Scott Berkun's Blog, page 79

Resumes vs. Recommendations

It's curious that people who are hiring put so much faith in resumes: a resume is a document made by the most biased source possible. Whereas a recommendation, if from a trusted source, knows both parties and, even if biased, has conflicting biases. As much as they might want to get a friend a job, they want to protect their reputation. They're unlikely to recommend someone who doesn't live up to their billing.

Unless the job you're hiring for is to be interviewed all day long, most interviews don't tell you very much about how the person will perform when actually working. A recommendation on work done at another job in  a similiar role has to weigh more heavily than their ability to merely talk about that work.

Of course resumes and recommendations are not mutually exclusive, but one is given undue dominance over the entire process.

See The Winchester Rule of Interviewing

In Athens next week: recommendations?

My team at Automattic is meeting up together in Athens, Greece late next week. Never been to Athens or Greece before. As a philosophy and history weenie, I'm psyched.

Any advice or recommendations?  Much appreciated.

On working for free

Recently, this comment was left on my job posting for a book designer:

You know what they say, Mr. Berkun – you pay peanuts; you get monkeys. If you want someone to spend the time required to design a book and then not get paid with anything other that good wishes, you're on the wrong track. Would you do consulting for free if a company said they would give you freedom and publicity alone?

There is nothing disrespectful about asking people to work for free if you are doing something interesting. Here are my arguments:

There are kinds of compensation other than cash.  Sometimes those other rewards are harder to obtain than cash. If you were a guitarist and could play a gig with U2, without pay, would you do it? I'm sure you would. I'm not Bono in 100 different ways, but you get the point. If you think I'm a bozo, I wouldn't want you working for me simply because I'm paying the most.
Yes, I work for free when the rewards are worth it.  Most experts or famous people do. If ever you see some author/expert on a television show, I guarantee you, they are not being paid to be there. Why? The opportunities of that "work" have value above and beyond financial compensation. I do webcasts online, for free, quite often.
If I could work with someone I admired, on a fun and challenging project, I'd certainly consider doing it for free. Especially if the project was unlikely to reap financial rewards for anyone involved (such as, say, an experimental self published book).
Hell. This blog you are reading is "free". No one pays me to do this. So why bother? Because it has rewards I can't obtain any other way.  I'm a writer by trade, yet I've written 1000+ posts here. Arguably 70% or more of the words I will ever write I will not be paid for.
Specific to this designer role, I don't want to hire someone who is motivated for this project solely for financial reasons. I did mention I'd like to find a way to pay them, but can't promise.  Primarily I want to hire someone who a) digs my work and wants to collaborate, or b) who is motivated by the opportunity to design something amazing and recognizes the unique opportunity here – since in the publishing world, designers rarely get that kind of seniority on a book with an established author.

The zero-tolerance argument against working for "free" is a bad argument, as zero-tolerance arguments always are. It discounts non-financial compensation, puts no value on how interesting or exciting a project can be, and ignores the huge number of successful people in hundreds of fields who willingly choose to work on projects without pay.

So fine, you can call me a monkey. I like monkeys. But at least in this case I'm a monkey who is practicing what I'm preaching.

Book review: The War of Art

I didn't like this book. It was just too unintentionally silly to like. Now I know silly books can be meaningful or moving, or just plain fun, but this one is hard to recommend. It's particularly hard to suggest it to anyone in serious pursuit of writing or making of any kind. It's too weird, dramatic, and fanciful, and the good advice and thinking it does contain is often buried in indulgence. You can find equivalently good inspiration without these flaws.  The book you should read instead is Art & Fear (more on that shortly). It's cruel to say, but it's the book Pressfield should have read first.

There is a fantasy among people who want to write that inspiration is the challenge. If only they had sufficient inspiration, all other problems would fade away. They imagine writers as people who are inspired all the time, which is nonsense.

But it's a convenient fantasy, and those who buy into it tend to believe two things: a) obtaining passion is the hard part and b) it can be found in a book.  It's these people who buy books like the War of Art. They prefer mystical, romantic and even supernatural explanations for what writing or art making is. A narrative of WAR is what they want, as it shapes the universe as a battle, with forces of good and evil, and you, the reader, get to imagine yourself as the hero in this epic conflict.

