Quotable Quotes

"Pinot Noir is like a tempestuos mistress that will leave you with a broken heart and an empty wallet' " But I still love it! 

What makes people overshare?

What Makes People Overshare? - WSJ.com http://ow.ly/l19O1

After arguing with her husband one Sunday, Vasavi Kumar was so upset that she called up her mom, her dad, her sister and three of her closest friends. "This is it," she told each one. "He is never going to understand me. I am getting a divorce."

Guess what happened the next day. Ms. Kumar and her husband made up. They said they were sorry, hugged and agreed to put the argument behind them. Yet Ms. Kumar, a 30-year-old life coach and social worker in Overland Park, Kan., still had some more apologizing to do—to six other people. "I dropped a bomb on everyone, but I was now fine and dandy," she says. "I had to go clean it up."

Ever share too much information—and you weren't even tipsy? I call it BYB—Blabbing Your Business. It's happening a lot these days thanks to reality TV and social media sites, where it's perfectly normal for people to share every single detail of their lives, no matter how mundane or personal. In the culture we live in, it's hard to remember that some things should be private.

It isn't all Facebook's fault. Experts say oversharing often happens when we are trying subconsciously to control our own anxiety. This effort is known as "self regulation" and here is how it works: When having a conversation, we can use up a lot of mental energy trying to manage the other person's impression of us. We try to look smart, witty and interesting, but the effort required to do this leaves less brain power to filter what we say and to whom.

This explains why people often blurt out embarrassing things to precisely the people they want to impress most, whether it's the boss, a first date or a future in-law.

Consider this scenario: Your boss walks by and doesn't make eye contact. You feel uneasy and think of something you need to discuss with him or her. "If you are psychologically aware, you will realize you are feeling anxious and picking up rejection cues," says Hal Shorey, a psychologist and assistant professor for the Institute for Graduate Clinical Psychology at Widener University in Chester, Pa. "You're trying to reestablish connection."

Does this work? Of course not. We often regret our disclosures, feel like an idiot—and then worry even more about what the listener is thinking. We may feel compelled to "fix" the situation, leading to—you guessed it—even more blabbing. It's a cruel downward spiral.

I know I'm not the only person who over-shares. I got the idea for this column after three people in one week said these terrifying words to me, "I want to tell you something I've never told anyone—not my spouse, my therapist, or my best friend."

Still, some people by nature blab more than others. They tend to be individuals with an anxious or "preoccupied" attachment style according to attachment theory, which psychologists developed starting in the mid-1900s. Our attachment system is the evolutionary byproduct of a process humans developed to stay alive, Dr. Shorey says. Attachment style is partly genetic, but it also is determined in part by how our parents related to us as young children.

There are three basic attachment types: Secure, anxious and avoidant. Secure people, roughly 55% of the population, had parents who were consistently caring and responsive; these people are typically loving and comfortable with intimacy. The other 45% have an attachment style that is more problematic—either anxious, avoidant or some combination.

Avoidant people, about 15% of the population, try to minimize closeness. Their parents typically were withholding or unresponsive. These folks aren't your blabbers. In fact, in interviews to determine personality type, therapists consider short, concise answers to be a marker of an avoidant attachment style.

Long, drawn-out answers typically indicate an anxious type. Anxious people, who make up roughly 15% of the population, typically had parents who were inconsistently nurturing. They are overly sensitive to social cues and prone to overmanaging their personal connections. (The other 15% are a combination.)

Of course, we all have our own bursting point, when under emotional stress we can no longer contain ourselves, says Sharon Gilchrest O'Neill, a Mount Kisco, N.Y., marriage and family therapist. "They think, 'Oh God, does that feel good to talk,' " she says. "But they're definitely not thinking of the other person and this may hurt their relationship."

