Management Tactic #34: Dress Up When You Go Up
People treat you differently depending on what you wear. Try going to a job interview dressed in slacks and a blazer, and then try the same thing in a nice suit. An interviewer knows that you’re taking him seriously when you dress in the suit, and he’ll take you seriously in return. I consider airline [...]
Treat Your Customers Like Potential Girlfriends
Last Monday I sent a project proposal for TypeTribe web development to a company called Intridea. 6 days later, and I still haven’t heard anything from them. Not a word. Not even a confirmation of receipt. In this economy. This absolutely, positively bewilders me. Most business spend a significant portion of their operating budgets trying [...]
The Fourth Secret to Extreme Happiness
This week I’m exploring the secrets to extreme happiness based off a list of the happiest, most gratifying, most joyous, most awestruck experiences of my life. You can read more about the premise here, the first entry in the series here, the second entry here, and the third entry here. Today’s entry concludes the series. The last entry of [...]
The Second Secret to Extreme Happiness
This week I’m exploring the secrets to extreme happiness based off a list of the happiest, most gratifying, most joyous, most awestruck experiences of my life. You can read more about the premise here and the first entry in the series here. The second category I’m going to talk about is where these experiences happen. [...]
The First Secret to Extreme Happiness
This week I’m exploring the secrets to extreme happiness based off a list of the happiest, most gratifying, most joyous, most awestruck experiences of my life. You can read more about the premise here. The first category I’m going to delve into is when these experiences of extreme happiness happened. There are a few that [...]
The Secret to Extreme Happiness
Recently I wrote about the idea of spending 15 minutes a day doing something creative that has no chance of being profitable (see here). Since I wrote about that, I’ve seen two things online that gave me an idea for such an activity. One of the blog entries was about one man’s “wow” experiences–moments that [...]
Management Tactic #17: Compliments
I have a simple lesson to teach on today’s blog: How to accept a compliment. It’s rather simple. If someone gives you a compliment–at work, at home, on the field, wherever, whenever–all you have to say is this: “Thank you.” That’s it. Don’t deflect the compliment, don’t immediately compliment the other person, and for goodness [...]
Management Tactic #20: Relating to the Humans
Two years ago, I took a road trip across the rolling hills of England and Wales. Accompanying me were two female friends and my girlfriend. We made a good group. After several days in the countryside, we arrived in London for the final leg of our trip. There, at the grossest hotel I’ve ever stayed [...]
Purging
I’ve spent the last two weeks purging. I’m not sure what started it all. For quite some time now I’ve had a reminder on my desktop to go to Goodwill, and about twelve days ago I decided to finally act on it. I went through my closet, expecting to come away with a small bag [...]
A Fool’s Bargain
A friend of mine called the other night with a query. He had encountered a situation at a dinner gathering and couldn’t figure out how to handle it. So he dialed The Truth. Here’s the situation: My friend, who I’ll call Poughkeepsie Bill, was at a restaurant with 15 people, only a few of whom [...]
