Diversity
Why Jason Collins matters for your career
Jason Collins is a professional basketball player who just announced that he’s gay. It’s rare enough for a professional athlete to be openly gay that President Obama called him up to offer support, and former President Clinton tweeted his support, adding that he’s known Jason Collins since he was friends with Chelsea Clinton at Stanford.
Collins …
I think Marissa Mayer has Asperger Syndrome
Marissa Mayer has just been named CEO of Yahoo. She is a powerhouse in Silicon Valley and she was on the cover of the most recent Fortune Magazine 50 Most Powerful Women issue.
Before I tell you why I think she has Asperger Syndrome, I want to tell you why I think it’s important: Aspergers is a …
Savor success. Forget failure.
My son already has experience taking care of an animal and selling it. Last year, his 4-H project was pigs. He showed them, then he sold them, and we even went to the carcass show, which is where fifty people go into a meat freezer with a agriculture professor and find out why one kid’s …
Read More...The real value of diversity
I always thought leaving New York City would be good for me because when you live there, the push to get the best of everything is very strong. New Yorkers are maximizers, a term coined by psychologist Barry Schwartz for someone who is always thinking they can do better. These people are generally unhappy.
There's a …
How Successful People Deal with Asperger’s
I get an incredible amount of email from people with Asperger Syndrome. It's all really similar. Here's a sample:
“I'm 45 and a lawyer and I have Aspergers. I don’t know what is appropriate, and not appropriate some of the time, such as talking too much about very personal info, or saying something that offends someone.
“I’ve …
Repulsion is part of diversity
One thing I have learned from living on a farm is that you are not really experiencing diversity unless you are also experiencing repulsion.
We each have lots of assumptions about what is right and wrong, how the world works, how people should act in a civilized community. When faced with true diversity – that is, …
The workplace should be segregated. Maybe.
Increasingly it makes sense to me that the workforce is segregated by gender.
There are, in fact, jobs where mostly women belong, and there are jobs where mostly men belong, and that's fine. It's outdated to think there are no differences between men and women. And once we accept there are differences, we need to study …
How men can improve work for women
Throughout my career, men have helped me every step of the way. Sometimes it was when I asked for help. Sometimes they saw I needed help even before I did, and they were there.
So you might think this is December-is-full-of-good-cheer-post — you know, me thanking men for all they've done for me at work. …
Revolution at work comes in small ways
One of the posts on my blog that gets a lot of angry comments is the one where I explain why women should not report sexual harassment at work. The problem with reporting workplace sexual harassment is that none of us is going to change policy single-handedly. There is a huge risk with little reward …
Read More...Generation Y in Politics: Krystal Ball’s candidacy
I have been waking up at 4am to work. And I like it. Not only have I been writing more regularly, but also, as soon as I became committed to waking up at 4am, I became committed to going to bed at 8:30pm. And then I got a routine. And all that research about how …
Read More...4 Twitter tips no one will give you
I think it's time for me to address the fact that I have 56,000 followers on Twitter but I have tweeted only 500 times. If I were an aging rock star or philandering basketball player, this might not be remarkable. But I'm basically a normal person.
So I'm going to give you four twitter tips that …
When is it okay to use the F word?
A lot of what I learned in college I learned from the New York Times. I was completely incapable of managing the college application process on my own. In hindsight, it strikes me as similar to my experience with the DMV. The application process is way too complicated for someone with Asperger Syndrome. But I …
Read More...Welcome to readers from Mail on Sunday
Hi there. You are probably here because you read the article about me having Asperger’s syndrome. I have never seen the Mail on Sunday, but it must be a big publication because thousands of readers are coming to the blog from London today.
(For readers who did not see the article, I like it. Here’s a …
How to cope with diversity
All projects run longer than scheduled. So when I planned for remodeling the farmhouse as a two-week project, I figured it would take four weeks. But we are on week eight because we're waiting for tile. And when the farmer and I have an argument, he says, “Go to Home Depot and buy some tile …
Read More...Check-up for self-delusion
It's unbelievable to me that everyone continues to watch football when we know that men are getting genuinely, permanently, brain damaged. The game is tantamount to cockfighting, only with people instead of animals.
The NFL has finally admitted the problem, to the extent it is poised to be the largest funding source for research about trauma …
Martin Luther King Day Special: Racism is alive and kicking. (Hello, McDonald’s)
The All-Star Rodeo Challenge came to Madison, WI last weekend, and the farmer took me and my kids. I was not thrilled about going, but I try to be open-minded when it comes to stuff that is new to me that I am not ever wishing I will get a chance to experience.
I asked the …
Asperger’s at work: Why I need a sick day to register my car
The guy who sold me my car cancelled the plates the very next week. Luckily, I didn't know that because there was a November expiration sticker on the plate. So the fact that I was driving the car illegally for three months did not bother me. Until now. But now I'm at the DMV.
I know …
Leverage the advantages of being an introvert at work
The workplace is set up to reward extroverts. For example, ENTJs make up only 3% of the population but they comprise a wide majority of the world’s CEOs. The bias against introverts in American society is well documented, including research that shows that a spot on the cheerleading team foreshadows career success much more reliably …
Read More...Asperger’s at work: 5 ways to be less annoying
The first step to growing a good career in the face of Asperger’s Syndrome is to recognize that this is a social skills deficit, by definition, and work, by definition, is a social skills decathlon.
I have written before that for me, the biggest problem at work stems from my own sensory integration dysfunction – something …
Asperger’s at work: Why I’m difficult in meetings
Eighty percent of adults with Asperger Syndrome do not have full-time work. This not because they can't do the work. It's that they can't manage to be socially acceptable while they get the work done. “?
Countless studies show people would rather have pleasant and personable co-workers than a co-worker who is always right. I try …

Don't do what you love
Don't go to grad school
Blueprint for a Woman's life
Living up to your potential is BS
Choose sex over money
The Farmer
Melissa
Penelope
Most Commented