When we were at LegoLand I was struck by the high emotional intelligence of the employees. Their job is to make everyone feel like their Lego project is great. (You'd be surprised how many parents are there, swiping the white blocks from little kids at the Lego snowman contest.)
High emotional-intelligence jobs are very hard, and [...]

I know you’re thinking that the workplace is dead between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but actually, December is a great time for careers. Here are five reasons why:
1.     Job hunting is great in December.
January is the biggest month for hiring, but December is the second-best month for a job hunt. This is because people have budget [...]

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 [...]

Last week was a board meeting for my company, Brazen Careerist. I used to hate the board meetings because there is so much to prepare beforehand, and if everything is not going great, then you have to really face that.
1. Hide your feelings if they are going to be trouble for someone.
I am still a [...]

You are probably wondering if I think about Melissa having an affair with the Farmer.
I do. I think about it all the time.
As a preventive measure I tell the farmer that if he cheats on me, I’ll stay with him. Forever. I’ll never leave him. He’ll be stuck on the farm with me, in misery. [...]

First of all, here is a photo of rhubarb cobbler.

And this is my food blog post for all of yeterday's commenters who think I would not be a good food blogger. You will love this post:  it’s about what to do if you think you’re about to be fired.
1. Be really interesting. And fun. It’s [...]

When we are not in the garden, I obsess about how I want to redesign my blog to look like the Pioneer Woman's blog. I want to be the Pioneer Woman on Suicide Watch. That will be the new title of my blog. I am obsessed with stealing her blog design.
Melissa sits in my garden [...]

You hear all this talk aobut how you have to march to your own drummer, think out of the box, blah blah. The truth is, you can’t change anything until you know all the rules.
Advice admonishing you to break rules is so shallow. How can you break rules without learning them first? People who understand all [...]

I get my haircuts in Los Angeles because my best friend Sharon cuts my hair for free, which means the cost of the plane ticket to LA is cheaper than paying for cut and color in Chicago.
Sharon is a color specialist. This is Sharon picking color for a client who Sharon is trying to focus [...]

I just got back from Washington, DC where we were meeting about the future of Brazen Careerist. The only time you have big company meetings for a startup is if you have no money or a lot of money. We just got a lot of money.
Usually I bring something to do during Brazen Careerist meetings [...]

Sixty-five percent of people in the white-collar world have workplace spouses. Jacqueline Olds, professor of psychiatry at Harvard, explains that because we spend so much time in the office, "these relationships can be critical to succeeding in today's work environment." CNN published a piece singing the praises of the workplace spouse, as "a wonderful support [...]

I'm always shocked to hear that people don’t like brown-nosing. If I could do it, I definitely would. But as someone who has Asperger's, brown-nosing always looks very difficult. So I have been looking for someone to teach me how to be better at brown-nosing, and finally, I found it.
First, here is research from James Westphal [...]

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 didn’t [...]

People at work are asking me why I am not working as many hours as I used to. I am. But I am working on anger management. Here are seven tips I've tried using:
1. Face the problem and make it a priority.
I used to think anger management problem is a thing for men who are [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Here’s the deal with giving flowers. Women like receiving flowers. Men think flowers are stupid.
Men think: Flowers die, they don’t do anything when they are alive, they are expensive, and they are a cliché. Men know that women in general like flowers, but men also believe that women they know personally do not like flowers. [...]

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 [...]

People often tell me that I should write career advice for people with Asperger Syndrome. This is because I am surrounded by people who have Asperger’s, and I have it myself.  Please, do not tell me I don’t have it. First of all, it looks very different in men and women, and most of you [...]

There are some things about work that are difficult for even me to write about. These are the issues that I have not quite worked out for myself.  I wonder if I am normal in these areas? Maybe no one is talking about them, but they are thinking still. And if no one else is [...]