Dan Benjamin¹ writes about Offices and the Creativity Zone and makes about a million good points.

There’s no choice about how or when you’re expected produce, or under what circumstances. Here is your computer, here is your workstation, you have the tools, the florescent lights are turned on, why don’t you go ahead and get to work, thanks, bye.

I’m beginning to think that when you boil things down to their core, the modern day ‘knowledge worker’ has two functions: creation and collaboration. And for the latter, the office environment can be important. I love online collaboration environments as much as the next person, but there’s always something to be said for the face-to-face meeting, where ideas fly over the boardroom table. It’s a proven method, and will always be enough to justify traditional office space.

But the creative element is a whole different matter. For that we are uniquely individual in our needs and practices.

Unfortunately, most people can’t simply step into The [creative] Zone. In the very same way you’d want to find the right time and place to read a book, creative types need to setup the specific conditions they need to enter The Zone. For some people, this might mean listening to a certain kind of music. It might be fueled by caffeine and a dark room late at night. Some people work best in the silence of the early morning. It all depends on the person.

One of the major symptoms of the shift to the information age is that more and more of your employees are doing work that requires creativity. Stuff like answering phones, filling out forms, data entry, tech support, purchase order accounting and so on, is either less important or has been outsourced to another organization halfway around the world. In smaller businesses, especially, it’s important to understand that everyone can be (and should be) a creative worker, but it will only happen if you give them the flexibility, freedom and motivation to find their ‘creative zone’ in relation to the work you’ve asked them to do. And if that zone happens to be outside the wall of your office then, well, who cares?

And definitely don’t do this:

Of course it makes sense why corporations work this way, but that doesn’t mean that this is the right setting for creative people. The corporate world rewards based on perceived productivity rather than accomplishment. People who arrive at work at 8am, take a 30 minute lunch break (at their desk), and leave at 6pm are usually congratulated regardless of their real accomplishments, while those who struggle with corporate schedules but produce brilliant work (delivered on time) are often penalized.

The hour is an irrelevant metric in most work. Smash the clock.

1. Benamin, with John Gruber also regularly appears on the excellent podcast The Talk Show [↩]

I’ve already written a bit about electronic books and the notion of a paperless world, but Todd Shultz got me thinking about the topic again in a different light.

If you haven’t noticed already, all mediums are starting to shift towards the internet. People are actually spending more time on the internet than watching TV. (I know I do) The internet is too great a location for advertisers to ignore. I am inclined to believe that print media will suffer a lot in the coming years. Who needs a newspaper when you can go on to CNN.com? Perezhilton.com has all of the tabloid lovers. Anything you can find on the newstands, you can probably find on a blog or a website.

This is pretty much impossible to dispute. Circulation on magazines is way down and book sales have been mostly flat. I guess it makes sense, then, that the question everyone is asking is this: is print dead?

The Difference Between Death and Irrelevance

Erin and I have had lots of conversation about this topic (we both tend to side with the “yes, dying or dead” camp, for what it’s worth) but lately I’ve been thinking about the idea of print as an industry in a whole new light. The battle lines have been drawn as print-versus-technology but that’s not really apt, when you get right down to it. Because consumers aren’t buying the material — the paper, the ink, the glass, the microchips, the whatever — they’re buying the stories.

Products should be defined based on why the user buys or needs them, not based on the physical materials that make up the product. An example: We don’t (or, more accurately, didn’t) buy audio CDs because we liked the shiny colourful back surface or the way it spun in the player. We bought audio CDs because we wanted to hear music.

Painting the battle as print-versus-technology is akin to vinyl-versus-CD or, hell, buying coke in a plastic bottle versus a glass bottle. In either case, the product is the same. Schultz points that out perfectly in his post: the stuff on the internet is the same product as the stuff on the newsstand (or on TV).

