From Here to Autonomy

Where did all my hobbies go?

My business partner, Lisa, passed along a questionnaire from a blogger who will be writing about the working habits of female entrepreneurs. Both Lisa and my other partner, Elisa, had responded; I tried not to read their answers as I approached the questions, but I couldn't help but notice that our answers were eerily similar--with the exception that, as a parent, Lisa spends about 1/3 of her time parenting. Elisa and I try to eak in workouts, books/TV and the occasional cooked meal when we're not working or sleeping.

What amazed me about all of our responses:

--Our hours worked: We tend to put in similar amounts of hours, getting up early to address email, getting in a full work day, and jumping back on our computers to address email/reading after our dinners and activities with friends/spouses/children.

--Our time on email: It's an ever-present thing, even when we're traveling or "offline".

--Our dwindling hobbies: Elisa is a theater buff, and Lisa used to ski a ton. I used to go to yoga class religiously and write creatively. These pursuits were not in our answers, or they were mentioned as rare activities squeezed in while on vacation, or with the words "try to" preceding them, as in, "I TRY to catch a show once a month."

As I was typing my responses to these questions about what I did outside of work--working on a Saturday morning, as I tend to knock out reading I didn't get to during the week--I looked over at my husband, Jesse, embarrassed.

"Jeezus hun! I don't have hobbies anymore."

"You think?" he said, with no small amount of sarcasm.

I love to read profiles of other entrepreneurs, with the voraciousness many have while reading People, In-Style, or some other publication detailing the lives of the rich and famous. I love to hear how they spend their time, down to their commute routines. There's a column in Inc Magazine that showcases a different entrepreneur every month, detailing his/her typical work day. And I marvel at those who do such things as cycle religiously for two hours before sunrise, or who are competitive flamenco dancers on the side. How do they do it and run a business? I wonder.  

I think back to early in my career in New York City, when I worked at several media conglomerates and made it a goal of mine to hit all of the new plays, films, and hot spots I could afford that were listed in Time Out NY magazine. Going through old boxes this past month as I prepared for a move, I found an old collection of Playbills and matchbooks--proof that, once, I did stuff that was not work-related. I found old manuscripts and magazine clips and was amazed at the consecutive hours of creative time it must have taken to write it all. Though I wanted to pare down all the random detritus I'd collected over the years, I couldn't get myself to throw this stuff away.

Jesse and I stole away for a bagel this morning, and I bragged to him that every Saturday, back when I lived in New York more than 10 years ago, I used to walk to a local bagel shop, order one with one of three of my favorite shmear flavors, then stop over at the coffee shop across the street to read The New Yorker or a book I was reading with my book club. I didn't have a mobile phone or a laptop; it was a purely analog pursuit. And I'd spend hours there, enough to get my thoughts swirling. I'd go home and write up a storm.

I used to regularly host friends for dinner, planning the menu days before and often prepping food most of a Saturday afternoon. Or I'd endeavor to bake something I'd never made before.

I used to take classes on such things as fiction writing, winetasting, boxing, or improvisational acting, and attend book readings after work.

I feel slightly wistful, but hardly regretful, of the changes; I'm more mindful of them. On the other side of the coin, 10 years ago I yearned for more adventure out of my work, and to do more than read manuscripts and edit articles eight hours a day. I wished I could travel more. I wished that I could work for myself and maybe even support a family with my work. I wished that the time I did have wasn't spent wishing for more.

I may have no hobbies, but in that last respect the grass is most certainly greener today.

PowerPoint Confessions #1: A Week in the Life of an Entrepreneur

PowerPoint Confessions, Vol 1: A Week in an Entrepreneur's Life

View more documents from JoryDJ.

UPDATE: Major disappointment with SlideShare. All the notations I've put in the deck, which are meant to give you some insights into how I plan my week, are not viewable. Will see if I can get some help from SS, or this first installment of PowerPoint Confessions is a bit of a fail.

