BC Gas Tax to Start Tomorrow - So What?

By crooky | June 30, 2008

My wife got me panicked this morning because she said there was a “24 cent” per litre gas tax starting tomorrow. I said “WHAT?” and promptly got online to confirm. It’s actually 2.4 cents per litre. When I usually fill up, I put $50 in. A 2.4 cent per litre gas tax means I’m paying an exta 80 cents at the pump when I fill up. OH NO!!!! TIME TO OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT!!!! 80 CENTS! RISE UP AND SMITE OUR OPPRESSORS!!!! THEY ARE NOT GOING TO GET $30 - $50 per year MORE FROM THIS CITIZEN!!!

Here’s why I don’t give a shit about the gas tax and you shouldn’t either:

1. It’s not enough to affect me.

I don’t know about where you live but gas prices fluctuate by more than this on a daily basis where I live. 2.4 cents? My gas discount at Safeway is often 7 cents per litre. Rising gas prices have only impacted my driving behaviour slightly. What’s an extra 2.4 cents per litre going to do?

The big burn for me is parking fees. When I drive downtown in my new, fuel efficient VW Golf, I’m spending about $9 on gas for a 100km round-trip. Parking downtown for the day can run well in excess of $20 though. That’s the big stick that gets me to leave the car at home - the idea of paying double or triple what I paid in gas to park.

2. I write off most of my gas at the end of the year as a tax deduction.

This doesn’t apply to everyone but for the self-employed, I have to buy gas to put in my work vehicle (which I also write off) and I write that gas off at the end of the year. It doesn’t really matter if it’s 2.4 cents per litre more. In fact, the more expensive gas is, the bigger the writeoff I get - as long as I can afford to pay it up front.

I also write off my parking for business which is why I don’t fly off the handle about parking too often either.

3. As a straight sin-tax, I am in support of the concept of the gas tax.

I know that fossil fuels are killing the planet. I know that I could be more eco friendly. I’m not super eco-friendly and I’m happy to pay the sin tax on gas because of that. It’s the same thing with alcohol and tobacco. People should begrudge paying the sin tax on those either. They know that their vice is costing society in the long run. When that’s the situation, you pay the tax and shut up about it.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

Topics: Cars, Policy, social issues | No Comments »

The Role of Universities - Knowledge, Skills, Citizenship

By crooky | June 27, 2008

I read a really interesting post over at Dooney’s Cafe yesterday on the role of universities in educating young people and commented on it at length (aka a rant). I wanted to expand on my views on my own blog because I was tired when I wrote those comments and I feel like I came across as a bit of a lunatic.

My position on post-secondary education is that universities have a three-fold responsibility to the young people who spend their time and money at their institution:

1. To bequeath knowledge

This is the point that I expect to get the least amount of argument about. Universities, by their nature, are designed to educate. The kind of knowledge you gain varies wildly based on the program that you are in and the teachers that you have the priviledge of working with.

In a nutshell, I believe that it is the responsibility of the university to show you a world that you didn’t understand or didn’t understand as completely. When you leave the university, you should have gained new insight into the world around you and by extension, the ability to think more critically about the world in which you live.

The point that Stan Persky seemed to be trying to drive is that we (society) are too focused on hard skills and not focussed enough on the broader cultural learnings that a university education provides. On this point, I disagree. Most university programs do not spend enough time on skills and spend too much time on trying to mold us into “well rounded citizens”. I think that happens naturally when you’re in the university environment.

2. To teach marketable skills

This is where I run into some resistance amongst my more academically-inclined friends. I believe that the university also has a big responsibility to ensure that graduates of its programs have marketable skills. Granted, the ability to think critically is an important skill to have but this should be complemented by the ability to write concisely, the ability to manage projects and hard skills in the technical areas (if that’s where your studies take you).

Some university types that I meet seem to think that expecting to learn hard skills at a university somehow sullies the mandate of the university and commoditizes education. I disagree. I think that without teaching skills with an application in the world outside the unviersity, the university is just furthering its reputation as an “ivory tower”.

3. To connect with the community

This is an area where most universities need the most improvement. I’ve seen small, limited-scope programs like co-op and special speaking engagements where the university makes an effort to connect what’s taught in the classroom to what’s going on in the community but there’s so much more that could be done.

