Archive for April, 2009

I realize I haven’t posted anything on this site in 3 weeks. This is pathetic. I just spent the weekend at a journalism conference where I learned about marketing myself. My big takeaway is that I don’t want to market myself. I just want to write, and that’s what I’ve been doing, cranking out several chapters in 168 Hours, another revision of the novel, another USA Today column in the hopper, Scientific American columns and another City Journal feature. Blogging or posting on Facebook or signing up for Twitter (why is everyone obsessed with this now?) is definitely going to get the short end of the stick. I guess this means I will be looking to hire someone to help with this function.

But anyway, just thought I’d post a short bit about the lower Manhattan White House plane photo-op on Monday. I was going to American Express’s headquarters in the World Financial Center around 10:30AM in order to interview the head of their small business OPEN division, and several entrepreneurs who were there for a women’s networking event.  When my cab tried to turn left off West Street into the Battery Park area, we wound up waiting through several light cycles because there were literally thousands of construction workers blocking the sidewalks, the intersections, etc. I thought there must be a protest or something going on. When I got out of the cab at Vesey Street, some of them looked at me strangely as I started going into the building so I stopped to talk to a few of them. They described seeing a big plane zoom right past the buildings in the no-fly zone. What really seemed to rattle them, though, was the F-16 flying right beside it. The obvious assumption (in this post 9/11 world) is that the plane was aiming for the buildings and a military plane was chasing it for a potential shoot-down. So all the construction workers in the various World Trade Center projects had been evacuated.

Now, I think it was ascertained very quickly that no one was in real danger, but it was also an incredibly nice day on Monday. So the evacuation was starting to turn into a nice, leisurely break. Hey, we have to seize the moments when they come…

A couple months ago, Dan Schawbel did a short Q&A with me over at his Personal Branding blog (illustrated, curiously enough, with a photo of the “Cubes” — dolls in a lifelike corporate setting — which was honestly one of my favorite items I wrote about for Reader’s Digest’s Only in America section back in the day. But I digress). Dan now has a book out called Me 2.0, subtitled “Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success.” Back in 1997, Tom Peters postulated that we would all have to become “Brand You” if we wanted to stand out in the new labor market. Schawbel’s book, aimed at younger readers, shows these career builders how to make a name for themselves.

The premise of the book is undeniably true. While some companies do still load up their trucks with new hires at college career fairs, landing any sort of entry-level job is becoming harder and harder. Whether you’ll  stay there long term is an even dicier proposition. As I pointed out in Grindhopping, it’s just as easy to start something on your own, a fact the lousy economy is driving home. As I pointed out in USA Today 2 weeks ago, at least one survey found that a full quarter of the labor force is now in “free agency” mode.

So how do you make yourself stand out as a free agent, or as someone looking for the next opportunity, or even as someone who wants to get ahead in your profession? You brand yourself of course, and then market your brand just like a corporation would. Me 2.0 talks about how to do that.

Going into book review mode here, I’ll raise a few quibbles with the book. The first is in style. Me 2.0 is standard self-help — long on describing what Twitter is, very light on stories. Personally, I like to see a lot of meaty reporting — tales of people who’ve used the suggestions offered. As it is, Schawbel winds up using himself as the primary example. I know he is quite accomplished, but still. Second, the idea of personal branding has definitely spread over the past five years or so, to the point where as a reporter, I’m seeing endless streams of folks who have branded themselves as The (Something) Mom, or The (Something) Pro, etc. When everyone’s a brand, it seems a lot less clever.

That said, there are some interesting tips. For starters, if you’re not going to be The (Something) Pro, you live or die by your name and its Google results.  So I am quite fortunate that there are no other Laura Vanderkams out there. I’m keeping that in mind for naming future children since my husband’s last name is relatively common (though this is a double-edged sword. If I’m ever accused of something hideous, you will definitely know it’s me!). Second, Schawbel suggests an “endorsement mindset” — collecting good quotes about yourself from people you’ve worked with. I’ve never done this, but should.

Of course, technically, I’m not even sure I could articulate what my personal brand is. I’ve stubbornly resisted specializing in my writing, even with the obstacles this creates to building a platform, because I like to write about most things. So broadly, I would say my brand is quality writing — translating complex material into compelling prose and telling stories in ways that make people say “I haven’t thought of it that way before.” Alas, though, I think that’s too many characters for Twitter, and probably doesn’t make a good sound bite either.

