How Not to Suck at Your Job

??Ken Walker??: “Getting the Basics Right”:http://relevantmagazine.com/life_article.php?id=7104. Hey, that’s me. :)

“Alissa”:http://www.alissaclark.com needed an article for the Career and Finance department of ??Relevant Magazine??, so I thought I’d divulge all the secrets of my success in 1,000 of my favorite words. Speaking of not sucking, do you know _how_ to condense everything you’ve ever wanted to say about the corporate world into a two page blurb? Revise, revise, revise. Then ask for feedback from people you respect (and will be honest about how much it _still_ sucks), and revise some more.

The final article endured 61 mostly-late-night revisions, ballooning up to as many as 1,714 words at version number 34. The picture below is every change I made between that version and the final. Highlighted green words are additions, grey struck-out words are removals. Here’s to “embracing your constraints”:http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives2/the_positive_side_effect_of_big_text_less_text.php:

Getting the Basics Right, versions 34 and 59 compared

This entry was written by Ken and posted on January 31, 2006 at 4:24 pm and filed under Business, Personal, Writing. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

11 Comments

  1. Chris
    Posted February 2, 2006 at 12:01 am | Permalink

    Wow Dude! Way to get published! That’s awesome, and a good article to boot. I mean, I know you’ve been blogging for a while, but getting published on someone else’s magazine is a bit different. Congrats.

  2. Ken Walker
    Posted February 2, 2006 at 9:07 am | Permalink

    Thanks, Chris. :)

  3. Matt
    Posted February 2, 2006 at 1:19 pm | Permalink

    Ken, that’s extremely cool. Ditto to what Christ said. Congrats.

  4. Matt
    Posted February 3, 2006 at 10:17 pm | Permalink

    Ummmm… I meant what CHRIS said, not what Christ said. :)

  5. Ken Walker
    Posted February 6, 2006 at 9:48 am | Permalink

    lol–thanks, Matt. Hey, when is the TechBridges blog going live? :)

  6. Kyleen
    Posted February 6, 2006 at 11:25 am | Permalink

    Way to go Ken! I so enjoy reading your blog. It’s ever so much more well-written than mine; perhaps that fact should serve as inspiration for improvement . . . :)

  7. Kyleen
    Posted February 6, 2006 at 11:30 am | Permalink

    Oh, and your bio on the Relevant site is perfect. :-D

  8. Ken Walker
    Posted February 6, 2006 at 5:22 pm | Permalink

    Thanks, Kyleen. By the way, where’s your blog? I googled your name but only found an a cappella group at NYU. :)

  9. Kyleen
    Posted February 7, 2006 at 1:57 pm | Permalink

    Ah, the good ol’ days as one of the N’Harmonics . . . you can find me here: http://www.xanga.com/a2cutefrog

  10. Ken Walker
    Posted February 7, 2006 at 2:49 pm | Permalink

    Awesome. “Subscribed”:http://www.xanga.com/rss.aspx?user=a2cutefrog.

  11. russ
    Posted February 15, 2006 at 9:46 am | Permalink

    Congratu-freakin’-lations, man.

    Canny list, entertaining (and dare I say applicable) even for the non-cubicle set. Very well-written with the right word for every thought.

    I have so many in-law stories to tell! Thanks for giving me one I can be proud of.