We’ve all got them.

If you’re in my age bracket, then you’ve probably reached 1 or more quarterlife crisis‘, as you attempt to navigate through a world that becomes more and more unclear with every step you take.

This is the game that moves as you play

I’ve run into more than a few snags over the past, let’s say, 10 years of my life. False starts, bad jobs, bad relationships, etc etc. But the truth is, like most people, I was flying blind. There wasn’t enough STRATEGY behind what I was doing. All of the people I’ve come to admire are able to plan and execute strategies.

Let me preface this with the following:

In the past, my brain would be considered OVERWHELMINGLY dominated by the right.

Read about Left VS Right Brain

Over the past few years, I’ve needed to train THE OTHER side of my brain. To work it out, if you will.

And it was here that I made a breakthrough regarding problem solving.

It goes like this:

When faced with a problem, be it physical/emotional, tangible/intangible, the gears begin to turn to attempt to solve the problem.

This is USUALLY done with some sort of logic.

At some point, I hit a barrier that prevents me from being able to solve the problem. For whatever reason, I am unable to solve the problem (perhaps, because the problem does not follow traditional logical models?)

Once a barrier has been reached, there are two clear results. First, an emotional response begins (anger, frustration, apathy, whatever.) Then, the same logical system that attempted to solve the problem cycles back around. Information is gathered and the logical mind attempts to solve the problem again. Here, I drew a picture:

This model can be applied on a macro and micro level in my life. For example:

Jim wants a new pair of shoes (problem identified). He plans on buying the shoes, so he saves up his money and heads to the local department store to purchase them (logical response). However, when he gets there, the clerk informs him that they are no longer carrying that particular brand (barrier). Jim gets slightly frustrated (emotional response) but after mulling things over (regrouping) decides to attempt to buy the shoes online on Amazon (logical response.)

Each time someone is faced with a problem and can’t work it out logically, the emotional response becomes stronger. You’ve essentially told yourself, “This problem is big enough for me to <insert emotional response here> over.”

The problem is, at some point, you will wear yourself out. You will become emotionally drained.

Now, here’s the best way I’ve found to break the cycle:

1. Leave it alone. For a day, a week, even a month. Sometimes, you can’t solve a problem right away.

2. Break it down into smaller problems.

The bigger the problem is, the more intimidating it is. Smaller problems can be managed.

3. Your logic might suck.

Talk to your closest friends, advisors, parents, whatever. They may come up with something you haven’t considered.

4. A seemingly illogical answer may be what you need.

I’ve been practicing taking a step back and looking at each problem I run into with this approach. It’s helped me identify flaws in my own logic and, more importantly, when to let something go. It’s work, but so far it’s been worth it.

A friend of mine introduced me to Jigsaw and lemme tell ya, it’s full o’ win.

Jigsaw is a business database that houses the contact information for just about any company you can imagine. You can pay for or “trade” contacts to access just about anyone in business. Lots of sales folks use it for lead gen and so forth, but we’ll be using it a lil differently.

First of all, grab an account. I usually use a seperate gmail addy for all of my registrations so I don’t get spammed to death with newsletters and such.

Next, once you’ve logged in, go to the COMPANIES link at the top of the navigation bar. Click on the dropdown link for FIND COMPANIES.

Next, decide what city you want to look for work. It drills down by country and then city or metro area.

Pick off the industry that you are interested in and then the subsets within that industry. If you don’t have much experience, start by looking for companies that sell products you like. What kind of people do you like to be around? What could you talk about all day if you could?

Identify the size of the company that you wish to work for (based on yearly revenue) and click search.

VOILA.

Now bookmark the URLs for each company in your list. Don’t visit the companies site or even read anything, you just want a giant list of URLS for companies that you may be interested in. Save them with a social bookmarking tool or better yet, use Firefox with the EVERNOTE CLIPPER.(You could pay someone on Elance $50 bucks to do this for you)

Do this for a few different industries and company sizes. That’s the only way you’ll get a feel for what’s really out there.

After you’ve pulled a nice handful of companies in your bookmarking folder, visit each companies website and decide whether their corporate culture and yours mesh.

Ask yourself, what is their website selling to their potential business partners and vendors? What are they trying to sell you on in their careers section? I found one company who listed casual Fridays and had pictures of them out drinking martinis and kayaking together.

A Few Thoughts

For most people I know, bigger does not necessarily mean better when it comes to employer. Keep in mind though, that the smaller the operation you pick (>2million/year revenue) the more specialized your skill will need to be to warrant them paying you a decent wage/salary. These guys are taxed at 39% or somesuch and to pull you on full-time you are going to need to be worth all of the taxes, benefits etc that come with taking on employees. Bigger companies can absorb this cost.

To get an idea of where you might fit, Jigsaw breaks down the department data for companies thusly:

Sales

Marketing

Finance and Admin

Human Resources

Support

Engineering and Research

Operations

IT and IS

Other

They also break down the staff as C-level, VP-Level, Director-Level, Manager-Level and Staff (You ever interviewed for a sleazy sales job where they wanted a “book of business” to plunder? Well now you have a giant one.)

Next, pay someone who knows what they are doing to juice up your resume and if you are attractive, send a picture. I’m sure plenty of people will disagree with this, but I’ve seen this tactic work behind the scenes at the past 3 companies I worked for.

Next, write a badass cover letter and send it to the guy who could hire you and tell him you want the job. Bypass human resource departments and admins if you can, afterall, their job is to weed you out. Find the department manager’s email by googling different combinations of their name and the city the business is in. Or pay for it on Jigsaw.

I’m in the process of using this very technique as we speak. My product is taking a lil bit longer to iron all the kinks out than I thought and consulting gigs here in Dallas have dried up quite a bit.

Finally, I’ll be flying out to LA and the Orange Curtain within the next few weeks, if anyone would like to grab a drink hit me up at admin @ phillipmarlow.com. If anybody has any luck with this method, please shoot me an email so we can tell everybody how you did it. Good luck : )

If we can gauge our life expectancy by our elders, that means I have approx. 66 years left on this planet. Sounds like a lot?

Check this out:

I will have approx. 24090 days left to live.

That’s 588160 hours.

I will sleep for approx. 192720 of those hours.

I will eat for approx. 36135 of those.

That leaves 371350 hours remaining to get shit done. Not nearly enough time. I could live 10 times that amount and still never do the things I want to do.

Which means I most definitely don’t have time to scroll through status updates everyday.

I don’t need to sell you on how clever I think I am. I don’t need Facebook to meet women or post pictures of my cat (WHICH I WILL STILL BE DOING ON THIS BLOG SOMEWHERE).

All of the information I want to collect can be done via RSS feeds. If you want to talk to me, my email is admin at phillipmarlow.com.