The up and downside of positivity

For the end of the month of positivity, I thought I’d share my own set backs, first.

I’ve always thought of myself a lightweight. Certainly that term can be dersive, leveled at someone with less than and not enough of whatever qualities as being valued. But, for me, it’s a certain type of lightness. I am a flitter, in and out of conversations, in and out of organizations. Once many years ago, my boss noted in a speech that I always have a broad smile on my face. I’m glad to be known that way.

Like all people, my insides broil and burble with the stresses of life. We all have things, as my boss said recently. We all have parents and friends. Some of us have children. We all hope and dreams. We all have boundaries on our times and our abilities. We all feel less sometimes.

The last few weeks have been particularly trying for me at work, in that a key person left, and in the interim, I found myself drowning in emails. I could feel the cracks in my exterior as they happened. I could feel the light in my eyes flicker, if not dim slightly. Personal things only make the cracks feel like deep fissures. The aches of life and work seem to make the fissures in your facade expand, like wood cracking from moisture.

Positivity isn’t about denying bad things. It’s about knowing you can change them or weather them. The world is neither all good or all bad. But, the world you see and react to is as good as you can make it.

And to end this month of positivity, I thought we could all think about all the amazing things are jobs teach us.

One evening not so long ago, I was sitting in the lobby of work watching a printmaking demonstration. The artist was masterful not only in her technical skill but also in her way with people. As I sat there, two colleagues came by.

We sat for a few minutes watching and chatting. Something came up about food trucks and curb clearance. I began speaking fairly cogently about chassis and disposing of oil. My one colleague, Katelyn, asked how I came upon this knowledge. I’d started a studio van once, I related. Another colleague, Reggie, then began to tell an amazing story of how she found herself cutting an enormous pumpkin at a state fair. I wished I could relate the enormity of the pumpkin or lessons learned, but alas, she was the one who lived that particular experience.

After we all shared more stories of “our other duties as assigned” triumphs, I started to think about how many interesting things we all learn at work. Often these odd assignments feel draining and take us off the path. Finding a balance in those is important, no doubt. But celebrating those little pieces of knowledge and skills as positive can also be helpful to your wellness.

Circuitous paths can be fun or at least funny. Off-topic can help you find new topics or refine your thoughts on the original one. If nothing else, you’ll get yourself a great story.

Positively Social

I was planning to write a post this week about positivity in management. And, I think I will, eventually. I have many thoughts, and a few notes on my dark forays into, well, darkness. But, instead, this week, I want to talk about the positivity of social media.

Listen, I’m not Pollyanna about much, and certainly not social media. It’s a time suck. It’s false social and often poor media. It’s disjointed and siloing. It’s hateful and harmless. All that bad exists in social. But there are bright spots of good. That’s what I want to showcase this week.

Work for many museum managers has gotten real recently, I suspect. If your fiscal year i

begins July 1, you’ve gotten past the blurry fun of the first half of the year and moved into budgeting. You are looking at spreadsheets. You’re trying to make tough choices. It’s keeping you up at night.

At the same time, if you’re in this field as both an avocation and a vocation, you can’t help but hear the constant drumbeat of change. The quicksand of philanthropy is underneath, and our footing feels precarious. I’ve buttonholed more than one colleague to try to talk about real solutions for salary equity. The problems in this field are real, and so many of us want to be the ones to solve them. Though, these solutions will only occur if we talk more.

I’m so lost as to how we’re going to get out of the mess that is the equitable support of arts and culture in the age of billionaires. It’s a big ole mess, frankly. That said, I know I’m solving this with others.

Enter social media. I started a conversation about salary as a percentage of operating costs. Mostly, I was trying to understand how to make sense of the field. I wanted some outside perspective. So many people responded, like Michelle Moon of the Tenement and Bruce Wyman of USD-Mach Design Consulting. Their conversations with me helped me continue and expand my ideas. It might have been a moment in their days but it had a big impact on me. I suspect many of us have dropped a note on social, without much thought, that had an impact on others. It might not be social like your coffee meetings with live colleagues at work, but it is a social form of meaning-making. I am truly appreciative of this resource.

Which brings me to the larger comment about social media. Museums are a very small sector (though larger than coal-mining!). The scale might feel suffocating. It’s hard to be in this a while and not know everyone. But, it’s also wonderful. It’s great to be in this a while and know everyone. The power of connections is what makes this whole crazy fieldwork. I suspect, and tried to test this on Twitter, but didn’t quite hit it right, everyone is about three degrees from everyone else. 

Alright, experiment here. Can we make a giant linked thread of people in this field?

Like Libby and I are connected by a book @CabinetofCurios .

