Trusting Your Intuition While Hiring and Getting Hired

Show perspective, not pedigree.

Recently, our CEO Karen Kaplan wrote a great piece that was featured in The Huffington Post titled: "How to Get Hired: Show Perspective, Not Pedigree." In this article, she covers various aspects in hiring the right person. Aspects like diversity, character, openness, collaborative, someone who is comfortable with the uncomfortable, confident yet humble and most importantly willing to work hard.

Kaplan writes, "One of the founding fathers of the advertising industry, Bill Bernbach, once said, "Throw out the resume. Hire on character." He believed -- and I do, too -- that you can hire smart people, or you can hire nice people, but the way to win is to find ambitious, curious people who are both smart AND nice."

This is not new thinking by any means, but we are in the age of highly qualified, skilled, over educated people entering our lives constantly. You are probably one of them. So what will help you get the job vs. that next person. You, as a person. The smile you may have, the warmth you bring to a room, the calmness that you may present while explaining a complicated process.  I guess it's just called being human.  These are the people who will succeed and move through the ranks.

"Priya has a tough time with numbers and grasping concepts, it's best not to expect too much from her." 

I'm one of those folks that did well in life not due to my stellar academic background, in fact I still have a report card somewhere from middle school where my math teacher stated "Priya has a tough time with numbers and grasping concepts, it's best not to expect too much from her." Yah, awesome freakin teacher - isn't that against the law to say that? HA! I'd love to show him where I am today as a Senior Vice President at one of the largest advertising firms in Boston.

Strive for a higher EQ vs. IQ.

My point here is at some point it became clear to me that common sense and striving for a higher EQ (emotional quotient) vs. IQ (intelligence quotient) is what will define success for me.  So I focussed on that strength of mine.  Now this isn't to say that I'm not smart, or don't know anything. I won't sell myself short either… you don't get to go to Boston College without a little knowledge and know how!

Hire based on intuition.

My first manager at a firm called Clarke & Company hired me back in 1994 based not on my transcript but on character, charisma, willingness to learn and do hard work. They hired me based on their INTUITION that I would do well and I did. I remember that all the time when I meet people and yes you will see me psychoanalyzing you with a smile on my face when I first meet you to figure out who you really are.  But I will say my intuition and gut feelings have yet to fail me.

Personal Case Study.

Here's another first hand of experience that highlights all the aspects of this post.

As a working mom, one of your hardest decisions that you are sometimes forced to make as early as your baby hardly turns 10 weeks old is to bring a complete stranger into your house to take care of your newborn. There are so many different feelings that take place as a new mom and you tend to question everything about yourself and every decision you make as you place your most precious love in this persons hands.

This person after all will now be spending potentially more time with your child than you…. and that's hard to stomach. Four years ago, Suhani came into our lives and the time came to find someone to take care of her so that we could continue working. We interviewed many people, very qualified people. But I chose to go with my gut and I just wasn't getting a good feeling from anyone.
 
Then Fanny was recommended to me. On paper, she didn't seem like a great fit, she hardly spoke english though she had taken care of children for over 20 years. Then we met her. Her warmth and love immediately came across when she saw Suhani and picked her up and knew exactly what to do with her. Suddenly the fact that she only spoke spanish seemed like a ridiculous reason not to hire her. 


She was a good person and I'm so glad I trusted my gut.


We were blessed to find her - an incredibly loving, caring nanny. She and her husband have now cared for Suhani and Arjun for the last four years and they've taken care of us as well. 


Today is actually their last day with us as they make their journey back to their motherland Columbia to be with their family. Thank you Fanny and Jairo for loving our children as much as we do and for showering them with love and making them feel safe and secure when we weren't' there to do so. Thanks to you we all learned spanish and we consider you family and will be eternally grateful to you both. You will be missed dearly!!!!

----
Visit my site www.utopia46.com for more UX info!

Does President Obama Know Where His User Experience (UX) Team Is?

Five Lessons in User Experience All Brands Can Learn From.

CBS News reported that the White House recently hired Jeffrey Zients to head up a team to “fix” Healthcare.gov. They also stated they were reaching out to experts and companies in Silicon Valley, trying to tap their expertise for the rescue of the site. 

