The Career Intensity Blog will be taking the next couple of days off. We will return refreshed and revitalized on January 2, 2006.

Happy New Year!

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2006 is going to be your year! This is the year you make things happen in your life and in your career.

In order to make the year successful you need to focus your efforts. What would happen if you dedicated the New Year to making something positive happen in the lives of other people?

By helping others, you help yourself.

Take some time to think about your mission for 2006. Once you’ve settled on it, write it down. Next tell a few of your close friends.

Writing your mission down will cement it in your mind. Telling people about it will give you the incentive to stick to it.

Finally, do something each day in fulfillment of your mission. It can be something big or something small the size of the daily accomplishment is not important. The forward progress will help you maintain momentum throughout the year.

Here is my mission for 2006:

I will share my ideas for career improvement with as many people as possible in books, blogs and via audio and video learning programs.

Filed under: Personal Strategic Planning
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Many people call the 80/20 rule The Pareto Principle, since it is often attributed to Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. He created a mathematical formula to describe the unequal distribution of wealth in his country (as measured by land ownership). Pareto observed that 20 percent of the people owned 80 percent of the land. In the late 1940s, Dr. Joseph Juran took Pareto’s name and his description of the economic state of Italy in 1906 and used it to describe his “theory of the vital few and the trivial many.”

The underlying theory is that a few (20 percent) greatly influence the outcome of a situation and the many (80 percent) have a limited impact. When he applied this theory to manufacturing, Juran discovered that 20 percent of the defects in products were causing 80 percent of the problems for customers. In working on a project, you can almost always predict that 20 percent of the work (the first 10 percent and the last 10 percent) will take up 80 percent of your time. There are literally hundreds of examples of the few requiring more resources than the many.

Although this law should not be interpreted literally, a successful individual uses it to her advantage every day. She focuses her time and effort on the vital few things that influence the greatest results. She uses this as a form of mental leverage. She focuses on the most productive aspects of everything she does and works around or delegates the least productive aspects of her work. Perhaps the greatest proof of this principle lies in your own life. Think back to something that you are particularly proud to have accomplished. On a sheet of paper, write down all the tasks that you performed in order to bring about this achievement. As you look at those tasks, think about those that were high value tasks and those that you could have avoided. You will find that consistent effort focused on a few critical tasks helped you achieve your desired results.

The best way to use this principle in a forward-looking manner is to examine any particularly difficult task on which you’re currently working. Look closely at the desired outcome and make a list of the steps necessary to achieve that result. As you look over your list, analyze which tasks will provide you with the best results (both in quality and quantity). Once you have determined which tasks are the vital few, attack them with all of your effort. You will often find that the momentum of attacking the most critical items at the beginning of a project will help sustain your effort to complete the project in a shorter time period than you originally anticipated.

Filed under: Personal Strategic Planning
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Have you ever met someone who loves to complicate things? They relish showing you how smart they are by making a concept or procedure so difficult that only they can understand it. These people don’t get very far in business and often become politicians. In truth, it is much more difficult to simplify than it is to complicate. Although the word “simple” often gets a bad rap, since it is often used synonymously with “inferior” and “substandard,” making things simple is one of the qualities that can help you create your own luck.

Simplicity plays an important role in creating luck through your interactions with others. There are three ways successful people make sure their relationships are uncomplicated.

Exercise common sense. Don’t impose unrealistic expectations on others. If you ask someone to complete a task for you, first make certain that it is possible. It can be a challenge, but it must be possible. Next, make certain that it is ethical. You should never ask someone to do anything that would in any way compromise your integrity or theirs. Finally, ask yourself if you can live with the most extreme results of your requests or actions. Common sense in dealing with other people is the best way to keep things simple and a great way to draw in your own luck.

Maintain an external orientation. Always try to see things from the other point of view. It’s easy to get caught up in your own agenda and fail to see how the other person may view your behavior or actions. A successful person – someone with Career Intensity – views the world with an external orientation. He examines each action from the perspective of an outsider. This helps give him a clear picture of the issue at hand before he proceeds. He checks his ego at the door and he takes the best course of action – not just because it is best for him, but because it is also the right thing to do.

Remember that wishing doesn’t make things happen. Hope is a great tool for staying optimistic and positive, but achieving your goals requires action. Do not make decisions based upon things that you hope will happen. Make decisions based upon concrete evidence, past precedents, or the resources that are available. Keep wishful thinking out of the decision-making process. You will thank yourself later.

Filed under: Personal Strategic Planning
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In discussing success with the leaders of every field of endeavor, they all mention creating a positive environment and having a positive attitude as necessary prerequisites for success. These leaders often say that most of their inner strength comes from the positive feelings they engender when doing things for others.

There are two main ingredients necessary to create a positive attitude. To truly be a positive person – a person who will welcome success and make your own luck – you must create a positive internal environment as well as a positive external environment. This means that you must not only surround yourself with positive people and reminders of your unlimited potential, but you must also master your internal self-dialogue. You cannot afford to have a single negative thought in your head. Just as negative people can drag you down, negative thoughts can become embedded in your unconscious mind and undermine your attempts at success.

People like to be around those who are kind and fair. They like to be near people who offer them hope and who view the glass as half-full instead of half-empty. People like to be around others who laugh and enjoy life. All of these things are part of having a positive attitude. In being positive, you project an image that attracts others to you.

A positive environment is one in which people feel good about themselves and the work they are doing. They enjoy working with one another and look forward to coming to work. A positive environment is one where people give of themselves not only to make money, but also because they have a sense of higher purpose – a sense that they are contributing to something that is larger than their individual needs.

