Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive Stephanie Land What’s in it for me? Learn what it’s like to be a low-income single parent working a menial job in America. Living in poverty, being a single parent and working a menial job – each of these tasks
What’s in it for me? Age with a flourish. As a woman, the prospect of growing older might fill you with dread. In a society that prizes women for their youth and sex appeal, can you embrace a new, life-affirming identity as you hit your sixties and seventies? Yes, you can! Let these blinks
What’s in it for me? Find out why you may be better suited for a different career. If you’ve ever struggled with a job only to realize that your coworker is doing the same thing with complete ease and a smile on her face, then you’ll realize how your personality can affect your work.
What’s in it for me? Find out how wrong you are about the way millionaires live. Millionaires are ostentatious. They live a glamorous life, with private jets and luxury cars, hidden away in enormous mansions in the exclusive Hollywood hills. Or is that all fantasy? The truth is far from the bling and bright
What’s in it for me? A Brexit crash course. In contemporary Britain, there’s nothing that divides the country quite like Brexit. Families are splintered, regions conflicted and political parties in all-out civil war. Finding out how we arrived at such a Disunited Kingdom has never been so important. And that’s exactly what A
What’s in it for me? Get to grips with a uniquely American crisis. These days, few can honestly doubt the seriousness of the opiate crisis in the United States of America. It has come to the attention of those at the top rungs of the country’s government, including President Donald Trump – but the problem
What’s in it for me? Top tips to get the most out of your travels. Psychologists and neuroscientists have made an interesting observation: if you make the effort to smile when you’re feeling down, you’ll actually feel happier! Taking this idea further, the old adage that, when in Rome, you should do as the
What’s in it for me? The ultimate pro’s guide to prospecting. If you’ve looked at the sales-and-marketing section in your local bookstore lately, you’ll know that “gurus” promising you the world are a dime a dozen. Follow their pain-free, no-hassle 12-step plan, they claim, and you, too, can knock it out of the park
What’s in it for me? Simple startup strategies that work. The world has become smaller and more connected. Doing business across borders is simpler than ever before, and the internet provides everyone with easy access to the tools they need to go it alone as a solo entrepreneur. In short, it’s a golden age
What’s in it for me? Discover the secret plot to bring down George Washington. How much do you know about the events leading up to the birth of the American nation? Chances are you haven’t been given the full story, but rather have gotten snippets of heroic tales or events like the Boston Tea Party.
What’s in it for me? Gain insight into the importance of sociality. What makes you who you are? One answer is the “self” – that set of consciously held preferences, ideas and desires which molds your character and sets you apart from others. It’s a well-established idea but is it true? That’s one of the
What’s in it for me? Discover the 4,000-year-old history of Palestine. There’s little doubt you’ve heard of Palestine in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict – it’s one of the longest-running political disputes of the modern age. While the media and politicians alike make the conflict out to be complicated, these readims seek to paint
What’s in it for me? Learn how to make better decisions by putting your own morality into context. Every which way you look, there’s a hot button topic flaring up. Politics has ceased to be about considered debate as opponents polarize themselves, convinced that each has the moral upper hand. But it could be different.
What’s in it for me? An investment method you can bank on. An investment isn’t just a handful of digits on a screen – your hard-earned cash is on the line. Managed well, your portfolio is a ticket to financial independence and even early retirement; managed poorly, it’s a black hole which swallows up your
What’s in it for me? Learn how to take back your life from the powerful forces of the attention economy. There have been many technological hallmarks over the past twenty years or so, but one that may not spring immediately to mind is the “Like” button. When this click of approval debuted in 2007, on
What’s in it for me? A minimalist model for clutter-free living. Consumerism is out of control. In the 1970s, the average American saw around 500 adverts a day. Today, it’s closer to 5,000. It doesn’t matter what’s being sold, all ads tell consumers the same thing: buy more and you’ll be happier. That’s the message
What’s in it for me? Learn the secrets of sticking with your projects and when to pull the plug. As the old song goes, “You gotta know when to hold ‘em, and know when to fold ‘em.” While this may be a reference to playing poker, it’s also pretty good advice on how to get
What’s in it for me? Learn about the marginalization of black people in the 1970s–1990s. The Black Lives Matter movement began on social media in 2013 when the public expressed their outrage over the acquittal of George Zimmerman for killing black teenager Trayvon Martin. But reports of police brutality against black Americans continue to feature
What’s in it for me? Valuable lessons without the price tag. Financial mistakes: we all make them. From overdue library fees to parking fines, our financial mishaps can be frustrating – but they rarely cost us hundreds of millions of dollars. And as it turns out, even the world’s most eminent investors miscalculate and end
What’s in it for me? When two tribes go to war. It’s an unfortunate but inevitable part of human nature: an us-versus-them mentality. Whether it’s courtesy of opposing political parties or different daily newspapers, most of us are guilty of listening only to our side’s perspective and painting those with differing opinions as bad. But
