ArcaMax

You probably don't have all the vacation time you would like, but you definitely look forward to the number of days you have.

It's an accomplishment, really. Getting your managers to let you take time off takes a lot of hard work. It also requires engaging in some tense negotiations with your implacable workplace enemy, the HR department, but ...Read more

If there's one part of working that you have mastered, it's the valuable technique of not working.

Anybody can go to a job and be productive. It takes a very special person to go to a job and be invisible.

Yet, invisibility is what you need if you want to make the most money possible doing the least possible amount of work. To accomplish ...Read more

Our sermon for today concerns a workplace problem that everyone has, except me.

Everybody is dying to read what I write at work. Take you, for example. But what you write -- an insightful memo, an urgent email, a game-changing report -- nobody wants to read.

Or so says Aaron Orendorff.

Orendorff is the author of "Your Colleagues Don't Read ...Read more

If you've always wished that you had the qualifications required to be a successful entrepreneur, here's good news: There is one career expert who believes that the best way to get a job is to be a job -- a nut job.

Meet Ayodeji Awosika, the author of "Why You Have to be Crazy to Succeed," a recent post on a career site called Ladders.

...Read more

The question for today is, "What do you do?"

If you answer dentistry, plumbing, teaching the tango or any other noble profession, you're wrong.

The right answer is, "I do nothing."

Writer Olga Mecking does not do nothing, yet she is the author of "The Case for Doing Nothing," an article in The New York Times.

It is Mecking's opinion that a...Read more

What's better: a really great job where you have to go into an office every day or a really awful job you can do from home?

Maybe it's just me, but it's difficult to imagine a job so terrific that it's worth dealing with commutes that are too long, meetings that are too frequent and managers who multiply like cockroaches. (How does a ...Read more

I won't be writing my column today. I'm turning that privilege over to a 6-foot-tall, electric green chipmunk, whose name, according to his business card, is Chippy C. Chipmunk.

If you find it strange for a serious and respected guru of the workplace, like me, to partner up with a giant green chipmunk, like Chippy, I can quickly calm your ...Read more

For many people, every new morning is an occasion to celebrate all the wonderful opportunities in the day ahead. These energetic, optimistic human people wake up ready to jump out of bed and jump into their lives.

And then there's you.

You lie in your bed, mentally surveying all the potential snares and unredeemable disasters that surely lie...Read more

The first month of the new year is almost over, and I have to say you've made amazing strides in maximizing your productivity.

I have to say it, but it isn't true.

You're the same sluggish, distracted underperformer you were in 2019, maybe even worse. This isn't the productivity boost you resolved to achieve, nor is it what your managers ...Read more

How can so many potential employers smart enough to invite you to a job interview turn out to be dumb enough to reject you? No doubt, they made a big mistake. Unless, of course, it turns out that the person making the mistakes is you.

"13 Mistakes That Could Ruin Your Job Interview, According To Hiring Managers" is the title of an article by ...Read more

Thinking about quitting your job?

Dumb question. You've been thinking about quitting from the day you started.

You remember that fateful day, of course. "It's a great opportunity," you told everyone. "It's not a huge salary, but I'll be making a boatload of money eventually. My co-workers seem really nice, and my boss really cares. It's a ...Read more

Remember way back in 2019? You made a bold resolution -- a promise to yourself that you would stop being a wimp at work. Instead, you would gird your loins and loin your girds and finally ask for that promotion you so richly deserve.

And you did it! You cornered your slippery sleaze of a manager and made your demands known in no uncertain terms...Read more