72 Hours in NYC - Part 1
The Monthly Jump > October 2024
I’ve always found NYC to be an inspirational place. Maybe pop culture icons Jay-Z and Alicia Keys belting out their hit song “New York” a few too many times has influenced me. Or, The Big Apple is simply a cool place to inspire and be inspired, especially regarding our careers.
I’ve been to NYC twice in the last 8 weeks. On both occasions, I spent 72 hours connecting with people at conferences. I met dozens of people carving cool career paths. I listened to inspirational speakers at the Insights Association Corporate Researchers Conversation.
This month’s “Jump” is the first of two posts highlighting career observations from my NYC trips. Between the two, I met inspirational speakers who put their skills on display. Many delivered insightful thinking and techniques we all should consider. Plus, I took in iconic New York establishments that’ll inspire you. Today, I’m talking…
A Quote from Abram Games
Bring Your Unique Self to Work
Immerse Yourself in Hotel Reading
Meet Abram Games
“Maximum meaning, minimum means” - Abram Games
Abram Games is an iconic British graphic designer. He designed many iconic WW2 posters for the British War Office.
We should all aspire to achieve the meaning in this quote. It’s about efficiency of effort and delivering the most we can with limited resources.
Abram studied life drawing at night school while working for a commercial design firm in London. He became a free lance poster designer after getting fired from his job.
Like many in the late 1930s, Abram was drafted into the military. In 1941, the British War Office asked him to design posters for the war effort. Games had a lot of leeway as the Official War Artist. He created iconic posters like the Blonde Bombshell, which received criticism and was even banned.
Games created hundreds of works for the government and private industry over a six decade career. He applied his focus on graphic design into a number of paths. Games is an example of someone who stuck with one major focus area but applied it to many subpaths and adventures.
Career adventuring doesn’t necessarily mean hopping between job types. It can mean sticking with one main interest and putting your skills to use in a variety of challenges.
Apply Abrams quote to your own career or life as a manager. How are you maximizing meaning with the least possible means? In managing career adventurers, how are you helping them simplify while seeking meaningful growth paths? Iconic creation can come from simple application.
Bring Your Unique Self to Work
You may have heard the term “bring your whole self to work.” It was popularized with a book by Mike Robbins. It champions being vulnerable and showing up authentically at work. While well intentioned, I do not fully ascribe to this idea. There’s many pitfalls.
Instead, bring your “acceptably” unique self to work. I saw two great great speakers at the conference who put their unique skills on display. Nikkia Reveillac and David Corsaro discussed the importance of being a “whole brained” insights professional and of using magic to help you think differently.
Nikkia is an accomplished leader with experience at Netflix and Colgate-Palmolive. Plus, she’s a podcast host and a dancer. Her keynote championed the importance of using your whole mind. She incorporates her dance experience into her work. She talked about how important the arts are today, when AI is such an ascendant force.
David is an insights leader and trained magician. He helps organizations embrace magic to improve results. During his talk, David displayed the limiting power of assumptions in work and life. Through magic, he encouraged attendees to lean into emotion and shed limiting assumptions. This helps people create unlimited options.
How do you bring your unique self to work? We all have many interests and talents. You will make work more fun and purposeful if you weave in more things that make you you.
Immerse Yourself in Hotel Reading
I read a hotel book for the first time. It wasn’t the bible, already read that one. I discovered E.B. White’s short essay, Here is New York, while exploring my closet size hotel room. It became my perfect companion for a few days of solo exploration and dining amongst millions of strangers.
What an easy, enjoyable read! Even at 7,500 words, it’s packed with more career focused insights than most 75,000 word career books. White describes Manhattan masterfully, romanticizing a city filled with the lonely and adventurers alike.
He describes New York as three different places. One filled with natives born there. Another is the daily destination of the commuter. Third, and most applicable to career adventurers, is a place for people born elsewhere who come in quest of something. White opines that the third group makes New York what it is: a place of incomparable achievement.
The book is filled with wonderful tips packaged in poetic passages and quotes. Here are a few snack-able examples.
“…for the residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail.”
“…for creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.”
“The city is always full of young worshipful beginners — young actors, young aspiring poets, ballerinas, painters, reporters, singers — each depending on his own brand of tonic to stay alive, each with his own stable of giants.”
Here is New York epitomizes Abram Games quote. It delivers descriptive passages that you’ll enjoy. Plus, it packs a punch of career insights for you to consider. All in less than 60 pages!
Summing it Up
I do not believe New York is the ultimate place to visit or live. There are many cities and places I find to be equal to or better than the Big Apple.
Yet, it’s a fantastic place that inspires many to create! How might we find places that inspire us to be giants? If we can’t find them, how might we build them ourselves to harness our own stable of giants to live purposeful work and personal lives.
Thanks for reading The Jump! Like and Re-stack with you own thoughts to spread the word!
Paul G. Fisher
Other Notes & Reads
Since last months The Jump, I’ve…
Released Two More Podcast Episodes: Zenda Walker talks becoming an award-winning children’s book author and Jason Hauer discusses forging his way as an Inc 500 honored serial entrepreneur.
Extolled the Benefits of Driving an Old Car: Read Why I Drive an ‘05 Toyota Camry. Hint….it fuels my career adventures
Enjoyed ’s Piece on Becoming a Top 1% Candidate: She shares her R-STAR framework, which I love! It should be part of everyone’s interview toolkit.
well thanks for the shoutout! Glad you enjoy the R-STAR framework