Category: Other

It is simply the reality that many of us spend 8+ hours a day sitting at our desks. Here at Book Architecture, we were discussing what can be done to mitigate the bodily wear and tear of that fact earlier this month. We bandied about some of the tips and tricks we think we maybe heard were helpful somewhere? before realizing it was time to consult a professional. Below is what physical therapist Dr. Mat Parker told Madison when she asked, on all of our behalf, what can be done: 

Motion is lotion. 

If you retain just one thing after reading this, Dr. Parker wants it to be that humans are made to move. You can sit with the most ideal posture on a multi-thousand dollar ergonomic chair with an optimally elevated screen, and even cumulatively that won’t be as impactful as taking mini breaks from being at your desk altogether. If you can swing it, he recommends moving around for five minutes every hour. 

Less is more when it comes to products. 

The type of chair you’re sitting on matters so much less than how you’re sitting on it. What we should be aiming for, according to Dr. Parker, is the 90-90-90 rule. Essentially, with your feet resting comfortably on the ground, your ankles should make a 90 degree angle, your knees should make a 90 degree angle, and your hips should make a nice 90 degree angle. If your feet don’t reach the ground but are dangling, that puts more pressure on the spine, and a footrest or foot stool might be a good idea–but really, that’s all. 

The biggest mistake Dr. Parker reports seeing is people, especially those with a history of back pain, opting for too much back support in their work setup. This can actually increase the curvature of the spine, forcing spinal muscles to activate and fire all day long, creating pain rather than alleviating it. Instead, when you’re sitting, you should ideally be straight up and down, with your low back gently resting against your chair or against a very small low back rest, with your back muscles relaxed and jelly-like. 

Check in with your body regularly. 

While we’re aiming for 90-90-90, people slouch. They sit on their feet. They cross their ankles. According to Dr. Parker, that’s fine. Don’t sweat it. Just make sure you don’t get so in the workflow that you hold the same suboptimal posture for too long. It’s important to switch it up. Even if you have a standing desk, for example, it’s best to alternate between that and sitting. If it doesn’t seem realistic to aim for the five minutes of movement per hour recommended above, these body scans and micro adjustments still carry a lot of value. 

Targeted effort goes far. 

If you want to take things a bit further, however, Dr. Parker says that working on hip mobility and glute strength is very beneficial for someone who sits for most of their work day. When people experience back pain or tightness, they often assume their core is weak and what needs to be strengthened. It is actually glutes that are the bigger issue. Dr. Parker describes it as their being the foundation to your house; if the foundation is rocky and unsteady, the columns of your spine are taking on force they’re not designed to. 

A hip flexor stretch is a great place to start to combat this. If you want to get fancy with it, you can add in some glute exercises like squats or glute bridges. Youtube videos can help guide these efforts–just take care not to let the glut of fitness videos therein overwhelm you.  

It’s an awareness game.

The true challenge is that when people are locked into work, or writers have found the flow, people tend to float off the back of their chair and inch closer to the computer screen–and there they might stay, for hours on end. According to Dr. Parker, “You want my annoying voice in the back of your head reminding you, ‘I haven’t moved in a few minutes. I should probably change positions.” At the end of the day, this is really all an awareness game.

Madison Utley speaks to first-time author Reuben Roth about his book, Recruitment Debt: A Glossary of Terms to Help You Hire Your Next Great Candidate, what pushed him to want to write it, and how it feels to have worked with the right team to get it into readers’ hands. 

Q: What made you decide to write a book to begin with, and what led you to reach out to Stuart for assistance? 

A: Earlier in my career, I made a list of around 75 things that were core to the recruiting process. I reached out to people who I considered experts in the space to learn more about these things, which turned into a series of blog posts. In putting those together, I generated so many words I thought it might be beneficial to turn the content into a book. To do that I tried working with two different ghostwriters, but things stalled out. Maybe it was me, maybe it was them; it doesn’t really matter. The point is, the process pre-Stuart was too confusing and generally pretty rough. I had been dabbling for almost two years with no success whatsoever.

It was only after Stuart and I partnered up that the process finally started to work. He had me outline everything I thought I knew. Then, we filled in all the blanks. We grouped that content into different chapters–and in doing so settled on the glossary format of the book–and then Stuart re-interviewed me on all those chapters to flesh them out even more. 

Q: What were the challenges of translating your complex, real life work into text in a book, and what were the benefits? How did squaring up to that effort contribute to the creation of the glossary, in particular?

