Get a Job in Six Simple Steps

Awesome Job-Getting Procedure: How to Find the Right Work for You

Here is a powerful approach to scoring a new job, as conveyed to me by Sharon Rich of Leadership Incorporated. Everyone she's coached who has followed these steps has found a job.

1. Make a list of 100 companies you want to work with.
   
   
2. For each company, do a little bit of research. Figure out what you like about them.
   
   
3. Find a live human being who works there, with a name. Hopefully a hiring manager. Anyone from HR will do in a pinch.
   
   
4. Call them. Say, "I'd really love to come and meet with you and explore how we might work together." To this they could say, "Yes, absolutely," in which case, great. Schedule the meeting.
   
   Or they could say, "We're not hiring right now," in which case you say, "That's okay. I'd like to meet you anyway because I'm interested in opportunities in the future. At some point you may need somebody, and I'd like to be in consideration when that happens."
   
   Or they could say, "You have to send a resume."
   
   
5. Whatever they tell you to do, thank them and do it. Send a resume to HR, call who they tell you to call, etc.
   
   
6. Give it a little time, then get in touch with them again. Say, "I'm just following up. I did what you asked me to do."

And repeat. Keep following up and following through. At some point you are going to get a yes.

I know from experience that picking up the phone is difficult for an introvert. I believe it’s worth it to get over that, both while seeking a job and while rocking the job you're in. Judicious phone use is like knowing how to pitch the CEO in the elevator. Career secret sauce.

United States: 52nd Freest Press?

I saw a meme that the US has the 52nd freest press in the world, and it was bugging me. Today I looked it up and could not find it. Instead, I found the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index 2008, according to which, we are NOT the 52nd freest press in the world! We're 36th! Tied with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cape Verde, South Africa, Spain, and Taiwan. Macedonia is the next one down, France the next one up. First place is tied three ways: Iceland, Luxembourg, and Norway.

Mark and JulieAnne and I touched on this Friday at lunch. When you travel internationally, you notice that their news includes stories about other countries, whereas ours does not. Perhaps now with a different politician in charge, we will become more open. But you won't see me running out to buy a television anytime soon.

Ho'oponopono and "The Tummy Is in Charge"

On Friday I had lunch with some really amazing people, JulieAnne Searles of local preschool music fame and Mark Johnson of Playing For Change. Peace through music! Woo! We talked about human cultures we admire and positive things that are happening in war-torn areas.

Things that really stuck with me:

• Mark mentioned a cognate of the Hawaiian ho'oponopono concept from some other part of the world. I forget where. The idea is, when a person behaves in an irritating or dangerous way, the knee-jerk reaction would be "What's wrong with that guy?" In this philosophy, one instead asks "What is wrong with that part of us?"
• The tummy is in charge. Mark had a couple of house guests staying with him from the Congo, and this was a phrase they liked to repeat. Apparently, if you imagine that every single thought and action you take and every musical note you play is coming from your tummy, rather than your head, you will get really ripped abs. And live a very happy life.
• Mozambique. I didn't know this, but Mozambique went from horrible civil war to complete peace in just a few years after the president ordered the military to meditate twice daily on how the country could be healed. As in, transcendental meditation. The resultant peace has spread throughout the region.

Top three results of the Google search mozambique peace military meditation:

1. Soldier of Africa: Meditation is path to peace, Mozambique leader says
2. Mozambique's Prevention Wing of the Military
3. How Peace Was Brought To War-Torn Mozambique

Getting more out of life

Enjoying one's work seems to be part of it.

MIT OpenCourseWare: Sloan School: System Dynamics Self-Study Readings

The kids here enjoyed their work with complex systems, staying late after school to see how the simulations turned out.

TweetStats are awesome.

Movie websites courtesy of Henry Jenkins:

• Documentaries at Snagfilms.com, including a three-minute newsreel on the Moscow Cat Theater
• The Auteurs
  

Mindtangle, category "brains:" Blue Monochrome, African fractals, moving in time to repetitive beats makes you smarter, and more.

Concussion

Gaaah.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concussion

"The forces involved disrupt cellular processes in the brain for days or weeks."

I think I have a mild one. The feeling is really weird, and subtle. I thought I was "hazy" all last week because I was just returning from vacation. I have historically had difficulty concentrating when just back from vacation, especially the second day. This lasted all week and was different somehow. Caffeine didn't do anything for it. I struggled hard to function. I have also been experiencing mild intermittent nausea.

My neck and lower back were hurting too much last week for me to really notice anything else, though. I got some bodywork on Wednesday, then Friday afternoon went to a chiropractor. After the chiropractic appointment, I felt totally relaxed, neck and sacrum felt aligned, and my brain felt like it was in a pea soup fog.

Saturday I had a relaxing day and did very little thinking. Sunday I went to the Huntington Gardens with some friends, which was fine -- again, very little thought required, and it felt like therapy to be around all the plants. Monday morning I went jogging, then to work, where it finally occurred to me that haziness plus nausea equals probable concussion.

