In the Real World…

May 27, 2010 By

The phrase “In the real world…” comes up in many different contexts and conversations, and is deployed by all sorts of people, for all sorts of reasons. Over several years of watching and filing away instances, a script for a funny SNL style sketch, stringing together several of these conversations, occurred to me. Well, at least I think it is funny. I wanted to do it as a comic-strip, but never got around to it.

Here’s the script for the sketch. I call it The Circle of Life. Okay, my dialogue is not exactly Shakespeare quality, but bear with me here. Bad fiction in the service of a non-fiction point.

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Intellectual Gluttony

May 19, 2010 By

An Einstein quote that I disagree with is the following:

Much reading after a certain age diverts the mind from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theaters is apt to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.

It is the best known of various cautions against “intellectual greed.” I once interviewed at a university where there seemed to be a particularly strong fear of intellectual over-reach. Every faculty member I talked to had a word of caution about young researchers and “intellectual greed” — taking on too many, too big, or too wide-ranging a set of intellectual interests. If this is a sin — and it sort of sounds like one, which is why the biblical word “gluttony” seems more appropriate to me — I am certainly guilty. But if I am going to hell anyway, I might as well know why in a little more detail.

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A Bumper May Harvest of Good Reading

May 12, 2010 By

I am headed out on a trip after a hectic week, so I didn’t have time to pipeline a new post for the week. Fortunately for me, I’ve reaped a bumper harvest of unusually good reading on the Web in the last week, so I thought I’d share a selection. If you follow @ribbonfarm, you may have already seen these. I put the selections on a convenient trail if you want to jump right in, otherwise read on for my quick commentary. Warning: I read the kind of stuff I write, so all these are long-to-epic size reads.

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Two Interesting Gervais Principle Follow-Ups

May 6, 2010 By

I thought I’d share two recent ‘Gervais Principle’ related posts that crossed my radar. There have been quite a few blog reactions to the GP series over the last 6 months, but most don’t venture beyond an editorial comment or two. These two go further, in a couple of rather dangerous (and fun) directions.

First, a few weeks back, Pete Carapetyan emailed me about his post on dealing with passive aggressive. He doesn’t cite or relate the ideas to GP directly, but he tells me that the post is “inspired” by GP (dangerously ambiguous linkage term there).

Working with Passive Aggressives

Working with a PA is the most counter-intuitive thing you will ever do. That is their primary tactic, coming across exactly opposite from what is really going on, which also includes covering their tracks. Well honed PA skills never show on the radar, that is how the whole system works.

In a different vein, Jacob, writing in the extreme early retirement (nice name for a blog, that), has a post riffing on the idea that if you can’t join the sociopaths, perhaps you can beat them by owning them, by turning to capitalism? Jacob suggests that this requires giving up addictive consumerism.

A Cure to Careerism

Of course there is a third way, extreme early retirement, which sadly is considered too extreme by many. The reason is that it means giving up consumerism which to consumers is like giving up cigarettes for smokers. Not only are many people suffering from careerism, but they are also suffering from consumerism believing that it is impossible, at least for them, to live a satisfying life without shopping.

Note that this is a different exit strategy than the ‘exile/exodus’ strategy described in Managing Language (With Extreme Prejudice), on Tobias C. Van Veen’s Fugitive Philosophy blog, which I highlighted earlier.

I’ll withhold my own opinion for now, other than to note that I agree that the questions being raised are important, even if I don’t entirely agree with the answers. Click on, check out the articles, and comment. I’ll be following the discussion with interest of course.

The Lords of Strategy by Walter Kiechel

May 4, 2010 By

It takes some guts to subtitle a business book “The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World.” Even for a genre whose grand overstatements are only rivaled by the diet-books aisle, that is an ambitious tagline. The Lords of Strategy lives up to that subtitle and then some.  It is a grand, sweeping saga that tells the story of how the ill-defined function known as “corporate strategy” emerged in the 60s, systematically took over  boardrooms and MBA classrooms, and altered the business landscape forever. Even though we are only 4 months into 2010, it is pretty likely this is going to be the best business book of the year for me. If you are considering, currently in, or recently graduated from, an MBA program, you really must read this book. If this book had been written 10 years ago, it would have saved me a good deal of trouble making my own career decisions.

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Be Slightly Evil

April 28, 2010 By

It’s time for yet another Ribbonfarm update. The big news, since the last update, is that I’ve incorporated Ribbonfarm as a small, slightly evil corporation, and started figuring out how exactly to take you guys for everything you’ve got.  Anyway, here goes. Lots of items to cover:

  1. The “Be Slightly Evil” Email List and Corporate Value
  2. Ribbonfarm Inc., Q1 report, including spin-offs, layoffs and the like
  3. Status of the Tempo book project
  4. Roundup of Articles

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The Gervais Principle III: The Curse of Development

April 14, 2010 By

In the first two parts of this series, we talked about the archetypes that inhabit organizations (Sociopaths, Losers, Clueless), what they do (the Gervais Principle) and how (the four languages). In this part, we’ll use a somewhat unorthodox take on the idea of arrested development to explain why the three groups behave as they do, and use that to predict the outcomes of individual interpersonal interactions.

Series Home | Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | ebook

 

For those who came in late: read Part I and Part II first, to avoid serious misunderstandings.

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Four-Hour Workweek or Executricks?

April 12, 2010 By

My latest post on the trailmeme blog, Four-Hour Workweek or Executricks? should be of interest to ribbonfarm readers.

There are two major views of the brave new world of work that is being created by social media tools. The first is the free agent dream of quitting the cubicle, striking out on your own, and settling into a comfortable, undemanding and lucrative niche by 40. Tim Ferriss’  4-Hour Work Week is the how-to bible of this gang. This is the gang that believes in overt lifestyle design, mini-retirements, a public “personal brand” and the like. The lesser-known dream is an under-the-radar version best described in Stanley Bing’s Executricks. This looks very similar, but actually sounds more deliciously subversive: using the exact same tools to “retire at work,” develop an under-the-radar personal brand, and achieve covert lifestyle design…Which view is smarter? Which view do you subscribe to? Let me frame the decision for you; it is subtler than you think.

Read the full post

I am planning to move my more tech-based/topical/practical “future of work” writing to the Trailmeme blog, leaving the more conceptual stuff here. Kind of a relief, since I like talking about the relationship between technology and work/life styles at a practical level, but have felt, of late, that that stuff doesn’t quite fit with the more philosophical ribbonfarm mode. So if you like that kind of stuff, you may want to subscribe to the trailmeme blog as well.

Against the Gods by Peter Bernstein

April 8, 2010 By

In the last few months, I read two books about the history of finance: Against the Gods by Peter Bernstein and The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson (there is a very watchable DVD version, as well).  My first thought, when I decided to read up on finance and money, was to dive into the deep end with one of the subprime mortgage crisis books. But I found that there were so many, each claiming to know the reason for the  meltdown, that I decided to table that effort. I decided to start, instead, with a couple of broader-perspective historical books. These choices, I have to admit, were a matter of laziness and convenience rather than careful and deliberate selection. Still they did the trick. Though they were somewhat random starting points, both books are pretty good, and they got me thinking about money in productive and stimulating ways. Let’s tackle the first one,  Against the Gods.

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An Elephant, Some Batteries and Julianne Moore

April 1, 2010 By

Some weeks, my brain is so fried that I can’t think, let alone write. This is one of those weeks. So I thought I’d share a few pencil drawings I made several years ago. Let’s start with an elephant:

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