The real trouble starts when you share information that isn't really yours to share. In her therapy practice, Ms. O'Neill says she regularly sees people who tell someone about their own marital problems, or a divorce or separation before it actually happens. Another common scenario involves mothers sharing information about their daughters. In all these cases, she says, "it usually comes back to haunt them."

So how do you stop yourself from blabbing too much? Do what your mother said: Stop and think before you open your mouth. "Go through the process in your mind where you walk through the ultimate effects of sharing," Ms. O'Neill says.

These are specific questions you should ask yourself, Dr. Shorey says. "Does my listener have time right now—and is he or she emotionally available to listen?" "Will your blabbing relieve your anxiety—or make it worse?" "In other words," Dr. Shorey says, "you can probably anticipate worrying that your boss will think you're an idiot for oversharing if you just take the time to think about it."

If you should find that you said too much, how do you recover? Most people think it's a good idea to go back and apologize. Most often, though, it isn't. "When I work with people in my office, I try to help them think through what the consequences will be," Ms. O'Neill says. "Will there be a boomerang effect?"

If you decide your listener has fundamentally changed the way he or she sees you, then apologize, but keep it short and low-key. "You should say, 'Listen, I don't want to make a big deal of this, but I want you to know I embarrassed myself and this isn't like me,' " Ms. O'Neill says. "And leave it at that."

Ms. Kumar recalls she was always an oversharer. Her childhood nickname was "Loose Lips." "I did it primarily as a way to connect with people, to get them to like me," she says.

When she called her father to apologize for telling him prematurely that she was getting a divorce, he started to cry. "He said, 'I just can't take this anymore. I am getting too old. I am taking blood-pressure medication. I have a nervous breakdown every time I see your name come up on the phone.' "

These days, Ms. Kumar says before speaking she asks herself, "Why am I sharing this with this specific person? What am I looking for here?"

"Otherwise, it's almost like you've spilled this debris over people's lives, telling them your stuff," she says. "And then you have to go back and clean up the mess you created."

Too Much Information: Avoid It, Recover From It

1. Recognize situations where you might overshare. You might be eager to make a good impression or nervous about what others think of you.

2. Before revealing information, ask yourself, "Does the listener have time to listen? Is he or she emotionally available at this time?"

3. Will sharing, rather than relieve anxiety, make you feel more anxious? Then don't.

4. Imagine the negative effects of oversharing and the regret you might feel afterward.

If you have overshared...

1. Think twice about revisiting the topic with the listener. He or she will probably forget about it if you don't drag out the awkwardness.

2. If you must return to the subject, keep it brief.

3. Your message is an apology. Don't seek approval. State your apology in as few words as possible and move on.

Sources: Sharon Gilchrest O'Neill, Hal Shorey

—Write to Elizabeth Bernstein at Bonds@wsj.com 

7 Secrets About Amassing & Maintaing Wealth

7 Secrets Wealthy People Know about Amassing and Maintaining a Fortune

By Abram Brown 
Becoming wealthy enough to keep the wolf from your door doesn't mean an end to unwanted callers. For every newly minted billionaire, there are cautionary tales of the well-heeled undone by visits from the the tax man, the loan officer and Uncle Sam himself.

A fortune requires finesse. As well as a willingness to embrace financial exotica, trips to Bermuda and the drive to start your own business--as a survey of FORBES' knowledge of the world's wealthiest people reveals. Below are seven tricks, secrets and maneuvers regularly conducted by those with more than a shekel or two to accumulate and maintain their fortunes.

1. Start Your Own BusinessClick over to FORBES' roll of billionaires, and you'll notice something if you dig into the biographies. Nearly all of the 1,426 billionaires  made their fortunes through an entrepreneurial spirit (or their fortunes come from a family member who created the business). Ten-figure sums aren't earned by rising through corporate ranks. They're made from creating the whole shebang from scratch. It will likely occur by happenstance, in the most unsuspecting of ways. Recall that the world's fourth richest man, the aforementioned Buffett, left the working world in 1955 with plans to retire. Shortly after, cajoled by a seven-person group of family and friends, twentysomething Buffett formed a partnership that laid the groundwork for his $53.5 billion fortune. He did so over a small dinner at the Omaha Club.

