We live in a time of superlatives. Everything is bigger, better, faster and more intense than its predecessor. We have online avatars that dazzle us with amazing feats of prowess. Social media intensifies our normal daily experiences, both in volume and speed. At 4,000 tweets a second, we need super...

After his first dinner as head of the Catholic Church, the newly selected Pope Francis rode the bus to his hotel with the all the cardinals instead of taking the car specially prepared for him.

We learned that Francis flew economy from Buenos Aires to Rome, he kept his silver...

I think using humor in the office is highly under-rated.

Research shows that the quickest way to form a positive connection with someone new is to laugh together. (Hopefully, not about the outfit your other colleague is wearing -- this is not the movie Mean Girls.) The pace of work...

As I get older I am a lot less tolerant about wasting my time, including at work.

When an event is not meeting my expectations I "vote with my feet" as quickly as I politely can. I leave the room. I hang up the phone. I shut off the...

Everyone, and I really mean everyone, can help someone else.

Last week, I spoke to 150 engineers, mostly women, who were just starting their working careers. If I had to guess, I would say that their average age was 21 or 22 years old.

I told them that they...

Crying at work makes me happy. Odd? Weird? Wrong?

I often cry at work. I don't really like to, but I know that it's as much a part of who I am as my eye color.

You see, I cry when I am inspired. People inspire me. People at work...

I am an optimist by nature, a glass half-full kind of person. (Funny aside for a moment -- a colleague once said to me, "I don't see the glass as half full or half empty, I see the wrong-sized glass.") I rarely use my blog to complain about something. This...

How do we connect in a disconnected world?

I realize that I am not the first to address the communication challenges of today, when we're all connected 24/7 and via a multitude of electronic devices -- PDAs, tablets, laptops -- the list is endless. While offering convenience, these devices also...

If you're someone I admire, please come sit next to me. I could use a little time breathing the same air as you.

Most people I know admire people who are out of reach -- Mother Theresa, Derek Jeter, Lady Gaga -- to name a few and I do as...

Does anything really good happen before 9 a.m.?

I am firmly convinced it doesn't. And please, folks, don't ask me to meet with you before 9 a.m. You might have something important to say, but for me it's the equivalent of fingernails scratching a blackboard.

I just think talking before...

This week I was speaking to a colleague who has made a significant life choice in respect to her job: she's following a new path and will take a brief sabbatical before venturing in a new direction.

It's actually an old direction: she's going back to the work she loves....

Do you remember your first job? More specifically, do you remember when you first got paid to do something?

Mine was picking fruit.

I was 10 years old and my maternal grandmother, Stasia, had a strawberry patch in her yard. It seemed enormous to me at the time, but...

Having spent the last five years writing about being happy at work, I am often asked: "What do I need to do to be happy at work?"

Frankly, it's the same as the old joke about Carnegie Hall in New York City. A tourist was visiting New York and asked...

How do you recognize when you are working too much and for the wrong reasons?

Who today truly keeps their perspective of what's normal or acceptable when it comes to work? Surviving the economic crisis of 2009 has pushed the limits of what is normal working behavior. The rules are...