I haven't posted for two weeks. This is the first time in ten years that I have gone two weeks without writing a column. Really. I have a track record for continuing to write when every other sane person would take a break: I wrote a column right after I delivered a baby, I wrote [...]

I give a lot of speeches, mostly telling people how to manage Generation Y, and how to manage their careers so that they are not jealous of Generation Y. My charm, I think, is that I don't prepare a speech. I never know, exactly, what I'll say when I stand up. It works for me—no [...]

You can tell if you are avoiding personal growth in your career because you are not feeling challenged. You can tell if you are not feeling challenged if you are not scared. Being scared is what makes life interesting. You should be scared that you are going to fail at something because if you are [...]

I'd like to tell you that there are no bad questions. But you know what? That's not true. So here are the ways people ask me questions that drive me nuts:
1. You ask me a career question for your wife.
The first problem with you walking around in the world telling people you need help for [...]

After my first visit to the farm, I quickly invited myself back. "I'm coming there without my kids," I told him.
When I got there, he made me hamburger that was shaped a little too much like how it might have looked in the cow's body, and then he asked me what I wanted.
"I want this [...]

I got an email from this guy who told me he thinks I need a friend on a farm. I think he wrote the email right after I wrote about being a pint-sized ENTJ on the estate-sized front lawn of my grandma's house. I am not sure how he knew I am fascinated with farms, [...]

One of the most dangerous things you can do in your career is to think you are different from everyone else. The biggest validation of that idea comes in AA meetings – it is widely understood by this group that thinking you're different is just an excuse not to get help, an excuse to think [...]

The transition from college to adulthood might be the hardest one we make in our whole lives. After we spend twenty years learning how to get good grades, we go into a workforce where those skills are largely irrelevant.
In fact, the skill that is most important in adulthood is self-knowledge—knowing what you like, what you [...]

I am trying to figure out what is the right kind of guy for me to be dating now that I'm getting a divorce. As an incorrigible go-getter — with all things I do — I am getting a jump start on dating. So if it's offensive to you that I'm dating before I'm divorced, [...]

Brace yourself for the most thorough compendium of research I've seen about how good-looking people get more of everything. The book is Looks: Why They Matter More than You Ever Imagined, by Gordon Patzer, professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago and former dean at California State University.
It is well-documented that good-looking people make more money [...]

Most career questions are actually identity questions. It seems like maybe we need to know which job to take, or which boss is better, or which line to delete on our resume. But really, we need to know who we are.
I learn the most about identity when I'm lost and I have to make a [...]

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 [...]

Happiness is not really different in each person. In fact, science shows us happiness is basically the same for all of us. And our roadblocks to happiness are all basically the same as well — that we each think we are special and the research doesn't apply to us, so we just keep trying to [...]

I have a disorder called prosopagnosia, more commonly called face blindness. It means that I have a hard time seeing faces.
It took me about a month to know what each of my babies looked like. I remember thinking how it's a miracle that the human race survived when it is so difficult to remember what [...]

Now that I do a lot of public speaking, I am flying a lot – two or three times a month. There are a lot of perks to travel, like expensive hotel rooms and a break from my kids. But my favorite perk is meeting sales guys.
Warning: here come generalizations with no data to back [...]

It is a cliché that everyone thinks they're a strategist. The reason everyone thinks they're a strategist is because they don't know what a strategist does.
Get a reality check. Odds are you are not a strategist. 
Strategy requires thinking conceptually and creating something from nothing. So, for the most part, if you need to see something [...]

Here is an open letter to all the parents, aunts and uncles who write to me asking for advice about the twentysomething  in their life who is an incorrigible underachiever:
Lighten up! No one should be labeled an underachiever in their twenties! The first thing you should ask yourself is whose standards are you using? This [...]

Most people who are overweight blame their job for their inability to eat right and get enough exercise. Too much work, too tired after work, too much travel. The list is endless. But losing weight is so important for you career that you should go so far as to cut back on your work-officially or [...]

One of the first major religious decisions that young, Jewish professionals make is whether or not to go into the office on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.
Most Jewish holidays start at sundown, a safe time to leave the office. However, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are all-day affairs, and this year Rosh Hashannah starts tonight [...]

By A.J. Jacobs – For my last book, The Know-It-All,  I tried to fill in the huge gaps in my learning by reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. I read from A to Z. Or more precisely, from a-ak (East Asian music) to Zywiec (a town in Poland)  – a total of 44 million words. Admittedly, [...]