The inner struggle of entrepreneurship

 

[Brain in lightbulb*]

Being an employee is essentially a carrot/stick psychology, sometimes reaching Pavlovian proportions. People go to work and do their best regardless of their mood or internal needs. The ability to ignore those factors comes from the desire for positive results, whether it be verbal phrase, financial bonuses or promotion, and acceptance from fellow workers, and fear of negative consequences, such as being fired or fined. Internal and cultural values may reinforce these external forces but the maintenance of “proper” work habits over a lifetime essentially is based on the reward principle to the point that many people don’t even consider why they are working so hard.

Freelancers have neither bosses nor co-employees and have to “Zen” it themselves. Faced with never-ending series of tasks each and every day, the discipline must come from within and sometimes fails, each person having a different fault line. Without the outer structure, freelancers have to manipulate their own mind in order to overcome emotional minicrises. This struggle is a part of being an entrepreneur and is winnable.

Procrastination is a human but harmful trait. In simple terms, everybody has certain tasks that create mental resistance in the mind even if they are not difficult in themselves. For children, this can be doing dishes or cleaning up the room. Many freelancers simply avoid bookkeeping tasks, including invoicing and collecting, planning and implementing marketing, and customer follow-up, to name a few. Clearly all these tasks are vital for any business. However, lacking background in the area, these tasks become energy intensive and even frightening in some cases. The best way to overcome that fear is to first recognize them as personally challenging tasks and accomplish them first before beginning the more natural aspects of the business. It is like drinking the medicine and then having a chocolate. The entrepreneur practices self-rewarding and promotes the business at the same time. In practice most of these duties can be accomplished in a few minutes and are quite profitable. Their weight is in the mind and can be thus eliminated.

Occasionally, the brain goes on strike, simply refusing to work on anything. Regardless of the amount of energy and discipline, the freelancer is incapable of doing the job at hand, period. Energy and will fail to change that reality. Of course, people become frustrated at this inability to move forward, especially if they have chosen the task and made a commitment. Psychologically, no man’s land is the worst place to be as a person can neither work nor relax. The solution is to accept and adapt. In practice, that means understanding that, even if it is somehow possible to overcome the inertia, the quality of the work, will be so low that it will probably have to be redone in any case. The next step is to direct energy and thought to rescheduling the task timeline and deciding what type of mini-break will best allow the re-start mechanism to work. Sometimes, the customer will agree to a later deadline. If not, ideally, deadlines should always have some “fudge” time Still, a few hours can be gained by working in the evening or getting up early in the morning. Options for relaxing include a nap, gardening, baking, cooking, running and talking to a friend, to name a few. The ideal break activity depends on the person. It is important to limit in advance the duration of the break as it tends to extend itself somehow. Upon return to the desk, the task no longer seems so daunting. As in most types of pain, acceptance, not denial, is the best method.

The silent killer of entrepreneurs is burnout, a slow-forming calcification of the motivation to work and succeed. Freelancers have great incentive to work hard and succeed as they started the business and enjoy all of its financial fruits. Unfortunately, they do not enjoy paid vacations nor are they prevented from working on weekends and holidays. Thus, the direct road to burnout involves a permanent 7 day a week schedule and no real vacation time. By contrast, a scheduled weekly day off, except for very extreme emergencies, coupled with aoccasional complete vacation from work leads to long term success. Many freelancers fail to realize that they will almost never lose a customer if they take a week off to go skiing or visit family from time to time nor do clients expect them to work on holidays. This life balance not only does not harm business but significantly increases productivity as a refreshed mind has more perspective and is more enthusiastic. People do not choose the way of freelancing in order to become robots.

