By Saul Kaplan, on Mon Mar 17, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET Out of Office, AutoReply: Sorry I will be out of the office this week. In an emergency you can contact…… Away messages bug me. Away from what? Aren’t most of us away from our desks all the time? If we aren’t maybe we should be! Who doesn’t get emails remotely these days? I don’t need to know that you are traveling this week. I assume that you are not sitting at your desk waiting for an email but out at meetings and visiting with customers. You will get back to me when you can.
OK. If you are on a personal vacation and need to disconnect or overseas and unable to receive emails it makes sense to let people know that you will not be able to respond while you are away. But most away messages seem to just provide notification that you will not be sitting behind your desktop computer for the next few days. Come on, we all know perfectly well that you will still receive emails on a remote computer, a laptop, or on a PDA. Why tell us that you are away.
I find that quick responders are just as responsive when they travel and slow responders are just as slow when they are away. I suspect many people leave an out of office message to manage expectations because they want the time away from the incessant drumbeat of emails, text messages, and twitter streams. I understand that. Sometimes you need to disconnect in order to reconnect.
A few vacation days away recently reminded me of the important perspective gained from disconnecting. I didn’t leave an away message before leaving and while I left my laptop at home I did bring my iPhone, which allowed me to check important emails and Red Sox scores. While I could have stayed connected to my Twitter stream on the iPhone I made a conscious decision (alright my wife insisted) that I disconnect cold turkey for the few days I was away.
 I enjoyed the respite from the cacophony of an over-connected and always-on life. I thought a lot about what it means to live in a networked world where communication channels travel wherever you go and filtering becomes an important personal decision. I am excited by the possibilities created by ubiquitous connectivity and personally experimenting with the right mix of channels and the right balance of being connected and finding time to disconnect. The capacity to disconnect is important but can’t we come up with a more honest and genuine approach than a lame away message?
By Julie Rath, on Fri Mar 14, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET 
A big thank you to The Wall Street Journal for including me in the recent article, Spring Shoes for Men Step Brightly. The piece discusses how men’s footwear is trending toward colorful uppers or soles and “statement” elements like spikes and wild patterns; my advice on how to incorporate this trend into your wardrobe is included at the end of the article.
After speaking with the WSJ reporter, I had an outfit brainstorm, and below I share with you a few specific looks that incorporate Spring 2012′s shoe trends.
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1) A great Spring combo would include a pair of neutral shoes with a neon sole like the bucks, above, from T&F Slack. Pair them with white straight-leg jeans and a denim shirt for a casual night out.
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2) If the shoe itself is brightly colored, like Tods’ royal blue Competition Shoe, go with a dark wash, straight-leg jean, a grey henley shirt and a navy vest.
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3) If neon shoes are too much of a commitment for you, you might dip your toes in the trend by adding color via your laces, as with the Esquivel shoes above. Because the color pop is not too prominent, you can play around by incorporating other colors into your look. Pair these boots with dressy jeans and a sport shirt that has some yellow in the pattern, like the one below from Polo Ralph Lauren. The reason yellow and purple work together is that they are complementary colors, meaning that they live opposite from each other on the color wheel. When used together, complementary colors intensify each other and create a harmonious color scheme.
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4) For a shoe where the detail (as opposed to the color) is the statement, like Jimmy Choo’s “provocative paisley” slippers above, you want to keep the rest of your look tailored and simple. Wear these with a midnight three-piece suit for a posh night out, or for a more casual event, try a medium grey dress shirt and black or charcoal grey pants. The important thing to keep in mind with shoes like this is that they need to be in line with your personality, and wearing them with confidence is key. (As an aside, check out this fun Bond-style video detailing the Burlesque silhouettes hidden in the print.)
By Josh Bowen, on Thu Mar 13, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET
By Lauren Mayer, on Wed Mar 12, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET Every generation in modern history has had its cultural, sartorial or entertainment fads ‘du jour’ – in the 1920s, it was flagpole sitting and Charleston contests, in the 1950s it was Davy Crockett caps and bobby soxers squealing for Frank Sinatra, the 70s had lava lamps and David Cassidy. These trends became popularized first by word of mouth, as a few adventurous souls made things look cool. Then it would take weeks or months for a fad to catch on, and months or years before it became so popular it was no longer cool. (I remember the first puka shell necklace I saw – worn by a 13-year-old at summer camp who was rumored to be so fast, she let boys French kiss her. So anything she wore was bound to be cool and a little dangerous – until about a year later when you could buy plastic puka shell necklaces at Woolworth’s . . . .but I digress)
However, these days trends can start, flare up and die out much more quickly, whether it’s a longer-lasting fad, such as Lululemon yoga pants, or a quick meme, like Mitt Romney’s unfortunate choice of the phrase “binders full of women.”
