Alan C. Fox's Blog, page 32

I always want the best for you, even if what you want for yourself may not ultimately be the best for me.

Ellie was one of the best secretaries I ever had. She was the only one who knew how to use our IBM MT/ST (Magnetic Tape/Selectric Typewriter) which was a very early version of an electronic word processor. Her successors never got the hang of it. And neither did I. One Saturday morning I tried it out. My project was to “self-address” twelve envelopes for the U.S. Post Office so they wou...

When I was eighteen I took the thousand-dollar inheritance from my grandmother, added some of my own savings, and bought my first car—a brand new metallic blue VW Bug.

Since my father always parked his car in the garage, I had to park mine on the street. A few weeks after my big purchase, I walked out of the house toward my beautiful new car and my jaw dropped. My precious VW had been sideswiped, leaving two ugly black scratches on its left rear fender. I was furious. My brand new car was r...

Last week, I finally finished the manuscript for my new book, People Tools for Business: 50 Strategies for Building Success, Creating Wealth, and Finding Happiness. In the midst of the final throes of the writing process, I was happy to stumble upon a delightful NY Timesarticle by Amy Klein about her experiencehaving herwriting critiqued by others at a writer's workshop. Using humor and insight, she lists a variety of tips that one should have in mind when engaging in the often-excruciating...

I hate to waste money, but for the past six months I’ve been driving my new red Tesla which is the most enjoyable car I’ve ever handled. I’m able to listen to every radio station in the world, including News Burundi. I now have a trunk in front and a trunk in back, so my new car serves as an even better portable closet than my last one with hardly any storage space at all.

The two factors which I most love about my Tesla are:

1. The burst of speed. I haven’t been pulled over for speeding ye...

Last week, I wrote an article for Fast Company magazine’s on Bottom Line blog, which is based on my next book, People Tools for Business (out this September). It’s about my approach to the annual review that many employers and employees face each year, and how I’ve learned how to make this usually dreaded process a positive experience. I’ve re-published it here on my blog. Enjoy!

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5 Ways to Make the Annual Review Process Less Painful

I've supervised hundreds o...

“It’s simple,” the all-star defensive lineman explained.

“The great ball carriers like Jim Brown or Gale Sayers fake with their eyes, they fake with their heads, fake with their shoulders. But they can’t fake with their belt buckle. Wherever that’s going, that’s where they’re going.

“I just watch their belt buckle.”

When I was young I asked many girls at my high school to go out with me. Since I was not every woman’s dream date—all right, I was president of the chess club—my invitations wer...

I used to be a partial perfectionist.

I say “partial” because certain aspects of my life, such as my clothing, weren’t especially important to me and I didn’t need them to be perfect.

I say “perfectionist” because often I would settle for nothing less than that ideal. In high school I wanted the highest grade in every class. When I began practicing law I wanted each letter or agreement to be perfectly composed and perfectly typed, and that was in the days before word processing equipment ma...

I am working at my desk. I hear a soft chime, and up pops an e-mail from one of my investors. He’s asking the same question he has already asked me three times in the last two months. It would take me an hour to research and answer his question, just as it would have taken me the first time he asked. Now my investor is upset and I am under increasing pressure to perform. What to do, what to do?

Delegate!!

Instead of doing the research myself, I forward my investor’s request to my assistant...

You do not always have to live with that which brings unhappiness.

When it comes to breakfast I am a creature of habit. Years ago every morning I fried one “over easy” egg for myself. I liked the yolk medium, not hard. One morning, as I dropped the egg into the frying pan, the shell punctured the yolk, which broke. I frowned, and resigned myself to another unhappy breakfast because I knew that when I turned the egg over the yolk would become hard.

I glared at the offending egg. I tried to c...

We all know that apologizing can be one of the most difficult, yet helpful things we can do in our relationships with friends, loved ones, and colleagues. Take these two contrasting perspectives as an example of the paradoxical nature of the simple art of apology:

“Faultless to a fault.” —Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book.

“Never apologize and never explain—it’s a sign of weakness.” –John Wayne in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.

My goodness! Here we have the poet Robert Browning suggesting t...