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You are here: Home / Archives for 2 - Professional Skills

How to Learn Anything…Fast

May 13, 2020 by Matt Perman

This is a great message by Josh Kaufman, best-selling author of The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business. The encouraging upshot is that acquiring basic proficiency in a skill does not have to take a huge investment of time, but rather can be achieved in about twenty hours — if you do it right. Towards the end, he gives four steps.

I’m sort of getting tired of receiving so much content in my inbox on adapting our work to COVID-19. Nonetheless, Josh’s advice here has a very useful application to our current context. For example, if you do not have a commute because you are working from home, why not take the time you are saving from your commute to learn a new skill?

One reason you might not be doing that is that it can still seem a bit overwhelming. Josh takes that challenge away. He shows you how in just 45 minutes a day, you can develop a valuable new skill in about 30 days. Now that would be a great way to bring yet another silver lining to this unfortunate time in our society right now.

For more guidance, you can also check out his book The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything…Fast.

Filed Under: Learning

Job Searching During the Coronavirus Economy

May 3, 2020 by Matt Perman

At least 30 million have become unemployed since mid-March. Suddenly, job searching is very relevant.

To help seniors at The King’s College who are launching their careers in the midst of these economic conditions, I wrote a series of articles a few weeks ago on King’s 101 (our website for making the most of King’s).

The principles in these articles are helpful for anyone looking for a job, at any stage in their career — not just college students. One of the articles also highlights positions from 75 companies that are hiring right now. Those companies have many positions beyond entry level, so that may be especially worth checking out for anyone doing a job search right now.

Here are the articles. Please also pass them on to anyone you know who could benefit:

  • Job Searching for Seniors During the Coronavirus Economy: The Big Idea
  • Job Searching for Seniors During the Coronavirus Economy:  5 Core Tips
  • Help with the Senior Job Search: 75 Companies Hiring Right Now
  • Internships and the Coronavirus Economy

 

 

Filed Under: Job Finding

Coronavirus and Your Job Search

March 31, 2020 by Matt Perman

My full-time job is to help students at The King’s College launch their careers. So I’ve been paying attention to how this Coronavirus pause is going to be affecting their job search.

This is one of the most helpful articles I’ve seen so far. It’s concise and insightful. It’s from The Muse, which is one of the best career development websites out there.

So if you were already in the middle of a job search when this Coronavirus pause hit, this article can be of use to you. Or, if you have found yourself out of work because of the economic hiatus we are on, these may also be of use.

The article is called What Does the Coronavirus Pandemic Mean for My Job Search? Here is a fantastic except:

As companies move to remote work to fight the coronavirus pandemic and an increasing number of workers are being laid off or furloughed, you might be wondering if you should continue to send out resumes or just assume that no one is hiring for the foreseeable future. It’s true that economists are predicting a recession, but career experts say it’s best to keep networking and applying, provided you change your approach a bit to acknowledge these are uncertain times.

“Companies might not be hiring today, because they’re trying to figure out how to do business virtually, but they will be hiring,” says Danielle Beauparlant Moser, managing director and executive coach with bltCareers in Asheville, NC “The people who continue to relationship-build and share their ideas will be in a better position when companies start hiring.”

Filed Under: Current Events, Job Finding

Invest in Yourself or Others in 2020

December 9, 2019 by Daniel Kaufman

At some point we all need help getting from point A to point B. We make resolutions to change and we go after them with intense focus for a few weeks. You know what happens next. 

You miss a day, cheat the plan, or run into opposition—and you start to lose focus and the desire to get back to your noble pursuit. Imagine if things could be different.

I’m convinced that one of the main reasons we fail in our desires to change is because we’re so accustomed to working on our own. But we’re not meant to journey alone. We were meant to do it with other people. 

That’s why we’re advocates for coaching at What’s Best Next. Some of you have personally experienced the benefit of having a WBN coach help you grow in gospel-driven productivity—an approach to life that understands God has a lot to say about how we spend our days. 

Do you know someone in your life that would benefit from productivity coaching? Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s a new team member, maybe it’s a friend moving to a new role outside their comfort zone. What’s Best Next would love to be a partner on the journey. 

Send them our way or contact us today if you’re ready!

 

 

Filed Under: 2 - Professional Skills, WBN Coaching

Productivity with Your Resume

July 18, 2019 by Matt Perman

One crucial aspect of productivity is getting into the context where you can be the most productive—which means getting the right job. When it comes to the job hunt, resumes are still an essential tool.

So here are six resume dos and don’ts from Brian Brenberg, chair of the program in business and finance at The King’s College. The six tips are:

  1. Don’t fudge the facts
  2. Do include jobs you think nobody cares about
  3. Don’t make spelling and grammar mistakes
  4. Do invite people to critique your work
  5. Don’t assume a good resume will get you a job
  6. Do know your resume inside and out
You can also watch him discuss the points in this video segment. Brenberg is always entertaining and insightful—the best possible combination!

Filed Under: Job Finding

How to be Awesome at Your Job

August 29, 2018 by Matt Perman

I was on Pete Mockaitis’s How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast the other day, and really enjoyed it. You can listen below or at the website, where you will also find helpful links to the various books mentioned and some relevant previous episodes (for example, his episode with David Allen).

