Short Chronicle Of My Switch To A Stand Up Desk

Garth Beyer

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  • We put a lot of our weight on our heels. Go bare foot, watch your balance, or get more comfy shoes.
  • I learned that it’s easier to dance. Give yourself the space and posture to move, and you will. (HT Childish Gambino)
  • Standing up encouraged me sneak in some exercises. The problem with sitting at work is that once we sit, we feel like we need to stay sitting. Sitting makes us feel like we’re constantly working. As a result from standing, I’ve done some dips, some squats, and sit up crunches.
  • I sit down to take notes, make phone calls, and read while I snack (not online material)

Notice now that I’m not sharing time stamps, nor telling you for how long I’ve done each thing. The reason being is that you can’t duplicate my schedule. You might not be able to go and take a late afternoon walk outside as I do, thus, I exclude it. You may work through your lunch while I pause my day to read a bit while I eat. You may not get to listen to music and thus miss part of the dancing experience to having a stand up desk.

As it goes with following any idol, trying to replicate their daily routines is a waste. Seth Godin once said that no artist is ever consistent enough for you to do exactly as they do anyway.

  • Sitting finally feels relaxing again instead of a portal back into the work world. Downfall is, I had to get up to write this. Ah, well, so it goes.

Final statement: Give it a shot. Don’t spend money on a high tech one, just craft one for yourself to see if you can adapt to it. Oh, and try to have someone that will rub your feet at night.

 

Stay Positive & Read More About Stand Up Desks

Garth E. Beyer

A New Problem With Customer Service

Garth Beyer

Phone broke. It was a smooth transition purchasing a new one. Lost my unlimited data plan though. But, of course, had to connect with customer service.

Three days into having my new phone I got a text message from Verizon saying that I have exceeded my two gigabyte data plan. Keeping it short, I visit the store and they tell me to call customer service. So I do.

I called the customer service number and got an automated voice system that asked what I wanted. There’s a button for everything else you could want, payments, minutes, checking data, etc,. but there was no button to get in touch with a sales rep. It took four calls until I figured out that I had to say that I wanted a customer service rep after I pressed “4” and was asked to state why I was calling. If you’re going to provide a number for customer service, have it connect to customer service. Strike one.

After figuring out how to get ahold of a customer service rep, the automated voice system said they were receiving an extremely high volume of calls and it would take a while to get on the line with a customer service rep. I was on the phone with one in 5 seconds.

If you ever have an automated voice message system to take service calls, remember that there’s a difference between preparing for the worst and being honest. I would rather be told the truth of how many calls are coming in even if the volume is low. Anyone calling customer service expects to be on hold for a while, even if told otherwise. Lying was strike two.

I had my situation resolved in less than 10 minutes. He (I don’t even remember his name, explained in a moment) reset my data usage from the time I got my phone. Done and done.

Yet, there was still a problem. The third strike. I got to speak to a human, but he wasn’t very human. He avoided the question of how his day was and turned it around to if I had protection on my phone. Instead of sparking a conversation when silence ensued, he merely thanked me for my patience. Everything he said felt scripted. I couldn’t help thinking that I could have had a better conversation with the automated voice service.

Want to know a reason why Apple is the go-to goodie about customer service and not Verizon? They are human. They have a conversation. And you get a hold of an actual person when you call customer service.

 

Stay Positive & Lessons Learned For Future Business, I Suppose

Garth E. Beyer

Artists Without An Audience

Garth Beyer

I came across Shoshana Fanizza’s blog earlier today. In one of her recent posts, she mentions that she “went to a concert last night, a chamber music concert with Glass, Verdi and Wagner.  It was a great mix of new and old pieces that are rarely performed.” She goes on, ” I looked around, and GenX me was the youngest one there!  There were no millennials, except onstage.”

Confusingly, that’s both surprising and not. Not surprising because, it’s true, millennials have no time to be attending performances because they are out striving to gather an audience of their own. It’s a bittersweet tragedy, really.

Fanizza writes, “I remember asking a younger performer who was in town if he ever was able to be an audience member.  He replied that he almost never had the time.”

I say it’s a tragedy for the same reason why it’s surprising to me. How can you know what an audience feels at an orchestra, how they interact with the composers and each other, how they listen to the music, if you’ve never been an audience member?

This is, more or less, a shout out to all the artists out there: you can’t be a successful businessperson without having ever been on the other side of a contract, you can’t be a composer if you’ve never sat in the audience of another composer, you can’t be a phenomenal writer if you’ve never read a book, and you will never truly connect with an audience member without first being one.

Consider being part of an audience like visiting family. At times, it may drive you crazy and you may other priorities and work to do, but you still visit, because, in the end, it’s in everyone’s best interest.

