Monday 30 September 2013
Sunday 29 September 2013
Saturday 28 September 2013
Friday 27 September 2013
Thursday 26 September 2013
If You Don’t Ask, You’ll Never Get
Nobody likes cold calling. But if you want to expand your network, getting acquainted with Art of the Ask is essential. In an interview for our new 99U book, we talked to super-connector Sunny Bates about getting up the guts to reach out:
99U: What do people struggle with the most when it comes to connecting with others and building a network?
SB: Asking. Nobody ever wants to ask—at every level, with every kind of person, from the CEO all the way down. I think people get very narrow-minded, thinking that they can only reach out to people who are already doing a similar type of job. But the underlying network science says that it’s all about weak links. Those people who are the friend of a friend of a friend. That’s a much more likely place for something important to happen to you than your inner circle of close friends and colleagues.
99U: What do you tell people who are afraid to ask?
SB: If you don’t ask, you’ll never get. Sure, you may only get a little bit at a time. But if you don’t ask, 100 percent of the time you won’t get. You’ve just got to get over yourself. We live in a connection economy. If you can’t connect with people for them to understand what you have to offer, you’re working in a vacuum and you’re going to lose out. You end up getting bitter in that situation, because you see your peers are moving up and doing things, and you say, “I could be doing those things. Why not me?”
It’s very easy to think that somebody knows you. And that if they know you, they will think about calling you, or asking you, or wanting you for something. But people forget. I was a headhunter for many years, and I was always amazed because easily 20 percent of the time, the final person who was hired was well-known to the client. (They just hadn’t thought about them.) That means that, for every five people you know, one is likely to have an impact on you or hire you—that should make you want to expand your circle.
Find the full interview with Sunny, as well as contributions from Frans Johansson, Scott Belsky, Ben Casnocha, and more, in Maximize Your Potential , the latest addition to our 99U book series.
via 99U http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/The99Percent/~3/dfHBuhzwZGc/if-you-dont-ask-youll-never-get
Wednesday 25 September 2013
Tuesday 24 September 2013
Monday 23 September 2013
All Risks Are Not Created Equal: Mapping Your “Risk Profile”
How adventurous are you? Very? Not so much? We tend to think of people as fitting squarely into one category or another: Those who like to take risks, and those who don’t. But, according to Stanford professor and neuroscientist Tina Seelig, the distinction is actually much more subtle. Or as she puts it: “Risk-taking is not binary.”
Here’s what Seelig had to say about risk-taking in an interview for our new 99U book:
You’re likely comfortable taking some types of risks while finding other types uncomfortable. You might not even see the risks that are comfortable for you to take, discounting their riskiness, while you are likely to amplify the risk of things that make you anxious.
For example, you might love flying down a ski slope at lightning speed or jumping out of airplanes, and not even view these activities as risky. Or you might love giving public lectures or taking on daunting intellectual challenges. The first group is drawn to physical risks, the second to social risks, and the third to intellectual risks.
There are five primary types of risks: physical, social, emotional, financial, and intellectual. I often ask people to map their own risk profile. With only a little bit of reflection, each person knows which types of risks he or she is willing to take. They realize pretty quickly that risk-taking isn’t uniform.
You can dig into our full conversation on failure and risk-taking in Maximize Your Potential , the latest 99U book, featuring essays from Tina Seelig, Joshua Foer, Cal Newport, and many more.
via 99U http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/The99Percent/~3/CYsKTDX1VBA/all-risks-are-not-created-equal-mapping-your-risk-profile
Sunday 22 September 2013
Saturday 21 September 2013
Friday 20 September 2013
Thursday 19 September 2013
The Art of Letter Writing Is Dead (And Other Concerns)
A reminder from webcomic xkcd, people have always feared that technology is “ruining” things. We can lament the “pace of change” or we can develop the skills to manage it, whether it’s the telegraph or Twitter.
Read the entire comic, which features excerpts of people complaining about the “pace of modern life” for the past 150 years.
via 99U http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/The99Percent/~3/eyCI_y9fWZY/the-art-of-letter-writing-is-dead-and-other-concerns
Wednesday 18 September 2013
Tuesday 17 September 2013
Monday 16 September 2013
Sunday 15 September 2013
Friday 13 September 2013
Why Keep A Diary?
Progress is the single most important motivating factor when it comes to work. That might seem obvious. But what’s not obvious is that we don’t always see our progress. In fact, we’re prone to lose track of it, if we don’t regularly document what’s happening in our lives.
