January 2008
18 posts
Tips for Personal Branding in the Digital Age:... →
Photo: IbrahimZen
Branding is no longer for Fortune 500 companies and Madison Avenue agencies with excessive budgets and inadequate tracking.
Personal branding is about managing your name — even if you don’t own a business — in a world of misinformation, disinformation, and semi-permanent Google records.
Going on a date? Chances are that your “blind” date has Googled your name.
Going to a job...
Relax Like A Pro: 5 Steps to Hacking Your Sleep →
Photo: Rickydavid
I once went almost five days without sleep in 1996 just to see 1) if I could make a week (I couldn’t), and 2) what the side-effects would be.
I was a new neuroscience major at Princeton at the time and hoped to do research with famed serotonin pioneer, Barry Jacobs.
Hallucinations cut my sleep deprivation trial short, but I’ve continued to experiment with sleep optimization...
Jack of All Trades, Master of One →
The dusty adage “Jack of all trades, master of none” is defined as… “A person who can do many different types of work but who is not necessarily very competent at any of them.” So we work to be a master. That sums up our basic evaluation system. Our job performance is based on meeting or exceeding the expertise outlined for our role. Human resource teams look for the...
Great example of coaching tool: 'This AND That' →
As a journalist, I’ve put off stories that I think should be told, just because my editor thought that readers wanted to read other stories. It was my job, so I did what it took to get paid. As a freelancer, I’ve taken on really bad assignments, basically writing flak pieces for businesses, just to pay my bills. I’m not proud of it, but it happens. As a fiction writer, I’ve put off on writing my...
I Don't Want To But...... →
I was getting ready for bed last night when I began worrying about my horses. They weren’t wearing their blankets because it had been in the upper 30’s during the day. When I fed them and put them in the barn for the night, it was still 28 degrees. In fact, as I took off my boots and socks and tucked my daughter into her bed, the temperature was the same as it was earlier even though the forecast...
Bad judgment →
All day, you run into people with bad judgment. That critic who didn’t like your last movie, or the prospect who refuses to buy your product even though it’s better. Or the angry customer who is bitter, vindictive, loud and out to cost you your job… even though they must know it’s not your fault. Or perhaps it’s the employee who refuses to exert a little extra energy...
Curious →
Nic created the video below—the subtitles and edits are his. The bad cold is mine. I hope you like it (the video, not the cold).
savile row, three years on. →
Thomas Mahon and I launched English Cut, a blog about the life of a small, Savile Row tailor, three years ago this week. 1. Our backstory was told pretty well in Robert and Shel’s 2006 book, “Naked Conversations†. A traditional English tailor [Thomas] and a blogging cartoonist [Me] live in the same remote, Cumbrian village. Being of similar age, we become drinking buddies in the same local...
Learn to Profile People [Psychology] →
Machiavellian psychology suggests that if you profile people around you, you’ll be less inclined to be involved in personal conflicts. How do you achieve this? First, you need to be receptive to the act of reading people and focus your energy on the task. Once you’ve reached this awareness, understand what you are looking for and master the act of listening. Keep the conversation...
Find a Job that You Love [Career] →
Looking for a job you love? For many of us, it won’t happen right out of school and it may take several years until you find a job you’re truly happy with. Blogger Jon Morrow recognizes that most people spend the majority of their waking hours working, so he proposes the question: “why not spend that time on you’re passionate about?” He suggests that you start looking...
It’s on me! →
Have you ever eaten at restaurant and looked over to the table next to you and noticed that people were fighting to pay the bill? Or better yet, have you ate at a restaurant and fought with the other party so that you could pay the bill? This is what my friends and I call the “it’s on me” philosophy.
By picking up the tab when you are out with friends, colleagues, or even potential clients, you...
Top Ten Myths of Entrepreneurship →
This is a guest post by Scott Shane as a follow up to his entrepreneurship test. He is the A. Malachi Mixon Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of seven books, the latest of which is The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By. Many entrepreneurs believe a bunch of myths about...
applying "creativity" to your... →
A young friend of mine, who graduated from university only a year or two ago, offered me this piece of advice about about expanding “How To Be Creative” into a traditional book format:
It’s about taking one’s creativity and learning how to harness it and apply it to anything one undertakes (including careers/business), despite the fact that the business world tends to kill...
Make Firm Decisions to Be Happier [Happiness] →
The Washington Post digs into the imperfect science of happiness and finds a few common “rules” that govern how we find and value it, many of them related to decisions and uncertainty. For instance, a number of experiments have shown that people tend to overestimate the consequences of events and decisions, to their detriment:
Torn between life choices? The experimental results...
From Shanghai to Silicon Valley: 3 Tips for... →
The amazing Olympic hopeful Oscar Pistorius.
Alibaba.com, which pairs non-Chinese companies with Chinese suppliers, rode its IPO to a $26-billion valuation. Its founder, Jack Ma, explains his secret for success:
There were three reasons why we survived. We had no money, we had no technology, and we had no plan. Every dollar, we used very carefully.
Read that one again.
Excuses not to jump...
allow your work to age with you →
[More thoughts on “How To Be Creative”:]
32. Allow your work to age with you. You get older faster than you think. Be ready for it when it happens.
I have a friend. Call him Dan. When I first met Dan, he was a twenty-eight year old aspiring filmmaker, in a one-bedroom apartment down on New York’s Lower East Side, who liked to spend too much time in bars. The last time I saw...
15 Lessons Learned in 2007 →
What a year. I can say with ultimate confidence that we never would have guessed, one year ago, that 2007 would be so transformative for Common Craft. Here are some things we learned:
OUR WORK
Video works. Text, graphics, audio, they all have a place. But video is a different animal. Nothing engages people like the dynamics of a video. Ever read about a car chase? It’s not as...
Experience Again. Be Inspired Again. →
The Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford from 2005 has made the rounds many times over online. I read the transcript two years ago and was moved. Now, I’m moved again because I’ve listened to (and watched) the commencement address. The audio (and video) is now available on iTunes. (Once iTunes opens up, look on the right-hand column under “Top Downloads” and you’ll find the Steve Jobs’...