Filed under: Personal Strategic Planning
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From Phil Gerbyshak’s Make it Great:

“My friend Dave Lorenzo over at Career Intensity is one of the best writers I have the pleasure of reading every day. It’s amazing to me that I end up bookmarking nearly every one of his posts for review later. I realized just now that I have a full 40 posts of Dave’s bookmarked for continued review.

Stop by and visit Dave today. He’s writing a new book that I can’t WAIT to read, writes amazing articles almost every day, and is one heckuva nice guy.”

Thanks for the kind words Phil. The book will be out in May. Click here to read a summary.

Filed under: Career Intensity - The Book
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Successful people take risks – the possibility of damage, injury, or loss – in order to capitalize on opportunities. Risk-taking is a part of everyday business and everyday life. If you are a strategic thinker (as discussed in Chapter Three), you are already contemplating the potential consequences of every decision and have prepared contingency plans that you can put to work if things don’t go your way.

There are certain types of risks that you can almost never proactively address. These are the risks associated with accidents, natural disasters, or another unexpected calamity. To address these issues, you transfer the risk by purchasing insurance. Super-achievers have emergency plans in place to deal with the aftermaths of these types of situations. They review them on a regular basis and they assess their insurance coverage to make certain that it is up to date and sufficient for their needs.

The type of risk that most people and most businesses face each day is the risk involved in making decisions. This is referred to as speculative risk because the possibility exists that the outcome could be either favorable or unfavorable. The risk taker is speculating on the potential result of the decision. Successful individuals win these situations most of the time; the outcome is favorable more often than not. In order to win they use a four-step process to aggressively evaluate each opportunity.

Assess and eliminate the risk of doing nothing. You may often sit back and wait for others to take the lead in a situation that contains an element of risk. Occasionally, the appropriate decision for a given set of circumstances is to take no action whatsoever. A top achiever is excellent at assessing whether or not action is warranted in a certain situation. She works to immediately quantify a situation and determine if doing nothing is a viable option. If it is not, she rules it out instantly. She does this even if she does not yet know what the appropriate course of action may be. She views the first step in the process of making a risky decision as deciding whether doing nothing could be an option.

List the proactive steps that could positively influence the outcome. For a successful individual, the next step in evaluating risk is to list all of the potential actions that could be taken immediately to reduce the risk of the decision. What information could he gather? How much information would he need? Who are his resources? What can he do right now to get up to speed on the situation? He lists the answers and enlists people to help in gathering the necessary information.

Live the Triple A rule - Always Avoid Assumptions. Assumptions have been the cause of more than one bad decision. A top performer does not take risks unless she has built a fact-based foundation for her decision. This intense individual always avoids assumptions – particularly when dealing with risk.

Play the odds. When making a decision, a successful individual always tries to understand the odds involved in his choice. He looks at the probability of a favorable outcome vs. an unfavorable outcome. Is there anything that can be done to increase the likelihood that the outcome will be favorable? Can he take steps to minimize the chance of unfavorable events? He only takes risks when the odds are in his favor.

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Career Intensity is taking the weekend off. You should too.

Take some time to reflect on the best things in your life. Enjoy the holiday weekend.

Career Intensity will return on Monday, December 26.

Best wishes for a happy, healthy and peaceful holiday season.

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Louis Pasteur, the famous French scientist, said, “Fortune favors the prepared mind.” In order to prepare yourself to welcome success, you need to replicate the mindset of high achievers and create your own luck.

Over the years, I have found that top performers – whether they were entrepreneurs, company executives, superstars of the academic world, or emerging leaders in business and public service – share four common qualities that draw opportunity toward them. Although these traits are often dismissed as being soft, they are the common denominator in those individuals who appear to be lucky, but who in fact attract success like a magnet. In sum, they take calculated risks; they create a positive environment for themselves and everyone around them; they work hard at making things simple; and they follow the 80/20 rule.

Starting Monday we will look at each of these traits.

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Have you ever wished for that one lucky break that would allow your dreams to become a reality, or reflected upon someone’s success and envied their luck? If so, you’re not alone. It has almost become a cliché to say someone is lucky. There is a degree of chance that is involved in everything in life. It seems that everyone is chasing luck but only a select few ever catch it.

A survey conducted by the Consumer Federation of America and the financial services firm Primerica revealed that 40 percent of Americans with incomes between $25,000 and $35,000 – and nearly one-half of respondents with incomes of $15,000 to $25,000 – thought that winning the lottery would give them their retirement funds. Overall, 27 percent of respondents said that their best chance to gain $500,000 in their lifetime was via a sweepstakes or lottery win. Even more astonishing is that this survey was conducted in 1999, during the stock market boom of the dot-com era. Untold numbers of people were becoming rich overnight by investing in the stock market or by starting up companies in their garages, yet a substantial portion of the American public still thought they could rely on luck to make themselves successful.

To become successful, you must make a decision to pursue success. You can’t leave it to chance. People who have Career Intensity make personal choices that are in line with their passion, their goals, and their tolerance for risk. They break through limiting beliefs and realize that they always have choices. Before you can move forward, you must give yourself the permission and the willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve your goals. Then, when you create the conditions in your career that will help you capitalize on opportunities as they arise, you will be in the position to reap the rewards of your journey.

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There is a question you need to ask yourself each day as you review your goals. This question is central to your ability to make your ambitions become reality. That question is, “What are you prepared to do?” Essentially, what are you prepared to sacrifice to make your goals become reality? The sacrifice may be temporary or it may be permanent. It may be long-term or it may be short-term. It may involve finance or it may involve quality of life. You should ask yourself this question repeatedly. Ask it during your goal development and during your implementation planning. Ask it each day as you review your goals and evaluate your progress.

