3 Steps to Personal and Professional Success and Happiness

I’ve been discussing life planning and the like with a friend of mine a lot lately. So I thought I’d share my thoughts on how I approach my planning.

1. Set some goals.

Think about your life 5 years from now and set some goals about where you’d like to be. Keep them general. Specific goals are next to impossible to reach. The idea is to be realistic and achievable, while still moving in a positive direction.

2. Cut out the “Woulda, shoulda, coulda…”

Learning from the past is fine. But it’s a waste of time and energy to worry about what would have, should have or could have been if only something went differently. The fact is, it didn’t. And regardless of why, you still have to deal with the present.

3. Get Off Your Ass and Do Something

As they always say, talk is cheap. It’s easy to complain. It’s easy to pontificate about what you want to do. But time is not going to stop while you think it all through. Decide on your course of action and make it a priority to keep moving in that direction.

These three steps, combined together, are how I approach most things in life, whether personal or professional. At least for me, they’ve had great results. And I hope that maybe someone else can be inspired by what I have to say.

The Dreadfullyposh Short Guide to Surviving (and loving) Your SxSW Experience

At this point, I suppose that my three years of attending the SxSW Interactive festival has brought me through from n00b to old guard.

A few weeks ago, a fellow Philadelphian, Ruth Kalinka, and I mused on Facebook about the meetup we went to in 2009 here in Philly before that year’s SxSW. Being my first year attending, I gleaned a lot of useful tips during that time, and even more so, I was inspired by banding together with other locals who were attending. The festival is HUGE, and taking with you a sense of local camaraderie is certainly one of the best assets you can have.

It seems to be a tradition for the SxSWers who have gone before to share their stories and advice each year with new attendees. And as I’ve now made attending a regular staple in my calendar, I think it’s time to pass the mantle on. So here we go:

1. Pack light.

I usually end up repacking my suitcase a couple of times before I leave. In reality, very little of what I think I have to have with me do I actually need or use during my trip. You’ll be out all day and all night, so anything you bring just for the hotel room is effectively useless. Don’t even bother.

Make sure you have a good bag to carry around with you during the day. I prefer a backpack, as I’ve found a messenger bag starts to kill my shoulder after a few days.

The key things I have found useful are:

iPhone

Everyone has a smartphone. You’ll use yours to keep up with your contacts/friends/coworkers etc as well as tweeting and following the hashtags for SxSW and the panels you attend. If you have an extra battery pack for your phone, bring it. If not, get one. Your first day you’ll kill your battery by noon if you’re doing it right.

non-AT&T mobile hotspot

AT&T gets maxed out during SxSW, so it’s helpful to have another network at your disposal, and it’s also helpful for venues with no WiFi where you might want to get connected

extension cord

There a lots of outlets at the convention center, but they’re not always conveniently placed. Bringing an extension cord enables you to recharge during a session and make a couple new friends by letting others plug into it too.

laptop/iPad

I generally take my laptop with me during the day, and just my iPhone at night, but this is really a personal choice based on what you need. Many people use just an iPad. For me, my laptop is like my comfort blanket.

chargers for your devices

This goes without saying.

business cards and/or swag*

While you’re out there and meeting people, give them something to make yourself stand out.

*That said, don’t be a douche about it and fling your wares at everyone you see. Talk first. Then give them your card.

2. Plan less. 

When you first see the SxSW schedule, it’s daunting. There are thousands of events. They all start and end at different times. They’re spread around multiple venues. There’s seemingly no order. This isn’t your college class schedule. You’re not expected to make every event.

I recommend that you pick one (yes, just one) event that you must attend each day and each night. This sounds ridiculous to the outsider, but SxSW is all about serendipity. You get to the right place at the right time with the right people and magic happens. Don’t overbook yourself and miss your chance to experience something new.

That said, I highly recommend attending as many of the keynotes as you can. Half the people I’ve never even heard of, but there’s a reason they’re keynoting at an event with 20,000 attendees.

