Sick in the City

When you're living abroad in an exciting new city for a limited period of time, it's really a bit like the honeymoon period in a relationship: rose tinted, romantic and not exactly a study in realism. Therefore, I believe it's always important to try to experience a new city not as a tourist but as a true resident would. I like to think that this is what I did this week. I experienced what happens when you get really sick and need to see a doctor, fast.

While it was certainly not a pleasant experience (and initially made me feel like I had wasted 5 days of my life) I realised that I learned what the city had to offer me in a time of crisis.

Initially I thought it was just regular old food poisoning and that I would have done my time in 36 hours, 48 at the most. When day 3 rolled around and I felt I was getting worse, I freaked out and looked for a doctor online. Zocdoc, the amazing online booking system I found, was great - it listed available doctors in my area and highlighted which ones took my type of insurance, their specialty and all their available times for the next few days. I could even review their resumes, or look at their picture to see which face I found most appealing, or knowledgeable! (Only in the US would you have this much information with which to make your choice!) Once you've made your choice, you can then click in to make your appointment. When I had issues with the website and called the 1800 number for help, a lovely young man named Matt tried to assist me, and when he couldn't, he SENT ME AN AMAZON COUPON for my troubles! God, I love customer service in America!

Eventually I got an appointment at Beth Israel two blocks from work. Just hearing the name Beth Israel  made me feel better. (For Aussies, Beth Isreal is a major hospital network with a very strong brand in NY).  I had chosen a professional looking general practitioner who was female and young. The appointment was pretty generic - lots of paperwork, doctor decor, super sterile clinical rooms and the doctor was 15 mins late as per normal. However, she had an air of efficient knowledge, and diagnosed me with absolute confidence. She even provided me with other useful life tips, before sending me out the door in just over 5 mins. I was impressed with her speed, but she was so quick it actually made me suspicious that she'd diagnosed me correctly.

When I wasn't getting better 24 hours later, I came across a little office in the East Village advertising "Dr. Dave", a man brave enough to actually post his cell phone number on his office door. In a panic, I texted him. We had a few back and forths, me frantically describing my symptoms and asking if I had Helicobacter Pylori (a bacteria from hell), and him calmly reminding me I needed to make a real appointment. What impressed me was that he actually responded to my text. What impressed me even more the next day when I showed up for my appointment was that he is obviously a doctor with a difference.

Turns out "Dr. Dave" is something of an institution in New York. Numerous articles have been written about him and he has been featured on CNN:

Sporting colourful tattoos up both arms and the mannerisms of a 21 year old, Dr. Dave runs a tiny office right around the corner from my apartment on Ave B. The population of people patiently hanging out in his waiting room indicates that he treats mostly immigrants, bootstrappers, and everyone else with little cash. Dr. Dave is most well known for his gig running a health co-op for food workers in the restaurant industry. He has been known to provide health advice from the bar and do house (restaurant) calls in the middle of the night when people cut themselves. As I sat waiting to see him, he treated a young guy seemingly for free. I seemed to have stumbled upon an honest to god community doctor, in the 21st century, in my neighbourhood.

In the end, Dr Dave confirmed that the doctor at Beth Israel had gotten the diagnosis right and it was just taking me longer to get better than I thought. However, he added another medicine to my list, as well as prescribing me Gatorade(!), which I actually think made all the difference in how quickly I got better.

Having had experiences on both ends of the spectrum, it is a nice feeling to know that I have choices, depending on what I need.  I could go with surgical efficiency, a brand name guarantee and mid town locale, or go the community style, slightly zany but discount route. At this point, I think I prefer the latter. It's hard to explain why I felt more comforted by Dr. Dave than my uber efficient Beth Israel practitioner. Perhaps it's because he takes care of the whole process, start to finish - from appointment booking (and texting, if you need that) through diagnosis to payment and followup. He seems to charge you what he thinks you can pay for, and humour never hurts when you're not feeling well. He made me laugh. Whilst Beth Israel is great, there is no substitute for a local experience that makes you feel like there is someone watching out for your community. Oh, and by the way, my follow up appointment with him is free. =)

Is our job market starting to embody the characteristics of a start-up?

 "The Start-up of You" - a GREAT article by Thomas Friedman appeared in the NYTimes today. I was super excited because Friedman, famous NY Times columnist and author of the much lauded book "The World is Flat",  has managed to synthesize into his op-ed many of the thoughts that have been swirling through my head recently.


