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What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then ... we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal.
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John F. Kennedy
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I apply for a new job twice a week, every week. I am applying for the position of millionaire but so far my numbers haven't come up.
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Brian Randleas (Harmony)
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If I’d had a career, I could change jobs, apply for a promotion, do something. If I’d stayed in New York, I could have had it all, couldn’t I? But I am a Japanese Housewife, a proper, old-school job for life, and you only get to choose your colleague once.
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Emily Itami (Fault Lines)
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The second mistake is the tacit assumption that first you go to school, and when you are done, you go get a job. This made sense when jobs and skills changed on a generational timescale, but it does not in today’s fast-moving labor markets. These two phases of life need to be strongly interleaved, or at least the opportunity for new skill acquisition must be explicit and omnipresent.
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Jerry Kaplan (Humans Need Not Apply: A Guide to Wealth & Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence)
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I can take care of myself just fine.”
She meant take care of her own pleasure just fine. My pants grew tighter while I imagined taking care of her in my own way.
“I’m sure you can, but I’d like to apply for the job.
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Juliette Cross (Don't Hex and Drive (Stay a Spell, #2))
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[N]early every creationist debater will mention the second law of thermodynamics and argue that complex systems like the earth and life cannot evolve, because the second law seems to say that everything in nature is running down and losing energy, not getting more complex. But that's NOT what the second law says; every creationist has heard this but refuses to acknowledge it. The second law only applies to closed systems, like a sealed jar of heated gases that gradually cools down and loses energy. But the earth is not a closed system -- it constantly gets new energy from the sun, and this (through photosynthesis) is what powers life and makes it possible for life to become more complex and evolve. It seems odd that the creationists continue to misuse the second law of thermodynamics when they have been corrected over and over again, but the reason is simple: it sounds impressive to their audience with limited science education, and if a snow job works, you stay with it.
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Donald R. Prothero (Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters)
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I’m sorry, Braden. I can’t keep crossing the line, so I can’t keep working for you. I’ll be applying for new jobs immediately, and until then, this will not happen again.” With
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Mia Carson (The Billionaire's Baby)
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Jobs’s return to Apple 12 years later shows how the most important task in business—the creation of new value—cannot be reduced to a formula and applied by professionals.
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Peter Thiel (Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future)
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soon realize that network tools are not exceptional; they’re tools, no different from a blacksmith’s hammer or an artist’s brush, used by skilled laborers to do their jobs better (and occasionally to enhance their leisure). Throughout history, skilled laborers have applied sophistication and skepticism to their encounters with new tools and their decisions about whether to adopt them. There’s no reason why knowledge workers cannot do the same when it comes to the Internet—the
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Cal Newport (Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)
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When something is chance based, be stubbornly persistent. There’s no reason to quit a (free) chance-based venture. Ever. It’s irrational to quit unless it costs you something. It’s free to submit guest post articles, ask women to go to dinner with you, apply for dream jobs, or ask your boss for a raise. There can be many upsides if you get positive results, so take action without apologizing. Be the most aggressive person you know! When something fails, try a different approach. Concrete failure, as opposed to chance failure, gives you an opportunity to eliminate that way of doing things (Edison’s failed lightbulb prototypes are a popular example of this). When you suspect a negative result comes from a combination of chance and failure, be persistent, but try varying strategies to the degree that you think it’s failure.
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Stephen Guise (How to Be an Imperfectionist: The New Way to Self-Acceptance, Fearless Living, and Freedom from Perfectionism)
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When I heard about the ease with which the Four had been removed, I felt a wave of sadness. How could such a small group of second-rate tyrants ravage 900 million people for so long? But my main feeling was joy. The last tyrants of the Cultural Revolution were finally gone. My rapture was widely shared. Like many of my countrymen, I went out to buy the best liquors for a celebration with my family and friends, only to find the shops out of stock there was so much spontaneous rejoicing.
There were official celebrations as well exactly the same kinds of rallies as during the Cultural Revolution, which infuriated me. I was particularly angered by the fact that in my department, the political supervisors and the student officials were now arranging the whole show, with unperturbed self-righteousness.
The new leadership was headed by Mao's chosen successor, Hua Guofeng, whose only qualification, I believed, was his mediocrity. One of his first acts was to announce the construction of a huge mausoleum for Mao on Tiananmen Square. I was outraged: hundreds of thousands of people were still homeless after the earthquake in Tangshan, living in temporary shacks on the pavements.
With her experience, my mother had immediately seen that a new era was beginning. On the day after Mao's death she had reported for work at her depas'uuent. She had been at home for five years, and now she wanted to put her energy to use again. She was given a job as the number seven deputy director in her department, of which she had been the director before the Cultural Revolution. But she did not mind.
To me in my impatient mood, things seemed to go on as before. In January 1977, my university course came to an end. We were given neither examinations nor degrees.
Although Mao and the Gang of Four were gone, Mao's rule that we had to return to where we had come from still applied. For me, this meant the machinery factory. The idea that a university education should make a difference to one's job had been condemned by Mao as 'training spiritual aristocrats.
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Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China)
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Nine Southern states adopted vagrancy laws - which essentially made it a criminal offense not to work and were applied selectively to blacks - and eight of those states enacted convict laws allowing for the hiring-out of county prisoners to plantation owners and private companies. Prisoners were forced to work for little or no pay. One vagrancy act specifically provided that 'all free negroes and mulattoes over the age of eighteen' must have written proof of a job at the beginning of the year. Those found with no lawful employment were deemed vagrants and convicted. Clearly, the purpose of the black codes in general and the vagrancy laws in particular was to establish another system of forced labor. In W.E.B. Du Bois's words: 'The Codes spoke for themselves. . . . No open-minded student can read them without being convinced they meant nothing more nor less than slavery in daily toil.
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Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
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Imagine a psychiatrist sitting down with a broken human being saying, I am here for you, I am committed to your care, I want to make you feel better, I want to return your joy to you, I don't know how I will do it but I will find out and then I will apply one hundred percent of my abilities, my training, my compassion and my curiosity to your health -- to your well-being, to your joy. I am here for you and I will work very hard to help you. I promise. If I fail it will me my failure, not yours. I am the professional. I am the expert. You are experiencing great pain right now and it is my job and my mission to cure you from your pain. I am absolutely committed to your care... I know you are suffering. I know you are afraid, I love you. I want to cure you and I won't stop trying to help you. You are my patient. I am your doctor. You are my patient. Imagine a doctor phoning you at all hours of the day and night to tell you that he or she had been reading some new stuff on the subject of whatever and was really excited about how it might help you. Imagine a doctor calling you in an important meeting and saying listen, I'm so sorry to bother you but I"ve been thinking really hard about your problems and I'd like to try something completely new. I need to see you immediately! I"m absolutely committed to your care! I think this might help you. I won't give up on you.
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Miriam Toews
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He tipped his head up. "Do you think that stars have shadows?"
She followed his gaze. They were close enough to Springfield for light pollution to dull the night skies, but galaxies still spangled above them. The moon had marched nearly to the end of her night, ready to stagger to her own bed at dawn.
"I guess if there's some brighter star," she said, thinking of lying on the couch months ago, a deep-voiced man explaining the universe on her television while she tried to convince herself to apply for a new job. "Like the kind that's about to become a black hole. Don't they flare first?"
Vince nodded. "Quasars. They flare as they're dying. I guess that would give any other star nearby a shadow.
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Holly Black (Book of Night (Book of Night, #1))
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at Dunkin’ Donuts, how did we move our anchor to Starbucks? This is where it gets really interesting. When Howard Shultz created Starbucks, he was as intuitive a businessman as Salvador Assael. He worked diligently to separate Starbucks from other coffee shops, not through price but through ambience. Accordingly, he designed Starbucks from the very beginning to feel like a continental coffeehouse. The early shops were fragrant with the smell of roasted beans (and better-quality roasted beans than those at Dunkin’ Donuts). They sold fancy French coffee presses. The showcases presented alluring snacks—almond croissants, biscotti, raspberry custard pastries, and others. Whereas Dunkin’ Donuts had small, medium, and large coffees, Starbucks offered Short, Tall, Grande, and Venti, as well as drinks with high-pedigree names like Caffè Americano, Caffè Misto, Macchiato, and Frappuccino. Starbucks did everything in its power, in other words, to make the experience feel different—so different that we would not use the prices at Dunkin’ Donuts as an anchor, but instead would be open to the new anchor that Starbucks was preparing for us. And that, to a great extent, is how Starbucks succeeded. GEORGE, DRAZEN, AND I were so excited with the experiments on coherent arbitrariness that we decided to push the idea one step farther. This time, we had a different twist to explore. Do you remember the famous episode in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the one in which Tom turned the whitewashing of Aunt Polly’s fence into an exercise in manipulating his friends? As I’m sure you recall, Tom applied the paint with gusto, pretending to enjoy the job. “Do you call this work?” Tom told his friends. “Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?” Armed with this new “information,” his friends discovered the joys of whitewashing a fence. Before long, Tom’s friends were not only paying him for the privilege, but deriving real pleasure from the task—a win-win outcome if there ever was one. From our perspective, Tom transformed a negative experience to a positive one—he transformed a situation in which compensation was required to one in which people (Tom’s friends) would pay to get in on the fun. Could we do the same? We
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Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions)
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The Church wishes, for example, to apply Rosmini's invitation to 'hear loftily of God' with worthy liturgical celebrations, stripping the concept of God from the guises, at times ingenuous and caricatural, in which an agrarian and prescientific civilization had dressed it. But it is a hard job. On the right, they shout impiety and sacrilege every time an old ritual is abandoned for a new one. On the left, vice versa, novelty is indiscriminately hailed for the sake of novelty, the whole edifice of the past is merrily dismantled, paintings and statues are sent up to the attic; idolatry and superstition are found everywhere, and it is even said that, to safeguard God's dignity, God must be spoken of in only the most select terms, or there must actually be silence.
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Pope John Paul I (Illustrissimi: Letters from Pope John Paul I)
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Susan’s and Jennifer’s job searches are likely made harder by the color of their skin. In the early 2000s, researchers in Chicago and Boston mailed out fake résumés to hundreds of employers, varying only the names of the applicants, but choosing names that would be seen as identifiably black or white. Strikingly, “Emily” and “Brendan” were 50 percent more likely to get called for an interview than “Lakisha” and “Jamal.” A few years later, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin conducted a similar study in Milwaukee, but with a unique twist. She recruited two black and two white actors (college students, posing as high school graduates) who were as similar as possible in every way. She sent these “job applicants” out in pairs, with virtually identical fake résumés, to apply for entry-level jobs. Her twist was to instruct one of the white and one of the black applicants to tell employers that they had a felony conviction and had just been released from prison the month before. Even the researcher was surprised by what she found: the white applicant with a felony conviction was more likely to get a positive response from a prospective employer than the black applicant with no criminal record. When the study was replicated in New York City a few years later, she and her colleagues saw similar results for Latino applicants relative to whites.
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Kathryn J. Edin ($2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America)
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At this point, I must describe an important study carried out by Clare W. Graves of Union College, Schenectady, N.Y. on deterioration of work standards. Professor Graves starts from the Maslow-McGregor assumption that work standards deteriorate when people react against workcontrol systems with boredom, inertia, cynicism... A fourteen-year study led to the conclusion that, for practical purposes, we may divide people up into seven groups, seven personality levels, ranging from totally selfpreoccupied and selfish to what Nietzsche called ‘a selfrolling wheel’-a thoroughly self-determined person, absorbed in an objective task. This important study might be regarded as an expansion of Shotover’s remark that our interest in the world is an overflow of our interest in ourselves—and that therefore nobody can be genuinely ‘objective’ until they have fully satiated the subjective cravings. What is interesting—and surprising—is that it should not only be possible to distinguish seven clear personality-ypes, but that these can be recognised by any competent industrial psychologist. When Professor Graves’s theories were applied in a large manufacturing organisation—and people were slotted into their proper ‘levels’—the result was a 17% increase in production and an 87% drop in grumbles.
The seven levels are labelled as follows:
(1) Autistic
(2) Animistic
(3) Awakening and fright
(4) Aggressive power seeking
(5) Sociocentric
(6) Aggressive individualistic
(7) Pacifist individualistic.
The first level can be easily understood: people belonging to it are almost babylike, perhaps psychologically run-down and discouraged; there is very little to be done with these people. The animistic level would more probably be encountered in backward countries: primitive, superstitious, preoccupied with totems and taboos, and again poor industrial material. Man at the third level is altogether more wide-awake and objective, but finds the complexity of the real world frightening; the best work is to be got out of him by giving him rules to obey and a sense of hierarchical security. Such people are firm believers in staying in the class in which they were born. They prefer an autocracy. The majority of Russian peasants under the Tsars probably belonged to this level. And a good example of level four would probably be the revolutionaries who threw bombs at the Tsars and preached destruction. In industry, they are likely to be trouble makers, aggressive, angry, and not necessarily intelligent. Management needs a high level of tact to get the best out of these. Man at level five has achieved a degree of security—psychological and economic—and he becomes seriously preoccupied with making society run smoothly. He is the sort of person who joins rotary clubs and enjoys group activities. As a worker, he is inferior to levels three and four, but the best is to be got out of him by making him part of a group striving for a common purpose.
Level six is a self-confident individualist who likes to do a job his own way, and does it well. Interfered with by authoritarian management, he is hopeless. He needs to be told the goal, and left to work out the best way to achieve it; obstructed, he becomes mulish.
Level seven is much like level six, but without the mulishness; he is pacifistic, and does his best when left to himself. Faced with authoritarian management, he either retreats into himself, or goes on his own way while trying to present a passable front to the management.
Professor Graves describes the method of applying this theory in a large plant where there was a certain amount of unrest. The basic idea was to make sure that each man was placed under the type of supervisor appropriate to his level. A certain amount of transferring brought about the desired result, mentioned above—increased production, immense decrease in grievances, and far less workers leaving the plant (7% as against 21% before the change).
