Rusty's Blog

We live in a materialistic society, and as a result are looking to turn what we want into what we have, on an almost continuous basis. I Want a different computer, mp3 player, home theater, dog, cat, home of my own, etc.

I look around me however and see a pretty serious mess of stuff. Some is trash, and needs to get taken out. Some is stuff that a friend may be able to make better use of than I am. Other stuff is taking up space that I’m not sure it’s the best use of, but it is valuable to me.

And there are the ‘job’ wants and haves. I’m already in a position where I happen to like the work I do, and I’m getting paid well enough for my needs at the moment. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t appreciate a few changes, just that for me at the moment, things are pretty good. They haven’t always been that way, and lessons I should have learned about getting here work wise, can very likely be translated into other parts of my life, and I’m hoping that someone else can gain from the lessons as well.

And yes that should be taken with the grain of salt that is my opinion that people rarely learn from their own mistakes, and almost never from someone else’s.

In any case, we all know that life is a journy of omving from one point to another. Sometimes where we end up for a period is not where we would like to be, however it needs to be remembered that as long as we are alive, we can learn from where we are, and use those lessons to get someplace we would rather be.

Elephants are known to live a long life. It turns out they have very long memories as well, longer than the perception of an elephant never forgets gives us. We have long nown that in humans, memory is a product of what we experience, and how we interact with what others experience. If you don’t provide knowledge in a way that others can use, the lessons you’ve learned are only going to be of use to you. If you listen to Feinman’s lost lecture, you’ll encounter the fact that with the development of calculus, the mathematical and physics communities lost a large body of knowledge regarding arcs, elipses and conical sections. Much of this knowledge was used by Kepler and Newton to develop the three laws of motion, by obsservation of the planets and aplication of their knowledge of conic sections, in a way that physicists and mathematicians are not able to easily reproduce today, even though we do have advanced calculus demonstrations that bear out the truth of those discoveries. Elephants on the other hand, without any known method of writing things down, and storing memories in that way, appear to have the ability of transfering knowledge from one generation to the next, as has been evidenced by matriarchs taking their heards to wattering holes that their ancestors had used, even though they had never been there themselves. The only obvious means of transfering that knowledge would be by speach or auditory means, though another possiblity which needs to be considered is through genetic methods. The reason the latter needs to be considered is that so far as we are able to determine at this point in time, elephants do not have a language capable of passing this level of information from one generation to the next.

What you have.

In most cases, even if you don’t have a job, you very likely have a variety of skills that you can make use of. You very much would like those skills to be earning you money, however it’s not a given that you are going to be able to make a direct transfer of having those skills, into getting paid for them. In the job market we are in at the moment, very highly skilled engineers, software developers, and others are finding themselves out of a job either because the business they work for has moved some of those jobs elsewhere in the country, or sometimes for harsher reasons. Most professionals who have joined the ranks of the unemployed are not there because they were bad at what they do, however people looing to hire someone often have to take a worst case perspective on why that person is unemployed. Fundamentally, this is why it is always better to have a job when looking for work, then to be completely unemployed. There is also the consideration that even a low paying job can pay better than unemployment, especially if the job includes external benifits. I know one guy who morned Circuit City passing, not because he lost his job there, which he did, but because several businesses had agreements that allowed him to save significant money when making purchases with them, simply because he did have that job. In short, some jobs may seem menial to take, and may lead to better jobs elsewhere, but that doesn’t mean that you have to leave them for another job in all cases. Having a job you put 16 hours a week in on the weekend, or less, but that saves you money elsewhere, isn’t necessarily something that you want to give up on quickly.

But that’s not really where I am thinking this blog should be pointing people. Most of us have an ‘ideal job’ that makes the best use of the skills we have today, while giving us challenges to develop those skills in new areas. It’s rarely the job we have. The problem is that most of us do not put together a plan on how to get from where we aree, to where we want to be.

There are two types of plans that can be put together and followed. There’s the open ended forward planning method, and the end focused backwards planning route. Latter method first. (I’m not going to discuss the take what’s dealt plan because even that can fall into the open ended planning method, and it’s also more of a non-plan.) Backwards planning is honestly very handy. You set a target date to do something, say bring home a million dollars, or get married, and you look at all the things that have to be done to get to that point by that day, and you start working towards that objective. There are some basic problems that need to be addressed, namely that you need to be pretty confident as to what exactly each step is going to be, and you have to be willing to ignore unrelated activities that may detract you from that objective. If you have a goal of getting married on the 1st of May, and you haven’t sent out the wedding invitations to the 500 guests you want at the church you haven’t gotten scheduled yet, I’m thinking now might not be the time you want to take that vacation to the Mexican coast for spring break. On the other hand, if you already have the invitations out, the dress ordered, the church registered, as well as the reception hall, the gift registry at Target and Sacs, perhaps now would be a good time to hit the beach and get relaxed to start the windup for the final events.

