Early career WORK

Think of this page as a career shopping mall. You should be looking for the elements you want in your future life.

So many people waste their time doing trivial things and make no effort to learn anything about "how the world works." There are plenty of clues on this page.

This page is meant to be used to create a career "radar" list with topics, timing, dependencies and importance. More on this below. This is relevant to anyone who wants more than a routine job in a dying organization.

… Real life involves a great deal of 'pro-active' thinking.

This means going out and doing things.

All the information is not given — you have to find it.

Something is not placed before you.

If you just sit in your chair nothing will happen. …

If you have an Internet identity, make sure it paints a positive, constructive picture. Otherwise it will be used against you.

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Major reality check: There are over seven billion people on the planet and almost none of them care about your career thinking—delusions. They care about themselves. Their question throughout your life will be: "what are you going to do for me tomorrow?" — what you did yesterday carries little weight. They behave just like you do—as a consumer. They move on when it suits their interests—just like you. This is a part of a foundation for career understanding and action. The work on this page will help you get organized for this reality.

This page focuses on careers over a life time—a longer and different view than jobs. It is different from occupation titles. There are people who use their work lives to create a good, meaningful life for themselves — more and different from just a good paying job. This is not something you can do once and then live happily ever after — that only happens in fairy tales.

It is not possible to work on things or draw on things that aren't on your radar.

This page is meant to be used as a conceptual landscape, systematic brainroad ^SM and time-investment menu. To perform this brainroad function requires an introduction to a broad range of topics and quite a few sidebars (through indentation) that add breadth or elaboration to a topic.

This page looks down the road ahead of you (2015, 2020, 2030 …), not the road behind us.

The roadS ahead are not linear extensions of the roads behind—an iPhone isn't just a more up-to-date version of the black, rotary-dial, party-line phone of the 1950s and a tweet is not a more up-to-date version of a telegram.

The content of this page will be useful to anyone at any age. It provides a foundation for managing oneself for life. It provides information for working on the question: "Where do I (as a unique individual) belong?"

Those who want to live a fulfilling life—who want to feel as if there is some purpose in their being on this earth—will have to learn to manage themselves.

They will have to accept the fact that it is their own responsibility to find meaningful work that builds on their strengths and values.

"The World Is Full Of Options"
by Peter Drucker

This page is an attention-directing tool — click now.

People sometimes use the words jobs and careers interchangeably, but few say anything like “I’m going to my career today,” rather they would say “I’m going to my job.” A test of whether a job creates a career is what happens when a job comes to an end. There are millions of people who assumed their job was a career only to find out later that their daily work didn’t conveniently translate into a job somewhere else at a different point in time. Defining what precisely constitutes a career is not necessary for the purposes of this page.

Working on this page presents a challenge, but that is the nature of the world you should be preparing yourself to enter or participate in—it is not sanitary like school. It may take months to harvest and organize the ideas you want to pursue.

The page's purpose is to help you create a valuable launching pad for the rest of your life. The term "launching pad" has special significance. It is chosen in preference to the word "foundation." This distinction is explained further down this page—in several places.

This page provides a work-life landscape view, links to conceptual resources, and suggested tools for harvesting and organizing those resources. In other words it performs the function of a menu. This allows you to pick what fits you. These are part of the building blocks of your future life and careerS. This page provides a foundation for future directed decisions. Part of that foundation is the understanding of the launching pad idea above.

The title of this page is early career WORK. This means finding important concepts, harvesting, organizing, acting, reflecting, rethinking, reflecting, more finding, harvesting … etc. This work should never stop—it is a part of navigating your life. If you are not willing to do this work, you will end up a "cog" in somebody else's "scheme" and be manipulated by somebody who doesn't care about you.

The page is a work approach blueprint that will take your brain to places it wouldn't go otherwise. No one—regardless of intelligence—can invest time in opportunities that aren't on their radar. Most people's radar is filled with yesterday—it couldn't be otherwise. The brain is a history library that has to run in the future tense. Getting the right stuff on one's radar is only the first step—and a repeated challenge.

