Career change: making an average day, a great day
“Time to head back to the salt mines.” said my supervising law partner as we would leave lunch or anything else that was marginally fun. The typical metaphor of equating work with drudgery stems from the view that work days are not good days. This need not be the case. Work can be elevating. Work […]
Career Renewal in the Spring
Alex came in to see me after he was laid off. Alex worked for a large corporation in Fairfield County. The corporation was not immune to the economic restructuring of the last decade. Alex had simply been fortunate not to get the ax earlier. As he told his story, he mentioned different downsizing moves by […]
Mothers Reentering the Work Force
It is wise to enter the Mommy Wars cautiously. The battles over the best ways to be a mother are fraught with tension with the battle over those who work “outside the home” (the new phrase to ensure that those who work inside the home are not offended!) and those that stay at home (is […]
Summer: career planning
While the real answer to “when is it the best time to find a new job” is whenever you need one. And, even without such a silly response, the real answer is that the job market never stops. People do get hired even on Christmas Day. But, of course, the last two weeks in December […]
You will figure it out! How Career Changers Succeed
At my best… which was not always the case in my 30s when I built The Learning Consultants… but has become more frequent as The Learning Consultants and its subsidiary Career Counseling Connecticut reaches year 20, I think “I will figure it out” when a problem arises. “I don’t know how to do bookkeeping or […]
Former GE Employees: We can help
“You start doing something and close your eyes long enough, you can’t imagine doing anything else.” a bartender explaining why he still works at a bar despite being an alcoholic in The Numbers Station (a forgettable John Cusack film). My friends at General Electric would sometimes talk to me similarly. They were “institutionalized”. Each had worked at […]
The Sunk Cost Fallacy: Why putting more time into a mismatched career makes no sense
“It’s kind of like chasing good money after bad in gambling, right?” Ryan, a twenty four year old financial analyst from Stamford said. I was explaining the sunk cost fallacy. We have a built in bias to weigh more heavily on avoiding past losses than acquiring future gains. In Ryan’s case, he majored in finance, didn’t really […]
Regret: More painful than failing
As my peers are now in their 50s, I’m regularly having conversations with those who have gone through the bulk of their careers. I think of my friends and one conclusion is unmistakable: those that took some risk – not great risk – but some risk to shift their careers in a manner that better […]
Summer Vacation Is Coming: Find a new job so you can fully enjoy your vacation
I live in Old Saybrook, Connecticut and have an office in Madison, Connecticut. So, I meet many residents of other Connecticut towns who are on vacation. When we talk about their work, jobs, or careers, most seem to have one thing in common: they get annoyed by work interruptions during vacation and dread going back […]
Anxious? Sleepless nights? Maybe you should see a career advisor, not a psychologist
“I’ve spent the last two years with a psychologist who said she would help me with my career issue and you helped more in one hour than she has in 20 sessions,” Emily said. I love psychology. People fascinate me. My life’s work has been devoted to helping others and among my very few gifts […]