How to live life in lockdowns

Some people take out the rubbish dressed as dinosaurs amid a shortage of facemasks, others play music or sing from their balconies to cheer up their neighbours; and zoo or aquarium employees have allowed some animals to have a field day by letting them roam around empty buildings.

Another side effect of countries around the world imposing complete lockdowns is that air pollution levels are now considerably lower.

Wild animals have returned to the much clearer waters of Venice’s canals, usually packed with tourists, after Italy closed the country to foreign tourists and imposed a lockdown.

One thing that I think has been sorely underestimated is how serious a mental strain the virus puts on each and every one of us.  The uncertainty is relentless. Attempting to protect yourself and your loved ones when the science is changing and while you're worrying about your work, your children's schooling, and your day-to-day life is exhausting. You will find yourself at home trying to read a spreadsheet when your kids are fighting in the living room day after day after day. In my own residential complex, I have seen people break out into shouting matches with security guards. Couples quarreling. A woman wandering aimlessly in her pajamas carrying a vacuum cleaner.  Everyone is on edge. Everyone is trying to manage their own situation.  And there is no respite.

So find ways to nourish your mental health and not feel overly confined. If you have a backyard, sit outside. Take a walk if you can.  Call your family and friends. Know that your patience will be tested. 

How to earn income online

Earning money has always been associated with traditional 'offline' ways found in the real world.

With the Internet taking over a large part of our lives, more people are looking to ways to earn money online to increase their financial inflows.

However, you have to be careful of the platform that you opt for. While there are numerous ways can help you earn money online, some of these could end up being scams, hence you have to be careful. Also, do not expect to earn a huge amount quickly when using online avenues to earn money.

Here are few such online platforms, websites, and resources that can help you earn money online.

1. Freelancing
Freelancing has always been a popular way to earn money online and the Internet has a plethora of options. There are several websites offering freelance tasks for people with varying skills. All you need to do is to create your account, browse through the listings, and apply for the task that suits you. Some websites may even require you to create a personal listing with the details of your skillset, so that interested clients can contact you directly. Outfiverr.com, upwork.com, freelancer.com, and worknhire.com are some websites that provide freelance jobs. You can earn anywhere between $5 and $100 through these websites.

But remember, you will only be paid once you complete your task and it has been approved by your client. This may even mean revising the work several times unless the requirements of your clients are not met. Some sites may ask you to set up a PayPal account, as most clients prefer to make payments through it.

2. Start your own website
There is enough material available online to help create your own website. This includes choosing the domain, templates, and the design for your website. Once ready to service the visitors with the relevant content, sign up for Google Adsense, which when appear on your website and clicked by visitors help you make money. The more the traffic you get on your website, the more will be the potential for higher earnings.

3. Affiliate marketing
Once your website is up and running, opt for affiliate marketing by allowing companies to insert web links on to your site. When visitors to your site buy products or services by clicking on such links, you earn out from it.

 4. Surveys and searches and reviews
There are several websites offering money to undergo online surveys, carry out online searches, and write reviews on products. To get the credit, one needs to disclose certain information to them including one's banking details. This is why you should use this route with utmost care. Some of them may even ask you to register with them before working on projects. The most important watch out in such projects is to stay away from websites offering money that appears too good to be true. Be careful while evaluating the reputation of the website as many of them could be a scam. Most sites promote businesses showing copies of cheque payments which may have been given to the middlemen only.

5. Virtual assistantship
Doing all the corporate stuff from one's home is what a virtual assistant (VA) does. VAs basically work remotely with their clients and manage the aspects of their business that they are too busy to handle themselves. When you work as a virtual assistant, you can choose to work as an employee or you can set up your own business.

VAs are skilled, home-based professionals that offer companies, businesses, and entrepreneurs administrative support. Some of the major areas of work includes making phone calls, email correspondence, Internet research, data entry, scheduling appointments, editing, writing, bookkeeping, marketing, blog management, proofreading, project management, graphic design, tech support, customer service, event planning, and social media management.