I strongly suggest that you read through this entire page before clicking links except the ones in this paragraph. It would be a good idea to have some kind of structured note-taking system for harvesting and organizing ideas on this and its linked pages. I'm a Mac user. I personally use OmniOutliner Pro, MindNode Pro (there is a free non-pro version), Scrivener, and DEVONthink Pro. Unless you need a heavy article archiving solution, Scrivener should do the job (there's a Windows version). Also see specialized knowledge now.

Thoughts on interesting topics you encounter during a day: As you're going through your day, it is a good idea to make note of any moderately interesting topic and where you discovered it. Later you can review these and archive those that don't seem valuable. The purpose of these notes is to help you look out the window. They are attention-directing tools. So pay attention to what catches your attention—it may mean something later on. Beware of the futility of politics, predictions of the future, and things that look like they are going to be big.

The new always looks so small, so puny, so unpromising next to the size and performance of maturity. Anything truly new that looks big is indeed to be distrusted. The odds are heavily against its succeeding. And yet successful innovators, as was argued earlier, start small and, above all, simple. — Chapter 13, Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Identifying the Future (The Daily Drucker)

Futurists always measure their batting average by counting how many things they have predicted that have come true. They never count how many important things come true that they did not predict. Everything a forecaster predicts may come to pass. Yet, he may not have seen the most meaningful of the emergent realities or, worse still, may not have paid attention to them. There is no way to avoid this irrelevancy in forecasting, for the important and distinctive are always the result of changes in values, perception, and goals, that is, in things that one can divine but not forecast.

But the most important work of the executive is to identify the changes that have already happened. The important challenge in society, economics, politics, is to exploit the changes that have already occurred and to use them as opportunities. The important thing is to identify the "future that has already happened"—and to develop a methodology for perceiving and analyzing these changes. A good deal of this methodology is incorporated in my 1985 book Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which shows how one systematically looks to the changes in society, in demographics, in meaning, in science and technology, as opportunities to make the future.

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The notes that survive your initial pruning process can be organized in a number of ways. Filing them by review sessions will keep them on your radar. David Allen suggests a weekly review (overview of his system). See JUN 2 "A Successful Information-Based Organization" and "30 AUG — Finding Opportunity in Surprises" in The Daily Drucker for a monthly review process. See NOV 15 in The Daily Drucker — The Management Letter for a semi-annual review. See Drucker's Annual Review in My Life as a Knowledge Worker. Also reviews are needed for: people decisions; expected results from assignments, contributions, key activities and projects; effective decisions. You are going to have to design your own attention-directing system as you go through your life—nobody else can do it for you.

The overriding question is "What needs doing" (See The Effective Executive)

The answer to the question "What needs to be done?" almost always contains more than one urgent task.

But effective executives do not splinter themselves.

They concentrate on one task if at all possible.

If they are among those people—a sizable minority—who work best with a change of pace in their working day, they pick two tasks.

I have never encountered an executive who remains effective while tackling more than two tasks at a time.

Hence, after asking what needs to be done, the effective executive sets priorities and sticks to them.

… snip, snip …

Other tasks, no matter how important or appealing, are postponed.

However, after completing the original top-priority task, the executive resets priorities rather than moving on to number two from the original list.

He asks, "What must be done now?"

This generally results in new and different priorities.

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"If something fails despite being carefully planned, carefully designed, and conscientiously executed, that failure often bespeaks underlying change and, with it, opportunity."

— Peter F. Drucker, 1985

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When you're reading something of substance its a good idea to think about what you need to calendarize.

The Road Ahead

Career Directions I

Formal Education

Self Education

Career Directions II

Conceptual resources that provide career vision and guidance

Preparing for the journey ahead

Early career horizon

Jumping In

Further down the road

Career Directions I

At age 20 a person can anticipate a 50-60-70 year work life. It pays to be informed on the nature the work challenges ahead. It pays to make the right foundational work decisions early on.

The pay differences above reflect the differences between the potential knowledge contribution values in world of work—see the economic content and structure diagram further down the page.

STEM Workers: Please Live Long and Prosper

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Simple view of the complex "world" of careers

Blue and rose rectangles above are linked to other pages.

Larger view

The "Changing World" (above) refers to the reality that we are embedded in a world moving relentlessly toward unimagined futures.

Changing Social and Economic Picture

A Century of Social Transformation—Emergence of Knowledge Society

Within the life span of today's old-timers, our society has become a "knowledge society," a "society of organizations," and a "networked society."