You have made it through every challenge you’ve ever faced. And you have what it takes to get through many, many more. It can be frightening to stretch yourself and test your strength. It can also be energizing and invigorating. Go after your goals. Be aggressive and never quit. Don’t let difficult situations keep you from moving forward, ever closer to your goals.

Overcoming a difficult challenge can bring you a level of satisfaction that you cannot reach in any other way. Along with that satisfaction comes a solid confidence of knowing for certain that you’ve done it before and you can do it again.

When you seek challenge, you end up gaining achievement. By welcoming each challenge, you’re expressing and expanding your own confidence in a way that is truly genuine and enduring.

There was a time when you were challenged by many of the things you can now do without a second thought. Think of how far you’ve come as a result of your willingness to take on those challenges. And think of how very far you still can go when you welcome each challenge as the great opportunity it can be. Without challenges in your life, goals cannot be achieved. If your goal is to climb the highest mountain and you happen to be afraid of heights, then your goal becomes to overcome that fear. Are you getting the idea? Goals and challenges are intertwined. You can’t have one without the other.

Highly successful people ask this question constantly. If they have set their goals correctly, and if they are focused, the answer is always the same: “Anything.” So, at this point in your journey, what are you prepared to do?

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You are the only person qualified to judge your own success. Only you know what the roadmap to your destination looks like. Pretend that you are going on a long journey with some friends. You all start out from the same location. Everyone knows that it will take several days to get to the place you want to go. Everyone knows where that place is, but the friends you are traveling with do not know how to get there. You are the only person who has the map that will help you find your destination. Only you know which landmarks along the way will help keep you on course. How do you think the other travelers feel? Do you think they have blind faith that you will reach your destination? Some of them may, but the majority probably has doubts. They may believe that you have selected a destination that is too far from home or that may require too difficult a journey. They may also feel that you don’t know how to get from point A to point B. You have the map and only you can judge whether or not you are on course.

Time and again I have seen people set standards for others that were far too low, and they ended up shortchanging the potential of the individual. Only you know how much talent, skill, and knowledge you bring to any task that you attempt. Others have no true way of assessing your potential. In addition, only you can gauge your motivation toward achievement. Because no one has access to those aspects of your personality, they can’t judge whether or not you are capable of achieving your goals.

If you allow others to define your successes, they will ultimately define your future. It is crucial that you look at your future through your own lens and that you assess your own effort toward success. It is the only way to control your destiny.

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Your imagination is a powerful tool that you should leverage in mapping out your future. As previously discussed, your mind does not differentiate between what is real and what is imagined. There are three ways you can use your imagination as you begin your program of continuous improvement.

• Consciously shaping your daily activities to move you closer toward your goals.
• Making changes in your environment that will influence you – on conscious and unconscious levels – to focus on your goals.
• Behaving as though you have already achieved your goals.

While fear embedded in the unconscious mind can sabotage our success, the reverse is also true. You can use your unconscious mind to influence your thinking in order to achieve your goals. This is an incredibly powerful process that all successful individuals have mastered. Many of these people were unaware that they had actually “programmed” themselves for success, but in reality they had shaped their destiny deep within their unconscious minds long before reaping their rewards.

The first step in changing your mindset and moving toward a new position, or a new career, is to understand what is involved in the new role. For example, if you want to start a business, you should interview people who have started businesses that are similar. You will gain an understanding of their thought processes and behaviors. Observe them in action. See what they do and how they do it. Spend as much time in that environment as possible. Think about what you would do differently.

For example, let’s say that you want to become the owner of a McDonald’s franchise. Stop in your local McDonald’s and talk with the manager. Ask her what she likes about working there. Ask her what she thinks could be improved. Ask if you can contact the owner and speak with him. Ask him to tell you his success story. More often than not, people are happy to share their stories with you. Not only are you gaining information to prepare for an ownership role in the future, but you are also programming your unconscious mind to believe that you are already in that position.

Next, you should surround yourself with items that symbolize what you hope to become. If you want to become a McDonald’s franchise owner, cut out some photos of a McDonald’s restaurant and tape them to your wall. Read books about McDonald’s. Imagine your success in this role. If owning several of these restaurants will make you rich enough to buy a boat, put some pictures of boats up on your wall, too.

Finally, before you go to sleep at night and immediately upon waking in the morning, think about what your day would be like if you achieved this new position. As you fall asleep, imagine yourself counting your money with the manager who works for you. Imagine, in vivid detail, taking the briefcase full of money to the marina and purchasing your boat. Then, when you wake up the next day, imagine how your day would start if you owned that restaurant. Imagine pulling into the parking lot and seeing it full of cars. Imagine a counter packed with a line of happy customers being served by employees who smile and nod as you walk into the building.

The more you practice this process of acting as if you are in the role you seek, the more natural your transition into that role will become. You should not limit yourself to small dreams. Successful people acted in ways appropriate to the roles they would assume years before they achieved their success. When they got there, they felt and behaved as if they had been doing it all their lives.

Filed under: Mental Sharpness
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Successful people approach their every interaction in a manner that’s different than everyone else. People who are successful enter into each interaction with a desired outcome. They have an idea of what they want from each meeting, each phone call, and each email. The most successful individuals have internalized this behavior; they don’t even realize that they are doing it. There is also a flip side to this coin. Successful people are incredibly appreciative when other people are focused on achieving an outcome from a meeting or interaction. This helps them cut through clutter and enables them to be almost twice as productive as everyone else.

