Tom

Many a man has found his place in the world because of having been forced to struggle for existence early in life.

— Napoleon Hill

Joining the 9-to-5 workforce as a rookie, as I did in the 1970s, can be unnerving.

You immediately learn that it's filled with people like Tom.

I remember encountering numerous Toms in my first 9-to-5 job. 

Jovial, assured and smug, middle-aged Tom glides through his job, the very model of self-confidence. 

Without enemies, Tom gets all the rewards, all the perks, all the bonuses and the big trip to Mexico.

Tom's in control of his destiny.

But within five minutes of getting to know Tom, you realize he's unoriginal and vapid and completely complacent. 

He's pleased by his place in the organization; works minimally; and remains only truly passionate about golf and that new blonde in accounting.

We wonder today, what's wrong with our economy? Why won't Gen Y'ers and Z'ers accept all the plentiful jobs available—and stick with them for more than a year?

We look all over the place for answers, when the answer's obvious.

Gen Y and Z weren't raised, as Boomers were, to tolerate—even celebrate—the Toms of the world.

Boomers were raised to put up with chronic bullshit; to accept that the workplace by nature was discriminatory and that "both cream and scum rise to the top;" and—most importantly—that the Toms earn their comfortable stature in the workplace by dint of tenure, obedience, and affability—and nothing more.

Boomers' parents, children of the Depression who came of age during World War II, taught them those beliefs.

They taught Boomers that struggle at a young age was the law of success; that, in the words of self-help pioneer Napoleon Hill, "far from being a disadvantage, struggle is a decided advantage."

Gen X'ers and Z'ers, on the other hand, were taught Trophy Communism. Struggle is anathema to them. 

As a result, they want it all, and they want it now. 

Gen X'ers and Z'ers are contemptuous of the Toms of the world and content to "sit out the economy" until all the Toms retire.

The Secret to a Longer Life

The secret to so many artists living so long is that every painting is a new adventure. They're always looking ahead to something new and exciting.

― Norman Rockwell

New research published in BMJ shows that patrons of the arts live longer.

Daisy Fancourt and Andrew Steptoe, both behavioral scientists in the UK, tracked 6,700 seniors (average age 66) for 14 years. 

They found that seniors who visit art museums, galleries and exhibitions, or attend plays, concerts or operas at least once a year have a 14% lower risk of dying than seniors who don't; and that seniors who engage with the arts more frequently―every few months or more―have a 31% lower risk of dying.

Their findings don't depend on race, ethnicity, gender, wealth, health, education, mobility or other activities, such as exercise, club membership, hobbies and church-going.

The researchers concluded that the arts might have a "protective association" with longevity.

"This association might be partly explained by differences in cognition, mental health, and physical activity among those who do and do not engage in the arts, but remains even when the model is adjusted for these factors (italics mine)."

Simply put, the arts protect you from dying.

Painting by Bob James

Games People Play

Customers are sick of being sold to, and grow more resistant to sales and marketing tactics every day.

Enter gamification.

"It sounds Machiavellian, but technology is transforming the incentive industry," says Rob Danna, SVP of sales and marketing, ITA Group, in Forbes.

Game technology doesn't merely entertain, but motivates. "It’s a holistic way of approaching motivation in business to advance value," Danna says.

To take advantage of game technology, marketers need to think like game designers, who easily "get inside the heads" of customers knowing customers innately prefer the familiar.

Game designers understand that customers "focus on what they want to see, rather than all there is to see"―and use the understanding to design games that motivate behaviors.

But what's the difference between a game that gets played, and one that's ignored? Game designers point to five factors:

The game must feel good. Players go along for the ride provided the game matches their self-image ("I'm skillful and competent.") Designers exploit that bias by tweaking a game's difficulty through subroutines. They allow players, for example, to recover from errors, even when they're fatal; or dumb down the questions after a string of wrong answers.

The game must challenge. While it can't bruise fragile egos, the game's no fun if it's too easy. To become addictive, the game must be one that seems to challenge.

The rules must be simple. Players must be able to get on board within moments.

The game must update. Players won't return unless the game changes randomly between rounds. It must also stay fresh (new content, levels, characters, etc.), or players won't engage more than a few times.

The idea must be original. No one want to play a game that's merely a clone.

Torment Tuesday

Call me a curmudgeon, but I've grown to loathe social media marketers who use weekday hashtags.

You know who you are.

Week upon week, you insist on reminding me it's:

• Motivation Monday
• Transformation Tuesday
• Win Wednesday
• Thankful Thursday
• Fearless Friday
• Social Saturday
• Fun Day Sunday

Your vapid diurnal emissions make every day feel like Munch Monday.

The word curmudgeon, by the way, originated in the 1500s; but its source is unknown.

According to Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary, the word is a corruption of the French coeur méchant, meaning "evil heart."

But according to other dictionaries, it's a mashup of the English cur, meaning "mutt," and the Gaelic muigean, meaning "grouch."

Random Fandom

Random fandom—the trait philosopher Bertrand Russell quaintly labels "zest"—is the sign of the happy camper.

You can be a fan of almost anything—foods, wines, games, cameras, books, birds, rocks, plants, people, countries, cultures—and it will light your fire, Russell says in The Conquest of Happiness.

The more, the merrier.

