It was one of the finest performances of Sir Laurence Olivier’s life. And it was as Hamlet, his signature role. So his friends were amazed, when they rushed backstage, to find him in tears, rhythmically pounding his fist into his thigh.

“Larry,” one of his friends asked, “What’s wrong? That was the finest performance of your life!”

“Yes,” replied Olivier, “but I don’t know why.”

Andrew Garcia, a contestant on this year’s version of American Idol, knows that feeling. For a while, he was the darling of the judges.

Andrew had a compelling story. And he had developed quite a following on YouTube even before the competition began. His fans liked his covers of a variety of songs.

Then Andrew wowed the judges with a version of Paula Abdul’s 1989 hit “Straight Up.” The judges loved it and pegged Andrew as a potential contest winner.

Since then, things have been tough for Andrew. He’s tried to re-capture the magic of that performance. So far, it hasn’t worked.

We like to think that our best performance is the measure of our ability, but that can be dangerous. It’s easy to confuse good luck with great skill. As Steve Martin says:

“Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. Those nights are accidental and statistical. Like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time.”

Whether you’re on the Idol stage, toiling away in a cubicle, or out on the road, your value doesn’t come from the occasional, unpredictable, great performance. It comes from what other people can count on from you. Steve Martin, again.

“What is hard is to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the abominable circumstances.”

The rule is simple. If you can’t re-create it, you’re not there yet.

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 communicating with your boss, a Free Agent Nation update, storytelling in interviews, work-at-home jobs, and the ultimate guru.

From CubeRules: Are you making these communications mistakes with your manager?
“Manager – employee communication is tricky. The process should be straightforward, but then, business is social and social situations are never that simple. Throw in the fact that your manager is writing your performance review and has influence on your pay and career and you get a communications nightmare. If you want to be an effective communicator with your supervisor, don’t make these killer mistakes.”

Wally’s Comment: Communicating with your boss is important. Communicating with your boss is tricky. This post describes five things you can do wrong.

From HR Observations: “Free Agent Nation” A Thing of The Past? Not In My World.
“I was somewhat surprised to come across the Towers Watson report Jobless Recovery in the U.S. Leaving Trail of Recession-Weary Employees in Its Wake, According to New Study. Sure you would expect to read that people are tired of being laid off or losing their jobs by job elimination. But surprisingly this has lead to a CULTURAL ATTITUDE SHIFT and people are now looking for more permanency in their relationships with their employers. The report states that “A startling eight out of 10 respondents want to settle into a job, with roughly half saying they want to work for a single company their entire career and the rest wanting to work for no more than two to three companies.” Whoa! Are these people wanting to return to their fathers’ world of work?”

Wally’s Comment: Towers Watson released the results of a survey that seems to imply that workers really want to return to a kind of 1950s workplace. Mike Haberman doesn’t think that will happen.

From Jackie Cameron: Why you need to tell stories in interviews
“Good interviewers will tease information from candidates but the candidate has to play their part. This is their moment in the spotlight! So providing evidence of experience by telling relevant stories with details and examples (blending more than one to make the point if necessary) is crucial.”

Wally’s Comment: Interviews are high stakes conversations. Stories are the most powerful communication medium human beings have. It only makes sense that they should go together.

From Alison Doyle at About.com: Real Work at Home Jobs
“I was helping a friend look for a work at home job this week and it was really hard to find anything that was a real job opportunity with a paycheck.”

Wally’s Comment: Sure, those “make gazillions working from home” ads are bogus. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t legitimate jobs where you can earn a paycheck working from home. Alison Doyle surveys the landscape and highlights some real opportunities.

From Awake at the Wheel: Be Your Own Guru
“I spent the better part of the first 40-years of my life looking for a guru, that person who would just blow me away with her or his prescience, kindness, compassion, vision and guidance.  The one who would give me the answers.  Who would tell me what to do to get to that place where I finally felt like I had “made it.” So many others I knew had found one and their lives seemed so much better, more directed and purposeful for it, but that never happened to me. I would attend lectures, teachings, seminars, trainings and retreats and, inevitably, end up leaving early because some combination of information, integrity, pace or delivery did not resonate.  Why couldn’t I find that person?”

Wally’s Comment: Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Jonathan Fields suggests something slightly different. “We have met the ultimate guru, and he is us.”

After she breaks into the domicile of the Three Bears, Goldilocks makes herself at home. She eats their food, yummy porridge. More precisely, she eats some of it.

One bowl is too hot. Goldilocks passes on that one, along with the one where the porridge is “too cold.” Luckily for her, though not the bears, one bowl’s temperature is “just right.”

