November 2011
1 post
interviewing tips for new grads(1)Take iPhone out of hand during 30min. interview(2)don’t tell me you’re “taking lunches” in New York and LA
October 2011
3 posts
Matt Sganga and Robin Lee at #Deutsch Media Boot Camp talking civility between salespeople and media. Awesome talk! Thx #SportsIllustrated
Gone from going officeless… - This post is mostly ceremonial at this point. I have been seen for a few… http://t.co/tWfriNQe
Gone from going officeless...
This post is mostly ceremonial at this point. I have been seen for a few months now in an office. Caged, like an animal at some demented business-zoo.
Ok, that’s rather dramatic. But I must admit that my experiment has ended. Not in failure, but in a recognition of practicality: I need a place to sit, more often than not. But the lessons were many and valuable, so let me reduce them to...
May 2011
1 post
Vote for VW’s “The Force” as best US spot! http://t.co/dFGn1wj
April 2011
8 posts
Old habits die hard...
Back from vacation and just realized that I spent the few days before and after vacation in an office. I hid out in an empty office to focus before leaving. It was helpful on some level to have a door to shut…but after almost four days in an office, old unproductive habits return: a small stack of paper is forming next to a coffee cup next to a tangle of cords next to a stack of business...
Going workless...
Off for a vacation to truly be officeless…see you in a week.
Stay free range!
Dropbox is from Heaven
Heading out to vacation with just my HTC Inspire. Critical files safely tucked in my Dropbox…nestled in the cloud. Easy peezy…
#corporatehobo downside numero uno
Finding space to truly focus. It’s easy to find space to do bullshit (email etc). But true creation demands space. Must solve…
Battery life?
Being officeless means I run on battery all day which means a full discharge cycle everyday which means a new battery every year. Hmm…
One Month with no office...
I have now gone a full month with no desk or chair and not only have I survived - I have completely thrived with the change.
As someone who spends 70% of my time in meetings, not having a place to sit has mattered little. Time spent out of meetings is now a mindful decision; I don’t just automatically wander back to my office and slip back into bad habits (ie things that are work-adjacent...
#CorporateHobo army might grow...
Someone just told me they are going to join the ranks of The Free!
March 2011
23 posts
"I've always wanted to do that."
I am surprised how many people respond that way when I tell them about this experiment. You start talking with people and they open up about how they have wanted to try a different mode of work, maybe not exactly my version of corproratehobo-ness, but something different.
Something different. So many people just want to try something - anything - dfferent. They whisper it to me in hushed tones...
Sage: Identify what you are good at by paying attention to what people ask you to do http://t.co/scrQksN
I am thinking of ACTUALLY dressing like a hobo while I do my #corporatehobo experiment at work. #GoodIdea
RT @Behance: Scott Belsky: How To Avoid The Idea Generation Trap :: http://t.co/M4F3wZE RT @the99percent
Today’s trip to NYC means a break from looking for a place to sit. Squatted in an office for the first time yesterday: too confining for a #corporatehobo
An expected Achilles heel in being a #corporatehobo: nowhere to go for hours of focused creative time.
Week 1: Lessons learned
Ok, after a week of being a corporate hobo I am going to jinx the whole thing and call it an unqualified success. Snap judgment? Absolutely, but that hasn’t stopped me before. Let me start with the bad stuff and then I’ll end on a happy note.
Downsides are surprisingly few:
Interruptions; When you don’t have a door - or any defined space - it is easy to be interrupted. But...
Tiny Time is no longer as useful
I find that small blocks of time are less productive as a corporate hobo: with 15 mins between meetings - and no office - it’s not worth setting up camp somewhere, only to decamp again quickly. High shoe-leather costs, as the economists say…
This may be a fatal flaw in an era where the best you can hope for is 15 free minutes.
Still, very much enjoying going officeless.
Day 4 as corporate hobo: Pity sets in?
People seem genuinely concerned for my lack of a home (thx). I suspect this will turn into disdain next week once the novelty wears off.
An exercise in minimalism
Not having an office means no storage. No where to put papers, magazines and detritus of business…all the things I swear “I am going to read. No really, I mean it.” That issue of Fast Company from 2007 is probably going to spontaneously combust before I read it.
Now, I have no room for papers and crap. I can reasonably only carry one or two things as hard copies. I purge...
Maybe we are all corporate hobos? When you are in meetings ALL day, an office is pretty superfluous…and everybody seems to be in meetings all the time.
"Uhm, you know Chiat tried this like 20 years ago,...
Yep, I do. (http://tinyurl.com/ms6jy) My little experiment is neither homage nor ignorant of that. This Wired article holds up well on the topic.
#conan takes a great stab at the iPad2. is this the official beginning of the backlash? http://tinyurl.com/4kyqyn9
Day 2 as a corporate hobo...
…and finding a place to sit is surprisingly hard. Found a spot in reception, which is fun because visitors don’t know I work here. Is it eavesdropping if we’re in a public space?
Where do you put your cup of coffee when you don’t have an office? The #corporatehobo finds out the hard way http://t.co/7GEOVdH
I really have not thought this through...
My first full day as a corporate hobo began with a surprisingly simple challenge: where do you keep a cup of coffee for the whole day? Before I kept my beloved cup on my desk…now, well, now I don’t have a desk. Hmmmm….
In other news, I realize i have nowhere to put my keys or jacket or briefcase. Leaving them out on a random table seems lame and carrying them all around all...
“You haven’t really thought this through, have...
That’s the most frequent thing I’ve heard when I proposed giving up my office to be the corporate version of a hobo. The basic idea started this way:
Amazingly, business around here is so good that we have officially run out of office space. Maybe a couple folks could benefit from using my office for a while?
Change: after 5 years in the same office, it is simply time to change the...
