Category: Success

When I speak with people, I have a completely different experience from the experience I have when I write to people.  Hearing someone laugh makes me feel different from the way I feel when I read LOL. Using email and sending text messages is simple and one-sided.  I tell you what I want to you…… Continue reading Jobs And Relationships: The Power of Speaking With People

Job confidence feels good, makes us healthier, gives us energy, and enables us to focus. Confidence is the friend of success. Uncertainty and its ugly sibling cockiness are the foes of success. Feeling confident when we are in the middle of success is easy.  Feeling confident when we are in the middle of frustration is…… Continue reading Job Confidence

Business Power: Taking Command 90 Minutes into the Job I read a lot of articles about companies using 90 days to know whether a person will work out at a company.   I have never seen anything in business that supports this thinking.  Often companies place people in jobs where the company can not know…… Continue reading Business Power: Taking Command 90 Minutes into the Job

Attitudes: Some people have a natural, positive attitude. Life has blessed them with wonderful circumstances or wonderful minds and emotions. Understanding Moods and Attitudes When I am in hungry, tired, or rushed, things can seem more personal.   I may feel more anxious or impatient.   My mood declines and my attitude declines with it.…… Continue reading Attitudes are Contagious: Catch the Good Ones. Heal the Bad Ones

Focus on the Job not the Boss. Bosses may come and bosses may go.  Bosses have good days, and bosses have bad days.  Some bosses make work a joy.  Other bosses make the people around them miserable. It is helpful for me to remember that the boss is not the job.  The reason that I…… Continue reading Focus on the Job not the Boss.

Sometimes The Best Way to Start Exercising is Simply to Walk Out the Door. This morning I was having trouble getting started on an exercise program.   So I just put on my shoes, my sweatshirt, and walked out the door. I walked to the end of the street and turned left. I walked along…… Continue reading Sometimes The Best Way to Start Exercising is Simply to Walk Out the Door.

5 Signs I Have Lost Focus on the Job When I feel anxious, I have lost focus.  My mind is not on what is going on around me.  My mind is on what I imagine might happen. There is a difference between planning for future events and creating scary scenarios of what might happen.  I…… Continue reading 5 Signs I Have Lost Focus on the Job

Why Leaders Tell People What to Do When I was sixteen, I worked as a grocery clerk.  On my second day on the job, I showed up at my work station a few minutes after the time to start to work. The store supervisor called me over. He told me that I was late for…… Continue reading Why Leaders Tell People What to Do

7 Action Steps to Productivity Assess and Adjust.  Life does not always go according to my plans.  I can do several things when I meet frustration. I can ruminate on how unfair life is to me. I can blame other people for my frustrations. I can feel sorry for myself and play the victim. On the…… Continue reading 7 Action Steps to Productivity

Building a Successful Business or Career Never Ends. It is a continual process of expanding your goods, services, skills, and network. Building a Successful Business or Career Never Ends. Building a business or a career is a continual process of expanding your goods, services, skills, and network.  The day I sat down to start my…… Continue reading Building a Successful Business or Career Never Ends

Thank you everyone for your support in nominating JayWren.com to Forbes top career sites.  I learned this morning that I made the list. Forbes writers Jacquelyn Smith and Susan Adams reviewed hundreds of websites and thousands of comments to reach their decision.  It is a real honor to be among their choices. The excellent articles…… Continue reading Forbes Top Career Sites

Clap your hands.   Have you ever noticed how American football teams huddle before each play?  What is the last thing that the players do before breaking the huddle?  They slap their hands together in unison.  They clap.  They are practicing the rhythm of focus.  In the huddle, each player receives the assignment for the next…… Continue reading 5 Techniques for Better Focus

8 Ideas for Enjoying Work Find the beat of your own drum and march to it.  It is so easy for me to get distracted and off course when I look at what other people are doing and imitate those people.  What I often find is that the direction that those people are going is…… Continue reading 8 Ideas for Enjoying Work

I heard Ed Land, who founded Polaroid Corporation, speak on the role of the inventor.  Land stated that it was his job to imagine things before they happened.  His approach began with identifying a need and creating a way to meet that need.  Ed Land provided solutions.  On the day he spoke, he said that…… Continue reading Become the Solution