Ok. Everyone knows that Healthcare.gov site has problems. The largest ones being functionality that that doesn’t work and accurate data collection and storage. This piece focuses on one other aspect, User Experience. Simple tweaks that can make the experience a bit easier for the user to navigate the site.

When a website launches, issues are inevitable but there are many lessons that brands can learn from the government’s (aka your tax dollars’) misfortune.

Let’s put all politics aside for a moment and take a look at some simple UX tactics that could have been applied to minimize risk. I’ve read a lot about the issues but the best knowledge is always first hand and I had to do a test drive myself.

What did I find, you ask?

Oh, many issues but most can all be consolidated into the following five points:

1.     You Need A Captain

2.     Estimate Initial Usage But Be Prepared for 10x the Volume of Users

3.     Streamline Content – Don’t Distract The User With Irrelevant Content

4.     Don’t Scare Them with Commitment Language Off the Bat

5.     Test Early and Rapidly

1.     You Need A Captain

October 2011. That’s when the government began subcontracting out development work for the website. Guess how many organizations this project was subcontracted to? 47. Yes 47.

So with 47 different subcontractors, how could the government know at any given point who was working on the site and who was responsible for the most critical piece that would deem this successful – ie a successful user experience?

It’s a given, when you are building a large site, that you will have multiple departments, people and potentially companies working on it.  That’s why it’s essential to have a UX captain that is all along ensuring the testing and usability of the site. If you don’t, you will fail. No blurred lines there. Your UX captain can serve as the connective tissue from concept through development and launch. Use them, that’s what they are there for.

2.     Estimate Initial Usage But Be Prepared for 10x the Volume of Users

The U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park stated the government had expected to draw 50,000-60,000 simultaneous users at any given time and they were prepared for that.  What happened? On average over 250,000 users have been trying to log in since it launched on October 1^st. 250,000!!!! Remember if you are building a site where you have stated your goal is “7 million users”, then scalability and capacity is critical. If they can’t get in, you potentially just lost a number of users.

3.     Streamline Content for the User – Don’t Distract Them With Irrelevant Content

I have to say one of my biggest pet peeves is when I’m in an experience and I get presented information that is completely irrelevant to me at that point in the process. Don’t do it, just don’t do it. Keep the experience clean and guide the user down a path, don’t distract them.

Here’s a prime example on the site. I get to the homepage, I decide I want more information on Individuals and Families. Here are the series of pages I am now taken through until I can finally take an action that I wanted to take initially.

Great – I’m interested in individual and family – so I click on that in the tabs

Ok I guess I’ll apply online so I click on that.

Hmm… ok I guess I’ll click on the big green button to get started.

Ok – I guess I’ll pick the one starting in January.

Hmm.. Wait what? Why am I seeing Small Business and Brokers here…

I thought I already told you I was an Individual. There doesn’t seem to be a big call to action – I guess I’ll click the individual tab again?

FINALLY A GET STARTED BUTTON THAT WILL LAUNCH A FORM

TO BEGIN FILLING OUT.

So five clicks before I can even begin to fill out a form. Five clicks and that’s because I was able to figure it out and not lose hope along the way. The average user will not get past those first two clicks. “Healthcare.gov”, why are you making me click so many times? Why can’t you just take me to this page immediately?

4.     Don’t Scare Them with Commitment Language Off the Bat

These words are on the homepage and the largest calls to action.  My guess is users want a little more information before committing to an application. Something as simple as Learn More and Apply may ease the experience for the user coming here for the first time and keep them moving through the process.

5.     Test Early and Rapidly

I can’t mention this enough. Even if you only have sketches, testing makes a difference. The smallest tweaks and enhancements can make or break your site. You don’t have to test a gazillion people either. You will begin to see trends after 5-7 users. Do it. Do it often. You won’t be sorry.

“Sources tell CBS News the underlying software was riddled with junk computer code, which means, one expert said, "No way it was properly tested before it went live.”

I rest my case.

In summary, launching a site at this scale is no simple feat. There are bound to be hiccups along the way. However simple UX guardrails can be applied to minimize risk at launch. Now go find your UX team ASAP! Or call me if you don't have one! :)

Check out my coverage in Ad Age.

