The Mrs and The Boy and I went for a walk this morning and at some point along the route, I got to thinking about what I would do in the afternoon while he was napping. “Weekends, as you know if you’re a parent, are built around his sleep schedule.” For some reason I also started thinking about what I would do if I didn’t have to go to work tomorrow. What would I do if I woke up rich?

I don’t mean what I would buy first, or what beach I would jet off to. I mean how would I spend my days if I didn’t need to worry about a paycheck?

That’s not a challenge I’ve faced before, but I did have one stretch, post-Nortel layoff, when I didn’t have a job to go to. In addition to sending out resumes, I spent a lot of time writing in the blog that eventually subsumed into this one “check the archives” and learning more about digital photography and photo editing. I went to Iceland and wrote the daily blog for the Iceland Airwaves music festival and created a “now defunct” Geocities site about the trip, Icelandic culture and music. I also did some volunteer work for the Durham Crisis Response Center and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

I’m lucky enough that my career gives me the chance to do similar things for my work. But lucky is a relative term, because I probably wouldn’t have ended up where I am in my career if I hadn’t learned some of those things on my own.

So I do know what I would do if I woke up rich and didn’t have to work. In addition to traveling more, I’d keep on learning new stuff, developing my creative outlets and offering my assistance and expertise to organizations I believe in.

But here’s the cool thing that occurred to me: Basically, I didn’t need to be rich to do those things. I had more time than usual, since I was unemployed, but even if I’d had a job I could have done some or all of them.

What would you do if you woke up rich? If you can answer that question, it could help you figure out what you most want to be doing in life, and what you want to be doing for a living.

And if you go out and start doing it, maybe someone will eventually pay you to do it.

photo by kevindooley

I by no means live an uncomplicated life, but there is one practice I hit on a few years ago that is as simple as it is effective.

Throw away all your socks, and replace them with 10 identical white pairs and 10 identical black pairs. You never have to sort or match socks, and when you’re getting dressed, you just open the sock drawer and grab any two socks of the same color.

Plus, they all wear more or less evenly. So after six months or a year “I haven’t measured accurately”, you throw them all away and start again.

Of course this doesn’t work if you’re a sockophile and like to match your socks to your outfit. And yes, it is much more applicable to men than to women. But if you don’t care that much about your hosiery, it works beautifully.

photo by bark

I was just perusing Facebook, as part of my getting-ready-to-write ritual. “It’s also part of my taking-a-break-from-writing ritual and my winding-down-from-writing ritual. Essentially, if it weren’t for Facebook, I could have finished this book in an afternoon.”

I came across a link to an article at PCMag.com entitled Suburu Slaps In-Car Wi-Fi into its 2011 Outback.

Interesting idea, but I was reading the article thinking, “I’m not sure it’s worth paying $29 a month for another Internet connection that you can only use in the car.” At least not for me. The only device I’m likely to connect when I’m in the car is my iPhone, and that’s already, you know, connected.

I am becoming increasingly averse to monthly fees. I will almost certainly cancel my XM Radio subscription, the next time I remember. Yes, there’s some good content, but there’s also lots of good content out there for free. “It should come as little shock that I spend the little time I have in the car alone listening to marketing podcasts like Six Pixels of Separation/Media Hacks, Marketing Over Coffee, For Immediate Release and Managing the Gray. Those are all free, as well as valuable. Those nine and ten and eleven bucks a month fees add up, after all. Then I came to this quote:

“We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: It doesn’t make sense to pay for most in-car Wi-Fi solutions from automakers,” writes editor David Thomas.

So I guess this idea isn’t playing very well with David Thomases.

Dad, what do you think?

photo by germanyengland

I’ve been writing like a fiend all weekend, trying to finish my part of The Executive’s Guide to Enterprise Social Media Strategy. Last night around midnight I finished a particularly thorny section on listening, monitoring, analytics and calculating the ROI of your social media activities. I think I’m feeling a bit punchy, because here’s a paragraph I just wrote, about sales people using LinkedIn to make connections.

There is one thing many LinkedIn users agree on: if you’re requesting a connection to someone you don’t know or who you met in passing, for the love of all that is holy, personalize the message that LinkedIn sends with the introduction request. Nothing says, “I’m in a hurry to get as many connections as possible more loudly and clearly than sending the standard, “I’d like to add you to my professional network message. Your request is much more likely to be well-received if you say, “Looks like we share similar interests in particle acceleration,” or “We met at the National Association of Underwater Taxidermists conference in Poughkeepsie. I spilled pomegranate juice on your man purse”

photo by smi23le