As a member of the Alumni Association at SFU, I hear many alumni who want to give back to the university by working with students in their programs and helping them put their “book learning” into context. These well-intentioned individuals are often frustrated in their efforts to reach out to the students in a meaningful way.

There are exceptions to this and some programs are very, very good at tying the program to the community but by and large, most programs do a poor job of this.

Stan Persky replied to my comment and thinks I missed the point of his article - which was a criticism of one auther’s view that some kids aren’t smart enough to go to university. I argue that my points are relevant because I’m posing the argument that universities are sometimes not smart enough for their students.

I’m actively working within the post-secondary system to correct this issue but it’s an uphill battle.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

Topics: Technology | No Comments »

Behaviour Modelling: Did it Go Out With A Whimper?

By crooky | June 25, 2008

An interesting article in Wired this month talks about how humanity is entering into the “Petabyte Age”. They describe the Petabyte Age as a time where there are sensors everywhere, data pouring in from myriad sources, unlimited data storage capacity and the processing power necessary to fill in the gaps. This article goes on to proclaim the “scientific method obsolete”. I want to argue for and against this idea.

Modelling, like Economics, assumes predictable, rational behaviour in all aspects of our universe. I’ve always had a beef with this supposition - especially on the economics side of the fence. If economic theory and models really worked, we’d have a utopia based on capitalism and the free market. These kinds of models and the political systems based on thse models fall down when they meet with reality because people do not behave rationally. In my experience, people behave irrationally. By extension, patterns in nature are equally as unpredictable.

On the other side of the argument is the fact that a model is only as good as the observations that form the basis of that model. If the observations are fouled, the model is fouled. Given an unlimited number of observations and validation points, you could build a model that could predict any behaviour. At that point - are we talking about a model anymore or omniscience?

That is what the Wired article is suggesting - that our modern ability to collect, store and analyze data about the world around us has made models irrelevant. We can measure and describe almost complete systems now. When you have a comprehensive description of a system, you don’t need a model because you have all of the data.

Models were originally designed to fill in holes in our ability to measure and analyze. Statistics helped us validate the accuracy of our models. The scientific method works as follows:

1. Define the question
2. Gather information and resources
3. Form a hypothesis
4. Collect the data
5. Analyze the data
6. Draw your conclusions and answer your question based on your analyses

The Petabyte Age allows researchers to skip step 3 - the point where models are developed. You can now just observe the data as it is and analyze the system that is in place. Modelling and hypotheses are important when you have limited resources and ability to collect data. When these limitations are taken out of the picture - are hypotheses really necessary? Wired says no.

My conclusion is that you still need to have some concept of what drives a system or motivations individuals in order to analyze even a comprehensive set of data. Otherwise, there is no patterns to guide our decision-making process. You could just say “well, this is how group A behaves” and when someone asks you to guess how Group B is going to behave, you say “we have to analyze their metrics before I can tell you that”.

Models and hypotheses form the foundation of wisdom - insight that can be applied to like situations without extensive data collection and analysis. Without wisdom, we’re all just fumbling around in the dark, hoping to find inspiration. Innovation in the research community comes from drawing on the wisdom of others - wisdom that is often embodied in models and hypotheses.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

Topics: Research Methodologies | No Comments »

Resigning Myself to Vista

By crooky | June 23, 2008

I have been a dyed in the wool Vista critic since it came out in early 2007. In a nutshell, my main beef with the system has been that it’s a resource hog, it has a few annoying features to improve security and it’s not a huge improvement over Windows XP. However, with this weeks’ deadline for downgrading, I finally caved and left Vista on my new computer.

It’s hard to fight a losing battle and let’s face it - when Microsoft decides that they’re going to stop supporting Windows XP, the majority of the market is going to make the switch with them. You can still obtain copies of Windows XP illegally but do you really want to deal with that hassel when you’re in a professional environment?

Here’s why I finally surrendered to Vista:

1. Downgrading is a pain in the ass

There are two ways to downgrade - you have to buy one of the two top-end versions of Vista which include an extended license that allows you to downgrade to XP, or you have to take your chances with pirated software (note: I do not advocate the use of pirated software).