How To Hire The Best People I had a partner who would tell clients that when they made a job offer they were halfway to making a hire.  Finding and interviewing great people is only the beginning process in hiring great people.  Working with those people through the interview process to the point of accepting an…… Continue reading How To Hire the Best People

13 Action Steps to Getting Promoted or Getting Hired Below are thirteen powerful steps to help you be successful in your current job or to make career move. Step into action: Offer to help each person you contact.  Building a professional network begins with helping other people. Become a research wizard.  It is no longer necessary…… Continue reading 13 Action Steps to Getting Promoted or Getting Hired

How to Write an Effective Job Description Job descriptions have multiple purposes. Job descriptions are essential when posting a job. For job posting purposes, a job description is promotional material used to attract people to apply for a job. The job description should enable hiring managers as well as the applicants understand the requirements and…… Continue reading How to Write an Effective Job Description

The following search wording should work on most search engines. Also, except for the math phrases, the job search engine at JayWren.com and most other job search engines are enabled to use these search phrases. The source for these phrases comes from Google.com.  What that fact means is that if you are looking for a job…… Continue reading 10 Nifty Search Engine Tools for Business, Career, and College

It can be very challenging for people who work long hours at a desk to get enough exercise to stay trim, condition their heart, vessels, arteries, and lungs, maintain muscularity, and avoid spinal deterioration. The effects of daily sitting at a desk over prolonged periods of time can be debilitating. Beyond a regular exercise program…… Continue reading Desk Jockeys and Exercise

There are third-party applications that will post your online updates to your accounts at membership sites. However, you can easily connect your membership accounts without sharing your information with third party applications.  Using just the three largest sites will give you a great deal of exposure. To navigate through these steps, open a second browser…… Continue reading Webcast Your Updates and Discussions from LinkedIn to Twitter to Facebook/Facebook Page.

Compulsive mouse-clicking is a powerful, mood-altering method for avoiding work.  Clicking around through business folders and business websites feels like work. The process may even resemble work. However, the process does not produce the results of starting and finishing one task at a time. MY PERSONAL STORY OF COMPULSIVE MOUSE-CLICKING On some days, I can…… Continue reading Has a Mouse Taken Over Your Career?

Communication that Works: All Do’s, No Don’ts Tell people what you want them to do, not what you don’t want them to do. A guest lecturer at one of my undergraduate classes put on note on the chalkboard and quickly erased the note and posted a different note. She then explained her action.  She said…… Continue reading Communication that Works: All Do’s, No Don’ts

I schedule five things to do each day. This habit is one I have used for years but got away from for a period of time as I was adjusting to computer-based scheduling. I imagine most people who read this article are already using some type of electronic calendar. As we all know too well,…… Continue reading Is Over Committing Killing Your Career?

The philosophy towards careers and business has made a tremendous shift in Millennium 2. During the 1980’s and 1990’s, American business and economics looked very different from the way it looks now. The mentality of this time period was based more on the philosophy that there will always be more.  Lifestyles were geared toward working…… Continue reading Careers in Millennium 2: From Excess to Less is More

I have a choice today to paint my day and the day of the people I meet by choosing words that go down or words that go up. I have a stellar idea. I am going to take the path of great teachers who only say things they want students to remember. I am only…… Continue reading Paint Your Day with Brilliance Through Word Choices

ANGLO-SAXON WORDS  The basic principles for business writing and public speaking is to get accurate information to reading or listening audience.   The best communicators select words that will ensure that their message is easy to understand. For business and public speaking, the power of their material is in the subject matter. SENTENCE STRUCTURE Simple…… Continue reading Simple, Effective Business-Writing and Public-Speaking Principles

TALK HAPPY I worked with a great guy who was always fun to see. He is the only man who ever called me “Sunshine.” This name was not even a man crush kind of thing.  My buddy just greeted all people with a smile and some enthusiastic greeting or another.  For me the greeting was…… Continue reading Be Extraordinary: 3 Ways to Turn Your Day into a Celebration!

