Bad decisions I am making

Everyone can do better at meeting goals by listing what we think we’re doing wrong. It’s because the pessimists of the world are more realistic. They accomplish more in life. Not that optimists want to accomplish more. They don’t. They are just happy where they are. But whatever. There is no place for someone like that on my blog.

So here’s my list of everything I’m doing wrong in my life right now.

1. The most recent bad decision I made is one second ago, when I decided that I would not write this blog post about Esther Williams. For those of you who don’t know, I used to sign autographs for her. I played volleyball in the day and signed fan mail at night. Read more

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Take more risks to make life more fulfilling

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I’m driving to the Madison airport to pick up Ian, my new partner in my new secret startup. I’m wearing the sunglasses that Melissa’s boyfriend said make her look too rich and too Type-A. The glasses are perfect for today.

I am also wearing a new, green shirt that I got at JC Penney. Did you read about how the new CEO overhauled women’s fashion and alienated all the loyal customers? This makes me think it’s okay that I like the shirts they sell. (Or used to sell—since he just got fired for selling clothes I like.)

I email Melissa a picture of me driving with the shirt on. Then I call her. Read more

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Five things you can stop worrying about when you worry about getting a job

More and more employers don’t care about your education. It makes sense: the first place social change happens is usually at the workplace because social change is almost always financially prudent. Think about it: hiring women during WWII meant factories could keep operating, so women got equality at work faster than other places. Giving gay partners health benefits gave employers access to a much stronger candidate pool, so gay rights launched from corporations (companies like Disney lead the way).

So that’s what’s happening with the backlash against school. Employers will continue to get much better at picking successful candidates by largely ignoring schooling (Google is leading the way), and then they’ll start to ignore other largely meaningless issues that are problems only for less progressive people. Which means you need to start adjusting whether you worry about this stuff, too. Read more

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For God’s sake, do the first thing on your to do list first

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Melissa says to me, “The reason you’re not writing is because you’re hiding. And if you hide something from blog readers you can’t cope. So you don’t write.”

I tell Melissa, “If you’re going to move to New York then David should put some of his huge salary in your bank account.”

Melissa says, “Don’t change the subject when you can’t face reality.” Read more

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5 Mistakes new grads should make

The advice I’ve given to new grads in the past is to marry rich so you have more options. And don’t go to grad school to get out of difficult choices. Consider moving home with your parents to save money and don’t do what you love.

This is all really good advice.  You should go read those posts, but this year, my message to new grads is that you should make the mistakes I made when I graduated. They were good mistakes to make.

1.  Ask for too much in the interview.
The first job interview I ever had was for the number one children’s book publisher at the time, Harper Row. It was a long shot, but I sent my resume to their New York City headquarters, and I ended up getting an interview – my ten years running our family children’s bookstore was worth a lot more than I realized.

When I got to the interview I didn’t understand that it was my job to sell myself.  I thought that had already been done, and that’s why I got the interview. Read more

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3 Rules high achievers never break

In case you were wondering what happened to the 20,000 bulbs I planted, here they are. But don’t worry that this is going to be a post full of happy spring cheer. That sort of post would embarrass me.

First of all, these bulbs didn’t come up until after spring. Partly because it was 50 degrees in Wisconsin this spring, and partly because my bulbs probably have some sort of photosynthesis version of schizophrenia since I planted fall bulbs during a blizzard in Janurary. But even those came up.

But first, look. When you plant bulbs in a blizzard, it is too cold to put the bulbs at the right depth and make each bulb point up so it’s ready to sprout. I ended up planting some bulbs in the muted moonlight of thick snowfall. I shoveled snow until I hit dirt, then I dug a little deeper and dropped handfuls of bulbs into piles. And even those came up. Read more

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Webinar: How to make your 20s count

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This webinar will show you how to make the most of your 20s so that you can set yourself up for an engaged, fulfilling life. It includes four days of of video sessions and email-based course materials. You can purchase this workshop for anytime, on-demand access. The cost is $195.

Get access now.

The most important thing to do in your 20s is figure out where you fit. Find your place in the world, pick your friends and family. You will make 85% of the major decisions in your life by age 35. And your earning in the first ten years of your life has exponential impact on your earning throughout the rest of your life. So act like your 20s matter, because if you act like they don’t matter, then they won’t matter.

To make the most of your 20s you need to make mistakes, because mistakes show that you’re moving forward and trying new things. But it’s important to make intentional mistakes. This means that you need to have goals, and plans, and when they don’t work out, you make new goals, and new plans. This four-day webinar will show you how to do that: Read more

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Put yourself in uncomfortable situations

One of the biggest changes in the workforce in the new millennium is that we have to be information synthesizers instead of information producers.  All information is available online.  So we can’t add value by memorizing it.  We have to add value by reframing it. I call this synthesizing.

IBM conducted a survey of CEOs to find out what they thought were the most important leadership skills of the near future. And in the top five was boundary spanning, which is networking ideas and collaborating in order to synthesize information in new ways.

Side note:  I have a theory that this is why we suddenly are noticing how many people have Asperger’s, because it used to be that people with Asperger’s were extremely valuable for their memorizing capacity.  Today, when we don’t need to hire people to memorize things, people with Asperger’s are suddenly viewed as weird and unemployable instead of savants and extremely valuable. Read more

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How to know if you’re in a good job

One of the things I had to do as an adult was learn to see what makes a good job. Some people intuitively know how to find a job that feels good. Most of us spend the first half of our lives trying to learn what feels right and the second half of our lives trying to get it. Maybe this post can speed up that process for some of you.

The bottom line of a good job is that it makes you feel like you have unlimited energy for your work because it’s so fulfilling. Psychologists would say the job matches your personality type. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi would say it puts you in the state of flow. However you approach the idea of a good job, though, The Economist presents research to show that good work has these four components: Read more

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Before you aim for someone’s job, look at the price they paid to get there

Whenever I write about grad school, someone writes in the comments about how I’m just bitter that I didn’t get a degree.

But what I’m really bitter about is that no one wanted to have sex with me. Some famous poet was a visiting professor, hitting on every grad student but me. And Leslie Epstein was there, who is not only king of the Jews but the father of Theo Epstein, a big name in baseball. Leslie said I’m the best sex writer he’s ever read. So why wasn’t he asking me for sex?

Probably because I’m the master of bad sex. There is no anal penetration that I cannot ruin with a piece of poop at the end of the paragraph.

So no one hit on me in grad school except maybe Susanna Kaysen. I was starving and homeless and she was getting movie deals that included Winona Ryder riders. And if I had not been so Aspergery I would have done anything to get her to edit my memoir – she is a master of the line edit. I’ll always worry that my memoir could have been edited better.  Read more

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