Back in November I was in DC, visiting New Media Strategies and chatting with their Director of Engagement Leslie Bradshaw, who turned me onto a cool idea--something she had been doing on her own blog--PowerPoint posts.

I have a love-hate relationship with PowerPoint. On the one hand, I hate when people over-rely on it to relay a message. However I love it as a stimulator of thought. Visuals can often make a point more powerfully than words. For instance: I can tell advertisers about the power of the BlogHer community, or I can show them pictures of women bonding at the conference, their Tweets and comments upon engaging with a brand, and a chart of the increase in brand awareness that ensued. These are more powerful than just taking my word for it.

I speak a lot to marketers, media professionals, and reporters who want to better grok the social media space. At some point this year it occurred to me that the creativity I once reserved for my previous blog Pause was now going into PowerPoint slides describing trends on the Internet. What if I brought these two worlds together, and created visual posts detailing anything from media analysis to the mundanities of the workday?

I was sold on the PowerPoint Concept; I just needed topics. Tresha gave me one in my comments section:

a simple request: a blogpost that offers your schedule. there's no typical schedule but what's a day in the life of Jory look like 5 am - 1 am? 4am to midnight. or 11pm? what? how you a lot time each hour? my why behind that? I think it's just a supportive hug to one another. We are all getting much done and have different demands. 

Initially I thought, who really cares about when I eat breakfast, or if I even bother to eat breakfast? But then I thought of what I tend to ask entrepreneurs I meet: Not "How did you grow your business?" but "What time do you wake up?" "When do you go to bed?" "Do you make dinner?" "Who tucks the kids in?" To me, addressing the everyday and learning how to make it work is the key to entrepreneurial longevity.

So here, my first installment in PowerPoint Confessions, with a nod to both Tresha and Leslie, a week in my life--the first installment of PowerPoint Confessions. It truly is confessional, because I offer up the often nonsensical way I plan things in Outlook (nonsensical to others, not to me). No laughing, please.

Creatvity On-Demand: Is this possible?

In my efforts to get more creativity out of my work and not wait until the weekend for divine inspiration, I've been capturing ideas for the blog and interesting pieces to read as I find them and store them for when I can fully digest and interpret them later.

This is meant to save me from what often happens when I am inspired at an inopportune time and run down a rabbit hole with an idea, blowing off work I need to do and disorienting myself for the remainder of the day.

So how is it going? OK. Not great. Just OK. I've noticed that when I go back to these pieces that inspired me, I have lost the thread of thought on which I wanted to elaborate or the piece just doesn't interest me like it did. Sometimes I'll scribble some thoughts down to help trigger me later. For instance, in my inspiration file I see terms that in some cases only I understand: "MPT, Chris Rock, legacy building, Tweet--sleep is for the week." I wish myself luck piecing it together. (By the way, these terms will be incorporated into a post coming soon; they actually mean something to me.)

Despite the fact that creative geniuses like Twyla Tharp are successful with programming periods of creativity into their day, and happiness is strongly linked to having outlets for creativity (this was cemented for me when I took this quiz),  I find that managing the flow of creativity is often pretty difficult. It's tough to be creative on demand.

This year I hosted a sponsored video show called TheJuice, in which I got to speak to experts about all aspects of life balance. My partners thought it would be right up my alley, possibly because of my obsession with studying, if not achieving, balance. One of the experts, Jennifer Lee, of Artizen Coaching is an expert in inspiring creativity. She works with entrepreneurs who rely heavily on it to do their jobs. She provided some great insights for bloggers, who have to pull rabbits out of their hats regularly. Still, I wonder, even after blogging all this time, how do some people have the ability to always be in the flow of creation?

A friend of mine, a documentary filmmaker, told me once that creativity is like running. The first few times you go out, you feel awful, like you are out of shape and incapable of enjoying the process, but through ongoing practice you eventually get your footing and even start thriving on running. It worked for me that way when I started blogging back in '04--I stumbled to find concepts, and eventually had to tear myself away from my laptop I was so infused with ideas and conversations in my head. I also had the luxury of hours to spend on my writing, during which I could fidget, fart, check email, and wait for words to come to me naturally.

