TGIF – Top And Bottom Jobs Are A Mouthful

As the week winds down, we wind down with some tidbits for your information, education, health, and enjoyment.

Quote of the Week: “A retired husband is often a wife’s full-time job.”  Bev (from Bev and Al)

Humor Break: (Al, from our favorite couple “Bev and Al” is retired but took a part-time job a few months back.  According to our unimpeachable sources, the following conversation took place earlier this week.)

Bev: Al, you are home early.

Al: Yeah, well my boss, the jokester, came in the office this morning and says “Experts say humor on the job relieves tension in this time of down-sizing, Knock, Knock.”

So I play along: “Who’s there?”

And he says: “Not you anymore.”

Stat of the Week: The 100 Best Jobs. According to US News these are the best jobs for 2013.  Each of the 100 comes with a brief description about why the job is included on the list.  Some are surprising.  #1 and #100 have something in common.  They both focus on the mouth (dentists and telemarketers).  My ideal job falls somewhere in-between.

Action Tip:  8 Ways to Motivate Yourself to Save for Retirement. Jobs come and go.  Over the past 10 years it seems as if more jobs go than come.  Which makes planning for the future ever more important.  Don’t do what I did.  Set up an automatic system for paying your retirement plan monthly.  Emily Brandon wrote an US News report on best jobs: “Motivating yourself to save for a retirement that’s decades in the future can be a daunting challenge. Behavioral researchers are testing exactly what triggers cause people to sign up for retirement accounts and increase their contributions. It turns out that a variety of experiences, including spending time with your grandparents, worrying about problems you could face in old age, and even picturing what you will look like in retirement could persuade you to boost your retirement account contributions.”

Self-Development Corner: February is Black History Month in the United States and Canada.  For me, it is that and more.  It is a reminder that we all come from different places with different histories.  And the more we know about people who are ethnically, racially, and culturally different that we are, the more like we are to achieve Rodney Kings’ famous quote “Can’t we all get along.”

The free online university Coursera offers us a couple of course this month that can broaden our knowledge about people who may be different from you and me: Women and the Civil Rights Movement, (begins Feb. 25, 12 weeks, University of Maryland) and Aboriginal Worldviews and Education, (begins Feb 25, 4 weeks, University of Toronto).

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.