Download or read book Ask a Manager written by Alison Green and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2018-05-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together

Download or read book Deep Work written by Cal Newport and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2016-01-05 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF 2O16 PICK IN BUSINESS & LEADERSHIP WALL STREET JOURNAL BUSINESS BESTSELLER A BUSINESS BOOK OF THE WEEK AT 800-CEO-READ Master one of our economy’s most rare skills and achieve groundbreaking results with this “exciting” book (Daniel H. Pink) from an “exceptional” author (New York Times Book Review). Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep Work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way. In Deep Work, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four "rules," for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill. 1. Work Deeply 2. Embrace Boredom 3. Quit Social Media 4. Drain the Shallows A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, Deep Work takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories-from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air-and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. Deep Work is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world.

Download or read book Cubed written by Nikil Saval and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2015-01-06 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book • Daily Beast Best Nonfiction of 2014 • Inc. Magazine's Most Thought-Provoking Books of the Year “Man is born free, but he is everywhere in cubicles.” How did we get from Scrooge’s office to “Office Space”? From bookkeepers in dark countinghouses to freelancers in bright cafes? What would the world be like without the vertical file cabinet? What would the world be like without the office at all? In Cubed, Nikil Saval chronicles the evolution of the office in a fascinating, often funny, and sometimes disturbing anatomy of the white-collar world and how it came to be the way it is. Drawing on the history of architecture and business, as well as a host of pop culture artifacts—from Mad Men to Dilbert (and, yes, The Office)—and ranging in time from the earliest clerical houses to the surprisingly utopian origins of the cubicle to the funhouse campuses of Silicon Valley, Cubed is an all-encompassing investigation into the way we work, why we do it the way we do (and often don’t like it), and how we might do better.

Download or read book Bullshit Jobs written by David Graeber and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From David Graeber, the bestselling author of The Dawn of Everything and Debt—“a master of opening up thought and stimulating debate” (Slate)—a powerful argument against the rise of meaningless, unfulfilling jobs…and their consequences. Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.” It went viral. After one million online views in seventeen different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer. There are hordes of people—HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers—whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs. Graeber explores one of society’s most vexing and deeply felt concerns, indicting among other villains a particular strain of finance capitalism that betrays ideals shared by thinkers ranging from Keynes to Lincoln. “Clever and charismatic” (The New Yorker), Bullshit Jobs gives individuals, corporations, and societies permission to undergo a shift in values, placing creative and caring work at the center of our culture. This book is for everyone who wants to turn their vocation back into an avocation and “a thought-provoking examination of our working lives” (Financial Times).

Download or read book Attachments written by Rainbow Rowell and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-04-14 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wayward Son, Fangirl, Carry On, and Landline comes a hilarious and heartfelt novel about an office romance that blossoms one email at a time.... Beth Fremont and Jennifer Scribner-Snyder know that somebody is monitoring their work e-mail. (Everybody in the newsroom knows. It's company policy.) But they can't quite bring themselves to take it seriously. They go on sending each other endless and endlessly hilarious e-mails, discussing every aspect of their personal lives. Meanwhile, Lincoln O'Neill can't believe this is his job now—reading other people's e-mail. When he applied to be “internet security officer,” he pictured himself building firewalls and crushing hackers—not writing up a report every time a sports reporter forwards a dirty joke. When Lincoln comes across Beth's and Jennifer's messages, he knows he should turn them in. He can't help being entertained, and captivated, by their stories. But by the time Lincoln realizes he's falling for Beth, it's way too late to introduce himself. What would he even say...?

Download or read book Wallet Activism written by Tanja Hester and published by BenBella Books. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2022 NATIONAL INDIE EXCELLENCE AWARDS FINALIST — SOCIAL/POLITICAL CHANGE • 2022 ASJA ANNUAL WRITING AWARD WINNER — SERVICE • 2022 NAUTILUS BOOK AWARDS GOLD MEDALIST — SOCIAL CHANGE & SOCIAL JUSTICE • 2022 AXIOM BUSINESS BOOK AWARD GOLD MEDALIST — PHILANTHROPY/NONPROFIT/SUSTAINABILITY How do we vote with our dollars, not just to make ourselves feel good, but to make a real difference? Wallet Activism challenges you to rethink your financial power so can feel confident spending, earning, and saving money in ways that align with your values. While we call the American system a democracy, capitalism is the far more powerful force in our lives. The greatest power we have—especially when political leaders won’t move quickly enough—is how we use our money: where we shop, what we buy, where we live, what institutions we entrust with our money, who we work for, and where we donate determines the trajectory of our society and our planet. While our votes and voices are essential, too, Wallet Activism helps you use your money for real impact. It can feel overwhelming to determine “the right way” to spend: a choice that might seem beneficial to the environment may have unintended consequences that hurt people. And marketers are constantly lying to you, making it hard to know what choice is best. Wallet Activism empowers us to vote with our wallets by making sense of all the information coming at us, and teaching us to cultivate a more holistic mindset that considers the complex, interrelated ecosystems of people and the planet together, not as opposing forces. From Tanja Hester, Our Next Life blogger and author of Work Optional, comes the mindset-shifting guide to help you put your money where your values are. Wallet Activism is not a list of dos and don’ts that will soon become outdated, nor does it call for anti-consumerist perfection. Instead, it goes beyond simple purchasing decisions to explore: The impacts a financial decision can have across society and the environment How to create a personal spending philosophy based on your values Practical questions to quickly assess the “goodness” of a product or an entity you may buy from The ethics of earning money, choosing what foods to eat, employing others, investing responsibly, choosing where to live, and giving money away For anyone interested in leaving the world better than you found it, Wallet Activism helps you build habits that will make your money matter.