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Colin Wilson (New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow & the Post-Freudian Revolution)
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I’ve applied to Brentwood every semester since I was a freshman. My mom fought me on it at first, but I think at this point she’s resigned herself to the fact that I’m never going to get in, so she just signs the forms without arguing. I mean, it’s Brentwood, so to get accepted you not only have to dance like you’re in Black Swan and belt out a B over high C like it’s a middle G and cry on cue through a memorized six thousand lines of Shakespeare, but you have to do it all at once, while having a 4.0 and forking over a hundred thousand dollars and giving the admissions director a blow job, apparently, but once you’re in, you’re in, it’s Brentwood then Juilliard then fame and fortune, and even if not, it’s New York City, baby, and the most important part of this equation is Brooklyn Bridge at midnight and tiny dogs in Chelsea and the Staten Island Ferry and that ex-girlfriend (don’t think about that, should I think about that?) and the answer to the goddamn equation is the absolute value of not Nebraska.
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Hannah Moskowitz (Not Otherwise Specified)
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While I enjoy the work because of my love of mathematics, I luckily realized that this career path was simply designed to exploit inefficiencies in markets in order to extract profits from others. This financial realm known as trading is a zero-sum game where for every dollar you make, someone else loses a dollar, and I know I’m not destined to become such an obvious parasite on society. I only aspire to lead a meaningful, impactful life where I can apply my skills as an extremely analytical individual toward the benefit of humanity. I’m
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Andrew Yang (Smart People Should Build Things: How to Restore Our Culture of Achievement, Build a Path for Entrepreneurs, and Create New Jobs in America)
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When we think of discrimination, these are types of ugly, virulent prejudice that we think about. But John faced a much different kind of prejudice when he entered the job market as a new minted PhD in 1995. Although he applied to more than 150 academic jobs and had completed several field experiments, he was given only one interview. He later discovered that other nearly identical applicants received thirty interviews from just forty or so applications. The main difference between John and these other applicants was that John received his PhD from the University of Wyoming whereas they have received theirs from "brand-name" schools like Harvard and Princeton.
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Uri Gneezy
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But as a Puerto Rican woman, she belonged to not one but two minority groups. New research suggests that her double minority status may have amplified the costs and the benefits of speaking up. Management researcher Ashleigh Rosette, who is African American, noticed that she was treated differently when she led assertively than were both white women and black men. Working with colleagues, she found that double minority group members faced double jeopardy. When black women failed, they were evaluated much more harshly than black men and white leaders of both sexes. They didn’t fit the stereotype of leaders as black or as female, and they shouldered an unfair share of the blame for mistakes. For double minorities, Rosette’s team pointed out, failure is not an option. Interestingly, though, Rosette and her colleagues found that when black women acted dominantly, they didn’t face the same penalties as white women and black men. As double minorities, black women defy categories. Because people don’t know which stereotypes to apply to them, they have greater flexibility to act “black” or “female” without violating stereotypes. But this only holds true when there’s clear evidence of their competence. For minority-group members, it’s particularly important to earn status before exercising power. By quietly advancing the agenda of putting intelligence online as part of her job, Carmen Medina was able to build up successes without attracting too much attention. “I was able to fly under the radar,” she says. “Nobody really noticed what I was doing, and I was making headway by iterating to make us more of a publish-when-ready organization. It was almost like a backyard experiment. I pretty much proceeded unfettered.” Once Medina had accumulated enough wins, she started speaking up again—and this time, people were ready to listen. Rosette has discovered that when women climb to the top and it’s clear that they’re in the driver’s seat, people recognize that since they’ve overcome prejudice and double standards, they must be unusually motivated and talented. But what happens when voice falls on deaf ears?
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Adam M. Grant (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World)
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If Paul brought the first generation of Christians the useful skills of a trained theologian, Origen was the first great philosopher to rethink the new religion from first principles. As his philosophical enemy, the anti-Christian Porphyry, summed it up, he 'introduced Greek ideas to foreign fables' -- that is, gave a barbarous eastern religion the intellectual respectability of a philosophical defense. Origen was also a phenomenon. As Eusebius put it admiringly, 'even the facts from his cradle are worth mentioning'. Origen came from Alexandria, the second city of the empire and then it's intellectual centre; his father's martyrdom left him an orphan at seventeen with six younger brothers. He was a hard working prodigy, at eighteen head of the Catechetical School, and already trained as a literary scholar and teacher. But at this point, probably in 203, he became a religious fanatic and remained one for the next fifty years. He gave up his job and sold his books to concentrate on religion. he slept on the floor, ate no meat, drank no wine, had only one coat and no shoes. He almost certainly castrated himself, in obedience to the notorious text, Matthew 19:12, 'there are some who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake.' Origen's learning was massive and it was of a highly original kind: he always went back to the sources and thought through the whole process himself. This he learned Hebrew and, according to Eusebius, 'got into his possession the original writings extant among the Jews in the actual Hebrew character'. These included the discovery of lost texts; in the case of the psalms, Origen collected not only the four known texts but three others unearthed, including 'one he found at Jericho in a jar'. The result was an enormous tome, the Hexapla, which probably existed in only one manuscript now lost, setting out the seven alternative texts in parallel columns. He applied the same principles of original research to every aspect of Christianity and sacred literature. He seems to have worked all day and though most of the night, and was a compulsive writer. Even the hardy Jerome later complained: 'Has anyone read everything Origen wrote?'
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Paul Johnson (A History of Christianity)
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I'd attended a selective liberal arts college, trained at respectable research institutions, and even completed a dissertation for a doctoral degree. In our shared office, I'd tell new hires I was ABD, so they wouldn't feel their own situation was so bleak. If they saw a ten-year veteran adjunct with a PhD, they might lose hope of securing a permanent job. It was the least I could do, as a good American, to remind the young we were an innocent and optimistic country where everyone was entitled to a fulfilling career. To make sure they understood that PhD stood not for "piled higher and deeper" or "Pop has dough," but in fact the degree meant "professional happiness desired," and at the altruistic colleges of democratic America only the angry or sad ones need not apply.
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Alex Kudera (Auggie's Revenge)
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Choosing Careers
Many people with social anxiety do not have the job they would like the most because of fear. They hold jobs in which their duties are clear and repetitive. They let other people make decisions because they do not want to be responsible. Social anxiety often causes people to find careers in which they can work alone. Many women with social anxiety immerse themselves in family to avoid the workplace altogether.
People suffering from social anxiety often remain at the same position for a long time because they are not seen as leaders. They avoid managerial roles and usually have a hard time communicating. As a result, work becomes boring, uninspired, and unfulfilling.
Debra has worked at the Boston Public Library for five years, returning books to the shelves. It is a very peaceful job and the only time she has to speak with people is when they ask her where to find certain books. She has always been a big reader, and the job seems like the perfect fit.
Lately, however, she has been feeling dissatisfied with her life. The library job doesn’t pay very much so she still lives with her parents, at age twenty-seven. Most people she went to school with have exciting jobs and are getting married. Often, Debra feels like life is passing her by.
However, when she thinks about applying for a new job, Debra becomes very anxious. She is embarrassed that she has limited work experience and fears people will not take her seriously. She reads the Help Wanted section of the paper every day but is too scared to call for more information or to send out her résumé.
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Heather Moehn (Social Anxiety (Coping With Series))
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If Daddy got fired,” Claire began thoughtfully, “what would... what would change? I’m not sure …”
“We would have to be very careful with our money,” said Mom. “We couldn’t buy extras or go on trips. And your dad would stay at home and look for a new job. He wouldn’t be happy about that,” she added.
“Why not?” asked Margo.
“Because looking for a new job, especially when you’ve been fired, is not easy. Dad will have to hear people say no to him a lot. He might start applying for jobs that are below the level of the one he’s got now, and people still might say no. He’ll call companies and hear other people say that there aren’t any jobs at all. It would be like going over to your friends’ houses and hearing each one of them say they don’t want to play with you.”
“Ooh,” said Claire softly. That had hit home.
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Ann M. Martin (Poor Mallory! (The Baby-Sitters Club, #39))
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Marisa replied: If you sit on the couch all day and do nothing, it is precisely because you don’t think you’re enough. You’re afraid. You’re afraid of failure. You’re afraid of rejection. You’re afraid that those things will be proof positive that you indeed are not enough. So you do nothing. Marisa continued: But if you believe that you’re enough, that’s when you take action. That’s when you go out and try something new. That’s when you apply for that job you really want. That’s when you ask for that raise. Because you’re enough. And even if you fail, you won’t take rejection personally because it’s not you—you ARE enough—so it must be your methods or your approach or skill or whatever—and because you know you’re enough, you know you can then improve those methods and skills and your approaches and then try again.
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Vishen Lakhiani (The Code of the Extraordinary Mind: 10 Unconventional Laws to Redefine Your Life and Succeed On Your Own Terms)
“
Docketing a judgment slapped it on a tenant’s credit report. If the tenant came to own any property in Milwaukee County in the next decade, the docketed judgment placed a lien on that property, severely limiting a new homeowner’s ability to refinance or sell.14 To landlords, docketing a judgment was a long-odds bet on a tenant’s future. Who knows, maybe somewhere down the line a tenant would want to get her credit in order and would approach her old landlord, asking to repay the debt. “Debt with interest,” the landlord could respond, since money judgments accrued interest at an annual rate that would be the envy of any financial portfolio: 12 percent. For the chronically and desperately poor whose credit was already wrecked, a docketed judgment was just another shove deeper into the pit. But for the tenant who went on to land a decent job or marry and then take another tentative step forward, applying for student loans or purchasing a first home—for that tenant, it was a real barrier on the already difficult road to self-reliance and security.
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Matthew Desmond (Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City)
“
As we’ve seen, one of the most frequently pursued paths for achievement-minded college seniors is to spend several years advancing professionally and getting trained and paid by an investment bank, consulting firm, or law firm. Then, the thought process goes, they can set out to do something else with some exposure and experience under their belts. People are generally not making lifelong commitments to the field in their own minds. They’re “getting some skills” and making some connections before figuring out what they really want to do. I subscribed to a version of this mind-set when I graduated from Brown. In my case, I went to law school thinking I’d practice for a few years (and pay down my law school debt) before lining up another opportunity. It’s clear why this is such an attractive approach. There are some immensely constructive things about spending several years in professional services after graduating from college. Professional service firms are designed to train large groups of recruits annually, and they do so very successfully. After even just a year or two in a high-level bank or consulting firm, you emerge with a set of skills that can be applied in other contexts (financial modeling in Excel if you’re a financial analyst, PowerPoint and data organization and presentation if you’re a consultant, and editing and issue spotting if you’re a lawyer). This is very appealing to most any recent graduate who may not yet feel equipped with practical skills coming right out of college. Even more than the professional skill you gain, if you spend time at a bank, consultancy, or law firm, you will become excellent at producing world-class work. Every model, report, presentation, or contract needs to be sophisticated, well done, and error free, in large part because that’s one of the core value propositions of your organization. The people above you will push you to become more rigorous and disciplined, and your work product will improve across the board as a result. You’ll get used to dressing professionally, preparing for meetings, speaking appropriately, showing up on time, writing official correspondence, and so forth. You will be able to speak the corporate language. You’ll become accustomed to working very long hours doing detail-intensive work. These attributes are transferable to and helpful in many other contexts.
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Andrew Yang (Smart People Should Build Things: How to Restore Our Culture of Achievement, Build a Path for Entrepreneurs, and Create New Jobs in America)
“
You should be!” “But we’re not,” Sophie insisted. “So please don’t blame yourself. And please don’t leave. You can make any other changes you want to my security. Just . . . not that. I promise, I’ll follow any rules you want me to. I’ll even promise I won’t sneak off without you.” Alden huffed a small laugh. “You should take that deal, Sandor. It’s the bargain of the century.” “Seriously,” Grady agreed. “Can I get in on that?” Sophie shook her head. “It’s just for Sandor—and it doesn’t apply to any replacement bodyguards. In fact, I’ll go out of my way to make their job impossible.” “No, you won’t,” Sandor told her. “You’re much too smart to resort to such reckless behavior.” Sophie’s eyebrows shot up. “You sure about that? You’ve seen how much time I spend with Keefe.” “I’ll give her some pointers, too,” Tam volunteered. “I picked up lots of tricks at Exillium.” “And I have lots of prank elixirs,” Dex added. “How many weeks do you think the new guard would last before they’d run screaming back to Gildingham?” Tam wondered. “I doubt they’d last days,” Sophie told him. “Especially if Keefe and Ro join in the torment.” Sandor’s sigh had a definite snarl. “I’m trying to help—can’t you see that?
