Start your day with this! Somebody get this guy a gig!

That would be you.

Even if you’re not self-employed, your boss is you. You manage your career, your day, your responses. You manage how you sell your services and your education and the way you talk to yourself.

Odds are, you’re doing it poorly.

If you had a manager that talked to you the way you talked to you, you’d quit. If you had a boss that wasted as much as your time as you do, they’d fire her. If an organization developed its employees as poorly as you are developing yourself, it would soon go under.

I’m amazed at how often people choose to fail when they go out on their own or when they end up in one of those rare jobs that encourages one to set an agenda and manage themselves. Faced with the freedom to excel, they falter and hesitate and stall and ultimately punt.

We are surprised when someone self-directed arrives on the scene. Someone who figures out a way to work from home and then turns that into a two-year journey, laptop in hand, as they explore the world while doing their job. We are shocked that someone uses evenings and weekends to get a second education or start a useful new side business. And we’re envious when we encounter someone who has managed to bootstrap themselves into happiness, as if that’s rare or even uncalled for.

There are few good books on being a good manager. Fewer still on managing yourself. It’s hard to think of a more essential thing to learn.

How is this for a mirror?

What a great job!

You don’t need a big pile of money to commission a new work from a composer.

The Minnesota Orchestra has launched the “Musical MicroCommission” project, inviting people to donate money to support the creation of a major new orchestral work by New York-based composer Judd Greenstein. Unlike standard commissions, which are usually funded by one or several large donations, the MicroCommission hopes for hundreds of “micro” donations of $5, $10, $20, $50 or more to support the project. The goal is $20,000, with all donations going toward paying Greenstein for his work and the cost of preparing and printing the score.

The premiere of Greenstein’s symphony-length piece, slated for March 2012, will be the final event of the orchestra’s 2011-12 Inside the Classics series, which is conducted by Sarah Hicks, principal conductor of pops and presentations, and hosted by orchestra violist Sam Bergman.

For more info, go to insidetheclassics.org. — Pioneer Press

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