12 Shares Chances are at least one of your New Year’s resolutions had to do with money. So how are you doing on your budget? I can’t count the number the times I’ve created budgets only to throw in the towel and decide that they just don’t work. Usually my frustration is due to any of the following: The amount assigned to a category just isn’t realistic. After figuring the numbers and seeing I had a little distribution problem, I determined I could eliminate entire categories or set them unrealistically low. I let my... More »
216 Shares Some people think that life balance is a thing of luxury, something you pursue when times are good…that we should work like dogs to remain indispensable in this unpredictable economy. But wait a sec. Weren’t we were already working like dogs, before we added in the fear of losing our jobs? Here’s what got me going on this subject: In the post Keep Your Job: A 10-Point Survival Guide at CNNMoney/Fortune, Anne Fisher quoted some sobering numbers: According to a poll by the Society for Human Resource Management 60% [of US employers]... More »
2009 will be a time of change. Included in those changes for many will be a job change. In tight economic times, job search skills become even more important. You need to stand out from the crowd. There are two ways to stand out. You will stand out if you do things that make you look ridiculous, and you will stand out by doing things that make you look remarkable. Ridiculous or remarkable: both cause you to stand out, but one gets you the job and one doesn’t. Naturally then, you hope... More »
31 Shares It’s so curious how we spend the last weeks of the year in a sugar-plum-induced family frenzy of parties and holiday sweaters, and expect to walk into our lives on January 1 ready to drill down and get things done. To get our minds focused back on what the year holds in store for us we make these shoulds-posing-as-resolutions and order all kinds of shiny productivity tools and smile at the future coming toward us. Then February rolls around and we glance sideways at our list and hope nobody’s looking over our... More »
68 Shares I started a video blog documenting my journey fighting breast cancer across America. President-elect Barack Obama started a video blog documenting how he plans to implement change in America. What do we have in common? Absolutely nothing; His vlog is way better. So if you are like me and want to video blog like Obama, I offer these tips that I picked up from watching the President-elect’s weekly video address.
12 Shares In a recession, the entertainment industry thrives. So if you are thinking about trying your hand at event promotion, I have some suggestions for you: You need at least two weeks to advertise. Use different color flyers with different ads for the same event. Use original artwork and be creative. Be brief: Too much information is bad information in modern advertising. Contact local stations, websites, and newspapers to see if they’re willing to plug your event in exchange for promoting them on flyers and other announcements. This is known as a “media... More »
282 Shares What are your critical activities? Critical activities are those activities that directly move you towards your goals. Every goal has critical activities. The problem is that most of us spend significant amounts of time doing things that are not critical. Often we convince ourselves that they are something we ‘need’ to do to be successful, but usually they are things that are not critical. Step #1 – Identify your goals You can’t know what the critical activities are if you don’t first have a clear understanding of what your goals are. You... More »
97 Shares Why should I listen to you? I have successfully pitched to local and national media outlets, ranging from the Albany Times Union, where I blog, to The Christian Science Monitor, MSNBC.com, E! Online, Newsweek, The LA Times, and others. Working as a blogger and journalist for the past eight years provided me with insight on how to pitch successfully. Proceed with the knowledge that you will only succeed in pitching if you persist. If you do not, these tips are useless. Be Brief If you can’t tell a reporter who you are... More »
193 Shares Every day that goes by you either move closer towards achieving a goal or you move further away from that goal. If you take specific steps you can be assured that you are moving towards our goal. If you do nothing you are moving away from the goal. By being still, you lose momentum, and the level of inertia of our current position increases. Following these steps will guarantee that you will move towards your goal each day. 1. Gain a Clear Picture of What You Want to Achieve You can’t move... More »
Every student’s nightmare: Another life altering standardized test. To make matters worse, it’s increasingly likely college seniors won’t be able to find a job after graduation. You might have heard your friends talking about graduate school. Is everyone doing it? You don’t need to look far to see: Graduate and professional school enrollment is on the rise across America. The recently unemployed, college seniors, and those looking for a career change are lining up. A high test score may be the only difference between your acceptance into graduate school and a place... More »
189 Shares When it comes to success in today’s world, being the kind of person others like outranks all of the fashionable traits like competitiveness, willingness to work harder then anyone else, piling up qualifications, or blind obedience to the demands of the people at the top. Pleasant, likable people have the best chances of being hired, promoted, and rewarded. Customers are more willing to buy from those they feel good around—even if they aren’t offering the best deal. Bosses who are well-liked get better performance from their staff and face fewer people problems.... More »
Two of the greatest influences on management thinking and practice have been the militaristic politics of the Roman Empire (via the Roman Catholic Church—a masterpiece of top-down, centralized, hierarchical control) and the world’s armies. Look at the words we use: “command and control,” “stuck in the trenches,” “didn’t have the firepower.” We “attack the issues head-on.” When people oppose us they “shoot down our ideas” or “get us from behind,” forcing us to “retreat in disorder” or “give up without a fight.” Management and leadership books are full of military phrases. Leaders... More »
307 Shares In the days of Ancient Greece, when the Greek army was trying to destroy Troy, there lived a young woman called Cassandra. She was a special person. As well as being beautiful and one of the daughters of the king of Troy, she was an accomplished prophetess. Not surprisingly, such a combination of beauty, social status, and talent attracted the attention of a top executive in the prophesy trade. In this case, it was the god Apollo. Apollo wanted to be her mentor. At least, he wanted her, since the Greek gods... More »
Today is Columbus Day in the USA and Thanksgiving in Canada. We have commemorative days for famous people, famous events and (in many parts of the world) religious festivals. I want to suggest that you establish a special day specially for yourself: for allowing yourself time and space to be who you are—and to look a little more deeply into what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. You can call it Doing Nothing Day, and celebrate it as often as you need it. What happens on Doing Nothing Day? Absolutely nothing.... More »
My friend Stefan Hagemann has observed that so many students on a college campus seem to be elsewhere. As I walk around my university’s campus, I understand what he means: phone conversations, text-messaging, and iPod management can take precedence over attention to one’s surroundings. Even without the distractions of a gadget, the sidewalks and quads of a campus sometimes turn into nothing more than empty yardage to be traversed, as quickly as possible, on the way from one class to the next. I like Marcel Proust’s words: N’allez pas trop vite. Don’t... More »