If you’re having trouble deciding on what to go to, try planting yourself in a room for a while. I generally try to stay in a room as long as possible, and it can never hurt to absorb some random information that you weren’t planning on.

3. Make friends.

I met some great friends my first year at SxSW, whom I continue to talk to, hang out with and even work with. That’s the whole point.

I’m a shy person, so when I say this, I’m talking to myself too. Every year I have to push myself to talk to new people. I’ve found it helps to pick some events with very specific subjects. It’s easier to start talking to people you don’t know, if they’re on common ground.

Don’t be afraid to have a meal with people you don’t know. If a group of people you’re talking with is going somewhere, follow them. Nobody will think you’re weird for joining in.

And remember, you’re not there to give your sales pitch. Connect on a personal level first. If there’s a good potential lead for your business, it’s only going to be strengthened by a personal connection.

4. Talk it up.

Twitter’s popularity was born at SxSW. It’s the primary way that everyone connects and communicates during the festival. Share your experiences. Tell the world where you’re going and what you’re doing. And don’t be creeped out if someone shows up that saw your tweet. Make a friend.

5. Don’t forget to eat. 

This may sound stupid, but it’s happened to me before. Sometimes you get so tied up running between events that you forget to eat. Austin has a ton of awesome restaurants. Grab some friends or random people and go get some food once in a while. There’s also always some sort of free food being handed out by sponsors as well, which can be a good quick recharge if you need it.

6. Party it up.

There are tons of parties during SxSW. I tend to favor the unofficial or less popular parties to the giant official ones that come with huge lines and crowds. I find a smaller event easier to connect with new people.

If there’s a party you really want to get into, go early. Really early. I mean, sit on the ground outside waiting for it to open. The crowds are insane, so if it’s really important to you, it’s worth waiting.

That’s all I’ve got for now. If there’s one theme that should be clear from everything above, it’s to make friends at SxSW. Above all it’s an event for networking. Other veterans, feel free to add your own tips and advice.

Hopefully this reaches someone who, just like me in 2009, had no idea what to expect.

Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter at @dreadfullyposh or in the comments here if you have questions. I’ll do my best to respond.

More Thinking on ROWE

Early in the summer, while I was on vacation, I dug into the book Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It. As my review post stated, I quickly was excited by the concept, and fully agreed that Results-Only Work Environment was the way work was meant to be.

Then I returned to work.

I brought back the excitement of my reading with me, and shared the core tenets of the ROWE with a number of my coworkers, encouraging them to read Why Work Sucks as well. Unfortunately neither I nor the supervisors in my team are in a position where we can begin the ROWE transition for the whole organization, but we did talk about how we could begin to move in that direction, at least within our own team, and that was encouraging.

Shortly after I returned from my vacation, my coworker Krista began working remotely full-time. I remember discussing the idea with her and our supervisor. Looking back, I see how the traditional work environment was so ingrained in me.

You see, even though I am a young 28, and I’ve only been out of college for 4 years, as I read through Why Work Sucks, my views on work were still challenged. One might think that me, coming from a younger generation of workers, might be more naturally inclined to the ROWE, but at least for me, that wasn’t entirely the case. I found myself wondering about the possibilities for making sure my soon-to-be remote coworker got enough “face time” and that we had multiple ways to contact her.

Apparently my laziness in finishing this post has paid off. Now I can give a bit of a before and after picture all together.

Months later, my coworker been working remotely just fine. I’ve also started working remotely three days a week, and several others have started working remotely more often as well. Our team has adapted well to it, and to a more ROWE-ish environment. Obviously, remote working arrangements aren’t the same as a fully ROWE organization, but we’ve certainly moved more in the direction of ROWE than a traditional telecommuting setup. Granted, we still have corporate red-tape holding us back, but our supervisors are great about staying within the traditional corporate rules, without following them to the letter, allowing us the freedom to work the way we work best. We still have a 9 to 5 schedule, but if we need to take time to take care of something else, it’s not a big deal at all. We don’t count the minutes away and make up for them. We just do what we need to do, and make sure our work gets done.