The Benefits of Creating Your Own Career Plan A CAREER PLAN CREATES DIRECTION. In a sense, everyone has a career plan.  Some people just do not know what it is or where that plan leads. When entering kindergarten or first grade, children begin to participate in a career plan.  The school system laid out the plan.  The…… Continue reading The Benefits of Creating Your Own Career Plan

Work breaks are important to your health and to your work performance. If you are unemployed and in a career search, keeping yourself healthy while experiencing the added stress of looking for a job is critical to keeping up your self-confidence and maintaining a strong self-image. Even if you workout before or after work and…… Continue reading Daily Sessions to a More Powerful You

Developing your online profile is as important to your career as developing as your reputation at work or developing your resume for your career change. The information you post online may also be more in-depth and broader than the information you put in your resume.  On LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook, and Twitter, you will find that you…… Continue reading Your Online Profile for Business and Career

After going through a lengthy project that may take several days, I find that the project required so much attention and had such a long list of things to get done, that I get away from preparing a schedule for the day’s activities. This morning was one of those days for me.  What happens on…… Continue reading Creative Ways to Manage Any Process

Medium is a community website that publishes articles from writers who collaborate to help each other create better material before publication. The website is a great place for business people to get stimulating ideas from outside their community to refresh their business, career, and home life perspectives.  The theme of writers helping writers create better material…… Continue reading Community Building: People Create Better Things Together

Everyone has days or even jobs in which they may not be able to do everything that needs to be done. Additionally there are times when the obvious choices of what to do are not always the best choices. So how do you select the best things to do for that day? A good approach…… Continue reading Time Management | Control the Controllable

Performance takes energy. Peak performance takes knowing the pace for the race to use energy most effectively. I ran a 10K run in which I was wildly excited to get started. I came out and set my pace as closely as I could to the runners who appeared to be the best runners in the…… Continue reading Set a Pace that Enables You To Be More Productive

Creating a list of things that I love about my work is a great way to enjoy the things I do every day.  Here are four of the things I love about my job. FUN I have a lot of fun working in the recruiting industry.  The requirements of the job are simple yet fast…… Continue reading Employment Matters: 4 Things I love About My Job.

THE FEELINGS OF SUCCESS How you feel about yourself and your world will have a great deal to do with how well you interact with other people.  These feelings also will have a great deal to do with how other people interact with you. SMILE I talked to a guy one time who said that…… Continue reading Employment Matters: You Matter.

I know that using the word “rehearse” to describe the word “spontaneous” create a bit of an oxymoron. However, I find it helpful to have a pocketful full of little phrases to use when I am in a discussion that may involve disagreement or tension. For a couple of reasons, I need at least to…… Continue reading Be Extraordinary: Rehearse Spontaneous Answers.

When you don’t like what you are saying to yourself, change the subject. I learned some time back that the quality of my thinking is related to my moods.  My moods may go up after I eat or listen to music or get some rest or get some good news.  My moods may go down…… Continue reading Be Extraordinary: When You Don’t Like What You are Saying to Yourself, Change the Subject.

There are times when the boss needs to know.  Extraordinary people know when they should call the boss. At sea as a Navy officer I stood watches which included the safe navigation (piloting) of the ship.  As a new ensign in the Navy, I served on an aircraft carrier and never expected to see the…… Continue reading Be Extraordinary: Know when to call the boss.

I once heard a guy say that he got the humility button, but he had to give it back because he wore it. So humility can not be worn like a badge.  When I forget that point, I pay a price in relationships and income. In an earlier article titled “Be Extraordinary:  Be Wrong,” I discussed how…… Continue reading Be Extraordinary: Practice the Power of Humility

For me, green vegetables are the best weight-loss food and the best way to bypass the cookie jar. Greens are interesting too! Greens are fun and nutritious.  Check it out! Celery burns more calories than it contains.   Check it out!  Just slap that sentence in your favorite search engine, and check it out! Broccoli…… Continue reading Be Extraordinary: Eat Your Leafy Greens

I am more successful when I start with simple steps. For me, motivation is not the key.  Consciously in the present moment, doing one thing at a time is the key. I do not require myself to get motivated to go for a walk.  I just agree to put on my shoes. I put them…… Continue reading Be Extraordinary: Start with Simple Steps

When writing for your job or your career, you can become a powerful writer.  The principles of great business writing are simple. State your subject in the first sentence.  A sales manager once told me that Procter & Gamble sent him to Cincinnati for a two-year assignment to teach him how to write. I thought…… Continue reading Be Extraordinary: Become a Better Writer.