Doubt is a more insidious challenge. Success is often neither immediate nor constant. Everybody loses customers, faces criticism and lacks uncertainty about the present and future at one time or another. As freelancers have no marketing or strategic planning department, they must depend on their instinct, initial plan and faith in their judgment of the situation. Even the most confident sometimes can momentarily lack faith. To overcome this crisis, it is necessary to switch modes from the emotional to the rational, identifying the reasons for the loss of customers, lack of success or change in reactions by seeking information. With that data, it is possible to make logical changes to the operating mode. Thus, the energy created by the legitimate concern for the future is productively directed to understanding that future. Once again, negative energy is directed towards progress.

The secret of success is in the mind, more so for a lone entrepreneur. The temptation to delay, avoid, stop and question will occur at one time or another. Freelancers simply have to know how to overcome it as much as possible. That is the inner struggle of entrepreneurship.

*Captions help the blind read posts. Picture for Pixabay

Rezooming the academic year

 

 

[Lens*]

In a one month, after the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, I will begin another year of teaching English to engineering students, my 28^th year, at the Braude School of Engineering in Karmiel, Israel.  Unlike last autumn and those previous, I will not be meeting them personally as circumstances require remote teaching through Zoom. Last semester, both students and teachers worldwide got acquainted, as intimately as possible, with this technology but it was like a first date, fraught with tension and nervousness. This time, we will be meeting as old friends, with some knowledge and comfort with each other. As it is considered wisdom to focus on the blessings you enjoy rather than the momentary shortcomings, teaching through Zoom does have its advantages for teachers and students.

Teachers will certainly enjoy the both the familiarity with the technology and distance from the students. After one full semester experimenting with the options and techniques for presenting various types of material, it will be a pleasure to begin a semester with reasonable certainty in regards to the pedagogical approach. In simple language, starting every lesson fearing potential technical issues is quite tiring. Teachers now have the basics down. Furthermore, while non-traditional, the physical distance from the students is also non-emotional. Zoom teaching is vedi, vici, exii, I came, I conquered, I exited. Teachers have very little emotional contact with the students. While this lack of human touch reduces the effectiveness of teaching, it also significantly reduces the weight of personal preferences in issuing grades, i.e., the students are mainly just faces. On a more important note, at least for college students, it places almost the entire responsibility for learning on the students in terms of their focus during and beyond the Zoom sessions. The role of the teacher is heavily limited to preparing proper explanatory material and providing understandable explanations. The rest is on the students.

They also gain in terms of being allowed to study according to their personal style. Every student has a preferred way of learning and reviewing material. Some requires extreme focus to grasp and remember while others learn more through osmosis, their brain absorbing the material as they play with their phone or do crosswords (the latter was my particular style). In the latter case, as this seeming distain tends to annoy flesh-and-blood lecturers, Zoom lessons allow them to do whatever they want during the lesson without causing offense. Moreover, they are able to go to the bathroom or get a sandwich without asking permission or disturbing other students. For slower-grasping learners, the recorded Zoom lessons create an opportunity to absorb one point at a time or reinforce key points. Clearly, Zoom is a boom for certain types of learners.

Both teachers and students benefit from the convenience and economic impact of Zoom. Nobody can argue that commuting to college is fun, whether in terms of time or parking spots. Most colleges suffer from a terrible lack of parking spaces. As for the hours, how many students really enjoy 8 o’clock classes, morning or evening? Even when the classes are being given at those hours, once the camera is turned off, students do not have to be present, whether physically or mentally, nor do teachers have to enforce active presence, a relief for both parties. Most importantly, Zoom allows the show to go on despite the Corona.  Even one year without schooling, regardless of the level, would be an educational and professional disaster for students and financial disaster for teachers. Zoom allows a semblance of continuity.

I am fully aware of the disadvantages and difficulties involved in Zoom teaching both for teachers and students. However, I am also aware of the millions of people that have lost their livelihood and businesses due to the Corona virus. I therefore choose to join Bing Crosby, the Andrew Sisters and Johnny Mercer, to name a few, and accentuate the positive and resume teaching with a smile.