Unfortunately, just this small change has also shown how much sludge exists. We’re not even fully ROWE, and those outside of our department are quick to blame our different working environment for issues when they come up. It’s frustrating to hear and recognize the comments, but for me it’s been a challenge to find out how we can provide the level of service we need to to offer while maintaining the flexibility to work the way we want to work.

Over the past 8 months, I’ve gone from being totally inspired by Jessica Lawrence‘s talk at SXSW, to slightly skeptical about how the ROWE could apply in my own workplace, and full circle back. I’m a believer now, and I’m seeing a glimmer of hope as my coworkers grasp on to the   freedom we all want and deserve in our work life and work to respect each other’s control over their own time. I think my idea of management has changed as well, and I’ve purposefully tried to apply the same principles as I run Conflux Group as well. I look forward to seeing my work environments evolve even further in the months to come.

Easing Some .htaccess Pain

Just wanted to post a quick tip that resulted from a Tweet from Jonathan Longnecker of FortySeven Media. He asked:

Anyone got Dreamhost to do 301 redirects in tandem with removing #eecms index.php? Weird query string stuff happening.

Well, having a bit of experience working with Dreamhost, I responded. This problem isn’t specific to ExpressionEngine, it actually will apply to any website or application where you are using .htaccess to rewrite index.php out of the URLs. Dreamhost and many shared hosts like it is are set up in such a way that .htaccess is always a bit more painful than usual, using the query string URI protocol. (Not that .htaccess isn’t painful to begin with.)

A typical .htaccess file on one of these hosts would look like this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond $1 !\.(gif|jpe?g|png)$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?/$1 [QSA]

That works out fine until you want to add some 301 redirects into the mix. If you add a standard redirect like:

Redirect 301 /oldpath /newpath

You’ll find that instead of redirecting to www.domain.com/newpath, it ends up going to www.domain.com/newpath/?/oldpath, which isn’t good at all.

The key to fixing this is making sure that your index.php removal rule excludes your 301 redirects.

Just add this line after the RewriteEngine On line:

# put all your redirects inside the parentheses, separated by |s
RewriteCond $1 !^(old|old1|old2) [NC]

Hopefully that’s helpful to someone out there. Thanks to Jonathan for asking a question that I could actually answer.

Reading up on ROWE

This year at South by Southwest, I attended a session called Rebel in a Polyester Sash: Rehabbing Corporate Culture (you can listen on the SXSW site and I encourage you to do so), given by Jessica Lawrence, former CEO of the Girl Scouts of San Gorgonio Council in California.

As I sat in the session, I was impressed and taken aback by the ideas she presented about a Results-Only Work Environment. As I spend my days working in an old, mid-sized nonprofit organization, I have experienced first-hand many of the spirit-crushing realities of these types of organizations and identified immediately with Jessica as she spoke about how the Girl Scouts were when she came on board and later became CEO.

The core changes that Jessica implemented were from the book, Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson. After returning home, I purchased several copies of the book and distributed them to some of my coworkers, but I had yet to actually begin reading it for myself. I was excited to get started, but wasn’t able to find the time to get into it.

Enter vacation.

Last week, as I started my two-week vacation at the beach, I brought Why Work Sucks with me and began to read it. I’m about half way through now, and I’m encouraged by the ideas Cali and Jody present. While at first the ROWE sounds like a dream state that can only be realized by Silicon Valley startups and freelancers, they present lots of evidence and experience from their work at Best Buy, where they devised the Results-Only Word Environment and brought it to fruition in the Best Buy corporate headquarters.

I’m excited to keep reading through the book and hopefully work to implement the ROWE at least in my own business and possibly in the nonprofit where I spend my days.

For now, I’d definitely encourage you to check out Jessica’s session, get a copy of Why Work Sucks and also visit GoROWE.com for more information.

As I’ve said on Twitter before, thanks so much for the inspiration Jessica and also for all the hard work Cali and Jody put into shaping and articulating the ROWE.