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Shannon Messenger (Flashback (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #7))
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she feels lucky to have a job, but she is pretty blunt about what it is like to work at Walmart: she hates it. She’s worked at the local Walmart for nine years now, spending long hours on her feet waiting on customers and wrestling heavy merchandise around the store. But that’s not the part that galls her. Last year, management told the employees that they would get a significant raise. While driving to work or sorting laundry, Gina thought about how she could spend that extra money. Do some repairs around the house. Or set aside a few dollars in case of an emergency. Or help her sons, because “that’s what moms do.” And just before drifting off to sleep, she’d think about how she hadn’t had any new clothes in years. Maybe, just maybe. For weeks, she smiled at the notion. She thought about how Walmart was finally going to show some sign of respect for the work she and her coworkers did. She rolled the phrase over in her mind: “significant raise.” She imagined what that might mean. Maybe $2.00 more an hour? Or $2.50? That could add up to $80 a week, even $100. The thought was delicious. Then the day arrived when she received the letter informing her of the raise: 21 cents an hour. A whopping 21 cents. For a grand total of $1.68 a day, $8.40 a week. Gina described holding the letter and looking at it and feeling like it was “a spit in the face.” As she talked about the minuscule raise, her voice filled with anger. Anger, tinged with fear. Walmart could dump all over her, but she knew she would take it. She still needed this job. They could treat her like dirt, and she would still have to show up. And that’s exactly what they did. In 2015, Walmart made $14.69 billion in profits, and Walmart’s investors pocketed $10.4 billion from dividends and share repurchases—and Gina got 21 cents an hour more. This isn’t a story of shared sacrifice. It’s not a story about a company that is struggling to keep its doors open in tough times. This isn’t a small business that can’t afford generous raises. Just the opposite: this is a fabulously wealthy company making big bucks off the Ginas of the world. There are seven members of the Walton family, Walmart’s major shareholders, on the Forbes list of the country’s four hundred richest people, and together these seven Waltons have as much wealth as about 130 million other Americans. Seven people—not enough to fill the lineup of a softball team—and they have more money than 40 percent of our nation’s population put together. Walmart routinely squeezes its workers, not because it has to, but because it can. The idea that when the company does well, the employees do well, too, clearly doesn’t apply to giants like this one. Walmart is the largest employer in the country. More than a million and a half Americans are working to make this corporation among the most profitable in the world. Meanwhile, Gina points out that at her store, “almost all the young people are on food stamps.” And it’s not just her store. Across the country, Walmart pays such low wages that many of its employees rely on food stamps, rent assistance, Medicaid, and a mix of other government benefits, just to stay out of poverty. The
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Elizabeth Warren (This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class)
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Variations on a tired, old theme Here’s another example of addict manipulation that plagues parents. The phone rings. It’s the addict. He says he has a job. You’re thrilled. But you’re also apprehensive. Because you know he hasn’t simply called to tell you good news. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen. Then comes the zinger you knew would be coming. The request. He says everybody at this company wears business suits and ties, none of which he has. He says if you can’t wire him $1800 right away, he won’t be able to take the job. The implications are clear. Suddenly, you’ve become the deciding factor as to whether or not the addict will be able to take the job. Have a future. Have a life. You’ve got that old, familiar sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. This is not the child you gladly would have financed in any way possible to get him started in life. This is the child who has been strung out on drugs for years and has shown absolutely no interest in such things as having a conventional job. He has also, if you remember correctly, come to you quite a few times with variations on this same tired, old story. One variation called for a car so he could get to work. (Why is it that addicts are always being offered jobs in the middle of nowhere that can’t be reached by public transportation?) Another variation called for the money to purchase a round-trip airline ticket to interview for a job three thousand miles away. Being presented with what amounts to a no-choice request, the question is: Are you going to contribute in what you know is probably another scam, or are you going to say sorry and hang up? To step out of the role of banker/victim/rescuer, you have to quit the job of banker/victim/rescuer. You have to change the coda. You have to forget all the stipulations there are to being a parent. You have to harden your heart and tell yourself parenthood no longer applies to you—not while your child is addicted. Not an easy thing to do. P.S. You know in your heart there is no job starting on Monday. But even if there is, it’s hardly your responsibility if the addict goes well dressed, badly dressed, or undressed. Facing the unfaceable: The situation may never change In summary, you had a child and that child became an addict. Your love for the child didn’t vanish. But you’ve had to wean yourself away from the person your child has become through his or her drugs and/ or alcohol abuse. Your journey with the addicted child has led you through various stages of pain, grief, and despair and into new phases of strength, acceptance, and healing. There’s a good chance that you might not be as healthy-minded as you are today had it not been for the tribulations with the addict. But you’ll never know. The one thing you do know is that you wouldn’t volunteer to go through it again, even with all the awareness you’ve gained. You would never have sacrificed your child just so that you could become a better, stronger person. But this is the way it has turned out. You’re doing okay with it, almost twenty-four hours a day. It’s just the odd few minutes that are hard to get through, like the ones in the middle of the night when you awaken to find that the grief hasn’t really gone away—it’s just under smart, new management. Or when you’re walking along a street or in a mall and you see someone who reminds you of your addicted child, but isn’t a substance abuser, and you feel that void in your heart. You ache for what might have been with your child, the happy life, the fulfilled career. And you ache for the events that never took place—the high school graduation, the engagement party, the wedding, the grandkids. These are the celebrations of life that you’ll probably never get to enjoy. Although you never know. DON’T LET YOUR KIDS KILL YOU A Guide for Parents of Drug and Alcohol Addicted Children PART 2
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Charles Rubin (Don't let Your Kids Kill You: A Guide for Parents of Drug and Alcohol Addicted Children)
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Professional Bio of Shahin Shardi, P.Eng.
Materials Engineer
Welding and Pressure Equipment Inspector, QA/QC Specialist
Shahin Shardi is a Materials Engineer with experience in integrity management, inspection of pressure equipment, quality control/assurance of large scale oil and gas projects and welding inspection.
He stared his career in trades which helped him understand fundamentals of operation of a construction site and execution of large scale projects. This invaluable experience provided him with boots on the ground perspective of requirements of running a successful project and job site. After obtaining an engineering degree from university of British Columbia, he started a career in asset integrity management for oil and gas facilities and inspection of pressure equipment in Alberta, Canada. He has been involved with numerus maintenance shutdowns at various facilities providing engineering support to the maintenance, operations and project personnel regarding selection, repair, maintenance, troubleshooting and long term reliability of equipment. In addition he has extensive experience in area of quality control and assurance of new construction activities in oil and gas industry. He has performed Owner’s Inspector and welding inspector roles in this area.
Shahin has extensively applied industry codes of constructions such as ASME Pressure Vessel Code (ASME VIII), Welding (ASME IX), Process Piping (ASME B31.3), Pipe Flanges (ASME B16.5) and various pressure equipment codes and standards. Familiarity with NDT techniques like magnetic particle, liquid penetrant, eddy current, ultrasonic and digital radiography is another valuable knowledge base gained during various projects.
Some of his industry certificates are CWB Level 2 Certified Welding Inspector, API 510 Pressure Vessel Inspector, Alberta ABSA In-Service Pressure Vessel Inspector and Saskatchewan TSASK Pressure Equipment Inspector. Shahin is a professional member of Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta.
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Shahin Shardi
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Betsy didn’t want to be at the party any more than Cole did. She’d met the birthday girl in a spin class a couple of years earlier and had been declining her Evites ever since. In an effort to meet new people, however, this time Betsy replied “Yes.” She took a cab to the party, wondering why she was going at all. When Betsy met Cole there was a spark, but she was ambivalent. Cole was clearly smart and well educated, but he didn’t seem to be doing much about it. They had some nice dates, which seemed promising. Then, after sleeping over one night and watching Cole wake up at eleven a.m. and grab his skateboard, Betsy felt less bullish. She didn’t want to help another boyfriend grow up. What Betsy didn’t know was that, ever since he’d started spending time with her, Cole had regained some of his old drive. He saw the way she wanted to work on her sculptures even on the weekend, how she and her friends loved to get together to talk about their projects and their plans. As a result, Cole started to think more aspirationally. He eyed a posting for a good tech job at a high-profile start-up, but he felt his résumé was now too shabby to apply. As luck would have it—and it is often luck—Cole remembered that an old friend from high school, someone he bumped into about once every year or two, worked at the start-up. He got in touch, and this friend put in a good word to HR. After a handful of interviews with different people in the company, Cole was offered the position. The hiring manager told Cole he had been chosen for three reasons: His engineering degree suggested he knew how to work hard on technical projects, his personality seemed like a good fit for the team, and the twentysomething who vouched for him was well liked in the company. The rest, the manager said, Cole could learn on the job. This one break radically altered Cole’s career path. He learned software development at a dot-com on the leading edge. A few years later, he moved over and up as a director of development at another start-up because, by then, the identity capital he’d gained could speak for itself. Nearly ten years later, Cole and Betsy are married. She runs a gallery co-op. He’s a CIO. They have a happy life and gladly give much of the credit to Cole’s friend from high school and to the woman with the Evites.
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Meg Jay (The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now)
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I WANT TO end this list by talking a little more about the founding of Pixar University and Elyse Klaidman’s mind-expanding drawing classes in particular. Those first classes were such a success—of the 120 people who worked at Pixar then, 100 enrolled—that we gradually began expanding P.U.’s curriculum. Sculpting, painting, acting, meditation, belly dancing, live-action filmmaking, computer programming, design and color theory, ballet—over the years, we have offered free classes in all of them. This meant spending not only the time to find the best outside teachers but also the real cost of freeing people up during their workday to take the classes. So what exactly was Pixar getting out of all of this? It wasn’t that the class material directly enhanced our employees’ job performance. Instead, there was something about an apprentice lighting technician sitting alongside an experienced animator, who in turn was sitting next to someone who worked in legal or accounting or security—that proved immensely valuable. In the classroom setting, people interacted in a way they didn’t in the workplace. They felt free to be goofy, relaxed, open, vulnerable. Hierarchy did not apply, and as a result, communication thrived. Simply by providing an excuse for us all to toil side by side, humbled by the challenge of sketching a self-portrait or writing computer code or taming a lump of clay, P.U. changed the culture for the better. It taught everyone at Pixar, no matter their title, to respect the work that their colleagues did. And it made us all beginners again. Creativity involves missteps and imperfections. I wanted our people to get comfortable with that idea—that both the organization and its members should be willing, at times, to operate on the edge. I can understand that the leaders of many companies might wonder whether or not such classes would truly be useful, worth the expense. And I’ll admit that these social interactions I describe were an unexpected benefit. But the purpose of P.U. was never to turn programmers into artists or artists into belly dancers. Instead, it was to send a signal about how important it is for every one of us to keep learning new things. That, too, is a key part of remaining flexible: keeping our brains nimble by pushing ourselves to try things we haven’t tried before. That’s what P.U. lets our people do, and I believe it makes us stronger.
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Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: an inspiring look at how creativity can - and should - be harnessed for business success by the founder of Pixar)
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You’re going to do great,” Lizzy said as they reached the mini Tiki bar. The air was cool in the high fifties and the scent of various meats on the grill filled the air. Even though they’d had the party catered, apparently Grant had insisted on grilling some things himself. “I wouldn’t have recommended you apply for it otherwise.”
Athena ducked behind the bar and grinned at the array of bottles and other garnishes. She’d been friends with Lizzy the past couple months and knew her friend’s tastes by now. As she started mixing up their drinks she said, “If I fail, hopefully they won’t blame you.”
Lizzy just snorted but eyed the drink mix curiously. “Purple?”
“Just wait. You’ll like it.” She rolled the rims of the martini glasses in sugar as she spoke.
“Where’d you learn to do this?”
“I bartended a little in college and there were a few occasions on the job where I had to assist because staff called out sick for an event.” There’d been a huge festival in Madrid she’d helped out with a year ago where three of the staff had gotten food poisoning, so in addition to everything else she’d been in charge of, she’d had to help with drinks on and off. That had been such a chaotic, ridiculous job.
“At least you’ll have something to fall back on if you do fail,” Lizzy teased.
“I seriously hope not.” She set the two glasses on the bar and strained the purple concoction into them. With the twinkle lights strung up around the lanai and the ones glittering in the pool, the sugar seemed to sparkle around the rim. “This is called a wildcat.”
“You have to make me one of those too!” The unfamiliar female voice made Athena look up.
Her eyes widened as her gaze locked with Quinn freaking Brody, the too-sexy-man with an aversion to virgins. He was with the tall woman who’d just asked Athena to make a drink. But she had eyes only for Quinn. Her heart about jumped out of her chest. What was he doing here of all places? At least he looked just as surprised to see her.
She ignored him because she knew if she stared into those dark eyes she’d lose the ability to speak and then she’d inevitably embarrass herself.
The tall, built-like-a-goddess woman with pale blonde hair he was with smiled widely at Athena. “Only if you don’t mind,” she continued, nodding at the drinks. “They look so good.”
“Ah, you can have this one. I made an extra for the lush here.” She tilted her head at Lizzy with a half-smile. Athena had planned to drink the second one herself but didn’t trust her hands not to shake if she made another. She couldn’t believe Quinn was standing right in front of her, looking all casual and annoyingly sexy in dark jeans and a long-sleeved sweater shoved up to his elbows. Why did his forearms have to look so good?
“Ha, ha.” Lizzy snagged her drink as Athena stepped out from behind the bar. “Athena, this is Quinn Brody and Dominique Castle. They both work for Red Stone but Dominique is almost as new as you.”
Forcing a smile on her face, Athena nodded politely at both of them—and tried to ignore the way Quinn was staring at her. She’d had no freaking idea he worked for Red Stone. He looked a bit like a hungry wolf. Just like on their last date—two months ago. When he’d decided she was too much trouble, being a virgin and all. Jackass. “It’s so nice to meet you both.” She did a mental fist pump when her voice sounded normal. “I promised Belle I’d help out inside but I hope to see you both around tonight.” Liar, liar.
“Me too. Thanks again for the drink,” Dominique said cheerfully while Lizzy just gave Athena a strange look.
Athena wasn’t sure what Quinn’s expression was because she’d decided to do the mature thing—and studiously ignore him.