So it’s probably not surprising that the Oscars weren’t even over before someone created a ‘Travoltify-Your-Name’ app, in honor of John Travolta’s now-legendary mispronunciation of Idina Menzel’s name. Add in a generation of teen girls who feel empowered by the characters Ms. Menzel has played, as well as the tendency of girl-power-anthems to sound alike, and I may have come up with the ultimate trend-driven, flash-in-the pan pop song.
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By Erica and Matt Chua, on Tue Mar 11, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET I always marveled at the way time sped up and slowed down while we were traveling. A few days could easily feel like a century and a few weeks in a new country could in retrospect seem like only a couple days. It seems that the mystery of time has caught up with me again as I realize we have been back “home” for six months. The blog has gone silent and the trip feels like decades ago rather than just half a year. What have I been doing and why haven’t I written?
The short answer is catching my breath, and pinching myself (did this all really happen?).
The long answer is, processing. I have been decompressing from the rush of the last three years. During our travels, we packed up our bags and moved every three to four days. So, it has been quite an adjustment to be in one place for the last six months. As we catch up with friends and family it’s hard to explain the lapse of time and all that has happened in our lives and theirs.
Reconnecting with friends and family after so much time away is the best part of being back. Me and my brother as we biked 300 miles across our home state of Minnesota just one week after I returned home.
I often yearn for my traveling life, I miss the extreme freedom, the anonymity and the constantly changing tomorrows with an unknown around every corner. However, operating in my native language, having a comfortable bed to sleep in with a
refrigerator of familiar food in the next room is not a bad trade off. What I miss most from the road is the child like wonder and excitement in achieving even the smallest of goals.
Perhaps never again in life will getting on the right bus or receiving the dish you thought you had ordered be considered a victory. However, when you are navigating in a foreign language and have little to get your bearings these small achievements are the equivalent of winning the lottery. It’s also possible that never again will an 18 hour bus ride be as fascinating and eye-opening as it was when we were on the road. The prospect of a new place when the bus stopped often made the time pass much faster.
Without these experiences on a daily basis I spend much of my time wondering “what’s next”, but also celebrating our journey. Time is once again playing tricks on me as I try to stay in the present moment, but seem to be caught in processing the past and planning for the future. A wise friend of mine, whom lived abroad, shared the following with me as I prepared to come home, I couldn’t have possibly known at the time how true her words were:
“The question you will be asking yourself after your return will become “what would my life be like if I hadn’t done what I did?” We can only imagine … I’ve done it dozens of times, but only with true appreciation that I actually did step out of the mold and do something different. Your life will be so rich because of it … and you will enjoy the memories for the rest of your lives.”
I share these same words with you to remind you that no matter how you pass your time, you will always be glad that you lived life on your terms by making conscious decisions and chasing your dreams rather than by looking back and regretting what you did with that time.
By Saul Kaplan, on Mon Mar 10, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET Beware of random collisions with unusual suspects. Unless, of course, if you want to learn something new. In that case seek out innovators from across every imaginable silo and listen, really listen, to their stories. New ideas, perspectives, and the big value creating opportunities are in the gray areas between the unusual suspects. It seems so obvious and yet we spend most of our time with the usual suspects in our respective silos. We need to get out of our silos more.
It is human nature to surround ourselves with people who are exactly like us. We connect and spend time with people who share a common world-view, look the same, enjoy the same activities, and speak the same language. We join clubs to be with others like us. I want to belong to the non-club club. The only tribe I want to be in is a tribe of unusual suspects who can challenge my world-view, expose me to new ideas, and teach me something new. Our tribe of unusual suspects can change the world if we connect in purposeful ways.
As an “accidental bureaucrat” over the last six years I had a front row seat to observe the silos in action. Every week went something like this; On Monday I met with the health care crowd, on Tuesday it was the education crowd, on Wednesday the energy crowd and so on, you get the idea. This cycle repeated over and over again. Each crowd was comprised of the usual suspects, well-intentioned people rehashing the same discussion incessantly. The scene is right out of Groundhog Day. Most of the participants were there to represent institutional perspectives and to protect their respective interests. In each crowd there are always a few innovators that want to change the conversation but they make little progress. At the end of each week I always came away with the same conclusion. If only we could take the innovators from across each of the silos and bring them together to enable more random collisions.
 Maybe we could change the conversation if we connect the unusual suspects in purposeful ways. Maybe then we can make progress on the real issues of our time, little things like health care, education, and energy. It will take cross silo collaboration and breaking down the boundaries between industries, sectors, and disciplines.
