Blending in by standing out

Back before our time towards the end of the 19th Century, military uniforms were traditionally brightly coloured. (Think bright red jackets worn by horsemen charging across green fields with their muskets at the ready.)

These distinctive forms of uniform had a number of strategic purposes: it allowed generals (or whoever was in charge) to see at a glance where their own troops were, it stopped soldiers from unintentionally slaying one of their own, and in certain cases where a particular regiment had a fearsome reputation, the mere sight of their distinctive colours could be enough to send terror through the enemy, forcing a retreat. (See an interesting history of military camouflage clothing, here.)

However time marched on, military technology improved, and with the development of weapons with longer ranges and greater accuracy (e.g. rifles, machine guns, grenades, missiles) it was not advantageous to signpost to the enemy exactly where you were.

So, what we now think of as regular army dress (khaki and camouflage) was developed as a way of disguising personnel in the field. The mottled colouration of garments is designed to blend with the natural background and it is available in a variety of colourways to blend with different environments.

However one instance where it would have the opposite effect is if you were to wear full camouflage gear and walk through a busy urban area. In fact, far from blending in, it would probably rouse a great deal of suspicion.

It is one of the ironies of the present day that one of the best ways to blend in, in almost any circumstance, is to don a garment which was originally designed to make you stand out - the high-visibility fluoro vest.

Fluorescent clothing was originally a military development (during World War II) designed to protect soldiers from unintentional friendly fire. Now, high-visibility clothing is worn by everyone from post delivery workers to road crew, cyclists to removalists.  If you want to look like you have an 'official' reason to be somewhere, put on a fluoro vest and you can walk around unaccosted.

In an article in The Guardian in 2005, Jon Ronson examined this phenomenon:

"So maybe ubiquity is to blame. Or perhaps, as dazzling as high-visibility clothing is, even more compelling is the public's desire not to notice those people who scurry around at our feet, fixing holes, mending tracks, cleaning up after us. We trust them and we don't want to think about them. This is how Bryan Ferry's son Otis and the other fox hunting aficionados got into the House of Commons to disrupt a debate last year. They put on fluorescent jackets and told the first policeman they met that they were "going to inspect the electrics". The policeman shrugged and waved them on.

The surveillance specialist Peter Jenkins - who teaches private investigators how to follow people without being spotted - is a fan of the fluorescent jacket, too. He says that if you're observing a target in a rural environment, use hedges and ditches and trees. But if you want to be invisible in a city, just put on a fluorescent jacket and sit in the passenger seat of a transit van, or queue up at a telephone box. (Remember to turn off your mobile phone first.)"

I drove past a neighbour's house a few days ago where two guys wearing high-vis tops were filling an unmarked truck with furniture and effects from the house. They (the neighbours) may have actually been being robbed, but the wearing of the high-vis clothing reassured me that a legitimate house move was taking place.

But was this a fair assumption?

According to an item on the BBC website, thieves just this month targeted homes in an English housing estate while clean-up from a flood was occurring:

"Walsall Council leader Mike Bird said thieves had been spotted wearing high-visibility vests to blend in with council workers helping with the clear up."

We rarely give a second glance to 'fluoro-collar workers'. Add an ID on a lanyard round their necks and we'd never question their legitimacy. 

But the flip side of this, is that we also don't notice those workers. They are, in fact, rendered invisible by their visibility and we don't necessarily see them as individuals doing a valued job.

UK photographer, Stephen Gill explored this concept in his 2005 book and exhibition, Invisible which contained photographs of all those people who, by the wearing of high-visibility clothing were rendered invisible to the general public. He was inspired by his own experience as a photographer. He had discovered that by wearing a fluoro vest he drew very little attention to himself when carrying a camera, far less than if he wasn't wearing one.

Do you notice the 'fluoro-collar' workers? Is it time for a new form of high-visibility?

The Triangle of Happiness

In the late 18th Century, before our time, my ancestors mostly lived in small villages across Scotland. They would have worked within walking distance of their homes and shopped for anything they didn't grow or produce themselves at the local village shops.