What’s in it for me? Break free from the cycle of bad management. In general, work conditions in the United States may be better now than they were 30 years ago, but how does the quality of management in your place of employment stack up? Are you unable to challenge the ideas of those higher
What’s in it for me? Take a statistical look at how the best performers work. The author, Morten T. Hansen, wanted to know how top performers worked. What were their habits and techniques? So, in 2011, Hansen and a team of researchers set off to find out. They analyzed over 200 academic papers and interviewed
Replicating excellence Why can’t all the stores in this city be as popular among customers as the ones in the city center? Why can’t all the research units in a university top the league tables? Why can’t your favorite football team play as well as the one from the neighboring city? If those questions have
The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups Daniel Coyle Give your team purpose Working together makes the world go round. Even the most brilliant geniuses among us need a helping hand now and then to get their ideas off the ground, but pulling together to achieve a common aim isn’t as easy as
A good leader People have different views of what makes a good leader. Some see the sensitive and quiet type as their ideal boss.And others hold the drill sergeant in high esteem.But in these blinks the case is made for the radically candid boss, the boss who can be both caring and direct and combine
Objectives and key results ave you ever worked for an organization that if not entirely lacking a sense of direction, at least didn’t seem like it knew where it was going? If so, you certainly aren’t alone.Companies often have so many goals that they might as well have none at all. And workers are tugged
How to Be a Positive Leader: Small Actions, Big Impact Jane E. Dutton and Gretchen M. Spreitzer, Make work a positive experience How to Be a Positive Leader can rightly be called the bible of positive organizational scholarship, which gives us an understanding of how organizations can flourish and deliver high performance. These blinks outline
Timing is everything As Miles Davis once said “time isn’t “the main thing, it’s the only thing”. While he was likely talking about music and not the day-to-day affairs of students and professionals, the statement nonetheless applies to all of us. We spend much of our lives trying to be on time, meet deadlines and
How to pivot Maybe you’re dissatisfied with your current position and are looking to start a new company. Maybe you want to transfer to a new position within your firm, or even change industries.Perhaps you’re a manger who wants your employees to be satisfied and productive. Regardless of which of these might apply to you,
What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School Mark H. McCormack Build a business Notes from a Street Smart Executive. Perhaps you’ve aced all of your exams at business school, and maybe you’ve already read countless books about how to succeed in your entrepreneurial efforts, but regardless of how much theoretical knowledge you’ve
Visionary companies Like number one, visionary companies can teach usthrough their enduring success. So called visionary companies have a lot to teach us. They are companies with long track records for success and widely admired as the crown jewels of their industries. What’s more, their success is enduring,they prosper even as great leaders retire and
Practice deep work Be honest.Over the course of these blinks, how many notifications, emails, and texts do you think you’ll get? Chances are there might be quite a few. The question is how will that impact your understanding of these blinks? Most likely you’ll be less focused and probably miss some of the details. In
The very best managers cultivate workplaces where team members are empowered to produce their very best work. Bad bosses tend to do the opposite, making their employees feel smaller and less capable. In her 2010 book, Multipliers, Liz Wiseman examines the qualities and behaviors that distinguish good leaders (which she classifies as “Multipliers”) from bad ones
The study Good to great companies can teach others how to make the same leap. Jim Collins’ previous bestseller, Built to Last, explains how great companies sustain high performance and stay great.Most companies however are not great, hence the more burning question: How do companies go from good to great? What do they do differently
Become a great CEO It’s lonely at the top. CEOs face an immense struggle. They have sole responsibility for their company’s fate and must make life or death decisions about it every day. They may need to fire their best friends or lay off an entire factory, all the while accepting full responsibility and keeping
Email is supposed to be a tool that helps us do our jobs. But the time we spend responding to unimportant messages (and obsessively emptying our inbox to zero) can actually impede our ability to perform key tasks. In Jocelyn K. Glei’s 2016 book, Unsubscribe, she shares strategies for taking control of your inbox. This
Crank your productivity to the max Boost your results, reduce your hours. People tend to think that increased productivity is going to be exhausting. They believe that they’ll have to work all the time at full capacity to fulfill their ambitions. But in fact, the opposite is true. The more productive you are, the faster
Embrace the benefits of boredom Manoush Zomorodi, Bored and Brilliant. How spacing out can unlock your most productive and creative self. When was the last time you came up with a great idea? Did it hit you when you were reading Twitter or group-texting some friends? Or maybe that genius thought struck you during a
Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t What makes certain leaders so effective in rallying their troops? In his 2014 book, Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek examines the role that our biology plays in the division of leaders and followers, and highlights the qualities that make up a good leader. This audiobook
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action Simon Sinek Finding the why Blink number one. If everyone found their why we’d all feel fulfilled by our work. Wouldn’t you like to call a job you love your own? Although just about anyone would answer yes to this question in reality most
