Time freedom is something I’ve pursued for a long time. Though some people don’t like the sensation of work “hanging over their heads,” I much prefer waking up with a particular thing to accomplish, knowing that I can knock it out after my workout or put in some time before the shower without having to ask permission for deviating from an irrelevant schedule.

I realized in my last endeavor that time freedom without attention freedom ain’t worth a hill of beans.

The assignment – a nightmare – was cutting text from one formatted document and pasting it into a template. In an application that carries with it all sorts of invisible code and byzantine formatting rules. (You know the one.) I could do the work at any time of day, sitting comfortably in my home.

The trouble was, there was no way to manage my attention to minimize the unpleasant parts. I could not, say, stage six paragraphs I needed to write, and then go take a break. Or write paragraphs and tackle clever headers later. Instead, I had to concentrate on one bug or breakdown after another for hours on end.

The whole concept made me reconsider the concept of time freedom and what I use it for … I concluded that I actually wouldn’t have much trouble with a regular schedule – provided there are mental ebbs and flows that are under my control.

What about you?

“If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere” is quite a dare. I never tried New York as an adult. I can’t quite give up on the Bay Area, though.

Queen Anne, Seattle, seemed more a bubble than San Francisco ever did.

Like many people of my generation (“X”), I’ve held a lot of jobs and worked a lot of gigs. The way that various terms are used to describe non-employee work get distorted, in my opinion – usually to the disadvantage of the worker.

How I see it: the words aren’t important; watch out for the terms of engagement.
- Will you be handed independent tasks to complete, or will you be expected to participate in team processes?
- Are you measured in terms of results or activities?
- Do you answer to someone who acts like your boss, or is your contact more like a customer/peer?

Many of us suffer from the dilemma of knowing what we don’t want before we know what we do want. That’s not always a bad guide though. I wish I’d considered this criterion for jobs when I started out:

“Never take a job that requires you to do something you’d never do if you weren’t being paid.”

That leaves a lot of things you might do and not like.

My list:
“I would never sit in a chair for more than 3 or 4 hours a day.”
“I would never sit behind a computer screen for more than a couple of hours a day.”
“I would never choose my associates by what colleges they attended or what their job skills are.”

(The latter, I guess, is why I’ve always liked working with customers rather than on internal projects. Even in a corporate setting – the customers are often diverse, as they come at the very least from different industries.)

Twenty years ago, I heard a motivational speaker say that she thought a purposeful way to live was to pick a problem to work on in that would not be solved in your lifetime.

The social entrepreneurship movement has changed this mindset. Fighting the good fight, David and Goliath-style, against problems like “world hunger” once sounded exciting. Now it sounds defeatist. I most admire the people in the world who are determined to take on the problems they believe can be solved if we work diligently at them.

My personal cause – stopping the killing of savable animals in shelters.

Some resources:
No Kill Advocacy Center
The Shelter Pet Project
Maddie’s Fund

Of note: these leaders are not simply joining existing organizations and institutions. The no-kill movement is a coalition of people within the system, people putting pressure on the system and calling it to account, and ordinary people with no “professional” role.

After bouncing back and forth between nonprofits and for-profits, I am weary of the false divisions between the sectors. A friend of mine, a long-time nonprofit consultant and former director, remarks that traditional NPOs are on their way out, that “social entrepreneurship” is taking over the sector. I get the sense that social entrepreneurship is actually taking over not one but three domains – nonprofits, small business, and individual careers.

Main Street businesses and community-based nonprofits face similar threats as models:

• People have increasing choice about where they give or spend their money – and where and how they work.
• People have increasing access to opportunities outside of their communities.
• People have the means to ask more questions about how things really operate, how the nonprofit is actually managed and whether that “community business” owner is really a pillar of the community.

In terms of careers, younger people have no memory of the social compact that would justify unlimited devotion to corporate masters and loan obligations that take any possible romance out of poverty-level wages still paid at some nonprofit jobs.

I recently worked in the animal welfare industry and still engage in the animal welfare cause. There exists a fluid network of pet shop owners, volunteers, activists, government-run pounds, nonprofit shelters, donors, consumers, and other business owners banding together on the Internet and elsewhere to improve pet’s nutrition, legal rights, quality of life, and cultural status. Job holders, volunteers, and self-employed workers alike float between sectors and roles and jobs – or hold multiple ones at the same time.

My days as a self-sacrificing nonprofiteer are most definitely over …

One of the best things about being the Vice President of the United States has got to be getting to do stuff like getting your picture snapped with Olympic athletes.

One of the most exciting things about being an Olympic athlete has got to be having your picture taken with important people like the Vice President of the United States

One of the most depressing things about most jobs I’ve had was the outsized proportion of time spent in a segregated world, engaging with people similar to me, often in the ways I am least interesting.

being in a situation where the only thing standing between you and the rewards and experiences you desire are shortcomings you recognize and are eager to confront.

Golden Road. No car; I walked.

I’ve been neglecting this blog but for good reason. Started working on some fun and all-consuming projects for Microsoft and planning a move to the North.