Their work/sleep/shop triangle would have been very small and therefore, according to Robert D. Putnam, author of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000) they were happier than if they had a large triangle between those points.

Putnam, who is a Harvard political scientist and Professor of Public Policy, is credited with the 'Triangle of Happiness' theory.

Putnam likes to imagine that there is a triangle, its points comprising where you sleep, where you work, and where you shop. In a canonical English village, or in a university town, the sides of that triangle are very short: a five-minute walk from one point to the next. In many American cities, you can spend an hour or two travelling each side. “You live in Pasadena, work in North Hollywood, shop in the Valley,” Putnam said. “Where is your community?” The smaller the triangle, the happier the human, as long as there is social interaction to be had. In that kind of life, you have a small refrigerator, because you can get to the store quickly and often. By this logic, the bigger the refrigerator, the lonelier the soul.

'There and Back Again.The soul of the commuter' by Nick Paumgarten. New Yorker, April 16 2007

Putnam points out however, that a small triangle equals a happier human only when social interaction is also involved. Reducing your triangle to one of working from your bedroom and ordering all the groceries on-line for delivery would be counter-productive to your happiness!

My local shops are walking distance, but getting to and from my workplace and my kids' school (and their various after-school activities) requires the car.  Some days my life as a chauffeur looks more like the Oblong of Exasperation than the Triangle of Happiness, but that is the reality of the life we have chosen to lead, and the key is to minimise the angst of the time spent in the car. 

I've tried a number of ways of making time in the car productive - listening to audio books, brushing up on a foreign language using audio programs and if the children are in the car, using the time to talk about their days. The most enjoyable activity when it's just me however, is to ensure the car radio is on a quality (usually ABC) talk radio station so that my time in the car is informative and/or entertaining. 

My 'commute' is under 10 kilometres, which is not much at all. However, a recent Federal Government report Population Growth, Jobs Growth and Commuting Flows in Melbourne, predicted ''an increase in journeys to work involving a road distance of more than 30 kilometres and an increase in the average commuting distance'' as the city is expected to add another million residents by 2025.

That's a really large Triangle of Happiness/Unhappiness for a significant proportion of our city's population, and the challenge ahead will be to try to create more jobs on the outskirts of the city - thereby reducing the size of those triangles.


What geometric shape is your work/sleep/shop life in?

Business Unwired

Last night I watched a program on the design of the Sony Walkman. You know, the original one from 1979. The iPod in tape form. There started the marvellous slippery slope to wired teenagers, of which I was one.

But we need to go way back further than than the Walkman if we wish to apportion blame. When Thomas Edison was a boy one would have to hoick oneself to the town square to hear the latest in music, bang away at one’s own piano or perhaps one would attend a musical soiree at a well-to-do neighbour’s house. Then Thomas found a way to record this music. No longer would we have to schlep to the town square on a cold winter’s night because the music could come to us. A marvellous thing.

A pity he didn’t foresee that his innocuous invention would result in teens all over the world coming to the dinner table wired for sound. It’s one thing to have your teen grunt at you in reply to a question; it is quite another thing for her to not even realise you’ve asked something. It’s enough to make you grab your own iPod and eat quietly to the life soundtrack of your choice.

In 2008 our family unwired and gave up screens of any kind for a week, during the winter school holidays, and found that it was a remarkably easy thing to do. The kids got to taste was boredom was like and like Dante’s Inferno they entered the nine circles of hell to emerge the other side having known themselves a little better.

And now I have business in my sights.

Returning to a corporate office after five years living and working from home I was shocked at how technology had seemed to contribute to the stress and workload of my colleagues. On my first day I was presented with a BlackBerry® and a lap-top. Welcome to the 24/7 workday.

When I last went to a corporate meeting people would turn up with a pad of paper and a pen. Now everyone had a laptop open and their BlackBerry® at their fingertips. No-one was interested in the speaker because they were either completing their upcoming presentation, checking their emails or working on something completely unrelated to the meeting at hand. Sometimes all three.

Ideas didn’t seem to carry weight unless supported by a PowerPoint presentation and far from reducing printing costs they seem to have increased with everyone simultaneously reading the PowerPoint presentation on the screen and writing notes on the colour print-out made earlier. The notes may or may not have been connected to the presentation – more likely to be a list of emails to be sent during the meeting.