See chapter titled "Managing in the network society" in Managing in a Time of Great Change

In the twentieth century, the major social tasks came to be performed in and through organized institutions—business enterprises, large and small; school systems; colleges and universities; hospitals; research laboratories; governments and government agencies of all kinds and sizes; and many others.

And each of them in turn is entrusted to "managers" who practice "management."

Management, Revised Edition

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Career math: "Many" people may have 5 or 6 Careers over a 50 year work life. That works out to about 10 years per career. Within each career there will be the need for learning and relearning.

To be valuable these careers will have to be based on knowledge specialties and competences. There will also be the need for developing necessary skills.

Within each career there is a possibility of 5 major assignments—each lasting a couple of years. These assignments should be derived from the needs of an organization

Within each career there will be jobs in which these assignments are embedded. These assignments are the bridge to new careers because they create new major capabilities. The new assignments you accept should fit you.

At some point you should start to consider the second half of your life.

If it were only this simple! Read on

Take Responsibility for Your Career

The stepladder is gone, and there's not even the implied structure of an industry's rope ladder. It's more like vines, and you bring your own machete.

Q: If a young man in a gray flannel suit represented the life long corporate type, what's today's image?

A: Taking individual responsibility and not depending on any particular company.

Equally important is managing your own career.

You don't know what you'll be doing next, or whether you'll work in a private office or one big amphitheater or even out of your home.

You have to take responsibility for knowing yourself, so you can find the right jobs as you develop and as your family becomes a factor in your values and choices.

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Remarkably few Americans are prepared to select jobs for themselves.

When you ask, "Do you know what you are good at?

Do you know your limitations?" they look you in the eye with a blank stare.

Or they often respond in terms of subject knowledge, which is the wrong answer.

When they prepare their résumés, they try to list positions like steps up a ladder.

It is time to give up thinking of jobs or career paths as we once did and think in terms of taking on one assignment after another.

We have to leap right over the search for objective criteria and get into the subjective—what I call competencies.

September 9 — The Daily Drucker

My Delicious Career Bundle (A range of articles: some are written from the viewpoint of cogs in the system and some with a more elevated view)

Acquiring new capabilities

If you start with capabilities X and successfully take on Assignment Z you now have Capabilities XZ …

Career Roads

There are two modern, attractive career roads that are available in reasonable quantities: knowledge technologist and knowledge worker. The remainder of this page applies primarily to knowledge workers.

After looking at the illustration above in its simple form, you could mentally rearrange into the following sequence: Sectors > then Organizations that make up a sector > then a Work type branch > then the branches of the "Every organization" node> has Worker types. The sequence you've just configured is a tentative future career road.

Living in More Than One World runs in parallel and is personal. The Second Half of Your Life is a part of living in more than one world—further down the road. There are links to Living in More Than One World and The Second Half further down the page.

The world of work depicted above takes place in the real physical world. You might find it interesting to get a list of the world's largest population centers and visit them in Google Maps or Google Earth's street view. Also check out their skylines. A view of the earth at night indicates the spread of electrification and the potential for modern electronics.

There is a time lag between part of what goes on in the world of work and when it becomes visible on the "street." In June 2011 there was no iPhone 5 out in the wild, but it had been in the world of work for several years—R&D in several organizations through out the supply chain. The engine that creates the new is related to the "Every organization" node in the mind map above. Every organization needs to be fully engaged with management's new paradigm and strategic certainties for tomorrow. Every organization needs to be fully engaged with every topic in Management, Revised Edition and each topic is a potential work area for somebody. Unfortunately many, many, many organizations wait for trouble before aggressively pursuing these action areas—when it is too late. When they do respond its usually with an inside-out effort rather than an outside-in approach (Find: The Customer: Joined at the Hip in The Definitive Drucker).

