Dive into the archives.
- DayTrading & Managing Our Own Minds
Increasingly, clients have described their turn to trading in volatile and uncertain markets, as their corporate incomes have vanished and their assessments of possible return to their former workforce positions have darkened. Day trading.
Paradoxically, they have embraced uncertainty as their former sense of loyalty to firm and task has been disappointed. Their “security”, they say, [...]
- Career Anxieties
This is how she remembered what her husband had said: ” Your preoccupation with work is destroying this family. We can’t take how wretched you’ve become.”
And as she told it, she’d successfully kept her underlying depression at bay for years. But 18 months of unemployment— which were the busiest months of her life as she [...]
- Working Knowledge Initiative: The Midlife “NO!”
The first hurdle facing consideration of independent employment for the midlife professional is internal. Its that assertive inner voice that says, “Hey—I’m 45, 50, 55, 60 years old. If I were a risk-taking entrepreneur, I would have been doing it years ago. I wouldn’t have worked the way I’ve worked, throughout my work life.” The [...]
- Working Knowledge Initiative. Transforming the sunk cost of job loss.
Peter Goodman reports in today’s New York Times that the underemplyment rate– including the jobless and those working part time though desirous of full-time work– has reached 17% of the workforce. That’s up from even a week ago .
Pausing for a moment both to reflect on the despair of economic dislocation and to ask, “what [...]
- New Research: “The Anguish of Unemployment” and Midlife Professionals
Just released: a new study called , “The Anguish of Unemployment” from the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University confirms what we’ve been saying all along: Midlife professionals represent about one-third of the unemployed workforce
• 32% of the currently unemployed workforce is over 45 years old, evenly divided between men and [...]
- From Unemployed to Self-Employed
We met in the dog run, Sean and I. Sean had a mastiff—big guy, rolling around with a bloodhound; and my terrier wanted to break up the fight.
After vetting one another, sniffing about and introducing ourselves via the names of our dogs, we got to talking about the work we did.
Sean is 26 and has [...]
- Family Business: Opportunity Lost in a Daughter’s Recognition of Dad’s Grumpiness
“Gosh, you’re grumpy today,” I heard, as I parked the car.
It hadn’t been addressed to me, but to the man in the car beside me, by his adolescent daughter. Though not feeling particularly grumpy myself, her comment got me thinking.
Everyone experiences moods. Some, more frequently and more intensely than others. Everyone experiences moments of concentration, [...]
- Them were Us, Yesterday: Not Coping With Recession’s Realities
Long ago, in another era, I worked as a volunteer following the 9/11 attacks. I began my work serving on a telephone information bank, manned by mental health workers, for the purpose of identifying 9/11 survivors. Working there, I noted an increasing kind of desperation. For example, on that first night (9/12), one of our [...]
- Annals of Denial: Follow Your Bliss
Two moments, several hours apart, gave me plenty to think about. The first happened, as three neighbors, all returning from walking our dogs in the park , paused on a street corner, to wait for the traffic light to change. We were chatting about friends and colleagues who’d recently become unemployed. A well-dressed, middle-aged man, [...]
- Retirement Tsunami
Those of us who have worked in organizations know that as individuals leave their roles in departments, or on committees, vital knowledge is often lost.
With single departures, we find that certain problem dimensions are not addressed. My colleague Angela, for example, paid particular attention to economic trends in the staffing of R&D departments. With [...]