Many people ask me if, by outcome-driven, I mean communicating in a frank or direct way. Although direct communication is often helpful and appreciated, that is not my specific focus. In this case, I am referring to the thought process that occurs prior to an interaction, such as scheduling a meeting, accepting an invitation to a meeting, picking up the phone, writing an email, or even going to the store. Most people take these things for granted. You will sit in a meeting for an hour or more and then leave the room wondering why you just wasted an hour of your life. You go to the mall with no clear purpose and end up just killing time.

Outcome-driven thinking is about being in the moment. What you do right now will create your past and it will have an impact on your future. Your life is a collection of these finite opportunities. You do not know when they will run out, so you owe it to yourself to make the most out of each and every moment. Entertainers say that, when you go up onstage, you have to “be in the room.” You need to be in tune with everything that is going on around you and act in harmony with those events. You have to be present in order to make a difference. In business, use these moments to advance toward the outcome you seek. Take advantage of the fact that you have that critical person on the phone, or that they read email at the beginning of the day. Use these tools to your advantage.

Filed under: Mental Sharpness
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• Tips for Happiness in Daily Life
  Good Stuff
  (tags: lifehacks)
• Personal Growth in 2006
  A guide to setting your New Years Resolutions
  (tags: goals)

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Creating a new and exciting future begins with self awareness. I call this a Personal Situation Analysis.

The Coyote Within shares his thoughts on this topic with us in his post titled: Creating a Future. Here is the money quote:

“The holiday break is an ideal time to STOP and THINK about who you are, what you want from life, and whether the way you’re behaving today is the best way to get there.”

That’s the first step in continuous personal improvement.

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The Occupational Adventure tells us how to know when we might be in a rut:

1. …you can’t remember the last time you tried something for the first time.

2. …you compare yourself to others more than to your former self.

3. …you’ve become comfortable living a life filled with goals mostly unrealized.

4. …you find yourself playing the victim.

5. …you haven’t made a big mistake lately.

Check out Dave Anderson’s article by clicking here.

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There was an interesting article recently in The New York Times of the value of Education.  

The Times offers this thinking for determining if education makes sense:

Start with what economists are confident about: the payoff to individuals. By measuring the relationship between the number of years of schooling and income earned in the job market, economists think that they have a good idea of what it’s worth.

Alan B. Krueger, an economics professor at Princeton, says the evidence suggests that, up to a point, an additional year of schooling is likely to raise an individual’s earnings about 10 percent.

For someone earning the national median household income of $42,000, an extra year of training could provide an additional $4,200 a year. Over the span of a career, that could easily add up to $30,000 or $40,000 of present value. If the year’s education costs less than that, there is a net gain.

This is a good place to start but there are also intangibles that must be considered.  These include:

• The value of the network associated with the educational experience.
• The value of the self awareness that comes with a rigorous academic experience.
• The value of new creative thought process that comes with stretching ones intellectual capabilities. 

Remember that not everything that matters can be measured. 

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We have all heard the expression, “It don’t come easy” in reference to success. This is the truth. Although success may appear to happen in an effortless fashion, someone somewhere worked very diligently behind the scenes to ensure optimal results. You must prepare your mind for the difficult tasks that lay ahead of you as you drive your way toward success. Just as a world-class athlete spends years training his body to take the punishment of intense competition, you must train your mind for the battles you will face on the road to making your goals a reality.

Your mental training regime involves challenging yourself with completing increasingly difficult tasks that require you to be alone. The task, be it an intellectual pursuit like getting a degree, or an artistic pursuit like painting or writing poetry, will help you push your limits and develop the mental toughness you need to become a success.

You will learn more about yourself during this strenuous alone time than you would after hours spent on a psychologist’s couch. When you focus your alone time on really difficult tasks, you battle every vice you have. When you win these battles, you gain the confidence that comes with self-awareness. You will know how far you can push yourself, knowledge that is absolutely critical to your career success.

Filed under: Personal Productivity
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• Rules Are No Obstacles for Committed People
  More great stuff from Steve Pavlina
  (tags: goals life productivity work)
• How to manage your manager
  Making it happen through your boss
  (tags: boss business career)
• How to Start a Business without Money
  No cash no problem
  (tags: entrepreneur startup)
• Bootstrapping a Company
  Interesting perspective on starting your own business
  (tags: entrepreneurship)
• Answering 6 common interview questions
  Navagate your way through the common Q&A
  (tags: career interview job)

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Management Craft has a post about using a blog to build your career.  Here’s what Lisa Haneberg has to say:

I have long been critical of the traditional way we go about finding the best talent. You can see some of my thoughts in this post called, Resumes are So Yesterday.

Here is an interesting example of how people can be creative and use blogs to build their career.

Check out Sebastian’s approach on this blog:

• He shared the types of projects or jobs that would interest him.
• He offered a summary of his talents and experiences.
• Shared his career goals.
• Shared the work he is NOT interested in.

And Sebastian put himself out there - everything in the open. I think this is a great approach and a company can learn a lot about someone by reading their blog.

Recruiters should be reading bloggers with functional expertise they seek. It’s like cheating because by the time you get to the interview, you already know a lot about the person. TONS more than the average and useless resume might offer.

Lisa is correct.  You need to “put yourself out there”.  However if you are waiting for recruiters to search blogs for the talent you have to offer you’ll be waiting for a long time. 

People with Career Intensity make their own opportunities.  Blogs are just one weapon in their personal buzz creation arsenal.  They also network like crazy and they keep their contacts fresh (calling or e-mailing them to check in).  They send random notes to people they admire and they work hard at giving to others without an expectation of anything in return.

These are some of the best ways to generate personal buzz.  How many have you done today?