At the urging of coworkers, I went to see an MD, who had me get a CT scan. The results come in tomorrow. While driving, I felt like I shouldn't have been driving; my concentration was affected. When I got home, I felt very groggy and actually fell asleep in the car outside my house, waking up half an hour later covered in drool. I went to bed at 4:30 PM and slept for the better part of the next sixteen hours.

Why am I suddenly knocked on my ass now, after a solid week of non-knocked-on-ass-edness? I'm staying home from work today. My head hurts and my cognitive functions feel disjointed somehow: they're all there, I'm all here, but there have been lots of tiny blips and glitches and slownesses, like losing track of time or forgetting to prepare for a meeting or having a hard time making a decision. This is not normal. It's like I'm not sober, except I haven't had anything to drink.

When I fell, I landed on the back of my head, which I think means the main impact to my brain would have been from the prefrontal cortex, the front part, knocking into my skull. I have indeed noticed a little bit of degradation in planning and decisionmaking abilities, which reside there in the front. The overall "haze" or "pea soup" effect is hard to describe, to the point where it's hard to believe it's even there. It's like one of those optical illusions where you try to look at the gray dot and it disappears, but it's the most specific thing I can point to as far as a symptom. That, and the occasional nausea, and the feeling that as long as I stay put, I'll be fine.

Music acquisition: effects of enculturation and formal training on development

"Enculturation of metrical structure, they argue, results from biological connections between movement and auditory areas of the brain."

And the vestibular system gets the credit for that.

Very important study, very cool.

I Love You, Music Brainer Blogger

Comunidad Segura

"Networks of ideas and practices in Human Security"

http://www.comunidadesegura.org/index.php?q=en

Protecting us from ourselves.

DFA and Vanguard Funds

Here's a guy making the case that Vanguard is better for investors than DFA.

Here's a more detailed analysis from Altruist FA. AND they have a fantastic page on the benefits of fee-only investment advisors!

Mistress Jezebel

I love this lady, and I don't even know her. I have only seen her a few times at the gym. First impression: who's that?! Dayam, mama! Second impression: this poster from the locker room:



Lastly, the Google: her ModelMayhem and Myspace profiles, and a nice shot of her at Easton Gym.

I have only to go and talk to her. I think I get two free personal training sessions with my gym membership. My trainer has arrived.

Tumblr?

It's been brought to my attention that what I am doing here may not be blogging so much as Tumblelogging. Hmmm..... that may indeed be the case. Luckily, only two people know about this blog, so it shouldn't be too hard to convert it. I'm thinking about it.

My tumblelog. TBD!

The Smoke Fairies

What a cool band name, and a lovely little bit of music writing, including a discourse on women guitarists.

Music Brainer Blogger, Toronto

Yes, yes, yes. I think I'm in luuuurve AGAIN!

Music Brainer Blogger

I want to read every single thing on here. Awesome.

Event: Voce

I'm excited to be attending the Voce program of chakra toning tonight with Frankie Lee Slater, author of Art of Living and Circles Uniting. Not clear whether Mark Pesce of Future Street Consulting is going to be there too. I'd like to meet him if he is.

-------Addendum, Post-Event

Well, Mark Pesce wasn't there, but Steven Coates and Phil Harrington of YOUBLOOM.com were.

The event was pretty good. My favorite part was the chakra toning. Picture fifteen people seated in a circle in a darkened living room high atop a hill in Hermon. We begin with the root chakra, and sing "Ah" for seven breaths while visualizing the color red and bringing our awareness to that area of our bodies. On up through the colors of the rainbow:



And it's pronounced "vo-chay." Italian for "voice."

Obituary: Henry M.

H. M., an Unforgettable Amnesiac, Dies at 82

We studied this guy relentlessly in MIT BCS. Suzanne Corkin was my UROP supervisor.

Rest in peace, Mr. Molaison.

Music and the Developing Brain

Ooh! Ooh! The Developing Brain: Birth to Age Eight by Marilee B. Sprenger. Whole book available free. Looks like a good one. Very important. I want to come back here and read more of it.

The Developing Brain: Nurture And Nature by philosopher Martin LeFevre. I like how he reminds scientists not to get too hung up on the "nature" side.

"A happy friend is worth about $20,000"

Don't know how I feel about that... Happy, I guess?

Happiness is contagious, study finds

Don't Try This at Home! Self-Directed Investing

This guy pretty much kills it. Awesome video, awesome quote.

"No one in his right mind would walk into the cockpit of an airplane and try to fly it, or into an operating theater and open a belly. And yet they think nothing of managing their retirement assets. I’ve done all three, and I’m here to tell you that managing money is, in its most critical elements (the quota of emotional discipline and quantitative ability required) even more demanding than the first two." - William Bernstein

Playing for Change

Mark Johnson's beautiful international versions of Stand By Me and One Love. Go Mark go!

(He went all around the world recording street musicians performing these songs, then mixed them together so they're all playing in harmony. I cry every time I watch these things.)

Stand By Me:



One Love (song starts in the last two minutes):

Lisa Ann McCall

Where can I go for massage education in Austin?

Lisa Gold recommends Lisa Ann McCall in Dallas, 3.5 hours away.

To be continued/researched.

Pandiculation

Word of the day!

Definition: the act of stretching and yawning.

The image, from baillement.com.

Thanks, Lisa.