The U. S. Census Bureau publishes frequent news releases. These contain indications of the complexity of the world and the world of work. You can be notified of these through a RSS feed or you can find them buried in my Society :: events :: stuff happening pages. Two more RSS feeds to consider: the Drucker Exchange (http://thedx.druckerinstitute.com/feed/) and McKinsey (http://rss.mckinseyquarterly.com/f/100003s2jgmrvob5sup.rss). If you don't already have a RSS reader, checkout Google Reader. MIT also publishes several newsletters. I subscribe to the Daily Updates: Emerging Technologies Update. This newsletter is just a reminder of the kinds of things other people are pursuing. A lot of the things that get reported from the sources turn out to mean nothing. Also there is an enchantment with technology—for technology's sake—that is unjustified by its track record—people don't buy technology, they buy what it does for them. There is more on this theme further down the page.

Every social or economic problem is an opportunity available to the world of work.

We now have a foundation for thinking about formal education. Part of the foundation for the world you'll be entering later.

Formal Education

If you are in college or thinking about attending college:

Long before your senior year make sure you have a real-world knowledge specialty—be sure to follow the preceding link (not just a college major).

See the first few paragraphs of résumé and interview planning for a connection between jobs and qualifications

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A knowledge specialty that is integral to the design, marketing and production (probably in another country) processes of the “things” that people want to buy (and can afford) in the worldS of tomorrowS.

In today's society and organizations, people work increasingly with knowledge, rather than with skill. Knowledge and skill differ in a fundamental characteristic—skills change very, very slowly. Knowledge, however, changes itself. It makes itself obsolete, and very rapidly. A knowledge worker becomes obsolescent if he or she does not go back to school every three or four years.

Peter Drucker, Jan 25, The Daily Drucker

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Knowledge workers cannot be supervised effectively. Unless they know more about their specialty than anybody else in the organization, they are basically useless. The marketing manager may tell the market researcher what the company needs to know about the design of a new product and the market segment in which it should be positioned. But it is the market researcher's job to tell the president of the company what market research is needed, how to set it up, and what the results mean.

Peter Drucker, Managing in a Time of Great Change

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The Function Of Organizations

The function of organizations is to make knowledges productive. Organizations have become central to society in all developed countries because of the shift from knowledge to knowledges.

The more specialized knowledges are, the more effective they will be. The best radiologists are not the ones who know the most about medicine; they are the specialists who know how to obtain images of the body's inside through X-ray, ultrasound, body scanner, magnetic resonance. The best market researchers are not those who know the most about business, but the ones who know the most about market research. Yet neither radiologists nor market researchers achieve results by themselves; their work is "input" only. It does not become results unless put together with the work of other specialists.

Knowledges by themselves are sterile. They become productive only if welded together into a single, unified knowledge. To make this possible is the task of organization, the reason for its existence, its function.

Peter Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society

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Your chosen knowledge specialty should meets the following conditions:

1. Jobs actually exist and are growing (where you want to live). Growing implies a healthy need for the work and a future for the work.

Where you plan to live may limit your career and life development choices. There are a lot of places mired in the worlds of yesterdayS.

Explore: Economic content and structure

2. Compensation is reasonable (there is plenty of info on the web)

3. Something you can do and you don't mind doing (to get you started in the real world). Make sure you have a crystal clear view of the daily work and working plus its realities.

"We have studied the country's best high school principals, the best affiliate leaders of Habitat for Humanity, the best emergency room nurses, the best pharmaceutical reps, and whenever we interview excellent performers in the same role," Buckingham says, "we find this same phenomenon—extraordinary results achieved in radically different ways."

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It takes far more energy … to improve from incompetency to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence

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Wrote Drucker: It's important "to accept the fact that other people are as much individuals as you yourself are. They perversely insist on behaving like human beings. This means that they too have their strengths; they too have their ways of getting things done; they too have their values. … Each works his or her way, not your way. And each is entitled to work his or her way."

Don't take someone else's word for it—do your own research, your own thinking. Try to make sense of the world from both customers and producers viewpoints. As an example, what explains the evolution of sound transportation technologies: from vinyl records of various sizes and speeds to 8 track to cassettes to CDs to digital downloads to cloud-based technologies … This is part of the evolving world of work.

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Observations on course work: If you take a course in tennis, basketball or any other sport, does that make you an automatic member of your university's team? How many of those who play on a university's team actually go on to play professional sports? How many of the superstars of a university's team go on to become superstars in professional sports? How many of the superstars in professional sports were superstars earlier in life? Why wouldn't these same observation apply in all fields? How might observations of this nature change over time? Where does the specific content of a course fit in economy, society and customer value systems? Conclusion: coursework is only an introduction and is not even directly applicable to evolving situations in the real world.