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Katie Reus (Sworn to Protect (Red Stone Security, #11))
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The process of receiving teaching depends upon the student giving something in return; some kind of psychological surrender is necessary, a gift of some sort. This is why we must discuss surrendering, opening, giving up expectations, before we can speak of the relationship between teacher and student. It is essential to surrender, to open yourself, to present whatever you are to the guru, rather than trying to present yourself as a worthwhile student. It does not matter how much you are willing to pay, how correctly you behave, how clever you are at saying the right thing to your teacher. It is not like having an interview for a job or buying a new car. Whether or not you will get the job depends upon your credentials, how well you are dressed, how beautifully your shoes are polished, how well you speak, how good your manners are. If you are buying a car, it is a matter of how much money you have and how good your credit is. But when it comes to spirituality, something more is required. It is not a matter of applying for a job, of dressing up to impress our potential employer. Such deception does not apply to an interview with a guru, because he sees right through us. He is amused if we dress up especially for the interview. Making ingratiating gestures is not applicable in this situation; in fact it is futile. We must make a real commitment to being open with our teacher; we must be willing to give up all our preconceptions. Milarepa expected Marpa to be a great scholar and a saintly person, dressed in yogic costume with beads, reciting mantras, meditating. Instead he found Marpa working on his farm, directing the laborers and plowing his land. I am afraid the word guru is overused in the West. It would be better to speak of one’s “spiritual friend,” because the teachings emphasize a mutual meeting of two minds. It is a matter of mutual communication, rather than a master-servant relationship between a highly evolved being and a miserable, confused one. In the master-servant relationship the highly evolved being may appear not even to be sitting on his seat but may seem to be floating, levitating, looking down at us. His voice is penetrating, pervading space. Every word, every cough, every movement that he makes is a gesture of wisdom. But this is a dream. A guru should be a spiritual friend who communicates and presents his qualities to us, as Marpa did with Milarepa and Naropa with Marpa. Marpa presented his quality of being a farmer-yogi. He happened to have seven children and a wife, and he looked after his farm, cultivating the land and supporting himself and his family. But these activities were just an ordinary part of his life. He cared for his students as he cared for his crops and family. He was so thorough, paying attention to every detail of his life, that he was able to be a competent teacher as well as a competent father and farmer. There was no physical or spiritual materialism in Marpa’s lifestyle at all. He did not emphasize spirituality and ignore his family or his physical relationship to the earth. If you are not involved with materialism, either spiritually or physically, then there is no emphasis made on any extreme. Nor is it helpful to choose someone for your guru simply because he is famous, someone who is renowned for having published stacks of books and converted thousands or millions of people. Instead the guideline is whether or not you are able actually to communicate with the person, directly and thoroughly. How much self-deception are you involved in? If you really open yourself to your spiritual friend, then you are bound to work together. Are you able to talk to him thoroughly and properly? Does he know anything about you? Does he know anything about himself, for that matter? Is the guru really able to see through your masks, communicate with you properly, directly? In searching for a teacher, this seems to be the guideline rather than fame or wisdom.
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Chögyam Trungpa (Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism)
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“I’m talking about greatness, about taking a lever to the world and moving it,” Larry Ellison said, walking the grounds of his new Woodside property in spring 2000 with his best friend, Steve Jobs. “I’m not talking about moral perfection. I’m talking about people who changed the world the most during their lifetime.”
Jobs, who had returned to Apple three years earlier, enjoyed the conversational volleying with Larry about who was history’s greatest person. The Apple co-founder placed Leonardo da Vinci and Gandhi as his top choices, with Gandhi in the lead.
Leonardo, a great artist and inventor, lived in violent times and was a designer of tanks, battlements, ramparts, and an assortment of other military tools and castle fortifications. Larry joked that had Leonardo not been gay, he would have been “a perfect fit for the Bush administration.”
Jobs, who had studied in India, cited Gandhi’s doctrine of nonviolent revolution as an example of how it was possible to remain morally pure while aggressively pursuing change.
Larry’s choice could not have been more different from Gandhi: the Corsican-born military leader Napoleon Bonaparte. “Napoleon overthrew kings and tyrants throughout Europe, created a system of free public schools, and wrote one set of laws that applied to everybody. Napoleon achieved liberal ends through conservative means,” Larry argued. " - The Billionaire and the Mechanic
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Julian Guthrie (The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed Up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, The America's Cup)
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One reason women avoid stretch assignments and new challenges is that they worry too much about whether they currently have the skills they need for a new role. This can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, since so many abilities are acquired on the job. An internal report at Hewlett-Packard revealed that women only apply for open jobs if they think they meet 100 percent of the criteria listed. Men apply if they think they meet 60 percent of the requirements.
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Sheryl Sandberg (Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead)
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Don’t be afraid to feel lost. If you want God to paint a new dream in your life, you will need to let him erase and clean everything else you have first. We can only paint something new on a white canvas. You can't paint a new life on a canvas that has been already painted, with beliefs, attachments, values and a certain self-image, all of which are unaligned with the dream you have set into motion by desire. God has to paint what is new on a white canvas; and that’s why you need to lose it all in order to have it all. And the more ambitious you are, the more often you will have to experience a restart, a new beginning, foreseeing the abandonment of the old within you. Your friends, your house, your job, and everything else that belongs to a fixed environment, belongs to a painting that you have dreamed once, but won't be part of the future you dream in your present state. It is very difficult to dream the new while inside the old, to recreate within what has been made, to rebuild without destroying, to recreate without breaking, to have the new without losing the old. The rules of this planet apply to building a chair as much as they apply to building a life.
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Robin Sacredfire
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. I was applying for other jobs myself and also around that time I think I was going on a couple of MeetUps, maybe because I wanted to avoid a situation where I depended too much on just one friend. That’s a situation I’ve found myself in several times over the years and my time in New York had been no different.
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J.R. Hamantaschen (A Deep Horror That Was Very Nearly Awe)
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It helps to know that trigger points form in specific places, where the motor nerve comes into the muscle to tell the muscle to do its job. This location is not always tender. It hurts only when a trigger point is present, and then only when pressed on. So, when practicing self-applied trigger point massage, you don’t have to go by what your fingers palpate—feel for the place that hurts.
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Clair Davies (The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook: Your Self-Treatment Guide for Pain Relief (A New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook))
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CONFUSION 2: HOW TO COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY WITH YOUR CUSTOMER The next step in the Customer Satisfaction Process is to decide how to magnify the characteristics of your business that are most likely to appeal to your category of Customer. That begins with what marketing people call your Positioning Strategy. What do I mean by positioning your business? You position your business with words. A few well-chosen words to tell your Customers exactly what they want to hear. In marketing lingo, those words are called your USP, or Unique Selling Proposition. For example, if you are targeting Tactile Customers (people), your USP could be: “Superior Contracting, where the feelings of people really count!” If you are targeting Experimental Customers (new things), your USP could be: “Superior Contracting, where living on the edge is a way of life!” In other words, when they choose to do business with your company, they can count on your job being unique, original, on the cutting edge. Do you get it? Do you see how the ordinary things most Contractors do to get Customers can be done in a significantly more effective way? Once you understand the essential principles of marketing The E-Myth Way, the strategies by which you attract customers can make an enormous difference in your market share. When applied to your business, your Positioning Strategy becomes the foundation of what we at E-Myth call your Lead Generation System.
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Michael E. Gerber (The E-Myth Contractor: Why Most Contractors' Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It)
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dependability of your business. 6. If your Customer is Traditional, you have to talk about the financial competitiveness of your business. Additionally, what your Customers want is determined by who they are. Who they are is regularly demonstrated by what they do. Think about the Customers with whom you do business. Ask yourself: In which of the categories would I place them? What do they do for a living? For example: If they are mechanical engineers, they are probably Neutral Customers. If they are cardiologists, they are probably Tactile. If they are software engineers, they are probably Experimental. If they are accountants, they are probably Traditional. But don’t take my word for it. Make your own analysis. CONFUSION 2: HOW TO COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY WITH YOUR CUSTOMER The next step in the Customer Satisfaction Process is to decide how to magnify the characteristics of your business that are most likely to appeal to your category of Customer. That begins with what marketing people call your Positioning Strategy. What do I mean by positioning your business? You position your business with words. A few well-chosen words to tell your Customers exactly what they want to hear. In marketing lingo, those words are called your USP, or Unique Selling Proposition. For example, if you are targeting Tactile Customers (people), your USP could be: “Superior Contracting, where the feelings of people really count!” If you are targeting Experimental Customers (new things), your USP could be: “Superior Contracting, where living on the edge is a way of life!” In other words, when they choose to do business with your company, they can count on your job being unique, original, on the cutting edge. Do you get it? Do you see how the ordinary things most Contractors do to get Customers can be done in a significantly more effective way? Once you understand the essential principles of marketing The E-Myth Way, the strategies by which you attract customers can make an enormous difference in your market share. When applied to your business, your Positioning Strategy becomes the foundation of what we at E-Myth call your Lead Generation System.
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Michael E. Gerber (The E-Myth Contractor: Why Most Contractors' Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It)
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faster. Now, when new technology is brought in, your coworkers have a different calculus. If they can produce 20 percent more per employee, why not decrease the workweek to twenty-eight hours? (For all sectors, legislation dictates the required workweek cannot exceed thirty-five hours.)13 There is still market competition, and firms still fail, but the grow-or-die imperative doesn’t apply when your enterprise’s goal is no longer to maximize total profits but rather to maximize profit-per-worker. And instead of a race to the bottom, there’s pressure to make sure janitorial and other “dirty jobs” are well compensated. In time, many of these tasks will be automated. People used to fear that machines would bring about mass unemployment, but now you and most others look forward to the social impact of technological innovations.14
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Bhaskar Sunkara (The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality)
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The dynamics of disbelief is an oscillating maneuver between covert and overt Polytheisms; between Modalism (aka, Sabellianism) and Partialism. Stubbing that resonance from its leaking cavity/roots -with the effect taking place worldwide in public and for all nations- was the exact function for which the (Semite) Christ was sent (onto Earth) to apply. The Paraclete's job half a millennium thereafter was to ensure rekindling the right belief by feeding the new revelation into the world; and the broken cavity (and demising roots) got eventually sealed for good by this active function through a passive courier of God’s decree: Muhammad.
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Ibrahim Ibrahim (Quotable: My Worldview)
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I always thought that Jax was my golden ticket to happiness, but I was wrong. There is joy without Jax, and in actuality, there always has been. In all my happy memories, he was there, and I let myself think that he was the reason. But now, I know that he was just along for the ride, just as I was on his roller coaster through life. He was a passenger on my ride, the one I created. I have the choice to live my life with regret or to live it with gratitude, and I’m choosing the latter. I still don’t understand everything that has happened, and maybe I never will. But I know that this isn’t the end for me. I’m not on the downward slide of life at almost twenty-three. Bigger and better things are out there. A smile warms my face as I focus on the full suitcase sitting next to my bedroom door. I leave tomorrow for New York City. I still can’t wrap my mind around that one either. While looking for photography jobs online this summer, I came across an internship at a huge advertising firm, and I applied on a whim. I knew that the competition would be fierce, and the chances of me getting
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Ellie Wade (A Beautiful Kind of Love (Choices, #1))
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Job Acquisition
The entire job-acquisition process—considering job prospects, your personal and professional preparation, creating a resume, going on a job interview—depends for success upon possessing social skills and managing anxiety. How you adapt to the stress of this process can play a major role. As with other aspects of interaction, anxiety can often keep you from getting the jobs you really want and would be well suited for. If you allow your anxiety to control you, you may avoid applying for a new position because you fear rejection. Or you may let the fear of failure keep you from accepting a new challenge, no matter how badly you would like to take the job. But let’s look first at the job process and consider self-help techniques that will lead to a more rewarding, productive career. For people with social anxiety, low self-esteem is often a stumbling block to fulfillment in their careers: If you feel you are underqualified, you may hesitate to seek challenges, whether in a new company or within your current one.
I have worked with several men who say their self-esteem is low because they are not the stereotype of success: They do not wear a suit, carry a briefcase, or drive the latest-model car. In their minds, this is the most important measure of success. But they themselves are not failures. One of the men I can think of is a successful plumber, another has a telephone sales job, and a third manages a large warehouse. Still, they have doubts about their appeal to women because of their career choices; increasing their self-esteem will help them to see themselves in a new way. Success need not be defined by media standards such as the right clothes or an expensive automobile. Everyone is different. Your personal success can only be measured by your own personal fulfillment and productivity.
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Jonathan Berent (Beyond Shyness: How to Conquer Social Anxieties)
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PERFORMANCE ANXIETY
If it is indeed human nature to seek social relationships, then why would someone choose not to socialize? As we discussed in the first chapter, fear is usually the motivating factor that causes people to avoid socializing. We fear failing, being rejected, being humiliated, being made to feel that we don’t belong. This fear is commonly referred to as performance anxiety. How does performance anxiety interfere with a fulfilling, productive life? When you fear being judged harshly by others, you may hesitate to take risks that could ultimately benefit you, whether personally (such as asking someone out) or professionally (applying for a new job).
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Jonathan Berent (Beyond Shyness: How to Conquer Social Anxieties)
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In typical fashion, Peter jumps in and clarifies how much he and the disciples have given up to follow Jesus: “See, we have left everything and followed you” (Mark 10:28). Jesus responds with a significant explanation of self-denial and kingdom blessings: Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first. (Mark 10:29–31) Is Jesus teaching us a simple formula that if we give up our possessions, we can receive the kingdom? Is this a divine promise that if you forsake family and lands, God is obligated to restore family and lands, like he did at the end of Job? No. Jesus is applying a kingdom filter to his disciples’ understanding of blessing in the present age. As we saw in the Old Testament, a growing family and fertile land were both ideas frequently associated with divine blessing. However, Jesus redefines these very images based upon a transformed vision of blessing in Christ’s kingdom. “Jesus speaks of the extended family of his followers (cf. 3:34–35) with new familial relationship and the sharing of possessions (cf. Acts 2:44–45; 4:32–37)—a new reality whose value is far greater than the security that personal possessions can ever give.”23
”
”
William R. Osborne (Divine Blessing and the Fullness of Life in the Presence of God: "A Biblical Theology of Divine Blessings" (Short Studies in Biblical Theology))
“
Oil Change instructions for Women:
1. Pull up to Dealership when the mileage reaches 5,000 miles since the last oil change.
2. Relax in the waiting room while enjoying a cup of coffee.
3. 15 minutes later, scan debit card and leave, driving a properly maintained vehicle.
Money spent:
Oil Change:$24.00
Coffee: Complementary
TOTAL: $24.00
Oil Change instructions for Men:
1. Wait until Saturday, drive to auto parts store and buy a case of oil, filter, kitty litter, hand cleaner and a scented tree, and use your debit card for $50.00.
