Career hacks

Taking a Leap is Most Difficult the First Time

August 17, 2011

“Now that she had done it once, she had the itch.” — Tim Ferris in The 4-Hour Workweek

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Climbing Mountains

August 7, 2011

I don’t consider myself religious, but I am spiritual. And I’ll take motivation and inspiration no matter what shape they’re in. So I was psyched this morning at the gym when Joel Osteen, pastor of the mega-church I used to attend in Houston, showed up on the television screen in front of the bike I […]

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Making Difficult Decisions Easy

July 17, 2011

As I hemmed and hawed over a decision this weekend, my girlfriend reminded me, “You only have one life. How do you want to spend it?” It’s a cliche, yes. As writers, we’re taught to avoid cliches like, well, the plague. We’re taught to cut them from our writing and fling them over the fence […]

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Dreaming Big

July 11, 2011

Thanks to all of you who completed my one-question survey about what you’d like to learn on this blog. It’s so helpful already! If you missed the weekend post — or you read via RSS feed and didn’t see the survey (sorry about that!) — you can answer the question here. I was emailing with […]

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To get big things done, let small bad things happen

July 4, 2011

Our culture has it backwards when it comes to retirement. Why work myself to death during my youth and save all the fun for when I’m older, and likely less energetic and less mobile? Tim Ferriss echoes these sentiments in his book, The 4-Hour Workweek. I had low expectations for this read because, well, there’s […]

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Most of your obligations are actually choices

June 22, 2011

“If you say you never could do that, you certainly never will. But every one of those obligations is a choice. Getting up in the morning is a choice. Taking your kids to that game, going to work. You face hundreds of choices every day, and you just keep saying yes, yes, yes to them. […]

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What Gives You More Freedom: Renting or Owning?

June 15, 2011

I tend to think owning a home in your twenties or early thirties is over-rated. There are great reasons to buy, like wanting life to feel stable for your kids, or turning a fixer-upper into a project, or if it makes sense financially. And I mean really makes sense financially for you, not just that […]

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On Evil Plans: When Scheming Becomes Planning

June 8, 2011

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my Next Big Adventure. Pondering. Plotting. Scheming. Not quite to the point where I’m ready to tell the world what that Big Adventure might be… but yes, scheming. And today something happened that turned my scheming into planning. It started with my eyes hurting at work, sore from […]

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Why You Should Take That Leap Now

April 18, 2011

~ A follow-up to How to Find the Guts to Take a Leap When I was 23 and interning at The New Zealand Herald in Auckland, I heard the Associated Press, a news service, was hiring a correspondent for their South Pacific bureau. I’d already fallen in love with New Zealand, knew I wanted to […]

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How to Find the Guts to Take a Leap

April 7, 2011

I bet, after reading that headline, you know what leap I’m talking about, what “leap” means for you. Chances are, if you’re reading this blog, you’re looking for the guts to throw yourself into your writing or take a career break to travel. Or maybe you want to change jobs or move to a new […]

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