Step Out. Step Up.
An article in today’s Wall Street Journal discusses the role of chance in saving for retirement, arguing that we can’t depend on the average 30-year return that’s often touted. Much depends on which 30-year period we’re investing in. If your career coincides with a relatively flat period or the markets, there’s going to be a [...]
Over a cup of coffee at Folly Beach, a wise friend told me what I needed to hear.
I’ve experienced several major changes in my life during the last six months, including putting a home I’ve owned for 13 years on the market and moving to another state. I told my friend that I feel as [...]
Post-recession demographics are not only showing that baby boomers plan on working longer to recoup from the financial collapse. What’s also now clear is the way they intend to work in the future – and that has major consequences for talent managers, who must rethink their policies to support the new workplace realty that is [...]
An article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal told of the latest “American Time Use Survey” released by the Labor Department on Tuesday.
It seems we now have extra time to spend each day due to rising unemployment. Okay, that I understand – a person without a job might have more spare time than those who are [...]
If you’re a small- or medium-sized company that wants to roll out a sabbatical program for your employees and be on our “Workplaces for Sabbaticals” list, we finally have the perfect solution for you.
We get a lot of inquiries from companies that are passionate about joining the ranks of innovative, “best” employers and are serious [...]
Talent Management magazine’s editor, Mike Prokopeak, wrote a compelling editorial in the May 2010 issue about how the difference between a baby’s brain and an adult’s brain and how, as we age, our thinking can become “stale” and we cease being able to see existing things in new ways.
He mentions Iconoclast, a book by an [...]
This was the title of an article in last Saturday’s Wall Street Journal. Two experts answered the question. Clay Shirky says “Smarter”. Nicholas Carr argues “Dumber”.
I was struck by some of Carr’s thinking, especially this: “…a growing body of evidence suggests that the Net, with its constant distractions and interruptions, is also turning us into [...]
This past weekend, my mother moved her 95-year-old father from Ohio to Pensacola, Florida, and into an assisted living facility a couple of miles up the road from her house. She had two siblings helping her, but this was still a time-consuming, logistical ordeal. Have you ever prepared an almost-centurion to get through TSA? Have [...]
My mother will be mad when she reads this: I text while I drive.
I anticipate the wreck that will teach me the lesson I need to learn. And shouldn’t the anticipation be enough?
In other areas of my life, I seem to have wisened up about multi-tasking. I’m not good at it. You’re not either, and [...]
A girlfriend in Ft. Worth paid $25 in shipping fees to send me a box of rocks for Christmas. Seriously.
But these were special rocks: stacked on top of one another, they formed three symbolic cairns. Granted, they were purchased cairns, likely from some pricey boutique in Dallas, but cairns nonetheless.
Like anyone who hikes on occasion, [...]
Last Friday, I attended a compelling business presentation on “Turning Potential into Performance in Generation Y” by Dr. Tim Elmore of Growing Leaders, an Atlanta- based
non-profit organization created to develop emerging leaders. Tim talked about the different markets that have been established by the last five generations:The market for the “Greatest Generation” (1900-1928) was commodities. [...]
By the time I met Randy Hain for an early morning cup of coffee in an Atlanta suburb, he had already been awake for almost three and a half hours. I met Randy at 7:15 a.m.
Randy gets up every morning at 4 a.m. to meditate, pray, journal, read and think. It’s his quiet time, before [...]
Dan Clements is the author of Escape 101: Sabbaticals Made Simple. He and his wife have taken several sabbaticals – the most recent was a 5-month career break to rural Paraguay, South America with their five-year old daughter. Dan was kind enough to share the following insights on taking sabbaticals with children. I sure love [...]
A good amount of attention has been paid to Stefan Sagmeister – on the social media sites, including the TED community – for his inspiring (although not unique, as we on this site know) year-long sabbaticals that he takes every seven years.
The famous designer has taken two year-long sabbaticals. The first was in 2001 at [...]
In 2006, then-struggling American indie folk singer-songwriter Justin Vernon left North Carolina with a broken heart and retreated to his father’s remote cabin in Northwestern Wisconsin. There, he recorded the songs that would become Bon Iver’s debut album, For Emma, Forever Ago, playing all the instruments himself. In isolation, Vernon says, he was able [...]
“Happiness” was the topic of discussion among seven friends this past Sunday. We were eating breakfast around a table in a cabin in the middle of North Carolina’s Nantahala National Forest. Four men, three women. Three couples: one married nary a month; another to be married soon; the third – talking about it. And an [...]