No funeral march for ink and paper

The technology isn’t there yet, so we’re still a ways away from the true shift from print to purely tech-based content. But it’s looming, and anyone who claims otherwise is probably burying their head in the sand. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Like with any shift, the only people who will be hurt or left behind by the shift are those who refuse to see it coming.

The market still wants the product — they want news and gossip, comedy and drama, fiction and non-fiction, art and pornography — but now it will be beamed to them, through devices that sit on a desk or fit in a hand (some of these devices might look just like paper). And, yes, this draws all sorts of questions about monetizing and content customization and the dynamics of publishing-as-business but the bottom line is simply this: people still want what publishers are selling. You’ll be okay.

What Gen Y should do

One of the most changed dynamics will be the ‘opening up’ of the content creation process. Whereas in the past writing went through a sort of ‘funnel’ through editors, publishers and printers before making it to the public, we’re at a place now where any business can make themselves visible instantly. For most organizations, then, a good, solid, web-savvy writer is going to be nothing short of a weapon. Remember that as you build your skills for your career.

Photo by oskay. Licensed under Creative Commons

Despite all anecdotal evidence, a lot of Gen Yers still tend to worry a lot about their potential in the job market. It’s probably due to the experiences their parents and older siblings may have had entering the workforce decades ago, struggling to find anything but the dreaded McJob. It’s so bad that this trepidation sometimes causes people to turtle themselves in academic institutions, piling on degrees and diplomas in the hopes of guaranteeing career potential right out of the gate.

The truth of the matter is that all that education, while undoubtedly important for other reasons, isn’t entirely necessary. Because, in the end, Generation Y’s secret weapon for career success is simply demographics.

Since the first wave of baby boomers reached the age of 60 in 2006 and have entered retirement, an increasing number of professionals are leaving the job market each year. So it’s not surprising that more than 80% of employers say they are concerned about a looming shortage of qualified workers.

There’s little reason today for Gen Y to fear the job hunt (though obviously this can’t hold true for all sectors — some are in steep decline) because there are simply more job openings coming down the pipeline than there are workers.

That said, the word ‘qualified’ in the above quote is extremely important. More on that in a later post.

Listen, young office young workers, odds are that as the youthful, tech-savvy person in your workspace, someone’s going to ask you to create a PowerPoint for them. And if your experience is anything like mine, your coworker is going to ask you to put A LOT of text on each slide. Like so much text that nineteenth century Russian novelists would be intimidated.

There’s a serious disconnect between what people WANT to see on the screen when they’re listening to a presentation and what they, in turn, SHOW people when it’s their turn at the podium. Everyone seems to nod their head in steadfast agreement when I talk about how much I hate dense, wordy PowerPoint slides. But then they turn around and create the same sorts of slides themselves. (Or, as the young, tech-savvy person in my workspace, they ask me to do it.)

It’s time to fight back. The next time someone asks you to create a PowerPoint presentation for them, ignore what they tell you and follow these rules instead. While it may get you in hot water initially, the universe will ultimately reward you. I promise.

Rule #1: THESE ARE NOT YOUR PRESENTATION NOTES

Seriously. This one kills me. If you need notes during your presentation (and, sure, most presenters do) then try HOLDING THE NOTES IN YOUR HANDS. Projecting the points you want to cover on a big screen is OVERKILL. And it has the not-so-lovely side effect of ensuring that everyone has read ahead of what you’re planning to say before you’ve even said. Presenters NEED to remember that, unless your audience is a room full of infants or hamsters, people can READ faster than you can talk.

And, no, having each bullet appear sequentially as you talk about each one is not an effective way around this problem. Really.

Rule #2: YOUR POWERPOINT IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE YOU

While it may be tempting to be really comprehensive with your slides, tying everything you want to say into a nice little package that can be sent as a ppt file via email to anyone who asks, this kind of thinking ALWAYS leads to a bad presentation. There is absolutely no way you can effectively lay out everything you want to talk about in a presentation on PowerPoint slides and still keep your audience entertained.