"The more things a man is interested in, the more opportunities for happiness he has and the less he is at the mercy of fate, since if he loses one thing he can fall back upon another," Russell says.

"Life is too short to be interested in everything, but it is good to be interested in as many things as are necessary to fill our days."

Newspaperman George Allen said, "Have a variety of interests. These interests relax the mind and lessen tension on the nervous system. People with many interests live, not only longest, but happiest."

Welcome to Indenture

Employers who recruit a lot of recent grads are luring them with a new perk: student loan repayment.

Bloomberg reports that investment and consulting firms like Nataxis and   PricewaterhouseCoopers will pony up as much as $250 a month toward a candidate's college debt.

McKinsey, Bain Capital and Accenture will also pay down employees' student debt, according to The Wall Street Journal.

If you're willing to provide seed money, we can jump on the bandwagon and start up our own firm to compete with Accenture.

Indenture.

A pillar of colonial America, indenture (a version of "enforced servitude") underwrote the tobacco economy in the Chesapeake region.

Under the system, an Englishman who sought a clean start in America signed a contract that promised he'd repay his master for ship fare, clothing, and room and board by laboring for seven years. 

Women also signed the contracts.

The word indenture refers to an indentation made on each contract. When it was drawn, two copies were made. One copy was then placed over the other and an edge indented.

As a result, master and servant could always spot whether a copy might be forged (often the end-date would be changed by one or the other party.)

On a serious note: Burdensome debt is no laughing matter. It drives in part the popularity of Bernie Sanders among Millennials. As one Boomer told a group of college students, “Your generation’s debt is our generation’s draft."

Punching through the Mask

My horoscope was dead on yesterday.

"As soon as you start thinking that you might, indeed, know it all, circumstances will conspire to set you straight."

Circumstances conspire against us all.

Just count the bromides about "conquering adversity" on your LinkedIn home page this morning and you'll know.

When you produce creative work, you need to wear a creative's mask, as director Sidney Lumet says in Making Movies.

"Creative work is very hard, and some sort of self-deception is necessary simply in order to begin. To start, you have to believe that it's going to turn out well. And so often it doesn't. I've talked to novelists, conductors and painters about this. Unfailingly, they all admitted that self-deception was important to them. Perhaps a better word is 'belief.' But I tend to be a bit more cynical about it, so I use 'self-deception.' The dangers are obvious. All good work is self-revelation. When you've deceived yourself, you wind up feeling very foolish indeed."

Setbacks punch through the mask. They sting, because they scream Fraud!

Mama said there'll be days like this.

Make a New Year's Revolution

Next year, instead of a resolution, make a revolution.

Rewrite your "fail script." 

Leave the catastrophes for the nightly newspeople.

Self-talk about rejection predicts both long-term success and long-term failure, psychologists have proven.

Your default fail script goes, "This always happens. It's all my fault. And it's going to ruin everything."

Instead, when you're next rejected—and every time thereafter—tell yourself, "It's temporary. Situational. And not about me."

Novelist James Lee Burke once said, "Every rejection is incremental payment on your dues that in some way will be translated back into your work."

Vive la Revolution!

Wintry Discontent

I get terrorists.  

But why does someone who's not politically minded relentlessly bully schoolmates, shoot up a theater, drive a speeding car into a crowd, or hike the price of a life-saving drug 5,500 percent?

Pessimism. A First World problem, if ever there was one.

In The Conquest of Happiness, philosopher Bertrand Russell devotes a chapter to pessimism, a feeling he has little patience for.

Pessimism, he says, "is born of a too easy satisfaction of natural needs."

When too much falls into your lap, struggle, "an essential ingredient of happiness," ends; and, with it, desire.

"The man who acquires easily things for which he feels only a very moderate desire concludes that the attainment of desire does not bring happiness. 

"If he is of a philosophic disposition, he concludes that human life is essentially wretched, since the man who has all he wants is still unhappy. 

"He forgets that to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness."

Lost in a Daydream

One hundred years ago this month, Einstein stood before the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin and read his paper describing the General Theory of Relativity, "the most beautiful theory in the history of science," according to biographer Walter Isaacson.

Isaacson wants to use the centennial to celebrate daydreaming, as he says in a recent op-ed in The New York Times.

Einstein concocted the theory not by recasting formulas, but by daydreaming about light beams and billiard balls.

Isaacson argues we should goad kids to accomplish more than memory-work. "We should stimulate their minds’ eyes as well."

"Everything of value in our world started at some point with an idle daydream," writes marketer Mark Schaefer in Born to Blog. "Dreaming helps us connect the dots. Dreaming is mandatory for seeing the world as it should be, rather than how it is."

Take a few minutes today, grab a coffee or chocolate bar, and celebrate Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

But, please, don't interrupt your daydream.

To Spur Innovation, Sponsor Playtime

Do deadlines breed innovative work?

Rarely, say most organizational behaviorists.

That's because creativity results from the playful association of ideas.

Deadlines dampen that play.

While they drive workers to work harder and longer—and even lead them to think they're innovating—deadlines, in fact, kill creativity.

To lessen deadlines' deadening effect, behaviorists suggest bosses:

• Set deadlines that allow for playtime—and build some into every week


• Shield workers under deadline from interruptions


• Help workers understand why particular deadlines are mission-critical