Friedman starts by highlighting how the strongest sector in the still lacklustre US economy is now in Silicon Valley, which is embodied by internet and social networking companies like Facebook and LinkedIn. For job seekers, the implications of this fact are powerful:  the job market has increasingly started to reflect the lifecycle and environment of a startup. 
A few quick notes on what makes a "start-up" a "start-up": 

• Start-up business cycles are much shorter than those of regular businesses and move much more quickly. 
• Start-ups make decisions quickly, with much less information than corporations would allow. 
• Because start-ups are always developing innovative new products, their goal is often to move fast and innovate, with processes tending to be lean and iterative. I think Michael K, from the start-up Skillshare, said it best on his blog: 

"Our team doesn’t believe in “launches” [of products]  because we’re always iterating, improving and innovating on our product. We don’t follow “two-week sprints”  because the biggest cost to our company isn’t money, it’s time. Two weeks for our team is equivalent to 2 months in the corporate world. For that reason, we will be releasing daily and often for our product.  This allows us to fail faster, and invest less time in things that just don’t work." (1)

Friedman suggests that this environment is reflected in today's job market as employment lifecycles shorten further and job tenures become more uncertain. Most importantly, those who manage to thrive in this new job market seem to possess the characteristics of agility, adaptation and tenacity - in short, the ability to continuously reinvent oneself. What does this mean for job seekers, or those of us trying to build our careers? One of the quotes Friedman includes that hits home most strongly is from Reid Garrett Hoffman*, one of the most prominent figures in the Silicon Valley start-up industry. He says: "...you should approach career strategy the same way an entrepreneur approaches starting a business.” (2)   


The changing job market has been written about before - particularly in relation to increasing globalisation and the characteristics of Gen-Y. The popular prediction to emerge from this conversation is that we will now have 4-5 different careers in one lifetime, not 1 or 2. However, comparing the job market to the incredibly uncertain environment of a start-up is a different proposition altogether and one I have not yet read about. Rather than 4-5 career changes, this implies a continuous shifting, adjusting and evolution of one's career and role, rather than distinct, definitive changes over a career lifetime. This implies more subtle adjustments, more iterations and less contemplation before making a move.    
   
If this is where the job market is heading, one would think that a lot of the job seeking population would need to adjust the way they think about their jobs and future careers. However, a lot of us already seem to be in this mindset. The rise in popularity of this industry with young, ambitious Gen-Yers from decent schools is evidenced even in my own network - at least 10 of the kids I went to school with are now working for Google. A handful have even started their own start ups.

In closing, this is a great article for those considering switching careers, kids in high school contemplating what they should study in college, and anyone else interested in the start-up industry. Read on here!!!! "The Start Up of You".

*"RGH is one of the premier starter-uppers in Silicon Valley — besides co-founding LinkedIn, he is on the board of Zynga, was an early investor in Facebook and sits on the board of Mozilla." (3)


Credits:
"The Start-Up of You", Thomas L. Friedman. New York Times online. July 12, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/opinion/13friedman.html?src=recg. (2), (3).
"Creating a Product Focused Start-up Culture", Michael Karnjanaprakorn. Michael Karnjanaprakorn Blog. February 21, 2011.http://www.mikekarnj.com/blog/. (1)

Microactions and other interesting trends.....

Whew! It's been a long time since the last blog post!

The good news - it's been an inspiring time! Work has just gotten really interesting, and tellingly, this happened when I started to focus more on Product and less on being a consultant!

However, it's also been a week of learning more about what is out there in the social media and social good world. New York is many things, but it is definitely at the forefront of shaping popular and Gen Y culture, kind of like a magnet which attracts everyone at the cutting edge of their industry, whatever that might be.  These are just a few of the concepts / trends I have observed recently and found interesting...

1. Microactions

Have any of you heard of microactions? I hadn't until last week. It is the idea that taking tiny steps can move people forward without threatening their sense of control. Its an effective way of enacting change without overwhelming people. Microactions disarm our resistance to and fear of change because we commit to something so small and inconsequential that we are not worried about failure, and we're guaranteed success in completing this tiny action. They're much smaller than actual steps, and often seem almost ridiculous. For instance, I learned of a life balance coach who used microactions to help an overweight client who absolutely refused to exercise. She writes: 

"As the director of the Hypertension Research Center at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center I prescribed exercise for all my patients who wanted to lose weight. I remember one woman who hated to exercise. I honestly think she would rather wire her jar shut or eat a strict diet of earthworms. At each visit I instructed her to walk for thirty minutes each day and at each return visit she confessed she had not exercised at all. We tried every behavior modification trick in the book, but no amount of punishment or reward could get her to comply.

So I tried a microaction. I asked her if she could simply get dressed to exercise three times a week. She looked at me as though I was radioactive. “What a worthless thing to do! Let me get this straight. I am supposed to just get dressed to exercise? A sweat shirt will not burn any calories!”I agreed but replied, “Just this week. Humor me.”At her next visit I asked her if she had tried the “just get dressed “ prescription.“Yes I did.”“Great!. Now I want you to add one minute of walking,,,”She interrupted me with a crafty grin. “I walked for thirty minutes three times this week.”“But I gave you strict instructions not to.”She laughed. “I felt so stupid standing there, all dressed up with no place to go, that I decided to walk just a little. Five blocks from home I discovered that exercise is not so bad. My neighbor joined me and now between the verbal venting and the hiking I come back feeling wonderful.”

