I’m not writing today about HDMI or $200 per-foot component cables, so you may wonder for a while if what I’ve got to say relates to your job. But bear with me—it does.
One year as my wedding anniversary approached, my wife knew that I was tired of the coffee table clutter. I was a home theater geek, so she started looking in that direction for an anniversary gift. Her gift to me was my first PC-programmable universal remote. It was the same green-backlit, grayscale touch screen that most of you once programmed professionally and eventually abandoned in frustration because programming took so long per client that you couldn’t make any money selling them.
But I was a hobbyist, so I stuck with it, determined to make my remote do things it was simply never designed to do. Eventually I was proud of what I’d accomplished, so I uploaded my file to a popular web site. It was there that my work caught the attention of Eric Johnson, a guy who was well known in our industry, but unknown to hobbyists like me. Eric contracted me for some graphics work from time to time, but mostly we just struck up a friendship. At the time, I didn’t expect that friendship to ever affect me professionally.
The files I had posted online elicited a lot of commentary on the forums, so around that time I coined a term to describe home theater components that fail to offer the discrete IR codes installers need for good automation. I wanted the term to imply an insult, so I came up with “Toggle-Only Actuated Device,” or “TOAD.” Eric Johnson picked up the term and used it in his trainings, presentations, and documentation. Due to his frequent use of the term, I succeeded at one of my geeky lifetime goals as a writer: I “invented” a word that has come into relatively common use.
That’s something I probably would have never accomplished without my friendship with Eric Johnson. And that’s a connection that paid off in more ways than one. Back then I was working as a technical writer and user interface designer for a struggling firm that finally hit their last hurdle and had to shut my department down. The layoff notices were a big shock in a tough economy. But later that day, by pure chance, I got a call from Eric at Universal Remote Control asking if I would come aboard full time. Amazingly, even after an unexpected layoff, I didn’t go a single day without a paycheck. Now I am part of a team that designs the products your clients use every day. To a geek like me, that’s pretty close to being a rock star.
Inventing a new word or designing consumer electronics may not be line items on your bucket list, but they are both very big things to me. I probably would have accomplished neither of them without putting forth the effort to maintain my friendships. The fulfillment of both goals came out of left field when I least expected them.
The point in all of this is probably obvious by now. Yes, the Federal Reserve says the economy is starting to improve. But that doesn’t mean we won’t see good days and bad days going forward. The quality of your tomorrows, quite often, is a direct reflection of the connections you make today.
You give your best to your clients. Be sure to also give your best to your friends, your family, and to yourself. The payoff comes in the enrichment of your life. Sure, you expect that personally, but you'll be amazed at how much those personal connections can mean professionally as well.
0 comments:
Post a Comment