2. Put Growth Investments In A Roth IRA

The investments with the greatest potential for growth should go into a Roth IRA. They sit there tax free, and as long as you wait until the age requirement (59 and a half), withdraws won't be levied either. Employees at fast-growing private companies often go this route. Peter Thiel did it as CEO of PayPal in 2001, buying 1.7 million shares for 30 cents a share through his Roth. The 2002 eBay acquisition of PayPal make those shares produce a $31.5 million profit. The man who founded PayPal with Thiel, Max Levchin, has also done something similar. His Roth has already sold 3.1 million Yelp shares and holds another 3.9 million. Result: some $95 million that an elder Levchin can withdraw tax free.

3. Find Stocks You'll Never Sell

At the forefront of investing royalty in the last century was an intense man with round glasses from northern California named Philip Fisher. He became the first to author an investing book that crackedThe New York Times bestseller list with Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits in 1958. It became an establishing text for modern growth investing, laying out a 15-point strategy that wound up catching the attention of a young man from Nebraska: Warren Buffett, who would make tens of billions of dollars through a combination of Fisher's tenets and those by value investing founding father Benjamin Graham.

Today, Fisher's son, Ken, is also a billionaire. He manages a $42 billion asset management company, and still calls northern California home. The younger Fisher is perhaps more value oriented than his father--especially favoring the price/sales ratio when assessing a company's worth--but there's a particular point in his father's work that he says is never far from his mind. Probably because it plays well in value investing, too. It's the idea that you buy a stock with the mentality to own it forever.

Papa Fisher had good reason to buy and never let go. He faced capital gains rates that topped 45%. (Today's, by contrast, cap gains are much lower at 20% or so.) He bought DuPont and Dow Chemical in the 1930s, selling them only four decades or so later. He picked up Motorola in the 1980s, and still owned shares when he died at age 96 in 2004.

Does such a mentality have a place in today's world of milisecond trading? "If done right, yes," says the younger Fisher. "People aren't perfect, though."

4. Insurance, Bermuda-Style

The latest tax loophole exploited by hedge funds involves the reinsurance business. A whole host of billionaire hedge fund managers have started Bermuda-based reinsurance companies since 2011,according to Bloomberg, and the roll includes bold-faced names like John Paulson, SAC Capital Advisors' Stevie Cohen, Third Point's Dan Loeb. (They were inspired by Greenlight Capital's David Einhorn.) By sending money through these companies, the hedge funds recycle it and reduce personal income taxes and delay the eventual tax bill. Normally the managers would be paying either ordinary income taxes (39.6%) or long-term capital gains taxes (20%).

5. Make Your Corporation Pay You

Ever heard of these corporations: Screaming Lord Baltic, Flip-Flop Films or On Nets Above People? Probably not, unless you're toiling in Warner Brothers' back-office.

Each of those entities were incorporated by an entertainer, specifically those advised by Scott Feinstein, who reps celebs like Aaron Paul, Hilary Duff and Taylor Lautner. Feinstein suggests the maneuver because it allows clients to better manage taxes and expenses. Celebs many times have trouble deducting some of large business expenses they face.  "These are people paying out like 20% or 40% in their income in expenses," to people like agents and managers, Feinstein says. Why can't the silver-screen crowd make the deductions? The Alternative Minimum Tax, something every American pays. "It effects something like 20 million Americans, and it limits how many expenses you take to eliminate your taxable income."

To get around this, celebs start a corporation and instruct producers to pay the corporation, not them directly. (The government made an exception for entertainers to earn wages this way, Feinstein says. You, in all likelihood, can not.) The corporation, in turn, pays the entourage, and the star emerges with a lowered taxable income.

