Around 20% of the people I coach are black, and race usually comes up in conversation, but not in a very interesting way. However, recently I coached a black guy who was so interesting that I stayed on the phone with him an extra hour. Read more
Men do a lot more housework today than they did ten years ago, but they do the same amount of housework regardless of whether they are single or married. This means men are more self-sufficient than they used to be, but also that they are only doing what women would call “the basics.”
Women do more housework when they are married than when they are single — even with no kids. Which means women are doing more than the basics because they want to make a nice home for the marriage. And men already thought they had a nice home. Men don’t care about the extra housework women are doing: the genesis of unpaid, unappreciated labor. Read more
I am not voting for Trump. And I think Hillary is a liar and I’m voting for her anyway.
Also, I love Ivanka so much I can’t stop Googling to find more tidbits about her. And I read in many places that Chelsea is a brat and neither she nor her husband can figure out a real job to do. Read more
Maybe you think I’m taking a cue from Cosmo here: Look Younger at Any Age!
Before I lose you, let me just say that it’s pretty true that anyone, at any age, is better off being younger when they interview. Example? Read more
I ask myself this question all the time: What would I have done if I had lived in Nazi Germany? I am Jewish, so I ask myself if I’d have left early on. Early enough. When I could have left.
I watch lots of movies and read lots of books about life in Nazi Germany. Read more
It is my business partner’s birthday. We have been through two years and $4 million in funding. We’re together every day, but I can’t say happy birthday. I wanted to skip work to avoid it, but I had to come in because we are getting so many media calls for our product launch—a tool that allows companies to recruit people from blogs. I sneak past his office and go to a friend’s cube and say, “I can’t tell Ryan happy birthday. I’m going to die. I can’t do it. I feel too stupid. I think I might cry if I have to do it.” And then I am actually crying. Read more
I’m going to ignore the fact that the DSM no longer includes Asperger’s as a diagnosis. Asperger’s remains a useful way to categorize people with very low social skills and very high IQ — and a high rate of manic-depression and suicide. It’s useful to separate out these people in order to help them. It’s like separating out people who have a gene for breast cancer. There are things you can do to make their lives better. Read more
As the High Holidays approach I start feeling anxiety about whether I’ll work during the holidays. Will I do two days or one? Will I write emails and send them? Or not hit send until sundown, or just not write emails at all?
It’s part of being Jewish to have a workaround for everything. For example, this is a picture of my sons participating in a not-real bat mitzvah for their cousin so we can take pictures because you can’t take pictures during the real bat mitzvah.
I’ve read that people who have willpower don’t actually have willpower. Rather they make decisions for themselves that have clear parameters and then they don’t reconsider them, so those people don’t need any willpower.
I’m pretty sure that my everything-is-negotiable approach to Jewish holidays requires an insane amount of willpower that I’ll never even come close to having. But I in that vein, I propose a few guidelines for those of you who are like me and trying to figure out what to do with social media on High Holidays. Read more
Jason Collins is a professional basketball player who just announced that he’s gay. It’s rare enough for a professional athlete to be openly gay that President Obama called him up to offer support, and former President Clinton tweeted his support, adding that he’s known Jason Collins since he was friends with Chelsea Clinton at Stanford.
Collins is a 12-year NBA veteran who has played for the Boston Celtics and Washington Wizards and chose to come out in the new edition of Sports Illustrated . He says, “I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay. I didn’t set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport. But since I am, I’m happy to start the conversation.”
It’s a great conversation to have, because we all do better in our careers if we are honest about who we are.
Marissa Mayer has just been named CEO of Yahoo. She is a powerhouse in Silicon Valley and she was on the cover of the most recent Fortune Magazine 50 Most Powerful Women issue.
Before I tell you why I think she has Asperger Syndrome, I want to tell you why I think it’s important: Aspergers is a serious disability that is very very difficult to diagnose in girls. (I know this all too well: I have Aspergers, and I was not diagnosed until I was an adult.)
Aspergers is a mental disability that primarily affects peoples’ ability to read social cues. You might think this is a small deficit, but actually social skills are essential to almost everything we do. An inability to read social cues leads to so much isolation and misunderstanding that suicide is relatively common among people with Aspergers. Read more