Soft Skills - Ask a Wharton MBA
Develop Soft Skills – Work Smart & Live More
Lots of people love the idea of working from home. With the daily 9-5 routine at a corporate cubicle, the luxury of working from home on your own business definitely represents “greener grass.” Well, before you decide to do it, you may want to hear my story. This story will also apply to those who are “working” from home to look for a job. ...
What annual salary do you need to be happy? $1 million? $200K? $100K+?. Well the answer according to a wide range of research is even lower – around $40K to $75K a year. Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology at Harvard University, says once you have enough money to meet basic needs – food, shelter, but not necessarily cable —incremental increases have little effect on your happiness. ...
We are paid to think – literally. Companies pay us thousand of dollars for our ability to think and solve problems. So naturally our brain is wired to think, evaluate, compare, devise solutions. It’s a blessing and a curse. I realize at times, I forget to turn off my brain and also think, analyze, and compare too much when it comes to life. Life is to be experienced and enjoyed but not over-analyzed. ...
The last few weeks have been stressful. I have been juggling five projects/initiatives at the same time on a 32 hours a week schedule. Unexpected project issues are coming up left and right; requirements are misunderstood; customer experience risks are newly uncovered, etc…
The end result is I have been taking my stress home after work. Thinking about issues in the shower and waking up with solutions to yet another unexpected problem. My daughter runs to greet me in the morning and sometimes I feel half there because I am already planning in my head how to tackle the day. Some days I don’t even feel like going to work. Does any of this sound familiar? ...
What is your reaction when you see this post title? Is your response “of course, I have a very good work life balance”? Or is your response “I wish I could, but I have to work a lot to make money, get ahead, take care of family. I have to wait to enjoy life later. What choice do I have”? If you are more like the latter, this is a story for you. ...
In the baby boomer era, the myth was “if you are loyal to a company, the company will take care of you.” Many believed that until they were laid off at 55 after 20 years of service with no good prospect to find work again. Then for Generation X (people in our late 20s to 30s), it became “if you perform well, you will be rewarded.” To some extent this is still true until the financial market crashed and even very talented people remain out of work. ...
I was taught the definition of success in business school. We just finished 4 weeks of pre-term (refresher courses on math, accounting etc..) before my official 1st year at Wharton began. My accounting professor used most of the time in our last class to give us a lecture on success and what it means. ...