Filed under: Personal Buzz
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Business Pundit points us to a post at the BPS Research Digest that tells us what many people have suspected for a long time – Self Discipline makes a big difference in life. Here are the details:

In a first study, Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman (Positive Psychology Center, University of Pennsylvania) recruited 140 school children (average age 13 years) at the start of the academic year. In the Autumn, the children, their parents and teachers, all completed questionnaires about the children’s self-discipline. The measures asked things about the children’s ability to follow rules, to avoid acting impulsively, and to put off instant rewards for later gratification. Scores from the different measures were combined to create an overall indicator of self-discipline.

The researchers found self-discipline predicted all sorts of academic measures taken seven months later, including the children’s average grade for the academic year, their Spring exam result and their selection into High School.

A second study with 164 children (average age 13) followed a similar procedure but also involved the children taking an IQ test in the Autumn. Self-discipline again predicted later academic performance, as measured by their average grade for the year and their Spring exam result. Moreover, the researchers found that the children’s self-discipline scores accounted for twice as much of the variation in their later academic performance as their IQ did.

Now here’s the money quote:

“Underachievement among American youth is often blamed on inadequate teachers, boring textbooks, and large class sizes. We suggest another reason for students falling short of their intellectual potential: their failure to exercise self-discipline”.

What does this mean for your career?  It means that your career is what you make of it.  There is no acceptable excuse for a lack of career success.  If you work hard and maintain your self discipline, you can create the career of your dreams.

Filed under: Personal Productivity
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Because irrational fears are learned, you can “unlearn” them by changing your thought process. Using the same principle as the rubber band exercise discussed earlier, every time you catch yourself thinking about the “negative consequences” of success, immediately change your thought pattern. For example, when you think that if you are successful, your friends will perceive you as arrogant, you should immediately recognize this as a self-limiting thought. Then you can unlearn the fear by thinking, “It is possible but not probable that people will perceive me as arrogant, but that will only happen if I allow my behavior toward my friends to change. I will be successful and I will not change my behavior toward my friends. I control my behavior and my reactions. My success will actually allow me to spend more time with my friends.”

Preparing for success is the best way to overcome both your conscious and unconscious fears. Each day, you should spend time visualizing the new successful you. Imagine your success in as much detail as possible. If you aspire to be a successful executive in a company – an Intrepreneur – picture yourself in a big chair in a large corner office. Imagine your friends coming in and out to see you. If your dream is to open a wildly successful business as an Entrepreneur, imagine all of your employees lining up to shake your hand because you have created a company that has transformed their lives.

When you use this visualization process you are actually participating in a form of exposure therapy. Your unconscious mind does not make a distinction between imagination and reality, so when you imagine yourself as a rich successful executive, your mind starts getting used to the image. The more you expose yourself to a situation you fear, the less potent the fear becomes. You should use visualization several times a day to help you overcome any conscious or unconscious fear you may have that will hold you back on your journey to fulfill your dreams.

Filed under: Career Limiting Behavior
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It is probably bets to post this every few weeks as people learn about RSS readers and as the audience for blogs grows. Please read this and e-mail me if you have trouble.

Subscribing to a blog is easy. There are a few steps that you need to take.

First:
You need an RSS reader also known as an aggregator(RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication). Click here to get a free reader from Bloglines.

Next:
Just click on the button on the right side of this blog (you have to scroll down a bit) that says “sub|bloglines”.

Finally:
A window will open up and you will see some check boxes with the feeds from my blog. Check the top one and click the subscribe button.

This will add my blog to the left hand column of your bloglines home page. It will be bold whenever I have an updated post that you have not read.

That’s it. It’s that simple.

If you have a different RSS reader, you can copy and paste the RSS feed for my blog into it. The RSS feed for this blog is: http://careerintensity.com/blog/?feed=rss2

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I came across a great post on K’s Blog the other day that reminded me that the office holiday party has been the Waterloo of many careers. We go into it innocently thinking it is one thing and we get massacred.

When you attend your holiday party this year remember that it is a business meeting. Don’t go to have some drinks and a good time. Drinking and work don’t mix. Partying and work don’t mix. You will only find yourself regretting it the next day (and probably for a lot longer than that).

Do your celebrating with friends and family. If you say something stupid to them they will probably keep you around (at least mine always do).

Filed under: Career Limiting Behavior
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As much as you want to be the best, you’re afraid that if you actually achieve more, others will dislike you, shun you, and think you’re arrogant. You may also feel that the pressure of being successful may be too great a load to bear or that you will never live up to the expectations of others.

It is true that it is easier to get to the top than it is to stay on top. This is partially due to increased competition and increased expectations that come along with success. However, the rewards of high achievement far outweigh the burden of the duty and responsibility associated with staying there.

People who dislike you when you attempt to control your own career destiny are not your friends. They might say things like, “You have a perfectly good job now” or “Why are you wasting your time with a book or learning program?” The best approach to take with a naysayer is to understand her motivations. First, mediocrity loves company. Deep down, insecure people resent the success of others in their peer group. Your success only highlights their mediocrity. Second, as you move toward your career goals, you may have less in common with those who do not take control of their own destiny. They may sense this and push you away. Third, your focus on self-improvement may temporarily shift your focus away from the attention you have previously given to other people, which causes them to resent you.

How you handle these individuals is entirely up to you. I prefer to thank my friends and relatives for their concern and then continue on with my aggressive pursuit of success. Once the people who really care about me gain a sense of how success has changed my life, they become supportive.

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Other people may not like the change you’ve made, even if that change improves your life. When it comes to making a change, gaining approval can be the wind in your sails. When people who are important to you are skeptical or disagree with you, you feel like you are running up hill.

When we were kids, we all craved the approval of our parents and the elders in our social environment. People who grow up never gaining the approval of their parents (or other influential individuals) can often have a fear of disapproval that will limit their career progression.

When I was in culinary school, I had a classmate named Jessica who baked beautiful cakes. She was a naturally talented pastry artist. Jessica’s cakes would often be entered into contests and she would almost always win one of the prizes. This was quite ironic because Jessica did not score well on the practical exams the school gave to students as they finished their training. When I asked Jessica how she could do so well in the contests and then so poorly on the exams, her answer gave me my first exposure to the negative power of the fear of disapproval.

She told me that, in the contests, she was just baking for herself. She was trying to make the best product she could. The feedback she received was direct and without detail. Either she was a winner or she was not.

In class, the instructors always found something wrong with her work. In an exam, even if she received an “A,” she would be given feedback that told her what she could have done better. This fear of negative feedback – of disapproval – led her to try to make everything perfect in the short period of time that she had to complete the work for the exam. It was an impossible task, and one that reinforced her core fear.
Successful individuals are confident in their ideas and don’t require outside validation. In fact, they are motivated to prove others wrong. Because super-achievers are unique, it is no surprise to them when others do not approve of their actions or their ideas.

Intrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs typically don’t take conventional paths toward their goals. When you stray from the conventional or the familiar, you are likely to draw some curiosity – and some disapproval – from others. At the end of the day, though, the only person you have to answer to is yourself. You owe yourself every opportunity to succeed. If you let an opportunity pass you by because you are concerned about the disapproval of another person, you are robbing yourself. You can’t let someone else determine your fate.

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This blog is about the next generation of career development. If you ever wondered why some people have careers that are remarkable and others are stuck in the same job year after year then Career Intensity is for you.

Career development is not just about resume writing and composing good cover letters. Career development is about formulating a proactive strategy for your future.

Career Intensity: Business Strategy for Workplace Warriors and Entrepreneurs is career development for the next generation of super-achievers. Read Career Intensity and turbo-charge your career development plan today.

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• Feng Shui Career Tips
  An eastern approach to career success
  (tags: career)
• Ten Steps to a Successful Career Change
  Things to think about if you’re considering a career move
  (tags: career)
• The Hot List
  The best businesses to start in 2006
  (tags: career business entrepreneur)
• Pitching Angel Investors
  Looking for some financing?
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• Constraints breed breakthrough creativity
  Stirring up the creative genius in you
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Like each of us, you have a strong desire to do what you say you are going to do. The psychological need for your actions to match your words drives you to follow through on whatever commitments you make. That type of commitment implies hard work, and you’d rather not commit than compromise your integrity by failing to keep your word. This is especially true when you make a commitment to yourself.

The psychology of commitment is a mental Catch-22. Your impulse to keep your word – make your commitment come true - is so great that it causes you to avoid making commitments.

There are two ways to overcome this fear of commitment. The first is to contrast possibility with probability. If it is probable that you will accomplish the task at hand, then you should be able to make the commitment. For example, if you are asked to take on a job with tight deadlines and you are afraid that you will be unable to meet the deadlines, you may be reluctant to take the job. In reflecting on your work history, you can only think of one time when you did not meet a deadline – and that was due to the death of a family member. In this case, then, it is possible that you will miss deadlines but based on your track record, it is not probable.

The second way to tackle this fear is to view a large commitment as a series of smaller commitments. This is the one-day-at-a-time philosophy that has proved so successful in helping people break addictions. Your short-term concern is meeting your goal today. Before you know it, your days turn into months and your months turn into years. Each day of success becomes positive reinforcing behavior. In the process, the basis of your fear becomes familiar and is no longer a threat.

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• Indeed | one search. all jobs.
  New job Search tool
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• Is That the Best You Can Do?
  Steve’s thoughts on getting things done
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• Segment your to-do list
  How to stay organized
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What if the change you make isn’t for the better? What will people think of you? People will laugh at you if you fail, and you’ll be embarrassed.

A great way to approach this fear is to reflect upon successful people who have had very public failures and still managed to recover. One of my favorite examples concerns the repeated public failures of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln lost his job as a clerk in a general store in 1831. He ran for the Illinois state legislature in 1832 and lost. In 1843 he failed to win his party’s nomination for a congressional seat. He tried running for the Illinois Senate in 1854. He lost. In 1858 he unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate again. After each of those defeats, people laughed at Lincoln, yet in 1860, he was elected the 16th President of the United States. He has become one of history’s most respected figures. Most people do not know about his previous failures or that people laughed at him each time. Somehow, I do not think people were laughing at him when he gave the Gettysburg address.

The lesson to be learned is that history will be the ultimate judge of your success. You should not fear failure; each time you fail you are taking another step closer toward success.

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• Action Verbs Listed Alphabetically
  Great for resumes and Cover Letters
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• Ten Steps to Take Once You Outgrow Your Home Office
  If you must get and office, read this first
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As human beings, we all experience fear. Fear is an emotion that evolved as a form of protection from painful or possibly fatal situations. Rational fears protect us. Healthy fear keeps us from acting in ways that would put our lives in danger. It keeps us from walking into a lion’s den or placing our hands in a roaring fire. On the other hand, we develop irrational fears as the result of painful past experiences and conjure them up when we anticipate a similar negative experience. Irrational fears can hold us back and steal our dreams.

To help overcome irrational fear, many people use a great acronym that places it in the proper context. FEAR is False Evidence Appearing Real. People with Career Intensity – Intrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs – have discovered ways to overcome the Five Irrational Fears that prevent people from creating their own destiny:

The fear of the unknown. You don’t know what the future will bring. You may know that greater possibilities exist, but what you have now is familiar. It’s difficult to give up the certainty of the familiar for the uncertain rewards of the unfamiliar.

This major hurdle is usually associated with income, and is the fear that prevents most people from taking action. A few years ago, I was having lunch with a business leader I know and respect. This man was a partner in a very successful real estate development firm in New York City. During the course of our lunch, the topic of forming my own business came up. The developer asked me why I was working for a large company when I clearly had the talent to go out on my own and start a business. I responded that the timing was not right. His response comprised the truest words I have ever heard on this topic. He said, “There is never a good time. If you wait for a good time, you will never get going. You just have to face up to whatever concerns you and move forward.”

He was right. I waited a few more years and a good time never presented itself. I needed to just move forward and not look back. It was (and sometimes still is) scary, but the only way to make things happen is to face the fear and plow ahead – without looking back.

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That knot or sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach that you feel on Sunday night as you look ahead to another week at work and the dread that envelopes you as you perform the mundane tasks that fill your days at the office are the career equivalent of flashing red lights. They are sure signs that you haven’t discovered and channeled your passion – that you haven’t taken the steps necessary to move toward your goals and achieve your dreams.

When you assume responsibility for your career, you will move into the driver’s seat and take control of your destiny. When you overcome the fears that keep your career stuck in neutral, you can accelerate toward your goals. When you clearly understand the impact of your decisions and actions, you have a roadmap to success. Ultimately, you become driven by an unstoppable force that is, in essence, Career Intensity.

Once you have made the commitment to value creation through the process of continuous improvement, you are on your way to becoming an intense, driven person who will stop at nothing until you are living your dream. At this point, you must carefully exorcise the self-doubt that will drive your career into a ditch.

You will achieve all of your goals. It will happen. Whenever a doubt creeps into your mind, you need to banish it as if it were the enemy. Doubt is the enemy of success. As long as you have the ability to draw breath you have the ability to achieve your goals. You are smart enough and you have as much ability to become successful as anyone else.

To reinforce this thinking, get a rubber band and put it around your wrist. Any type of rubber band will do. Now, when you find yourself daydreaming about your goals or your future success and a doubt creeps into your thoughts, snap the rubber band. When you feel the sting, tell yourself that self-doubt can only hurt your progress and that, as you move forward, there is no room for it in your life. Immediately think about a positive action you can take to make your daydream a reality. The trick is to associate pain with the negative thought and replace it immediately will a positive image. Practice this exercise for a week, or until you find yourself immediately replacing negative thoughts and self-doubt with possibilities.

Your mind has the ability to create any world that you can imagine. Perspective is simply the way you see things, and not necessarily the way they really are. The first step in developing Career Intensity lies in taking control of your own mind by controlling your thoughts. It’s your responsibility.

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• Myths about Women Entrepreneurs
  Let’s clear this up right now
  (tags: entrepreneurship)
• Online networking used by half of U.S managers
  Blog for a new job
  (tags: blogging tips)
• Small Biz 101: How to Get Started
  Start now and move fast
  (tags: startup entrepreneurship)
• What Can’t People Interview Well?
  Interview tips
  (tags: interview)
• What’s your story?
  Can you tell the story of your career?
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• The State Of Holiday Bonuses In America
  See what could be under your tree
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Slacker Manager points us to an article at Inside Work that talks about bad bosses. The article correctly asserts that there are too many people who are unqualified filling managerial roles.

This is something I come across almost everyday in the corporate world. Part of the reason is talent and the rest of it is training. You need to have some natural, innate ability to lead people. There are many people who are good at “manager” roles – controlling the completion of tasks or projects and handling administrative responsibilities – who cannot motivate, train and develop other people.

What does this mean for you? Actually it means everything. If you work in a corporate environment you have a dependency on the person in the role of you supervisor. You need to go to him/her for approval on various tasks and you are held accountable by him/her. Dysfunction in this relationship will have the same implications as dysfunction in a marriage. The result will be emotional or physical breakdown and the potential severance of the relationship.

What can you do? You can take control of your destiny. There are a number of ways to do this. Here are a couple of those ways:

Create some passive income that will allow you to be less dependent upon your job (and your boss) for earning a living. Investing in real estate is one way to earn some passive income. Another way is to start a blog and get sponsorship or post ads. A third way is to earn a little money from a hobby. I know a woman who makes beautiful gift baskets. She enjoys the creative aspects of this work. The money she makes is good but it’s not enough for her to leave her job. This hobby income does give her some piece of mind.

Start a part-time job that could become a full-time job. Many entrepreneurs begin working in their businesses as part-timers. If you can slowly build a base of clients you can build your confidence and mentally prepare to leave the corporate world.

Bad bosses are everywhere. Don’t give them psychological power over your future. You control your destiny.

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Eddie Cantor, a star of stage, screen, radio, and TV from 1904 to 1960 famously said, “It took me twenty years to become an overnight success.” Let’s think about that literally. If I told you today that your dreams would come true if you gave 100 percent effort everyday toward those dreams for the next 20 years, would you be able to do it? Let’s say that you could make a fine living and you would be comfortable, but that you had to give 100 percent of your effort toward your dream each eight-hour workday, five days a week for the next 20 years. Would you be able to sustain that type of effort to accomplish you most fantastic ambition? What if it took ten years? Could you maintain your persistence over the long haul?

Persistence – sustained effort in the face of adversity – is exactly what it takes to realize your dreams. You will have incremental successes along the way that will help to keep you motivated. Ultimately, though, the will to keep going will be the most critical aspect of your success.

As you begin looking at ways to enhance your career, you must be persistent in your desire to improve.

How many times have you missed an appointment, a party, or an event, only to have someone tell you that it was fantastic? I want you to remember the feeling you have when you discover that you missed out. You should feel that way right now about your career. At this very moment, great things are happening for other people. What is the difference between you and them? They are present. They show up. They engage themselves in the process of making their careers better each and every day. The value of showing up each day – in body, mind, and spirit – cannot be overstated. You need to break through obstacles and keep showing up.