People always ask me how I could have worked in the public sector after being in the private sector all of my career. Doesn’t it move too slowly? I don’t know about that. I worked with many large companies, during my road warrior consulting days, and I don’t remember them changing so quickly. You are right, I would say, government agencies move pretty slowly too. I can’t resist adding, I am certain that academic institutions move the slowest of all! The point is few organizations across both the public and private sector have the capacity to innovate and change because they are working hard pedaling the bicycle of their current business model and trying to stay alive and competitive.
In this heads down mode, public and private organizations staying within their silos, do not work and play nicely together across boundaries. Collaboration is an unnatural act. Attempts are mostly under resourced and under supported by sponsors. That’s a shame because the issues we deal with as a community including, health care, education, and energy, will only be fixed it we can experiment with new system approaches that cut across all of our protected silos. We need to think and act more horizontally.
Maybe we don’t need institutions to be the catalyst for change. Maybe in the shiny new networked world we live in, with mega bandwidth and social media platforms, we can self organize to design and test new system approaches that deliver more value to the patient, student, and citizen. It is time to try more stuff and take advantage of the disruptive innovation potential of all the technology we have within reach. We have more technology available to us than we know how to absorb. It isn’t technology that gets in our way. It is our fault. Humans, and the organizations we live in, are both stubbornly resistant to change.
Institutions are moving too slowly. Most were designed for a different century. We have to catalyze change ourselves. Let’s go.
Wanted: Innovators to join a non-club club and tribe of unusual suspects. Bring on more random collisions.
By Lauren Mayer, on Fri Mar 7, 2014 at 1:30 PM ET  You’re probably familiar with the rather over-used cliche of technology-impaired adults being at the mercy of youth. The pre-teen rolling her eyes as she tries to teach her mother to text, the intern showing the executive yet again how to log in to Outlook. Mind you, there are plenty of us who are quite capable of more sophisticated tasks (especially now that we’ve figured out there’s a youTube tutorial on doing just about anything).
But it is generally true that the younger generation is more comfortable with technology – they don’t know a world without portable computers & smart phones. (It’s hysterical watching toddlers treat a television like a mobile device, trying to change channels by swiping their hands across the screen. And while I’m not sure how I feel about all these devices for young kids, boy, do I appreciate those iPads when I’m on a plane with young kids!)
I have learned quite a bit from my sons, whether it’s the proper use of ‘twitter’ vs. ‘tweet’ (one is a noun, one is a verb), or how to reboot our cable/internet connection when it goes down at least once a day. My 17-year-old son runs his own youTube channel and is pretty savvy (he’d seen Gangnam Style before it hit 100,000 views!); when I was wondering whether my own youTube videos were doing well, he kindly reassured me by saying, “Well, Mom, anything over 100 views is viral for old people.”
My boys were the ones who turned me on to “Cards Against Humanity” (an off-color, totally inappropriate and hysterically funny variation on category games like “Apples To Apples”). This self-described ‘party game for horrible people’ was launched via Kickstarter, a crowd-funding platform. Notice, I can now use terms like ‘crowd-funding’ and ‘platform’ and sort of sound like I know what they mean!, but in case you’re wondering, crowd-funding is basically a cross between layaway, Renaissance art patronage, and PBS pledge week. Artists and inventors finance projects by soliciting backers, who pledge varying amounts of money in return for ‘rewards’, varying from a copy of a CD or game to a custom-designed song, video, or food item. And you can find all sorts of projects – indie films, steampunk-themed cupcake sprinkles, graphic novels, medieval guitar music, and more.
I’m jumping in, producing an album of ‘greatest hits’ from my weekly songs, and hoping to prove that people over 30 can play in this new playground too, including those of us who grew up without computers, who remember the first ‘car-phones’ that were the size of suitcases, and who actually know the meaning of an “E ticket’ ride at Disneyland.
So I invite you to try out Kickstarter, or IndieGoGo or other similar sites, to see work by inventive people of all ages. (Or at least by a bunch of youngsters plus one feisty 55-year-old who can’t lie about her age because her kids will rat her out.) The project pitches themselves are often very entertaining, and at least in the case of mine, you can amuse yourself by imagining the double dose of hate mail I’m likely to get from my title.
Check it out here.
By Josh Bowen, on Thu Mar 6, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET
“I do not know anyone who has gotten to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It won’t always get you to the top but it will get you pretty far.” Margret Thatcher
As a society we have grown into people who are looking for the quickest and most efficient way to live our lives. Cars, microwaves, computers, the internet were all invented to make our lives easier. Health and fitness is no different. Go to any magazine stand and look at Muscle and Fitness or Shape magazine and you will see pages after pages of advertisements for the latest muscle builder or fat loss supplement. I’ve always pondered what it would be like to survey 1000 people and ask them one question; If you could have the body of your dreams without working out or dieting by taking one pill per day. Would you do it? The only catch is it would knock off 10 years to your total life span. What do you think people would say? I have a gut feeling it would be an overwhelming amount of people that would take the pill, taking the easy road to success, cheating their bodies, their mind, their soul and their lifespan.
