Letters Remain

Tag: personal-development

  • Graduating into the Recession and What Next

    For recent graduates, those in their early 20’s and, well, almost everyone else, the job market at the moment is overwhelming bad. There’s hope, of course, and this interview between recent graduate and entrepreneur Alex J. Mann and Phila Lawyer discussing what it’s like graduating into one of the nastiest job markets in history is a good…

  • Determination, Long-Terms Goals, Success

    Determination and long-term goal-setting may be more contributory to success than intelligence, suggests research being conducted by Angela Duckworth and her contemporaries. These two traits (perseverance and keeping long-term goals in mind) are affectionately called ‘grit’ by researchers in the field and—according to a 2007 paper on the subject (pdf)—play an important role in many…

  • Goal Setting and Affluence

    You’ve heard of the Yale Goal-Setting Study, right? The one that goes like this: In 1953 a team of researchers interviewed Yale’s graduating seniors, asking them whether they had written down the specific goals that they wanted to achieve in life. Twenty years later the researchers tracked down the same cohort and found that the…

  • The 12 Core Human Skills

    Elaborating on a concept from one of my favourite posts written by Dilbert creator Scott Adams (career advice: either “become the best at one specific thing” or “become very good (top 25%) at two or more things”), Josh Kaufman of Personal MBA suggests the 12 core human skills that we should strive to become very good…

  • Self-Esteem vs Self-Discipline in Children

    Self-esteem, we are told, is a great virtue to foster in a child, hence the many school programs to instill it in young children and the self-help experts extolling its benefits to all who will listen. This is folly, says psychologist Angela Duckworth in this interview where she discusses the futility of attempting to enhance…

  • 30 Ways to a Better Person

    As Trent says, this article’s original title—30 Days to a Better Man—may exclude a large proportion of readers, and this is a bad thing. It’s a bad thing because these 30 articles compiled together to help you “improve in […] relationships, fitness and health, career, and personal finances” are not only excellent, but apply equally to both…

  • Laziness, Impatience, Hubris

    The three virtues of a programmer, according to Larry Wall (in Programming Perl): Laziness The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don’t have to answer so many questions about…

  • How To Be Happy in Business

    ‘What we do well’, ‘What we can be paid to do’ and ‘What we want to do’ are the sets in Bud Caddell’s ‘How To Be Happy in Business’ Venn diagram. Reminding me of the love–growth–cash triangle (previously posted), this Venn diagram is an infographic worth looking at on an annual or semi-annual basis to quickly…

  • Advice for Design and Life, from Milton Glaser

    Milton Glaser, the designer best known for creating the ‘I ♥ NY’ logo, offers ten pieces of advice from a life in design: You can only work for people that you like: “all the work I had done that was meaningful and significant came out of an affectionate relationship with a client”. If you have…

  • Advice from Hoehn’s Year

    One year after setting his personal goals Charlie Hoehn takes a look back at his achievements and offers some fantastic advice: Your friends who don’t care or are stupid will use Monster, CareerBuilder, and Craigslist (I was one of these stupid people for a few weeks). They will compete with hundreds of people for mediocre…