Career

Cynicism Is Not a Strategy

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It's easy to be cynical – as I'm quite aware.  The economy is tough.  Industries are changing.  Society is altering.  There will probably be another "Transformers" movie.

It's easy to be cynical all the time.  It's fashionable, cool, and makes you look all deep and mature.

Cynicism also doesn't solve a damn thing.  You can be as worried as you want about the career economy, you can be fashionably cynical or really cynical, but here's the basic painful truth:

Cynicism is NOT a strategy.

Being cynical won't solve a problem.  It doesn't make things work better. It doesn't do anything.  At best it can be a shield or an indicator of problems – and that's it.  An alarm doesn't put out the fire, a shield doesn't defeat an enemy.

So ask yourself this – is cynicism something you treat as a strategy?  Is it so core to your identity, actions (or just sheer posing) that it's something you treat as vital, as part of your identity as something that is somehow going to yield results?

It's not.

Strategy is about planning, organizing, measuring, and achieving.  Being cynical doesn't do any of these things.

In fact the longer you remain cynical, the less you get done, and the more cynical you become.  Not a recipe for success.

– Steven Savage

Convention Idea – Have Business Owners speak

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The roundup of ideas for adding more professional events to conventions is here.

Want someone to speak about careers and opportunities at your convention?  Sure you can hope to get some of the big names to speak, get that oddball guest, arrange seminars . . . but you may be missing a great source of professional panelists.

People who already have fannish businesses.  Take a look at your Dealer's Room or Artists' Alley and youll find there's a huge amount of potential speakers on careers, options, and that often-talked of but hard-to-speak on subject of starting your own business.

Career ambition doesn't have to mean working for someone else.  And, yes, at times I see people with fannish businesses invited to speak on such things at conventions – but I think it could go way farther.

The guy whose been running a comic shop for fifteen years has a lot of insights.  The Artists Alley freelancer who manages to survive on her art is going to have knowledge to share few others will.  The couple who runs an anime memorabilia shop out of a warehouse with a tiny storefront is going to have a lot to speak on.

It doesn't even have to be someone whose living on it full time (though I would certainly make sure to try and get such people).  You may have a lot of budding talent, or people who have managed to mix their fannish and non-fannish work, who can speak and lecture on skills, career issues, experience, etc.  They don't have to have "arrived" at doing full-time fannish work to be people with things to share.

Finally, keep inviting such people back.  As their side businesses and personal businesses evolve, they can share more and more insights.

Your next big career panel may mean raiding your Dealer's room.  Go for it.

– Steven Savage

Negatives to Positives

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It's easy to figure out what we don't want in life.  You can make a rather extensive list of what's wrong with your life now or what you don't want to go wrong (many of us probably have semi-conciously).

The problem with negative goals is that they're impossible to measure – you have to measure the level of not-badness which is to say the least pretty difficult ("My unhappiness level is 10% below my projected goal!  Yay?").  Goal-setting is important to reaching your goals, obviously, but negative goals will drive you batty because there's no way to measure them.

THe solution I've found? Phrase negative goals as positive ones.  Turn them around and phrase them in positive – measurable – ways.

Don't say "I don't want to work a boring job" say "I will find an exciting job that fits my interests" then detail those interests and traits of a job – and go looking for it.

Don't say "I don't want to be alone" say "I want to make sure I am involved with friends that like my hobbies, and will join a club or clubs involving that".

You get the idea.

This is important in our careers – and even more important in a time of economic downturn where it's way, way too easy to be negative.

Go ahead.  List all the things in your life you're not happy with or your negative goals and rephrase a few as positives that you can measure.

– Steven Savage