I announced last week that I'll be running a poll on my sidebar each week. I’m aiming for a new one every Tuesday.
The poll is a fun way for me to think about career topics. A new format always gets me going. But it's also fun because even after writing about careers for ten years, [...]

The idea that we somehow have a certain amount of potential that we must live up to is a complete crock. People who say they are not living up to their potential do not understand what living means.
Life is very hard. We each probably have some fundamental goals, even if we don't think of them [...]

I have been derailed for the last year by a fungus growing on my foot. I've actually had the fungus since my days as a volleyball player. All that time, and the few years after, I was uninsured, and I only went to the doctor if I felt my life was at risk.
So I learned [...]

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 [...]

Last week I wrote about how important it is to pick the right goal for yourself so that you are not banging your head against the wall trying to meet an impossible or insignificant goal. I actually think the reason we don't meet our goals is mostly because the goals suck. But if you have [...]

The way to keep a New Year's resolution is to pick a good goal and then overhaul your life to in order to meet it. Duh.
But some of you are saying, hold it, my goal isn't big enough to require an overhaul of my life. Maybe your goal is to, say, clean out your closet. [...]

Don't jump so fast for that promotion or raise you're about to win. Today's workplace is largely unstable — people get laid off and job hop constantly, and in general, staying anywhere more than five years is a career liability. Your learning curve flattens out so much that you're not gaining skills fast enough to [...]

For those of you who graduated from college before happiness courses were available, you've got some reading to do. But luckily, almost all of the books I have seen on this topic are very interesting.
One of these books is Satisfaction: The Science of Finding True Fulfillment by Gregory Burns, a professor of psychology at Emory. His [...]

It's fun to be a superstar. You get a lot of accolades. But the real benefit to being a workplace superstar is that you have more control over your life. A superstar gets flextime. A superstar gets to take a five-month sabbatical and have their job held for them. Superstars are so top-flight that they'd [...]

By Ryan Healy - Safe for me is a cushy, decent job that pays well. Safe is making a steady paycheck that will cover my student loans, rent and living expenses with a small amount left over to put in the bank. Safe is having the spending money to eat out on Tuesday, [...]

Are you switching jobs every two years? Are you draining your savings to start companies with no business plan? Are you hiring a headhunter to find you a spouse? These are things you should be doing to find the success you're looking for in the new workplace. Sure, they create instability, but what else are [...]

Exercise is an essential part of a successful career. It's an essential part of a good life. I think one problem a lot of us face is that we approach exercise like it's a choice.
When email first became widely used, I worked for a guy who thought it was optional. At some point, it truly [...]

Advice for getting happier: Instead of focusing on what's wrong with people, try focusing on what's right with people -what makes people happy, successful and more productive. This is what the positive psychologists do.
Senia Maymin (pronounced Sen-ya) has a master's degree in applied positive psychology. What this means is that she uses the science of [...]

I am a list writer. I do it by hand. Every day. Sometimes three or four times a day, if I'm feeling really overwhelmed.
Lists are a great way to force yourself to prioritize your life. When you read lists of why people fail, it's clear that writing a list of goals every day will make [...]

People often tell me that I should answer more questions from readers. I do actually answer a lot of questions, but I don't put them in a Q&A format. People say they like the Q&A format. But I don't believe people like it as much as they say they do. 
I confess, however, to really liking Dan Savage's [...]

By Ryan Healy — A question I have been thinking about for months is, what is more beneficial to a young person's career; putting in the extra time to do great work for a company that undervalues them, or finding a hobby that will positively contribute to the career they hope to have in the [...]

I'm not a perfectionist. In fact, when I painted my walls I didn't paint near the windows because I didn't want to do the detail work. When I accidentally address an envelope upside down, I don't get a new envelope.
You know what? Doing those things hasn't made my life any worse. It hasn't made me [...]

By Ryan Healy — Unless you are a professional athlete or working on Wall Street, an entry-level salary is not very exciting. When you couple this with the fact that the average college student graduates with tens of thousands in student loan and credit card debt and the cost of renting a place in [...]

By Ryan Healy — Most of my friends would love to run their own business some day. Me too. However, we believe the first logical step is to get a few years of work experience, make connections, and save money.
A couple of months ago, my good friends from college, Matt, Cole and Adam, came to [...]

It used to be that finding a good paying career was the path to adult-life stability. Those days are over. What we think of as stability has to change, and how we get to that stability has to change.
Here's a summary of the new employee of today's workplace: Most will change jobs every two years. [...]