Pete is doing great work and I highly recommend his website and podcast for specific, actionable insights that will boost your work performance.

Here’s a summary of the show:

Matt Perman explains how to tell the difference between important tasks and urgent tasks, and how to make room for what’s important in your life and work.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why you should plan your day with your time, not your tasks
  2. Four tips for effective personal management
  3. Two ways to prioritize like a pro

337: Choosing the Important Over the Urgent with Matt Perman

 

 

Filed Under: Career Success

Lifetime Value and Business Courtesy

August 22, 2018 by Matt Perman

This is a basic marketing principle which Seth Godin summarizes very well. Seems obvious, but it is often overlooked!

If an Apple upgrade breaks your phone and you switch to Android, it costs Apple more than $10,000.

If you switch supermarkets because a clerk was snide with you, it removes $50,000 from the store’s ongoing revenue.

If a kid has a lousy first grade teacher or is bullied throughout middle school, it might decrease his productivity for the rest of us by a million dollars.

Torrents are made of drips.

The short-term impact (plus or minus) of our work or our errors is dwarfed by the long-term effects. Compounded over time, little things become big things.

In other words, courtesy and generosity are not only good for business — they are essential for business when you look at things from the long-term perspective.

Filed Under: Marketing

How Do You Define Value in Your Work?

May 10, 2018 by Matt Perman

From Great at Work, which is now the best book on personal effectiveness I have ever read:

As our study suggested, we should evaluate the value of our work by measuring how much others benefit from it. That’s an outside-in view, because it directs attention to the benefits our work brings to others. The typical inside-out view, by contrast, measures work according to whether we have completed our tasks and goals, regardless of whether they produce any benefits.

This may seem obvious in retrospect, but how many of us intentionally work this way? It is so easy to get caught up in accomplishing tasks, defining our productivity that way, rather than defining it in terms of the benefit our work actually brings.

If we take this outside-in view, I see two benefits. First, we will have more success in our jobs. That seems obvious, right? Second, we will be able to become more efficient, because now we have a criteria that allows us to identify unnecessary tasks or unnecessary steps in our tasks.

Beyond this, the outside-in view is very much in line with the gospel ethic, which is others-centered.

There is one nuance, of course: do not let this stifle innovation or too easily justify the status quo. You know the benefits of your work by how people act, not mainly what they say in response to your initial idea. Focus groups, for example, are usually a bad idea. As Henry Ford said, “If I had asked the public what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” What actually produced the greatest value was when Ford democratized the automobile — something people weren’t asking for initially.

Filed Under: Decision Making, Defining Success

How History’s Most Creative People Organized Their Days

May 9, 2018 by Matt Perman

Fascinating! From the Washington Post.

And it’s collected into a nice chart for easy comparison:

 

Filed Under: Creativity, Scheduling

How Do You Respond to Dissenting Opinions?

March 30, 2016 by James Kinnard

Dissenting opinions are useful even when they’re wrong.

That’s the argument Adam Grant makes in one of his chapters in Originals:

“Minority viewpoints are important, not because they tend to prevail but because they stimulate divergent attention and thought,” finds Berkeley psychologist Charlan Nemeth, one of the world’s leading experts on group decisions. “As a result, even when they are wrong they contribute to the detection of novel solutions and decisions that, on balance, our qualitatively better.”

When we have expertise in a particular area or more context than others or feel the need to move fast, it’s easy to discount dissenting opinions.  Or worse, to be threatened by them.

Humble confidence means truly listening to dissenting opinions, not shutting them down.

Coupling our confidence with humility honors others and (it shouldn’t be a surprise) leads to better results.

Filed Under: 6 - Culture, Collaboration, Meetings

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About

What’s Best Next exists to help you achieve greater impact with your time and energy — and in a gospel-centered way.

We help you do work that changes the world. We believe this is possible when you reflect the gospel in your work. So here you’ll find resources and training to help you lead, create, and get things done. To do work that matters, and do it better — for the glory of God and flourishing of society.

We call it gospel-driven productivity, and it’s the path to finding the deepest possible meaning in your work and the path to greatest effectiveness.

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About Matt Perman

Matt Perman started What’s Best Next in 2008 as a blog on God-centered productivity. It has now become an organization dedicated to helping you do work that matters.

Matt is the author of What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done and a frequent speaker on leadership and productivity from a gospel-driven perspective. He has led the website teams at Desiring God and Made to Flourish, and is now director of career development at The King’s College NYC. He lives in Manhattan.

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Foundational Posts

3 Questions on Productivity
How to Get Your Email Inbox to Zero Every Day
Productivity is Really About Good Works
Management in Light of the Supremacy of God
The Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards in Categories
Business: A Sequel to the Parable of the Good Samaritan
How Do You Love Your Neighbor at Work?

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  • How to Learn Anything…Fast
  • Job Searching During the Coronavirus Economy
  • Ministry Roundtable Discussion on the Pandemic with Challies, Heerema, Cosper, Thacker, and Schumacher
  • Is Calling Some Jobs Essential a Helpful Way of Speaking?
  • An Interview on Coronavirus and Productivity

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