Month: July 2017

 

I don’t know how Aloha Friday started or why it is not as wide spread as it used to be, but at one time everyone on a Hollywood set wore a Hawaiian shirt to mark the end of the week.   In my craft we often work the weekend, but Friday is still the traditional end of the work week.  On some crews we would get an extra long lunch break for wearing the flowery print.  At some point I decided I would wear a Hawaiian shirt to work everyday, because I like the way it looks, how it feels against my skin, and because I like to have the breast pocket to keep cards in.  Now, I am the “Hawaiian shirt guy”, as I have heard myself referred to.  I guess there are worse things to be known for.

According to Jerry Seinfeld, success in his field is based on “work and thought and preparation”.  Ronald Riggio stresses competence, conscientiousness, and common sense, which sounds like a similar formula to me.   In the blog Mondo Frank, I read about the equation of PIE: Performance, Image and Exposure.  He cites Harvey Coleman, saying that your job performance, how well you actually do what it is you are payed for, accounts for only about 10% of your overall success.  Image, your personal brand, is what other people think about you and your personality.  This factor, which some may say we do not have control over, but from the spiritual perspective is our sole creation, contributes 30% to our experience at work.  The most important aspect in our career development, he says, is exposure, how many people know about you and what you do.  When your name is mentioned at the plan bench do they say “yeah, he’s cool.  Is he available?”  Or do they look away, indicating they would rather not have you around.  As I believe I have mentioned before,  most foremen, because of the long hours we spend together, want to hire people they like, who they know they will enjoy being around.  I am sure it is the same in any environment where people work closely together.

I am not the type of person to talk about myself a lot.  At work I keep a pretty low profile, and try to be consistent and reliable in what I do.  However, I do not hold back on expressing my opinion when I think it is appropriate.  I have, almost accidentally, created an image for myself that most of my coworkers and bosses know: I am the hard working, reliable, conscientious, Hawaiian shirt wearing Buddhist. I don’t think that is a bad way to be thought of.

One Monday morning at 6AM a coworker on a TV pilot, who had himself acted on a major TV show for many years, yelled out on stage “Come on Friday”.  We all smiled at his exuberance and went to work.  Throughout that day I thought about how we approach time and the old saying of  “watching the clock”.  Most people, I assume, have places they would rather be than at work.  I know that I look at my watch many times a day:  ‘How long until coffee’, ‘How long until lunch’, ‘When are we going home?’  We want the work day, and the work week to go quickly, but we want the weekend, and our time off or vacation to last.  I don’t think you can have it both ways.  If you rush through your day and your work week you will rush through your life.  The movie Click showed this through dark comedy.  Adam Sandler found a remote control with which he could fast forward through the parts of his life that he didn’t enjoy, such as a major project at work.  He realized at the end that he had missed out on most of his life and didn’t have any of the memories he should or could have enjoyed.  The key then is to learn how to enjoy the moment, even if we don’t overly enjoy our present activities.

Mindfulness is described as the state of living in the moment, a state that can help us recognize what we enjoy about our life.  People strive to achieve this state in many ways, whether through going on a silent retreat, or working out at the gym.  Forcing ourselves to focus on our present activity allows us to recognize what we can enjoy in that activity.  Some of these things might be an appreciation of our breath, and how it rejuvenates our body, or the awareness that we can expand our mental or physical limits at any time.  Concentration on an activity can be used as a tool to train our brain and our body.  I like to ride my mountain bike in the hills.  One technique I use to conquer the toughest steep stretches is to focus on short sections.  I pick a spot on the road or trail ahead of me maybe ten to thirty feet away.  Once I reach that spot I pick another, and pedal to that.  I have noticed that this focused attention frees my creative brain to roam, and often my best ideas pop into my head at that time.

Some projects on my job require so much attention that I do not notice the passage of time.  I will look up and it is almost lunch time or the end of the day.  Other assignments are so typical that I cannot help watching the clock, waiting for a break.  When I get one of those jobs I look for ways to make a game out of it.  The most basic task in my field is building flats, which are walls made of a 1×3 wood frame covered with a 1/4 inch plywood which we call luan.  The basic stock size is 8 feet wide by 10 feet tall.  One day at Universal I built 8×10’s by myself all day.  To entertain myself  I counted the number of steps I took for each approach to building: vertical, horizontal and hybrid.  That day I discovered the most efficient way to build a flat, in terms of the numbers of footsteps taken, and I believe I can still build a flat quicker and more efficiently than anyone else in the business.   More importantly, using my system activates my mind in a way that blocks out the mundane experience of flat building and frees my brain to explore new creative ideas.