Download or read book Making Work Work written by Shola Richards and published by Sterling Publishing (NY). This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Shola Richards's soul-sucking job left him feeling numb and suicidal, he switched focus and devoted himself to transforming the workplace into a space of relentless respect, courtesy, and endless energy. Meant to motivate current and future leaders, Making Work Work aims to start a movement that will banish on-the-job bullying, put meaning back into work, and enhance coworkers' happiness and engagement.

Download or read book So Good They Can t Ignore You written by Cal Newport and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2012-09-18 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an unorthodox approach, Georgetown University professor Cal Newport debunks the long-held belief that "follow your passion" is good advice, and sets out on a quest to discover the reality of how people end up loving their careers. Not only are pre-existing passions rare and have little to do with how most people end up loving their work, but a focus on passion over skill can be dangerous, leading to anxiety and chronic job hopping. Spending time with organic farmers, venture capitalists, screenwriters, freelance computer programmers, and others who admitted to deriving great satisfaction from their work, Newport uncovers the strategies they used and the pitfalls they avoided in developing their compelling careers. Cal reveals that matching your job to a pre-existing passion does not matter. Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it. With a title taken from the comedian Steve Martin, who once said his advice for aspiring entertainers was to "be so good they can't ignore you," Cal Newport's clearly written manifesto is mandatory reading for anyone fretting about what to do with their life, or frustrated by their current job situation and eager to find a fresh new way to take control of their livelihood. He provides an evidence-based blueprint for creating work you love, and will change the way you think about careers, happiness, and the crafting of a remarkable life.

Download or read book Evil Plans written by Hugh MacLeod and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-02-17 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed author of Ignore Everybody is back with more irreverent wisdom, wit, and original cartoons. "It has never been easier to make a great living doing what you love. But to make it happen, first you need an EVIL PLAN. Everybody needs to get away from lousy bosses, from boring, dead-end jobs that they hate, and ACTUALLY start doing something they love, something that matters. Life is short." -Hugh MacLeod Freud once said that in order to be truly happy people need two things: the capacity to work and the capacity to love. Evil Plans is about being able to do both at the same time. The sometimes unfortunate side effect is that others will hate you for it. MacLeod's insights are brash, wise, and often funny.

Download or read book Dust Grooves written by Eilon Paz and published by Ten Speed Press. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A photographic look into the world of vinyl record collectors—including Questlove—in the most intimate of environments—their record rooms. Compelling photographic essays from photographer Eilon Paz are paired with in-depth and insightful interviews to illustrate what motivates these collectors to keep digging for more records. The reader gets an up close and personal look at a variety of well-known vinyl champions, including Gilles Peterson and King Britt, as well as a glimpse into the collections of known and unknown DJs, producers, record dealers, and everyday enthusiasts. Driven by his love for vinyl records, Paz takes us on a five-year journey unearthing the very soul of the vinyl community.

Download or read book The Art of Non Conformity written by Chris Guillebeau and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-09-07 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you've ever thought, "There must be more to life than this," The Art of Non-Conformity is for you. Based on Chris Guillebeau's popular online manifesto "A Brief Guide to World Domination," The Art of Non-Conformity defies common assumptions about life and work while arming you with the tools to live differently. You'll discover how to live on your own terms by exploring creative self-employment, radical goal-setting, contrarian travel, and embracing life as a constant adventure. Inspired and guided by Chris's own story and those of others who have pursued unconventional lives, you can devise your own plan for world domination-and make the world a better place at the same time.

Download or read book The Startup Checklist written by David S. Rose and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-04-25 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 25 Steps to Found and Scale a High-Growth Business The Startup Checklist is the entrepreneur's essential companion. While most entrepreneurship books focus on strategy, this invaluable guide provides the concrete steps that will get your new business off to a strong start. You'll learn the ins and outs of startup execution, management, legal issues, and practical processes throughout the launch and growth phases, and how to avoid the critical missteps that threaten the foundation of your business. Instead of simply referring you to experts, this discussion shows you exactly which experts you need, what exactly you need them to do, and which tools you will use to support them—and you'll gain enough insight to ask smart questions that help you get your money's worth. If you're ready to do big things, this book has you covered from the first business card to the eventual exit. Over two thirds of startups are built on creaky foundations, and over two thirds of startup costs go directly toward cleaning up legal and practical problems caused by an incomplete or improper start. This book helps you sidestep the messy and expensive clean up process by giving you the specific actions you need to take right from the very beginning. Understand the critical intricacies of legally incorporating and running a startup Learn which experts you need, and what exactly you need from them Make more intelligent decisions independent of your advisors Avoid the challenges that threaten to derail great young companies The typical American startup costs over $30,000 and requires working with over two dozen professionals and service providers before it even opens for business—and the process is so complex that few founders do it correctly. Their startups errors often go unnoticed until the founder tries to seek outside capital, at which point they can cost thousands of dollars to fix. . . or even completely derail an investment. The Startup Checklist helps you avoid these problems and lay a strong foundation, so you can focus on building your business.

