Smartlife

It’s time for some Smartlife philosophy — if not the Zen of Motorcycle Maintenance, at least a Thought of the Day for Scooter Repair — with a simple strategy to make everyone in the world happier and better at everything. You’re welcome.

The problem for millions of employees (currently sighing their way through Solitaire) is that we grew up aiming to be astronauts or elite fashion designers. But since there are so few jobs in industries based on gigantically expensive clothes regular people would never wear, most of us ended…

The secret to a smart life is never wasting time in work or in play. Which is a pity, because the modern office is a psychological experiment designed to make you waste both simultaneously: you have to stay in place for a certain amount of time (not a certain amount of work), you can do what you like as long as it looks like work, and you have a computer. It couldn’t be better built to force you into the Internet if it was that machine from TRON.

The Internet…

You need to protect your intellectual property rights, but most people are not familiar with the legal intricacies that such protection can require. Just as it is your best interest to hire a tax professional to help you manage your income and business tax concerns, it is likely in your best interest to retain the services of legal counsel to deal with patent concerns too.

Many lawyers working on intellectual property cases specialize in patent law, from preparing applications to defending existing patents. This can involve everything from software innovations…

You shouldn’t outsource your social networking, says Penelope Trunk, even partially. She should know: not only have her columns and blog become popular sources of career advice, but she’s written a book, launched a startup, and built a personal network that has helped her succeed.

Social Networking is a Must

“Saying that networking is time-consuming is totally ridiculous — you never hear someone say that I don’t have time to manage my money.” Without a network, Trunk says that you’re unemployable. That said, she does offer a…

Unlike everything else made of paper, business cards still make sense for the modern worker. Technology might be killing the newspaper, murdering the magazine, and forcing the evolution of pretty much every media into faster forms, but until we start implanting it into our heads, we’ll still need to tell people how to find us later. Even the flashiest web developer might meet the meat version of potential clients, and a business card speaks volumes of professionalism — while scrabbling for pens and paper in pocket lint shouts “amateur” in every language.…

Several months ago, Smartlife published a series of posts on personal branding. During that time, I was approached by a local professional who expressed interest in acquiring the services of a personal branding consultant, but needed some help in articulating what he needed. So I volunteered to produce a Statement of Work for him. Here’s how I did it:

1. I had him fill out the Career Vault. (I can’t believe no one’s offered me a billion to turn that into an app yet.)