Status On My Next Book

Well my next book – which is really more of a booklet  – is out of editing.

My plan is to take some of my past Fan To Pro columns on job searching and improve and enhance them to form a tight guide to oddities on the job search.  It’s gone pretty well, and I expect to be publishing sometime in November.

I’ve had great feedback from my pre-readers and I think it’ll be very useful for folks on the job search, especially those who want to try and get out of a rut or take their job search skills a bit farther.  I’ll probably be pricing it pretty cheaply as an e-book.  Not sure I want to do a physical book, but more on that later.

It’s a bit under 40 pages, and doing it’s been interesting:

First, I really feel the idea of using blog content as the seed for a book actually works.  I wasn’t initially sure about the idea (I mean, why not just do a reprint?), but instead it’s like the original posts are the basis for another useful form.  What works as a blog post in my ranty-coach didactic style doesn’t work as a book, and what you can do in a book and a blog differs.

Secondly, after you get feedback on a series of blog posts and/or look over your work, you can incorporate that into the based-on work, and this ads a lot of value.

Third, it’s a way to make your content accessible in a  different manner.  People don’t want to have to go back to your blog all the time, or have to find printouts, or whatever.  You can give things to people in a different useful format.

Fourth, and something I hope to explore later, if you’re producing a physical object (a book or magazine), there’s something new to leave for posterity.  Something that can be passed on, put on a shelf, gifted easily.  There’s something satisfying about that.  This may not happen with this book – but we’ll see.

So hang in there, it’ coming . . . and starting to wonder how I present these books on my sites, so suggestions welcome . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

 

Politics and The Psych Degree

I got a degree in psychology back in college, looking for a science career, though I eventually went back to my first choice in computing.  Still, I don’t regret the degree at all (a psych degree is actually good as a minor or a complimentary degree for most anything), as it helps me get some great insights into human behavior.

One insight that comes to mind this holiday season is that Freud would have a field day with U.S. politics.

First, there’s the bizarre sexual issues, issues that indicate a kind of regressed or immature sexuality for so many people.  We’re actually to the point where rape being a bad thing is something people discuss as opposed to going “yeah, it’s bad.”  People are freaked out over contraception, something you think we’d be used to by now.

Secondly, there’s the daddy issues, and the press is really bad with this.  There’s the bizarre fawning over machismo which is often false machismo – and then just as soon as people show any machismo, there’s fear of angry daddy.  There’s an acceptance of adolescent posturing on war, and little thought on actual repercussions – I mean seriously, if there’s a war with Iran there will be impacts we have to cope with, whether a war is, was, or will be necessary.

Third, and related, there’s really little talk of long-term planning.  How do we get from A to B?  What of the repercussions?  What of sustainability?  What do we really want to do as opposed to say we’ll do.  Is this policy or that real long-term planning or a dodge?

Now I could have a Freudian field day with a lot of politics, but I suspect one of the big issues is that we don’t want to take a look at the pathological state of our own politics.  We don’t want to confront the immaturity, the parental issues, the regressed adolescent sexual issues, etc.  We know it’s there, but it seems we’re happier playing the games.

I’m not.  A lot of people aren’t.  Perhaps we need to get the media and politicians to catch on . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Skill Portability: Direct Skill Portability

(9/17/2016 – These posts have been expanded in a book, Skill Portability: A Guide To Moving Skills Between Jobs)

So my little guide to “how to do Skill Portability” is an acronym, DARE.  This is not just because I love acronyms, but because it’s handy to remember that skills fit into four categories that let you determine how you can use them in your career.  Be it training plans or a resume, you want to think about what your skills mean to your career.

The D?  That stands for the easiest kind of portability – Direct.

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