Frame questions to your advantage
You can steer others to offer the responses you want by “framing” the questions you pose. Use one of these tactics the next time you’re asking for a “Yes” or other positive reply.
Learn to get a little selfish during a major life change
Q: “After his company closed, my husband relocated to the West Coast. He is quite likely to land a permanent position in the next month or so. I plan to join him as soon as possible, but we need to sell our home before I can leave. I’ve been with my company for twenty years, and I’m not sure when to notify them of my pending departure. Business is bad, so they might lay me off if I tell them too soon. On the other hand, if I wait too long, there may not be time for me to train my replacement. What’s your advice?” Moving On
Increase efficiency with time blocking
To get more done in the time you have, Gary Keller, author of The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results, recommends a technique called time blocking that you can employ with four simple steps.
What motivates you?
There are basically two types of people in the workplace—those motivated to do well by prevention and those motivated by promotion, writes Heidi Grant Halvorson, associate director of Columbia University’s Motivation Science Center. Research shows these two types of people need different strategies to succeed.
Shatter the perception of old
When I talk to Boomers who are working, there’s a palatable fear that if they lose their jobs, they’ll never find another one. There’s good cause for their concern. According to Forbes nearly 40 percent of unemployed Americans—roughly 4.8 million people—have been jobless for six months or longer. About half of them are over age 50.
4 troubles endemic to the open office
Open offices are all the rage these days and while they have their advantages, they also cause employees plenty of stress and can make it hard to focus. Heidi Hanna, a fellow with the American Institute of Stress, offers solutions to four common open-office irritations.
America’s top 10 weightiest jobs
A CareerBuilder survey identified 10 professions that seem to invite weight gain, usually because of prolonged sitting, on-the-job stress or frequent, high-calorie working lunches.
Get Word to run a tighter ship
Q. There is too much space between the lines of my recipients’ address in a letter. How can I tighten it up?
Avoid overdosing on niceness at work
After reading Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, Amy Keyishian, an author at LearnVest, summarized eight nice behaviors that Sandberg says women—and men—must avoid in the workplace if they want to get ahead.
Self-reliance: the Emerson ideal
Ralph Waldo Emerson is usually remembered as an American poet and philosopher, not a career-development expert. Yet, the philosophy of self-reliance that Emerson developed with his friend Henry David Thoreau offers a blueprint for accomplishing remarkable things in life.