Womxn's Month

It’s upon us. Womxn’s Month. Yesterday was International Womxn’s Day, and we celebrated here in America by having no viable womxn candidates for the 2020 Presidential Election (and losing an hour of sleep on top of it all). It’s tough out there for womxn. It seems like every step forward for non-cishet white men, we take another step backward.

If womxn are deemed unremarkable, incapable, less than, having no cause for celebration, then we don’t see them acknowledged, and if we never see them acknowledged, we assume they’re (we’re) unremarkable, have no capabilities, are less than, and nothing to contribute. And then round and round we go, diminishing the abilities and accomplishments of half the global population.

What can we do as creatives?

Hire womxn. Pay them equitably. Take womxn’s needs into account when doing market research, listen to their opinions, stop shouting over them, taking credit for their ideas. Give (because it’s earned, not a handout) your womxn peers the time they need to be full humans instead of expecting them to live by the standards we’ve come to expect from men.

I’ve written womxn vs women because not every woman has certain body parts and not every person with certain body parts is a woman. It’s more inclusive and that matters.

This project by TIME was very, very cool. They went back 100 years and created a cover with a womxn who would’ve won had it not been “man of the year” until 1999 when it became “person of the year.”

At any rate, let’s do better, together.

Someone forgot to tell Simone Biles she’s supposed to be incapable of greatness (photo courtesy of Glamour)

Maximizing Human Fulfillment vs Profit

The 30-hour work week. Seems unreasonable, unmanageable, unachievable. But what if we chose to optimize human time vs maximizing profit? Honestly, what would happen?

Curious 7 hates the notion that we must hit some target hours worked/billed. In the end, it doesn’t focus on the end product, it focuses on money made. It drains workers, it bleeds clients, and it pisses just about everyone off (except maybe some suit doing very little of the work but seeing all that cash).

Does a 30-hour work week look like five 6-hour days? Four 9.5-hour days? It probably depends on workflow and workload, but who cares? What if we placed client needs over the bottom line? Do we think we could create a better end product in less time with more happiness and sense of fulfillment?

It doesn’t mean we let the parent go home early over the young single worker. It means you leave to get your kid. Or get drinks with friends. Or go to your league basketball game or your French class or a bike ride or finish your library book. Or call your cousin or walk your dog or just freaking relax, it’s all valuable. Every experience we have, especially as creatives, make us better at our jobs. The more exposure to the world we have outside of our offices gives us more inspiration, more knowledge, more life.

At Curious 7 we strive to work hard, give our clients exactly what they want and need and maintain a sense of dignity and humanity. We have late nights and early mornings and the need for massive amounts of coffee, but we also recognize that being able to bugger off midday to hit up the bank or a doctor appointment - without needing “sick time” or whatever - is part of life. Doctors aren’t open at 8pm on a Thursday. You can’t plan your sicknesses or injuries or when your credit card numbers get stolen and you need to make a call.

Let’s trust each other to work hard and get the job done…without target hours. Just work. But also play, eat, drink, run, sleep, LIVE.