Harvard professor Teresa Amabile has been researching what motivates creatives, and what keeps them going, for years. And it turns out the simple answer is: Keeping a diary.
Here’s what Amabile has to say about the power of diaries in an essay penned with Steven Kramer and Ela Ben-Ur for our new 99U book, Maximize Your Potential :
Creative people frequently work solo, without the benefit of colleagues who could help capture or develop their ideas. But even teams and organizations rarely offer creatives the necessary time, understanding, and patience to nurture their creative seedlings. A diary can help fill the void. It can serve as a sounding board and an alter-ego companion—one who will never forget what you say. What might otherwise have been isolated or passing thoughts become permanent and potentially powerful ideas.
This sounding board can serve a number of functions, the simplest of which is planning. Many entries in “The Daybooks” of Edward Weston reveal him focusing on future actions to capitalize on emerging opportunities:
“The excerpts from my daybook and photographs will be published in the August issue of Creative Art… It seems my fortunes are to change for something better. Now I must spend all my spare time in cutting and correcting my manuscript.” —Edward Weston, May 23, 1928
Of course, Weston could have used a simple calendar or to-do list to plan next steps. But notice his remark that his luck seems to be changing. What a calendar cannot do, and a journal can, is help you reflect on the big picture of your life and your creative work—where it is, what it means, and what direction you want it to take.
Diaries can be particularly helpful tools for accurately capturing positive events. In his book, “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” the psychologist Daniel Kahneman distinguishes between experience and memory, noting that human memory of an experience can easily be altered. Kahneman describes a man who was enjoying a concert immensely until the very end, when there was an obnoxious sound in the concert hall. The man said that the noise ruined the entire concert for him. But it didn’t really, of course; he had enjoyed the concert up until that moment. What it did ruin was his memory of the concert.
By keeping a daily diary, you will reduce the chance that some later event will transform your memory of the day’s experiences. So when you feel you have accomplished something, write it down soon, before a client or critic has the opportunity to say something that diminishes that sense of progress.
You can find the complete essay, as well as contributions from Joshua Foer, Jonathan Fields, and Tony Schwartz and more, in Maximize Your Potential , the latest addition to our 99U book series.
via 99U http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/The99Percent/~3/318r0jGXAGI/why-keep-a-diary
Thursday 12 September 2013
The Anti-Hiring Pitch
via 99U http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/The99Percent/~3/9HCoLxyyZDk/the-anti-hiring-pitch
Wednesday 11 September 2013
Tuesday 10 September 2013
Monday 9 September 2013
Marissa Mayer: Play With The Varisty Squad
Business Insider takes a detailed look into the working life of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. One choice excerpt:
When people ask Mayer why she joined Google after getting her masters in symbolic systems at Stanford, she likes to tell them her “Laura Beckman story.” It’s about the daughter of her middle school piano teacher, Joanne Beckman.
Mayer begins: “Laura tried out for the volleyball team her junior year at high school. At the end of the tryouts, she was given a hard choice: bench on varsity, or start on JV.
“Most people, when they’re faced with this choice, would choose to play – and they’ll pick JV. Laura did the opposite. She chose varsity, and she benched the whole season.
“But then an amazing thing happened. Senior year she tried out and she made varsity as a starter, and all the JV starters from the previous year benched their whole senior year.
“I remember asking her: ‘How did you know to choose varsity?’
“And she said, ‘I just knew that if I got to practice with the better players every day, I would become a much better player, even if I didn’t get to play in any of the games.’”
The moral of Mayer’s story is that it’s always better to surround yourself with the best people so that they will challenge you and you will grow.
“My quest to find, and be surrounded by, smart people is what brought me to Google,” she says.
…
“The turning point for me,” she says, “was realizing that I would learn more at Google, trying to build a company, regardless of whether we failed or succeeded, than I would at any of the other companies I had offers from.”
Read the entire biography here.
via 99U http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/The99Percent/~3/PCQk2-jd6-0/marissa-mayer-play-with-the-varisty-squad
Sunday 8 September 2013
Saturday 7 September 2013
Friday 6 September 2013
Thursday 5 September 2013
Are You Standing in Your Own Way?
