Casual Friday is a form of mind control

I have a few friends who work for companies that have a "casual Friday" policy. The idea here is that on Fridays, employees can where whatever they want to work - ie, something casual.

Ooooh, hooray! I'm a 33 year old man raising two kids, paying a mortgage, managing a significant budget for your company, and I'm so excited because today I get to where whatever pants I want! You're so awesome boss!

Are you kidding me?

If once a week your employer is saying "hey, you can wear whatever you want to work" - all they're doing is telling you that they have so much power over you that they get to control what you're going to wear on a daily basis.

It's a ridiculous form of mind control.

Stodgy companies of course respond by saying something to the effect of: "but we often have clients visiting" or "there are important meetings to attend with key executives" or some other lame excuse for a ridiculous policy.

The reality is that if your people can't figure out the appropriate attire to wear for a particular event, then you've hired the wrong people. The other reality of course is that people work most effectively when they are comfortable. And clothes have a direct impact on our comfort.

Just talk to a woman who has to wear panty hose every day, or a man that has to wear an upside down noose - I mean tie - every day.

If you want people to wear pleated khaki pants with a checkered button down just because that's what you wear, at least have the wherewithal to realize that what you're doing is telling people they have to wear a uniform.

And if you expect people to wear a uniform, don't be surprised if they're unwilling to take a risk, make a mistake, or do something amazing. Because you've trained them to be so obedient that they can't even pick out their own clothes.

Casual Friday's are nothing more than an exercise in mind control. On Monday, be an adult and wear whatever pants you want.

Twitter is for listening

I'm pretty sure most people that use Twitter for their business in some capacity are using it the wrong way. I say this because it seems most people view Twitter as a way to tell the world about something that they know about - or something they're making, or doing, or selling, or whatever.

And to be sure, this is certainly one benefit of twitter. I make it a point to tweet a blog post I've written, mention something interesting I see, and post the occasional picture of my kids. But the ability to say something on twitter isn't why it's valuable.

Listening is where the real value is at with Twitter.

I had never even heard of Derek Sivers until Jason Fried mentioned his writing. I learned about a whole new way I could make websites by learning to use Perch, something that Ryan Singer tweeted about. I only knew that Andrew Dubber was going to be putting up an idea a day, every day for thirty days, because Derek Sivers linked to it. And because I learned of Andrew Dubber, I now know there is a double distilled whisky-type alcohol called Manx that you can get from the Isle of Man. (There's lots of other great stuff I've learned by hearing of Andrew Dubber too.)

Truly though, the times Twitter has been the most valuable are the moments when I've learned something from someone I respect, or when something I mentioned got noticed - but only as a direct response to something that I heard.

This is why I got so confused when I would see people that were following 3,000 or 4,000 people. How can you keep up with anything that anyone is saying?

These people of course are following others in the hopes that they'll be followed back. Their plan is to basically follow a bunch of people, hope they get followed back, not listen to well over 90% of these people, and lastly, hope that a good percentage of the people that they're ignoring will pay attention to them.

Good luck with that.

I was talking about this with a friend when I was informed that TweetDeck allows users to determine which of the people they follow that they're actually going to listen to. So now, whenever I see someone that's following thousands of people and also uses TweetDeck, I just figure that's exactly what they're doing. And I don't even notice how many followers they have, because all I see is the thousands of people they're ignoring.

Tell me, if you're asking people to pay attention to you, knowing full well that you're going to be ignoring them, why should I give you my attention? Haven't you just built a wall between us before I've even had a chance to listen to what you have to say? Aren't you just telling me that you're probably going to ignore me? How big of a fan of yours can I become if this is my perception?

I use my blog for speaking, but Twitter is for listening.

"I can't do it"

Really?

You can't?

Are you sure can't is the word you should be using?

I've been thinking about how often people say can't the past couple weeks. It's also discussed in REWORK, which I just finished on Thursday, in the essay titled "four letter words", and then today Seth Godin's post Yes we Can had me thinking about it again.

You'll hear people use the word can't about their work, themselves, and their lives all the time. It's too bad, because understanding that we're almost always making choices, allows you to gain a lot of control over you life while also being a lot happier about the choices you've made. Just as importantly, it helps to keep a clear perspective by recognizing when you truly can't do something.

Any time I'm about to say I can't, I try to find what choice it is that I'm really making. And not necessarily because I think this will allow me to make a better decision, though it sometimes does, but because I just feel trapped if I say I can't do something.

Now, I'm not perfect at this, and the "can'ts" still slip through now and then, but I strive not to say it. Because if I can't do something, then I'm not really free, and that is terrible.

Almost always, the word can't can be replaced with "I choose not to _____ because _____"

You can't fly? Or you choose not to go extreme skydiving because you are afraid it might kill you?

You can't sing? Or you choose not to go to open mic night because you might be embarrassed or people might laugh at you?

You can't speak another language? Or you've chosen not to spend your time learning French?

Some people must feel more comfortable by saying can't - otherwise I suppose we wouldn't hear it said so often. If you can't do something, then you're not responsible are you? If you can't do something, then you don't have to embrace what you can do, which is really just the choice you made. Instead, you can just get mad and blame your situation - but not yourself.

That mindset is just a frustrating trap so I try to avoid it at all costs.

