How to Be Happier at Work – Start Something!

Start something. More specifically, start something outside of work.

via How to Be Happier at Work – Leonard A. Schlesinger, Charles F. Kiefer, and Paul B. Brown – Harvard Business Review.

Before you get mad at me take note of where this article comes from.  Harvard Business Review Blog Network is the source of this article.  This article reminds me of what I did several years ago.  I started something.

When I started something I had no clue what it was I started.  What I thought I started was not what I am doing today.  In other words, my original plan failed but ultimately my little business succeeded.

Take a risk.  Start something!

  What are you avoiding doing that you know needs to be done?”  We seem to have a talent for burying the truth, covering it up, distracting ourselves from it… When was the last time you took a risk in the direction of your dance?

Laurie Beth Jones

 

Teleworking Triples Over the Last Decade

In its report, “The Incredible Disappearing Office: Making Telework Work,” The Conference Board finds that the advancements in home networking over the last decade have been accompanied by teleworking gains among a number of these technology-reliant professions, including insurance underwriters 4.5 percent, up 275 percent since 2001-2003 and computer software developers 6.1 percent, up 127 percent.

via Teleworking Triples Over the Last Decade – Insurance Networking News.

You Are Not A Computer – HBR

The Internet, and all it has come to include, is the most powerful interruption technology ever invented. It slices and dices our focus, fractures and distracts it, gives us less and less of more and more. It prompts us to skim, scan, and skip rather than immerse ourselves in any one thing.

Technology has no business setting our agenda, but it has turned into our dominatrix. Masochistically — but all too willingly — we submit to it. Emailing, texting and tweeting, searching Google, checking Facebook, and surfing websites not only consumes our time and energy, it also diminishes our capacity to pay attention to anything for very long — or to resist the next digital temptation.

via You Are Not A Computer (Try As You May) – Tony Schwartz – Harvard Business Review.

Pizza Delicious Bought An Ad On Facebook. How’d They Do? : Planet Money : NPR

Those ads went viral. They got twice the usual number of click-thrus, on average. The ad showed up more than 700,000 times. Basically, everyone in New Orleans on Facebook saw it. Twice. Pizza Delicious got close to twenty times the number of Facebook fans they usually get in two days. The guys were stoked.

via Pizza Delicious Bought An Ad On Facebook. How’d They Do? : Planet Money : NPR.

I’ll cut to the chase so you don’t have to read or listen to the entire article.  It didn’t work.

After a long night of asking every single customer where they found out about Pizza Delicious, not one said it was through Facebook.

Maybe at some point, the new Pizza Delicious fans will show up and buy some pizza. But social advertising is so new that nobody knows for sure. It’s still unproven, untested and largely unstudied.

Update –

I read the article first, then listened to the podcast.  Listen to the podcast, it’s funnier than hell.

Intelligence Is Overrated: What You Really Need To Succeed – Forbes

Research carried out by the Carnegie Institute of Technology shows that 85 percent of your financial success is due to skills in “human engineering,” your personality and ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead. Shockingly, only 15 percent is due to technical knowledge. Additionally, Nobel Prize winning Israeli-American psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, found that people would rather do business with a person they like and trust rather than someone they don’t, even if the likeable person is offering a lower quality product or service at a higher price.

via Intelligence Is Overrated: What You Really Need To Succeed – Forbes.

An Inadvertent Error

CEO Says Sorry to Yahoos for Borked Bio “Distraction” – Kara Swisher – News – AllThingsD.

Yahoos:

I wanted to share some additional thoughts with you related to the disclosure of my academic credentials.

As I told you on Friday, the board is reviewing the issue and I will provide whatever they need from me. In the meantime, I want you to know how deeply I regret how this issue has affected the company and all of you. We have all been working very hard to move the company forward, and this has had the opposite effect. For that, I take full responsibility, and I want to apologize to you.

In my note Friday, I said I would be focused on continuing to do what needs to get done. That’s because I feel I owe it to all of you to make sure that nothing disrupts the progress we’ve made in just a few short months due to all of your focus, commitment, and hard work. As you’ve heard me say many times, we have a tremendous business with incredible assets, and we can win by putting our customers first. The progress I shared with you in the first quarter should make clear that we intend to move fast and deliver on the potential of the business for our customers, shareholders, and all of you.

I know the board plans to conduct the review thoroughly and independently, and I respect that process. I am hopeful that this matter will be concluded promptly. But, in the meantime, we have a lot of work to do. We need to continue to act as one team to fulfill the potential of this great company and keep moving forward. You have my word that all my energy and attention will be on that mission.

Scott

How about a little truth here?  The CEO of Yahoo lies about his academic credentials and the company called it “an inadvertent error”.