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Don't ever begin to believe that getting an academic certificate is a guarantee of success in the real world. There are untold numbers of organizations with or that had lots of financial resources, people of high intelligence, advanced degrees (even Nobel Laureates) and years of experience that get in terminal or near-terminal conditions—Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?: Leading a Great Enterprise through Dramatic Change or It takes a crisis or Google: Nokia platform burning or the American auto companies or the real-estate melt down or the list could go on and on …. And they don't get out of trouble by doing more of yesterday. Things fail at the height of their success. Asserting that an organization is doing great and therefore doesn't need to create its future is predicting the future based on the past—which created today's situation. Peter Drucker once commented that "trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window." Its a competitive world and that spells change. It is also a world where knowledge is constantly making itself obsolete. All of this is unpredictable—except that its going to happen. If you don't believe me, get a list of prominent companies from 30 years ago and see what happened to them. How many completely disappeared? How many were able to successfully pursue a linear path?

Remember you may have a 60 year work life. Don't let yourself get lulled into a false sense of security—always keep trying to design your way forward.

Be aware of the unique risks inherent in new knowledge and the existence of the shakeout: Chapter 9 of Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

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In Peter Drucker's The Effective Executive and Innovation and Entrepreneurship he writes about the wisdom of "aiming high." As a thinking exercise pick ten current products or services that have large global markets then imagine "aiming high." Next try the same exercise on ten products or services from the 1960s. What did you learn? What about aiming to be average? In considering which of your enthusiasms or passions to pursue remember that "aiming high" is always future directed and dynamic.

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From 4 FEB — Knowledge and Technology in The Daily Drucker

The new technology embraces and feeds off the entire array of human knowledges.

The search for knowledge, as well as the teaching thereof, has traditionally been dissociated from application.

Both have been organized by subject, that is, according to what appeared to be the logic of knowledge itself.

The faculties and departments of the university, its degrees, its specializations, indeed the entire organization of higher learning, have been subject-focused.

They have been, to use the language of the experts on organization, based upon "product," rather than on "market" or "end use."

Now we are increasingly organizing knowledge and the search for it around areas of application rather than around the subject areas of disciplines.

Interdisciplinary work has grown everywhere.

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This is a symptom of the shift in the meaning of knowledge from an end in itself to a resource, that is, a means to some result.

Knowledge as the central energy of a modern society exists altogether in application and when it is put to work.

Work, however, cannot be defined in terms of the disciplines.

End results are interdisciplinary of necessity.

Larger

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This is the launching pad for your life (not just a job or a career) in a world where there is little previous experience that is directly relevant to the years ahead.

Self Education

Learn to find a job !!! (See My delicious bookmarks)

Learn what employers are seeking

Learn what you have to contribute (see Strength Finder for an introductory approach)

Learn to connect what you have to offer with what the prospective employer is seeking.

This includes having an elevator pitch and some personal brand preparation.

Learn to ask intelligent, informed questions (the ammunition for your questions is on this page and it links) then stop talking and listen carefully. Ask for clarification where needed. Then say "Thank you."

Figure out how you are going to connect with people who have jobs to offer. 80% of jobs come through networking.

Below are a couple of books that present some ideas to be working on. The books are basically out of print but the outline topics can be used for creating web searches to fill in the missing details.

Marketing Yourself

Smart Questions: Interview Your Way to Job Success

Start some resume planning. This is not about format, but what you want to be able to say about yourself—that is rock-solid true. Start collecting information

Get some work skills and experience

Ten or So Things to Learn This School Year from Reality Check (good list, but suggestions in the book seem weak)

• 1. How to talk to your boss. See chapter 46 in Management, Revised Edition

• 2. How to survive a meeting

• 3. How to run a meeting

• 4. How to figure out anything on your own

• 5. How to negotiate

• 6. How to make small talk

• 7. How to explain something in thirty seconds

• 8. How to write a one-page report

• 9. How to write a five-sentence e-mail

• 10. How to get along with coworkers

• 11. How to use PowerPoint (or Keynote). Presentations

• 12. How to leave a voice mail

• Prepare for life, not just work

Try an internship in your knowledge field. If this makes you squirm—maybe you're considering an inappropriate field.

