Tam Harbert

As I work on a story about new ways that managers are monitoring employees, I’m reminded of and increasingly grateful for one of the biggest advantages of the freelance life: my time is my own.

When I worked for a company, I generally had to be in the office by 9 in the morning. During the course of the day, I was expected to sit at my desk, work on a computer, talk on the phone, and attend meetings. If I left before 5 p.m., I had to have a good reason. (They never seemed to mind, however, if I stayed late.)

I’ve always struggled with traditional 9-to-5 hours. I have never been a morning person. I may be awake and at my desk by 9 a.m., but I’m not fully conscious until about 10 a.m. Being able to set my own hours has been a huge blessing. I can structure my day according to my own circadian rhythms. I try to start at 9 a.m., but I do undemanding work, like going through e-mails or reading my daily news sites, until 10 a.m. when my brain is up. I’ll work steadily until about 12:30, then break to go to the gym, run errands or do some housework. My energy peaks in late afternoon, so 2 till about 7 is my most productive time. I try to reserve my heaviest mental lifting for then. I’ll break for dinner and evening activities, but often go back to my computer to wrap up loose ends between 10 and midnight.

That’s my typical schedule, but it’s not set in stone. If I have a lot of work, I’m at my desk at 7 a.m. (with a huge mug of coffee) and work till midnight. If the workload is light, I take the day off. If it stays light, I spend my days marketing myself to new publications and editors. Or teaching myself new skills like how to do more with Wordpress or how to search for sources on Twitter. If the workload is medium and it’s Opening Day, I go to the ballpark.

The point is, I’m free to use my time in the most productive ways. In traditional jobs, employers are in charge of time and they decide what’s productive. They watch not only when employees are in the office, but increasingly what employees do on the computer. They use technology that blocks websites, and not just the pornographic ones or the shopping sites, but also social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Network administrators keep logs of what websites employees frequent. Some employers even install software that records every key stroke and captures screenshots.

If I waste two hours socializing on Facebook, nobody cares, but I may pay the price in lost productivity and lost revenue. On the other hand, I may spend an hour figuring out how to do specific searches on Twitter, which may lead me to the perfect source for a particular story. That’s productive.

As a freelancer, I have the constant pressure of meeting deadlines and earning enough income to live. But I’ll take that any day over a rigid schedule set by others and ruled by their judgments about how I should spend the most precious thing I own: my time.

Sometimes, when I’m on a deadline, my head hurts. And I think I know why. There’s a war going on in there, a war between my left brain and my right brain.

When I’m reporting a story, it’s all very logical. My left brain is in full control of the situation. I conduct research. I talk to people. I ask questions. I gather answers. If something doesn’t make sense, I ask for an explanation. Most of the time, my emotions don’t play much of a part in this process. I’m cool and efficient.

I’m nothing if not thorough in reporting. I usually gather too much information for any given story. That means when I finally sit down to write, I’m overwhelmed. Where to start? How to make sense of all this?

My left brain is nearly always the one to dig in first. The left brain is logical, analytical, objective. It looks at each snippet of information and tries to build a linear sequence. That becomes my rough outline. Often this works. But sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the parts just don’t fit together logically.

That’s when my right brain steps in. And that’s when the trouble begins.

The right brain is intuitive, random, subjective. It likes to synthesize parts into a big picture. My left brain bats it back, saying, “Hey, I’m in control. If I just try harder with this outline, I’ll get everything to hang together and it’ll be a great story.” My left brain insists on handling each tidbit of information like a piece of colored glass. It reviews my notes and my outline, sorts the pieces into piles, by shape, by color, over and over.

My right brain usually stands back and lets my left brain bang itself against the wall for awhile. Then, after ol’ Lefty is battered, bruised and hopelessly confused, Ms. Right will step in and sigh. “Take it easy,” she says. “Go for a walk. Take a nap.”

Researchers who study the brain are finding that daydreaming is actually an important thought process. New brain-scanning studies suggest that our brain may be most actively engaged when we just let go and let our mind wander. “Solving a problem with insight is fundamentally different from solving a problem analytically,” one researcher told The Wall Street Journal. “There really are different brain mechanisms involved.”

When I come back from my walk or wake up refreshed from my nap, I often find that my right brain has taken those bits of colored glass and created a beautiful mosaic. I sit down and start writing, and everything flows together into a nicely packaged story, sometimes with an insight or conclusion that I never knew was there.

Chalk one up for the right brain. At least until the next story, when the battle begins anew.

Very little of what I write actually gets printed on paper anymore. Most people read my stories online. But most publishers – magazine publishers especially – haven’t adjusted well to digital. The visual presentation is boring, often awkward and sometimes downright ugly. The text is hard to read. A beautiful two-page spread from a major magazine feature gets stripped of its best design elements online. It just stands there, naked.

