More than a living

In the second of a semi-regular interview series on people who love their jobs, I spoke with Kevin Rasmussen and Vivian Su, a husband and wife team running their own small architecture firm. They have worked to create a lifestyle that blends doing what they love, with caring for their two small children in a […]

We talk often on this blog about the quest to find work that is personally meaningful, much more that just a paycheck, and ultimately a job that is THE job — the one you’d prefer to have over any other. It’s the Holy Grail of employment: dreamy and glorious, but nearly impossible to find.
But there […]

(This is part of the “Enhance perspective, assume control” series)
One of the things that always killed me about working on the corporate side of the desk was my perspective. I always felt like I owed something to “the Business.” With a big “B.”
There was something beyond the people with whom I worked, beyond the execs, […]

Ugh.
If you have (had) a little person in your home, you know what potty training is all about. This is a crazy mix of hope, anxiety, and sense of pending loss as your little person flirts with the idea of leaving diapers behind for a bold and independent new world. As easy as diapers are […]

When Toby and I started scribbling the ideas that became More than a living, we were trying to find a way to describe the business ennui in which we both found ourselves seemingly irrevocably ensconced.
Part of that cathartic process was giving our goal a name. That concept was “more than a living.” That’s what we […]

Work-life balance. Oy.
Everybody loves to wax on and on and on about the infamous “work-life balance.” As if it were some mystical answer to all the problems of the business world. How everyone would be happy little clams in the work-a-day world if only–if only–we could all achieve a work-life balance.
“Julie seems a little stressed.”
“You […]

Nothing is more disrespectful than showing up late to a meeting. It is almost better to completely blow it off, at least then people can assume you had a scheduling conflict.
I know you know that it is disrespectful. I know you know that YOU hate waiting for the key decision maker to arrive. But the […]

The more manifestos the better. That’s what we always say.
And while 26 points may be a little long–and rival the verbosity of our own postulates–I think this is well worth the read: The Happy At Work Manifesto
(Hat tip to Curt Rosengren)

This really did start out as a comment to John Moore’s Brand Autopsy entry entitled Is it Making Money or Making Meaning? But I just kept writing and writing and writing. So I thought I’d move it over here.
In the post, John argues that employees join a company to make meaning but stay with a […]