A: Writing a book definitely pushed me to simplify the concepts I’m so used to talking about. That was a challenge, along with finding the theme that unites the different parts of what I do, and getting the tone right. The benefit was that I learned a lot. There were things I thought I knew well, but it turns out I didn’t know as much as I needed to so I had to dive back into the material myself. The glossary concept we landed on was key as it’s quite representative of the recruiting process; it makes it easy to take only what you need to build out the system that’s right for you. Not all companies need the full menu, they might just need a few of the pieces. I’m proud that my book reflects that, and is applicable to all use cases. 

Q: What did the addition of the illustrations (a nod to your natural diagram prowess, SH says) bring to the finished product? 

A: The illustrations keep the book lighthearted and help it flow. Sometimes recruiting can just feel like a list of things you have to do; things you know you should do, but things that take time and require extra work. So the illustrations being fun is important. And working with Molly was great. She was very autonomous which I appreciated, and even with that she managed to capture exactly what I wanted. 

Q: What is the value in having completed this process and getting your book out into the world? 

A: I have only positive things to say here. I appreciate that it gives me something concrete to point at when people reach out to me, but also, it’s just really nice when people randomly reach out and say they’ve read it. That’s part of why I’m in the recruiting space: having the opportunity to help people and give advice that means something.

When it comes to writing, when it comes to life, there are some things that can wait for inspiration, and there are those things that we just have to do. Finding an agent to represent your project falls into the latter camp, and that’s because it’s a numbers game. 

Some of our authors have found their agent on the 100th reach out, the 83rd, the 17th, the 1st. There’s no rhyme or reason. While that may strike you as discouraging, the productive takeaway is that all we have to focus on is our own efforts. All we can do is keep reaching out. That’s it.  

To put some figures to it, we recommend going to 6 to 8 agents every three weeks, to strike the right balance of generating momentum while ensuring things stay manageable and organized; it’s important you’re able to track your efforts, perhaps through a spreadsheet, in order to manage the air traffic control effectively. 

Reaching out can be time-consuming. Every agent has a special twist. We want the first 20 pages. We want the first 40 pages. We want a synopsis of 800 words. We want a synopsis of 1,000 words. While these preferences can create a headache, that’s what agents have to do in order to avoid getting blanketed by submissions. Tailoring your pitch to fit within their parameters is crucial, as is infusing some sense of why you are going to this specific person in the very first paragraph of your query. 

It can be a challenge not to be emotionally reactive throughout the process. All kinds of psychological demons might surface: your fear of rejection, your entitlement, and the like. I can’t believe they wouldn’t even write me back, you might find yourself thinking. Or maybe you come across an agent who’s open to queries and recently published a comp title, so now you’re getting excited. You’re thinking, This is the person! And you fall asleep with their name written on a piece of paper under your pillow. And then they’re not the person…but maybe your person is over here instead…

The point is, you can’t think of this process as an evaluator of your self-worth. There are so many factors at play; what this agent is looking for, what they feel they can do a good job selling, what they think is selling at all. You could be rejected because they just represented someone very similar to you and it didn’t work out, or because they just represented someone very similar to you and it did work out. But really, it doesn’t matter. Don’t waste your time having emotional reactions to these things, and don’t waste your time trying to suss out why the agent you thought was the perfect fit said no. Instead, put that time and energy into continuing the search. 

Here at Book Architecture, we provide support for your agent search as part of our Phase Three services, which is marketplace assistance and project management for a completed manuscript. (More on that here).  

Phase Three can include the generation of a query letter and synopsis for a fiction manuscript, or the cover letter and nonfiction book proposal for a non-fiction project, as well as a database of literary agents hand-selected for your project or publishers you can approach without an intermediary. 

The databases we put together for our clients aren’t constructed with any proprietary tools that you can’t take advantage of, but we have an efficient methodology to cull through the online platforms. QueryTracker, Publisher Marketplace, and The Directory of Literary Agents are our most utilized, but it’s really a matter of which interface feels the most comfortable and intuitive for you. 

Then, the assembling of the actual database is a rather manual affair. We sort through the mass for the agents who work within your genre, follow the links to see if they’re open to queries currently or if the office is closed, and take note of how they accept submissions and what it is they’re actively interested in. 

As you can imagine, it’s not the most riveting work we do. But the main reason why we keep doing this, and why it’s part of Phase Three, is because it feels really good to be the one to find an agent that’s right for a project. In fact, there’s nothing quite like it.