How to overcome bad habits

Habits become hard to break because they are deeply wired, by constant repetition, into our brains. And when you add pleasure to them — like you have with drugs or porn, for example — the pleasure centers of the midbrain get fired up as well.

But habits are also patterns of behavior and it is the breaking of patterns that is the key to breaking the habits themselves. Usually there is a clear trigger to start the pattern. Sometimes the triggers are emotional — the wanting a drink or cigarette or nail-biting driven by stress. Other times the trigger is more simply situational and environmental: You see the TV and couch as soon as you hit the front door, and now your brain connects the dots, and eating dinner in front of the TV on the couch is not far behind. More often it is a combination of both — the mix of social anxiety and the party environment leads to your heavier drinking.

But these patterns are also usually wrapped in larger ones: This is where routines come to run our lives. Here is where, as soon as you hit the front door after work, the dumping the shoes, the grabbing a beer, the sitting in front of the TV with dinner flow together without much thought, just as your morning work-break automatically leads to you and your friend Kate going outside and chatting while you each have your mid-morning cigarette.

Overall these routine behaviors are evolutionary wise and practically good. They keep us from having to reinvent the wheel of our daily lives by making an infinite number of decisions all day long, which in turn provides us with more brain-space to think about other things. The downside of these routinized patterns comes when those patterns land more in the bad column than the good one.

Customer success stories

In many ways, customer success stories are a marketer’s dream form of content. When used effectively, they merge the qualitative power of storytelling with the evidence-based pillar of hard data. They allow you to present real-world use cases and results that shift your product from abstraction to physicality in the minds of the readers.

However, in order to accomplish these goals, a customer success story must be well composed and positioned to provide the most value for the intended audience. Unlike some marketing and sales collateral, which can be assembled with a few hours of graphic design work, customer success stories generally involve several days or weeks of research and composition, making it paramount that they are optimally used to service your organizational goals.

Creating customer success stories has been a time-honoured tradition in marketing for decades, but the digital revolution has created opportunities for companies to take their case study materials to a new level. Currently, nearly two-thirds of B2B marketers indicate that customer case studies are effective tools in their content marketing toolbox.

The main source of their efficacy is their position as a powerful form of social proof, taking a prospect through a journey that features a real-world problem and presenting a concrete solution. When these compelling narratives are backed by reliable data points and finished with a strong pitch and call-to-action, they provide the client with a compelling list of reasons to move to the next stage in the buying funnel.

Broadly speaking, there are a few different types of customer stories that you can use depending upon the specific business realities of your situation. You may choose to employ only one type of success story, or you may incorporate multiple categories. You may reserve one type for certain product lines or even mix and match for a single product to present a range of stories.

Text-based stories
The most traditional form of customer success story is the text-based narrative. These accounts generally read like normal case studies by laying out a problem, describing the solution that the customer implemented, and detailing the results to frame the narrative. In most situations, it’s preferable to include graphical representations of data at strategic intervals throughout the piece, as they draw the reader’s eyes to relevant information and provide memorable touch points through the course of the story. Text-based customer success stories are typically (but not always) written as third-person accounts.

Share yout secrets

You keep secrets from each other; you keep secrets from yourselves. Secrets bond you; secrets drive you apart. Keeping a secret can be a burden, or it can delight you. Sharing secrets can be a relief, whether it’s with your old friend or new therapist.

For children, learning to keep secrets is a vital developmental milestone. In one study, researchers asked kids who were three, four, and five to play hide-and-seek and to keep a secret about a surprise. Abilities to do the two tasks correlated strongly with each other, and with the kids’ social cognition. At three, the kids were fairly hopeless at these tasks; by five, most of them could keep a secret, and had the cognitive development to match.

Which secrets should you not be entirely alone with? Secrets motivated by shame. The research is clear: shame is highly correlated with addiction, depression and violence. The first step away from shame can be as close as a shared secret and the words “me too.” As explained so eloquently in 2012, “If you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in a Petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive.”

If no trusted confidante comes to mind, then it may be appropriate to share that “shameful” secret with someone new. Just being listened to by a kind and empathetic stranger can sometimes provide relief, says suicide prevention counselor Kevin Brigg. And if you’re not yet ready to share your secret out loud, the act of writing it down and turning it into shared art can sometimes be transformative.