----
Visit my site www.utopia46.com for more UX info!

Looking to Build a Home Run Landing Page?

We all have to build them at some point for our clients - need some ammo to convince your client on building the "right" kind of page to get the results they are looking for? Look no further -

This article will give you the tools you need...

"Designing an optimized landing page isn't exactly a cakewalk. If you want to achieve a respectable conversion rate, that is. So ... how schooled are you in the concept of conversion-centered design? Conversion-centered design (CCD) is a discipline targeted specifically at designing experiences that achieve a single business goal."

Read more about Principles of Conversion Centered Landing Page Design

----
Visit my site www.utopia46.com for more UX info!

Gesture Recognition - What What?

Learn About Gesture Recognition and See How Cadillac is Already Using It!

First the definition…

In gesture recognition technology, a camera reads the movements of the human body and communicates the data to a computer that uses the gestures as input to control devices or applications. For example, a person clapping his hands together in front of a camera can produce the sound of cymbals being crashed together when the gesture is fed through a computer.

We all know it's in the works and has been for a while. It has already manifested itself in the gaming industry and we are seeing it now via google glass. It's just a matter of time before we are faced with yet one more variable to consider when designing a product.

Touch technology, thanks to Apple, took the world by storm with a high adoption rate and a rare sharp intuitive learning curve. Everyone just got it, including two year olds within a matter of seconds. Touch technology is also scaleable as It works within a confined set of guidelines with very clear inputs – the touch of your finger.

Gesture recognition however is a bit more complicated. Why? Here are a few reasons:

1. We are all different physically. We all do things slightly differently, whether it is blinking or moving a finger in the air from the left to the right. The screen has to adjust specially to person. Similar to voice recognition.
2. There are certain things that you would rather do quietly. As I'm searching the internet for something, rather than making my eyes move quickly down the page to scroll or waving my hand rapidly, I may prefer to do it slightly with my finger and not draw attention to myself.
3. Human Ergonomics. Sitting at a desk and looking at a lap top suddenly makes my mouse pad cursor unnecessary. Why do I need my cursor if I can just gesture or tap on something that will give me my result. To that same extent – navigation may drastically change if gesturing becomes the norm because  the natural movement of gesturing while at a desktop would be with your elbow somewhat glued to the desk, so the range of motion suddenly turns into an arc. Therefore does it make sense for navigation to be more at an arc value vs. the standard horizontal top of the page value? This is just one of the variables to consider.
4. It seems easier but is it really? While in some situations, gesture recognition seems to really be the way to go (gaming, oversized digital displays (think Tom Cruise and the Minority Report) or music perhaps) but in other situations are we just overcomplicating an experience?  

So what's the net net here? We still have a ways to go when it comes to gesture recognition. Think long and hard about the audiences you are working with and the product you are designing. 

I have no doubt it will slowly begin to creep its way into our lives but as designers of products, let's always be sure to ask the very important question of "will this enhance or detract from the experience." In that question, I believe you will find the correct answer on how to proceed in adding the additional requirement in.

In the case of Cadillac, they figured out just where they can use it in their cars. It's called CUE (Cadillac User Experience). How you ask? Very simply by the screen sensing the users presence of their finger coming closer to the screen and narrowing results or expanding. The screen is predominantly tactile and voice operated but I love that they were able to figure out a way to incorporate gesturing to enhance the user experience. 

Check out the latest CNET review of 2013 Cadillac ATS that includes the CUE technology. Surprisingly, the voice and proximity gesture recognition worked very well for the reviewer (which are usually the trickier ones) but the tactile piece was a bit slow in response time. I'm sure they are working on it!

I expect to see more of this integration in the future from Cadillac. Way to go!

Side note: Cadillac introduced CUE back in 2011 and has been enhancing ever since…

----
Visit my site www.utopia46.com for more UX info!

Design Your Website Like The User is Drunk!

Brilliant video, I will leave it at that and let the video do the explaining!

WATCH: The User Is Drunk, You Tube

Credit: You Tube, SquareWeave, Do The Internet Better

----
Visit my site www.utopia46.com for more UX info!