Few entrepreneurs have this luxury, even those who write books as a big part of their living. I'm always amazed by pals who are writing books and running a business. How do you segment your day to get the most out of both endeavors?

I've had to settle for a hybrid form of creativity--proposals and presentations. This requires summoning ideas that meet a set of criteria, as client needs are not always what I'm moved to impart, but I can choose how to impart them. I never thought of this sort of thing as creative until I witnessed how others did them poorly. You know who I'm talking about, the person who reads off power point bullets pulled from the sales deck, or proposals that are so disjointed you wonder how a client could put the pieces together? It's a new pride that I have in my creative abilities, even if I'm not writing the great American novel that I am helping people connect the dots. I'll take this form of creativity ... for now.

Other mini refuge periods: Flights, and a blogreading period I've inserted into my mornings. Yes folks, I'm getting up earlier these days. Something I never thought possible. I'm still training my body to fall asleep earlier so I'm not exactly bursting with energy, but I'm more satisfied with my day by carving out this time.

Are People Who Sleep Less More Successful?

Early in my working life in New York City I read a feature story, I think it was in the Times Business section, about the sleeping habits of top-performing media executives. The common thread among all of them: They slept no more than 5 hours a night. Most slept less. This tendency to not sleep was positioned in this article as a competitive edge, even a requirement to being successful.

I remember feeling discouraged. I had been slogging it out at magazines and was looking for some way to distinguish myself, but I wasn't an early riser. As a teenager I often slept until 10 or 11 in the morning. An early-bird class I had one semester nearly did me in. In college, I dropped the one class I had that began before 10.  I was fortunate to work in an industry where people ambled in between 9 and 10am. I never minded working late.

But the luminaries in this article--many of whom I forget now, interestingly, though I do recall book publisher Judith Regan--often worked long hours. A typical routine: Wake up at 4am; jump on the treadmill (these folks had the money and the space in their Manhattan apartments to have exercise equipment in their homes, something I aspired to have); shower and get dressed; read all of the dailies; and still manage to get into the office before everyone else.

For a while I tried to wake up early--around 6am--to fit in a workout before going to the office, but the effort was short-lived. My body much preferred working out in the evening and the scramble to and from the gym took too much time. I loved to read, but I could never get through all of my material on a subway ride. I figured I was just too inefficient and lazy.

Years later I still wonder how it's possible to hold to this kind of schedule. I work longer days now, but I can't function if I can't sleep at least 6 hours (insomnia notwithstanding). If I have to get up early for a meeting, or to catch a plane, I'll get up; I have to. But it's been only recently that I've accepted that all things being equal, I prefer to sleep in.

My evolving definition of Working Smart

2009 was the year of getting organized. Sort of. I spent the latter half of my holiday vacation last year training myself to work differently. Don't get me wrong, I've managed to do things somewhat right over the past 16 years of my working life, but more than ever in my career I felt like I needed a working makeover--a new framework for productivity.

If you'd sat down with any of my past bosses (including myself, as I've had numerous stints of self-employment), all of them could say I was organized. They may not have praised my communication style, or how I presented, or my problem-solving skills, but dang-it I was ORGANIZED. But as an entrepreneur I've found that being organized is just the ticket to admission into the stadium. No one gets a front-row seat, or to even perform on-stage, unless she's strategically organized.

There's been a quantum shift in the type of work that I do. I've always had busy work, information gathering, creative work, and what I call "social time", when I must actually interface with people, whether on the phone or in-person, what Tony Bacigalupo refers to (quoting the uber-smart start-up supporter Paul Graham) as "Management Time". But in the past few years I've had much less control over when I can schedule these types of work. I attribute this shift to three circumstances: