Saturday, January 24, 2015

5 minutes a week to advance your career

5 minutes a week to advance your career | Computerworld: In reality, simple advice like this is not as universally helpful as we would like to think. Focusing on hot skills may be useful for some, but for many it’s a complete diversion because the paths that people follow through IT careers are remarkably varied. Some pass easily from technical roles to management and back. Some oscillate between employment and contracting. Some even follow the traditional path of staying with one organization and climbing the corporate ladder.
























But there is one thing that everyone can benefit from, regardless of what path you choose to follow, and that you can realistically accomplish given the day-to-day demands of work and life. Just take five minutes each week to reach out to someone from your past. Everyone can find five minutes a week — five minutes that would otherwise go to looking at your smartphone, waiting for people to arrive at a meeting, drinking your morning coffee or eating lunch at your desk.

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

What a Market Correction Would Really Look Like | Some business and investment information to consider

What a Market Correction Would Really Look Like | Fox Business: In considering this aging bull market, some sobering facts from John P. Hussman, Ph.D., of the Hussman Funds: “Recall that the 2000-2002 [market] collapse wiped out the entire total return of the S&P 500 in excess of Treasury bill returns, all the way back to May 1996."

Hussman adds: “The 2007-2009 collapse wiped out the entire total return of the S&P 500 in excess of Treasury bill returns, all the way back to June 1995. If the S&P 500 was to experience nothing but a run-of-the-mill 34% bear market decline over the coming three years, it will have underperformed Treasury bills for what would at that point be an 18-year period since 1999.”

Saturday, January 3, 2015

4 Keys to Shedding the Attitudes Keeping You Stuck

4 Keys to Shedding the Attitudes Keeping You Stuck: It happens to all of us: We become comfortable in how we think, how we lead and how we behave and react to things, and then we end up stuck in our ways.

Even when things are not working as well as they could or should, or if others criticize us and give us direct feedback, it can be a hard to recognize and own our predicament. We often feel that, after all, the way we’ve always done things has worked, hasn’t been that bad, so why change now?

New Study Finds Minimum Wage Increases Hurt Low-Skilled Workers | Cato @ Liberty

New Study Finds Minimum Wage Increases Hurt Low-Skilled Workers | Cato @ Liberty: A new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that significant minimum wage increases can hurt the very people they are intended to help. Authors Jeffrey Clemens and Michael Wither find that significant minimum wage increases can negatively affect employment, average income, and the economic mobility of low-skilled workers. The authors find that significant “minimum wage increases reduced the employment, average income, and income growth of low-skilled workers over short and medium-run time horizons.”

The 4 Habits You Need to Be Successful

The 4 Habits You Need to Be Successful | Fox Small Business Center: The most successful people in this world maintain and master good habits. They realize what they do on a daily basis and where they direct their energy deeply matters when it comes to reaching their goals.

The habits you have picked up over the past couple of years is a reflection of where you are right this moment.

The sad news is that most people don’t have very good habits. The great news is if you are unhappy where you are at in your life you can gradually change the trajectory by altering what you do daily. To achieve high levels of success, you must start to develop the habits of the highly successful.