As an exercise, this is fine. As a metaphor, it's useful. But as a literal way to think about the daily practice of making things it's absurd. Worse, I think it's destructive for learning how to write, especially for new writers. There are much better ways to explore why writing is hard, particularly the notion of blocks.

The first half of the War of Art is a reasonable attack on the psychology required to make things, and this much of the book I'd recommend. He writes just a paragraph on most pages. Short notes on the fight and how he fights it, plus anecdotes from famous figures, and his pet theories on psychology. Some of it is good and moving. Other bits are cliche, cheezy or overly dramatic. As a light read for getting psyched, I was often moved and entertained. But the annoyances and wanderings increase as you read. After two of my favorite sections ( How to be miserable, We're all pros already), which came mid-way through the book, I had an increasingly hard time continuing. It was hard to finish the book's 165 sparse pages.

The problem is Pressfield (Author of the Legend of Badger Vance) likes his fantasies. It's clear he depends on them to work. This may work for for him, but as a model for others? With no offering of alternatives? He gets lost in them in this book and will lose inexperienced writers in them too. As the book progresses his central arguments shift to mystic forces, with the task of creative work scrambling into literal notions of angels and gods and their pivotal role in writers and their work. If you like books like The Secret and find the Law of Attraction useful in your life, and you want to write, you'll like this book, as it bets on similiar faith in the universe and forces beyond our control as its central, or at least concluding, theme.

Otherwise please go read Art and Fear instead. It achieves all of the aims of The War of Art with more grace, honesty, concision and power than any other book on making there is. Bradbury's Zen and the Art of writing is also excellent, without any self-indulgence or dependence on mystical metaphors.

Meanwhile, read my post on How to write a book: the short honest truth.

How U2 gets ideas for songs

In my never ending study of how people work with ideas, I watched Classic Albums – U2′s Joshua Tree.  Unlike most behind the scenes documentaries, much of the 60 minute film is the band and the producers (including Brian Eno) discussing how certain songs were created, composed and mixed, often while they are in front of mixing boards playing with the raw tracks.

Here are some highlights:

Adam Clayton (bass) explains how half the songs on Joshua tree are expressions of a musical idea first, and often those ideas are arrived at collaboratively. Then Bono works to find a lyrical idea based on the emotional content of the music.  The other half of the songs are ideas Bono or the Edge bring to rehersal, in wide range of (in)completeness that they develop together.

About the song 'With or without you':

"I can see that it [With or without you]  was so out of step with everything around – it was mad. It was kind of ecstatic music – kind of gosh and uncool but with a kind of highness to it. A highness that works so well live. Of course when you sell that many records and you hear me say it was out of step with the times you want to slap me around the face, but it was going into it. And something that is a staple on the radio now, like with or without you, got to understand is a very odd sounding song, it just sounds normal because you've head it so many times. But it kind of whispers its way into the world and this odd guitar part that's played on the edge's infinite guitar, it's an unusual sounding record"

- Bono

On how not being cool can be a creative asset:

"Coolness is a certain kind of detachment from yourself.. it's not exposing of something of yourself"  – Brian Eno

About the need for iteration:

"that's the story of our records – they start with ideas either quite simple or quite abstract and then they get brought into focus slowly" – Edge

Why Where the Streets have no name took longest to create:

"[The edge had a riff that was in 6/8 time and was trying to figure out how to get from] 6/8 to 4/4 time for where the band come in. At the time I didn't appreciate the hours of thought that had gone into the idea – it just seemed like a way of fucking the hand up. So he had the beginning and the end but he didn't really have the bit in the middle, so we would spend interminable hours figuring out chord changes to get the two bits to join up. Which is why it drove Brian (eno) mad" – Adam Clayton

On why starting from scratch can be the fastest way to a solution:

"That song [Where the streets have no name] was recorded, so there was a version of it on tape. That version had quite a lot of problems. What we kept doing was spending hours, days and weeks… probably half the time that the whole album took was spent on that song, trying to fix this version on tape. It was a nightmare of screwdriver work. My feeling is it was just better to start again. I'm sure we would get there quicker if we'd start again. It's more frightening to start again, because there's nothing. So my idea was to stage an accident. To erase the tape so we'd just have to start again." – Brian Eno"

If you're a fan of the album I'd recommend watching the whole thing - It was fascinating to see Bono listen to his raw, early vocal tracks for different songs and talk to the producers about it. And for fun, at 38:05 one of the producers mixes together a DepecheMode / Pet Shop Boys version of Where the streets have no name in real time on camera.