A substantial portion of self education involves seeing what needs doing in the outside world and what your contribution should be.

Career Directions II:

The more a person knows, about the world, its complexities and its changing nature the better able they are to navigate. They also need some personal and individual conceptual tools to help navigate along the way—those tools are here (either directly or through links—the ones I like the best are marked with the following symbol: )

Time as a social and personal resource

… Effective executives know that time is the limiting factor.

The output limits of any process are set by the scarcest resource.

In the process we call "accomplishment," this is time.

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Time is also a unique resource.

Of the other major resources, money is actually quite plentiful.

We long ago should have learned that it is the demand for capital, rather than the supply thereof, which sets the limit to economic growth and activity.

People—the third limiting resource—one can hire, though one can rarely hire enough good people.

But one cannot rent, hire, buy, or otherwise obtain more time.

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The supply of time is totally inelastic.

No matter how high the demand, the supply will not go up.

There is no price for it and no marginal utility curve for it.

Moreover, time is totally perishable and cannot be stored.

Yesterday's time is gone forever and will never come back.

Time is, therefore, always in exceedingly short supply.

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Time is totally irreplaceable.

Within limits we can substitute one resource for another, copper for aluminum, for instance.

We can substitute capital for human labor.

We can use more knowledge or more brawn.

But there is no substitute for time.

Everything requires time.

It is the one truly universal condition.

All work takes place in time and uses up time.

Yet most people take for granted this unique, irreplaceable, and necessary resource.

Nothing else, perhaps, distinguishes effective executives as much as their tender loving care of time.

— The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker

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These ideas about WHAT we spend our time doing have major strategic implications for individuals, organizations, and society.

One of Drucker's favorite sayings: Focus, Focus, Focus. (See How Drucker taught me to focus by Shao Ming Lo)

Brainscape enhancement and topic assessment

Donation: Click the button below to make a donation through PayPal. Just a few dollars helps with the books, software, web site hosting, and the time devoted to enhancing the work approach blue print available on this site. See the text site map for a view of the site's unique scope and resources. Also see links to external resources on my delicious page

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Radar: attention :: enhancement :: organization

Life-TIME Investment System

(a road map and brainscape ^© for time investing)

For a world always moving
away from yesterdays
and toward unimagined futures.

Working on the familiar (routine tasks)
with the familiar (capabilities)
won't get you to tomorrows.

What follows is part of a
foundation for future directed decisions

Time investing is the only way to escape
the decaying worldS of yesterdayS — its not a one time event.

The 1850s, 1920s, 1950s, 1970s, 1990s … are gone
and they aren't coming back.

Many people seem to believe that a rising tide lifts all boats.
But does it, really?
Look around the worlds of yesterdays.
How much of the things being done then
had any lasting value?
(Disco, 8-tracks, B&W TV, rotary dial phones,
downtown shopping, fashion, bleeding, Blockbuster, …)

How much of what you're doing today is really
effective or future directed?

Organization change events are with us for the roads ahead.

Amazon link: How The Mighty Fall

… the organization of the post-capitalist society of organizations
is a destabilizer.

Because its function is to put knowledge to work
—on tools, processes, and products;
on work;
on knowledge itself—
it must be organized for constant change.

It must be organized for innovation;
and innovation,
as the Austro-American economist
Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) said,
is “creative destruction.”

It must be organized for systematic abandonment
of the established, the customary, the familiar,
the comfortable
— whether products, services, and processes,
human and social relationships, skills,
or organizations themselves.

It is the very nature of knowledge
that it changes fast and
that today's certainties
will be tomorrow's absurdities. — Peter Drucker

Extrapolating yesterdays is hazardous to your future.

But what if you're currently doing great?

“Only fairy tales end
‘They lived happily ever after.’
Success always obsoletes the very behavior
that achieved it.
It always creates new realities.
It always creates, above all,
its own and different problems.” — Peter Drucker

You can only invest your time in the things on your radar

You can only utilize the things on your radar

What you primarily see around you is yesterday
and the dead past.