Native Ads 101 - Native What?!!!!

I came across this article today and fell in love with the title...

People Are More Likely to Survive a Plane Crash Than Click on a Banner Ad.....

Oli Gardner gave a lot of great pointers and stats in this post and I thought it was worth reposting.

Most importantly he begins to explain the difference between a banner ad and a native ad. What's a native ad you ask? Basically, it's an ad placed within a content piece BUT the ad is very relevant to the topic you are reading on (hopefully).

Many brands are moving towards Native Ads as they have a higher click through rate than banner ads (52% more), shared more (32% vs. 19%), Native Ads registered a 9% higher lift for brand affinity and 18% for purchase intent and native ads are consumed the same way people view editorial content.

Ok here's the whole article:

People Are More Likely to Survive a Plane Crash Than Click on a Banner Ad.....
Oli Gardner

Best. Statistic. Ever. Makes me feel better about flying, but sorry for those designing banner ads.

They say that a kitten dies every time someone uses a bullet point in a presentation, so I shudder to think what’s going to happen the next time someone clicks on a banner.

Banner ads. The ugly stepchild of online marketing. Just trying to hang out in the top-right corner, minding their own business. They never asked to be overused. They never asked to be animated GIFs. But they certainly didn’t want to be ignored.

Yet, here we are, about to discuss how little action they get, and how they’re being usurped by another form of advertising. Poor little rectangular bastards. 75,000 wasted pixels in an otherwise useful area of your page. Destined to be thrown on the marketing scrap heap, never to be seen again…

Scratch that. Banners aren’t going anywhere. Yes they’re annoying. Yes they are essentially useless. But they’re here to stay, in all their 300x250px glory. They just have to compete with what’re known as ‘Native Ads’, which, as we’ll learn, have some significant advantages.

What’s a native ad? In 197 characters or less.

Native ads are contextual paid ads that appear in your content stream, designed to augment the user experience by providing semantically relevant supporting content, without breaking the flow of information.

But placing ads in content is bad, right?

It certainly is. The typical method for injecting ads is to use interruption marketing tactics to plant banners and text ads directly into the middle of a piece of content, forcing you to look at them in order to experience the whole article. People – me included – despise these ads. They provide no contextual benefit and diminish the value of the content they appear in. You can probably blame Google for this, as most of the bad behavior seems to have been built around the mass adoption of AdSense as an advertising platform.

There’s a reason for the epidemic known as banner blindness. People never liked banners and decided unconsciously to tune them out, focusing instead on the real content on the page. If you infer the same reaction to ads placed inside your content, you can imagine how unpleasant and interrupted the content consumption experience would be.

However, done correctly, ads inside content can be effective. This is where native ads come in.

So how are native ads different?

To extend the definition of native ads a bit. You can think of them as sponsored content designed to “blur the distinction between editorial and advertising in the eyes of the consumer”, according to Pilgrim Advertising. What this means, is that despite the ads being paid for, they are placed more carefully, with a heightened level of knowledge about where and how they are being used. The result is that they appear more like ‘useful supporting content that just happens to be paid for’.Read more about native ads.

The benefits of native ads

The infographic below was created based on a study to compare differences in behavior and perception between native ads and banner ads. Using eye tracking tools and surveys, the following insights were uncovered:

• Native ads are more visually engaging: Native ads in the study were looked at 52% more frequently than banner ads.
• Native ads drive higher brand lift: They registered a 9% lift for brand affinity and an 18% lift for purchase intent, compared to banner ads.
• Native ads are more likely to be shared: 32% of respondents said they would share the ad content with a friend, compared to 19% for banner ads.
• Native ads are consumed in the same way as the content they appear in: Consumers actually registered that they looked at the native ads slightly more than the content itself.

Enjoy the rest of the data in the infographic, and be sure to tweet the facts at the end of the post.

(Infographic by Sharethrough )

Tweetables

Share these rad stats with your followers to show how ad-savvy you are. And don’t worry, you can change the final tweet text before it goes out. Just leave the stats intact.