When we’re the new person working on a project, it’s natural for us to seek the approval of our colleagues, who have been there longer than us. While there is certainly a time for observing, eventually it’s time for you to make your mark. After all, that’s why you were brought in, right? It’s important to learn to trust yourself, and to know that those around you trust you as well. The Harvard Business Review writes about one worker’s epiphany that helped her trust herself:
But when she pressed [her boss] for more specifics, [he] simply said, “I trust you to continue doing what you do so well, and I expect you’ll ask for my help if you need it.”In that moment, she realized something profound: He was telling her that she was free. She was in charge of her own considerable domain — and her own life. Somehow, amid the pressures to meet operational goals and balance budgets, she had failed to notice the full implications of that shift.
She wanted to make sure she understood correctly. “You mean to say that I can push the envelope as far as I want, as long as I believe it is in the best interest of the company, and you’ll tell me when I’ve gone too far?”
He nodded his agreement. She was buoyed by the possibilities that her newfound freedom presented, and at the same time, she felt the weight of the responsibility this change implied. Before she even made it to the door, Karen started thinking about how she could take ownership — and advantage — of this situation.
Previously: Are You (Subconsciously) Afraid of Success?
via 99U http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/The99Percent/~3/hK8lZhEBQi4/are-you-standing-in-your-own-way
Wednesday 4 September 2013
Announcing the 99U Pop-Up School Class of 2013
The call to action was simple: we wanted to round up the best and brightest young entrepreneurs for our first ever 99U Pop-Up School. The “Class of 2103″ is an eclectic group of makers, coders, artists and more, all with a passion for getting things done. Winners received a free three-day pass to the Pop-Up School, an opportunity to lead a Round Table Talk at the event, and access to a private cocktail event at Samsung Accelerator.
Along with our friends at Samsung Accelerator, we’re happy to present the winners:
Anselm Bradford
Fellow, Code for America
www.anselmbradford.com
Alison Bryce
Project Manager, No Noisy
www.nonoisy.com
John Coghlan
Co-Founder, DUMBO Startup Lab
www.dumbostartuplab.com
Natty Coleman
Designer, Freelance
www.nattycoleman.com
Dean Cooney
Intern, Wildcard
www.trywildcard.com
Ian Gadson
Designer, Freelancer
www.iangadson.com
Navit Keren
UX Designer, Huge
www.navitk.com
Konstantinos Kollias
Communication Design Consultant, Freelance
www.startupmail.com
Meghan Lazier
Entrepreneur & Communications Strategist
www.meglaz.com
Joe Loveless
Chief Ideator, Digital Nomad
www.joeloveless.com
David Mahoney
Designer, Freelance
www.idmahoney.com
Polina Marchenko
CEO ,KptnCook GbR
www.kptncook.com
Khary Kwabena Menelik
Mobile Developer, Independent
www.be.net/custommobiledesign
Elan Miller
Co-founder, Glimpse
www.itsglimpse.com
Fares Nimri
Leader, Talentscout
www.faresnimri.com
Ehsan Noursalehi
VP & Designer, Bump Nonprofit Design Studio
www.madebybump.org
Sean O’Connor
Ruckus Maker
www.brightful.ly
Brijesh Patel
CTO & COO, InquisitHealth
www.inquisithealth.com
Betty Quinn
MFA Student, Parsons
www.bettyquinn.com
John Smith
Student, Berklee College of Music
www.Slide20xl.com
Joe Speicher
Founder, Ground to Grounds
www.groundtogrounds.com
Jake Szymanski
Strategist, Instrument
www.weareinstrument.com
Shahrouz Varshabi
Developer/Designer, No Noisy
www.nonoisy.com
Pei Zhan
Founder, Dezign Lab
www.dezignlab.co
A big thank you to everyone who applied!
via 99U http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/The99Percent/~3/wBPGkLQnqOI/announcing-the-99u-pop-up-school-class-of-2013
Tuesday 3 September 2013
Charles Bukowski: Don’t Waste Your Life
Author Charles Bukowski in a letter to a friend about finally “breaking free” of his job and being able to write:
And what hurts is the steadily diminishing humanity of those fighting to hold jobs they don’t want but fear the alternative worse. People simply empty out. They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. And the body. The hair. The fingernails. The shoes. Everything does.
…
So, the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took, has given me a kind of joy, the jolly joy of the miracle. I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember (no matter how far I’m gone) how I’ve come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die.
To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.
via Letter of Note
via 99U http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/The99Percent/~3/sw_H0TSYTn0/charles-bukowski-dont-waste-your-life