Remember though, the objective of backwards planning is to make the things that need to happen by a certain date, happen in the order and limited time you have scheduled for them. You are going to find that you have to work against what is called a critical path within your schedule, and it requires very detailed knowledge of all the steps involved.

For most of us looking to meet long term objectives, we are looking for a somewhat different plan. I’m looking to retire at age 70, with $xxx,xxx.xx sitting in low risk investments that pay a healthy dividend. For me that’s a bit over 20 years from now, so if the first x is replaced with an 8, I’m looking to average something like 40k a year in investment income. That may seem a bit much for most people, but it’s an ‘average’ not a minimum. Presumably the money I’m putting into my retirement funds now, which are somewhat less than that $40k figure are going to be working for me over those 20+ years.

So, I’m a reasonably competent engineer with some experience working on help desks, and implementing network solutions on a one off setup. Or I’m fresh out of school, looking to complete my education but need to find a way to feed myself, and keep a roof over my head. Long term I want to make use of the skills I have, but the immediate goal is to earn more than an unemployment check. Preferably taking some advantage of my skills base. I’ve posted my resume to all the job search companies, and I’m not getting all that many hits. Time to take stock of the situation, and start looking at what else I can do. First up is to find any sort of a job. I would rather not shovel coal dust at the coke plant, but if that’s the only thing available, I’ll take it. I’m a bit over qualified perhaps, but it’s better than simply sitting waiting on the phone to ring or an e-mail to come in to set up an interview. At the same time I’ll be looking at the job postings within the company. Perhaps I’ve given my word to my manager that I won’t try to jump ship without letting him know that I’m looking for something. Or perhaps I’ve commited to 6 months or a year before I can apply internally. That gives me a period of time where I can use my free time to work on a few ideas related to what my long term goals and objectives are, and who knows I may have an idea that I can pattent, or turn into a profit along the way. But always in the back of the mind is the long term plan of where do I want to go from here. What’s my next logical step, and how am I going to convert what I’m doing into doing that next step.

If this were ‘easy’ you could just take the cards that you are dealt, and you would just lay them down, and always win. Right? Any poker player knows that almost any card that you are dealt can be used to win any given hand. There are some cards that are better than others, but the true skill comes not in knowing which cards are most likely to be out there, but in knowing how to take that knowledge and decide whether the Ace-Queen in your hand is likely to be beaten by someone else having an Ace-Ace or Ace-King, or making 2 pair off the river. Living with the cards that are dealt you almost always involves looking at where you are, and deciding how to use what you were dealt to improve your situation. At times it means going all in on a hand that is less than perfect, and at other times it means throwing a pair of face cards in as not being of value for this hand. Learning which is which will probably cost you some money along the way though.

The general rule is never to gamble with money you can’t afford to loose. That’s true whether the money is in your 401k retirement fund, or the cash you take to the Thursday night poker game at your budies. It also applies to taking jobs. I’m all for people getting experience at fast food stores, gas stations, and other retail businesses. But you have to look at it as ‘experience’ not ‘I’ve got a job!’ At some point you will be asked in an interview what the toughest situation you had to work on was, and how you resolved the situation. Spend time looking through the standardized HR questions, and be prepared to answer them honestly. Think about your day at work, and how you can leverage what you did, and learned, to hand that information off to people who can work for you to help you get towards where you want to be.

Of more importance than anything else however, talk to people who are doing what you would like to be doing. Get to know them, and let them get to know you. You may find that while what they are  doing now is something you would like to be doing, it’s not going to be a viable occupation when you are looking to get there. You may also get a referral that you are not expecting. Let these people know what you are doing now, and what you like about it. Some will have no idea what it’s like to have worked at that specific job, but more than a few will have done that, or even more menial jobs along the way, and are going to be far more interested in what you are learning from the job, than what bothered you the most today. The other really big reason to be doing that networking is that you want to know where what you have been studying is going. If you have been studying how to build better widgets, and the people working on that problem today are all talking about an exciting branch off those jobs where people are building a new series of frobules, you will be in the ‘know’ as it were. You have the opportunity to look into frobules on your own, and perhaps you can voice your observations on the subject. And that can ultimately be your ‘in’ into the field.

Getting from here to where you want to be, whether it’s from a perfectly good job, to a better one, or from an apartment in the city to a vacation home in the mountains, takes planning. It takes a strategic plan of the steps that are going to have to be taken to get there, and it takes tactical planing in how to accomplish each step. Take some time, research how to make and execute an effective plan. Build the plan, and work in the ‘what if’ situations. Have contingencies. “What happens if the entire industry collapses? Can I take the experience someplace else?” Then Do.

Some places to look at for references. “7 habits of highly effective people” as well as several other of the Franklin-Covey books. “Time Management for Dummies”, “The 4 hour work week.” “Getting Things Done.” “How to make friends and influence people.” “Think and Grow Rich.” Much of this is very old knowledge. All of it is being re-learned and re-written every week, if not every day.