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Less is Best

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Less is best in most cases. We live with a tsunami of information and all we often need is a beach and an umbrella. Malcolm Gladwell in Blink says, “We live in a world saturated with information….The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding.”20130704_112354

So how do we take this enormous amount of information and turn this into understanding? One way to do this is to embrace the “less is best” motto and it will leave you with the clues to understanding. Malcolm Gladwell speaks to this in his book and I talk about “trusting your instincts”. (See 3rd bullet point in this blog).

When working with college students on their resume, I say that every word on this needs to count. To have a purpose. You do not need to tell me that 207-555-5555 is a “cell phone” or JimPeacock @Peak-Careers.com is an “email”, I know what it is. Use bullet phrases, not sentences in your experience area because I am skimming this document, not reading it. Make this resume shorter, meaningful, and cleaner, so I can understand you.

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Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath

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I had read this book before but did not have a code to actually take my own assessment. This time, new book, my own personal code to take the Strengths Finder assessment, and here I am!!

Communicator / Winning Others Over- WOO / Empathy / Positivity / Adaptability

Much of my work is focusing on people’s strengths and that is clearly what Gallup has built here, a way for people to identify their strengths with specific tips on how to highlight your strengths, deal head on with others who may not understand you, and how to work with people by identifying their strengths and honoring them.

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Fort Halifax: Winslow’s Historic Outpost by Daniel Tortora

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fort-halifax

Having now lived in the greater Waterville / Winslow Maine area since 1984, I have driven by this blockhouse from 1754 for 30 years. I’ve climbed in it with the kids and was devastated when the April Fool’s Day flood of 1991? washed it down the Kennebec. Fortunately they found much of the blockhouse down river and put it back together with a flood stabilizing design. It is the oldest blockhouse in the U.S.

This is the first book to actually pull together the wonderful history of this fort and the importance of it to the development of the area. Settlers were not coming to this area without some protection and the Brit’s in Boston wanted more control of the area from the French in Quebec.

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The Angel Effect: We Are Never Alone by John Geiger

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John Geiger’s first book, The Third Man Factor was the first time I realized I wasn’t crazy. I had a near death (in some ways an actual death) experience when I was caught in a flash flood in the Fiordland’s of New Zealand in 1984. I saw my life pass before my eyes, the white light at the end of the tunnel, a wonderful warm beautiful feeling throughout my body.

After reading his first book, I realized I was not the only person who had a guardian angel help them out of a difficult situation. Read my short version of my drowning on his website and others in the Third Man Factor Forum http://bit.ly/18HuLma. (I just looked at nearly 8000 people have read my story there so far).

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Boomers to Save the Economy…again.

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Why not? Boomers have driven the economy since we were born. Our love of toys in the 50’s & 60’s created many new companies. You are welcome Hasbro, Fisher-Price, Legos, and Mattel.

With 10,000 Boomers nationwide turning 65 daily across the country, we are facing a labor shortage crisis everywhere. Here in Maine, nearly a third of the population is in the Boomer age range. Some states are worse than others, but nationally 47% of the labor force is 55+ during the decade 2006-2016. The growth in the labor force for ages 16-54 is less than 1%!  YIKES! Houston, we have a problem.

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A career expert, David DeLong calls them “piling up at the door”.

Here in Maine, the total labor force is 700,000 and with 411,000 people aged 45-64, they will be leaving the workforce in the next 2 decades. Match this with 302,000 residents under the age of 20 years old, this could be a gap of 109,000! And Maine is typical of states across the U.S.

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Blink. The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. By Malcolm Gladwell

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I tore through this book. I could not wait to find time daily to read.

Blink

Blink resonates with me so much because I am constantly talking to people about “trusting your instincts” and not trying to over analyze things or collect more data, and more data, to make a decision. Blink has the research to support my thinking. Thank you Malcolm.

I devoured the first half of the book and then read the rest. The first half focused on the power of knowing in the first 2 seconds and that it is not a gift given to a fortunate few people but is naturally in all of us.

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