I check the farmer’s blog obsessively for any updates, which takes a lot of energy partially because he never writes on it but mostly because I have to work really hard at all the mental gymnastics I use to justify to myself what I’m even doing on there in the first place. Read more
This course includes three days of video sessions and email-based course materials and a 20-minute one-on-one coaching session with Penelope. You can purchase this course for anytime, on-demand access.
The first job I got at a startup blew my mind. I was learning so incredibly fast, and there was no limit to what my job could include. Anything I could teach myself how to do, I could add to my job. Read more
We’ve never been good at predicting the nitty gritty of the job market (who could have thought of the term community manager 20 years ago?). But we are pretty good at predicting mega-trends (for example, 20 years ago we knew we’d all be working with computers by 2015). Read more
Many of the coaching sessions I do center around a single question: is it time to switch careers? What I’ve found is that in most cases, the answer is no, it is not time to switch careers.
Here’s why: We are absolutely terrible at predicting what we will like to do in our careers, and we overestimate how much we’ll like a new career. Read more
Melissa and I are in a hotel room in New York City to meet with a guy who has a lot of money and wants to do a makeup line. And of course Melissa and I said we could definitely launch a makeup line. I mean, we shop at Sephora, so we can launch something like that. Read more
About a month ago I got a stack of catalogues from Restoration Hardware in the mail. My first thought was that I had purchased so much at Restoration Hardware in the past year that I am now one of their top customers. I thought about my friend Maria, who teaches people how to choose a color for anything in their home. She can make you feel like a genius and I’m pretty sure that means everything she buys from Restoration Hardware tax deductible. Read more
When we’re in a terrible job we think we’re the only person who is in a terrible job, and everyone else loves their job, and everyone’s life is great, and our life is terrible. But, in fact, every single person, no matter where they are in their life now, has had a job that they hated.
The only people who don’t have jobs they hate are people who don’t take any risks and end up having terrible careers, because part of a good career path is having moved through a job that you hate.
Here are three steps to make a horrible job good. Read more
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
Of course I have to open this post with something about how stupid college is. Colleges are finally responding to the problem they charge tons of money and then graduates are unemployable and in debt. Colleges are responding by becoming job preparation centers. And Frank Bruni, opinion editor for the New York Times, says this is a waste of time and resources. Here’s what’s better:
1. Skipping college.
The real issue we have with admitting that college is not a path to the work world is then we have to ask ourselves why we send our kids to high school. There is plenty of data to show that teens are able to manage their lives without the constraints of school. The book Escaping the Endless Adolescence is chock full of data, and a recent article by my favorite journalist, Jennifer Senior, shows that high school is not just unnecessary, but actually damaging to teens who need much more freedom to grow than high school affords. Read more
This webinar will help you get the job you thought was out of reach. It could be a position two levels up or something totally new. I’ll show you how to figure out your best next job and get it. 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.
I’m going to give you an outline below, of all the stuff I’m going to cover. But one of the things we’ll cover is that you need to solicit advice from people you trust, and then you need to take it, even if it’s hard.
The first piece of advice is that someone said I put too many unflattering photos of myself on my blog. So I hired Tamara Bell, a photographer for the Chicago Bulls, to take my portrait. And I dragged her to the bathroom at my son’s music lesson building because I love the lighting. See? I take advice. Read more