The problems these days are people are not willing to get their hands dirty and not patient enough to stick with anything long enough to make it count. We have been programmed to believe quicker, efficient is better. I disagree, efficient is not better, effective is and what trumps everything is quality and hard work. It’s not easy to go to the gym 5 days a week and work your butt off. It’s not easy to juggle kids, marriage, jobs and try to get healthier or have the body you have dreamed of.
 It’s not easy and it never will be. My rant today is nothing short believing in you. Believing that the hard work you are putting in is worth it. Believing that anything and everything is possible with hard work, determination and preparation. As humans we were meant to struggle but we were also meant to persevere under any and all circumstances. You don’t need the easy way out, you don’t need the quick fix and your life will not be complete without the effort it took to get what you want.
We will not lose….ever. That’s my rant for today. Repeat after me; I WILL NOT LOSE. I’m out.
By Lauren Mayer, on Wed Mar 5, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET The Oscars weren’t even over before the internet was buzzing with critical comments about celebrities’ appearance & wardrobe, and with critical comments about those critical comments. Can’t they just enjoy their intimate little industry awards ceremony (televised to millions and millions of watchers) in peace?
When celebrities and politicians put themselves in the public eye, they’re fair game, since they achieved their status through public attention. I do agree that it’s not nice to hit below the belt (although when Joan Rivers does it, it’s pretty entertaining). But it is perfectly appropriate to criticize public figures for the choices they make, whether it’s to dress like a swan, complete with an egg purse (no one will ever top Bjork’s outfit!), or to disregard the one name you’re supposed to introduce (which has already launched apps that will ‘John Travolta’ your name into something unintelligible).
Likewise, when politicians say or do ridiculous things, it is understandable when we mock them, whether it’s John Oliver’s iconic ‘Carlos Danger’ dance when he was subbing on The Daily Show, or all the humor that was prompted by Sarah Palin’s insistence that she could see Russia from her house. (Although even Ms. Palin could be overshadowed by some neighborhoods – during the ’08 election, I had been a runner-up in a Palin impersonation contest, and thus was invited to come in costume to the Castro, San Francisco’s colorful gay neighborhood, to introduce a local news feature on Halloween. I walked several blocks in a red suit & her signature hairstyle and glasses, carrying a larger-than-lifesized stuffed fake moosehead, and no one even stopped to look at me. But I digress . . . )
So sure, sometimes I feel a twinge of guilt at making fun of politicians in these weekly songs. But hey, I can take it as well as dish it out – I know that by posting my videos on youTube, I will get insulted and called a variety of names (which are usually spelled wrong). And if politicians like Ted Cruz do things like urging their supporters to pray for more anti-gay discrimination laws, or insist that if people listen to Ted Nugent, it’s Obama’s fault, then they can’t expect me to resist material like that!
By Erica and Matt Chua, on Tue Mar 4, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET LivingIF is filled with “world’s ____” sights. We’ve covered the superlatives and self-professed rankings time and again, highlighting local pride points, and sometimes even writing about the world’s largest something, just to visit an even larger one somewhere else (i.e. the 17+ world’s largest Buddhas we’ve seen). Most of the time, these sights are pretty impressive, even if they are not as world class as they claim. The lucky few are actually the world’s biggest/tallest/deepest/highest-altitude and beautiful enough to write about. The Salar de Uyuni, the world’s biggest salt flat, does not disappoint in size, spectacle or superlatives.
EPIC. Situated on the Bolivian side of the Bolivia-Chile Border, the vast Salar de Uyuni separates more than just countries. It separates cultures, with progressive and relatively-rich Chile on one side and indigenous, impoverished Bolivia on the other. It also separates geology, with the world’s driest desert on the Chilean side and the rugged crest of the Andes on the Bolivian side giving way to the Amazon Basin. Due to the location, geology and history, traveling through the salt flats, usually en route from one country to another, is an epic 3-day trip.
UNIQUE. Having seen photos and heard stories from friends that had visited previously, I thought I understood how unique the Salar is. Seeing it was another matter. I really don’t think there is anything quite like it. From the size to the surprising variety of colorful sights, I was thoroughly in awe. Arriving from Chile the first days are spent crossing the high-altitude Atacama Desert. This area is one of the world’s richest mineral producing regions with copper, silver, gold and lithium deposits, creating unexpectedly colored lakes and rock formations. The uniqueness of the Salar will cause those who think geology is boring to rethink their disinterest.
Read the rest of…
Erica & Matt Chua: Superlative-Worthy Salar de Uyuni
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