* Caption pictures to allow the blind to fully enjoy your posts. Picture: Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/PhotoMIX-Company-1546875/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=3151078">Photo Mix</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=3151078">Pixabay</a>

Say it again, Sam or syntactical repetition

 

[Humphrey Bogart*]

Redundancy can be both positive and negative. In legal terminology, terms and conditions are the same as are cease and desist and thus merely add superfluous complexity to the language. By contrast, on airplanes and space vehicles, redundancies save lives. In grammar, redundant structures are quite frequent but from far from universal. Comparing examples from English, Hebrew, French and Russian, I will present some linguistic double-takes in the use of prepositions, articles, subjects, possessives and negations.

All languages use prepositions in conjunctions with verbs but the difference appears where they are multiple objects of the preposition. Most languages repeat the preposition before each noun. For example, in French, you would say “Je suis allé au cinéma, au café et à la piscine” meaning I went to the movies, coffee shop and pool. Note that the preposition à meaning to in its appropriate form (à and au) appears before each noun. This is the practice in most languages but not in English. The word to is only used once before the first noun in the English translation.

To be fair, in the case of a particle, a word without any lexical meaning but serving a grammatical function in the sentence, repetition can matter. Take the following Hebrew sentence:

הם הכירו פה את כל סוגי מזג האוויר, את החברה ואת הים.

The word את is a particle indicating the presence of a specific direct object. Translating the phrase literally into English, it comes out “They knew all types of weather, the society and the sea.” In Hebrew, the particle is placed before each noun, clearly indicating that types of weather, society and sea are all direct objects of the verb “to know”. However, in English, because of the intervening presence of the words “types of”, it could be understood that they knew types of weathers, types of society and types of sea, not the writer’s intention. Thus, a lack of a repeated article or particle can create ambiguity. The sentence as translated came out: “they are familiar here with weather of all types, the society and the sea.”

This example leads to the matter of articles, the and a in English. Since in most languages nouns have a gender, i.e., masculine, feminine and sometimes neuter, it is necessary to insert the gender identifying article before each noun. In the following sentence Le pėre, la mėre and les enfants ont tous les droits., meaning the father, mother and children all have rights, each of the forms of the French article le is used in accordance with gender and number. However, as English nouns do not have gender unless it is natural, e.g. girl and boy, there is no need to insert the word the before the two last nouns as the first use implicitly applies to each of them. Reverting back to the translation in the previous paragraph, it is not a mistake to repeat the article if it adds a certain required emphasis or stylistic element. As English stresses conciseness, the repeated articles are usually omitted.

Certain languages lack a commonly-used form of the verb to be in the present tense, notably Hebrew and Russian. They simply write the subject and predicate without that verb. For example, in English, in identifying someone’s profession, a person would write Mr. Jones is a teacher. In Hebrew, due to the lack of a register-neutral form of the verb, it comes outs Mr. Jones, he teacher. In effect, the subject, Mr. Jones and he, is repeated to allow use of the accepted grammatical structure, pronoun – identifier, without a verb. Here the redundancy is required by syntactic rules that do not apply in most languages.

Possessives are often doubled, albeit for different reason. In French, the form of the possessive is determined by the gender of the noun it describes, not that of the person that owns it. For example, in the sentence “Son chien est laid”, which means his/her dog is ugly, the use of the masculine form son is indicated because the noun chien is masculine. In order to clarify the matter of ownership, it is necessary to write Son chien à lui or son chien à elle in order to indicate his or her, respectively. In Hebrew, for syntactical reason, a possessive declination is added to the noun in addition to the actual possessive element. To demonstrate, בעלה של נינה [baala shel nina] translates literally as her husband of Nina.  The ה at the end of the word בעל turns “husband” into “her husband”, which, according to English thinking, is obvious due to the word of. English does not require such doubling up.

Finally, there is strange matter of negation. Most languages a no is a no, i.e., one word of negation does the job. You don’t need to add any other element, an example in itself. Even Russian is satisfied with one word: он не нужен большее [on nye nujen bolshe]. It does not need more, literally. However, French takes an additional step, i.e., an added pas, because the negating ne is not sufficiently emphatic: ça ne suffit pas. Ne is not enough. If you only use ne, it suggests an explanation or fear: je crains que il ne soit trop tard. – I fear that it will be too late. Like in backgammon, it is double or nothing in French.