I’m betting that my wife would have been just fine with the “too hot” bowl. I probably would have been OK with the one that Goldilocks thought was “too cold.” At least that’s how we are with coffee.

We’re different in the way we work, too. I’m pretty much a “plan your work and work your plan” person. My wife is a true “go with the flow” person.

One of life’s arts is finding out what a “just right” level of discipline or structure is for you. If there’s too much structure, you’ll be frustrated and you won’t be creative. If there’s too little, you won’t be very productive.

As you go through your life and career, learn what’s right for you. In the meantime there are some things you should know.

You only have a limited capacity for self-discipline. Dr. Roy F. Baumeister of Florida State University found that “people who successfully accomplish one task requiring self-control are less persistent on a second, seemingly unrelated task.”

You can develop your capacity for self-discipline. No matter what level of structure is right for you, having more self-discipline when you need it will help you succeed.

Start your day with your most important task. That uses your self-discipline where it has the most effect.

Find simple ways to practice self-discipline throughout your day. You’ll be developing your self-discipline muscles.

Look for simple tools like checklists and automatic reminders that can lift the load of remembering from your brain. That way you save self-discipline for more important things.

Learning your “just right” level of structure will help you work more effectively. Increasing your self-discipline capacity will give you the discipline you need for times when you just have to buckle down and get the job done.

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 cell phones and interviews, networking up, why several mentors are better than one, wise education/training choices, and niche job search engines.

From Fistful of Talent: Cell Phones and Interviews Just Don’t Mix…
“Cell phones actually have NO place in a job interview. Period. End of story. It’s inappropriate, un-necessary and down-right rude. ”

Wally’s Comment: What can I say? I agree. Turn it off. Leave it in the car. Better yet, bury it in the backyard, at least until the interview is over.

From Alexandra Levit’s Water Cooler Wisdom: Next Level Networking
“I’m going to the SXSW Interactive Conference in Austin this week, and a lot of high-profile people whom I’ve wanted to meet for a long time will be there. I’ve talked to some other attendees, and we all have the same goal. But if everyone has the same goal, how can we make the most of the little time we might get with the big shots, and how can we encourage them to remember us?”

Wally’s Comment: Alexandra Levit tackles a topic no one ever talks about. How do you get a wee bit of face time with that guru you’ve always wanted to talk to, since you’re both at some giant convention? Even better, how do you wring some value out of the encounter if it happens?

From NW Jobs: Why a handful of mentors is better than one
“To me, the idea of the grizzled older professional bestowing all their hard-won wisdom upon a junior colleague week in and week out seems so very twentieth century. Outside academic settings and rigidly structured corporate or volunteer mentorship programs, it’s unusual to find one person who has the time, energy, and inclination to take you under their wing and dole out hour after hour of career advice.”

Wally’s Comment: The mentoring described in the opening line quoted above is not how it happened. What happened was that you went to work for someone who took an interest in you. Most of the advice came while you worked together. If you were lucky it continued later, too. Even back in the Pleistocene Era, when I came up, most people had several mentors. And people who should know, like Jack Welch, have been recommending multiple mentors for years.

From the NY Times: In Hard Times, Lured Into Trade School and Debt
“One fast-growing American industry has become a conspicuous beneficiary of the recession: for-profit colleges and trade schools. At institutions that train students for careers in areas like health care, computers and food service, enrollments are soaring as people anxious about weak job prospects borrow aggressively to pay tuition that can exceed $30,000 a year. But the profits have come at substantial taxpayer expense while often delivering dubious benefits to students, according to academics and advocates for greater oversight of financial aid. Critics say many schools exaggerate the value of their degree programs, selling young people on dreams of middle-class wages while setting them up for default on untenable debts, low-wage work and a struggle to avoid poverty. And the schools are harvesting growing federal student aid dollars, including Pell grants awarded to low-income students.”

Wally’s Comment: Let’s take a line from Hill Street Blues: “Be careful out there.” You need to do your due diligence on any education/training opportunity, especially if you’re looking to change career paths.

From Alison Doyle: Niche Job Search Engines
“A niche job search engine, rather than searching across the Internet for jobs, searches for jobs based on a more specialized criteria – just green jobs from green job boards, for example, or just retail jobs.”

Wally’s Comment: If there’s a niche search engine that meets your needs, it’s probably your best source of quality leads. Check out this post to see if Alison Doyle has found a search engine for you.

