Growing in web, social media, and nonprofit worlds.

Friends, election day has finally arrived and I love it. For one thing the threshold for talking to strangers has dropped out of the floor. “Nice sticker man!” to the guy passing you in the crosswalk will win you a big smile from just about anyone today. The elevator ride down from my office, normally a silent affair had everyone chatting about where they were heading out to, or what their experience was like in the morning. I got cheers when I shared that I had sent my absentee ballot off to Florida last week.

An Election of WE

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out Seth Godin’s lessons from the election. He write about the centrality of stories. Here’s the section that resonates with me down at the bottom.

“So why didn’t the ads work this time?

The tribe that Obama built identified with him. Attacking him was like attacking them. They took it personally, and their outrage led to more donations and bigger turnout. This is the lucky situation Apple finds itself in as well. Attacking an Apple product is like attacking an Apple user.”

Over over again this election season people speak about how “we’ve have to win” and how “we’re going to pull through”. My grandfather has been using the same WE with me since June and I enjoyed reading about Seth and Jackie’s voting stories from across the pond too.

Track Results

There are a ton of places to track election results tonight. I was also happy to find that MSNBC is streaming their coverage live- the quality is pretty good, so if you find yourself without a tv - never fear! You can get a nice bird’s eye view of coverage at Alltop too and Read Write Web has a nifty Election Day Web Tool Kit.

Also, if you’re into the wisdom of crowds you can check out Daily Kos’ predictions contest though that I’d bet that demographic is skewed enough to negate the theory in this case.

Election Day Schwag

There’s a ton of free stuff around town this election day.
(I’m writing this post from Starbucks across from my office as I enjoy my free coffee.)

Happy Election day everyone!

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In honor of Job Action Day, I want to share some job search related tips that I have found helpful.

Quintessential Careers invited a host of job bloggers to participate in the event by sharing a post with actionable items people can take. They describe the sentiment of the day as follows.

“Job Action Day 2008 is all about facing the realities of the global economic meltdown and taking action steps to protect your job, build your career.”

Lindsey Pollak’s entry discusses 5 immediate steps for job hunters to take. As always she has a ton to share. She also has an easy to read run-down of all the posters for the day.

Two other jobby posts that I’ve enjoyed recently include Shannon Paul’s post on making a resume shine with Web2.0 goodness and Britt Bravo’s 5 tips for job seekers.

Also: I’m aware that the site doesn’t display in Internet Explorer (working on it, but get in touch if you think you can help!)

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Just in: My apartment rocks the hizzhouse! That’s right folks- I’ve got my own place and a great roommate to boot. I feel like I’ve joined some secret club. It’s great. Here’s one of many photos Judy took of Josh and me signing our lease. Look mom - no hands!

Our Place is Awesome

Here’s why I love my apartment.

• We have a pool! A POOL! It’s on the roof and there’s water and everything. I’ve started swimming most days and I’m enjoying the chance to cool my head in the water at the end of the day.
• Location. We are a block from the subway at Dupont Circle, 20 minutes walk from Kesher Israel Synagogue, 10 minutes from the DCJCC, and six blocks from Trader Joe’s and Safeway. A ton of our friends are nearby. Hurray!
• We love Mulu! Mulu is the woman who staffs the front desk during the day. She is spunky as anything and looks out for us.
• All the free stuff. Our place came mostly furnished and today we scored a ton of things from a woman moving out of another unit- linens, pillows, a stereo, paper goods, plastic drawers, and booze.
• Josh lives here too. I know, “Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww…”

On the Way

Today the final construction on our partition wall are being completed and Josh’s new bedroom will soon be carved out of the living room (no worries, we still have plenty of common space left). We still need Comcast to come out here and do their magic so we can use the internet, and this afternoon we’re heading to Target to buy cooking and dishware, but it’s shaping up fast.

You can find a sweet apartment in DC too.

Before we started looking we knew the general area we wanted to live in and we heard from lots of people that in a solid 2-3 days you can be pretty sure you’ll find a place. We found ours in a day and half. Here’s how you can do it too.

1) Craigslist DC is home base. Check here every morning and search for the neighborhoods you’re considering. For us that meant Dupont, Foggy Bottom, and Adams Morgan. Places go like lightning so try to make appointments for same day. If you are told the place has already been taken ask if the person is knows of or is renting other places in your price range.

2) Walk into apartment buildings and ask if there are vacancies. This is how we found our place. It may help to start by mapping out the locations of likely buildings on a google map. For starters try the Kesher Building List and the SAIS Building List. Pop into buildings on the list and any others that look promising along the way.

3) Call management companies in the area to ask about vacancies.

4) Have people you know in the area check on vacancies in their buildings for you in advance of your search. Friends may also know of people moving out whose leases you can take over.

5) Consider looking at one bedroom places even if you mean to have two people living in the place. If you find something big enough and the landlord and building consent, you can construct a partition wall to create a second bedroom. Plus, there’s always bunk beds

Come Visit

It is really nice to be settling into this apartment. Friends, let me know when you’re in town - There’s a futon and a place at my Shabbos table waiting for you.

