Taking an Interest in People Is a Reward in Itself

According to Mark Twain, "America and England are two great nations separated by a common language." He was right. For many Americans arriving in the U.K., it's a shock to discover that American English can be vastly different from English English. When we think we fit right in and don't stand out from the natives, it's easy to make some embarrassing mistakes. (Don't ask for an order "to go" at a British restaurant; it's a "take-away.")

Lately, I've been reading about autism. Asperger's syndrome is a type of high-functioning autism where the language skills are better than with other forms of autism; people with this condition are often found in higher education as professors. They have the capacity to lock in on a subject and stay focused. In the movie Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman showed us the savant aspect of autism with his ability with numbers. He also showed another aspect of autism -- being clueless about things around him.

As a photographer, I study people and how they act and react to all sorts of things, so that I can photograph them and show who they are. As a result, I have over the years become an armchair sociologist. I'm fascinated with people's behavior, especially within groups.

Converting the Natives

I have watched missionaries in Africa "convert folks," only to find out that the locals were just being kind and didn't want to embarrass them. These missionaries were used to how people respond "back home" and were unaware of the foreign culture.

In parts of America, people are extremely polite. It's difficult to know where you really stand with them. In other parts of the country, people don't hold back their feelings and, unless you are accustomed to this behavior, it's easy to take it personally. Sometimes your best friends will point out your worst faults, yet your worst enemy is always pleasant to you.

The most successful business people try to win and hold clients for the long run -- not just long enough to close a sale. If we focus on selling a product and just finding a one-time buyer, we are focusing on the short-term. Like the missionary who thinks she has "converted a soul" but has not learned the culture, it's a short-sighted approach to life.

Many successful people I have encountered are collectors. They may collect baseball memorabilia or classic cars or art. They enjoy finding something and holding on to it. I think this is also how they feel about people. They enjoy "collecting" them and keeping them around. They are interested in developing a relationship with these people -- not just conducting a transaction.

In some cultures, it is rude to immediately jump to the transaction or point of the visit. You must spend time with a cup of coffee or tea, talk about families and complete other cultural necessities before getting down to business. Most cultures reward those who pursue relationships and not just transactions.

With Relationships Come Rewards

I believe if we focus on connecting with people, the rewards will follow. On the other hand, I believe focusing on rewards, rather than relationships, is the surest route to failure.

It's easy to tell the difference when you deal with people. How many people have you met who made you feel like you were important to them? How many made you feel that you were just a stepping stone on their path to success? Which of these did you look forward to meeting, or working with, again?

Showing an interest in other people and cultures is not only good business. It's a more personally rewarding way to go through life.

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Backing Up for a Disaster

The severe weather warning sirens in my town have been going off more and more lately due to tornadoes. But this isn't what prompted me to write about the importance of backing up your computer.

One of the students I taught in Hawaii packed her computer and backup drive in the same bag. This, of course, is the bag the airline lost when she flew home. She lost everything she had worked on at school.

My cousin works for a large furniture store. They dutifully backed up all their computers; however, they kept the backups in the same store with the computers. One night the store burned to the ground and they lost all their computers and their backups.

I am not even going to go into my losses through the years.

Tornadoes, computer crashes, lost luggage, burglars, floods -- there are a lot of things that can make our important files and photos vanish. So I'd like to talk a bit about planning a system for backing up our computer files.

My Backup System

First, I prefer a permanent backup of important files to CD/DVDs. It is a more stable solution than a hard drive. Hard drives fail more often than CD/DVDs.

I make two copies of these backup CD/DVDs and put them in different locations. I keep one backup with me where I can get to it in a hurry if my computer fails, but I put other copy in a safety deposit box or at a friend’s house.

Second, I have an external hard drive and make regular backups to it. Most external drives come with software designed to help you make backups.

I use this external hard drive to mirror -- completely duplicate -- my computer's hard drive. When my computer dies, I only need to do a restore and everything will be put on the new hard drive or new computer.

Third, I bought yet another backup hard drive. I labeled one A and the other B. I alternate backups between the two. I make sure these A and B drives are rotated, not just with the computer, but the location where I keep them (bank vault, neighbor, etc.)

Another option for backing up important files, like photographs, is to use an online backup. To take advantage of this solution, a high-speed connection is needed. Your first backup takes the longest, but once this is done only the changes to your hard drive from the last backup are needed each time. I program my computer to do this at night after I've gone to bed. It takes longer than backing up to a hard drive connected to a computer, but it is off-site, and it is one more place to keep your data. One such provider is Carbonite, which is only $49.95 a year for unlimited storage.

I stay away from tape backup systems. The computer department where I used to work decided to use a tape system to backup their image library. The system corrupted the files and, after five years of inputting data, everything was lost. After restoring all that had been lost and adding four more years of images, it happened again. As far as I know they never recovered the images from those nine years.

You Need More Than One Safe Place

The estate of President John F. Kennedy's personal photographer, Jacques Lowe, archived all their images in a safe deposit box housed in the vaults at 5 World Trade Center next to the Twin Towers.

I make sure my images and other important files are stored in more than one location.

Now, when I hear a weather alert, I've got one less thing to worry about.

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