Productivity Tools

There are many potential challenges of an encore career – including ageism, adjusting to a lower status, getting back to learning, and taking orders from a younger boss.

The challenges can seem daunting…but there are also opportunities galore.

Discovering What You Want to Do

Consider why you want an encore career. Is it to earn  money,  have  fun, add fulfillment, create mental stimulation, stay active and healthy, make your mark or leave a legacy?
Consider aspects of your persona. Are you a doer, a

In the late 1970’s researchers discovered that a particular  shade of pink had a calming effect on people. Soon  after, drunk tanks  and even  some colleges visitors’ locker rooms were being  painted pink to try to take advantage of this fact.

Marketing and psychology professor Adam Atler shares the profound  effects  that hidden cues like color have  on us, so we can  mitigate  their effect or use  them to our benefit. According to Atler, these cues tend to reside in three

If you think difficult conversations can’t  be made easy, you’re  not alone.

It turns out there  are only 3 types. Diagnose which type you’re  in so you can  change it from being  emotionally taxing to a “learning conversation” where  problems get solved.

Three Types of Difficult Conversations

The “What Happened?” Conversation

Centers on who’s right, and who’s wrong.

The solution  is to shift from a blame-focused to a solution-focused conversation.

Acknowledge your own contribution  to the issue first – preventing other  party using it

as a weapon.

Authors Chip and Dan Heath help us make better decisions with their four-step process known as WRAP:

Widen Your Options:   Choices are rarely black-and-white so consider multiple alternatives. When life offers you “this or that” choices, always remember that the right answer might be “none of the above.”

Reality-Test Your Assumptions:  Innovative business leaders, like the late Steve Jobs, understand the power of testing assumptions. Rather than spending months planning the perfect product, they have their design team hack together a quick

In the story of David and  Goliath,  a simple  shepherd boy manages to defeat a gigantic  well-armed soldier.  This story has  long served as a metaphor for the weak winning an “improbable  victory” over the strong.

But according to Malcolm Gladwell,  this interpretation is wrong.  Instead, challenges and  obstacles can  actually  give underdogs a winning advantage.

The Advantages of Disadvantages (and the Disadvantages of  Advantages)

We tend  to assume that  the weak  person,

As industry is moving into the fully-digital future, businesses and employees are left unsure where things are headed or what they must do to survive and thrive.

To succeed in this rapidly changing environment internationally-acclaimed digital marketing guru Mitch

Joel offers …

Five Digital Strategies

Build Truly Direct Relationships with Customers

Don’t “blast back impersonal offers and specials” to your social media followers. Interact individually with them and look for ways to deliver value.

Provide Utility

Give priority to helping your customers ahead of promoting

Creativity is eclipsing all other factors as the key to growth – and even survival – for every type of business. An IBM survey of 1,500 CEOs reports that thinking creatively is the most important leadership competency.

Yet, only 25% of employees surveyed say they’re living up to their creative potential.  Could we be holding ourselves back? Perhaps we feel that being creative is a fixed trait…it’s not!

Creative confidence is like a muscle – it can be strengthened through  effort and

Quelles sont les trois choses les plus importantes que vous puissiez faire pour votre sécurité financière ? Enregistrez, enregistrez et enregistrez.

Économisez sur vos revenus en investissant, économisez sur vos dépenses en réduisant vos dépenses et évitez les tracas et les soucis en étant bien organisé.

Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz explique comment utiliser cette approche à travers…

3 étapes critiques de la vie

1 . Lorsque la retraite est dans 10 ans : calculez le montant dont vous aurez besoin en calculant

revenus et dépenses mensuels. Renforcez vos

Tout le monde est enseveli sous les informations et submergé par les interruptions. Personne n’a de temps à perdre, alors faites en sorte que votre message soit précis et concis. C’est la seule façon dont vos idées seront entendues.

Être BRIEF requiert trois compétences : conscience, discipline et esprit de décision :

Soyez conscient : Cela signifie que vous et les autres devez vous tenir à un niveau de concision plus élevé.
Soyez discipliné : Si les gens

Les progrès de la puissance de calcul et du stockage des données ont permis l’émergence du “big data” et son impact va être énorme.

Trois changements majeurs transforment notre façon d’analyser l’information :

Nous n’avons pas à nous contenter de l’échantillonnage – nous pouvons désormais utiliser toutes les données applicables.
Nous devrons renoncer à une certaine précision – les données volumineuses sont désordonnées, car elles se présentent sous différents formats et se présentent de diverses sources.
Nous devrons passer d’une concentration sur la recherche de