2. Stop to buy a case of beer, (debit $24), drive home.
3. Open a beer and drink it.
4. Jack truck up. Spend 30 minutes looking for jack stands.
5. Find jack stands under kid's pedal car.
6.. In frustration, open another beer and drink it.
7. Place drain pan under engine.
8. Look for 9/16 box end wrench.
9. Give up and use crescent wrench.
10. Unscrew drain plug.
11. Drop drain plug in pan of hot oil: splash hot oil on you in process. Cuss.
12. Crawl out from under truck to wipe hot oil off of face and arms. Throw kitty litter on spilled oil.
13. Have another beer while watching oil drain.
14. Spend 30 minutes looking for oil filter wrench.
15. Give up; crawl under truck and hammer a screwdriver through oil filter and twist off.
16. Crawl out from under truck with dripping oil filter splashing oil everywhere from holes. Cleverly hide old oil filter among trash in trash can to avoid environmental penalties. Drink a beer.
17. Install new oil filter making sure to apply a thin coat of oil to gasket surface.
18. Dump first quart of fresh oil into engine.
19. Remember drain plug from step 11.
20. Hurry to find drain plug in drain pan.
21. Drink beer.
22. Discover that first quart of fresh oil is now on the floor. Throw kitty litter on oil spill.
23. Get drain plug back in with only a minor spill. Drink beer.
24. Crawl under truck getting kitty litter into eyes. Wipe eyes with oily rag used to clean drain plug. Slip with stupid crescent wrench tightening drain plug and bang knuckles on frame removing any excess skin between knuckles and frame.
25. Begin cussing fit.
26. Throw stupid crescent wrench.
27. Cuss for additional 5 minutes because wrench hit truck and left dent.
28. Beer.
29. Clean up hands and bandage as required to stop blood flow.
30. Beer.
31. Dump in five fresh quarts of oil.
32. Beer.
33. Lower truck from jack stands.
34. Move truck back to apply more kitty litter to fresh oil spilled during any missed steps.
35. Beer.
36. Test drive truck.
37. Get pulled over: arrested for driving under the influence.
38. Truck gets impounded.
39. Call loving wife, make bail.
40. 12 hours later, get truck from impound yard.
Money spent:
Parts: $50.00
DUI: $2,500.00
Impound fee: $75.00
Bail: $1,500.00
Beer: $20.00
TOTAL: $4,145.00
But you know the job was done right!
”
”
James Hilton
“
The former head of this operation, Gary Wendt, who is credited with much of the enormous success of GEFS, used his personal agenda as a simple but inordinately powerful tool for growing the business into ever new entrepreneurial arenas.
Over the years, he used his personal agenda to make it unequivocally clear that he expected entrepreneurial business growth from every member of management. At every major meeting, the topic of business development was on the agenda (usually in the number one spot). In every annual review, managers were asked to demonstrate the revenues they had created from businesses that did not exist five years before. From division heads to newly hired analysts, everyone was held accountable for some set of activities having to do with creating entrepreneurial revenue and profit streams. In short, no one who worked in the organization could avoid the unremitting focus on new business development.
You need to make sure that you are similarly consistent, predictable, and focused, and that you sustain this emphasis over a long period. Pressure applied only once is soon forgotten, and alternating pressure (as in flavor-of-the-month management) will cause people to be confused, disillusioned, or angry. Wendt’s consistent, visible, and predictable attention to business development created a pressure in GEFS for entrepreneurial business growth that took it from the $300 million installment loan portfolio we looked at in chapter 6 to a financial services behemoth with $250 billion in assets under management when he left in 1998.
Examples of Wendt’s single-minded determination to drive growth through entrepreneurial transformation at GEFS are numerous. Years ago, for instance, he was asked whether his agenda would change if someone rushed in and told him that the computer room was on fire (implying that his business could be completely destroyed). Wendt replied that he employed firefighters to handle such emergencies. As the leader, his most important job was to keep people focused on business development. Since business development is an uncomfortable and unpredictable process, Wendt knew that if he allowed it to appear to be a low priority for him, all those working for him would heave a sigh of relief and go back to business as usual, with new businesses struggling to find a place on the priority list. In fact, as he remarked, even if he did try to get involved in putting out the fire, he would probably only interfere with the efforts of the highly competent people employed to do so.
”
”
Rita Gunther McGrath (The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Strategies for Continuously Creating Opportunity in an Age of Uncertainty)
“
I am on Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and both my children are in school. . . . I have graduated from
college with distinction, 128th in a class of over 1000, with a B.A. in English and sociology. I have experience in
library work, child care, social work and counseling.
I have been to the CETA office. They have nothing for me. . . . I also go every week to the library to scour the
newspaper Help Wanted ads. I have kept a copy of every cover letter that I have sent out with my resume; the stack
is inches thick. I have applied for jobs paying as little as $8000 a year. I work part-time in a library for $3.50 an hour,
welfare reduces my allotment to compensate. . . .
It appears we have employment offices that can’t employ, governments that can’t govern and an economic
systemthat can’t produce jobs for people ready to work. . . .
Last week I sold my bed to pay for the insurance on my car, which, in the absence of mass transportation, I need
to go job hunting. I sleep on a piece of rubber foamsomebody gave me.
So this is the great American dream my parents came to this country for: Work hard, get a good education, follow
the rules, and you will be rich. I don’t want to be rich. I just want to be able to feed my children and live with some
semblance of dignity. . . .
”
”
Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States: American Beginnings to Reconstruction (New Press People's History, 1))
“
Freelancing and Creativity
In Freelancing, doing a job in different ways is called creativity. The importance of creativity is immense among all that is required for freelancing work because creativity is the main thing of freelancing.
It is difficult to give an exact definition of creativity. Because there is no end to creativity. In the case of some, creativity or the development of creativity begins to manifest naturally, while for some it manifests through talent, practice, and practice.
Creativity is basically a mental process that is the result of positive thinking, perseverance, and high analytical ability.
Just as it takes practice, practice, and dedication to develop this creativity, there is a high chance that this creativity will be wasted if it is not properly used or applied.
Below are the causes of creativity loss and ways to increase Creativity:
** Reasons for loss of Creativity -
1. Lack of focus on work – Creativity does not arise if there is no focus on work, to complete a task properly, there must be focus on it.
2. Irregular sleep – the brain does not work properly if you do not sleep properly, repeated sleep disturbances can also cause many mental problems that hinder creativity.
3. Suffering from indecisiveness – Having too many negative thoughts running through your head while doing a task can also hamper creativity. For example: if the work is going well, if the client likes it, if the client doesn't like it, if the client doesn't pay, etc.
4. Fear of not succeeding at work – Many people rush to work for quick cash income, but it does not work properly or on the contrary, more creativity is lost, which results in payment time problems. As a result, the fear of not succeeding enters the freelancer.
** Ways to Increase Creativity -
1. Dietary discipline – Of course, there is no substitute for healthy eating. Consuming regular meals maintains mental and physical well-being which in turn enhances creativity.
2. Gaining knowledge from nature – Nature is the main source of knowledge. All the sages and poets in the world were worshipers of nature. All of them could see something extraordinary in the ordinary things of this nature. Try to see it that way.
3. From everyday events – notice what is happening around you. You can get new ideas from it, for example, you can get an idea on any subject by reading a book, and new ideas can be invented while watching TV or watching newspaper advertisements.
4. Write down ideas – We all have something going on in our heads all the time, either mainly through thought or sensory processing. So whenever you get an idea, note it down so that you don't forget to read it.
So, creativity is created by the combination of ideas and skills. Freelancing is unthinkable without this creativity because to do freelancing you must have a clear idea about something or acquire full skill in that subject.
”
”
Bhairab IT Zone
“
There’s a study that shows that when a man is considering a new job, he will apply for a position he feels he’s at least 60 percent qualified for. His confidence tells him that he’ll make up the other 40 percent by learning as he goes. By contrast, that same study shows that the average woman feels that she must be 100 percent qualified to apply for anything.
”
”
Rachel Hollis (Girl, Stop Apologizing: A Shame-Free Plan for Embracing and Achieving Your Goals (Girl, Wash Your Face))
“
When you go to a job interview, nobody is really interested in your background, but on what you can actually do and how committed you are in applying disciple and self-control to learn, improve your results, and improve the relationships and communication inside the company where you work. Therefore, having a PhD but no capacity to empathize or work on new methodologies means nothing, which is why so many people with PhDs work as supermarket cashiers and bartenders, or can't even find a job. Prepare your Curriculum in such a way that anyone can see in the front page all the things you have done and studied on your own, and add to the information the topics you actually studied and can apply. Your employer doesn't care if you went to university for it or learned from a laptop while in pajamas during a Sunday morning. He cares about what you can do to improve his results. If he raises your salary after you make him rich, great, and if not, you can use that opportunity as leverage to a better opportunity with a much higher salary. But always remember that, as an employee, your purpose is not to get a salary but to make your boss rich. The salary is a bonus you get from that intention. If you want to become rich yourself, you have to start your own company and work as many hours as your boss did and employ people who aren't willing to make you rich because they only care about their own salary, people who in many cases have diplomas but can't do anything useful. You will be surprised with how many useless people there are in the world, which is why interviews can last weeks and months before someone is selected for a position.
”
”
Dan Desmarques
“
These were “times of stress and change,” and Roosevelt had thought much of the responsibilities of the Presidency in 1932. “The Presidency is not merely an administrative office,” he told Anne O’Hare McCormick during the campaign. “That’s the least of it. It is more than an engineering job, efficient or inefficient. It is preeminently a place of moral leadership. All our great Presidents were leaders of thought at times when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified.” So Washington had personified the idea of federal union, Jefferson and Jackson the idea of democracy, Lincoln union and freedom, Cleveland rugged honesty. “Isn’t that what the office is—” he suggested, “a superb opportunity for reapplying, applying in new conditions, the simple rules of human conduct we always go back to? I stress the modern application, because we are always moving on; the technical and economic environment changes, and never so quickly as now. Without leadership alert and sensitive to change, we are bogged up or lose our way, as we have lost it in the past decade.
”
”
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (The Crisis of the Old Order 1919–1933: The Age of Roosevelt, 1919–1933)
“
I need to do something about college, but I’m not sure what.”
“Where have you decided to apply?”
“Nowhere yet. Any time I think about the schools I’ve visited, I feel overwhelmed. The campuses are so big that I know I’ll get lost. I dread making new friends. And the professors acted too busy to deal with someone like me. My parents will be wasting a huge amount of money.”
“Your fears are no different than most high school seniors.” He studied me thoughtfully. “Must you go to college?”
I opened my mouth to say Of course, I must—and then shut it again. The concept didn’t bother me nearly as much as it should have. Skipping college would be crazy. Right? It was hard enough for a disabled person to find a job, but being disabled with no degree would make it hopeless. “I don’t have a choice.”
“Perhaps you have more choices than you realize.
”
”
Elizabeth Langston (Wishing for You (I Wish, #2))
“
Night One Introduction Stampy Cat is an adventurous young fellow who loves having fun. One day, when Stampy is thinking of what to do, he starts having a random craving. He wants pizza! Lee, Squid, and all of Stampy’s other friends have been talking about a new pizza restaurant called Freddy’s. Stampy’s hunger leads him to go to Freddy’s, but something seems a little strange… Being the inquisitive guy he is, Stampy decides to investigate. He applies for a job at Freddy’s so he can do some detective work of his own. To make this mission even more fun, Stampy invites Lee and Amy to join him. The gang sure is in for a lot of adventure… Night One Stampy was ready to become a security guard and he had his pals Lee and Squid ready to go as well. The boys got all their gear ready. Stampy grabbed a shiny diamond sword. Lee grabbed his favorite pickaxe. And Squid grabbed a bucket.
”
”
Mineberg Books (Five Nights With Stampy Cat – Full Series (Night 1 – Night 5): A FNAF Story Comic Book ft. Stampylongnose (Unofficial))
“
beaten and humiliated and experience indescribable suffering and anguish. Will become sin offering and die on job. To qualify: Must be male, minimum age 30. Father must be God, mother must be of house and lineage of David, must have been virgin when he was born. Adopted father must also be of house of David. Must have sinless blood and spotless record. Must have been born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth. Must be self-motivated, with aggressive personality and burning desire to help people. Must have tremendous knowledge of Old Testament and firm reliance on biblical principles. Must incorporate the foresight of Noah, the faith of Abraham, the patience of Job, the faithfulness of Joseph, the meekness of Moses, the courage of Joshua, the heart of David, the wisdom of Solomon, the boldness of Elijah, the power of Elisha, the eloquence of Isaiah, the commitment of Jeremiah, the vision of Ezekiel and the love of God. Wages: Holy spirit (without measure) to start. Additional payoff in intimacy with God and receiving revelation as necessary to complete job. Constant on-job training, supervision and guidance by top-level management. Benefits: Position will lead to highly exalted position in future if job carried out successfully. Workman’s compensation: Injuries sustained on job, including death, well compensated by promotion including new body. Management will highly promote name upon successful completion of job, and entire publicity department will be devoted to getting name before multitudes. Will assume presidency of expanding international venture (The Ministry of Reconciliation), as Head of Body of well-equipped members ready to move dynamic new product on world market. All in all, tremendous eternal potential for growth and rewards in return on initial investment of giving life. If qualified, management will contact you. No need to apply.
”
”
John A. Lynn (One God & One Lord: Reconsidering the Cornerstone of the Christian Faith)
“
Control got up and poured the tea, watching Milton as he did so. One did not apply for a job like his, one was chosen, and as was his habit with all the operatives who worked for him, Control had selected him himself and then supervised the year of rigorous training that smoothed away his rough edges and prepared him for his new role. There had been moments when Milton had doubted his own suitability for the position, and Control had not so much as assuaged the doubts as chided him for even entertaining the possibility that his judgment might have been awry. He prided himself on being an excellent judge of character, and he had known that Milton would be the perfect field agent. He had been proved right. Milton had started his career as Number Twelve, as was customary. And now, ten years later, all his predecessors were gone, and he was Number One.
