Category: Tools and Information

Five Rude Emails You Send Every Day | Inc.com

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getty_143921954_9706479704500119_60092Even the most likeable and well-mannered among us can still look like jerks in an email. Writing an email that comes across just like you do in person is a fine art.

During a conversation, you adjust your tone, facial expression, gestures and posture in order to fit the mood of what you’re conveying. You do this because people tend to be much more responsive to how you say things than to what you actually say.

Email strips a conversation bare. It’s efficient, but it turns otherwise easy interactions into messy misinterpretations. Without facial expressions and body posture to guide your message, people look at each word you type as an indicator of tone and mood.

Most of the mistakes people make in their emails are completely avoidable. The following list digs into these subtle mistakes and hidden blunders.

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New LAEDC Research: People, Industry, Jobs in LA County | Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation

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The LAEDC’s Institute for Applied Economics has published a new study on LA County’s workforce needs, occupational forecasts, and skills required by occupations, to provide workforce development intelligence as part of our ongoing partnership with our regional Workforce Investment Boards (WIBs) and other education and workforce development partners.  The study, titled People, Industry, and Jobs is available to any interested readers below.  Both the City of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County are detailed.

Get Report.

Why Do Certain Retail Stores Cluster Together? | Planetizen

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Ever notice how competitors like Target and Walmart tend to cluster together? Ken Steif has, and through a close analysis of retail location trends in NY, NJ, and CT, he examines which businesses tend to agglomerate and why.

I spend much of my free time digging for old records.  Philadelphia, my home, has a rich history of soul music and its countless thrift stores and flea markets offer a fiend like me plenty of opportunity.  There are times however, when I prefer the efficiency of shopping at a record store, and although there are record stores in Philly, there is no better cluster of record stores anywhere on the planet than in the Lower East Side of New York City.  As it turns out – this pattern can be explained by two extremely important planning-related theories, Hotelling’s Law and Central Place Theory.

Stores like Good Records and A1 Records are approximately 2.5 hours from Philly via a combination of bus, subway and walking – but on occasion I will make the journey because the selection at these stores is nothing short of extraordinary.  But why do they insist on locating so close to each other?  Wouldn’t it be more advantageous for these stores to locate farther apart so that they can each enjoy their own dedicated market area?

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15 Things To Do When You’re Tired of Being Broke | Marketing for Hippies.com

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I recently wrote a post called ‘I’m Broke (And I Don’t Care).’ It got well over 100 comments from readers on it and has been shared far and wide.

I think it resonated with people because they’re tired of feeling like their self worth needs to be tied to the amount of money they make or that their choices to work with people with less money, or to take time off for fun are wrong. And maybe they liked knowing that someone they might have assumed always had money sometimes went broke.

But since writing it, I’ve wanted to write this to talk about the other side of it: sometimes you are tired of being broke.

And that’s okay too.

Sometimes it can be fun to be reckless and a bit irresponsible and go on adventures, buy things we shouldn’t because it adds joy to our lives.

And sometimes there’s the aftermath.

There’s the non profit we wish we could give money to that we can’t.

We aren’t able to pay rent or our bills and we feel mortified about it.

We owe money to dear friends who trusted we’d pay them back soon and we just haven’t been able to.

Our spouse or partner is breathing down our neck and needing us to pull it together.

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Why Do I Bruise Easily? | Live Science

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bruise-easilyA contusion, or bruise, is a reddish-purple discoloration of the skin that doesn’t blanch, or turn white or pale, when pressed upon.

Bruises typically form when a localized injury, such a blow or impact, causes capillaries to break open and leak red blood cells under the skin.

A person may start to bruise more easily than before for a number of different reasons, though bruising doesn’t necessarily indicate a serious health issue.

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Genetically Modified Animals Will Be on Your Plate in No Time | WIRED

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NO ONE EATS genetically modified animals. That is to say, human beings have modified almost every domesticated foodstuff, plant, and animal through traditional breeding techniques. But start using genetic engineering technology, moving genes around or inserting one from one living thing into another, and people freak right the hell out. That’s what happened two weeks ago—France went into a panic because a lamb that was the offspring of a sheep modified to express a green fluorescent protein made it to market. In Europe, genetically modified organisms are outright banned; in the US, lots of staple crops like corn have plenty of modified genes. But animals? That’s a line supermarkets haven’t crossed.

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How to Grab and Keep Your Audience in the Attention Economy | BusinessTips.com

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downloadFrom closing the deal to firing up your team, make your message stick with SHARPs

Want to know your real competition when you’re speaking, whether to an individual or group? You’re up against the human mind. Weighing in at just three pounds, this competitor is the repository of countless conscious and unconscious thoughts.

We are all bombarded with data at every turn. Our smartphones (and the constant content they provide) call to us like sirens, ready to distract us under the guise of multi-tasking.

This is the attention economy. And it’s the new reality.

The average attention span for an adult is a measly 8 seconds (we’re only 2 seconds better than our kids). This doesn’t mean that you can only hold someone’s attention for 8 seconds; it means that you can lose it in 8 seconds.1

With this reality, we face an even greater challenge every time we communicate an idea, a request or an action item. How do we connect? How do we get through all that other clutter caused by the attention economy? How can we be more compelling than the smartphone?

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Dubai to print world’s first 3D-printed office building (it’ll just take a few weeks) | Inhaitat

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The United Arab Emirates likes to be first when it comes to amazing feats of construction and technology, and architecture in Dubai is constantly pushing the envelope. The world’s tallest building already towers over Dubai’s skyline, and now the city is planning to build the world’s first fully 3D-printed office building. It’s a cool, space-age structure that will save a bundle on construction costs and material waste.

The office building will take just a matter of weeks to construct. The overall structure won’t be that big in terms of scale, covering just 2,000 square feet (186 square meters), but it’ll be huge for the 3D-printing history. The building will be the world’s first fully-functional 3D-printed office building, and will serve as operations headquarters for the recently opened Museum of the Future, which is located nearby the building site and also features 3D-printed components. The office building will be printed one layer at a time by a 20-foot-tall 3D printer, and then assembled onsite. What’s more, all of the furniture, fixtures, detailing, and structural components will also be 3D-printed, making this endeavor the most ambitious 3D-printing project in architectural history.

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Employee Engagement? What If Employees Don’t Want To Be Engaged? | Forbes

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downloadEngagement statistics really haven’t changed much over the past 10 years. Why? Surely, we’ve focused enough attention, money, staff, time and energy on the concept of engagement to make a huge difference. And yet the numbers remain relatively flat and generally negative.

But what if people just don’t want to be engaged?

By and large, leaders know that they can’t make their people suddenly become passionate about the company’s mission and strategy, the customer experience, the bottom line, or any other owner-level consideration. Thoughtful leaders understand that employees must first want to make a larger contribution, so these leaders institute recognition and reward programs designed to foster a desire to engage…and still, in many cases, no appreciable or sustainable engagement materializes. Why?

It might be time to build a process of engagement that includes more than just an organizational motivation approach. In the book Influencer, authors Patterson, Grenny, Switzler, Maxfield and McMillan reveal two other, equally important sources of motivation that can be brought to bear on any change goal, including this stubborn challenge of employee engagement—namely, social motivation (peer influence) and individual motivation (intrinsic desire). When combined with organizational rewards, these two sources of influence can create a formidable recipe for sustained increases in engagement. Let’s explore both.

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