Self-Help

 It's no coincidence that children everywhere tease one another. They can hardly help it. It's fun for them, a game. That's why I view the verb "kid" as deriving quite naturally from the noun form of the word. Kidding is simply what kids do. And what's the object of this well-nigh universal game? Well, that's easy enough to answer. . . . Read More

Admit it. When do you get your best ideas? When you're sitting at your desk striving for an answer, or when you're doing something off-task like driving, walking, or puttering around the house? On the surface, daydreaming seems like the antithesis of "work," yet it's truly at the core of our most important type of productivity--creative problem-solving. That's why some of the most innovative companies in the world feature programs that give key employees the time and space to think creatively, i.e. daydream--Google offers a 20% program, 3M has a 15% program, and Gore & Associates (Gore-Tex, etc.) features "dabble time." All three companies credit these programs as the source of their most successful products. Read More

“There is certainly no greater happiness, than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.”
-- Samuel Johnson

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2010 Resolution: Dress Like a Power-Player (Part II)

When there's a Part I, Part II will follow.  Here you go; a continuation of how to acquire and sustain power so your personal and professional goals don't languish, but produce results.  If your intent is to emit visual authority, here's a novel look at what you need to know.  Part I listed suggestions 1-5. Let's talk 6-10 and yes, pictures included. Read More

Drop down into a flow state, where your mind is so absorbed by what you're doing that time seems to stop. The clock will catch up with you later, of course, but meanwhile you won't feel constrained by its mocking tick-tock. Here are additional ways to free your creative mind from the confines of time.... Read More

When an important relationship ends, just grieve. Don't go looking for a rebound. You can't run away from your problems. Only time will heal.

I agree with that common advice whole-halfedly. I think it's absolutely half-true, and so would like to make the case for the other half. Read More

By Janine Driver, author of YOU SAY MORE THAN YOU THINK (Crown, 2/16)

It's that time of the year again - the heart shaped candy boxes are at the grocery stores, the card aisles are filled with pink, and the flower shops are brimming with roses. Read More

One of my favorite resolutions – but also kept with great difficulty – is to Schedule time for play. I often get teased about this resolution, because people think it sounds incongruous, and even silly, to schedule time for play. Play should be spontaneous, right? Aren’t we naturally alert for opportunities to have fun? Why put it on the schedule?

Well, that’s not how it works for me. Maybe it sounds odd to pencil “play” into my calendar like a dentist’s appointment, but what I’ve learned, from long experience, is that if I don’t schedule time for play, I don’t do it. Instead, I focus on working or crossing tasks off my to-do list, or I do the activity that’s most convenient, instead of what would be the most fun thing to do. Read More

I Got My Mojo Workin'...

Likely you have heard the word mojo used in reference to virility as in the Muddy Waters' song with that immortal lyric: "I got my mojo workin'." You might also remember The Doors' lead singer Jim Morrison belting out, "gotta keep my mojo risin'..." at the end ofL.A.Woman, repeating the lyric faster and faster to simulate making love. Younger generations may recall the Austin Powers film The Spy Who Shagged Me, wherein the spoof-hero loses his mojo while in bed with Ivana Humpalot. So, to many of us who learned about this word through pop culture we think of our mojo as our sexual power. Yet it means a lot more than that. Read More