With so many employees crying out that they are worked to the bone I can see why. They are connected 24/7 and if they mistakenly respond to an email at 10pm then they’ve opened the floodgates of expectation.

When I studied organisational communication we were taught that organisations talk themselves into being. In the past this talk was in the hands of an inter-office memo, a report or a speech from the CEO. Now it is in the hands of anyone with access to email.

In an effort to control the 24/7 exhaustion of the workplace Sony executives recently agreed that it was reasonable for the leadership team to respond to emails and phone calls in an 8am-8pm timeframe. After that your time was your own. In another company one senior leader decided that each evening to think of the 2-3 critical things he had to resolve the next day and devote 90 minutes to doing so the next morning before he turned on his electronic media.

You know technology has done a lot of good and a lot of bad. We both know it. These companies have taken a great step. But I think we need to make a corporate statement. I’d like to start a low-technology week where businesses agree to go old school and communicate by phone, in person and with the pen. Bring back the inter-office memo for a week, send a letter, ring your colleague or supplier instead of shooting off an email and *gasp* turn up to a meeting with nothing more than your voice, a pad and a pen (the purpose being to actually discuss and resolve something).

My bet is that despite an early shock the result would be a week of bliss. Exempt from the expectation of the 35 slide PowerPoint and the 24 second reply employees, customers and suppliers might actually speak with one another and those rubbish emails which have no point will simply not.be.sent. If you don’t think it is possible think back to your office circa 1992. You did it then, and other than having to warn your external customers (and encourage them to join with you) you know it would be possible.

Anyone with me?

*all power to Dilbert's mate Mr Adams, Sony, Thomas E and the person who came up with the BlackBerry cartoon. It is to them that you should direct your thanks for their images (Thomas E may be a little hard to get hold of).

Happy Slow Year!

Time rage comes from an insidious mix of ego (my desires and my needs) and the demands of time (I have to get an answer immediately or I need to get this piece of information ASAP). Just as it is on our roads with car rage and even cyclist rage — get in my way and you will pay!

Instant communication can have its real pluses: knowing where our partners, friends and children are can be very reassuring. But wanting to know where they are all the time may just be fuelling, rather than dampening, our anxieties. Did Marco Polo's mum fret because he didn't text every day?

Rob Moodie* "Time to usher out the fast and the furious"
in The Age, 1-2 Jan 2010

It's the first day of the new year and the new decade. (Is it the tensies? the teenies? the onesies?...there needs to be a UN think tank working on the label we will give this awkward period between the noughties and the twenties.)

The noughties are a decade synonymous with an explosion in personal connectivity. Mobile smart phones, wireless connection, Twitter, Facebook, My Space, messaging, personal GPS...the ways to keep track of ourselves and our colleagues, family and friends are endless.

Perhaps this new decade is a time to re-evaluate our obsession with this connectivity?

Rob Moodie's column in The Age this morning struck a chord with me. Go read the entire piece. I particularly liked the line about Marco Polo's mum.

Before our time, the ways of communicating with people not within our immediate vicinity were, if not limited, infinitely slower than they are today.

Handwritten letters took the slow boat to China. Costly long distance phone calls were booked in advance and connected via an operator. Copies of photos taken at family events were made by leaving the negatives at the local pharmacy and prints were collected days later and mailed to the intended recipients.

Nowadays, an email can be received and replied to on a mobile phone that is in a beach bag, while you sit on the sand. Phone calls can be made across the world and timezones at low cost via Skype or VOIP. Photos can be uploaded and emailed around the world practically while the event is still continuing. Family across the country can have a pic of junior blowing out the candles saved as a desktop background before the smoke has actually cleared.

But does all this connectivity make life simpler?

The times I log into Facebook, my head spins with the activities of all my 'friends'. I feel guilty if I haven't replied to message or a missed call on my mobile phone within a short time. My inbox overflows with emails I have flagged to respond to, or that contain something I have to add to my 'to-do' list.

