The Blog
So many words, so little time.


Values List
Your Values Can Help Guide You

(If you care about being happy.) The single most important thing you can do to be happy at work (and life) is to figure out what you value — the things that matter to you — and then do everything you can to live your life in accordance to what you’ve listed on the back...

Gift of being fired
The Gift of Being Fired

About 56,839 people are canned each day in the U.S., which means that about 56,839 people each day find themselves somewhere on the freak-out spectrum (most at the “full-fledged” end of the range). The 56,839 is a measure of people both laid off and discharged, so let’s say for the point I’m trying to make...

Staples
How a Stapler Taught Me to Take Action

It started back in 2011, on a late-fall day near the tail end of an unreasonably gloomy stretch of rain and sleet. I remember sitting in my office, acknowledging the initial stirrings of career disenchantment (a feeling not a lot unlike indigestion mixed with the way it might feel to have a missing limb; you...

The Flow Zone
How Do You Know When You’re In the Zone?

For those of us who want to spend our time better. For those of us that get a certain kind of high off productivity (hello, fellow happy workaholics!), the feeling we’re really looking for is flow. (You know, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's gift to positive psychology? I can't pronounce his name either. First or last name. I think his...

Asking for a raise
Four Things Your Boss Hates When You Ask For A Raise

And it's not just a money thing. Asking for a raise is never easy; many would rather do something stupid like speak in public or bungee jump off a shady-looking bridge than politely inquire about maybe getting more money for services rendered. But having been a boss and having coached a bunch of bosses, I...

Grim Reaper Job Title
Why I’m Quitting Job Titles

And you might want to, too? I hate job titles, precisely because I used to love them, and they didn’t always love me back. I used to be a judgey-judgerson; yes, judging others by their titles, but mostly judging myself and what my title said in size eight font on my business card about how...

Four Thousand Mondays Values
The Four Thousand Mondays Values: In Case You Give a Shit

When I was making the Four Thousand Mondays website, I had to pare back about 63% of what I originally wrote because it was Way, Way, Way Too Much. It hurt me in various parts of my soul to shave the Values section off the About page, because COACHING IS FREAKING BUILT ON VALUES. (I'm...

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