Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist. Advice at the intersection of work and life.
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Browsing category "Knowing yourself"

List of things I hate #3

Posted to: Knowing yourself
March 4th, 2010
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This is not an exhaustive list on the topic. In fact, it may be an inexhaustible topic. There are older lists of what I hate. So today's post is merely my most recent list.
Which is notable because hatred is a process. Neurologists have proven that love and hate are closely related, and I have found it's hard [...]

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Do you overemphasize happiness?

Posted to: Fulfillment |  Knowing yourself
January 14th, 2010
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I think I’m over the happiness thing. I think I am thinking that the pursuit of happiness is, well, vacuous. I don’t think people are happy or unhappy. Because I think knowing if we are happy would require knowing the meaning of life, or the ultimate goal, or the key to the world, or something [...]

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How to make yourself more likable

January 6th, 2010
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I am back with the farmer.
This probably is not surprising to you, because admittedly, it is absurd to be engaged one day and not engaged the next day. But there are exacerbating factors, and basically, the way I got him back was to be more likable.
I have spent most of my career overcoming my lack [...]

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How to hit a wall at work, with grace

December 22nd, 2009
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I am lost. I have been lost before in my career. It’s just that I did not write about it while it was happening. I wrote about it after the fact. That’s much easier. But in the past, during the time I was lost, I simply stopped writing.
For example, I quit playing volleyball and went to [...]

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Asperger's at work: 5 ways to be less annoying

November 24th, 2009
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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 [...]

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This is what it looks like to have a hard time making a change

Posted to: Fulfillment |  Knowing yourself
November 20th, 2009
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Some days I look through old posts, reminding myself of posts that I've written that I like and that I should link to. Often, this process serves to let me procrastinate writing while pretending to be engaged in writing. If I were a body builder, this would be me looking in the mirror instead of [...]

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How to know if you'll be good at sales

November 19th, 2009
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It’s clear to me that emotional intelligence is the most important skill for success in adult life. And the consummate career application of emotional intelligence is the sales department. So I’m fascinated by sales.
I used to think I’m not that good at sales. For example, I’m an open book—I have very little ability to bluff or [...]

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First, be honest about what you want

Posted to: Goal setting |  Knowing yourself
November 2nd, 2009
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Someone once asked me to think of a moment in my childhood that was really nice. I thought of one.
Wait. You think of one, now. Quick. Just any one…
So I thought of a time:  it was in my grandparents’ huge yard with fruit trees and flower gardens and grass for running. And it was so [...]

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Asperger's at work: Why I'm difficult in meetings

Posted to: Diversity |  Knowing yourself
October 29th, 2009
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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 [...]

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4 Types of questions get us in trouble

October 12th, 2009
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How far you get, in almost anything, is limited mainly by your ability to ask good questions.
The problem is that we are not taught to ask good questions. We’re trained to answer questions. But only answering questions doesn’t make an interesting life. After all, if you have all the answers, and you’re spewing them all [...]

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Asperger syndrome in the office: How I deal with sensory integration dysfunction

September 30th, 2009
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A lot of people ask me how I manage to keep a job when I have Asperger syndrome. So I'm doing a series this week on the topic, because it’s true that most people with Asperger’s are not doing well at work. The work place rewards social skills, and people with Asperger’s have a social [...]

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The sign of a great career is having great opportunities, and saying no

Posted to: Fulfillment |  Knowing yourself
July 29th, 2009
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This is about the farmer. The guy I met last year, and I drove through tornados, twice, to see. He dumped me. But I kept his toothbrush in my bathroom for five months while other men paraded through. And the way you can gauge if you love someone is if you keep the toothbrush even after the toothpaste [...]

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How to decide how much to reveal about yourself

Posted to: How to blog |  Knowing yourself
July 21st, 2009
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People ask me all the time how I can be so honest about my life in my blog. They want to know how I can write about marriage, sex, abortions, or running out of money over and over again. It’s an endless list really, of the stuff I write about that people can't believe I’m [...]

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Five steps to make yourself great

May 7th, 2009
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The best way to get control of your career and stability in your life is to be great at what you do. Superstars are not out of work right now. Really. Even in finance. If you have an amazing track record in your field of work, you’ll have a job. And if you need to [...]

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The new post-college prestige job is retail

April 15th, 2009
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It used to be that the best post-college jobs were the ones that gave you a sense of security (law, medicine) or financial windfall (banking). But the finance industry and grad-school route are both dead ends at this point.
The New York Times reports that we’re experiencing a sea change in the career department because the [...]

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Twentysomething: Why it's smart to quit a job after just two weeks of work

March 11th, 2009
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This is a guest post from Jamie Varon. She's 23 years old. Her blog is called intersected.
Not too long ago, I started a new job, in which I moved my self from point A (college town) to point B (Bay Area). This was supposed to be my career launch. It took me about two weeks [...]

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How to decide if you need a therapist

January 28th, 2009
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I receive about fifty career questions each week. The questions have a predictable diversity, but not my answers. My answers are almost always the same advice: Know yourself better.
Watch:
Problem: My boss is a jerk. How can I fix it?
Advice: Understand what you can do differently to make people act differently around you.
Problem: My coworker got [...]

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The art of knowing when to hide and when to reach out

January 21st, 2009
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Ryan calls me from the office. I say, “Don't talk to me now. I'm sulking.”
He says, “Okay. What are we doing about the five-year sales projections?”
I say, "I told you. I need ten minutes."
“Nothing is going to change in ten minutes,”
“In ten minutes I’ll be more pleasant on the phone.”
“Okay.” He hangs up.
I eat two [...]

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How to figure out what you should be doing with your life

January 15th, 2009
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There is no other way to figure out where you belong than to make time to do it and give yourself space to fail, give yourself time to be lost. If you think you have to get it right the first time, you won't have the space really to investigate, and you'll convince yourself that [...]

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How to write an email that generates a useful response

Posted to: Knowing yourself |  Networking
December 22nd, 2008
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Most people who are on top of their game respond to most emails within 48 hours. However some emails are so terribly written that it’s actually impossible to send an answer. Other emails are so terribly written that the amount of time it would take to figure out what to answer is simply not worth [...]

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