A year ago, CJ Spiller had the opportunity to set himself up financially for life. All he had to do was say, “Yes” and enter the NFL draft.

But Spiller decided to stay at Clemson for his senior year. Lots of people, including his mother, thought he was crazy. Today newspapers like The State are running stories with titles like “Smart move: Spiller’s draft stock on the rise.” Here’s a key paragraph.

“Today, however, he looks pretty smart. He has a sociology degree because he came back to finish school. But he also has a better career opportunity lined up after a spectacular season has vaulted him up the rankings before April’s NFL draft.”

That’s how it looks today. But if you want to learn something from Spiller’s decision, today doesn’t count. Think about how it looked a year ago.

Laid out logically, at the time, things looked like this. Spiller could enter the draft and become an instant millionaire. Or he could return to Clemson for his senior year, with the risk that those millions might be gone forever if he suffered a career-ending injury.

Why take that risk? You could find the answer if you were at Clemson last December 19. It was graduation day and one of the 1080 graduates was CJ Spiller. He had earned his degree in sociology at one of America’s top public universities and he did it in three and a half years.

After the ceremony among family and friends and members of his local church who had made the day-long drive to Clemson, Spiller cleared up any doubt. “This is the No. 1 reason I came back,” he said.

If you’re facing a big decision, take a lesson from CJ Spiller, Nr. 28. Know what the most important thing to you is and make it the most important part of your decision process.

Today there are all kinds of articles and blogs speculating on where Spiller and others will be chosen on NFL Draft Day. Spiller doesn’t pay attention to them.

“If you get caught up in that stuff,” he says, “It’ll get you off-track.” Staying on track is important, but you have to choose which track is most important.

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 cover letters, going beyond the numbers, changing sectors, building a broad business network, and resources for job seekers.

From the Wall Street Journal: Standout Letters to Cover Your Bases
“It’s something job seekers often wonder: Do you really need to submit a cover letter with your résumé?”

Wally’s Comment: Some hiring managers simply don’t read cover letters. So why put effort into your cover letter? Simple. You don’t know if you’re contacting one of the non-readers or a hiring manager who thinks cover letters are important. This article gives you advice on what to do to make your cover letter a potential competitive advantage.

From HR Bartender: Performance Metrics: Beyond the Numbers
“Peter Drucker once said, “What gets measured gets managed.”  It’s very true.  Tracking the numbers is essential to running your business.  But it’s also important to not just calculate numbers. You need to have a good understanding of what they mean.”

Wally’s Comment: With spreadsheets and calculators, anyone can generate performance numbers. But which are the important ones? Why?

From Dorothy Dalton: Changing sectors or function? You need to walk the talk!
“50 % of my coaching clients aspire to move out of their existing sectors,   some perhaps that have been hard hit by the recession (automotive, logistics, manufacturing, financial services) and into hot predicted growth areas   for 2010 such as Clean Tech, IT renewable energy, healthcare, personal development education and re-cycling.

Wally’s Comment: Dorothy doesn’t say it, but some candidates seem to think that hiring managers are psychic. They expect the manager to look at a resume that lists only experience as a keypunch operator and see the potential for a marketing vice president’s position. OK, so maybe I exaggerated a little. But, if you want to change the kind of work you do or the industry you do it in, you’re going to have to bear the burden of communication.

From Cube Rules: How to build a broad business network
“Research consistently shows that your business network is the best way to find a job. Then, there is the best of the best: getting a recommendation from an employee in your network that is inside your target company. This makes sense: a person already in the organization knows the potential candidate and will put their reputation on the line saying this person (you!) will do great in the job. This means your best opportunity to find a job is to have a business network where people are in as many different targeted companies as possible. But how can you start to build that kind of network? Let’s check out some different tactics to get you there.”

Wally’s Comment: I selected this article because it’s about building a broad business network. The idea is not to have the most friends, twitter followers, or contacts. It is to have the most contacts that can help your career.

From Katheryn Rivas writing at All Things Workplace: Ten Online Resources for Job Seekers
“The Internet can be a very useful tool when it comes to finding work. However, you may have to search hard and long for quality websites, since, as with most things online, there’s a lot of junk. The following are ten online resources with job search engines and other websites to help you find work fast.”

Wally’s Comment: This is about the perfect length for a resource list. It covers a number of areas and offers a limited number of recommendations in each.

You’d like Jack. Everybody does.

Jack’s retired now, after a long, successful career at a Fortune 200 company. That’s where he developed a reputation for hiring great people.