Sarah, who is someone who connects you and me? https://t.co/YSx4aa9whh

— Seema Rao (@artlust) February 14, 2020

Think about that. Everyone can find someone else who can help them within three degrees. I’m not talking about a popularity contest. Being cool or popular isn’t the point. Instead, it’s about being three degrees from someone who can help you with your thoughts. Or being three degrees from someone you can help. We’re in a position, largely due to social, where we can make collective action happen every day on social media. Art Museum Transparency is one good example of this; as are #MuseumsRespondtoFerguson and #Museumsarenotneutral.

What are the ways you can make a positive impact, one social connection at a time? 

Next week, we’re going to talk about how the quirky parts of our job can be positive. Do you have a story to share about something positive that resulted from doing the “other duties as assigned” parts of your job? Tag me so I can add your thoughts to this month’s summary post @artlust on twitter, @_art_lust_ on IG, & @brilliantideastudiollc on FB. 

Positivity starts with you

Pollyanna was one of my godmother’s favorite movies. It seemed a bit like a fable, this girl who looked for the good in everything. I hadn’t spent enough time with people to be think it was an unreachable fiction. But the world depicted was so divorced from my own life as to be basically as unlikely as ET.

Years later though, I remember hearing someone call another colleague a Pollyanna. I was surprised by their derision. Pollyanna wasn’t hurting anyone with her behavior. She was just trying to do her best playing the cards she was dealt. But, then I found myself interacting with the forced cheeriness of “I’m happy” colleagues. They wouldn’t speak negativity because they didn’t want to take sides, say. Or they would only talk about the successes, say. There were also the people whose idea of forecasting the future and budgeting was basically storytelling and conjuring. These were the people who call problems  “opportunities.” These folks use positivity as a coping mechanism and a shield. They often project, and even push, their attitude onto others. They don’t dig deeper into negativity. But like so many facades, the ugliness underneath remains. Potemkin villages don’t flourish; they just shine in the moment of inspection.

Why do people do this? Seeing the negative, voicing the reasons for such issues, and then finding solutions are all really hard to do. It’s hard to be willing to speak truth to power; it’s even harder to speak your own truths. You might be fooled by others (I know I often am), but the people many are most fooled by are themselves. So, people honest with problems is hard. Now, honesty is not negativity, though they can be kissing cousins. Honesty is about sharing good and bad.

Negativity is dwelling in the bad. They can sound like the same language. The difference with negativity is that it persists, permutating and propagating itself. Negativity has a velocity that can feel explosive. And, negativity loves power vacuums. So, the so-called Pollyannas often avoid negativity, in the way someone might avoid a potentially addictive drug.  Negativity feels good, at once a release of energy and people validating your fear.

But like a reformed sinner, I know the cost to your soul of negativity in the work place. The toxicity can erode your well-being. It fuels you, while at the same taking energy away from you. Negativity can eventually colonize your mind, and like a virus, just feed itself.

So, how do you not fall prey to the pull of negativity but also not be a Pollyanna? I don’t know if I have a universal answer. But, for me, it’s a bit about vigilance. You are the only one who can remind yourself to not be negative. You are also the person who has to remind yourself to be realistic. You might tell me that you can do your best at being positive, but you are mired in a toxic workplace. 

And, I’ll tell you the fight is real. I’ve been there. But, the best thing I did, and I had the means to do so, was to leave. I also made the very conscious choice not to continue to let my mental processes go back to that place. Old mental habits feel better than your most comfortable shoes. They’re well-worn paths are where your mind, if not trained, will take you. You have to push your mind to other, more positive paths. And, putting up a façade of positivity won’t keep you off those dark paths. Your mind will take you there when you’re in your quiet moments or when the stress short circuits you.

Try this. On a given day, measure your reactions. How many of them were realistic, but positive? How many were hopeful? How many were about growth and improvement? How many of them were defeatist or negative? Be honest with yourself on these answers. After you tally your responses, try to make one more positive reaction tomorrow. Give yourself a couple weeks of being a bit more positive. Then assess how you feel. If this move toward positivity feels good, what does it hurt? Who knows—you might be glad of the change.

Pollyanna wasn’t a fool. Being positive is just as easy as not. If you aren’t pushing people into false positivity or shaming people for their level of negativity, your positivity can make doing work easier. And, I do believe there is plenty of good in every work day if you look for it. As Pollyanna said, “there is something about everything that you can be glad about, if you keep hunting long enough to find it.” You are the one who can find sources of gladness in your work life.

Is positivity part of your work process? Tag me so I can add your thoughts to this month’s summary post @artlust on twitter, @_art_lust_ on IG, & @brilliantideastudiollc on FB. 

