Try to be funny, even if you’re not
February 29th, 2008
Men are hard-wired to think they are funny. They use it as a courtship technique. A study by Eric Brassler at McMaster University finds that women rate men as more attractive if they make more jokes. And men are somehow aware of this, because they are more likely to make jokes if women are around.
This …
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Catch Brazen Careerist on CNN today
February 27th, 2008
That’s right. Me on CNN today. On the show Open House. I know that often times I have posted about me being on TV have not been moments of genius. Like, me mispronouncing Kucinich’s name. Or me not knowing how to put makeup on for TV.
So I haven’t said anything about TV for a while. …
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A case study in staying resilient: My divorce
February 27th, 2008
My husband and I are getting a divorce. It’s really hard to write this for a lot of reasons, but the one that comes to mind this moment is that it’s so crappy to be in the middle of a divorce when I make a living telling people how to run their lives.
Fortunately I also …
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Steps to figuring out your next career move
February 25th, 2008
Here’s how you figure out what to do next in your career: you line up all the stuff you like to do and you figure out which one will pay best. Don’t complain to me that I’m too focused on money. Really. Just do the exercise. The ones who are complaining the most right …
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How to decide if you should start a company
February 22nd, 2008
Do you want to know how to tell if you have a business idea that will succeed? You know what? I don’t know how you know that. And if I did, I’d be a venture capitalist, right? But I do know how you can tell if you have a business idea that is worth reorganizing …
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The answer to the toughest interview question
February 19th, 2008
There’s a lot of advice on this blog about how to interview: Tell good stories, ask good questions, be a closer. But here’s only one most important thing to remember: when it comes to discussing your potential salary, never give the number first.
The right answer to the question, “What’s your salary range?” is almost always …
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Memo to human resources: New ways to get great candidates
February 17th, 2008
Since today’s job market is employee-driven, many candidates are fielding more than one or two offers at a time, and at this point, maybe it’s the employers who need the advice on how to attract the employees, instead of the other way around.
There is lots of chatter about how resumes are on their way out. …
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How to job hunt from your current job
February 15th, 2008
A lot of people worry that they can’t get another job because they don’t have time to find one. This is why hunting for a job from your cube is totally standard. It used to be that people stayed in their jobs 40 years, and a job hunt was an earth-shattering event, and there was …
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The part of postpartum depression that no one talks about
February 13th, 2008
In the past few years, postpartum depression has had a lot of press. Brooke Shields had it, Marie Osmond had it. Tom Cruise denied it exists. All good for raising awareness. Now we all know it exists, and maybe some of us know the warning signs. But no one talks about this: What if you …
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Positive psychology exhausts me: Requires so much self-discipline.
February 12th, 2008
I recently mentioned a new book about happiness: The How of Happiness, by Sonja Lyubomirsky. The premise of the book is that we each have a setpoint for happiness—we are born with a proclivity toward being happy or not. But we can affect that proclivity to become happier. And Lyubomirsky tells us how.
There are snooty …
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How to be more interesting to other people
February 10th, 2008
For a while, I was a visual artist. Well, sort of. I mean, I made money from it. But as you may know, I am a big advocate of specializing, and I realized that I had a better chance of being outstanding in my field by focusing on writing instead of visual art.
But I did …
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Use the entrepreneurship boom to improve your corporate job
February 6th, 2008
The new wave of entrepreneurship is changing the startup landscape for sure. It’s nearly free to start a company online, even teens are having wild success, and young people are flipping web sites like boomers flip houses.
Life as an entrepreneur has never been so fun, but that is very annoying to hear if …
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Barack Obama, the female vote, and why this matters at work
February 4th, 2008
Did you see the rally for Obama in Los Angeles last Sunday? It rocked my world: Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and California First Lady Maria Shriver talking to a packed stadium at UCLA. (Watch the video here.)
For one thing, Michelle Obama is a great speaker in her own right and she is teaching us how …
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