All posts in the ‘ Dealing with People ’ Category

Remember that Jump to Conclusions mat from Office Space?  You have one living in your brain.… Read More

There is a nice piece about confidence from Daniel Kahneman in last week’s New York Times Magazine.  It’s definitely worth a read before you head into your next negotiation.  Especially if you happen to think you’re 100% right and they’re 100% wrong.… Read More

Disagreements suck.

It is never fun to be at odds with someone, especially if that someone is a person you’re working with or who is in charge of paying you money.

But disagreements happen.  They are a part of life and they are definitely a part of work.  Instead of hoping really, really hard that the impossible occurs and the remainder of your days are … Read More

Jack has been freelancing for six months.  He’s done his fair share of work on spec and picked up jobs that friends and acquaintances didn’t want.  He’s had some good experiences and some that made him long for the days he worked at Borders endlessly stocking Twilight novels.

Last week Jack got an email from an educational book publisher asking if he’d be interested in … Read More

Sometimes you don’t want to understand why things happen or how you can become a better person through active listening.  Sometimes you just want someone to help you figure out how to fix a problem.

I can do that.… Read More

Regardless of where you come down on this whole debt ceiling business, if you want to hone your negotiation skills, it is the thing to pay attention to.  Because watching people screw things up beyond all recognition is a fantastic way of learning.

Here are the major lessons I hope you take away from this debacle.… Read More

R2-D2 and C-3PO are best friends.  They grew up together, went to the same college and for the past few weeks, they’ve been working on a story together.  A friend of a friend of C-3PO’s is an editor and, based on R2 and 3PO’s happy hour accentuated pitch, has agreed to take a look at it.  Unfortunately, the story isn’t done; it’s still in pre-first … Read More

You have a client named…Splinter.

Splinter has a new job for you about once every two or three months.  The work tends to be interesting, but not overly taxing, and Splinter generally agrees to a higher hourly rate than many of your other clients.

Splinter is also consistently late.  He’s late to conference calls, passing on specs and worst of all, he’s generally 10-15 days … Read More