Positivity, Time, and Work

Last week turned into an empirical study in my own personal goal for the year (being kind to myself). I had written most of last week’s post at the beginning of the month. I only needed to dump it from the temporary file into blogger, but I couldn’t find the five minutes. Sure, there were five minutes somewhere. But, mentally, I just couldn’t. And, I could have beaten myself up. I could have thought of the scores of loyal readers, most of whom predate my authorship. I could have worried that people might be waiting for my post. Or I could do what I said in January. I could let it go. I could give myself a break. 

So, instead of stressing, I’m going to combine the last post for January and the first one of February. The topic for February will be about work and positivity. How do we harness positivity to make our own work better? 

For me, one huge step is to be confident in my own abilities, and honest in my weaknesses. Last week reminded me of a weakness. I can ignore work as easily as I can do it. In ignoring work, or procrastinating, I add new labor to my docket. I add the labor of worrying about the work I haven’t done. The worry becomes a shadow looming over me as I do whatever other actions I’m doing with my time. Now, last week, I forced myself not to worry. And, I did a pretty good job. But, it took real effort to stop worrying about undone work. There are times when doing the small task, like just finishing up this post, would be far preferable to the ghost labors of procrastination. 

Positivity in work is about making choices. Which tasks do I have to do to be less stressed? Which issues can I ignore because they don’t need my attention? Which elements of work are out of my control? What elements of this task can I control? When can I enjoy the fruits of my failures, compost for successes? 

Making good choices requires knowing yourself. For January, I was originally going to write about a practical goal I’ve set myself for this year. I’ve been trying to improve my work processes. You’re often the best person to improve yourself. As part of that task, I’m trying what I accomplish each week, and marking down how much of my time is spent doing each type of task (meetings, email, etc). 

I also tried to think critically about how long it takes me to accomplish something. I decided to do an experiment recently. In my early career, time was vast and free, or at least it felt like it. My energy was equally easily replenishable. I’d finish things right. No shortcuts were taken! Extra effort gains extra merit. But as it turns out, there isn’t really extra credit in the workplace. 

For example, two curators can be asked to write the same number of labels. One gets finished in ten hours and the other in twenty. Neither gets more credit than the other (if they’ve co-curated the show). Furthermore, lavishing ten extra hours on labels doesn’t ensure having labels that are twice as good. 

Why? Museum work includes many intellectual labors that draw on deep reserves of knowledge and years of experience. The person putting in ten hours from the example above might actually be putting in 10 hours plus 30 years of reading in the field. The person putting in 20 hours might have only 10 years of reading in the field. So, with 3 times of background, the first writer becomes twice as efficient. That said, experience doesn’t necessarily help. Some people are so mired in their process, and with years of using the same system, frozen in their ways, they can’t get faster at a task. Time, therefore, is not an indicator of quality. There are those people who say but I spent 20 hours on those labels—they can’t be half as good. There is no simple metric to understand how to consider efficiency and effectiveness in intellectual work. A good label is insanely hard to quantify. Just as porn was famously hard to define, good writing is easy to enjoy and hard to measure. 

Good writers are hard to manufacture. I’ve long asked applicants to write a short label based on a catalog entry. (In case you’re wondering, I shred the output after the job is hired. Their intellectual output should not be used for my org’s gain.) I did this because credentials often inveigle hiring managers. Your old prejudices and hang-ups, your own beliefs about credentials, are hanging out in your mind, no matter how you try to avoid it. Then, when you look through resumes, your unconscious brain might move you to a certain candidate. It’s hard then to say you’ve looked at apples and apples. You’re looking at a Harvard apple vs a Community College apple, say. Over the years, I found good writers didn’t come from a single background or training. They weren’t similar in temperament or attitude. Some people can just write. Some can’t. 

So, what does this aside about writing have to do with my experiment? Understanding work, time, and efficiency in museums aren’t easy or universal. Everyone’s process is different, and if you want to understand work in your organization, you should start with you. 

Over the holidays, as it was my first at my new job, I didn’t take a vacation. My boss was away, and I needed to be around. In this quiet period, I did three wildly different types of tasks. I performed an analysis of my organization’s attendance at programs for the last five years, I created the decorations for our new music series, and I worked on labels for an exhibition in our interpretation laboratory.