Infographics

When a complex piece of information needs to be described quickly, precisely and clearly, a graphic is suitable. Infographics are used for signs, maps and data presentations. Scientists, technical writers, mathematicians, educators and statisticians ease the process of developing, organizing, recording and communicating conceptual information by using infographics.

Infographics are used for the following reasons:

To communicate a message,
To present a lot of data or information in a way that is compact and easy to comprehend,
To analyze data in order to discover cause-and-effect relationships,
To periodically monitor the route of certain parameters.

Infographics are used in many fields: government, the corporate sector, medicine, engineering, research and development and so on. Certain types of infographics are targeted to people with specialized knowledge or expertise. It is possible to classify infographics according to five categories.

Infographics need to convey information clearly, but they can still be creative. Likewise, infographics that capture the imagination of readers can also be comprehensible.

Infographics surround us: we see them on TV, in books, in newspapers, on road signs and in manuals. The Internet is flooded with infographics related to a range of fields—from science and technology to society and culture.

Gift ideas

A gift or a present is an item given to someone without the expectation of payment or anything in return. An item is not a gift if that item is already owned by the one to whom it is given. Although gift-giving might involve an expectation of reciprocity, a gift is meant to be free. In many countries, the act of mutually exchanging money, goods, etc. may sustain social relations and contribute to social cohesion. Economists have elaborated the economics of gift-giving into the notion of a gift economy. By extension the term gift can refer to any item or act of service that makes the other happier or less sad, especially as a favor, including forgiveness and kindness. Gifts are also first and foremost presented on occasions such as birthdays and holidays.

For couples, gifting can be especially enjoyable. You know what your partner loves, what small daily annoyances of theirs that you can solve with a thoughtful gift, and how much they'll appreciate knowing the gesture came from you.

Odds are you want to give them something wonderful — whatever your price range is. All you need is a little direction, and a few great options to choose from.

The top 5 best gifts for your girlfriend:
A beautiful candle from Otherland, a cool startup
A personalized gourmet coffee subscription from Driftaway Coffee
An Aquis towel that makes her hair dry faster
A gourmet Cozymeal cooking class with a renowned chef
A pair of Apple AirPods wireless earbuds

Tech support

Technical support (tech support) refers to a range services companies provide to their customers for products such as software, mobile phones, printers, and other electronic, mechanical or electromechanical products. Technical support services usually provide users with help in solving some common problems rather than providing training on how to use the product.

Technical support is usually delivered over telephone, via email, over chat (IM) or using special software or software extensions that the user can employ to directly contact tech support. Technical support representatives are very familiar with the ins and outs of the products for which they provide support. If there is a problem that cannot be solved by the tech support, it is escalated to the development team and logged as a bug that should be fixed by a future product update or the next product iteration.

There are a few key types of technical support:

Time and Material: This type of support is common in the tech industry. Also known as "break-fix" IT support, the payment of the materials and technician service charge falls upon the customer for a pre-negotiated rate.

Managed Services: This is usually given to large-scale customers rather than individual consumers. A list of well-defined services and performance indicators are provided to the customer on an ongoing basis for a fixed rate, which is agreed upon on contract. Services provided could be 24/7 monitoring of servers, 24/7 help desk and the like. This may include on-site visits when problems cannot be solved remotely.

Block Hours: This is a prepaid support system where the customer pays for a certain amount of time, which can be used per month or per year. This allows customers to use the hours flexibly without the hassle of paper work or multiple bills.

Internet stars

Someone who is known (either world-widely or nationally) through the internet, though mainly from Youtube. Many get hated especially if they breakthrough and be part of Hollywood business (Justin Bieber, Rebecca Black), but a lot are admired.

Most internet celebrities are comedians, singers, bloggers and, nowadays, pranksters. The singers part is where some haters grow, but the comedians get a lot of praise.