 

Stay Positive & Don’t Get Me Started On Standing Ovations

Garth E. Beyer

Jeff Bezos – Letter to The Washington Post employees

Garth Beyer

To the employees of The Washington Post:

You’ll have heard the news, and many of you will greet it with a degree of apprehension. When a single family owns a company for many decades, and when that family acts for all those decades in good faith, in a principled manner, in good times and in rough times, as stewards of important values – when that family has done such a good job – it is only natural to worry about change

So, let me start with something critical. The values of The Post do not need changing. The paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its owners. We will continue to follow the truth wherever it leads, and we’ll work hard not to make mistakes. When we do, we will own up to them quickly and completely.

I won’t be leading The Washington Post day-to-day. I am happily living in “the other Washington” where I have a day job that I love. Besides that, The Post already has an excellent leadership team that knows much more about the news business than I do, and I’m extremely grateful to them for agreeing to stay on.

There will, of course, be change at The Post over the coming years. That’s essential and would have happened with or without new ownership. The Internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs. There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment. Our touchstone will be readers, understanding what they care about – government, local leaders, restaurant openings, scout troops, businesses, charities, governors, sports – and working backwards from there. I’m excited and optimistic about the opportunity for invention.

Journalism plays a critical role in a free society, and The Washington Post — as the hometown paper of the capital city of the United States — is especially important. I would highlight two kinds of courage the Grahams have shown as owners that I hope to channel. The first is the courage to say wait, be sure, slow down, get another source. Real people and their reputations, livelihoods and families are at stake. The second is the courage to say follow the story, no matter the cost. While I hope no one ever threatens to put one of my body parts through a wringer, if they do, thanks to Mrs. Graham’s example, I’ll be ready.

I want to say one last thing that’s really not about the paper or this change in ownership. I have had the great pleasure of getting to know Don very well over the last ten plus years. I do not know a finer man.

Sincerely,

Jeff Bezos

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Letter found here

This makes me curious, not necessarily about where Jeff will take the paper (that’s a natural curiosity to everyone in knowledge of the ownership change), but what I or you would do if we all the sudden found ourselves in charge of the newspaper – or any newspaper for that matter.

Would we turn it completely digital? Would we break it up into smaller newspapers covering specific parts of Washington (and America)? Would we find a new way to challenge advertisers? Would we shift the writing toward more gonzo journalism?

These questions, as well as hundreds of others, I’m sure, are questions Jeff is asking himself. Think on them.

Now imagine if the answers you give to the questions turn out to be the same ones Jeff gives. Exciting, huh? Now is the time to make critical educated decisions on what to do with a newspaper company, when you’re not responsible, and you can verify what works, what experts* would do, and how to handle the ever-changing** newspaper market.

*You can argue Jeff Bezos is not a newspaper expert, but he brings enough to the table for me to call him one.

**Some say dying, and sure, the newspaper industry is dying, but when I answer the questions above, I think it’s changing more than dying.

 

Some Now. More Later.

Garth Beyer

People are talking now. Not so much about you, but to you. That you’re crazy, that you’re weird, that what you are doing isn’t going to work out. Some are even saying (for a fact, they are at least thinking) you will fail.

I am amazed at how many people have the guts to say things to our faces that they would normally have only said behind our backs. This leaves us – the dreamers, those with ambition, and those who try new things all the time – with a new challenge to face.

So for those that are being talked to (negatively) now. I have one piece of wisdom that will meet the challenge.

Just remember that people talk later more than they talk now. Will they say that you gave up? Or will they say how they used to know this crazy person that actually went off and made it as an artist, a fitness expert, a writer? Will they say how they got you mad and upset and question if you’re doing the right thing? Or will they say how despite all resistance, you carried on doing what you knew was right?

People talk. Some now. More Later.

 

Stay Positive & Keep Going

Garth E. Beyer

What It Means To Mashup

Garth Beyer

I preach endlessly that the new age art is created by mashing up two or more properties, objects, or entities to create something entirely new.

Here I present to you Ben Heine’s Pencil vs Camera project. Click the picture to view more.

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Something I’m incredibly happy that I found: Writers as Architects.

Another artist, defying gravity.

Art was once about taking a photo of a photo of a photo of a photo. Now it’s about using a different medium at each level. It’s about combining not only different types of brushes, but different paints, different juices, coffees, and mud.

This method of creation goes beyond the easel. It encompasses us in advertising, in technology, and self-made products. The world is being redesigned and it wants you to be an artist.

Well, will you be?

 

Stay Positive & Mash Mash Mash

Garth E. Beyer

Newton vs Einstein

Garth Beyer

Newton only cared about analyzing everything and proving ideas with mathematics. Newton had a fixed idea about life and how it worked. He created laws instead of breaking them. A man who studied outward rather than inward.

Einstein is about creativity. He thought about macro and micro level moments of life and how they can’t be broken down to mathematics. The macro and the micro is of the ether, of uncertainty, of fear, and creativity. Rather than create laws, Einstein went on a crusade against them, against stereotypes, against the impossible. A man of originality and intellect.

There’s a reason why Einstein, not Newton, is synonymous with genius.

 

Stay Positive & All In Theory, Of Course…

Garth E. Beyer