Setting Waypoints for your Career Trails

Ever look up from your screen during the work day and wonder “What am I doing here?”  You’re busy, but not focused.  Grinding through your day.  You’re not even sure of your goal anymore.  You may think, “What am I doing in this job?” Sounds like you might

Find Career Trails Through Connections and Skip Networking

Does attending networking events give you the “ick” feeling?  Me too.  That’s why  I decided not to network early in my career.  Instead, I blazed my own career trail by doing what I always did well: learn and make connections. Finding Your Trail When Traditional Paths Don't

Skip the Path - Find Your Career Trail

For years, we've been sold the idea of a "career path" - a straight, predictable line from entry-level to the corner office. We've been told that with the right planning, right skills, and right moves, we can map out our professional lives with GPS-like

Pushing Through Fear

Many of us are wrestling with fear these days. For instance, one of my career coaching clients asked a question recently. I thought you might enjoy hearing the question and my response. Of course, I'm changing a bit to protect their identity. The Question: Still working on turning

Finding Safe Harbors in Storms

I’ve attempted to write something useful for the last six weeks. Each time, it’s turned somewhat dark and stormy.  2025 has not started gently with national politics, international politics, job markets, and more dark waters. We don’t need more darkness in turbulent times.   So I wanted to

A different kind of gift guide

This will be the last newsletter of 2024. We are all too busy this time of year to take on "new." In the USA (and other parts of western culture), we are bombarded this time of year with messages about giving. I wanted to give you something different.

Reflecting with Gratitude on the Year (The Personal Annual Review)

As I approach the end of each year, I like to look back at what happened and what I can learn from it.  Whether it’s been a busy year, a fantastic year, or a challenging year, I always try to find time to examine elements of work and life

The Write Through It Approach to Become Unstuck

Last time I shared how walking away from a problem and scheduling a time to come back to it helps me unlock some difficult problems. It works most of the time for me, but not always. Did you ever come across a complex problem or a complex web of problems

Walk Away and Back - Ways of getting unstuck (2)

Previously, I've discussed the dangers of "powering through" your work. I also shared the pitfalls of powering through when you are stuck. Now, I'll share one of my biggest secrets to becoming unstuck. Are you ready? Walk away. I discovered this approach by accident

Ways of Getting Unstuck (part 1)

I’m stuck right now.  I’ve been stuck in several ways.  I thought you might be stuck too and you might find it useful to learn how I get unstuck. How I’m Stuck As I Write This Now We can all get stuck in various ways; sometimes, multiple

How “Powering Through” May Be Harmful at Work

Many people like to “power through” difficult situations.  No matter the difficulty, they do their best to reach their goal.  It’s all about “pushing through" or “winning at all costs.”  Sometimes we achieve the goal and we celebrate.  Sometimes this approach causes harm — to ourselves and others — whether

A Resilient Career is Like What?

How to find a smoother ride with your career. In my career, I’ve ridden through multiple tech bubbles and financial bubbles, rising startups, collapsing corporate cultures, bumpy buyouts and messy mergers.  What many do not know is I’ve also pivoted my career four times on my professional journey.

Retooling

When change happens, you should consider your own change. Apologies for being so quiet these last few weeks. I've been retooling in a number of ways. I'm picking up new skills and launching my fourth career pivot. Why pivot now? I've applied agile thinking

Making connections in a hybrid work environment

The folks at LinkedIn recently asked me to respond to their post on entry-level professionals making connections in hybrid work. I had more to share than the tiny space I was given to reply. I hope you find this more detailed answer useful. Connecting online is not impossible, but it

Is It Loss or Letting Go?

I hear a lot about loss lately. I lost my job. (Yeah, I’ve been there too.) I lost my country.  Let’s make it great again. I lost my community.  Someone bought it, encroached upon it, didn’t respect it, enshitified it. Sometimes I find the loss is loss

What's your simpler path?

An analytical mind can be dangerous. Those gifted with such a mind see many possibilities in our work. We also see many problems in those possibilities. We then see options around the problems. Then, we see problems with the options. The gift becomes more of a challenge. The analysis of

Job Fishing with AI

Following simple steps with a generative AI LLM can speed up your job fishing. In a previous post, I mentioned that job fishing might be a better phrase than job hunting. This post is more step-by-step as I wanted to show you how you might job fish with generative artificial

Can I ask a quick favor, please?

As I mentioned in my first January post ( Swimming Away from Toxicity? ), I moved this newsletter from Substack. It's a long story; just read that article if you didn't see it. You might now be saying, "I didn't see that! Why did it

Are You Job Hunting or Job Fishing?

I recently came across an interesting essay that described the Too Many Needles problem of information overload.  It immediately made me think of the different sources of job posts and the challenges job hunters and employers face.  It also gave me some ideas on how to ease the stress of

Move Fast and Break People

It’s difficult not to think about the continued layoffs, especially with so many friends and colleagues in the tech industry.  Also, seeing the layoffs in December at Spotify and Google and the odd responses from outsiders and support from employee alumni makes me wonder if we need to rethink

Newsletter

Swimming Away From Toxicity

This was not the New Year message I wanted to write, but here we are. I wanted to share a few short stories and a solution that works well for me in challenging situations. (Content warning: I'll be talking about toxic situations. I have a solution for you.

Newsletter

Wishing you peace in 2024

The last newsletter of the year with a small gift included.

Agile

Will AI help or harm our agility?

Everything we see online floods us with the promise and fears of artificial intelligence (AI).  But I have a way to describe what I see when I look at AI.  It’s not a huge technological breakthrough.  It’s also not the end of humanity or our jobs. AI represents

Video

A Thankful Quick Update

Expect some new experiments from me

Newsletter

Tell Stories to Generate Action

How storytelling can influence the everyday.