Networking is not getting favors from other people. Networking is giving favors. A good networker is always sniffing for a way to help whoever she is talking to. If you are at a loss for how to do this, read Ken Ferrazzi’s book Never Eat Lunch Alone. When I interviewed Ferrazzi about building networks, he […]
Networking is not getting favors from other people. Networking is giving favors. A good networker is always sniffing for a way to help whoever she is talking to. If you are at a loss for how to do this, read Ken Ferrazzi’s book Never Eat Lunch Alone. When I interviewed Ferrazzi about building networks, he […]
You do not need to have an intellectually challenging job in order to be happy in your job. You need to feel like you are meeting a core need by being at your job. I interviewed Sonja Lyubomirsky, assistant professor of psychology at University of California at Riverside, who studies what makes people happy. She […]
The reason you should do what you love is because you won’t work hard at it if you don’t love it. And hard work is, in fact, more important in success than raw talent. The guys who wrote Freakonomics also write a column in the New York Times magazine, and this topic is the focus […]
When it comes to finding a career, the huge soul search is hugely overrated. At some point — usually much earlier than people think — you should just start doing something. Anything. While the soul search is routinely touted in the self-help section of bookstores, it is not the most practical approach. The first problem […]
Here’s a piece in the Boston Globe about learning how to react constructively when someone makes offensive comments at work. In fact, the majority of people, it appears, will say nothing, even though a comment offends their sensibilities. Decades of research into bystander apathy shows that people freeze when they are in a group. “In […]
In a moment of publicity genius, Salary.com compiled research to determine the value of a stay-at-home mom. The verdict: $134,121 a year. And then the arrows started flying. The economists complained that the math is sloppy. (By the way, one of my brothers is an economist so I know that economists think everyone’s math is […]
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 […]
The most fun I ever had interviewing someone was when I talked to Daniel Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard University. It was about a year ago, and I thought I would just ask him a fast question about how much money someone needs to be happy. (Answer, about $40,000 a year. That’s enough to […]
I spent two hours this week writing an article about autism. My son was diagnosed with autism and I could write five hundred pages about dealing with the diagnosis. But then I reminded myself about specializing. About focus. Specialists get a lot of good things in this world, and people who dabble in everything get […]