Data analysis isn’t strictly my job, but I’ve been asking everyone to start using data to help inform decision-making. (Notice I didn’t say drive). I work with a couple of data-obsessed folks, so my analysis was somewhat easy. Everything was at my fingertips, and I’m a bit obsessed with using excel as it was meant to be employed. 45 minutes later, I had some solid graphs and a couple of zip code maps to pour over. I made some quick conclusions and walked away. Later, as I was sending my findings to a colleague, I told them the exercise took me 1 hour. The active time was one hour, but there was that percolating time. It was as critical as my active time. In the workplace, we often don’t allot for these interstitial moments. Putting in the time to ruminate can be challenging, but in the end, essential. Smart workers often chunk rote tasks and/ or various types of tasks in order to allow space for deep thought. Also, it’s important to remember in organizations, work is often accrued time. I wouldn’t have been able to have that time, or data if a couple people hadn’t put in the initial labor to compile my source numbers. So, my 1 hour of work was also someone else’s 20 hours of work. Was all this time worth it? More on that later. 

After the data crunching, and before my analysis, I spent time preparing decorations for an event. It has been a long time since I made things. In an old job, I used to make all sorts of things. I’ve probably made more coasters than I’ll ever need. Most of the jewelry I wear are old samples. And I feel like if everything I’ve screenprinted in my life were lined up, it’d stretch coast to coast. In other words, I’ve got pretty good muscle memory and a great facility with scissors. It took me 20 hours to decorate 20 giant lanterns, make 20 T-shirts, print 4 large rolls of paper, print 80 tote bags, and make 12 banners. Now, I’m excluding the time in bed when I dreamed up the image, the hour to make the image for the screens (done by a colleague), the two hours to burn the screens (done by a dear friend), the half-hour of driving to get the screens and back. Experience not only helped me be efficient but in some ways, it helped me be effective. I chose an evergreen image we can use for years. I focused on big decorations so my efforts were maximized.

But experience also led me down some less smart paths. Work is often about patterns. Imagine you date a crummy person. Rationally, in the end, you say, no more bad people. Two decades later, you might find yourself recalling dozens of crummy people in your past. Museums have a lot of tasks that are terrible dates. For events, for example, you might decide you must have this particular set up. Sure it will mean you lose a weekend, and your porch will stink of indigo dye, but it’s worth it. The mission is worth it, you think. Well, friend, like that bad date, the mission doesn’t care about you. And your choice (I’m looking at you, Seema) was a bad one. I’d gotten into the bad habit of excusing the overage of hours for events and fell back into that pattern. (Though at a particular moment in December, a wiser me stepped in. We ended up with some indigo blue bags but more white ones.) I chose to spend time with my kids over wasting time getting the right blue. 

That’s the thing about work. Every single element is a choice. You might say I need to spend a good deal of time reading and searching before I write that label. You might feel you do your best writing twenty minutes before the deadline. You might think you have to write something out longhand first. Those are all choices. None of those choices are inherently wrong.

As to the last task, the labels, I’ve spent countless hours and none. At first assessment, I’m like the person who took 10 hours to write my labels. (I certainly feel twice as old as many). I’m a fast and slow writer. When I finally get to writing, I’m fast with the keys. But there are hours, weeks even, of time falling into every rabbit hole of research I find. I probably could change this method, but I’m old and I’ve never been good with tricks. Instead, I’ve chosen to set up systems to accommodate my process. I do things that are fast for me, like data crunching and silkscreening, by rote. I choose to sandwich rote tasks with deep tasks to give me time for both. I choose to allot a specific, very short, amount of time for tasks that don’t give me a high yield. 

In the end, I think the prepping data was a good use of my time particularly given that did the deep thinking part while silkscreening. My decorations were a mixed bag. The production was a good effort, but the batch dying wasn’t. While the products are a lovely blue, the products will not appreciably improve the event and as such it’s a poor allocation of my time. 

Finally, the hours I spend thinking about writing are an imperative use of my time. Ideas can be self-propagating but slippery. Their trajectory is hard to track; their path tortuous but exhilarating. In a knowledge field, ideas are our ore. We need them to fuel every part of our organizations and to propel our visitor-engagement. Does my scanning Blaire’s Moskovitz’s regular feature on museum collection connections to award attire look like goofing off? Sure. But then, hours later as I wait for a meeting when her thread sends me down a rabbit hole of colors, design and the science of looking, and then I find myself reenergized to write labels, I know that I wasn’t a detour. It was the scenic route—the richer, more enjoyable path. 

For me, time has an eggs/ basket quality. With these three tasks as my baskets, I decided the labels would take the most time, and that’s where I spent my time. 

Work processes aren’t a given or immutable. Reflecting on the time a task takes and if that is the right amount of time can appreciably improve the way you work and therefore how you feel about work. In the end, you might need to work longer. You might need to do things a certain way you perceive as right. And that is your choice. I made the choices that made me feel the most positive about my work and my output. 

What are some choices you make at work to help you feel good about your labors? Tag me so I can add your thoughts to this month’s summary post @artlust on twitter, @_art_lust_ on IG, & @brilliantideastudiollc on FB.