thought of the day
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Archive for February 2010
USA Today: What else could that ring buy?
My column on wedding spending and time use ran in USA Today this morning, also reprinted below:
What Else Could That Ring Buy?
by Laura Vanderkam
Valentine’s Day is here again, and with it, a perennial bloom of marriage proposals from the romantically inclined among us. In our consumer culture, that means that over the next week, thousands of prospect… read more »
Google and 20 Percent Time
It’s an unspoken commandment of writing about the “New Economy”: You are required, at least once in your big concept business book, to mention Google’s 20 percent time. This is the corporate policy that allows Google engineers the equivalent of one day a week to work on projects of their choosing, and it is usually cited as an examp… read more »
Op-eds and putting in the extra hours
I recently signed on to volunteer with the Op-Ed Project, a non-profit organization which seeks to increase the number of columns written by women. According to director Catherine Orenstein, 85 percent of op-eds in the major US newspapers are written by men.
I have been pondering exactly why this might be, and have two explanations. First, being willing to… read more »
After the Breakthrough: Olympic Stars of Yesteryear
The New York Times magazine this weekend will apparently have interviews with former winter Olympics stars, discussing their memories of the games, and their lives after. To me, this raises an interesting question. An Olympic victory is often seen as the pinnacle of a life. You have spent years working to achieve it. And then, let’s say, you do.
Now… read more »
Strategic Thinking Time
Around New Year’s, I spent some time identifying what would be my most important professional projects for 2010. These are the things that, if I were working in a corporate environment, I would highlight in a year-end review. By nailing them down in January, my thought process went, I could spend big chunks of the working part of my 168 hours executing a… read more »