Can Getting Healthy be Fun?

Talking about losing weight is easy, but as the obesity rates in the U.S. attest, living up to that talk is something else entirely. Most people try, fail, and try again, stumbling each time back to old habits. It's surprising, and depressing, how hard simple things like eating less and exercise more can be. But perhaps the solution is more than just willpower, or eliminating temptations. There might be a need for a new kind of tool that approaches the challenge from a smarter perspective.

One on the horizon is healthmonth.com, and it takes a tech-savy, yet easy and fun, approach that might make all the difference. As the name suggests, it's modeled on the calendar. You sign up for free, set up a few basic behaviors you'd like to change, and track your results. This sounds simple, and it is. But the the big difference is unlike other tools, that use the metaphor of a to-do list, Healthmonth frames your health as a kind of interactive game. An interactive game you play with yourself, or your friends. It provides rules, based on theories of human behavior and science, that you can customize to your own particular goals.

According to the site's creator Buster Benson (who I've written about before),  there are four key ingredients needed to make change happen, and rarely do we get them all at the same time. They include:

Good information
Ability to make better choices
Motivation
Fun and sustainable triggers

Most of us can summon one or two, but few have reliable sources for all four. His goal in designing the website was to build one tool that helped with all of them. By using simple user interfaces to create and follow rules, and integrating social media features so you can share your activity with friends, he may have created something very clever and surprisingly powerful.

One mistake I've made in the past is trying to improve too many things at the same time . But with Healthmonth, as you create rules you get feedback on just how realistic or not what you're doing is going to be. As you pick individual rules, such as eating more vegetables, or going to the gym 3 times a week, depending on how hard the rule is to achieve, you get a certain number of points. Like a video game, your total score for all of your self created rules determines how well you are doing, and how much healthier you are getting. Friends can form teams to watch each others scores, engage in friendly competition or even share rules.

If this sounds interesting, now is the time to give it a try.

Healthmonth.com is currently in a free beta release, and there are a few days left before the next game begins on November 1st. You can do it solo or find friends to form a team and help each other along. The first few rules are free, but if you want more you pay a few dollars to get more. Seems worth a try: I'll let you know how it goes at the end of the month.

Help Wanted: Designer for my next book

I'm looking to hire someone to play a unique role in my next book: The Designer.

The plan is to self-publish a collection of my best writings to date, from essays, to blog posts, to magazine articles. But the goal is to avoid the traps of most "blog posts in a bundle" books – which usually stink. They have a reputation for not being well designed, edited, or curated, to work as a book. We intend to blow those perception to smithereens.

I've hired an awesome editor as the first key member of the team. Now it's time for the next key member: the designer.

The role: A book is a kind of user experience, starting with the cover, but extending to every font, every layout, every chunk of whitespace. Typically designers come in late, are forced to work quickly and without much input – it's no wonder most books are so ugly, so sad, so unloved. This role will different. You'll be involved early. You'll have power and influence over what's in the book, not just how it looks. There will be no bureaucracy: it's just me, you, Krista (editor) and a few other hand-picked people we choose.

Here are the responsibilities:

Drive the visual design and user experience of the book
Have primary authority over the cover design, typography, layout and interior choices
Manage the challenges of print and e-book (kindle/pdf) design
Contribute to the vision for the book itself
Suggest and provoke me to write new material
Collaborate with me, Krista and other team members
Use the readers of scottberkun.com to contribute ideas and feedback

Here are the rewards:

More influence over a book's design than you will ever have
The potential to do great work with great people
Redefine the contribution of design to modern book publishing
If you're a fan, you'll get a unique opportunity to define one of my books
This is currently not a paid role. If this offends you, I understand – don't apply. I am convinced the opportunities on this project outweigh what you'd expect to be paid for a similiar role on a lame project.
I'm considering a bonus structure for team members based on how well the book does. But I can't promise anything at this point.

