All Posts Tagged With: "career"

Hey, everyone!  Sorry I’ve been incommunicado for the last week or so.  Life’s been crazy busy, as it all too often is. Here’s a little taste of what I’ve been up to.

Update on My Happiness

I’ve been doing a lot better as far as my personal independence since my Philosophy of Happiness post.  I’ve gone out again with my sorority alum club and been to the gym almost every day.  Also, in a recent conversation, the BF admitted that he’d been at fault, too.  He’s really still in a lot of debt from grad school because his field doesn’t offer funding to grad students, and he also didn’t do a great job budgeting so there’s a credit card debt factor.  As a result, he can’t afford to do a lot of the things he considers fun, and he admitted that he’s been taking out the frustration about the results of his poor financial planning on me.  But I do have some news that is not only great for me, but which will also alleviate both our financial situations. Continued

In this post on his blog, Evan Marc Katz asked his readers to rank themselves in four categories: Looks, Personality, Intelligence, and Career.  Both Lance and I couldn’t resist commenting, and Lance also blogged an excellent reaction here.  It is pretty evident from the comments to his blog as well as the original article on the Freakonomics bulletin here that most people have a tendency to seriously overestimate themselves.  EMK hypothesizes,

The good news is that having a combination of self-esteem and self-delusion seems to be exactly what allows us to function. How would we feel if we didn’t believe we’re above average in every single way?

Although that is insightful and seems at least partially true, I also can’t help but feel that there must be a little more to it.  In a comment on Lance’s blog about whether you can teach an old dog new tricks, I mention something that I always told my students:

People are inherently lazy. Therefore, to convince them to take action, you must convince them not that your position is morally superior, but that they have more to lose by doing nothing than they do by taking action.

The fabulous cheekie suggested that I write a post where I expand on that idea, so here we go.  Continued

(Watch the video above then read me)

My homeboy Evan Marc Katz wrote an interesting post where he ranks himself in the following categories: Looks, Intelligence, Personality, Career.

Continued