This story, that I read many years ago, has stayed with me — so much that it is now woven into the fabric of who I am. Good stories are like that. I don’t know where it came from and I don’t know if it’s true. But it might be.
Late one evening, Amy is on a subway, coming home from work. It’s been a long day and she’s tired. The subway car is pretty empty with just a smattering of passengers here and there. At the far end is a father, sitting with his head leaning against the window, his eyes staring straight ahead. He is oblivious to his two boys running rampant through the car. They look to be about eight and ten years old. They are having races down one length of the car, then running back, swinging around the poles, whooping it up. Their jackets are unzipped and sway behind them as they run.
Continue reading “Angry at Strangers? Amy’s Story Might Help”
Single-tasking is the New Black … I Hope
Imagine going out for dinner with friends, and no one pulls out their phone; or trying to remember that name of Robert Downey Jr.’s most recent film without checking Google (Captain America: Civil War); or sitting on a bus and not having your neighbor talking loudly to his mother. Don’t get me wrong — I’m all for using cellphones, google-ing, and calling your mother. But research shows that there is a significant cost of both multi-tasking and being distracted by the phone — cost to brain development, creativity, and happiness.
“Wait, what?” you say. “My brain? My creativity? My happiness? But I can’t get my job done unless I multitask!” It’s time to re-think this.
Choosing Your Next Career
Career advice is easy to get — maybe too easy because there is too much information and too many people who think they know what’s best for you. So, how do you wade through it all? My straight-forward advice is to pace yourself and complete a thorough process such as these five steps:
- Understand yourself
- Be practical (and budget minded)
- Explore your options
- Be inspired
- Be brave and take a leap
Ask Five Good Questions
In May of 2016 James Ryan, Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, gave a commencement speech about asking good questions. While his words were directed at future teachers and leaders in education, they are invaluable to a much broader audience.His speech includes a reference to Raymond Carver’s poem “Late Fragment.” In just thirty words, Carver beautifully articulates the simple desires that so many of us want at the end of our lives: “to call myself beloved” and “to feel myself beloved on the earth.”
Seems simple.
And it is.
Message from a tree
I heard this first from a yoga teacher. In English, we would likely have called it “Advice from a tree” but she is not a native English speaker and she called it a “message” from a tree, which now I like better.
How to Write That Cold-call Email
Want to get a meeting with someone who you don’t personally know ? Skip the Dear Sir/Madam email– it’s a long shot in this busy world, so a waste of your time. So, what can you do? It’s simpler than you think: write a compelling and flawless email, and follow up.
There are so many reasons why you might want to meet a stranger. If you’re in sales, you hopefully already know how to do outbound cold calls. If you don’t know, there a is a lot of readily available advice on how to sell something.
But what if what you’re selling is YOU? How do you convince someone to share their valuable time?
Do These Three Things When Publishing on Medium
A friend asked me to help him write his first article on medium.com. So I did my research and read everything I could find on how to write for Medium. I may be oversimplifying, but I think not. My research can be synthesized into three guidelines:
- Keep your writing simple
- Write to a specific audience
- Engage as an author