Without continuous, systematic on-going work
your radar will be infested with yesterday
rather than opportunities.

Because we live in a world that is always heading
into a non-linear future …

1940 Census

… we need a way to force ourselves
to look for and at things
that aren't on our radar (with some credible help)
and decide what to do about them.
At the same time we need a way
to narrow down the infinite number
things we could look at.
The previous ideas need to rest
on a solid foundation for future directed decisions.

The topics below are “top of the food chain” radar ammunition

It would be a really good idea
to read all of the following before clicking the links.

As you're reading remember the non-linearity of time.

All of the below are connected through TIME
and are moving in TIME

They are part of the elements
for creating a “life time” work approach
mentioned at the top of most pages.

They will help you figure out
where you want to go (your most valuable roads ahead)
and how to get there.
And then do it again …

This is a blueprint for a genuinely interesting life.

A radar list will be helpful in your exploration and life navigation.
It could include important, relevant topic areas and where you found them.
There is a limit to the number of topics a person can effectively calendarize.

One of the difficulties of getting to tomorrows
is having access to the right brain-addresses.
Your radar list should be your future brain-address book.
Every line in the image below is a brain-address
or at least a jumping off point toward the right brain-road to pursue.

Please don't ever begin to believe that
a permanent answer or magic bullet exists.
There is a constantly receding horizon — no final answer.
Just alternatives — appearing at different times.
Life is a navigation challenge
in a world moving toward unimagined futureS.

The pages below are meant to be explored and selectively harvested.

They are ATTENTION-DIRECTING TOOLS

They provide a form of LIFE “insurance.”

Having a complex mental landscape
combined with periodic abandonment and refocusing work
will prevent your from traveling the wrong roads for too long.

Every road eventually becomes the wrong road.

Having a complex mental landscape is also
some protection from those pushing “snake oil.”

Everything above and below is about time investing
for the purpose of time-life navigation.
All of it is part of a foundation for future directed decisions.

You should want to know how the world works
and how you can navigate this reality.

We are already embedded in
a knowledge society, a society of organizations, and a network society.

Attention !!! (refocusing attention always comes first)   :::   LTIS for TLN — Quick Look   :::   The World is Full of Options by Peter Drucker (a social ecologist)   :::   Contents of books by Peter Drucker   :::   What do you want to be remembered for?   :::   Foundations for future directed decisions (What do you need to know before you decide … ?)   :::   Knowledge: Its Economics and Its Productivity   :::   The Daily Drucker (a foundational resource with an unparalleled field of vision)   :::   TLN text site map (quick view of the Time-Life Navigation ^{SM ©} site's scope. Over 500 html pages, 100+ PDFs, 1000s of images. Which of these elements are part of your future?)   :::   Time-Life Navigation ^{SM ©} (about living in a world moving toward unimagined futures)   :::   Adventures in time (can you connect this idea with someone or a topic listed here?)   :::   Adventures of a Bystander   :::   Simplified TLN system view   :::   The Unfashionable Kierkegaard   :::   The Changing Social and Economic Picture   :::   Economic Content and Structure   :::   Knowledge System View   :::   Selected TLN articles from the news (Society :: events :: stuff happening)

Work life brainscape: Early Career Work (for knowledge workers and ambitious knowledge technologists—a foundation for future directed decisions)   :::   Because life-time employment is gone Networking is necessary   :::   Résumé and Interview Planning for your years and the decades ahead   :::   New job game plan: when you get a new job, task, or assignment — this is very, very important   :::   Learning

Managing Oneself (as a unique INDIVIDUAL human being over a lifetime in a changing world—beginning NOW! This should be your foundation for everything else)

  :::   Career and Life Guidance from Peter Drucker   :::  

  :::   The Essential Drucker   :::  
("A coherent and fairly comprehensive" introduction to management)

  :::   Managing Oneself for Effectiveness (a step up the performance ladder — The Effective Executive Preface !!!!! Outline !!!)   :::  

  :::   The Educated Person ("defines society's performance capacity")   :::  

  :::   Living in More Than One World
How Peter Drucker's Wisdom Can Inspire Your Life by Bruce Rosenstein   :::  

  :::   CEO   :::   Board member   :::  