In either case, it’s not an easy process if Vista is already installed on the machine you’re using.

2. If your machine has lots of RAM, no worries

Vista is an unabashed RAM hog. It uses most of that memory to do the same things that XP did but in a fancier way. Yay <-sarcasm. On my old laptop, Vista would have run like a one-legged asthmatic but now that I'm running a quad-core machine with 3 gigs of RAM, Vista runs just as good as XP did. Not better, mind you, but just as good.

3. You can tweak Vista to run better

There are some tweaks that I have implemented to make Vista run better. One of the big ones is to turn off all the fancy animated menus and that crap to make it look like good-old Windows 2000. No, it’s not sexy but it runs noticeably faster when you turn off the Aero interface.

There are other things you can do as well. Just Google Vista Tweaks for more information.

4. They are finally starting to get drivers for your peripherals

One of the biggest things stopping me from upgrading was the fact that my (not so) old HP Laserjet 1012 had no Vista drivers available. I was essentially told that I’d probably have to get a new printer to get it to work with Vista. I thought “fuck that”.

However, they recently released a driver for my printer and it works just fine. It’s about bloody time, too. I know there are still some hardware that won’t work with Vista but I’m satisfied because all of my gear works.

My pet peeves that are unresolved:

1. Where the fuck is the disc?

What the hell is this new policy with OEMs that when you buy a machine with Vista on it (which you pay for), you don’t get a disc? Apparently you can get a disc but you have to pay for it. I ALREADY DID YOU FUCKS! GIVE ME MY GODDAMNED DISC!

2. The security alerts that freeze your computer every time you try to install a new program

I’ve spent most of this weekend loading onto this computer everything that I used to have on my XP machine. Every time I try to install a new piece of software, the security warning pops up and lets me know that I’m trying to install something. I KNOW! GOD!

3. Bloatware

Vista comes pre-loaded with all kinds of useless bloatware installed. Norton Antivirus (bleac!), PC Doctor (those guys are still around?), etc… You’ll need to spend a good hour going through and uninstalling all the bloatware.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

Topics: Technology | 1 Comment »

Marketing You Can’t Buy - Verizon

By crooky | June 23, 2008

As I was trolling around my Google Reader feed this morning, thinking about what I was going to write today, I came across this gem:

Ah yes! Sponsored by Verizon - the company that makes people fake their own deaths to avoid doing business with them anymore. You can’t buy marketing like that, people!

I’m going to post again later this afternoon about me surrendering to Vista after 18 months of fighting but I couldn’t let this one slip by unnoticed.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

Topics: Levity | No Comments »

Consulting Business by the Numbers: How Are You Spending Your Time?

By crooky | June 20, 2008

I was going over my bookkeeping records today as a housekeeping exercise and I thought it might be interesting to look at how many billable hours I’ve racked up so far this year (since January 1, 2008). Aside from the fact that I should be using a proper bookkeeping system like Clarity Accounting, I learned some interesting tidbits about my business. Here are the highlights:

1. I accrued an average of 4.6 billable hours per day, every day of the week over the past six months.

That doesn’t sound very impressive but take into consideration that most people only work five days per week (I work seven) and even when someone has a 9-5 job, they don’t work 40 full productive hours every week. The average number of productive hours that Canadians work in a full work day is 6.5 hours. The Canadian average (including those who don’t work full-time) is 5.3 hours per day. If I worked those number of billable hours over five days and didn’t do a lick of work on the weekends, I’d average 6.4 billable hours per day - pretty much bang on the national average for productive hours.

However, as you can see from the graph above, my business requires that I spend time on things that a lot of working Canadians do not. The average Canadian does 1/4 the amount of volunteering I do. Most Canadians don’t spend any time on blogging and the majority of those that do don’t spend as much time on blogging as I do.

I spend about the same amount of time commuting as the average Canadian but I spend time on business development and networking (while not on the clock) that most Canadians do not.

Add it all up and I’m spending twice as much time on my business than most people spend on their jobs (including volunteer time). I also make more money than the average Canadian in six months - with 865 hours logged to date with Friuch Consulting at an average per diem rate of $500 (my rate varies), I’m at $56,000 for the first six months of 2008.

