Are you an artist or a white-collar assembly line worker? Most white-collar workers wear white collars, but they still end up working in the factory. Seth Godin mentions in his new book Linchpin that "white-collar workers push a pencil or process an application or type on a keyboard instead of operating a drill press. The only grease they have to get off their clothes at the end of the day is the grease from the take-out food at lunch." After all it's factory work because it's planned, controlled, and measured. As soon as it is part of a system, it's not art.
If you're an artist, you tend to shake things up. You invent as you go. That's why MBAs often have trouble pigeonholing artists. A true artist can't be easily instructed, predicted, or measured, and that's what you're taught to do in business school. Art represents a chance to improve the status quo, not just make it cheaper inside a factory while wearing a white collar to work.
A good friend of mine, Jeremy Dearringer, is an artist. He co-founded Slingshot SEO, and leads research at this fast growing Indianapolis tech darling. His job is to explore and develop new ways to rank your company first on Google's search engine.
Jeremy solves problems that people haven't predicted, sees things people haven't seen, and connects people who need to be connected. As an artist, he applies artistic judgement combined with emotional labor. Jeremy's job is a platform for generosity, for expression, and for art.
So I pose the question again, are you an artist or do you "rock" a white collar to work, stressed out on the assembly line?