As Rob Moodie says, "We are tyrannised by the to-do list, and also by the to-worry-about list and the to-feel-guilty-about list. As our inboxes overload and our lists expand, we get more irritable and more anxious".

And the most insidious aspect of all this connectivity is that it has blurred the distinction between leisure and work time. Never again will corporate workers be able to 'leave work' at the end of the day.

All of which means that home and family life is never 100 per cent the focus of most corporate workers. One ear or one eye is always on the Blackberry or the iPhone or the computer screen, even if only to skim over the cause of the latest ping and decide that it is not in fact urgent and can wait for a response until the following day, or after the holidays.

In order to slow our lives down and mentally de-clutter, we need to chose to physically turn off these devices; to adjust our expectations of others' response times; and to enjoy our experience of the present without being tuned in to a reality that exists elsewhere, whether it be the workplace or another geographic location.

But is that even possible? Or desirable? Tell us what you think.

Oh, and we wish you a happy, but slow, New Year!

*Professor Rob Moodie is chairman of global health at the University of Melbourne's Nossal Institute.

I'm just so busy being busy.

Well before our time, during the Victorian era, a leisured life was something to aspire to. The amount of time a Victorian gentleman could devote to unpaid pursuits was an indication of his social status.

Now, it seems the amount we do and the hours it takes us to do it are instead the status symbols. “Being busy” has replaced “being useful” as a measure of an individual’s self-worth.

I’ve noticed this particularly in the language we use to describe ourselves. Until fairly recently, the expected response to the question, “How are you?” would be something along the lines of:

Very well, thank you.
Fine, thanks, and you?
Not bad, mate.
or even,
Good. Accompanied by determined nodding of the head. (Let’s not start on the grammatical merits of this choice!)

There is however, a creeping tendency for all of the above to be replaced by:

I'm so BUSY.
Keeping busy.
You know, busy as always.

In fact, “How are you?” is also in danger of being made obsolete by the query, “So. Are you busy?”

Busy has become a highly desired state of being.

How many e-mails start with the line, “Sorry I've taken so long to get back to you, I've been busy with [insert appropriate activity here]”?

Busy is worn as badge of honour. There is a degree of smugness accompanying the use of the busy descriptor when it’s used to decline a request for assistance: "I'm sorry I can't help you organise Christmas lunch for 50 of our closest family and friends. I'm just too busy at the moment. How about I bring some Christmas crackers?"

The implication is, “I have important activities to do, and what you request of me is frivolous.”

Let’s face it, we’re all busy. We all have the same number of hours to fill in a day, and we all fill them. If some people choose to spend most of those hours watching television and sleeping, then they are still busy - with their own priorities.

Telling someone you are too busy to do what they request of you is an attempt to illicit agreement from the requester that your own activity is of greater importance than theirs, or to denigrate the value of the activity you have been requested to complete.

A more honest response would be, “I know that spending time with our families during the Festive season is important to you, but I have higher priorities at the moment.”

Try replacing the word busy with the term “out of control”.

Now, being busy doesn't look like such a desirable state of being, does it? It means you haven’t planned and prioritized your day.

So to test a pet theory, I devoted an entire week to declaring a state of non-busy-ness. Every time I was asked how I was, I replied that I was very well thank you, and had everything under control.

When my osteopath asked, “How's your week? Busy?” I replied, “No. Not at all.”

In doing so I discovered a sure-fire way to kill any conversation.

Try it out. Next time you’re asked, “Are you busy?” watch the tailspin the questioner goes into when you respond, “No, not at all. I have stuff on, but it’s all under control.”

It’s just unacceptable for you not to be BUSY and it leaves nowhere for the small talk to go!

When my daughters asked me to do something for them and I was otherwise engaged, I didn’t tell them I was busy, I said, “Sorry. I won’t do that right now. I am doing something else I would prefer to finish first.” This process really made me stop and think about which activity actually was the higher priority.

Without the catch-all ‘busy’ safety net to explain my actions (or inactions) I found I really had to examine my priorities.

The next time I’m asked if I’m busy, I may just reply, “No, I’m not. And how about you? Are you useful?”