2. I have worked 25 days with more than 10 billable hours in the past six months.

As you can see from the graph above, my hours are all over the map. Note: the red line is the 5.3 hours/day that the average Canadian works. These hours also do not include my volunteer work, blogging, networking, business development or commuting (I don’t bill my clients for driving to see them). As you can see, there are some fun peaks hitting 14+ billable hours in a day. My record is 17.5 this year.

That might sound crazy but when you add up all the things that I do for my business, I’m only working twice as many hours as the average Canadian. Furthermore, I’m only working for 48% of the hours that I am awake, compared to the 25% of waking hours that the average Canadian works. I have more bandwidth!

The following chart shows how the 48% of my waking hours is spent:

If you’re self-employed like me, it shouldn’t surprize you that I spend only half my time on billable hours. Without the rest of the stuff on that chart, your sales pipeline runs dry pretty quick.

3. I divide my billable hours pretty evenly between different activities

The chart above shows how I spend those 865 billable hours this year. A full 30% of my time is spent on the phone booking meetings, arranging the logistics of projects that I am working on, coordinating with my clients and managing sub-contractors. 25% of my time is spent doing field (primary) research and a further 26% of my time is spend writing reports/documentation for my research. 12% of my time is spent in meetings (with clients) and 7% is spent doing secondary research (reading up on the subject I’m researching).

I wasn’t really surprized by any of these numbers except the amount of time that I’m spending on logistics/ coordinating resources. I think I’ve spent more time on that this year because the projects I’m working on are more complex than in previous years and I make more extensive use of sub-contractors now.

4. It turns out my least productive days are Fridays and Saturdays

If you’d asked me to guess before running this analysis, I would have guessed that my “weekend” was Sunday/Monday. Sundays and Mondays are a lot more productive than I had assumed.

So I put it to my readers - how much time do you spend working, blogging, volunteering and networking? Do you keep track of your time like I do? Do you feel like you have work-life balance?

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

Topics: Business of Consulting | No Comments »

The Death of the Desktop PC? London Drugs Says “Not Quite”

By crooky | June 19, 2008

I’ve recently been on the market for a new desktop PC. I have a laptop that I bought around two years ago and it’s been showing signs of decay. It probably just needs more RAM and a clean install of Windows but I’m finding that my computing needs are increasing and my little Dual Core Toshiba U200 isn’t cutting it anymore. What’s shocked me in my quest for a desktop PC (something I haven’t bought in almost a decade) is how slim the selection is at my favourite vendors. It had me wondering if we were seeing the beginning of the end for the desktop PC.

I love London Drugs and refuse to buy any major computer equipment from anywhere else because their customer service is phenomenal. The last computer I bought there was a nice Sony laptop for my wife about eight months ago. Even then, desktop PCs outnumbered the amount of laptops on the showroom floor by probably 20%. I went in to look today and there were close to 25 laptops to choose from by only a handful of desktop PCs.

I was flabbergasted. During a recent trip to Office Depot, I noticed that they were clearing out most of their desktop PCs but I assumed they were getting out of the market because they couldn’t compete with speciality electronics stores. My experience at the London Drugs computer department actually prompted me to call them when I got home and ask why their selection of desktop PCs had dwindled so rapidly. This is what they replied back (verbatim):

Thanks for the inquiry. The customer is correct in that the Computer Industry as a whole has seen a shift in the market from predominantly desktop computers, to laptop computers. Portability, more powerful specifications at very affordable prices have really helped to drive the laptop business. As well, some manufacturers (Sony) at one point stopped production of desktop computers all together.

This is not to say that the desktop is dead. In fact, the customer will be happy to know that London Drugs will continue to promote both laptops and desktops. London Drugs will have a good selection of Certified Data desktops, All in One desktops from both Sony and Apple, and possibly other manufacturers desktop products as well. London Drugs will also be expanding our monitor line to coincide with our desktop offerings.

The Globe and Mail seems to think that people are going to forgoe purchasing a new personal computer at all in favour of new gadgets such as next-generation game consoles like the Wii, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 or personal electronics that do many things a PC does like a new smartphone or iPod Touch.