Requirements (read them all – it's a test):

You are a visual design god/goddess (in the opinion of people other than your Mom and your cat)
You enjoy collaboration with smart, fun people – good feedback inspires you
You love books
You are really fucking smart
You are really fucking funny/sarcastic
You are not offended by the word fuck
You are organized, self-directed, and can lead a project with many parts
You've always wanted to contribute to a beautiful, well-crafted, book that defies convention in favor of smart, clever ideas for book design
You are psyched about this for reasons other than money
Bonus points for being a fan, or being familiar with my writings

FAQ
1. Why aren't you (Scott) working with O'Reilly Media again?

The main reason is to do an experiment – what happens if I/we have control over the entire process? I'm sure I'll learn things about writing books I couldn't learn any other way. What would happen if I/we didn't need anyone's approval for anything? I want to find out.

2. How will you self-publish it?

There are great options these days that make self-publishing transparent to readers – fans can buy the book via amazon or kindle and never know. Details TBD by the editor/curator (Krista).

3. When does this start?

It's already moving. Krista and I are working on outlines. The train is moving and picking up speed.

To Apply:

Email me: info at scottberkun dot com
With the subject: I kick ass at design
Must include: a link to your design portfolio, your favorite cartoon character, and who in the world you'd most like to see naked

Update on my next book

A few months ago I put out a call for an editor to work with me on the next book. More than 30 people applied, which was amazing, and after a long and tough process (I chose three people as finalists and worked with each on a small project), I hired Krista Stevens for the job.

She has an amazing combo of experience, asks tough questions, and is fun to work with – I'm confident this project is going to turn out fantastically well (or if it doesn't it will be my fault, not hers). Whatever happens I'm sure it will be interesting and we're going to have fun doing it.

The project is rolling and we're working on possible book outlines – I can't say much other than one goal is intelligent provocation. People tell me they like the way I think about things, and one goal is to offer my best thinking on a wide array of topics and themes. We'll be revising some of the best things I've written online, but will also be writing significant new material.

The plan does include involving you guys – to give feedback along the way – so stay tuned for that. More soon.

How to speak to a bored audience

(I'm behind on readers choice, so you get two this week) In a series of posts, called readers choice, I write on whatever topics people submit and vote for. If you dig this idea, let me know in the comments, and submit your ideas and votes.

This week: How to speak to a bored audience

All audiences are bored. If not now, then soon. Listening is boring, and listening to boring people talk about boring work in boring ways is even more boring. As a speaker I go in thinking "these people are probably bored to death from the last guy", as I would be. Here's a fun trick: next time you are in an audience at a lecture, look to your left and your right. You'll notice how bored everyone is, even if the speaker is doing a decent job.

The surprise is there's a huge advantage if the audience is bored. Their expectations are low. If you do anything interesting at all, such as not suck, you will stand out. If you prepared correctly (meaning you practiced, have clear points, are enthusiastic about them, and understand why the audience showed up) you'll look like a rock star. All things equal I'd rather follow a very boring, pretentious speaker than Malcolm Gladwell or Clay Shirky.

People will perk up instantly when you start answering the question they came into the room to hear. If you choose those as your first words, you'll have them out of the gate. And when they hear you are answering it well, you will have their full attention. It's that simple. But few speakers have good material, or more bluntly, good thinking on the right questions in their material, that this often does not happen. Pretense, fear and ego blind smart people into doing stupid things, in lectures and at large.

The other challenge is it's hard to judge an audience as you are presenting. The vibe you feel on stage can be different from what the audience is feeling. All performers know this, and prepare themselves to go on with the show with enthusiasm even if they don't get the energy from the room they hoped for. If you go to Japan or Scandinavia, where the culture is more polite, you could be Martin Luther King Jr. and not get much energy back from the room, despite how awesome they thought you were.

If you dig this answer, you should check out Confessions of a Public Speaker – it goes in depth on this approach and the pieces you need to get it right.

The quote of the month

"In the range of invention…the man of today is nearer to being a god than at any time in history. Yet never was he less godlike. He accepts and utilizes the miraculous gifts of science unquestioningly: he is without wonder, without awe, reverence, zest, vitality or joy. He draws no conclusions from the past and is utterly unconcerned about the future. He is marking time. That is about the most we can say for him."

– Henry Miller, The Books in My Life