It’s not all the publishers’ fault. So far, no technology has been able to do justice to the beauty and class of glossy magazine articles. Three weeks ago, I was skeptical about the future of digital magazines . But in the course of reporting a story on e-readers, I’ve learned about recent developments in both publishing and technology that could bring magazines fully into the digital age.

First, e-readers are catching on fast. There are about 50 e-readers on the market today. Semiconductor companies, excited by the potential, are jumping into the market with chips that offer faster speeds and more functions at lower costs. These chips will enable new e-reader makers to enter the market. The drop in electronics cost combined with the increased competition could cut the price of an e-reader – the least expensive of which is about $250 today – to less than $100 by year end. To differentiate themselves, e-reader vendors are experimenting with designs, including a hinged reader that would open up like a magazine, according to Gregg Burke, manager of the e-book business line of chips recently introduced by Texas Instruments. He thinks such a product could be on the market by December 2010.

The displays are still limited to black and white, but some promising color technologies are on the horizon. Jennifer Colegrove, director of display technologies at consultant DisplaySearch, says that within five years, rich, full-color e-magazines could be common.

Second, publishers seem to be finally loosening their death grip on the old print model and rethinking how to sell their product in digital form, taking a cue from Amazon’s Kindle and its digital newsstand, which offers dozens of magazines, including Time, Forbes and Fortune. Hearst Corp. recently launched Skiff, a digital magazine and newspaper service for e-readers. And in December, a consortium of publishers, including Time Inc., Conde Nast, Meredith, Hearst and News Corp., announced a joint venture to create a digital storefront for their magazines.

Independent companies also are trying to make a business out of distributing digital magazines. Zinio claims to be the largest digital newsstand in the world, offering 1,900 consumer magazine titles.

The big question is whether publishers can and will design their content for multi-dimensional digital media rather than plain old analog paper. After all, why would I pay $3 a week for a digital subscription to Forbes when I can already read it on my PC for free? Several reasons:

• It’s hard work to read a long magazine article on a PC. All that scrolling and jumping through pages. Plus the text is hard to read, at least for middle-aged eyes. Take one look at the crisp display of an e-reader and you’ll immediately appreciate the difference.

• I want to read that magazine at the dinner table, in bed or on the subway – NOT at my desk when I’ve got more important stuff to do.

• I get articles with beautiful color and layouts, articles that are presented even more attractively online than on glossy paper.

• I get interactive features that are fun, useful and informative. Clicking on a photo of baseball star Manny Ramirez, for example, might reveal a list of his stats.

Technology is already delivering on the first two points, but that won’t be enough. As for the last two, the next year will be critical. I hope the technology to present rich color develops quickly. I hope magazine publishers invest the time, money and effort to get it right. (To get a sense of how magazines could develop, see this video from Swiss media company Bonnier AB.)

Magazines just might survive. I plan to buy an e-reader so I’ll have a front-row seat to watch.

I did an unusual thing the other day. I called my friend. It’s not that we have been out of touch, but I haven’t heard her voice in months. Instead, we have communicated through Facebook, e-mail and texting.

At least this friend answers her phone. I have another friend who rarely does. She does not even respond to e-mails. She’s strictly text. Most of the time I don’t even have my mobile phone on, since I work at home. I’ve told her that and suggested that she call me on my landline. Still, she texts.

It’s ironic that the more ways we have to communicate, the less we talk to each other — actually use our voices interactively in real time in person to exchange information. It’s called conversation. I first noticed this in my work. It’s rare that I can cold-call a source and actually have someone pick up the phone. Most people let voice mail pick up and then return the calls they want to. Virtually all of my interviews are arranged through e-mail. I did reach an IBM executive on her mobile phone once – she told me to text her my phone number and question and she’d get back to me.

Sure, interviews are conversation. But they are a conversation that’s been prepared for. They are at least partially scripted.

This real-time avoidance seems to be increasingly common in my personal life. Rarely do I have an impromptu, casual, meandering conversation in which there is no agenda. We seem to be using our digital technologies to build a wall around ourselves in which we can view the information that comes in and then choose whether, when and how to respond to it. That’s useful in that it helps us to be more efficient and protects us from confrontation with people we may want to avoid.

But it also has a price. It isolates us and increases the potential for misunderstanding.
Conversation is intimate. It forges a strong personal connection. It can foster an understanding of or at least appreciation for another’s point of view. For all our social networking, each of us is a lone voice adding to the digital cacophony. Electronic communication is fine for exchanging information. But knowledge and understanding requires listening to someone, in the context of a situation, and seeing the light in their eyes and the animation in their gestures. I’m really starting to miss that.