Here’s my theory (and I think the Globe and Mail article touches on this):

For the vast majority of consumers, a computer with 1-2 gigs of RAM, a dual-core processor and a few hundred gigs of hard drive space does more than they need. It lets your organize photos, send e-mails, surf the web and write letters to Charles Manson, pretending to be a 12 year-old looking for advice on life.

If you go into London Drugs, the computer you can buy today isn’t a huge improvement over the computer you bought two or three years ago. The only difference between my laptop and my wife’s laptop is a marginally faster CPU on my wife’s computer and a slightly bigger hard drive for about $200 less than what I paid for mine. That’s not much innovation in two years.

With my photo-manipulation needs, my need for dual monitors and running up to six applications at the same time, I’m verging on power user. That means that a laptop is out of its element on my desk. I’m not sure how many people are out there like me but there must be enough of us to warrant keeping a healthy supply of quad-core, 4 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD, dual head systems in stock.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

Topics: Business of Consulting, Technology | 2 Comments »

Three Big Ideas for Gaining an Edge in the Consulting Market

By crooky | June 18, 2008

I wanted to loop back on a few ideas that have been kicking around this blog and my network over the past few months. First, I want to re-look at professional designations. Second, I want to discuss the idea of teaming up with other consultants. Third, I want to talk about lead gen.

1. Professional Designations

I’m currently doing some work for the University of British Columbia around a new Project Management degree that they’re developing. As part of the work I’m doing on this project, I sent out a survey to several thousand project managers. One of them wrote me back today and said “I took your survey but I was reading your blog and wanted to commment on the CMC designation”.

I was thrilled that someone took the time to backread but the gist of his comments were that unless you’re in a market where a professional designation is fully recognized, the benefits of membership and certification are limited. He joined CMC Canada in Ottawa, where CMCs are well recognized and valued. When he came out West, he found that having a CMC did not give him a leg up in the market.

This is an important point - when considering which (if any) professional designation to pursue, make sure that the designation you choose has market potential where you live and work. Designations like PEng and CA and PMP seem to have legs in this market. Others, like CBAP and CMC are struggling to be heard out here in BC. I guess what I’m advocating is DO YOUR RESEARCH.

2. Consulting Teams

This morning, I had an early lunch with two other consultants that I’ve recently met. They’re both relatively new to Vancouver (one has been here a few months and the other has been here two years). They’ve both got about the same amount of on-the-ground experience as I do and they both have complementary skills in public sector consulting.

Our discussion today was around how we might team up as a mini-consulting firm and leverage our mutual experience and networks to do bigger, better projects. We talked a lot about the structure of another firm I’m involved in called Rocket Builders. The Rocket Builders model has some big benefits.

By keeping the operation lean and flexible with relatively autonomous partners, the firm can hit with a force far greater than the combined output of the individual partners. This is an ideal model. While Rocket Builders maintains a physical office, there are further efficiencies to be gained by doing without an office. Pooled resources such as a part-time virtual assistant can be leveraged to make the firm seem even more professional.

I’ll keep you posted as to how our little skunkworks project goes but I believe there’s a lot of benefits in sole-proprietors teaming up and operating under a common brand.

3. Lead Generation

There has been a lot of interesting chatter in the comments section of an article I wrote recently on Lead Generation. The debate is raging around how you get new clients. In some businesses, it is clear that cold calling is the way to go. I’m not convinced that this is the case with consulting businesses.

Just today, when sitting with my consulting colleagues (see above), we were discussing how consultants get contracts and what we landed on was the fact that as consultants, you need to nurture your network and that’s nothing to do with cold calling - it’s spending face time with the kinds of people that you want to work with.

Networking events, doing pro bono work with organizations - they all put you in the face of potential clients. That’s where a successful consultant should concentrate their efforts. My argument against cold calling was primarily around the fact that cold calling wastes so much time and generates so little business for consultants. If you must cold-anything, I’m suggesting that going to an automated system costs a fraction of what cold calling does but might generate just as many leads.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

Topics: Business of Consulting | 2 Comments »

The Stealth Incursion of Zombie-Killing Robots Into Our Lives

By crooky | June 17, 2008

This Father’s Day, one of my children gave me a copy of How To Build a Robot Army: Tips On Defendiing Planet Earth Against Alien Invaders, Ninjas, and Zombies. It’s a great book and full of new insight not already covered by Engadget and blogs of that nature. This book reads like Popular Mechanics on LSD.