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Years ago, the television show Gilligan’s Island centered around a group of people who were stranded on a deserted island in the Pacific Ocean. This group of folks was ingenious in finding ways to stay alive and create small comforts while marooned, yet they could not find a way to get off the island. They managed to fight off wild animals, illnesses, storms, and various bad guys, yet they could not find a way to strap some of the trees together and make a boat in order to get home.

Many people have a career that is stuck on Gilligan’s Island. They are incredibly creative and valuable individuals. They contribute enormous value to their workgroup and to the company as a whole, yet they never break out and realize their actual worth. They can never get off of the island.

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• It’s Not Dangerous
  Ten reasons why blogging is good for your career
  (tags: career blog blogging)
• How to Make a Million Dollars
  Great practical advice
  (tags: entrepreneur startup)
• It’s a great time to be an entrepreneur
  Hope for everyone
  (tags: entrepreneur)
• Maintaining Motivation
  How to keep going when you’re on your own
  (tags: motivation work tips)
• Success & Motivation - Blog Maverick
  Good Success Stories
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People, technology, experience, and time are the four most common accelerants leveraged by successful people as they focus on goal achievement, but there are certainly others. Your only limit in finding accelerants to help you achieve your goals is your creativity or, better yet, the creativity of those around you.

People: Successful individuals multi-task, but they don’t tackle every task themselves. Instead, they enlist other people to help them by creating a win-win scenario for the person who is the accelerant. In the mentor-protégée relationship, for example, the protégée benefits from the learning associated with completing tasks that are critical to the mentor, and the mentor offers guidance on how the protégée can achieve greater success in life.

Technology: You can use technological accelerants to e-mail, fax, or leave a voice mail for anyone at any hour of the day or night. This asynchronous communication is effective when you have task-oriented items to cover with colleagues. Interactive or synchronous communication has also benefited from evolving technologies. Mobile phones, two-way messaging devices, and instant messaging all offer you the opportunity to communicate anywhere at any time.

Experience: There are two different ways experience can help facilitate goal achievement. The first is when you have direct, relevant experience and can rely on it as a rough roadmap to guide you through the completion of the task at hand. The second is when the relevant experience is available to you in the form of another person’s success. You don’t need to have an actual relationship with the person to use their success to your advantage; you need only to have access to a recorded history of their success methodology. You can then replicate their behavior and duplicate their success.

Time: One way time can be used as an accelerant is in a negotiation process. If one party has to make a decision by a certain date, time is certainly not in that party’s favor. Time is, however, a huge advantage to the party who is making the offer – provided they know about the time pressure faced by the other side.

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People with Career Intensity are outstanding at convincing others to help implement their solutions. They are master persuaders who have a quality product – themselves and the value they provide – and the subtle skills necessary to convince others of their value. The integrity and reliability of a top performer enhances his reputation, which makes his target audience more receptive to his idea, product, or service.

In order to convince others of your value, you first must believe in the value you provide and build a foundation of integrity in all of your business dealings. You also need to learn that others process information either directly, though sound, logical arguments, or indirectly through more subtle cues. You can then learn to “read” people and position your proposal in a manner to which your target audience will be most receptive. Finally, you must develop credibility in the minds of your target audience members. When you do, you can employ the tactics of master persuaders to sell your idea, product, or service.

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• Problem Solving Techniques from Mind Tools
  Good article to get us thinking
  (tags: creativity)
• Tips for applying to a job from Craigslist.
  Good basic info
  (tags: career job interview)
• Secrets of Satisfying Careers
  Values and your career
  (tags: career business work)
• Top 7 Tricks to Getting an Interview
  Gimmicks, yes but one of them just might work
  (tags: interview job)

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There are two types of heroes in this world: Those who die nobly for a cause and those who live humbly for a cause.

My father is the second kind of hero. He worked for IBM for 40 years and his career was a model of loyalty, persistence and durability.

Loyalty is an important quality that was instilled in me by my parents. In growing up, my sister and I were taught to be loyal to God, Country, and IBM – in that order. Our family relocated on a couple of occasions so that my father could improve the scope of his career opportunities within the organization. Of course, decisions were always made in the context of what was best for our family, but nary a harsh word was spoken about the company that put the food on the table for so many years.

Twenty years ago, people would have accepted the longevity of my father’s career as significant but unremarkable. Such tenure symbolized a solid company that had the interests of its employees at heart. Today, when I tell people about my father’s 40 years at IBM, they are astonished. In the twenty-first century, a long career with one company symbolizes the staying power of the individual.

Over the past two decades, we have witnessed a seismic shift in loyalty, in terms of both the loyalty employers show their employees and the loyalty employees feel toward their employers. In effect, both the needs of individuals and the needs of companies have evolved over the years.

The best businesses in every industry are focused not only on how to succeed today, but also how to sustain growth and profitability for the long term. They realize that what works today may not work tomorrow, and that their currently successful strategy may be their competitor’s strategy in the near future. To maintain a competitive advantage, they must have the ability to nimbly move from one approach to another that will be even more effective down the road. Companies live and die by their ability to differentiate from one another and maintain that point of differentiation.

At the same time, the demands thrust on individuals in the corporate world have dramatically increased during the course of the past five decades. As technology advanced the ability to accomplish more with less effort, individuals have been called upon to perform tasks that previously required a team to complete. Processes such as Lean Management, Six Sigma, and Total Quality Management, along with millions of consultants, have streamlined processes to the point where maximum departmental or workgroup productiv