I chased him for months to get him to sit down talk about what he looked for when he was hiring. Jack was reluctant. It seemed like bragging to him and that’s something Jack hates. Besides, there were rounds of golf to be played and new countries to be visited.

A couple of weeks ago, Jack slowed down long enough to talk with me. He said that he and other managers looked for “all the usual things.”

But he found three things that he thought were the identifying marks of someone who would do well at his company. I call them “Jack’s Big Three.”

Jack looked for people who had dealt with failure or disappointment. He believes that you can’t have a career without several setbacks. What matters is whether you figure out what went wrong and what to do differently in the future.

Think about times in your life when things haven’t turned out the way you wanted. How did you deal with it? What did you learn? Can you describe those lessons and how they made you a better person and candidate?

Jack looked for people who would enjoy the work of their first job with the company. He reasoned that if you didn’t enjoy the work, you probably wouldn’t be passionate about it and put in the effort to do it well.

Think about the jobs you’ve applied for. Do you know what you’ll be doing every day?

Jack looked for people shared the values of the people in his company. He said that when someone has different values than the organization, it’s like they’re playing the game using a different rulebook.

Think about the companies where you want to work. Do you know what their values are? How do they compare with your own?

What struck me about Jack’s Big Three is that they weren’t about basic qualifications, what he called “all the usual things.” They’re about fit and ethics and work ethic, the things that drive success in a particular job or company.

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 revamping your job search, social networks, writing a better resume, improving your interviews, and becoming more productive.

From MSNBC: Revamping your job-search strategy
“If you’re not landing interviews, it’s time to try something new”

Wally’s Comment: The test of a strategy is in the results. If your strategy isn’t getting results you need to try something else.

From the Wall Street Journal: Social Networks Work
“When you’re making a career change, social-media networking is better than traditional networking for several reasons.”

Wally’s Comment: Alexandra Levit doesn’t make any wild promises here. So if you’re looking for a magic trick, this is not the article for you. She reviews the ways in which social-media networking is more effective than traditional networking with suggestions about how you can leverage those differences to your advantage.

From the New York Times: Writing a Resume That Shouts ‘Hire Me’
“IT’S tempting to think of a résumé as a low-maintenance aspect of your job search. Just list where you worked, what you did and where you went to school, attach that to each application and press the button. In fact, though, you have considerable flexibility in how you structure your résumé. The decisions you make about what it says and how it looks can affect whether you get the job you really want, or get a job at all.”

Wally’s Comment: Your resume is a marketing document that you use to land the right job. This article covers strategy, structure, and tips to help your resume help you to a better future.

From Forbes: How To Give Great Interview
“Show that you have the skills and would fit in, but above all make it clear how much you want the job.”

Wally’s Comment: If you think of your search strategy as marketing and your resume as a marketing document, then this article will fit right it. It treats the interview as something like a sales call with tips for prep and follow-up as well as for how you should act during the interview itself.

From Terry Starbucker: The Secret To A Lifetime Of Productivity – And Five Ways To Find It
“The secret to a lifetime of productivity is simply this:  Making the best selection of WHAT to do at any given moment.”

Wally’s Comment: This post is about easy ways to make a good decision about what you should do right now. Terry’s five tips are general enough to work in most situations and specific enough to be really helpful.

We gathered at a cold and windy gravesite at the far end of the state to say good-bye. There weren’t a lot of people there, in the cold middle of the week, but some had driven over three hours.

The woman whose body we buried didn’t have one of those lives that are significant in the view of most of the world. She was a wife and mother and grandmother and great-grandmother and great-great grandmother. She had a lot of friends. She had family who loved her.

She got the nickname “Picnic” because she would put together a picnic at the drop of a hint. Her picnic basket is the treasured possession of a grand-daughter.

“Picnic” was a living example of what psychologists mean when they talk about “social support.” She had friends and family that mattered. She was an active member of her church. And those relationships made her life rich.

There is a bottom line here. Being connected is important. Study after study comes up with findings that people who have a rich social networks and relationships love longer, happier, and more productive lives.

On blogs like this one we spend a lot of time on career success. Sometimes we discuss “work/life balance.” But developing your social support doesn’t get much attention. To remedy that, here are some suggestions.

Make time for social connections. If you’re busy with your career, it’s easy to do just a little more work instead of spending time with your spouse or friends. Make the time.

Do nice things for others. Kindnesses develop your social support net while they help you feel good about yourself.

Tell people that they matter. Tell them you appreciate them, admire them, and love them.

Do those things consistently. That’s how you develop a “Picnic” kind of life, one that’s rich in people and relationships.