When you recognize the choices you've made, then you can really embrace them and give them your all. This also makes it so you're not bummed out about what you "can't" do.

You can't take a year off of work? Or you want a nice home to live in with a steady job? It's fine if you want that steady job! Just stop saying you can't do something else because that means you're not taking responsibility for, and embracing, the choices you've made.

The other benefit of looking at things this way is that you recognize how important it is to maintain a proper perspective on things.

I can't stop the affect the internet will continue to have on the world (nor would I want to) so I choose to do things differently than I did before. I can't stop my children from growing up, so I choose to embrace the - literal - writing on the wall while they're toddlers. I can't bring back loved ones that I've lost, so I truly embrace the time I do have with my friends and family.

What can't you do?

Are you sure about that?

With this in mind, I wanted to give you an update on the first follower dance party project. If you've been following it - which is best summarized in this fantastic drawing by Simon Fowler, one of people participating in the project - I've decided that I'm going to use it to try my hand at programming.

What? A project manager that wants to try to learn some programming. Yep. As I told the rest of the group in the project space, I feel lately as if my ideas have been imprisoned by my inability to actually make them real on my own. I'm using this project as an excuse to try something I've been putting off for too long.

It would be really easy for me to say I can't develop the website I'm thinking of. Or I can't afford to hire a few people to do this. Or I can't find the time.

Instead.

I don't want to spend the money on hiring a developer, I'd rather try to do it myself. I don't know Ruby on Rails, so I'm going to get tutoring from Jeff Cohen of Purple Workshops so that I can learn it as quickly as possible. This project is a priority, so I'm going to put the necessary time and effort into it.

Can I really develop a web application that's my twist on this idea from Andrew Dubber? We'll find out.

It ships on May 1st.

The brain and the heart are equally vital

There seems to be an ongoing debate in the world of the web and technology around what's more important - design, functionality, usability, etc.

I find this debate odd.

Just last week Ryan Singer of 37signals wrote a post about how different the experience is between visiting an Apple store and a Sprint store. His main point, which I agree with entirely, was essentially that the experience in an Apple store is awesome and at a Sprint store it's pretty terrible.

Here's the thing though - he was there because AT&T's coverage has major issues. He wrote:

AT&T has been bad enough lately that, while I’m not ready to chuck the iPhone, I’m at least growing curious.

No matter how great the user experience is in the store, if the product isn't actually working that poses a pretty significant problem.

You never hear doctors arguing about whether the brain is more important than the heart. Or whether the lungs are more important than the Kidneys. Sure, I suppose in a major accident and something's got to go they know they can't take away the brain. I'm not trying to get in a philosophical debate here.

My point is, everyone agrees that these are all vital organs. They're all critically important, and they all matter a lot. I don't often hear doctors debating about whether it's more important to get oxygen to the blood or whether it's more important to pump the blood. That would be a sort of ridiculous argument.

This is how I feel about web applications. The 37signals products are simple and elegant, but if my data was lost or there was a major security breach, the easy to use UI would cease to matter very quickly. And likewise, without the design they just wouldn't be the products they are today.

Design and functionality are equally vital.

By the way, this is something I'll be keeping in mind as I execute on this idea, from Andrew Dubber. I'll be giving it a little twist, so it's going to be more than just a printout of a numberless calendar. Stay tuned.

The language barrier is crumbling

Google translation has been around for a little while, but I just used it in any sort of extensive fashion recently with this first follower dance party project that's going on. One of the people that joined this still as of now unknown project is a man named Lykle de Vries.

Lykle is involved with some really cool projects such as New Music Labs, which helps musicians maintain and cultivate their fan base. Basically, he helps ensure that his client's art is received. Lykle also has another business that focuses on new business development for a variety of clients.

Here's what's fascinating me right now though; the new music labs site I linked to above is all in Dutch - because Lykle lives in The Netherlands. With the power of Google Translate though, all I had to do was enter the url of his site and I'm taken to it and everything appears in English.

The language barrier is literally crumbling.

Now, for some people, this may not be news. They've seen translate before, and it's not new to them. That's fine, but I've been thinking about this reality the last couple days and I think we're going to witness another one of those monumental shifts - or maybe accelerations - in the kind of content we consume.

It's amazing to me that now, we'll be able to get any web page delivered in pretty much any language we want. And, Google chrome just added translate right into the browser - at least for windows. So if you visit a site in another language, it just asks you if you want to view it in your language.

I'm amazed by this kind of stuff.

So now here's what I'm wondering; how long until we begin copywriting pages towards Google translate? Some things translate better than others, and I wonder if this is the next evolution of copywriting. We'll now not only be trying to capture an audience that speaks in our natural language, but we'll also writing with the Google Translate engine in mind.

How long until this technology is incorporated into Instant Messaging, text messaging, and other forms of communication?

I'm certainly not arguing that this should replace learning another language - but I am suggesting that this will yet again dramatically increase the amount of information we're able to consume, and the audiences we're able to reach online. As a result, it will change the way we create websites and how we write on these websites.

I hope I never get to a point where I'm not completely amazed by the awesomeness of this stuff, and it's more proof that this whole internet thing is just only getting started.

By the way, I've added a little widget in my sidebar so that any visitor to my site can view it in any number of languages.

Hello world indeed.