Do employers hire you for who are you or for what you know? Obviously, most employers are looking for both traits. So when you go into that interview, be prepared to show how you can serve and benefit the company and how you can be someone people will want to have around the office. Two…… Continue reading Be Extraordinary: Understanding Organizational Fit

It is about this time of year that I have forgotten about New Year’s resolutions or given up on them and feel guilty that I was not able to fulfill those resolutions I made just four short weeks ago. Why have always found that these resolutions were not going to work long-term and were just…… Continue reading Be Extraordinary: Moving beyond Resolutions to Lifestyles Changes

It seems as though all my life I have held to the idea that I was right.  It is not so much that I had to know everything.  Often when I do not know something, I can just say that I do not know.  When I do know something, I have trouble seeing that what…… Continue reading When It’s Okay to Be Wrong

Today I am going to do one thing at a time.  I will start the day by going over my plan for the day. Then I will work with one computer program until the project is finished. When I have finished that one project, I am going to take a break and do some crunches.…… Continue reading Be Extraordinary: Do One Thing at a Time.

Last July, I wrote an article on getting back to the home gym by following the methods used in the movie “Karate Kid.”  That is, by washing my car and doing other things that I had turned over to public commercial services. Now with the beginning of the New Year, the most effective home gym…… Continue reading Be Extraordinary: Build Something with a Hammer and Saw.

Every day at 8:00 AM, I go over my plans for the day. I establish the status of my business with existing customers and what needs to be done to further my business with these customers. I review developing business and set priorities for turning those prospects into customers. I establish how I will proceed…… Continue reading Be Extraordinary: Make Plans.

I love fruitcake.  Like everything else, fruitcake has people who love it and people who do not.  Nearly two million fruitcakes are sold each year.  I doubt that many people eat an entire fruitcake, since most fruitcakes have a very dense texture and are about a foot in diameter and four inches high less that…… Continue reading Be Extraordinary: Keep it positive!

I am going to be extraordinary today by appreciating that I have the present moment to be effective at my job, love my friends and my family, and experience life.  For those things and many other things I am grateful. My wife went through the experience last night of buying a gift for a friend…… Continue reading Be Extraordinary: Be Grateful

Today to be extraordinary, I am going to take breaks.  I know when I need a break.  There are signals. When I dial the correct phone number and get the wrong phone, that is a signal to take a break. When I enter the correct password and the password does not work, that is a signal…… Continue reading Be Extraordinary. Take Breaks.

William Shakespeare wrote 37 plays and 154 sonnets. At the same time he was running a theater, where he also acted.  Shakespeare, as the result of years of very hard work, became a wealthy man.  He is also the greatest English writer in history. Thomas Edison executed 1093 successful patents.  Thomas Edison, along with Michelangelo,…… Continue reading Be Extraordinary. It’s Still Okay.

I get a ton of email.  By clicking the reply button, I can reply to that email. However, some of this email is confusing as to who sent it. For example, if you use some clever name like Soccer Chief for your email name or just your first name and your email address is 5552541@me.com,…… Continue reading Career Tip of the Day: Name, City, State, Zip, Phone, Email on all Correspondence

I have  heard that it is impossible to smile and be sad.  I can never remember to test the idea when I am sad. Motivational speakers often emphasize the importance of thinking positive thoughts.  I have heard the expression “fake until you make it.”  I take this to mean act successful and happy and you…… Continue reading The Happiness Habit

Going through a career change or any life change can bring feelings of uncertainty, inadequacy, and uselessness. You may also feel that have less energy and less interest in life in general. Home projects during these periods can be hard to start. All the feelings and loss of energy during challenging life changes can reduce…… Continue reading The Home Gym: Why Doing Things Yourself is Good for Your Self-Esteem, Your Confidence, and Your Health.