  :::   Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It   :::  
  :::   What Got You Here Won't Get You There both by Marshall Goldsmith   :::  

  :::   The Second Half of Your Life (important to start by your mid-30s)   :::  

Career evolution : Professional Grade (another door)

Organization evolution (essential to creating and maintaining a healthy, modern society. Somebody has to want it and do it. From working in a basement or garage to Built to Last)   :::   Management, Revised Edition   :::   Managing the Non-Profit Organization   :::   The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization   :::   The Definitive Drucker   :::   Leadership   :::   Production (from "specs" to user reality)   :::   Managing the Small Business   :::   Managing the Family Business: see December 28 and 29 in The Daily Drucker

Apple: Apple II, Lisa, Mac, Laptops, iPod and iTunes and other online stores, iPhone, iPad, iCloud …
always aiming high

Innovation and Entrepreneurship ("This is a practical book, but it is not a "how-to" book. Instead, it deals with the what, when, and why; with such tangibles as policies and decisions; opportunities and risks; structures and strategies; staffing, compensation, and rewards. Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service. … The test of an innovation, after all, lies not its novelty, its scientific content, or its cleverness. It lies in its success in the marketplace. … A successful innovation aims at leadership … successful entrepreneurs aim high. They are not content simply to improve on what already exists, or to modify it. … Successful businesses, businesses that are today in the right markets with the right products or services, are likely ten years hence to get three-quarters of their revenues from products and services that exist today, or from their linear descendants. In fact, if today's products or services do not generate a continuing and large revenue stream, the enterprise will not be able to make the substantial investment in tomorrow that innovation requires.")   :::   Innovation   :::   Entrepreneurship   :::   Entrepreneurs and Innovation

Life lines (a view from above)   :::   Life design (as your verb or noun)   :::   Financial investing (developing an informed capacity)   :::   Life management system (LMS) (a conscious navigation system from yesterdays to tomorrows) OR Time-management

Practical thinking (knowing what to to do)   :::   Mental patterns (our self-organizing information system. In the final analysis the future of society depends on what's between our ears)   :::   More thinking resources by Edward de Bono

Using conceptual resources (as brainroads ^© and brainscapes ^©)
Conceptual resource digestion process   :::   TLN conceptual resource file listing   :::   Concepts and ideas …

Calendarization (from topic introduction to what's the next action—really?)
What's next? in your life and time
Where will your current time usage lead?

Larger

bobembry contact info (suggestions or whatever)   :::   Conceptual resource assistance   :::   Partners wanted   :::   Resume (Bob Embry)   :::   Personal (Bob Embry)   :::   Bob Embry's Time-Life Navigation © Blog   :::   Twitter | Bob Embry   :::   Twitter | ti4tomorrows   :::   Facebook | Bob Embry   :::   LinkedIn | Bob Embry   :::   delicious | bobembry   :::   googleme (unexpected ways to view site connections)   :::   TLN search (semi-functional Google site search)

The URLs to my site are going to change before June 30, 2012. Apple is discontinuing their hosting service. The new domain is http://rlaexp.com/. Also you will still be able to find the site by Googling either bobembry or "Time-Life-Navigation" or "Life-Time-Investment system"

"To know and not do, is to not yet know"

tlnview tlnkwview

At the present time this is a prototype site. I add, remove, and redesign content based on my own unfolding comprehension of the time-life navigation ^© (TLN) landscape . This means that you might want to periodically revisit relevant pages.

Site design goals (beta—September 2010): My minimum goal is to provide enough "sign-posts" that serious site users don't find themselves in major negative situations because they didn't get the TLN memo. My desired goal is to provide "sign-posts" to a meaningful life—both for individuals and society. One supreme sign-post is to set your sights on achievements that really matter, that will make a difference in the world. The second half of your life is the major opportunity for full effectiveness and fulfillment.

Many of the books that were available when I first started working on what I now call "time-life navigation" have gone out of print or are hard to find. You can still use the content of the book outline pages to identify topics of interest and to search Amazon Books for topics or phrases.

Copyright 2001 2005 2007 2010 2011 © All rights reserved | bobembry | bob embry | "time life navigation" ^© | "life TIME investment system" ^© | "career evolution" ^© | "life design" ^© | "organization evolution" ^©

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