Good reasons exist for redundancy in language even if they do add words. By nature and training, I value conciseness and efficiency in language. On the other hand, these repetitions are part of the language and add a certain charm as well as precision. So, to paraphrase Humphrey Bogart, say it again, Sam, but only at the right time.

*Always add captions to pictures to allow the blind to enjoy your posts.

The not-so-fine art of discouraging customers

                                        (Man at desk surrounded by Darth Vader figures*)

As the expression “a word to the wise is sufficient” suggests, it is always advisable to learn from others, including their mistakes. I wish to provide a personal precautionary tale that demonstrates even in the Corona-period hunger for customers, old habits don’t die as well as remind all sellers of both goods and services of some important basic principles. 

To make a long story short, a phrase that indicates that a long story will follow, I am considering taking a law course, not program, to improve my contract writing skills. To explain, I attended law school more than 30 years ago but never completed the full program or obviously became a lawyer but have been translated contracts for some 16 years now from French, Russian and Hebrew to English. While my current level of legal writing is sufficient, I have no doubt that there is room for improvement. I was contacted by a reputable on-line law school and was intrigued to know that non-degree seeking students could take individual courses for an appropriate fee. I decided to investigate the matter. That is where the fun began.

 My first contact was with the on-line chat. The representative, despite all my direct questioning, was unable to provide me a list of available courses, forcing me to ask about them one by one, with time in between for him to check. He clearly knew nothing about this program nor understood what the difference between a course description and syllabus is. All he could do was to send me a link to the program site and say that he would send me more information by email, which never arrived. After 30 minutes, I ended the “chat” frustrated and still knowing nothing.

The next day, a Monday, I tried to call but was kept on hold for 30 minutes without reaching an advisor at long distance rates. I again tried the chat and unfortunately reached the same clueless representative, who ignored my requests to pass me on someone that understands. We chatted for some 30 minutes but this time I managed to receive a list of available courses but no additional information. The same promise to send material was made with the same result. 

Many years ago, I learned to ignore unpleasantness and focus on my goals. On Wednesday, I called again and was immediately answered by a pleasant and knowledgeable advisor. She apologized for the issues, answered my questions, took my email and sent me all the material I requested. She even gave me her direct number should I have any further questions. I am now seriously considering enrolling for the course. 

This tale of woe with a happy ending, Disney style if you will, is not intended as a complaint against this honorable institution in particular as the problem is far from unique. To demonstrate, I have yet to receive replies from two other law schools to which I sent requests for information. The Corona crises, among its many effects, should have made all businesses, regardless of type, further appreciate all existing and potential clients as the margin for error for business survival is very small today. Most unhappy customers do not complain; they simply do not buy, a silent killer. 

The essential error was committed by the college, not the representative regardless of how incompetent he may be. The college was aggressively marketing its programs. It is clear that all front-line personnel, those that directly recruit the students, must be thoroughly familiar with the programs. Furthermore, if the latter is not possible, the college must provide immediate expert backup and train the employees when should they pass customers on. Finally, during high demand period, it should increase the number of personnel and phone lines to properly answer requests for deadline. On the positive side, the higher-level personnel, the advisor in this case, knew how to diffuse the negative feeling and go forward. However, a company is only as good as its weakest front-line link as most potential customers will simply look elsewhere. 

My father used to say that anything worth doing is worth doing well. Unfortunately, the college in question did a very solid job pushing me away. It is not alone as many business, large and small, are equally proficient at making the buyer feel unwanted. It is not a fine art by any means as it can lead to bankruptcy. Let the seller beware.

* Label your pictures to allow full access to the blind. Picture creditd: Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/www_slon_pics-5203613/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=2539844">www_slon_pics</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=2539844">Pixabay</a>