As soon as possible. There are certainly external factors forcing my hand in this decision, not the least of which are family illnesses, the cohabitation situation at my mansion and my completely frantic workload.

I take the blame for these items – except the health issues – because I’ve spent the last month working on my first novel. I finished it and have been quietly gloating the past few days. But now it’s time to get to work.

In order of importance, I must…

Write blog entries for the majority of my neglected 14 blogs;

Organize the Grampys.org site so that we can take registrations online and put up fantastic auctions;

Edit the aforementioned novel. I expect it will go through two rounds before I’m even ready to share it with my yet-to-be-named agent*;

Write a feature article for Gatehouse on holiday entertainment gift options – CDs, DVDs, and other gifts;

Finish my meeting schedule for vendor interactions while at CES in January;

Get fitted for a suit for sitboaf’s wedding;

Shop for holiday gifts – Channukah and Christmas;

Find and gobble some pumpkin pie (as nobody thought to bring any to Thanksgiving.

If you have suggestions for any of these tasks, *or are an agent looking for a literary novel – the fictional memoir of a boy whose life was shaped by the influence of his seven sisters, please contact me in the comments here.

If you’re an editor still looking for a reporter on the floor of CES in Las Vegas in January, let’s talk. My dance card is pretty full now, but I might be able to assist you before or after the event with research I’ve already completed or planned meetings.

Talk to you all soon. Head down now, gotta work.

Keep reading!

ILLUSTRATING my complete lack of attention span…the main reason I wrote this was because I have just been looking at the plethora of bookmarks and links to other sites in each of my browsers. I’m headed to clean those up – BEFORE ANY OF THE OTHER TASKS. Wow. Talk about ADD – or don’t!

© Jeff Cutler for Jeff Cutler - columns, essays and opinions, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: #ces09, Jeff Cutler, journalism, nanowrimo, reporter, SPJ

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I can’t put into words – maybe because I’ve used so many in the past three weeks – how great this feels and how energizing this task has been.

Thanks for your support and I welcome anyone to tackle this challenge next year.

Now I’m off to put some content – not the novel, just content that’s been sitting in the back of my mind – onto the 14 blogs I had chugging alone happily until the novel took over my fingers.

Keep reading!

© Jeff Cutler for Jeff Cutler - columns, essays and opinions, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Fiction, Jeff Cutler, memoir, nanowrimo, novel, seven sisters

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The exercise was part of the NaNoWriMo event coming up in less than 15 days. That’s right, National Novel-writing Month is November.

Part of my anxiety – aside from the actual word-count issue – is topic. I’m a font of silly ideas, smart commentary and unique introspective conversation starters. But that’s where it ends.

The stuff I usually write are concise and powerful 600-775 word diatribes. How can I hope to create characters, plot, description and wild action in chunks of 650 words? Further, how will I paste the whole thing together well enough to entice a major agent or publisher to take a flyer on my project?

It can’t be that hard, can it?

I mean, at every Tweet-up, cocktail party, family gathering and trip to the dentist, people bludgeon me with their ideas for books once they learn that I’m a professional writer.

Sure, I get paid to write and have done so since the days of green screens and mimeograph machines. But that doesn’t mean I’m a modern-day literary Midas.

Just look back over this rant and count the number of times I’ve used a hyphenated descriptor. That’s amateur hour, but you must concede me the errors in style as I’m trying to pound out the characters.

Nimble fingers are necessary. Just like a toy boat will tangle your tongue, you should try writing alliteration always. Or don’t.

How many words is that? 900? Not even?

C’mon. I’m going to have to do twice this amount AND make it tell a story. I think what I need is some acid. Or at least a lucid dream.

Thank god it’s Friday and I won’t have to think about this heinous challenge until Monday when I’ll be limbering up my fingers again.

What?

NaNoWriMo requires you to write EVERY day of the week? That means my trip to NYC mid-month will include some frantic banging of the keys.

And TurkeyDay will make me look like Mike Felger in a previous life. Anti-social wanker with his laptop at every family event. But it’s for the greater good.

And whatever I end up with next month better be good. And it better be greater than this collection of words.

Every day.

All month long.

Until I reach 50,000 words.

Yikes.

Keep reading…I’ll keep typing.

*Leave your thoughts on NaNoWriMo in the comments. And let me know if you’d like me to dump my daily words right here on the blog. It will give you a chance to see the novel as it travels along a path from concept to abysmal reality.

© Jeff Cutler for Jeff Cutler - columns, essays and opinions, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Felger, Fiction, Jeff Cutler, nanowrimo, november, procrastinate, sham, writing contest

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