by Alex Funkhouser
With self-discipline, we cultivate the ability to serve our own best interests by balancing competing or even contradictory impulses and priorities.
The lecturer has you spellbound. Their topic is highly relevant, their slides compelling, and their presentation style mesmerizing. You’re hanging on their every word, closely following their line of reasoning, frantically scribbling down each salient point in your notebook, when suddenly . . . squirrel!
Your mind flits away, zigzagging near and far until you notice the other attendees gathering up their notebooks and tablets as they head for the door. The lecture is over, and you’ve missed out on much of the wisdom that held you momentarily entranced.
We all want quick payoffs, but most endeavors are marathons and not sprints. If you jump ship too soon, you might have abandoned the vessel that was carrying you to the promised land.
In our age of handheld devices and communicable ADHD, human beings are more distracted than ever. No matter how determined our efforts to keep focused, our eyes and our minds seem equally determined to ricochet hither and thither, drawn to any target that will eclipse what should be the object of our attention.
Read the complete Fast Company article BY YONASON GOLDSON: https://www.fastcompany.com/90939882/how-to-stay-focused-when-you-have-to-pay-attention-to-multiple-things-at-once
by Alex Funkhouser
Making a career pivot can be daunting at any age. This road map will set you up for success.
The pandemic changed everything, and for many that included a new career. According to Pew Research, 53% of U.S. adults who quit their job in 2021 did so to enter a new field or occupation.
“Think about what could get in the way,” Goredema says. “What could become difficult? Thinking about this in advance helps you think about what you’ll need if [obstacles] arise. It’s like having your own provisional contingency plans. You’ll know what you could do next.”
Maybe you’ve dreamed of a career change, too, but don’t know where to start. Octavia Goredema, author of Prep, Push, Pivot: Essential Career Strategies for Underrepresented Women and host of the Audible Original series How to Change Careers, says trying out a new career is a valuable life experience, but it can also be daunting.
“There are some difficult things that are invisible to anyone else when you’re making a major shift,” she says. “People see what you do currently, and they’ll eventually see what you do next. But they don’t see what it takes to get there.”
Read the complete Fast Company article BY STEPHANIE VOZZA: https://www.fastcompany.com/90926724/want-change-your-career-heres-how-steps
by Alex Funkhouser
People who find ways to combine their knowledge and experience with AI-enabled tools will always have work waiting for them.
Our relationship with work is in the early stages of changing forever as our capabilities are drastically enhanced by the technologies associated with AI. I’ve been working in this space for decades, but the general public got a massive dose of what I’m talking about with OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT. Suddenly, machines can interact conversationally, responding to written prompts with stunning levels of sophistication.
“By automating these non-hazardous calls,” he wrote, “the company reserved agents to deal with complex issues, such as a passenger stuck on a snowy highway at night.”
The concerns about AI replacing jobs are valid (if not completely founded). Many companies are taking a short-term approach to implementation centered around cost-cutting and immediate profit. This kind of activity is bad for jobs—not just in the roles it eliminates, but also in terms of the quality of the jobs that it doesn’t render obsolete.
In his contact center automation predictions for 2023, Gadi Shamia notes that past solutions designed to get agents to answer more calls faster are missing the mark and that the focus should be on freeing agents from repetitive tasks. He points to an automobile association that uses automation to handle standard roadside emergency requests.
Read the complete Fast Company article BY ROBB WILSON: https://www.fastcompany.com/90932970/5-surprising-jobs-that-wont-get-eliminated-by-ai
by Alex Funkhouser
These five techniques can help you balance performance and pace yourself during the lovely, sometimes slower, summer months.
We wait all year for the wonderful days of summer—full of relaxation, rejuvenation, and more free time. But the problem with this vision is that it’s often inaccurate. Instead, summers can be periods of demotivation, disorientation, and decreased productivity.
In reality, summer can be a challenge for many reasons. Parents and caregivers may have more demands from children based on shorter or different hours for school or daycare. Essentially, summer disrupts normal routines, and this can be stressful.
I believe we need to reset our expectations around summer and that we should even embrace the summer slump. Here’s how to do so while simultaneously ensuring you don’t fall behind at work.
ACKNOWLEDGE THE SLOWDOWN
The first step in facing the summer slump is to acknowledge that it exists. For many, the summer struggle is real. 46% of workers admit their personal productivity wanes during the summer, according to a poll by Korn Ferry. In addition, people view their colleagues as unproductive as well—with 78% believing their teammates aren’t accomplishing what they should, based on data from ClickUp.
Read the complete Fast Company article BY TRACY BROWER: https://www.fastcompany.com/90930268/how-to-deal-with-the-summer-slump-and-not-fall-behind-at-work
by Alex Funkhouser
Humility doesn’t pay the bills. Here’s exactly how to get potential clients to say yes.
I spent over a decade deciding whether your email pitch lands you on TV, in an online feature, or gets deleted. Since leaving traditional journalism, I now train executives and entrepreneurs to be effective and confident in their messaging for presentations, on-camera interviews, and pitches. The aim: to win clients, investors, and press.
Your challenges when pitching journalists or potential clients are twofold: humans are cynical and people hate bragging. It makes their skin crawl.
A lackluster pitch is a nonstarter. It confuses or worse, never engages the target audience. Many pitches are uninspired or overly humble leading to an actively disinterested audience. So here’s how to pitch yourself or your company in a way that hooks and keeps your audience’s attention.
The people you are pitching do not know who you are, what you’ve done, what you’re passionate about, and how you can apply your unique mix of skills and talents to them. So you have to tell them—clearly and succinctly.
The cornerstones of a great pitch are messaging and confidence. If either one is lacking, it just doesn’t work. While I no longer am a national TV journalist, I still contribute segments on TV and articles online. And I now host a top 1.5% podcast, Mom’s Exit Interview, for which I receive hundreds of pitches.
Read the complete Fast Company article BY KIM RITTBERG: https://www.fastcompany.com/90925024/how-to-pitch-yourself-in-30-seconds
