{"id":5324,"date":"2013-06-19T09:15:57","date_gmt":"2013-06-19T13:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theweekinimaging.com\/?p=5324"},"modified":"2013-06-19T09:41:22","modified_gmt":"2013-06-19T13:41:22","slug":"tom-sawyer-art-and-the-fun-of-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/the-week-in-imaging-twii\/sales-and-service\/2013\/06\/tom-sawyer-art-and-the-fun-of-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Sawyer, Art, and the Fun of Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tom<\/a>In Mark Twain\u2019s 1876 classic,\u00a0The Adventures of Tom Sawyer<\/i>, the mischievous protagonist is ordered to painting a fence but convinces other boys that the task is fun, thereby getting them to do it for him. Twain writes, \u201cTom surveyed his last touch\u00a0with the eye of an artist<\/i>\u00a0[emphasis added], then he gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as before.\u201d The phrase \u201cwith the eye of an artist\u201d shows that Tom had treated\u2014or at least had pretended to treat\u2014painting the fence like an artistic undertaking. This story points to a lesson for the modern business person.<\/p>\n

For instance, what if each time we had to write something\u2014no matter how tedious\u2014we treated it like art? How would that change our mindset towards the project?\u00a0This isn\u2019t a question of whether or not what we\u2019re writing\u00a0is<\/i>\u00a0art, it\u2019s about whether we\u00a0treat<\/i>\u00a0it like art.<\/p>\n

At\u00a0ESP<\/span><\/a>\/SurgeX<\/span><\/a>, we write plenty of product pages, brochures, technical documents\u2014the kinds of things most people probably would not consider to be art. But perhaps treating projects like these as if they were each pieces of art might add some fun to our daily tasks, kind of like Twain\u2019s Tom Sawyer did with painting a fence. If we treated what we write like art, at least to a certain extent, it might make writing for a business a bit more enjoyable\u2014and maybe doing so would inspire others to have fun doing it, too.<\/p>\n

ESP<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/a>\/<\/i><\/strong>SurgeX<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/a>\u00a0<\/i><\/strong>a<\/i>sks<\/i>:<\/i><\/strong> What is another common business task you think could be treated like art?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Mark Twain\u2019s 1876 classic,\u00a0The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the mischievous protagonist is ordered to painting a fence but convinces other boys that the task is fun, thereby getting them to do it for him. Twain writes, \u201cTom surveyed his last touch\u00a0with the eye of an artist\u00a0[emphasis added], then he gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as before.\u201d The phrase \u201cwith the eye of an artist\u201d shows that Tom had treated\u2014or at least had pretended to treat\u2014painting the fence like an artistic undertaking. This story points to a lesson for the modern business person. For instance, what if each time we had to write something\u2014no matter how tedious\u2014we treated it like art? How would that change our mindset towards the project?\u00a0This isn\u2019t a question of whether or not what we\u2019re writing\u00a0is\u00a0art, it\u2019s about whether we\u00a0treat\u00a0it like art. At\u00a0ESP\/SurgeX, we write plenty of product pages, brochures, technical documents\u2014the kinds of things most people probably would not consider to be art. But perhaps treating projects like these as if they were each pieces of art might add some fun to our daily tasks, kind of like Twain\u2019s Tom Sawyer did with painting a fence. If we treated what we write like art, at least to a certain extent, it might make writing for a business a bit more enjoyable\u2014and maybe doing so would inspire others to have fun doing it, too. ESP\/SurgeX\u00a0asks: What is another common business task you think could be treated like art?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[87],"tags":[487,612],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5324"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5324"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5336,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5324\/revisions\/5336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}