”
”
Mark Dawson (The Cleaner (John Milton, #1))
“
Applying the 80:20 rule, I would say that 80 per cent of our youth don’t even care about politics or government. What they care about are their lives—their jobs, their boyfriends or girlfriends and, well, that’s about it.
”
”
Chetan Bhagat (Making India Awesome: New Essays and Columns)
“
Applying the 80:20 rule, I would say that 80 per cent of our youth don’t even care about politics or government. What they care about are their lives—their jobs, their boyfriends or girlfriends and, well, that’s about it. We can call this set of people Self-focused Indifferent Indians.
”
”
Chetan Bhagat (Making India Awesome: New Essays and Columns)
“
Today I feel like this job is truly a part of God’s purpose for me— as a former athlete and former teacher/coach, this role of leadership was a natural fit once I realized how I could apply it to my new business.
”
”
Kami Dempsey (Retire Your Husband: A Mom's Guide To Making Millions With Network Marketing)
“
Your Guide To Hiring The Best Driveway Contractor
Great driveway pavers do not just appear, you have to do extensive research to find the right one. You will need to put in certain effort on your part and apply a certain amount of spadework in order to determine exactly what your aim is. You won't know if the driveway repair service provider fits your needs or what you have in mind if you're unsure about your demands. Make a checklist of qualities as quickly as you could and refer to our list of tips to help you along.
When you start receiving bids, do not make the mistake of assuming that a low bid is indicative of poor work. Do some research about how much materials should cost and compare them against the low bid. You will also need to take labor costs into consideration. If the amount of the bid allows for an acceptable profit, you can consider drawing up an agreement.
Always interview and take quotes from at least three contracting businesses. With an array of estimates at your disposal, carefully examine the cost breakdowns for materials and labor to guarantee that you're receiving the very best person for the project. If you're willing and in the position to invest more money in hiring a high quality driveway paving contractor, the chances are good that you will probably be very satisfied. Should you have any questions, make sure to address them before signing the legal agreement and ensure that all detailed information about the costs of the job are included.
Take your time when searching for a honest driveway paving contractor. Look for the advice of your family and friend when looking for a recommendation. Find opportunities for networking in order to meet and become familiar with contractors. You will increase your odds of locating a great driveway repair contractor by conducting as many interviews as you could.
You can always rely on a trustworthy driveway paving contractor to present you with a written assessment prior to him beginning the work on your project. Should you be in immediate need of the information, it should be a possibility for your driveway repair service provider to provide you with a quote over the phone. Also check their expertise and skill level as well as what other clients are saying about them in order to find out if they finish work on time and at the agreed upon fee. Don't sign a legal contract if you have any questions about anything in it; ensure your driveway repair service provider addresses every issue you have prior to you finalize your agreement.
”
”
Kensington Construction Services LLC
“
Failure can feel like the ultimate death sentence, but it’s actually a step forward. When we fail, life is pushing us in a different direction so we can experience something new. One adventure has ended and another is about to begin, because it must. Think of your activities in life as scientific experiments. Scientists expect the vast majority of their tests to fail, but they still view each test as a step forward, regardless of the outcome. This is because each failed test rules out that particular approach, narrowing the remaining scope of potential solutions. You might be thinking, “What if all of my experiments fail until the day I die?” Great question. That might happen, depending on how you define failure and success. Here’s the magical solution to that problem: The results of your experiments are of little consequence. Only the experiments themselves matter. The old platitude is true: It’s about the journey, not the destination. Doing experiments will account for 99% of your time on this earth. That’s the journey. The result of your experiments is the other 1%. If you enjoy 99% of your life (the time spent in experimentation), who cares about the results? This is how to remove the problem of failure. Failure is just a temporary result. Its effect is as big or as small as you allow it to be. Elon Musk is becoming a household name. He cofounded Paypal. He now runs two companies simultaneously. The first, Tesla Motors, builds electric cars. The second, SpaceX, builds rocket ships. Many people think of Elon Musk as a real-world Iron Man—a superhero. He’s a living legend. He works extremely hard, and he’s brilliant. Did you know that Elon Musk never worked at Netscape? This is interesting because he actually wanted to work there very badly. He applied to Netscape while he was in grad school at Stanford, but never received a response. He even went to Netscape’s lobby with resume in hand, hoping to talk to someone about getting a job. No one in the lobby ever spoke to Elon that day. After getting nervous and feeling ashamed of himself, he walked out. That’s right. Elon Musk failed to get hired at Netscape. The recruiting managers didn’t see a need for him, and he was too ashamed to keep badgering them. So what happened next? Well, we know what happened from there. Musk went on to become one of the most successful and respected visionaries of our time.[30] Take a deep breath and realize that there are no life-ending failures, only experiments and results. It’s also important to realize that you are not the failure—the experiment is the failure. It is impossible for a person to be a failure. A person’s life is just a collection of experiments. We’re meant to enjoy them and grow from them. If you learn to love the process of experimentation, the prospect of failure isn’t so scary anymore.
”
”
Jesse Tevelow (The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions)
“
Faced with the truth that he was not an actor, he wondered, what now? Burroughs eventually made his way toward writing. Because he writes well, he was able to do the job that he had hoped to do as an actor: connect with people. He then explains, "When I chose writing over acting, I didn't give up on a dream, I gave up on my choice of vehicle used to deliver the dream. Dreams are not like spleens, there's not just one per person." Like Burroughs, you may find that your distinctive strengths do not align with the learning curve you are hoping to scale. In which case, you'll want to jump to a curve that is a better fit. There is no shortage of jobs-to-be-done and problems to be solved. But there's only one of you. The right problems are those that you somehow feel called to solve, and are capable of solving, because of your expertise and accumulated life experience. As you consider making the leap to a new learning curve, examine the assets you've acquired, and focus on what you can do that others cannot. Then look for a job that no one else is doing. Just as Darwin's finches developed unique beaks to effectively get access to food, when you recognize and apply your distinctive strengths, you'll quickly move up the pecking order of your personal curve of learning.
”
”
Whitney Johnson (Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work)
“
I wanted a position that required broad management in a growth enterprise that was doing something I could get excited about. I wanted to be an owner and to be committed to helping a team achieve its goals. Money would be great, but I was happy to be paid based on the value I was bringing to an enterprise, which presumably would be reflected in its success (or failure). The culture of the environment was important to me too. Basically, I wanted to build something. I knew that these factors applied only to those fortunate enough to have significant choices as to what sort of employment they take; most people take what they can get. That said, I figured I was still relatively young and could afford to take some risks and push myself in the direction I wanted to go. I could always declare penance later. By the time I arrived at Manhattan GMAT, I was charged up and ready to make a mark.
”
”
Andrew Yang (Smart People Should Build Things: How to Restore Our Culture of Achievement, Build a Path for Entrepreneurs, and Create New Jobs in America)
“
The Four Global Options Now that you grasp the BIG picture, which includes your life values, your career values, your T-Bar, and current market conditions, it’s time to consider the four global options. I call these global options because, in reality, these are the only four job or career options you have. Option #1: Same job–same industry. Choosing Option #1 means you enjoy both and, most likely, need only conduct a job transition campaign to seek out a new company or organization. For example, a fifth grade teacher who is teaching in a public school may seek the same job (teacher) in the same industry (public school system); this teacher only needs to look at a new school in the same school district or to apply for a teacher’s position in a new school district. Option #2: New job–same industry. Option #2 means you enjoy the industry but need to identify a new job within that industry. Using the fifth grade teacher as an example again, she might seek a new job as an assistant principal or librarian. Or maybe she wants to earn more money than she would make as a teacher, so she becomes a sales professional and sells textbooks to educational institutions. The job transition campaign will take place within education, but she will identify and pursue a new, more inspiring, and more rewarding job within that industry. Option #3: Same job–new industry. If you select Option #3, it means you enjoy your job or vocation, but you need to identify a new industry or environment to perform that job in. The fifth grade teacher might get a job teaching for a private school (new industry or venue) or a private learning center, or she might even start her own tutoring business. In this case, the job transition campaign will focus on teaching but in a new, more appealing industry or venue. Option #4: New job–new industry. This option means you are ready for a wholesale change. Oftentimes this option is the option of choice if there’s a career or job you’ve always dreamt about. Or possibly you have a nice severance package or the financial means to return to school and prepare for an entirely new career. Possibly the fifth grade teacher always had a passion for antiques. In this case, she might pursue a job as a manager or even an owner of an antique store. Perhaps she’ll make the decision to stay home and be a full-time mom. The job transition campaign will focus on an entirely new job or activity in an entirely new industry or venue.
”
”
Jay A. Block (101 Best Ways to Land a Job in Troubled Times)
“
Your life will blossom or shrivel based upon the courage you have to act. Take smart risks that will require you to confront some fear in your life such as accepting more responsibility or applying for a new position. Go beyond your job description occasionally to tackle a persistent issue or opportunity. When your God-given creativity and intuition lead you to recognize problems and solutions that no one else has seen yet, don’t play it safe and hide these ideas in a dark closet. Take a risk—get those ideas out, give them some air, and see what develops.
”
”
Paul Coughlin (No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends)
“
APPLYING WITH A SMALL PORTFOLIO We’ll talk more about applying for jobs soon, but while we’re talking about portfolios, I’ll mention how I got started. The first time I applied for a job, I was honest with the client. I said something like “I’m new to oDesk so don’t have much of a portfolio. I’m willing to work for less than my regular rate in exchange for good feedback (assuming you’re happy with my work of course) so I can build credibility and experience on oDesk”.
”
”
Evan Wainberg (The Complete oDesk Handbook: The Step By Step Guide To Launching Your Successful Freelance Career)
“
You don’t need to make your entire path a challenge (though sometimes that’s a necessary part of progressing to the next level). But at the very least, try to always have something going that stretches you. Something that makes you wonder if you’re actually going to be able to do it. Maybe that’s a project you initiate at work. Maybe it’s learning a new skill and applying it in your job. Or it could be something outside of work, like organizing a fundraising event or climbing a mountain. Whatever it is, it should give you a chance to engage in a way that the safe and comfortable doesn’t.
”
”
Curt Rosengren
“
One reason women avoid stretch assignments and new challenges is that they worry too much about whether they currently have the skills they need for a new role. This can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, since so many abilities are acquired on the job. An internal report at Hewlett-Packard revealed that women only apply for open jobs if they think they meet 100 percent of the criteria listed. Men apply if they think they meet 60 percent of the requirements.7
”
”
Sheryl Sandberg (Lean In: For Graduates)
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Working Hard Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters. COLOSSIANS 3:23 NIV Paul encouraged his readers to work hard, with all their hearts. Many of the new converts were enslaved to non-Christian masters. The tension between Christians and non-Christians increased when the non-Christian had the authority to lord it over the Christian. But the wisdom in this verse applies to us today. We should always work hard, always give our best, even if we don’t like our bosses. Ultimately, the quality of work we do reflects on our Father. If we’re lazy or if our work is below standard, it has a negative impact on the Body of Christ. But when we meet our deadlines and our work exceeds expectations, we give others A positive impression of what it means to be a Christian. If we want to get ahead in our jobs and we want to help build the kingdom of God, we must have impeccable reputations. One way to build a positive reputation is to be a hard worker. When we do our absolute best at any task, people notice. When we consistently deliver quality products and services, people notice. We honor God and we honor ourselves when we work hard at the tasks we’ve been given. Dear Father, I want to honor You with the work I do. Help me to work hard, with all my heart. Amen.
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Anonymous (Daily Wisdom for Women - 2014: 2014 Devotional Collection)
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Let’s take the case of US law schools as an example. If you were to say to someone educated, “There are too many law schools producing too many lawyers in the US,” she would probably agree, in part because there have been dozens of articles over the past several years about the precipitous drop in positions at law firms and the many unemployed law school graduates.9 The general response to this problem is, “Well, people will figure it out and eventually stop applying to law school,” the suggestion being that the market will clear and self-correct if given enough time. On the surface it looks like this market magic is now happening. In 2013, law school applications are projected to be down to about 54,000 from a high of 98,700 in 2004.10 That’s a dramatic decrease of 45 percent. However, a closer look shows that the number of students who started law school in 2011 and are set to graduate in 2014 was 48,697, about 43,000 of whom will graduate, based on historical graduation rates.11 We’ll still be producing 36,000–43,000 newly minted law school grads a year, not far from the peak of 44,495 set in 2012, from now until the current entering class graduates in 2016. Meanwhile, in 2011, only 65.4 percent of law school graduates got jobs for which they needed to pass the bar exam, and estimates of the number of new legal jobs available run as low as 2,180 per year.12 Bloomberg Businessweek has projected a surplus of 176,000 unemployed or underemployed law school graduates by 2020.13 So even as applications plummet, there will not be dramatically fewer law school graduates produced in the coming several years, though it will have been easier to get in as acceptance rates rise due to the diminished applicant pool.14 We’ll still be producing many more lawyers than the market requires, but now they’ll be less talented. If anything, the situation is going to get worse before it gets better. Human capital markets don’t self-correct very quickly, if at all. At a minimum there’s a massive time lag that spans years, for several reasons.
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Andrew Yang (Smart People Should Build Things: How to Restore Our Culture of Achievement, Build a Path for Entrepreneurs, and Create New Jobs in America)
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Think of how your work environment would be altered if the leaders in your organization related to themselves differently. If they hate the parts of themselves that want to slow down and enjoy life, they will be impatient with workers who aren’t as driven as they are. If they want to get rid of their own insecurity and anxiety, they’ll create an atmosphere in which people fear for their jobs if they show vulnerability. If they attack themselves for making mistakes, everyone will pretend to be perfect. If they fear their own inner critics, they’ll fear the judgment of others and let people become exploitive. On the other hand, if they can relate to those parts of themselves in caring ways, that compassion and acceptance will permeate the company, making it much easier for all the employees to relate compassionately to their own parts and to one another. The same process applies to your inner family. This new way of relating to yourself can’t be forced. It doesn’t work to command yourself to be curious about these parts of you or pretend to feel compassion for them. It has to be genuine. So how do you get to that point? This raises the question of who the “you” is who relates to your parts. Who are you at your core?