They usually start out good and funny, but after a few videos, they start to do anything they want and lose ideas/creativity. But people still like them. I admit, I'm one.
Janoskians, Chris Crocker (one of the first, most influential), Shane Dawson, Smosh, Nigahiga, MrTeddy, Kevjumba, Ray William Johnson, Perez Hilton, Jenna Marbles, Community Channel (Natalie Tran)...are examples of an internet celebrity.

An Internet celebrity (also known as a social media influencer) is a celebrity who has acquired or developed their fame and notability through the Internet. The rise of social media has helped people increase their outreach to a global audience.

 Internet celebrities may be recruited by companies for influencer marketing to advertise products to their fans and followers on their platforms. Internet celebrities often function as lifestyle gurus who promote a particular lifestyle or attitude.

In this role, they may be crucial influencers or multipliers for trends in genres including fashion, technology, video games, politics, and entertainment.

GIF's and memes

A GIF, or Graphical Interchange Format, is a bitmap image format that was invented on June 15 1987 by a US software writer called Steve Wilhite for CompuServe.

Gifs are highly compressed images that typically allow up to 8 bits per pixel for each image, which in total allow up to 256 colours across the image.

For comparison, a JPEG image can display up to 16 million colours and pretty much reaches the limits of the human eye.

Back when the internet was new, gifs were used extensively because they didn’t require much bandwidth.

A single gif file can feature multiple frames which are displayed in succession in order to create an animated clip, these can either be looped endlessly or just stop at the end of the sequence.

We tend to use animated gifs today as “Reaction Gifs”, they act as fun replies for conversations on apps like Facebook Messenger.

The main difference between an animated gif and a meme is that memes tend to be static images that make a topical or pop culture reference and animated gifs are, more simply, moving images.

You can find all the animated gif memes that your heart desires at website such as Giphy and Awesome Gifs.

As with most things, gifs and memes work better together. Grab an animated gif and stick some topical words on it et voilà, you have an animated meme.

History

In the past history has been justified for reasons we would no longer accept. For instance, one of the reasons history holds its place in current education is because earlier leaders believed that a knowledge of certain historical facts helped distinguish the educated from the uneducated; the person who could reel off the date of the Norman conquest of England (1066) or the name of the person who came up with the theory of evolution at about the same time that Darwin did (Wallace) was deemed superior—a better candidate for law school or even a business promotion. Knowledge of historical facts has been used as a screening device in many societies, from China to the United States, and the habit is still with us to some extent. Unfortunately, this use can encourage mindless memorization—a real but not very appealing aspect of the discipline.

History should be studied because it is essential to individuals and to society, and because it harbors beauty. There are many ways to discuss the real functions of the subject—as there are many different historical talents and many different paths to historical meaning. All definitions of history's utility, however, rely on two fundamental facts.

History Helps Us Understand People and Societies

In the first place, history offers a storehouse of information about how people and societies behave. Understanding the operations of people and societies is difficult, though a number of disciplines make the attempt.

An exclusive reliance on current data would needlessly handicap our efforts. How can we evaluate war if the nation is at peace—unless we use historical materials? How can we understand genius, the influence of technological innovation, or the role that beliefs play in shaping family life, if we don't use what we know about experiences in the past? Some social scientists attempt to formulate laws or theories about human behavior. But even these recourses depend on historical information, except for in limited, often artificial cases in which experiments can be devised to determine how people act.

Major aspects of a society's operation, like mass elections, missionary activities, or military alliances, cannot be set up as precise experiments. Consequently, history must serve, however imperfectly, as our laboratory, and data from the past must serve as our most vital evidence in the unavoidable quest to figure out why our complex species behaves as it does in societal settings. This, fundamentally, is why we cannot stay away from history: it offers the only extensive evidential base for the contemplation and analysis of how societies function, and people need to have some sense of how societies function simply to run their own lives.

Productive tips

Don’t overwhelm yourself. To-do lists often fail because we make them way too complex or the tasks are unequal. Some tasks will take a long time, others won’t take any time at all. This creates an unbalance in the way we distribute our time. What happens then is that our to-do list then becomes a procrastination tool. Yes, that’s right. Because then we do the easy stuff, and then become really distracted on the hard stuff.

Before you read one more article on how to be more productive, remember this:  Be kind to yourself and your mistakes.

You can’t expect to be more productive overnight.

You’ve probably spent years cultivating your work habits–both good and bad, consciously or subconsciously–and those won’t immediately change.

Small adjustments can lead to more lasting changes, but those may take time and discipline. It looks really easy when you’re reading a productivity article like this to think it’s easy. But it’s not. I’m not writing this from an expert point of view, but from a fellow worker in the fight against distraction.

So be patient and kind through the rough patches and try again. Okay, now we’re ready:

How To Be More Productive
1. Make a reasonable to-do list.
Don’t overwhelm yourself. To-do lists often fail because we make them way too complex or the tasks are unequal. Some tasks will take a long time, others won’t take any time at all. This creates an unbalance in the way we distribute our time. What happens then is that our to-do list then becomes a procrastination tool. Yes, that’s right. Because then we do the easy stuff, and then become really distracted on the hard stuff.

Don’t lie, you’ve done that before. So then you need to …

Your Daily To-Do List is Failing. Here Are 3 Strategies To Make It Better & Improve Productivity.

2. Set small goals for the tasks.
With every new project or assignment, the scope may seem too large. But once you start breaking it down and realizing what can be accomplished, you’ll notice how each part builds upon the other.

One of the easiest and most practical things you can do is to break down your marketing project or deliverable into smaller goals. What are the pieces and assets needed? Who do you need to talk to first? Break up these pieces before even setting timelines, and then estimate how long they’ll take you to accomplish. Understanding the scope of what’s being asked, putting the steps in place and then estimating the time needed will help you get a grasp of what’s being asked. Sometimes what seems like a big project won’t take much time at all, or vice versa.

Tracking your time, even if no one is asking you for it can help you understand your work habits and the time of day when you finish work most successfully. Tracking your time efficiently, knowing what your tech habits are, from when you check your email to how often you check your favorite websites or social media can affect your workday in a big way.

By re-arranging some of those things, you may be able to get more done. Tracking your time for a week or two will help you see where you spend your time, and will help you better estimate your goals from #1 a little bit better the next time around. The next time you’re asked to repeat a task, you’ll have a better sense of the amount of time needed.

You’ll also notice problem areas, where you tend to be less productive, or identify certain scheduling quirks that you can work around–such as weekly meetings or appointments or even when that one coworker comes by to chat for a few minutes.

Contests

A contest may require entrants to submit a photo, answer questions, respond to short writing prompts or complete any other action or task that can be judged on performance.

A contest is essentially a game of skill, and alongside sweepstakes they are the ideal type of promotions for businesses and brands to run.

The key difference between contests and sweepstakes, which are often referred to as giveaways, is that a contest is a skill-based promotion where winners are chosen on merit, while a sweepstakes or giveaway is a luck-based promotion where winners are chosen at random.

Prize promotions in the US and most other countries are regulated by no purchase necessary laws that essentially state that if promotion winners are randomly drawn you cannot ask users to make a purchase or provide other forms of consideration in order to enter your promotion.

Since contest winners are drawn based on merit instead of randomly, no purchase necessary laws are not applicable to contests and you are free to require the purchase of your product for entry. This includes getting users submit photos of themselves with your product, or write testimonials about their experience with it.

Troubleshooting guides

Troubleshooting is a systematic approach to problem solving that is often used to find and correct issues with complex machines, electronics, computers and software systems.

The first step in troubleshooting is gathering information on the issue, such as an undesired behavior or a lack of expected functionality. Other important information includes related symptoms and special circumstances that may be required to reproduce the issue.

Once the issue and how to reproduce it are understood, the next step might be to eliminate unnecessary components in the system and verify that the issue persists, to rule out incompatibility and third-party causes.

Continuing, assuming the issue remains, one might next check common causes. Depending on the particular issue and the troubleshooter’s experience, they may have some ideas. They may also check product documentation and/or conduct research on a support database or through a search engine.

After common causes are ruled out, the troubleshooter may resort to the more systematic and logical process of verifying the expected function of parts of a system. One common method is the split-half troubleshooting approach: With a problem resulting from a number of possible parts in series, one tests half-way down the line of components. If the middle component works, one goes to the middle of the remaining parts, approaching the end. If the test finds a problem at the mid-point, one does a split towards the start of the line until the problem part is found. The split-half process can save time in systems that depend on many components.

Once the problem part is identified, it may be adjusted, repaired or replaced as needed. Evidence of effective troubleshooting is indicated when the issue is no longer reproducible and function is restored one. 

The success of troubleshooting often depends on the thoroughness and experience of the troubleshooter. That said, the majority of those who develop tech savvy are likely to have friends, coworkers and family who call on them for help.

Automation

Automation is the creation of technology and its application in order to control and monitor the production and delivery of various goods and services. It performs tasks that were previously performed by humans.

Automation is being used in a number of areas such as manufacturing, transport, utilities, defense, facilities, operations and lately, information technology.

Automation can be performed in many ways in various industries. For example, in the information technology domain, a software script can test a software product and produce a report.

There are also various software tools available in the market which can generate code for an application. The users only need to configure the tool and define the process. In other industries, automation is greatly improving productivity, saving time and cutting costs.

Automation is evolving quickly and business intelligence in applications is a new form of high-quality automation. In the technology domain, the impact of automation is increasing rapidly, both in the software/hardware and machine layer.

 However, despite advances in automation, some manual intervention is always advised, even if the tool can perform most of the tasks.

Myth debunking

Debunking myths requires an understanding of the psychological research into misinformation. But getting your refutation out in front of lots of eyeballs is a whole other matter.

Here, I look at two contrasting case studies in debunking climate myths.

If you don’t do it right, you run the risk of actually reinforcing the myth. Fortunately, there are a number of steps you can take to avoid any potential backfire effects.

First and foremost, you need to emphasise the key facts you wish to communicate rather than the myth. Otherwise, you risk making people more familiar with the myth than with the correct facts.
That doesn’t mean avoid mentioning the myth altogether. You have to activate it in people’s minds before they can label it as wrong.

Secondly, you need to replace the myth with an alternate narrative. This is usually an explanation of why the myth is wrong or how it came about. Essentially, debunking is creating a gap in people’s minds (removing the myth) then filling that gap (with the correct explanation).

Breaking news

Breaking news, also known as a special report or news bulletin, is a current event that broadcasters feel warrants the interruption of scheduled programming and/or current news in order to report its details.

Many times, breaking news is used after the news network has already reported on this story. When a story has not been reported on previously, the graphic and phrase Just In is sometimes used instead. Its use is often loosely assigned to the most significant story of the moment or a story that is being covered live. It could be a story that is simply of wide interest to viewers and has little impact otherwise.

Breaking news, interchangeably termed late-breaking news and also known as a special report or special coverage or news flash, is a current issue that broadcasters feel warrants the interruption of scheduled programming and/or current news in order to report its details. Its use is also assigned to the most significant story of the moment or a story that is being covered live. It could be a story that is simply of wide interest to viewers and has little impact otherwise.

Many times, breaking news is used after the news organization has already reported on the story. When a story has not been reported on previously, the graphic and phrase "Just In" is sometimes used instead.

Product reviews

Product reviews are an essential part of an online store’s branding and marketing. They help build trust and loyalty, and typically describe what sets your products apart from others.

Today we’re going to learn how reviews help your store increase sales, and how you can convince customers to leave more of them. Read on to get started.
Savvy shoppers almost never purchase a product without knowing how it’s going to work for them. They read the good, the not-so-good, and the downright ugly to make the all-important decision: should I pull out my wallet and take the plunge?

The immediate benefit of reviews is that they can make your future customers feel that much more confident. The more reviews you have, the more convinced a shopper will be that they’re making the right decision.

Reviews can help increase a store’s online presence, too. Since customer feedback appears on each product’s page, reviews can help pages be found on search engines via unique keywords.

