Life Meets Work Blog

“You must understand your job is your most valuable asset, and your primary objective is to protect it,” Viscusi writes. And in a nod to Sun Tsu…”Work is war.”

When work becomes a battlefield and the primary objective is self-preservation, everyone suffers—including your employer. As competition increases, productivity decreases. As cooperation disappears, so does creativity as well as the valuable internal vetting that comes from debating and evaluating new ideas.

Ignore Viscusi. Be generous with the knowledge and information you have. Share contacts, new ideas, and resources. You can’t build a network without cooperation and you can’t build a career without a network.

Posted by Jaime

This member of the Life Meets Work team works remotely from Titletown USA. (That’s Green Bay, Wisconsin for you non-football folk.)

I don’t know what the news coverage is like elsewhere in the country, but we’ve been all abuzz for weeks now over Brett Favre’s potential un-retirement conundrum.

Scot Herrick says Brett lost his personal identity in retirement. No doubt. It’s a challenge all successful careerists face: Who will you be absent the job?

One M&A firm I know asks its clients to sit down with a business psychologist before deciding to sell their companies. The reason, says CEO Scott Bushkie, is that when business owners don’t have a vision for retirement they wind up scared about the future. They start sabotaging the deal, make unreasonable requests, and sometimes flat out change their minds. In the end, everyone suffers—the company, the seller, and the seller’s family.

Sound familiar, Green Bay?

So what’s the takeaway for would-be retirees? Have a plan. Think about who you will be and how you’ll spend your time. And make sure you and your partner are on the same page. Will you volunteer? Spend more time with the grandkids? Take on a second career or “fun” job?

Like any good career plan, retirement is bound to be better with a few new goals. After all, you can only play so much golf.

Posted by Jaime