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Richard C. Schwartz (Introduction to Internal Family Systems)
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new challenges is that they worry too much about whether they currently have the skills they need for a new role. This can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, since so many abilities are acquired on the job. An internal report at Hewlett-Packard revealed that women only apply for open jobs if they think they meet 100 percent of the criteria listed. Men apply if they think they meet 60 percent of the requirements.7 This difference has a huge ripple effect. Women need to shift from thinking “I’m not ready to do that” to thinking “I want to do that—and I’ll learn by doing it.” My first day at work at the World Bank, Larry Summers asked me to perform some calculations. I was at a loss on how to proceed, so I turned to Lant Pritchett for help. “Just put it into Lotus 1-2-3,” he advised. I told him that I didn’t know how to do that. “Wow,” he exclaimed. “I can’t believe you’ve gotten this far, or even how you can understand basic economics, without knowing how to use Lotus.” I went home convinced that I was going to get fired. The next day, Lant sat me down. My heart was pounding. But instead of firing me, he taught me how to use the program. That’s
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Sheryl Sandberg (Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead)
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Who’s the harlot who broke your heart?” she demanded. “I haven’t been disgraced this badly by a mortal since that Psyche girl a few months back!” “Well, actually, about that…” Eros told her the truth. Aphrodite hit the roof. Literally. She blasted the ceiling to rubble with a pretty pink explosion, giving Eros the new skylight he’d always wanted. “You ungrateful little boy!” she screamed. “You were always trouble! You never listen. You mess with everyone’s feelings, even mine! I should disown you. I should take away your immortality, your bow and arrows, and give them to one of my manservants. Any mortal slave can do your job. It’s not that hard. You never apply yourself. You never follow directions. You—” Blah, blah, blah. And on and on like that for about six hours. Finally she noticed that Eros’s face was sweaty and pale, which you don’t normally see with an immortal. He was shivering under the blankets. His gaze was unfocused. “What’s wrong with you?” Aphrodite moved to the side of his bed, pulled back the covers, and saw the festering, steaming wound in his shoulder. “Oh, no! My poor baby!” Funny how a mom’s mood can change like that. She wants to strangle you, then BOOM!—a little life-threatening injury, and she’s cooing about her poor baby.
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Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes)
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That afternoon, Neal DosSantos, a young architect who worked at a firm in Manhattan, was strolling back to his office after eating lunch in Gramercy Park when he spotted Adam heading briskly uptown on the sidewalk and talking animatedly into his phone. WeWork’s CEO was walking past Pete’s Tavern, one of New York’s oldest bars, wearing a gray T-shirt, black pants—and no shoes. DosSantos recognized Adam by sight. He had friends at WeWork and had considered applying for a job there over the years. Given all he had heard about the founder, the moment seemed to sum everything up: Neumann was moving quickly and talking fast, the only CEO who would casually walk the streets of New York barefoot during the most trying week of his life. (One of Adam’s publicists at the time explained away the incident to me by arguing that this was simply who he was: “Adam grew up on a kibbutz and likes to walk barefoot. He is a kibbutznik. Should we ask him to stop?”)
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Reeves Wiedeman (Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork)
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1. A Rich Life means you can spend extravagantly on the things you love as long as you cut costs mercilessly on the things you don’t. 2. Focus on the Big Wins—the five to ten things that get you disproportionate results, including automating your savings and investing, finding a job you love, and negotiating your salary. Get the Big Wins right and you can order as many lattes as you want. 3. Investing should be very boring—and very profitable—over the long term. I get more excited eating tacos than checking my investment returns. 4. There’s a limit to how much you can cut, but no limit to how much you can earn. I have readers who earn $50,000/year and ones who earn $750,000/year. They both buy the same loaves of bread. Controlling spending is important, but your earnings become super-linear. 5. Your friends and family will have lots of “tips” once you begin your financial journey. Listen politely, then stick to the program. 6. Build a collection of “spending frameworks” to use when deciding on buying something. Most people default to restrictive rules (“I need to cut back on eating out . . .”), but you can flip it and decide what you’ll always spend on, like my book-buying rule: If you’re thinking about buying a book, just buy it. Don’t waste even five seconds debating it. Applying even one new idea from a book is worth it. (Like this one.) 7. Beware of the endless search for “advanced” tips. So many people seek out high-level answers to avoid the real, hard work of improving step by step. It’s easier to dream about winning the Boston Marathon than to go out for a ten-minute jog every morning. Sometimes the most advanced thing you can do is the basics, consistently. 8. You’re in control. This isn’t a Disney movie and nobody’s coming to rescue you. Fortunately, you can take control of your finances and build your Rich Life. 9. Part of creating your Rich Life is the willingness to be unapologetically different. Once money isn’t a primary constraint, you’ll have the freedom to design your own Rich Life, which will almost certainly be different from the average person’s. Embrace it. This is the fun part! 10. Live life outside the spreadsheet. Once you automate your money using the system in this book, you’ll see that the most important part of a Rich Life is outside the spreadsheet—it involves relationships, new experiences, and giving back. You earned it.
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Ramit Sethi (I Will Teach You to Be Rich: No Guilt. No Excuses. No B.S. Just a 6-Week Program That Works.)
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Even if you are stuck at a job currently because you need money, don't let that discourage you from going out and applying to other places. It's never too late to start a new career if the path you've chosen in life is constantly putting you in stressful situations.
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Mindnatic (How to Read People Like a Book: Understand Body Language, Decode Emotions, And Predict Intentions to Unlock the Secrets of Behavior to Connect Effortlessly ... Skills and Charisma Development Book 5))
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Steve Kerr’s Keys to Success 1. Working to create a strong team not only makes the team better, it also make you better. 2. Learn all you can from the people who are you life. 3. Use all of the opportunities you have to seek out additional knowledge, even if it doesn’t apply to your current responsibilities. 4. Create detailed plans about how you will tackle new jobs. Develop your management philosophy before you become a manager. 5. Every organization needs to have a set of core values. 6. Adjust to the resources and players you have. Use their skills and personalities to your advantage.
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Leadership Case Studies (The Team Building Strategies of Steve Kerr: How the NBA Head Coach of the Golden State Warriors Creates a Winning Culture)
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Cindy Haden wanted to be able to touch Richard, hold him, and be close to him, and she constantly thought of ways she could make that happen. When her employer had a mass layoff and she was fired, she decided she would become a private detective. If she had a detective’s license, she’d be able to work with Richard’s new San Francisco attorneys and have a visit with Richard in a private room. She applied for a job with a San Francisco security firm, was hired, and moved to San Francisco. She took a quiet apartment in Richmond. The security firm sponsored her for a license, and she passed the required examination. She went to one of the San Francisco public defenders representing Richard and talked him into taking her inside the county jail with him when he went to visit Richard. She and the attorney were shown into one of seven rooms allocated for lawyers who come to see inmates. It was ten by ten and had a wooden table and a few chairs. There were panels of glass in a wall so guards could look in. As Cindy waited for Richard to be brought down, her heart raced. She paced back and forth, her hands trembling. When Richard got there, the guard uncuffed him and he sat at the table. They were like two school kids, laughing and giggling. Under the desk she raised her foot and put it on Richard’s thigh; his eyes bulged. He couldn’t believe he was actually sitting with one of the jurors who had handed him a ticket to the death room. After a few minutes, Cindy later related, the attorney went to look for a bathroom. When he left and Cindy was sure there were no guards about, she stood and quickly gave Richard a deep kiss as he groped her with his huge hands. She nearly passed out, she was so excited. When later asked if she was afraid to be alone with Richard, she said, “No, absolutely not. He’d never hurt me.” When the lawyer returned, Cindy sat down, breathless, her heart pounding. On subsequent visits to the jail, as she helped with Richard’s legal problems, she says, she was able to have more contact visits and was actually alone with Richard.
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Philip Carlo (The Night Stalker: The Disturbing Life and Chilling Crimes of Richard Ramirez)
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Staffing Companies
Staffing firms are hired by companies to vet candidates. Many of the top employers in my area use staffing firms to vet candidates for open positions.
The last time I was in the job market, I got a call from a local staffing firm fifteen days before I started my new job.
When I met with the firm, though, I found there was one big problem. Since I had already applied to the leading companies in my area, the staffing firm could not earn a commission by recommending me to their clients.
In fact, twelve months had to pass since my last application for the Staffing firm to earn a commission by recommending me.
I’m sharing this strategy early in the book, because pursuing this option could cut months off your job search.
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Clark Finnical (Job Hunting Secrets: (from someone who's been there))
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Human Resources Says, “Only Apply to Jobs If You Have 80% of the Requirements”
HR says this because it reduces the number of applications they have to review. The 80% requirement sounds logical, until:
• You read a job description, which is one continuous sentence and 15 lines long.
• The hiring manager says he's so busy that he didn’t have time to create a job description. In fact, the description online is only a template, so it doesn't describe the actual job.
• The hiring manager tells you that they haven’t fleshed out the responsibilities for the new role.
• The job requirements appear as if they’re looking for a Nobel Prize winner.
I’ve encountered all four situations.
I've applied for positions where I didn't have 80% of the requirements. Because of the exposure I received during the interview, I was asked to interview for another role. That is where I work now, four years later. I know others who’ve done the same thing.
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Clark Finnical (Job Hunting Secrets: (from someone who's been there))
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The Under-Informed…
I saw this continuously when I was a job seeker. I’d call a friend working for a great company and make the mistake of asking him,
“Do you know of any good job opportunities at your company?”
He responded, “Oh no, they’ve been eliminating jobs for years.”
After hanging up, I went to his employer’s career site and found page upon page of good jobs, many of which I could apply for.
When you worked for your last employer, did you know anything about open positions outside of your department?
Unless you worked in HR or were actively looking for a new position there, you knew nothing.
It’s easy to think, “They work there, and they’re closer to it than I am, so they should know.”
In reality, they rarely know more than you. If they do know more, it’s rarely a full picture of all of the opportunities.
TAKEAWAY
1. Don’t ask people who don’t know.
2. Don’t listen to people who don’t know.
Believe me, everyone and their brother, cousin, great aunt (you get the idea) will be only too happy to give you their opinions.
So, after you’ve read the resume section and created your resume, and one of these people tells you, “You’ve done it all wrong,” ask that person, “When was the last time you hired someone? When was the last time you interviewed someone?”
If you don’t feel inclined to pose these questions, make a beeline for the door or turn up the volume on your ear buds.
A few years ago when I was in between roles, I messaged a former co-worker and made the mistake of asking her about jobs in the Tampa Bay area.
She replied, “There are no jobs in Tampa Bay.”
She was obviously misinformed or at least under-informed, because I had a phone interview for a position in Tampa Bay the next day.
In short, don’t be quick to assume that the people you’re communicating with are the best source of information. Do you really want to make what could be life-impacting decisions based on people whose knowledge is limited?
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Clark Finnical (Job Hunting Secrets: (from someone who's been there))
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That the New Deal should have been bigger, sooner, is a conclusion of long standing: John Maynard Keynes told Roosevelt he needed to approximately double the rate of “direct stimulus to production deliberately applied by the administration” in 1934, at a time when Roosevelt had reduced such expenditures in response to political pressure just like the kind that later came from Grassley or King.29 Roosevelt soon moved in the direction that Keynes suggested, getting the so-called big bill—amounting to nearly $5 billion—from Congress and allowing him to create the WPA to employ Americans nationwide under the direction of Harry Hopkins. But a few years afterward, once recovery seemed well under way, Roosevelt again cut relief spending—again in response to political pressure. For many economists—including Keynes—that premature reduction in fiscal stimulus was the cause of the 1937‒1938 recession.30 Only after making that fiscally cautious error did the Roosevelt administration adopt a deliberately Keynesian budget. Soon afterward, mobilization for war began.31 In 1941 Hopkins took a new job, directing Lend-Lease operations; Congress approved nearly $50 billion for the program—an order of magnitude more than the “big bill” that created the WPA.32 So when Grassley says the war ended the Depression, he is not stating an argument against the New Deal: he is stating an argument for a bigger New Deal, an argument that New Dealer Harry Hopkins at WPA should have had a budget more like World War II–era Harry Hopkins at Lend-Lease.33
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Kevin M. Kruse (Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past)
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Freelancing and Creativity -
In Freelancing, doing a job in different ways is called creativity. The importance of creativity is immense among all that is required for freelancing work because creativity is the main thing of freelancing.
It is difficult to give an exact definition of creativity. Because there is no end to creativity. In the case of some, creativity or the development of creativity begins to manifest naturally, while for some it manifests through talent, practice, and practice.
Creativity is basically a mental process that is the result of positive thinking, perseverance, and high analytical ability.
Just as it takes practice, practice, and dedication to develop this creativity, there is a high chance that this creativity will be wasted if it is not properly used or applied.
Below are the causes of creativity loss and ways to increase Creativity:
** Reasons for loss of Creativity -
Lack of focus on work – Creativity does not arise if there is no focus on work, to complete a task properly, there must be focus on it.
Irregular sleep – the brain does not work properly if you do not sleep properly, repeated sleep disturbances can also cause many mental problems that hinder creativity.
Suffering from indecisiveness – Having too many negative thoughts running through your head while doing a task can also hamper creativity. For example: if the work is going well, if the client likes it, if the client doesn't like it, if the client doesn't pay, etc.
Fear of not succeeding at work – Many people rush to work for quick cash income, but it does not work properly or on the contrary, more creativity is lost, which results in payment time problems. As a result, the fear of not succeeding enters the freelancer.
** Ways to Increase Creativity -
Dietary discipline – Of course, there is no substitute for healthy eating. Consuming regular meals maintains mental and physical well-being which in turn enhances creativity.