I don't know who said this, but a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step (and I know from personal experience that the first step is often the hardest.) Microactions are being used more and more in startups and on websites to get users to do what you want. However, they are obviously useful across a range of applications.... 

2. If we ran the world.....

This is an amazing idea that I came upon when reading about microactions. Their mission, in short:

IfWeRanTheWorld is a real-world experiment in tapping good intentions and turning them into tangible, do-able microactions that anyone and everyone can help you to do. All of us can achieve more than one of us, and everything starts with a microaction.

I have just added my own microaction to the site - please check it out! Danz, you will love this one. 

3. "Reading the news" is no longer about reading the Times or the SMH

My friend Danz would be the first person to tell you that she now goes to Twitter and FB for her latest news updates. Traditional practices of reading the newspaper or watching CNN are becoming outdated as we demand more and more tailored news - news that is relevant specifically to us and our interests and lifestyles. We don't want to read about what some editor thinks is important, rather we want everything potentially newsworthy to be filtered through our own lens so we're left with the most pertinent and interesting information, without having to wade through a whole raft of things we care nothing about.  

Nowadays, Gen Y'ers tend to establish a collection of blogs or e-publications on the areas they are interested in and scan those every morning. Say you are really into American politics. Sure, the NYTimes may report on Capitol Hill  or feature the biggest news items in the main section, but the idea is that niche political sites will report on the same news but do it better, because that is their area of expertise.  Others 'follow' someone on Twitter who they know has the most up to date information on the issues they find compelling. 

In general, I would say, our world is becoming more and more tailored to each of us, as companies figure out how to leverage the vast datasets of personal information stored on the web - just look at the Google ads which appear on your side bars when you are reading your Gmail.......it's kind of spooky! There is even a new term now to describe these datasets: "big data"! McKinsey Global calls it "the next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity." Check out their report on Big Data here.

A day in the life.....

So a typical day might run like this....

6.45am - if Emily is strong enough to get me out of bed, she does, and we go for a run by the East River. Have made the unsurprising discovery that I am VERY unfit. 

8.30am - leave for work - get ice coffee on the way (I trial a new place every day but have not yet found the holy grail....) 

The walk to work:

 Stuyvesant Street:  an example of the ideal street to live on in the East Village..apparently it's heritage listed. 

A popular NY hang out for couples...(a common sight for me on my morning walk to work)

The dog park! The weird thing I've noticed is, New York dogs are ugly.  I know you are never supposed to say that about anyone else's dog, (it's like saying their child is ugly or stupid) but New York dogs are, on the whole, not very cute - in my humble opinion. (why is this!?!?) They definitely don't hold a candle to Blue. 

Everything here is so CHEAP! Fitness First, you are the devil!

9.00am-ish Start work at Startup X

Mid morning: Sales meeting! This is what a typical meeting might look like.....

Maile has no shame!

Lunch: COSI! Forgot how well America does salads.

6.30pm: Potentially hit up a "meetup" in the city somewhere. For those who have not yet heard of the meetup phenomenon, it's pretty cool. If you are looking for other people who also like to knit baby clothes and eat cheese together, you could probably find that. You can pretty much find any community your heart desires, no matter how niche. Some examples: Women Walkers of South Palm Desert, New York Gay and Lesbian Rock Climbing Group, Knit and Wine Brooklyn...

We went to a meetup recently of Australians in Tech, held at an amazing rooftop bar...

On the walk home.... There are a bunch of funky bars in the East Village....the following Soviet outpost has always fascinated me but I haven't yet ventured the courage to go in....sometimes there are KGB-esque types hanging around outside.

 

What New Yorkers do on the weekends....

So, I'm not going to lie - after living on the beach in Coogee it's been a bit hard to transition to the lack of space in New York. So I understand why New Yorkers need to "weekend" elsewhere. Southern Connecticut, known as a bedroom of New York City, has long been a destination of choice.

Luckily, the beach house was available for the final weekend in June and so we took major advantage...

Lazing around on the deck at "Pure Luck"...

Definite evidence of more lazin' going on...

This hobiecat really flies when you get going...

Maile was probably the most excited of all of us to get out of the city  ("no more pooping on concrete!") We were worried that the little bare patch on her nose was going to get burned as she lay in the sun, so we created a little tent for her schnoz out of an ad from the Wall Street Journal....

                                                                                           Maile and Thomas floating in the Sound together.

Emily doing some beach reading......