Tag Archives: work

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”

Calling All Word Nerds

Yes­ter­day I start­ed my new job as Com­cast’s chief blog­ger. Now I’ve had some fun with social media so far in my career and have had a real­ly great time get­ting peo­ple excit­ed about bring­ing the A’s back to Philadel­phia, but I have very lit­tle in the way of what you may call deep back­ground on social media practices.

My take: I feel like I have the trick­i­est part–writing–down cold. I have a sol­id under­stand­ing of what sto­ries are best told through text and which are bet­ter explained by video, thanks to my tenure at comcast.net. I know that peo­ple want reg­u­lar con­tent and they have expec­ta­tions around how it’s deliv­ered. That’s understood.

What I have ques­tions about are best prac­tices in the social web. If you can rec­om­mend read­ing either on- or offline, I’d appre­ci­ate it. Leave a note in the com­ments or @ me on Twit­ter. If you have favorite blogs that deal specif­i­cal­ly in this, feel free to share those as well. My Google read­er feels a lit­tle emp­ty after I 86’d oh so many music blogs.

Don’t think I’m not doing some heavy lift­ing myself. I’m find­ing Kristi­na Halvor­son­’s work and the Brain Traf­fic blog a very use­ful font of info and links. I’ve also sub­scribed to sev­er­al rec­om­mend­ed com­pa­ny blogs, rang­ing from South­west Air­lines to Google’s Offi­cial blog. Love how they read!

My First Day as Chief Blogger

Check out the view from my new office!

Today was hec­tic, but real­ly cool. Had some neat meet­ings. Was a lot like my first day at Com­cast: a lit­tle con­fu­sion and a ton of excite­ment. Met more peo­ple today than I have in three years at the com­pa­ny and that’s great!

Very excit­ed to see where my new role takes me. This office is just the first step.