My essay on spring cleaning fantasies ran in The Wall Street Journal on the Taste page on Friday; reprinted below as the link will expire soon.

THE JOY OF HOUSEWORK

by Laura Vanderkam

Confession: I’ve never done a proper spring cleaning. Perhaps the warm breezes have inspired me to sweep up my toddler’s Cheerios more frequently. But I had no idea that, come April, I was supposed to vacuum the ceilings, launder the area rugs and scrub all the windows — inside and out — with equal parts white vinegar and water.

At least that’s the procedure described in the newly released “Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Home: No-Nonsense Advice That Will Inspire You to Clean Like the Dickens.” Mrs. Thelma A. Meyer (former Iowa housewife and mom of nine) is the inspiration behind the upscale Mrs. Meyer’s line of natural cleaning products that includes a 32-ounce bottle of all-purpose cleaner for $8.

But Mrs. Meyer isn’t the only one instructing women in the art of intense, pricey cleaning these days. Real Simple magazine spent 10 pages in April urging its upper-income readers to (among other things) make a grout scrubber by mixing fresh lemon juice with cream of tartar. Williams-Sonoma hawks a $135 Australian lamb’s-wool duster set. Caldrea, which sells a $9 Sea Salt Neroli scented countertop cleanser and a $75 “cleaning-essentials set” in a retro mop bucket, promises that these treats will deliver the “premier home cleaning experience.”

There is an irony to this — women who can pay $75 for soap can also pay $75 to outsource the “cleaning experience” to someone else.

But this recasting of cleaning as “luxurious” (Caldrea) or as fantasy (vacuumed ceilings?) was also, in some ways, inevitable. Once, women complained of being chained to the stove. Now, yuppie couples who could eat out every night carefully select Whole Foods heirloom tomatoes for their made-from-scratch pomodoro sauce. The same thing is happening to cleaning. But fret not, feminists — the rise of the cleaning fantasy is actually a sign of how far women have come.

In our era of dishwashers and dryers, we often forget how laborious housework used to be. One hundred years ago, moms of large broods spent whole days bent over washboards and wringers. But even in the 1960s, after Norge washing-machine ads filled Good Housekeeping, housework still vacuumed up the time of women like Mrs. Meyer. According to time-diary studies analyzed by researchers at the University of Maryland, married moms in 1965 spent 34.5 hours on activities like cleaning, laundry and cooking each week. This is the equivalent of a full-time job.

Fast-forward to 2009. Now, according to the American Time Use Survey, women log fewer than 20 weekly hours on these chores. One big reason? Many of us hold paying jobs; moms who work full-time spend a mere 14 hours per week on household activities. But even stay-at-home moms are down to 25 hours — beneficiaries of a spillover change in attitudes that employed women have inspired.

Glenna Matthews, a historian and the author of “Just a Housewife,” once told me: “When I was a young housewife” — nearly five decades ago — “somebody who didn’t like me came over one time and then a week later said, ‘You think you’re so hot, but I’ve seen the dust under your bed.’ ” Now, Ms. Matthews says, no one views dust as “a mark of shame.” As with cooking, some of us outsource cleaning, and most of us minimize it by nixing ceiling vacuuming in favor of quick touch-ups (the equivalent of one-pot meals). Moms use the saved time to work and also to interact with their kids. Women spend more than double the time reading to and playing with their children these days than they did during the must-dust era of 1965. This is a huge victory.

Of course, once you no longer have to clean, you can afford to be nostalgic about it, just as we have elevated our kitchens from hidden galleys to galleries of high-end appliances. A lemon-scented grout cleaner is nice to read about when you’re kicking your feet up with a magazine. And if you spend just 1.3 hours per week doing dishes, as opposed to 5.1 hours in 1965, why not indulge in “liquid loveliness” (as Caldrea touts its $9 dish soap) and turn the whole thing into aromatherapy? Our modern spring cleaning fantasies are much like Renaissance festivals. You wear fancy dresses and ride a pony — but drive your car to get there. Likewise, an $899 Williams-Sonoma Miele Celebration Vacuum does seem worth celebrating if — should the moment pass with the April breezes — you can always hand it over to Merry Maids or let the dust linger on the floor. Or ceiling. Few will judge you for it.

Ms. Vanderkam is a writer based in New York.