Gaining knowledge from nature – Nature is the main source of knowledge. All the sages and poets in the world were worshipers of nature. All of them could see something extraordinary in the ordinary things of this nature. Try to see it that way.
From everyday events – notice what is happening around you. You can get new ideas from it, for example, you can get an idea on any subject by reading a book, and new ideas can be invented while watching TV or watching newspaper advertisements.
Write down ideas – We all have something going on in our heads all the time, either mainly through thought or sensory processing. So whenever you get an idea, note it down so that you don't forget to read it.
So, creativity is created by the combination of ideas and skills. Freelancing is unthinkable without this creativity because to do freelancing you must have a clear idea about something or acquire full skill in that subject.
Please Visit Our Blogging Website to read more Articles related to Freelancing and Outsourcing, Thank You.
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Bhairab IT Zone
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Every attempt to produce holy living by applying Moses to the conscience is an attempt to give Moses a job God never intended him to have. It also denies the true bridegroom his full rights as the new husband.
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John G. Reisinger (Tablets of Stone & the History of Redemption)
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I didn’t want this job. I wanted any other job but this one. But I applied to every single job within a sixty-minute commute of the town of Raker in upstate New York,
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Freida McFadden (The Inmate)
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Among his peers, Pablo Guzmán had a unique upbringing. He graduated from one of New York’s premier academic high schools, Bronx Science, where students were engaged with the political debates of the day, from the Vietnam War to the meaning of black power, thanks to the influence of a history teacher. Guzmán had also been politicized by his Puerto Rican father and maternal grandfather, who was Cuban. Both saw themselves as members of the black diaspora in the Americas. The job discrimination and racist indignities they endured in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and in New York turned them into race men committed to the politics of black pride and racial uplift. When Guzmán was a teenager, his father took him to Harlem to hear Malcolm X speak.188 He also remembers that his Afro-Cuban grandfather, Mario Paulino, regularly convened meetings at his home to discuss world politics with a circle of friends, many of whom were likely connected through their experience at the Tuskegee Institute, the historic black American school of industrial training, to which Paulino had applied from Cuba and at which he enrolled in the early 1920s.189 Perhaps because of the strong black politics of his household, Guzmán identified strongly with the black American community, considered joining the BPP, and called himself “Paul.” His “field studies” in Cuernavaca, Mexico, during his freshman year at SUNY Old Westbury, however, awakened him to the significance of his Latin American roots.
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Johanna Fernandez (The Young Lords: A Radical History)
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Trump’s unpredictability caused much discomfort among his frequently changing staff and among America’s allies, who were used to automatic, reflexive support from American presidents. But it had its uses internationally by putting America’s adversaries off balance and instilling fear in its enemies. As Israel’s prime minister, I saw it as my job to carefully navigate through the new reality Trump brought to Washington in order to advance Israel’s security and vital national interests and to forge four historic peace agreements. I could do so because Trump adopted an entirely new approach to peacemaking. He did not heed bureaucratic orthodoxy and was willing to go outside the box. For the first time in Israel’s history, peace was achieved without ceding territory or uprooting Jews from their homes. It was based on mutual economic, diplomatic and security interests in which all sides benefited. In addition to recognizing Jerusalem and the Golan, President Trump recognized the legality of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. In confronting Iran he was equally bold. Recognizing the absurdity of the Iran deal, he withdrew from it and did not hesitate to apply forceful economic and military pressures on Tehran. In all this he was a true trailblazer. Despite bumps in the road, our years together were the best ever for the Israeli-American alliance, strengthening security and bringing four historic peace accords to Israel and the Middle East. They showed the world that great things happen when an American president and an Israeli prime minister work in tandem, with no daylight between them. We proved conclusively that if you pursue peace through strength, you get both.
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Benjamin Netanyahu (Bibi: My Story)
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Similarity. Analogy is one of the most powerful creative tools. We’ll dig deeper into the power of analogy in the next chapter. Here, consider parallel contexts at one end of the dial and completely unrelated ones at the other. To think of good analogies to try, start with the intended outcome. Want to make ice cream faster? “Who or what is built for speed?” Want to delight your customers? “Who or what delights people?” The brain solves new problems in this way, using its understanding of a familiar topic to grapple with one that appears very different on the surface. You might apply the lessons of high school football to your first job managing a team, or transplant one of Napoleon’s battlefield strategies to a product launch. Consciously or unconsciously, we distill principles from observations and then see where else they might fit. How might we make ice cream like a therapy session? How might an Olympic sprinter serve up an ice cream cone? How might Apple design a container for ice cream sprinkles? How might eating ice cream feel like a roller coaster? Like a magic show? Like a horror movie? HMW questions can be silly or serious.
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Jeremy Utley (Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters)
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Autistic people frequently experience inertia in starting a task,[6] and challenges in breaking complex activities down into small steps that follow a logical sequence.[7] This can make everything from basic household chores to applying to jobs and filing taxes incredibly challenging, or even impossible without help.
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Devon Price (Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity)
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pressures and intense learning curve It takes time to get up to speed on the content of your new position, and yet business and markets cannot slow down and wait for you to catch up. Decisions still need to be taken and, consequently, the pressure can build up and will need to be managed in order to stay operating effectively. Being overwhelmed with immediate fire-fighting and task-driven priorities It would be tempting to get busy and dive into the immediate business tasks and issues. But you need to have the strength of character to step back and take time out to look at the big picture: what tasks should you continue, what should you stop, and what should you start? Need to invest energy in building new networks and forging new stakeholder relationships There is no point in having the right vision and strategy in isolation of bringing people with you. The culture may be dense and slow-moving – people may be resistant to the changes you bring. Invest early in the influencer and stakeholder network. Dealing with legacy issues from the predecessor Depending on the quality of your predecessor, your unit may or may not have a good reputation, and your team may have developed poor habits, behaviours and disciplines that will take time to address. Or you may have to endure the scenario of filling the shoes of a much-loved predecessor, and being initially resented as the new guy whose mandate is to change how things have always been done before. Challenges on inheriting or building a team and having to make tough personnel decisions Don’t expect underperformers to have been weeded out prior to your arrival. A key task in your first 100 days will be to assess the quality of your team: who stays, who goes and what fresh talent is needed on board. Unfortunately, your best talent is possibly now de-motivated and resentful – and consequently underperforming – because they applied unsuccessfully for your job. For external appointments, a lack of experience of the new company culture may lead to inadvertent gaffes and early political blunders – all of which can take time to recover From the innocuous to the significant, everything you do is being judged as indicative of your character. Checking your smart device during a meeting may deeply offend your new role stakeholders who may judge that action as an indication that you are brash, uninterested and arrogant. You will need to be on ‘hyper alert’ to consciously pick up clues on the acceptable norms and behaviours in your new culture. Getting the balance right between moving too fast and moving too slowly Newly appointed people sometimes panic and this can result in either doing too much (scattergun approach, but not tackling the core issues) or doing too little (‘I’ll just listen and learn for the first three months, and then decide what to do’). Neither extreme cuts it. Find the right balance.
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Niamh O'Keeffe (Your First 100 Days: Make maximum impact in your new role (Financial Times Series))
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Labor’s dominance applies more broadly still among the million jobs listed by name in the earlier discussion of elite hours—finance-sector professionals, vice presidents at S&P 1500 firms, elite management consultants, partners at highly profitable law firms, and specialist medical doctors. These specifically identified workers collectively constitute a substantial share—fully half—of the 1 percent. The terms of trade under which they work—the economic arrangements that underwrite their incomes—are well known. All these workers contribute effectively no capital to their businesses and therefore again owe their income ultimately to their own industrious work, which is to say to labor. Comprehensive data based on tax returns corroborate that the new economic elite owes its income predominantly not to capital but rather, at root, to selling its own labor. The data themselves can be technical and even abstruse, but a clear message emerges from them nevertheless. The data confirm that the meritocratic rich (unlike their aristocratic predecessors) get their money by working. Even guarded estimates, which defer to tax categories that treat some labor income as capital gains, show a stark increase in the labor component of top incomes. According to this method of calculating, the richest 1 percent received as much as three-quarters of their income from capital at midcentury, and the richest 0.1 percent received up to nine-tenths of their income from capital. These shares then declined steadily over four decades beginning in the early 1960s, reaching bottom in 2000. In that year, both the top 1 percent and the top 0.1 percent received only about half of their incomes from capital (roughly 49 percent and 53 percent, respectively). The capital shares of top incomes then rose again, by about 10 percent, over the first decade of the new millennium, before beginning to fall again at the start of the second decade (when the data series runs out).
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Daniel Markovits (The Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite)
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As the saying goes, "It's not who you know, but who knows you."
How does that relate to getting a job?
Lets look at 2 cases where "who knows you" resulted in landing the best job. Keep in mind: The great thing is that you can start right where you are right now!
Case 1
In my first teaching job in Mexico in the early 1980's, we were half way through the semester, when the director called me into his office to tell me he had taken a job in Silicon Valley, California. What he said next floored me. "I'd like you to apply for my job."
How could I apply to be the director of an English school when it was my first teaching job, all the teachers had more teaching experience than I did, and many of them had doctorate degrees. I only had a bachelors degree.
"Don't worry," he said. "People like you, and I think you have what it takes to be a good director."
The director knew me, or at least got to know me from teachers' meetings, seeing me teach, and noticing how I interacted with people.
Case 2
Fast forward 3 years. After Mexico, I moved to Reno, Nevada, to work on my Master's degree in Teaching English as a Second Language. I applied for a teaching job at the community college, and half-way into the semester, a teacher had to leave and I got the job. I impressed the director enough that she asked me to be the Testing and Placement Coordinator the next year.
At the end of that year, I wrote a final report about the testing and placement program. It so impressed the college administration that when a sister university was looking for a graduate student to head up a new language assessment program for new foreign graduate teaching assistants and International faculty, I got recommended.
What Does This Mean?
From these two examples, you can see that when people see what you can do, you have a greater chance of being seen and being known. When people see what you are capable of doing, there is less risk in hiring you. Why? Because they've seen you be successful before. Chances are you'll be successful with them, too.
But, if people don't know you and haven't seen what you can do, there is much greater risk in hiring you. In fact, you may not even be on their radar screen.
Get On Their Radar Screens
To get on the radar screens for the best jobs, do the best job you can where you work right now. Don't wait for the job announcement to appear in the newspaper. Don't wait for something else to happen. Right now, invest all of you and your unique talents into what you're doing. Impress people with what you can do! Do that, and see the jobs you'll get!
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HASANM21
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With a StoryBrand-inspired narrative, ordinary jobs become extraordinary adventures. With a unifying BrandScript, the above story would have gone more like this: Before even applying for a job, the prospective employee has already heard the buzz on the street about this cool company. It’s somehow more alive. The people who work there love it and so do their customers. They exude a sense of competence within their industry as well as across the community in general. Their leaders are respected. Even their former employees talk about it with a hint of sentimental longing. On the list of ideal places to work, there are few that compare. During the first interview, the candidate starts to understand where the buzz has been coming from. The hiring manager describes the company the way you might describe Lewis and Clarke preparing to tame the western frontier. There are interesting characters whose lives have led them to this place. Business goals sound like plot twists. There are mountains to climb and rivers to cross. There are storms to weather, bears to hunt, and treasure to find. The hiring manager is visibly excited as she walks effortlessly through the seven categories of the company’s narrative. But not just anyone gets selected for this expedition. The employees of this company aren’t trying to be snobs; they’re just staying true to the story they’re following and they don’t want to compromise the plot. If you happen to be selected, it’s because destiny basically demands it. Instantly the candidate’s concept of work shifts up a level. It’s no longer just about what he can get out of it. It’s also about who he will become if he’s allowed to enter the story. He senses that working for this company will transform him. By the second and third interviews, the candidate has met most of the team and even been interviewed by them. Everyone he meets tells the exact same story he heard on the street and in the first interview. The story is growing on him. He realizes he needs to be part of a story like this to be fully satisfied in life. We all do. Finally, his first day on the job arrives, and the onboarding experience is more like being adopted than getting hired. He spends quality time with a facilitator who takes a small, new team through a curriculum explaining the story of their customer and how the company positions themselves as the guide in their customers’ story. Amazingly, the onboarding is more about the company’s customers than it is about the company itself. This organization loves their customers and is obsessed with seeing them win the day. Finally, the new employee discovers the secret. These people are here to serve a customer they love.
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Donald Miller (Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen)
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Let’s apply our model to the work of a new employee. What is his motivation? It is very much based on self-interest. So you should give him a clearly structured job with a low CUA factor. If he does well, he will begin to feel more at home, worry less about himself, and start to care more about his team. He learns that if he is on a boat and wants to get ahead, it is better for him to help row than to run to the bow.
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Andrew S. Grove (High Output Management)
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I have identified seven elements essential to Apple’s software success: Inspiration: Thinking big ideas and imagining what might be possible Collaboration: Working together well with other people and seeking to combine your complementary strengths Craft: Applying skill to achieve high-quality results and always striving to do better Diligence: Doing the necessary grunt work and never resorting to shortcuts or half measures Decisiveness: Making tough choices and refusing to delay or procrastinate Taste: Developing a refined sense of judgment and finding the balance that produces a pleasing and integrated whole Empathy: Trying to see the world from other people’s perspectives and creating work that fits into their lives and adapts to their needs There weren’t any company handbooks describing these elements. Nobody outlined this list in a new-employee orientation. There weren’t any signs affixed to the walls of our Cupertino campus exhorting us to “Collaborate!” On the contrary, we felt, on an instinctive level, that imposing a fixed methodology might snuff out the innovation we were seeking. Therefore, our approach flowed from the work. This happened from the top down, stemming from the unquestioned authority and uncompromising vision of Steve Jobs, and it happened from the ground up, through the daily efforts of designers and programmers you’ve never heard of, people like me and my colleagues, some of whom I’ll tell you about.
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Ken Kocienda (Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs)