The best time to look for a job is when you don't need one. That probably sounds counter intuitive, but let me explain. When you need a job, you are in the worst bargaining position possible. Anytime you put yourself in a position where you can't walk away from a deal--or where it is hard to walk away--you lose your advantage in negotiating. I found out about a job opportunity that would have been the perfect fit for a friend of mine. I told him about it, but he didn't want to apply because he was happy with his current job. This is they way most people think. If I like my job, why should I go to the trouble of getting my resume ready and talking to someone else? What most people … [Read more...] about Best Time to Look for a Job
Blog
Reader Questions
In the next few weeks I'm going to start posting answers to reader questions every Friday. I'm going to start off with some existing questions that have come in via email or on Google searches, but I wanted to open it up to everyone. If you have a question you think would be interesting to see answered here, please send it to [email protected]. … [Read more...] about Reader Questions
Advice for Setting up a Home Office – Group Interview
If you like this post, why not subscribe to the RSS feed or email feed for this site? I recently emailed a number of bloggers asking them for the most important non-intuitive piece of advice for setting up a home office. Here are their responses along with my thoughts. If you find a response that seems especially relevant to you, consider subscribing to the author's blog rss feed (included below). I learned this from Tannaz Sassooni, one of my favorite Wise Bread bloggers: Put an old fashioned egg timer on the desk. When I start a long or boring project, I'll set the timer at 15 minutes, and no matter what happens, I'll force myself to take a break when the alarm goes off. At first I … [Read more...] about Advice for Setting up a Home Office – Group Interview
How to Jump Start an Economy?
Right now the US is trying to figure out how to jump start the economy. Most of the proposals involve sending people money from the government or temporarily lowering taxes. The idea on sending everyone a "rebate" goes like this: When people have extra money they spend more, when people spend more businesses have to hire more workers. When more people have jobs, the earn money and in turn have more money to spend. So the idea is to "prime the pump" and get the cycle started. The idea of lowering taxes follows the same thinking, but there has been some talk of lowering corporate taxes. The idea here is that if businesses are charged a lower tax rate, investors will be more willing to … [Read more...] about How to Jump Start an Economy?
Gym Membership
My wife and I have been planning on joining the local gym for several months, but we've been on the road so much that it hasn't been practical. Now that our travel schedule is slowing down we went ahead and filled out all the paperwork and signed up last week. When we turned everything in we asked about the schedule and what was the busiest times of day. The receptionist told us, "oh January is really busy with New Years resolutioners, but they will all be gone by February." One of the biggest mistakes people make with resolutions is shooting too high. Some people think, "if I shoot for 100 maybe I'll hit 51 which is better than if I shoot for 50." In reality it doesn't work that … [Read more...] about Gym Membership
Last Night
Last night I got a new electronic book device. It was the size of an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper and had 600 dpi resolution. The quality was excellent. It worked in bright sunlight without a problem. I put all my scanned documents on it and found it was just as easy to read them as it was on paper and it was even easier to navigate and find documents than using the filing cabinet. I loaded it with all the PDF articles I wanted to read and found it worked flawlessly. Then I woke up. I was very disappointed. Should I be concerned that I'm now dreaming of becoming more paperless? … [Read more...] about Last Night
Habit List Web App
Tom from App Engines put together a web app based on the Habit List. (Thanks Tom!) It keeps all your data in a cookie on your local computer. (If you delete your cookies your data for the app will be gone.) Check it out here. … [Read more...] about Habit List Web App
Tuesday’s Tip: Kind of Like a String Around Your Finger
You've brushed your teeth and you are headed to bed. Suddenly you remember something very important for tomorrow. You can't forget. You can go write it down, send yourself an email, etc. but you really just want to go to bed. How can you make sure you remember? Simple. Grab your shoe and put it on top of the toilet. In the morning, you'll stumble into the bathroom, see the shoe and groggily think "What in the world is that doing there?" As your brain clears you'll remember you put it there for a reason and soon you'll be awake enough to recall what caused you to put the shoe there in the first place. This is very similar to tying a string around your finger. You can do it with about … [Read more...] about Tuesday’s Tip: Kind of Like a String Around Your Finger
My Desk Layout
This weekend I rearranged my desk. My goal was to remove some equipment that was no longer essential and try to reposition everything where in a way that reflects my work pattern. Here is a diagram of the current layout. I've experimented with the 30 inch display in several different positions. When I started moving things around I originally had it up against the wall, but I found I couldn't see it from that distance. When I got the new display a graphic designer friend of mine asked if I found myself pushing back from my desk because the screen was so huge. I've found the opposite is true. The high resolution means there are quite a few more pixels per inch that what I had … [Read more...] about My Desk Layout
Time Machine in the Real World
Today I used Time Machine on my first real world data loss problem. I'm embarrassed to even describe what happened, but here it is, anyway. I am working with an online store that sends me an email each time an order is processed. At first this was done just for testing, but there is some automation that happens when certain types of orders come into my mailbox. This is a temporary setup, so I don't want to take the time to move everything over to a separate mailbox. The downside is, one of my email accounts gets 10 to 40 emails that are just copies of sales confirmation. Each one represents an interruption to my day. So the logical thing to do was to setup a rule to take these out … [Read more...] about Time Machine in the Real World