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 …

I think its safe to say that for the majority of people, Thanksgiving is not about goodness and gratitude, but rather, family drama.
Until now, I have been pretty much on the outside of this American tradition: The tradition of building up Thanksgiving to be a great family moment and then the family not living up …

Most of us think of a dream career as one that affords us flexibility for personal relationships and high engagement for personal growth. And while flexible work used to be limited to women, USA Today reports that increasingly, men, too, feel stress from the personal impact of inflexible work. So the question for everyone is: …

Here is a map of where all the single men are:
http://creativeclass.typepad.com/thecreativityexchange/2007/04/the_singles_map.html
I do not live near any single men. Well, I sort of do. My divorce lawyer has set me up with a few men in my hometown, Madison, Wisconsin. He told me that I am too focused on my work life. I need to get …

Here’s what happens in every meeting I have with investors: They ask about my divorce.
Many people ask about my divorce. Usually it’s because the person cares about me. But with the investors, there is no pretense. They just want to know if Nino is going to get a large percentage of my stock in the …

In case you are new to the drama that is my marriage, here is the post about our first day of counseling, which now has 171 comments. And here is the post where I blame my whole marriage on the institution of shared-care parenting, and also where I find out that the population of available …

When I founded my first company I didn’t have time to find someone to date, but I knew that I wanted to get married. So I followed all the advice I had read about how you should tell people what you want in order to get what you want. I started telling everyone that I …

Your gender might matter most when it comes to negotiation — women just aren’t as good at it as men. Part of the reason for this is that women are more hesitant to ask. But to be fair, women who negotiate competitively are judged negatively, whereas men aren’t.
BATNA Thousand
Another factor that has a huge impact …

You probably know by now that while I go by the name Penelope today, it didn’t start out as my real name. It was a pen name. My editor at Time Warner gave it to me, and the first time I saw it was in a contract. It looked like a good place to start …

During my first job interview, my mom drove me to 31-Flavors while we practiced interview questions.
One question we did not practice was “How much money are you expecting?”
When the ice cream store owner asked, I said, “Well, my parents are cutting off my allowance for the summer so I’d like twenty dollars a week.” That …

More money is good, right? You’re going to be doing your job anyway, so you might as well ask to get paid more for doing it.
But you actually have to do a lot of preparation in order to ask for a raise effectively. The most obvious preparation is to find out what everyone else is …

John Annabel, of Northampton, walked into the office one day to find himself working side by side with a new employee whose only qualification seemed to be that she was having an affair with Annabel's department head. Annabel says people didn't particularly care that she was in the office doing no work until she started …

The best thing you can do if you want a flexible schedule is ask for it. Younger workers are finding more and more success when they ask, which should give everyone encouragement to request flextime if they want it.
Laurie Young is a founder of Flexible Resources, a company that specializes in finding flextime jobs for …

You do not deserve a raise just because you have been doing your job well for x amount of months. It is your job to do your job well. That’s why you were hired.
Also, do not complain about your salary not being at market rate six months after you take your job. Because if you …

Time magazine’s cover story is How Your Siblings Make You Who You Are. There are a few good tidbits about how your sibling experience affects how you are at work.
Adult life is made up of relationships – at work, in marriage, among friends — and we learn the skills for these relationships through siblings because …

The deluge of press about the difficulty of attracting and keeping Generation Y employees is amazing.
Here’s an example of a press release pandering to the media infatuation with the topic. Even the sheep are suffering : “Fewer and fewer people are choosing the sheep and beef industry as a career. There are huge job choices …

Can we all just stop talking about promotions like they matter? A promotion has meaning when someone is moving up the corporate ladder at such a slow pace that every small step is grounds for celebration.
But there are no more ladders because no one stays long enough at a company to get up the whole …

One summer, when I found myself with no job and no plan, I panicked and took a job on a chicken farm in the French countryside. I told myself the job would look good on my resume — showing I am adventurous and understand the agriculture business to boot. Neither is true, in fact, and …