Some initial highlights:

“It is only natural for humans to form a deep social attachment with a girl-shaped hunk of plastic. Resist this urge and concentrate on objectifying the womanbot. In a life-or-death situation you cannot hesitate to hand your fembot a cutlass and send her into battle against foulmouthed, male-chauvanist pirates.”

Dr. Daniel Wilson on How to Keep a Sexy Fembot Fit For Battle.

“Convert your harmless [Roomba] into a mechanized soldier fighting for the forces of awesomeness. Add passive weapons. Duct tape a pair of scissors (or a steak knife) to the top. Consider aiming the knife straight up, in case an enemy steps on your low-profile bot.”

Dr. Daniel Wilson on How to Weaponize A Robotic Vacuum.

I’m not a good enough writer to make this stuff up. It got me thinking though - robots really are a bigger part of our lives than they have been in the past. Some of my friends have Roombas. Others have given their kids RoboSapien toys which are actually simplified robots.

The US military makes heavy use of battlefield robotics and some of this technology is starting to be introduced into police departments in the US such as the LAPD.

The Japanese are always pushing the envelope with Robotics and companies like Mitsubishi are pitching home-based robots for keeping your kids and elderly loved ones company. I wonder if you can weaponize them?

In the end, this book ignited thoughts and feelings about robots that I hadn’t had since I was young. You see - when I was in highschool, I wanted to work in robotics. I studied physics and math very hard to get into mechanical engineering when I hit university. Alas, there were prettier girls in Communications.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

Topics: Levity, Technology | No Comments »

The Myth of Work-Life Balance

By crooky | June 14, 2008

Over the years, I have heard people that I otherwise respect chide me on my lack of “work-life balance”. They see my weight problems, my obvious lack of sleep and my stress levels as an outward sign of a pending collapse. What they don’t see is the level of satisfaction that I derive from my hard work. Happiness is overrated and being content is undervalued.

My hypothesis is that the whole “work-life balance” shtick is a joke - dreamt up by naive HR hacks during the peak of the dot com era to compensate for the fact that dot commers were working 80 hours a week and loving their lives. They saw that these young men and women were going to work, enjoying their jobs, taking naps when they needed to, socializing with their co-workers and giving themselves the flexibility to take a refreshing break from work when and how they wanted.

Say what you will about the dot com era - some of those guys learned that happy employees work harder. The whole concept of “work-life balance” is an admittance that your life as a wage slave in some corporation, government office or company is sucking the life out of you. If your job didn’t reek like rotting dog shit in the hot sun, you wouldn’t need your boss to tell you that you need to spend more time doing the things you enjoy. You’d be doing what you enjoy - while you’re at work.

I have also seen that many employers who tout the work-life balance system (WLBS™) will chide you for working too much unpaid overtime (with a wink, knowing full well that you’re underpaid and overworked and that’s how they like it) but God help you if you ask for one of your flex days to take a day off to go chill at the beach or to get chemotherapy or something. All of a sudden, your manager is watching your every move. Your e-mail will start to get monitored.

There is an implied rule in this environment that if you actually try to embrace the WLBS™, you’ll find yourself out of a job or starved to death in a dead-end career. What they want you to do is to appreciate the WLBS™ from a distance, work just as much unpaid overtime as your boss and choke down some cheap fucking hotdogs with no-name brand mustard at the company fundraiser where they tell you that you have to give $100 off every paycheque to the community. That’s what the WLBS™ is all about.

FUCK THAT. If you love your job and you look forward to going to work every morning - you have achieved work-life balance. If someone has to tell you to spend more time doing things that you enjoy so that you don’t start making claims against the company psychotherapy benefit pool - get the hell out. When work is no longer a disruptive force in your life, you’ve arrived.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

Topics: Business of Consulting, social issues | 2 Comments »

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