While Feinstein favors this method, he refuses to take the blame for the oddity of the corporate names: "I tell them to come up with something that means something to them." Screaming Lord Baltic. Huh.

6. Think Like Zuck. Think Trusts

Doubts about Facebook the company's longevity aside, Mark Zuckerberg and his co-founder Dustin Moskovitz have already taken steps to secure their family's legacy. As FORBES reported last March, Zuckerberg and Moskovitz put pre-IPO stock into a type of financial instrument called a grantor retained annuity trust (GRAT). The pair, by FORBES estimates, wound up moving more than $200 million to the trusts. Future payouts will avoid the 45% gift tax that existed (in 2008) when these trusts were created. Perhaps not as cool as sliding $1 billion past the IRS, but a GRAT is especially useful for stashing away hard-to-value assets, like private companies shares, because it allows changes to the trust's details if you're audited.

7. Cash Flow Is Important. Buy MLPs, Sell The Steak House

Where does Brad Pitt put his multi-million-dollar paychecks? It's not too much to presume that he, like much of Hollywood, has money invested in master limited partnerships (MLPs). Conversations with five of Hollywood's top money managers revealed a cult following for these stocks, which generate strong yields and cash flow. Like real estate investment trusts, MLPs pay no taxes. Hence, they have more to share with investors, and payouts are more lightly taxed.

They're certainly more than one-hit wonders. The Alerian MLP Index's returns beat the S&P 500's on a 1-year, 3-year-, 5-year and 10-year basis. The index, holding some 50 MLPs, favors gas-and-oil infrastructure companies like Enterprise Products Partners, Kinder Morgan and Plains All American Pipeline.

Alan Goldman, a Los Angeles business manager with a star-studded rolodex and client roster, says he's often left talking his crew out of pitches on the next trendy restaurant, instead advising more consistent investments, like MLPs. "We find that they need to be more conservative than Joe Average." Goldman sighs. "The restaurants are very, very popular with entertainers. We look at something like a restaurant and just assume that the money is gone."

Don't Reward Failure

Reward vs. Punishment: What Motivates People More? | Inc.com http://ow.ly/kk12V

As the Marquis de Sade taught us long ago, penalties are far more motivating than rewards. Economists argue that we are more inclined to avoid actual loss than to strive for conditional benefits.

This tendency is called loss aversion. It has been measured for decades, but only recently have researchers begun studying its influence on workplace productivity.

In a study of 150 public-school teachers in Chicago Heights, Illinois, University of Chicago economist John List split the teachers into two groups and told both that their bonuses would be linked to student test scores. Teachers in the first would receive a bonus at the end of the year if student test scores improved. Members of the second group received a check for $4,000 in September and agreed to return the money if test scores failed to rise by June. Loss aversion worked: Teachers who faced the threat of having to refund their bonuses produced student test scores that were about 7 percentage points higher on average than the scores of students with teachers in the conventional bonus plan.

Since then, List has favored revising the traditional bonus structure.

Although he doesn't recommend business owners actually give out money and then take it away, he suggests telling employees up front that the bonus will be theirs if they meet their goals. If not, it will be reduced or retracted completely.

Warning: Don't set the stakes too high. Studies on choking show that the more pressure people are under, the more likely even seasoned professionals are to screw up.

As a business owner, you can boost your own productivity by setting consequences. Online services like stickK.com let users sign up, set a goal, appoint a referee to track their progress, and pledge money if they fail to reach their targets. That money can either be donated to a favorite charity or, to really up the stakes, a so-called anticharity. For example, do you hate guns? Miss your goal, and stickK will kindly donate your cash to the National Rifle Association.


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Some interesting thoughts on Amazon doing it right for long term value!

What 5 insights can you learn from the single best book on management?

http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2013/03/insights-management-book/

Pete Drucker is probably the most influential writer on the subject of management. Why? One of the reasons is that he understood that the most important part of management is managing yourself.

