Tag Archives: jobs

Hack Your Job

It was prob­a­bly three years ago when my friend Roz Duffy intro­duced me to the phrase “hack your job.” We were both talk­ing about what we’d do dif­fer­ent­ly at work and how we might reimag­ine what we did every day for eight hours plus. When Roz said “hack your job,” I did­n’t even know what she meant. I felt like that was some­thing bet­ter left for the folks who built the web­sites that I pop­u­lat­ed with copy. (I copy-ulated!)

She urged me to think dif­fer­ent­ly about work. In fact, she sug­gest­ed that I pur­sue every oppor­tu­ni­ty to make my job my dream job. I explained that I’d tried and done and exe­cut­ed any num­ber of things to make my job chal­leng­ing, includ­ing run­ning with a head full of steam into the estab­lished order, only to bounce back. She was­n’t accept­ing excus­es. I kept moan­ing about “burn out” and I start­ed to see what she meant. I need­ed to look at my job with fresh eyes. If I want­ed to remain employed — and you can bet I did — then it would behoove me to real­ly focus on mak­ing my job as cool as I imag­ined it could be.

It’s great advice to any­one look­ing to real­ize their pro­found res­o­lu­tions going into 2012. One of the things I’ve been able to think about this week are my 2012 goals and how I hope to achieve them. Part of that is rethink­ing the way I approach my job, the way I inter­act with my col­leagues and the way I go about exe­cut­ing my plans. The dev­il may be in the details, but you need to think big so those details don’t seem menial. If you find your­self “check­ing the box,” then maybe it’s time to think about hack­ing your job.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Hack Your Job”

Whither Original Geek Jobs?

When I was grow­ing up, I always dreamt of work­ing at a record store. Whether I was in Kutz­town, NYC or Philly, I’d always drop off an appli­ca­tion and say a prayer for a few hours a week at a cool shop, most­ly to sub­si­dize my record habit.

Now those gigs, along with sim­i­lar ones at book and movie rental shops, are dis­ap­pear­ing. What’s a geeky kid to do for those jobs we take on sum­mer break, or those we take after, say, get­ting out of grad school?

Sure, you can always sign on at a temp staffing firm, but where’s the fun in that? I know plen­ty of peo­ple who’d soon­er take a job that paid less at a cool shop. What those gigs don’t have in pay, they make up in pres­tige. How can one do under­em­ploy­ment in style these days?