Jorge Quinteros
Blogger, web enthusiast & avid photographer based in Brooklyn.

23rd April 2010

Stumbling Through Pages

Rummaging through some drawers today, I stumbled across a worn-out notebook that was kept as journal where I infrequently wrote entries back in 2005.

Blogging was no where in sight so significant events where often recorded with pen and paper and I had this sentimental moment reading through some passages I wrote during the time when my grandmother passed away -

It struck me then, something I had never thought of before. The purpose of life is not just to reproduce, to love your neighbor or to live a pure life so that you can enter heaven. Or perhaps it is and I’m just exaggerating.

I think the true purpose of life and yes even death is to impact others. My grandmother will never do the things that everyone takes for granted but she, with one simple sentence, picked up all of the shattered pieces of my beliefs and fitted them back together seamlessly.

Because of her, I can look and see her as a living person, not as the walking, talking dead. I can share her joy in want she did and what she experienced until the end instead of crying about all of the things she’ll never do. You can’t defeat death but you can live life and I this point, that’s the only option.

I’ll continue writing as much as I’ll do photography. Regardless of which one you practice, who needs a time-machine when you have any of these two crafts to resort to for reliving moments.

17th November 2009

More Than A Salesperson

I’ve been blogging long enough to know that disclosing confidential information about your employer is a “no, no” and while I’ve never necessarily have fought the urge of wanting to, it’s harmless to state that as a retail manager, a fraction of my work entails conducting interviews.

The process in time has become a well memorized screenplay carried out several times in a month, each encounter being different, strenghting of experience gained through each one but an element that remains unchanged is the expectations we set on doing our best of bringing people on board that really care about the company, the product and the culture.

As much as I frequent stores like Target or Sports Authority, the one thing you’re likely to find in each one is just workers. Absolutely nothing wrong with that admired attribute but I can’t recall the last time I ever found anyone in those stores to assist on a purchase either because there wasn’t anyone around or the ones that were visible cared only enough to finish their projects and not on servicing.

So the question to myself is, does this staff really want to be there? Perhaps a few do but Jonathan Christopher’s description of what he loves most about his profession and industry is what would make a shopping experience in any store an even greater one -

I sincerely doubt that you’ve come across a fellow [Web] designer who talks about his job as though it only pays the bills. I find that extremely endearing about our industry. We’re all here by choice, and apart from unavoidable frustrations found in everything, we love what we do.

Despite our current economic hardship, I think it’s easy finding a job but the difficulty relies in finding one that you truly enjoy and want and not just have because society and bills says you need one.

The same goes for hiring. We can hire anyone to fold a shirt, to break down a box or ring at the register but if all those attributes overshadow the likelihood of providing an exceptional customer service, what’s the use for them. As associates, it’s about being versatile enough to handle everything in the spectrum without jeapordizing one or the other.

Equally important is about us as managers being meticulous in hiring candidates that will highly represent the company name and not accepting a bunch of people connected together by the fact that they work in the same buildilng with nothing in return.

A large quantity of employees in a store with the intent to service customers does nothing if half of those staffer don’t care about anything other than not being approached and their paycheck.

Finding the Right People

In an ideal world, everyone that worked in a store would care about their line of work and it would be clearly visible from a customer’s perspective. Mark Sanborn says “there are no unimportant jobs, just people who feel unimportant doing their jobs” and as a leader, that’s where the training, coaching and mentoring comes from us in valuing the employees we have and instilling the mentality that being of service isn’t an obligation, but an opportunity.

Nobody decides to become car salesman because they feel they need a job. The people employed in the industry do it because they have a passion for cars, they care enough to become knowledgeable about the product and because making a sale is not about actually selling things but about building relationships with hopes that customers come back and do more business with them.

As taxing as the hiring process can be, it’s a critical stage for any great company wanting to build a core passionate team. A team that will always go the extra mile for each other, their customers and by extension the company simply because the staff loves what they do.

4th November 2009

Grounded with Focus Booster

Walking into a supermarket is very similar to launching your browser to navigate the web in that if you don’t establish a purpose before your visit, you inevitably spend more time trying to recall or stepping away from what you came for other than focusing on what needs to get acccomplished.

We’re all guilty of this and while having all the time in the world would be ideal for perfecting a task, that’s simply not reality, so setting up perimeters for ourselves to “getting things done” is what’s most critical. Add to that the extra effort we need to put forth in fighting for our time from all other distractions (Twiter, Youtube, etc ) that we still willingly participate in daily and things get worst.

I’m personally a time freak and especially as it pertains to anything computer related. Not by choice but because I feel like have to. Any type of activity on these machines is equivalent to walking into a dark room and the presence of having a system to manage your time on them is the railing that will bring you back to reality.

Keeping Me Grounded

Focus Booster is this amazing, simple and elegant application I’ve been using that’s powered by Adobe AIR and it’s designed to help you eliminate the anxiety of time and enhance your focus and concentration. There’s quite a few other effectual applications that excel at the same thing but I really don’t need all the extra features that others offer.

If you don’t feel like downloading the application to your desktop, there’s also a neat online version with identical functionalities. The application is essentially based on the principles of the Pomodoro Technique which is a time management method created by Francesco Cirillo. It can be used for any kind of task and enables you to view time as a valuable ally in acomplishing what you want to do.

The idea is to focus on one task at a time through the following steps -

• Pick a task and perform that task for 25 minutes straight.
• Take a short break — about five minutes.
• Work on the task again or pick another one to do for another 25 minutes.
• Repeat until you’ve done this four times.
• Take a longer break.

The first time I applied this technique on my day off, I think I became more mentally exhausted thinking back how much I had accomplished in a day and not because I really was. I played Xbox, read chapters on my Kindle, published an article and cooked dinner all revolving around the 25min limitations. It felt great knowing there was still time left on the table to focus on other responsibilities.

I can’t highly recommend enough Focus Booster or the technique it applies. Test it out. I leave you with a passage by Keith Robinson which is what inspired me to embrace the method.

In my opinion, one of the biggest discouragements to getting things done is having a system that has to be managed. If you’re spending more time looking for new ways to help you get things done you’re missing the point. Keep it simple.

29th September 2009

What I’ve Learned Under 155 Words

• Get it in writing.
• Buy a really good chair.
• If it looks good, eat it.
• You don’t have to suffer.
• Say no more than you say yes.
• Communicate with your customers.
• Even doing what you love is hard.
• Buy a really good monitor (flatscreen).
• Disappointing people hurts more than saying no.
• Blogging works and you meet amazing people doing it.
• Life exist in the moment, not in the voice in your head.
• Don’t assume other people are as motivated as you may be.
• Everything will take twice as long as they say it will no matter what.
• Being a photographer makes you more aware of the details in life.
• Read what you love and not what others think you should be reading.
• If your people aren’t giving what you want/need, perhaps the problem lies wit you, not them.
• Spending time with a special person is the greatest thing even if it involves doing nothing.