Every week I check dozens of “career” blogs and other online publications, looking for things that will help you find a job, get promoted, develop your skills, and keep everything in perspective and balance. Here’s the pick of the lot for this week. I’m pointing you to items about taking care of yourself, deciding when a project is perfect enough, working for free, the most important thing for job seekers, and negotiating for women (and the rest of us).

From LeaderTalk: Leading Self with Character: Health and Well Being
“Leaders need to stay fit both physically and mentally in order to perform at their best each day. An important component of leading self with character is paying attention to and taking care of one’s health and well being.”

Wally’s Comment: Becky Robinson shares some sensible health and well-being tips. This stuff isn’t just for “leaders,” it’s for anyone who works hard.

From Strategic Intuition: Three-Percenting
“Generally when you work on something that matters, you find yourself making a little extra effort to get everything just right. I may only be addressing the perfectionists in the crowd, but there are enough of us out there that it’s worth saying. Now, I don’t know if there’s an 80/20 rule for this, but there seems to be an 80/20 rule for everything else. So let’s suppose it takes 80% of your effort to get the last 20% “just so.” And it’s worth it, that striving for perfection. It’s what puts you above the competition, makes you stand out. It’s what keeps you from being singled out for having errors in your copy, for example. Shoot for perfect, right? But.”

Wally’s Comment: I once knew a young woman who took an incomplete in every single course in her master’s program because her papers were never perfect enough for her. Lucy, wherever you are, this post is for you. And it’s for you if you’ve ever obsessed over perfecting one thing while other important things went undone.

From the Wall Street Journal: It Costs to Work for Free
“How do you know if an unpaid experience-builder is right for you? According to Chris Anderson, author of “Free: The Future of a Radical Price,” there’s really no such thing as working for free. ”

Wally’s Comment: There’s a lot of talk right now about working for free as a way to get experience and get your foot (or some other body part) in the door of opportunity. Chris Anderson notes that there’s no such thing as truly “free.” Alexandra Levit reports on Anderson’s thoughts and others about how to sort out whether working for free is a good choice for you.

From Virtual Job Coach: The single most important best piece of advice for job seekers
“Always set a next action. I’m serious, of all the advice and guidance out there for job seekers I still think this is the “one thing” that makes all the difference in a job search, any job search.”

Wally’s Comment: Here’s another piece of advice that isn’t just for job seekers. Always setting a next action is a good habit. If you’re familiar with “Getting Things Done,” you’ll recognize David Allen’s influence. To use his language, you want a “physical, visible action” that will move you forward.

From Future Perfect: Cave in… or leave the cave?
“I’ve had lots of comments on my series of posts on women:  salary negotiation and the gender divide ( Let’s go girls… Negotiate!   and Don’t be Afraid of “No” ). Thank you!   One topic still to be covered is the issue of us ladies stepping up to the negotiating table in our current organisations, as much as six times less than our male counterparts. This can mean a loss to net life income of up to half a million dollars.  So, let’s look at what can be done about that.  Just to be clear, this is only about women taking control of their own situations and dealing with passivity,  rather than covering flagrant cases of outright discrimination ( bullying?) where there are separate procedures both internal and legal to take care of those sort of issues. ”

Wally’s Comment: A little over a month ago, Dorothy Dalton initiated a conversation on this blog about the differential between men’s and women’s salaries and whether a difference in willingness to negotiate and negotiation style and skill might explain some of the difference. This is the third post in that discussion. The principles of salary negotiation here will help you, regardless of gender. There’s also extra value in reading Dorothy’s prior posts and the discussion comments if you want to understand some of the issues in the salary differential bundle. Links to prior posts are embedded in the post.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 8:36 am and is filed under Tools and Strategies for Success. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.