Marty Nemko's Blog, page 292

Fighting Your Weaknesses

Conventional wisdom says, “Build on your strengths.” And I agree, but some common weaknesses usually must at least be mitigated or you may not get a chance to use your strengths.

Of course, most weaknesses don’t succumb to quick tips but my current thinking on behavior change is that quick tips end up yielding more net good than do protracted prescriptions. 

Quick tips  are particularly likely to yield more net good per-minute of reader time. There are plenty of long articles and books on each of the following but perhaps the quick tips I offer in my PsychologyToday.com article today add something to the corpus.

Becoming a Successful Employee

The advice on how to be a successful employee can reduce to: work well, fit in, yet retain your personhood. 

But in case you’d like a little flesh on that skeleton, I offer that in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Gaining Your Instructors' Respect

Whether in high school, college, or graduate school, gaining the instructor’s respect is key not only to getting a good grade but, at the risk of sounding like the fuddy-duddy I am, learning more, including acquiring attributes more important than the course content: responsibility, communication skills, and perhaps even—and the data on its teachability is equivocal—thinking ability.

In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I offer ways to gain your instructors' respect.

What if You Lose Your Job?

Losing your job is one of most life’s more stressful events. After all, our identify may be heavily defined by how well we do at work. Indeed, compare the worthiness of a life centered about sex, drugs, and NetFlix with even an ostensibly unimportant worker bee—say a receptionist—who ends up making life easier for countless people.

But losing one’s job can happen to the best of us. What to do? I tackle that question in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

How the Media Influences Us...Perhaps Without Our Awareness

To a greater extent than we may realize, the media, even entertainment media attempts to get us to believe as they do.

My PsychologyToday.com essay  explores how that’s done, using an example: The play, The Book of Mormon.

Terry's Tale: A career saga

As the latest in my PsychologyToday.com series of short-short stories embedding life lessons, I today describe the saga of a 20-something person's career saga. .

Marty Nemko Gives a Public Lecture at U.C. Berkeley: The Future of Work

I'll be giving a public lecture, The Future of Work, at the University of California Berkeley on Sep. 12 at 6:30 PM at the Golden Bear Center. It is sponsored by the University so it is free to all.

Hands-On Careers

Career contentment depends less on a career’s coolness than on whether it matches your core ability: words, people, data, or hands-on.

To that end, here is the fourth in a four-part series. In this installment, I offer brief introductions to some hands-on careers. The previous installments were on careers for word people, for people people, and for data-oriented people.

Career contentment depends less on a career’s "coolness" ...

Career contentment depends less on a career’s "coolness" than on whether it matches your core ability: words, people, data, or hands-on.

To that end, I'm writing a four-part series. In this installment, I offer a brief introduction to some data-centric careers. The previous installments were on careers for word people and on careers for people people. I hope to publish the final one tomorrow. It will be on hands-on careers.

Careers for People People

Career contentment depends less on a career’s “coolness’ than on whether it matches your core ability: words, people, data, or hands-on.

To that end, I am writing a four-part series in PsychologyToday.com. In the first one, I described 11 word-centric careers.

In today's installment, I describe some careers for people people. 

The final two installments will be on careers for data-centric people and hands-on careers.