His book The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done is one of my most most frequent recommendations. Everyone can get something from it because it’s not about the minutiae of business, it’s about organizing your life so you can accomplish the things that are important.

What are its most critical lessons?



1. “Effective executives know where their time goes. They work systematically at managing the little of their time that can be brought under their control.”

Record how you spend your time. Cut the things that steal it. Then consolidate your time into chunks big enough to accomplish good work.

Via The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done:

Effective executives, in my observation, do not start with their tasks. They start with their time. And they do not start out with planning. They start by finding out where their time actually goes. Then they attempt to manage their time and to cut back unproductive demands on their time. Finally they consolidate their “discretionary” time into the largest possible continuing units. This three-step process: recording time, managing time, and consolidating time…



2. “Effective executives focus on outward contribution. They gear their efforts to results rather than to work. They start out with the question, “What results are expected of me?” rather than with the work to be done, let alone with its techniques and tools.”

Don’t focus on the work in front of you, focus on results. If you’re just doing what comes in, you’re on the treadmill, not making a difference.

Via The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done:

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does, what he works on, and what he takes seriously, he will fritter himself away “operating.” He may be an excellent man. But he is certain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away what little effectiveness he might have achieved. What the executive needs are criteria which enable him to work on the truly important, that is, on contributions and results, even though the criteria are not found in the flow of events.



3. “Effective executives build on strengths—their own strengths, the strengths of their superiors, colleagues, and subordinates; and on the strengths in the situation, that is, on what they can do. They do not build on weakness. They do not start out with the things they cannot do.”

Judge people by what they’re good at. If you want people who are competent at everything you’ll end up with a team of mediocrities.

Via The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done:

The task is not to breed generalists. It is to enable the specialist to make himself and his specialty effective. This means that he must think through who is to use his output and what the user needs to know and to understand to be able to make productive the fragment the specialist produces… We can so structure as to make the strength relevant. A good tax accountant in private practice might be greatly hampered by his inability to get along with people. But in an organization such a man can be set up in an office of his own and shielded from direct contact with other people. In an organization one can make his strength effective and his weakness irrelevant.

Want to get ahead? You must do this for your boss as well. Stop bitching about what they’re bad at and do the work necessary to allow them to focus on what they are good at.

Via The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done:

Conversely, there is nothing quite as conducive to success, as a successful and rapidly promoted superior… The effective executive, therefore, asks: “What can my boss do really well?” “What has he done really well?” “What does he need to know to use his strength?” “What does he need to get from me to perform?” He does not worry too much over what the boss cannot do… Subordinates typically want to “reform” the boss. The able senior civil servant is inclined to see himself as the tutor to the newly appointed political head of his agency. He tries to get his boss to overcome his limitations. The effective ones ask instead: “What can the new boss do?” And if the answer is: “He is good at relationships with Congress, the White House, and the public,” then the civil servant works at making it possible for his minister to use these abilities.

Same goes for yourself. Do not turn yourself into a mediocre generalist. Delegate what you’re not good at and spend your time on what you are.



4. “Effective executives concentrate on the few major areas where superior performance will produce outstanding results. They force themselves to set priorities and stay with their priority decisions. They know that they have no choice but to do first things first—and second things not at all. The alternative is to get nothing done.”

Getting things done is not enough. You must get the right things done. What is most important? Focus on that.

Via The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done:

To be effective is the job of the executive. “To effect” and “to execute” are, after all, near-synonyms. Whether he works in a business or in a hospital, in a government agency or in a labor union, in a university or in the army, the executive is, first of all, expected to get the right things done. And this is simply that he is expected to be effective… All in all, the effective executive tries to be himself; he does not pretend to be someone else. He looks at his own performance and at his own results and tries to discern a pattern. “What are the things,” he asks, “that I seem to be able to do with relative ease, while they come rather hard to other people?”