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Remember when you were little and your parents told you not to talk to strangers?

Well recently I have been going out of my way to forget all of that and it has paid off in interesting ways.

What prompted this?

Part of the reason I’ve been having more random conversations is that I have been taking the advice of Lindsey Pollack whose career search book I’m reading. Lindsey suggests getting speaking about your search with whoever you meet and also getting in the habit of introducing yourself more. I also had a great conversation yesterday with Jocelyn Harmon and we reflected that we are trying to have more faith in strangers. We observed that the web savvy crowd is generally less suspicious of the intentions of strangers and willing to learn and accept resources from them.

Things better and funnier than candy that I’ve gotten from talking to strangers

I had a nice conversation with a woman on the subway who is in business school. She had some good advice for me and when we got off together she gave me her card and wished me luck.

On the street in Manhattan a man dressed in a full batman costume walked by me on the street and gave me a full pat on the back as he passed by saying “Laila tov” (goodnight in Hebrew). Not something I was expecting! (ok this one’s just funny)

Meeting with Jocelyn Harmon yesterday. Jocelyn isn’t really a stranger since I have been reading her blog for a while and I read about her work on Beth Kanter’s blog, but I did call her out of the blue. I found her cell phone number posted on one of her online outposts and decided to connect. A less web oriented person might have been thrown by someone reaching out on the spur of the moment like that. Meanwhile, we had a great discussion and I really enjoyed talking with her.

Sitting in Starbucks the other evening I joined a conversation that three guys were having at a neighboring table about class and race. Turns out they are participating in a summer service internship program I had never heard of. Joel gave me his card and has since connected me with someone at a prominent DC nonprofit focused PR agency.

Traipsing around DC with a friend looking for a restaurant yesterday we were about to use google text to get directions, but then I though better of it and asked a person passing on the street if they knew the area well. DC Stranger beats Google text FTW!

Anyone else have great stories of people you’ve just up and introduced yourself to or struck up a conversation with? Have you found it as worthwhile as I have?

photo by dariuszka

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If you haven’t seen Randy Pausch’s last lecture on achieving your childhood dreams that has been floating around the Internet yet, watch it now. I’ll wait.

What an awesome and insightful human being. Seriously if you haven’t seen it it is worth the hour long investment if only to see hear his wry jokes and see him pull off those one-handed push ups.

One of the most insightful things I learned from Randy is the role of brick walls.

“Brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.”

What a great attitude. I talked about something similar in my first MeshugAvi Blog post ever. There is no doubt in my mind that Tal Ben-Shahar would have shown a clip of Randy talking about this idea in class for that session. He’s just nailed the right attitude to achieving your dreams on the head and for me it ties in nicely to my earlier thoughts on massive action.

Another quote of Randy’s that gets at the idea of embracing the suck during those times when the needed work isn’t to your liking:

“Don’t bail; the best gold is at the bottom of barrels of crap.”

So what are the brick walls in your life? How are you going to throw yourself over them or tear them down? What helps aside from massive action?

photo by viZZZual.com

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I’ve been walking around for a few days now with the phrase “massive action” in my head. I knew that I had read it somewhere as a productivity and motivation hack/mantra, but couldn’t place it. Finally, I turned to google, well the search bar of all my feeds in google reader to be precise, and found that I had come across it in an awesome post on Rock Your Day, a productivity blog from Dave Navarro. I have started to think of this idea of taking massive action to accomplish a goal with the word “hustle”.

Dave’s Pillow Test

One of Dave’s central points is that Massive Action is the proper response to the question

How do I want to feel when I put my head on my pillow tonight?

After a day when I have really worked my butt off I feel accomplished, energized, and confident that my goals are in reach. That’s what massive action can offer.

Consistency

The hardest thing about hustling for massive action is staying consistent. It helps to take things one step at time. Chunking work into smaller pieces can make a project a lot less scary. A good tip for chunking is too tell yourself that you are going to spend a set amount of time doing consistent work- 5 to 10 minutes at most. Set a timer if you want, but force yourself to focus for the time you alot. The idea of this habit is to stretch the length of time you can focus with practice. Eventually you’ll find you want to work longer and, shock of shocks, that you are actually engrossed in the work.

If the work required to move towards your goal is unpleasant, boring, or as a good friend of mine would say, “isn’t to your taste”, then embrace the suck! Dig in, build a rhythm, and get your hands dirty, whatever you do don’t stop and don’t sit idle.

Get YOUR Hustle On!

My main goal right now and the project that I’ve been hustling for the most is networking and searching for my first job. I want to work in marketing, public relations, or community management and apply my hustle and experience at an awesome company or nonprofit organization.

On Monday explore the advantages of baby steps and small actions. Until then…

What are you doing with your hustle? What’s your biggest project or goal right now, or if it’s intimidating to specify the most important, then identify any goal. Share what your hustling for along with a tip or trick you use to stay on target in the comments!

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