Additionally, if customers share products they’ve reviewed across their social networks, it’s more exposure for those products and your brand.
Reviews can also help you better understand your products. You can spend hours using a product, but chances are customers will notice things you never would. That means your customers can give you great feedback, ideas for improvements, or even incredible marketing ideas!

The best way to get customers to review items they own or have purchased is to just ask them. Be direct — it’s not as if your customers don’t want to leave reviews, but they often don’t remember!

Ask the customers who have made a purchase from you for a review about a week after their order would have arrived (or later, if your customers aren’t likely to use your products right away).

Personal stories

One effective strategy for personal storytelling involves finding a challenging time in your life and talking about how you got past those challenges. By offering up your real challenges, and sharing stories of both successful and unsuccessful attempts to meet them, you can engage your followers while allowing them to learn new ways to overcome obstacles in their own lives.

Such stories are both educational and motivational, arming your fans with both useful information and the feeling that the struggles they themselves are facing are struggles that others have overcome.

This, in turn, can help them believe in their own eventual success.

A great example of this strategy would be the old story of the truck that got stuck in a too-short underpass. Every solution all the experts on the scene proposed to get the truck out would damage either the truck or the underpass. Finally, a young child asked why they didn't just let some of the air out of the tires then back the truck out, and the child became a hero for seeing the problem differently than all the adults.

Stories like this, like fables, illustrate simple life lessons in ways that personalize the learning, which can lead to deeper understanding.

The essence of this strategy is to take a few key nuggets of learning, wrap them up with a few tasty morsels of who you are, and create a kind of mental appetizer that gets your followers thinking - and connects them in genuine ways to your brand and story.

Interviews

"Tell me a little about yourself."
If you're the interviewer, there's a lot you should already know: The candidate's resume and cover letter should tell you plenty, and LinkedIn and Twitter and Facebook and Google can tell you more.

The goal of an interview is to determine whether the candidate will be outstanding in the job, and that means evaluating the skills and attitude required for that job. Does she need to be an empathetic leader? Ask about that. Does she need to take your company public? Ask about that.

If you're the candidate, talk about why you took certain jobs. Explain why you left. Explain why you chose a certain school. Share why you decided to go to grad school. Discuss why you took a year off to backpack through Europe, and what you got out of the experience.

When you answer this question, connect the dots on your resume so the interviewer understands not just what you've done, but also why.

 "What are your biggest weaknesses?"
Every candidate knows how to answer this question: Just pick a theoretical weakness and magically transform that flaw into a strength in disguise!

For example: "My biggest weakness is getting so absorbed in my work that I lose all track of time. Every day I look up and realize everyone has gone home! I know I should be more aware of the clock, but when I love what I'm doing I just can't think of anything else."

So your "biggest weakness" is that you'll put in more hours than everyone else? Great...

A better approach is to choose an actual weakness, but one you're working to improve. Share what you're doing to overcome that weakness. No one is perfect, but showing you're willing to honestly self-assess and then seek ways to improve comes pretty darned closed.

 "What are your biggest strengths?"
I'm not sure why interviewers ask this question; your resume and experience should make your strengths readily apparent.

Even so, if you're asked, provide a sharp, on-point answer. Be clear and precise. If you're a great problem solver, don't just say that: Provide a few examples, pertinent to the opening, that prove you're a great problem solver. If you're an emotionally intelligent leader, don't just say that: Provide a few examples that prove you know how to answer the unasked question.

In short, don't just claim to have certain attributes -- prove you have those attributes.

"Where do you see yourself in five years?"
Answers to this question go one of two basic ways. Candidates try to show their incredible ambition (because that's what they think you want) by providing an extremely optimistic answer: "I want your job!" Or they try to show their humility (because that's what they think you want) by providing a meek, self-deprecating answer: "There are so many talented people here. I just want to do a great job and see where my talents take me."

In either case you learn nothing, other than possibly how well candidates can sell themselves.

For interviewers, here's a better question: "What business would you love to start?"

That question applies to any organization, because every employee at every company should have an entrepreneurial mind-set.

The business a candidate would love to start tells you about her hopes and dreams, her interests and passions, the work she likes to do, the people she likes to work with ... so just sit back and listen.