Five Career Tips I Particularly Like

For my PsychologyToday.com article today, I offer five career tips I particularly like because they're potent but may not be obvious.

Ten Career Tips I Wish I Knew When I Was Younger

My PsychologyToday.com article today: Ten Career Tips I Wish I Knew When I Was Younger. HERE is the link.

How the Mainstream Media Could Thrive

The demise of the traditional media outlets (newspapers, TV, magazines) has long been predicted, and indeed revenue has plummeted. The mainstream media has largely failed to figure out how to remain relevant in an era of nearly infinite free content: blogs, YouTube videos, Twitter streams, etc.

I think I've come up with the answer.

It has now become cost-effective for a major media outlet to create a rich, multi-faceted presentation of each story it covers. That is a level of sophistication and cost beyond the capability of most bloggers. I call it rich reporting.

So for example, while a blogger could certainly write a good article on whether Obama has been good for business, that piece would be grossly inferior to this week's Economist feature on that topic. That consists of a text-based debate between two world-class opponents on the issue. It's moderated by another world-class person. Readers can vote during the debate and change their votes as the debate proceeds. The up-to-the-minute pro/con voting is published in real time as are reader comments. After the debate, there's a post-mortem in which readers can participate. Now imagine that when the topic was appropriate, the debaters could introduce video evidence. Even without video, such content is much more appealing than nearly all citizen journalism.

Let's take another example. Many news stories start with an anecdote about a person. Imagine that the reader could elect to see that person's story in a one-minute, high-quality video. Or in the case of a science story, the viewer could see a vivid video presentation of the core complicated scientific process, for example, the mechanism via which global warming could be the result of sunspot explosions. Such high-quality user experiences would be infeasible for solo content providers to provide.

Rich reporting could even extend to the Web's most trafficked sites: porn. Sure, YouPorn and PornHub feature thousands of free porn videos, but most, I'm (ahem) told, are story-light, script-idiotic, visually grainy and/or poorly lighted. I believe there's a market for porn in which users would subscribe to a site with high-quality porn of varying lengths. Nick Bolton, New York Times writer and author of I Live in the Future says that porn industry has always led the way in the use of technology and predicts, "The next generation of porn and storytelling will be hyperpersonalized, placing you almost directly in the scene. That will give you control over what you see--almost like you're standing on a holodeck, a room that uses holographs to simulate reality."

The mainstream media has the advantage of money. If the MSM exercised the restraint to cover fewer stories but with rich reporting, I believe the mainstream media would not only thrive but provide a better product for all of us.

The Art of Storytelling

Whether in a job interview, cover letter, on the job, when networking, or in your personal life, the ability to tell a story well can be very helpful.

Actually, I decry storytelling's power because anecdote is the weakest form of argument, playing on emotion and a sample-size of  one rather than on solid data or reasoning.  But our shallow populus is more likely to be swayed by emotion than by fact or data, so storytellers we must be.  Principles of  compelling storytelling:

1. It's no more than two minutes long. 

2. In that short time, your story must include, as in a screenplay, a character you care about and a vivid retelling of how that character deals with a difficult situation.  

3. Include sufficient detail (interesting detail if at all possible) to make it clear that this is a true story--specificity is the antidote to listeners' skepticism.

4. A capstone sentence that ties it all together.

Here's an example that I believe would build rapport with coworkers, networking contacts, or friends:

My parents wouldn't let me play Little League or high school baseball because they were afraid I'd hurt my fingers. (I used to play piano at weddings and bar mitzvahs.)

What was the first thing I did when I went to college? Try out for the baseball team. 

I am not a laid-back person by nature and when I was trying out--with no organized baseball experience--my heart was leaping from my chest. But the manager let me on the team mainly because--so the manager told me-- I ran full tilt every time he called us over and because I cheered-on the other players who were trying out. Except for a strong (but wild) arm, I was talent-free. Indeed I was a near-permanent benchwarmer but I wouldn't trade that experience for the world. Somehow, putting on that uniform--including the sanitary socks--you know, those white socks that go underneath the stirrup baseball socks--was always exciting.  

And I had one success: We were playing Army and we were ahead by one run in the 9th inning. The manager brought me in to play left field as a defensive replacement. Army had a runner on second with two outs. The next batter hit a shot deep down the left field line.  I speared it and threw a strike, on the fly, to home plate to get the runner out, and we beat Army.  No matter what else I've accomplished in my life, that will always have a special place in my heart. 

Moral of the story: I invite you to always leave room in your life for that thing that--beyond the rational--you just love the heck out of.