5. “Effective executives, finally, make effective decisions. They know that this is, above all, a matter of system—of the right steps in the right sequence. They know that an effective decision is always a judgment based on “dissenting opinions” rather than on “consensus on the facts.” And they know that to make many decisions fast means to make the wrong decisions. What is needed are few, but fundamental, decisions. What is needed is the right strategy rather than razzle-dazzle tactics.”

The best decision makers don’t make many decisions. They focus on the ones that are important and the ones only they can solve. How can they do this?

Most situations are generic and have a standard solution. Once you understand this and know the standard solutions you can cut through the easy problems and focus on the few unique problems that really require effort.

Via The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done:

The effective executive does not need to make many decisions. Because he solves generic situations through a rule and policy, he can handle most events as cases under the rule; that is, by adaptation. “A country with many laws is a country of incompetent lawyers,” says an old legal proverb. It is a country which attempts to solve every problem as a unique phenomenon, rather than as a special case under general rules of law. Similarly, an executive who makes many decisions is both lazy and ineffectual. The decision-maker also always tests for signs that something atypical, something unusual, is happening; he always asks: “Does the explanation explain the observed events and does it explain all of them?; he always writes out what the solution is expected to make happen—make automobile accidents disappear, for instance—and then tests regularly to see if this really happens; and finally, he goes back and thinks the problem through again when he sees something atypical, when he finds phenomena his explanation does not really explain, or when the course of events deviates, even in details, from his expectations.

Location:Denver Int Airport

9 Daily Habits That Will Make You Happier

http://ow.ly/hwGIy

These minor changes in your daily routine will make a major difference in your life and career.

Happiness is the only true measure of personal success. Making other people happy is the highest expression of success, but it's almost impossible to make others happy if you're not happy yourself.

With that in mind, here are nine small changes that you can make to your daily routine that, if you're like most people, will immediately increase the amount of happiness in your life:

1. Start each day with expectation.

If there's any big truth about life, it's that it usually lives up to (or down to) your expectations. Therefore, when you rise from bed, make your first thought: "something wonderful is going to happen today." Guess what? You're probably right.

2. Take time to plan and prioritize.

The most common source of stress is the perception that you've got too much work to do. Rather than obsess about it, pick one thing that, if you get it done today, will move you closer to your highest goal and purpose in life. Then do that first.

3. Give a gift to everyone you meet.

I'm not talking about a formal, wrapped-up present. Your gift can be your smile, a word of thanks or encouragement, a gesture of politeness, even a friendly nod. And never pass beggars without leaving them something. Peace of mind is worth the spare change.

4. Deflect partisan conversations.

Arguments about politics and religion never have a "right" answer but they definitely get people all riled up over things they can't control. When such topics surface, bow out by saying something like: "Thinking about that stuff makes my head hurt."

5. Assume people have good intentions.

Since you can't read minds, you don't really know the "why" behind the "what" that people do. Imputing evil motives to other people's weird behaviors adds extra misery to life, while assuming good intentions leaves you open to reconciliation.

6. Eat high quality food slowly.

Sometimes we can't avoid scarfing something quick to keep us up and running. Even so, at least once a day try to eat something really delicious, like a small chunk of fine cheese or an imported chocolate. Focus on it; taste it; savor it.

7. Let go of your results.

The big enemy of happiness is worry, which comes from focusing on events that are outside your control. Once you've taken action, there's usually nothing more you can do. Focus on the job at hand rather than some weird fantasy of what might happen.

8. Turn off "background" TV.

Many households leave their TVs on as "background noise" while they're doing other things. The entire point of broadcast TV is to make you dissatisfied with your life so that you'll buy more stuff. Why subliminally program yourself to be a mindless consumer?

9. End each day with gratitude.

Just before you go to bed, write down at least one wonderful thing that happened. It might be something as small as a making a child laugh or something as huge as a million dollar deal. Whatever it is, be grateful for that day because it will never come again.



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