From the Author

Who among us has not sat through a job interview and been asked the standard question: “Where do you see yourself in five years?“ OK. Good question. But what I’m also asking is: “Why should you answer it only for others in a job interview? Why not answer it for yourself? And even better, why […]

In my last post on Gear Up for Success – Part 2, I included a suggestion that you “Stretch Your Time Horizon.” As you may remember, I wrote: “… the farther out you are looking, planning, and working, the more likely you’ll find the right way to set things up and do the work needed

As I wrote last time, in a perfect world, you’d get all the success you deserve without any struggle. You’d do your thing. The world would reward you commensurately. Tomorrow you’d wake up and do more of the same. But it happens we’re in a world where obstacles abound, where a great many successes require

In a perfect world, you’d get all the success you deserve without any struggle. You’d do your thing. The world would reward you commensurately. Tomorrow you’d wake up and do more of the same. But it happens we’re in a world where obstacles abound, where a great many successes require more than natural talent and

Unless you run your own business, you’ll generally be part of a team, and the team may itself be part of a larger organization. In situations like this, the ability to move up the ladder more quickly will be a major element in improving your career trajectory and your level of success. Navigating upwards within

Much has been written about overcoming fear of failure. This is good stuff, but it misses the really important point: there is often nothing about failure worth fearing. Sure, there are some failures that contain negative elements, such as falling off a cliff you are trying to climb or hitting your thumb instead of the

In a previous post, I explained that not only the Dunning-Kruger Effect, but a variety of cognitive biases keep you from thinking as well as you think you do. As I explained there, many of these biases are downright interesting. However, all of them hack away at your ability to engage with various situations and limit the chances

This series is not really about leadership, but there’s no doubt that leadership can find you, even when you’re not looking for it. Why? Simply because, as you become more productive and successful in your work and your life, the chances increase that you will be thrust into a leadership possession. When that happens, you’re

If only the world were more black and white, with fewer shades of gray. If it were, then producing success and living well would be much simpler. Since the world happens to be extremely complex and heavily nuanced, however, it’s increasingly important to become as comfortable as you can with the resulting uncertainty, ambiguity, nuance,

Much like a shark, if your career doesn’t keep moving forward, it will suffer and eventually die. But unlike a shark, your career may not move forward on its own. Unless you’re at the elite level in both talent and luck, you’ll most likely have to drive your career forward through intentional strategies, actions, and