Download or read book Five Feet Apart written by Rachael Lippincott and published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Also a major motion picture starring Cole Sprouse and Haley Lu Richardson! Goodreads Choice Winner, Best Young Adult Fiction of 2019 In this #1 New York Times bestselling novel that’s perfect for fans of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, two teens fall in love with just one minor complication—they can’t get within a few feet of each other without risking their lives. Can you love someone you can never touch? Stella Grant likes to be in control—even though her totally out of control lungs have sent her in and out of the hospital most of her life. At this point, what Stella needs to control most is keeping herself away from anyone or anything that might pass along an infection and jeopardize the possibility of a lung transplant. Six feet apart. No exceptions. The only thing Will Newman wants to be in control of is getting out of this hospital. He couldn’t care less about his treatments, or a fancy new clinical drug trial. Soon, he’ll turn eighteen and then he’ll be able to unplug all these machines and actually go see the world, not just its hospitals. Will’s exactly what Stella needs to stay away from. If he so much as breathes on Stella, she could lose her spot on the transplant list. Either one of them could die. The only way to stay alive is to stay apart. But suddenly six feet doesn’t feel like safety. It feels like punishment. What if they could steal back just a little bit of the space their broken lungs have stolen from them? Would five feet apart really be so dangerous if it stops their hearts from breaking too?

Download or read book Talking to Strangers written by Malcolm Gladwell and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers and why they often go wrong—now with a new afterword by the author. A Best Book of the Year: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and Detroit Free Press How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to one another that isn’t true? Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland—throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.

Download or read book A People s History of Computing in the United States written by Joy Lisi Rankin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-08 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Silicon Valley gets all the credit for digital creativity, but this account of the pre-PC world, when computing meant more than using mature consumer technology, challenges that triumphalism. The invention of the personal computer liberated users from corporate mainframes and brought computing into homes. But throughout the 1960s and 1970s a diverse group of teachers and students working together on academic computing systems conducted many of the activities we now recognize as personal and social computing. Their networks were centered in New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Illinois, but they connected far-flung users. Joy Rankin draws on detailed records to explore how users exchanged messages, programmed music and poems, fostered communities, and developed computer games like The Oregon Trail. These unsung pioneers helped shape our digital world, just as much as the inventors, garage hobbyists, and eccentric billionaires of Palo Alto. By imagining computing as an interactive commons, the early denizens of the digital realm seeded today’s debate about whether the internet should be a public utility and laid the groundwork for the concept of net neutrality. Rankin offers a radical precedent for a more democratic digital culture, and new models for the next generation of activists, educators, coders, and makers.

Download or read book People Analytics written by Ben Waber and published by FT Press. This book was released on 2013-04-24 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover powerful hidden social "levers" and networks within your company... then, use that knowledge to make slight "tweaks" that dramatically improve both business performance and employee fulfillment! In People Analytics, MIT Media Lab innovator Ben Waber shows how sensors and analytics can give you an unprecedented understanding of how your people work and collaborate, and actionable insights for building a more effective, productive, and positive organization. Through cutting-edge case studies, Waber shows how: Changing the way call center employees spent their breaks increased performance by 25% while significantly reducing stress Quantifying the failure of marketing and customer service to communicate led to a more cohesive and profitable organization Tweaking the balance of in-person and electronic communication can enhance the value of both Sensor data can help you discover who your internal experts really are Identifying employees involved in "creative" behaviors can help you promote innovation throughout your business Sensors and simulations can help you optimize your sick-day policies Measuring informal interactions can improve the chances that a merger, acquisition, or "mega-project" will succeed Drawing on his cutting-edge work at MIT and Harvard, Waber addresses crucial issues ranging from technology to privacy, revealing what will be possible in a few years, and what you can achieve right now. In bringing the power of analytics to organizational development, he offers immense new opportunities to everyone with responsibility for workplace performance.

Download or read book The 12 Week Year written by Brian P. Moran and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-05-15 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The guide to shortening your execution cycle down from one year to twelve weeks Most organizations and individuals work in the context of annual goals and plans; a twelve-month execution cycle. Instead, The 12 Week Year avoids the pitfalls and low productivity of annualized thinking. This book redefines your "year" to be 12 weeks long. In 12 weeks, there just isn't enough time to get complacent, and urgency increases and intensifies. The 12 Week Year creates focus and clarity on what matters most and a sense of urgency to do it now. In the end more of the important stuff gets done and the impact on results is profound. Explains how to leverage the power of a 12 week year to drive improved results in any area of your life Offers a how-to book for both individuals and organizations seeking to improve their execution effectiveness Authors are leading experts on execution and implementation Turn your organization's idea of a year on its head, and speed your journey to success.