Routines
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Are traditions the same thing as routines, they're just done less frequently? And if the tradition is both loved and hated, what does that mean? On today's Keepin It Real, Cam shares that he both loves and hates them. ----- I have a routine that I practice nearly every day. I both look forward to it and hate it. I wake up shortly after 5am. I have clothes laid out on a chair next to the bed and I dress and go into the kitchen and start the coffee. I fold laundry while it brews. I then pour myself a cup and sit in my morning chair and write in my journal for about thirty minutes. I then...
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Work Week
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, it's Friday and Cam's brain has had enough. He once wanted to keep going. Now, he's just hoping to make it to today. ----- I can remember complaining that there simply weren’t enough days in the week to get all the stuff I needed get done done. I wished that each day was longer and the work week had more days to it. I wanted a twelve-hour workday and a ten-day work week and a three-day break at the end. That would be preferred, I thought. That way I could get everything done and take a break when it was over. Wow, have times changed. Or maybe I’ve...
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Turn The Page
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, another chapter closes in Cam's life. And he wonders what comes next. ------ John Cougar Mellencamp has a song called Ain’t Even Done with the Night. It’s one of my favorites. That song became a regular part of my days four or five years ago. I’d pick my daughter up from her volleyball practice and as we made the turn from the gym onto the larger road, I’d ask Siri to play it. My daughter would protest and moan. “Not again, Dad” she’d say. I’d sing it loudly. It became our song in a weird way. She didn’t like it, didn’t want to hear it...
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Side By Side
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston continues to be interested in the research he's doing on retirement trends. He's discovered something called a Men's Shed which is different from a Man Cave where men can go and stand next to each other. ----- My work continues to lead me into retirement research. Specifically, how to make retirement fruitful and productive. One of the leading causes of an unhappy retirements is too few friends or no friends at all. Referred to as social isolation, the US Surgeon General said that social isolation is as unhealthy as smoking fifteen cigarettes a...
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Retirement Ready
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston and his buddies are beginning to discuss retirement. Cam's learning, though, that maybe working so hard to get to retirement may not be worth all the effort. ----- The subject of retirement has come with my crowd lately. A few years ago, we maybe whispered about retirement, but now it’s a full-on conversation – when are you going to retire, we’re asking each other. How will you know it’s time? The answer from nearly everyone is “as soon as possible” and “I’m ready right now.” Last week I had breakfast with a lady in healthcare...
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Meeting and Convention Bingo Card
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week’s Keepin It Real, Cam’s on his way home from a conference. He began making notes a few days ago about what his years and years of attending conferences has taught him. A bingo card might be fun, he says. ----- I speak at few dozen conferences each year. My audiences are the same – thinning brown haired, slightly overweight, middle aged white guys dominate each room. These are my people. I’ve learned how they like my content delivered and I do it for them each time. If I do it well, it may get me invited back. After twenty plus years, I’ve seen hundreds of events,...
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It's Different This Time
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week’s Keepin’ It Real, Cam admits he feels helpless in today’s political climate but he’s found something he can do. It’s very small, but at least it’s something. ----- I have quite a few friends who, over the years, have tried to persuade me to get out of the stock market due to some crisis or another. “Pull all your money out,” they say, “this time it’s not some run of the mill crisis. This one’s real. It’s different this time.” It’s different this time. We are so often tempted to think that whatever the crisis, this one is different. Rarely, very...
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Large Adult Pool
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin' It Real, Cam's visit to a hotel on the Gulf this wekend got Cam to thinking about how some people, well, they just don't get it... ----- Tuesday I checked into a hotel in Gulf Shores at the Gulf State Lodge. “Where is the free parking?” I asked. “We don’t have any. You can pay to park or pay a little extra and I’ll park it.” This is the bell staff at the front door. I handed him my car key. “Where is a luggage cart? I have a bunch of stuff to get to my room for my workshop tomorrow.” “Guests aren’t allowed to use luggage carts. Only bell staff.”...
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Mercenaries vs Hessians
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
In today's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston laments the significant changes happening to the things that he once believed were fixed in place. Attitudes and beliefs once firmly held are vanishing. Even predictable things like football rankings have been deeply shaken. ----- To say that our world is undergoing a remarkable paradigm shift today is a ridiculous understatement. Each morning I look over the headlines prepared to be blown away by how formerly predictable things are now upside down or simply gone. On the political front, an economist at a meeting a few years back told us it was...
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Pushing Electrons
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam discusses his largely sedentary life and the fulfillment he gets on the rare occasions he can see the results of his work. ----- Most weeks, my work mainly involves pushing electrons around. I sit at a computer and do stuff. Recently it’s been requests for short training videos for clients to use with their teams. I write scripts, edit scripts and record videos. Other weeks I prepare presentations. Lots of PowerPoint editing, lots of rehearsing content. Lots of time online. Lots of buying tickets. It’s all sedentary stuff. Me plus a keyboard plus a...
info_outlineThis may be a bit over the top but it's what it looks like to me:
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The apprentice to master model in the workplace may be dead. It was declining prior to the pandemic but now, after the struggles from the pandemic are largely behind us, the apprentice to master model is gone. And it’s a shame. Our society today, our workplace, our government, all of it comes from this model. It served us well. We’ve left it behind. Out to pasture. It’s not a good thing.
Begun in the trades ages ago, its basic tenants are that a person enters a trade or a workplace with little to no knowledge. They apprentice themselves to someone who can teach them – a master. The apprentice slowly learns, begins mastery of their craft, to become the master themselves. They then train the next generation and so on. Stone masons, mechanics, glass blowers, plumbers, electricians, lawyers, and accountants. All of them and many more.
What brought apprentice to master to an end? A few things, the first of which is technology. Technology began its creep into the workplace two generations ago. The Baby Boomers were running the show. Boomers were first skeptical of stuff, and took it on reluctantly. In time, the power of technology became apparent and most Boomers didn’t know how to use it. Who did? The Gen X’ers.
The Boomers said “Hey Gen X. We need your tech skills. Please come work here, use this stuff, and teach me how to use this stuff.” Thus, Gen X entered the workplace as the master. The young were teaching the old. As technology continued its creep, more and more Gen X’ers were needed to teach the Boomers. The technology changed and the Millennials then entered teaching the Gen X’ers. Again, the young teaching the old. The workplace desperately needed the young master.
After the pandemic hit it changed again. No one could find workers. Workplaces were doing cartwheels to get employees with no proven experience, no discernable talents. Employers further sent apprentice to master into oblivion by giving the youngest workplace entrants perks and benefits and hybrid workplaces and flex schedules that previously only the masters could dare ask for. Tenure no longer mattered. And if the new employees didn’t like the way they were treated, if they felt unappreciated, registered too many microaggressions, off they went to quickly find a new job. A California MD told me in her workplace the newest workers are weaponizing wellness. “I don’t want to do that,” they’re saying, about whatever it is. “It will make me unwell.”
I was with a client in Dallas Wednesday. They’re struggling. They make high pressure valves and pumps and such. They’re struggling to find people to work. Making the items, installing the items, building things, and fixing things. To learn this stuff, employees have to apprentice to a master. No Google search, YouTube video, or ChatGPT will do it.
There was a lot of white hair in the room of 850 people wondering how to keep their businesses going. I’ve studied workplace trends for twenty years. I didn’t have much good news for them.
I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep it Real.