When in doubt, remember this: You are NOT presenting a PowerPoint presentation to an audience. You are presenting YOUR IDEAS to an audience. The PowerPoint is a mere enhancement.

Rule #3: LEARN THE PROGRAM BEFORE YOU DIVE IN

PowerPoint is not a complicated program, but that doesn’t mean you should just dive in and start creating your presentation without doing a little bit of learning first. Here’s a little test to let you know if you’re ready: Do you know what a Master Slide is and how to use it? If not, then learn THAT before you start. The Gen Y employee you get to help you later on will thank you for it.

Also, Times New Roman? No. Comic Sans? Double No. (Even if it is such a ‘fun font!’) Animation? Triple No. Your title zooming across the screen one-letter-at-a-time accompanied by machine gun noises? No No No No No.

Rule #4: REMEMBER THAT POWERPOINT IS VISUAL

As often as I’m annoyed by what people include in their PowerPoint presentations (see #1), I’m also generally dismayed at the stuff people leave out. PowerPoint is at its best when it’s used for visual information. So if you’re talking about the increase in sales over the last quarter, don’t just list those numbers in a table — make a chart! Trying to create a feeling of collaboration or innovation? A picture works wonders. These should be the bread and butter of your slides — if there isn’t any way to convey what you’re talking about visually, then you likely don’t need a slide for it.

And, as stupid as it sounds, don’t forget the obvious stuff. Include a slide with your name on it. People will appreciate it not only because it helps them remember, but also because it lets them know the proper spelling. Ditto your phone number and e-mail. And any sources, whether they be books, URLs, movies, or whatever, should be shown on screen, so people can be sure to record them accurately if they want to look them up later.

Rule #5: CONSIDER THAT YOU MAY NOT NEED A POWERPOINT

In a lot of circumstances, PowerPoint can serve as an effective visual aid during your presentation. But there is no rule that says EVERY presentation need its own PowerPoint presentation. In fact, some presenters might find themselves stronger without it. If you find yourself thinking more about the upcoming slide than you are the core idea you want to convey to your audience, removing the PowerPoint may prove beneficial to both you and your audience.

After all, Lincoln never had PowerPoint, and the Gettysburg Address still turned out okay. (With PowerPoint, it might have turned out like this)

Photo by fling93. Licensed under Creative Commons.

I don’t take notes during meetings at work. I’ve taken some flack for this in the past, as usually I am the ONLY person in the room not taking notes. I also never really took notes during school classes. Not even in university. I’ll jot down REALLY important items (phone numbers, deadline dates, really critical items) but, by and large, when you look over at me during a meeting, I’m not going to be writing anything down.

I’ve always thought of myself as a mental note taker.

But this post over at Penelope Trunk’s blog has got me questioning this practice. According to Penelope, mental note taking is bad practice.

I tell Ryan Paugh that mental notes is a joke. No one takes a mental note taker seriously. It looks like they don’t care. “Even if you’re a genius,” I tell him, “you have to take notes to show you are engaged.”

It used to be that note taking was for secretaries. When hotshots didn’t type, hotshots didn’t take notes. But now we know that people actually learn more when they write as they listen, and people learn more when they translate what they are hearing into their own idea nuggets, so it makes sense that writing notes is a hot-shot job now. Everyone takes notes.

As much as I hate to admit it, this does make sense. My rationale for not taking notes has always been that, even when I do take notes, I never end up looking at them again anyway. I have no organizational system for my notes. I have no organizational systems in general.

I just assume I’ll be able to remember it all. And, up until now, that hasn’t really been a problem. But I guess the question I need to ask myself is this: will that ALWAYS be the case?

I tend to tout the virtues of Gen Y a lot, but I think, in this case, I’ve come across something that truly is a flaw. While it IS possible to be TOO organized — and I’d definitely argue that a lot of ‘traditional’ paper-based organizational systems are a waste of time (and space!) — Gen Y’s hubris when it comes to things like “mental note taking” is a real flaw.