• Consumers looked at native ads 52% more frequently than banner ads
  » Tweet This «
• 32% would share native ad content with a friend, compared to 19% for banner ads
  » Tweet This «
• Native ads registered 9% higher lift for brand affinity & 18% higher for purchase intent than banner ads
  » Tweet This «
• People are more likely to survive a plane crash than click a banner ad
  » Tweet This «
• Native ads are consumed the same way people view editorial content
  » Tweet This «

And in case you’re wondering. The stat about the plane crash came from here.

– Oli Gardner

---

Credit: http://unbounce.com/online-marketing/native-ads-vs-banner-ads/?utm_content=buffer1bb3d&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

----
Visit my site www.utopia46.com for more UX info!

Lessons from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ...

Esquire Magazine recently posted an article by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I love this guy. We've been working with him lately because he's helping us on a campaign for a cancer drug for one of our clients. As most of you may or may not know, Kareem suffers from Leukemia (specifically CML). Despite the disease he continues to do great things for the community and serves as an inspiration to many.

It's always fascinating to me when you learn something new about a person - for example did you know that Kareem is a history buff and LOVES reading history books in his spare time? He's a self proclaimed closet nerd. Love it!

So he recently posted this - and what's not love about it?

We know many of these "lessons" but it's worth a refresher... my favorites in purple...

Kareem: 20 Things I Wish I’d Known When I Was 30

When I was thirty, I was living my dream. I’d already accomplished most of what I’d set out to achieve professionally: leading scorer in the NBA, leading rebounder, leading blocker, Most Valuable Player, All-Star. But success can be as blinding as Bill Walton’s finger in the eye when battling for a rebound. I made mistakes. Plenty of them. In fact, sometimes I wish I could climb into a time machine and go back to shake some sense into that thirty-year-old me. If I could, here’s the advice I would give him:

1. Be more outgoing. My shyness and introversion from those days still haunt me. Fans felt offended, reporters insulted. That was never my intention. When you’re on the public stage every day of your life, people think that you crave attention. For me, it was the opposite. I loved to play basketball, and was tremendously gratified that so many fans appreciated my game. But when I was off the court, I felt uncomfortable with attention. I rarely partied or attended celebrity bashes. On the flights to games, I read history books. Basically, I was a secret nerd who just happened to also be good at basketball. Interacting with a lot of people was like taking someone deathly afraid of heights and dangling him over the balcony at the top of the Empire State Building. If I could, I’d tell that nerdy Kareem to suck it up, put down that book you’re using as a shield, and, in the immortal words of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (to prove my nerd cred), “Engage!”

2. Ask about family history. I wish I’d sat my parents down and asked them a lot more questions about our family history. I always thought there would be time and I kept putting it off because, at thirty, I was too involved in my own life to care that much about the past. I was so focused on making my parents proud of me that I didn’t ask them some of the basic questions, like how they met, what their first date was like, and so forth. I wish that I had.

3. Become financially literate. “Dude, where’s my money?” is the rallying cry of many ex-athletes who wonder what happened to all the big bucks they earned. Some suffer from unwise investments or crazy spending, and others from not paying close attention. I was part of the didn’t-pay-attention group. I chose my financial manager, who I later discovered had no financial training, because a number of other athletes I knew were using him. That’s typical athlete mentality in that we’re used to trusting each other as a team, so we extend that trust to those associated with teammates. Consequently, I neglected to investigate his background or what qualified him to be a financial manager. He placed us in some real estate investments that went belly up and I came close to losing some serious coin. Hey, Kareem at 30: learn about finances

and stay on top of where your money is at all times. As the saying goes, “Trust, but verify.”

4. Play the piano. I took lessons as a kid but, like a lot of kids, didn’t stick with them. Maybe I felt too much pressure. After all, my father had gone to the Julliard School of Music and regularly jammed with some great jazz musicians. Looking back, I think playing piano would have given me a closer connection with my dad as well as given me another artistic outlet to better express myself. In 2002, I finally started to play and got pretty good at it. Not good enough that at parties people would chant for me to play “Piano Man,” but good enough that I could read music and feel closer to my dad.

5. Learn French. My grandparents were from Trinidad where, though it was an English-speaking country, the school system was started by the French. Whenever my grandparents wanted to say something they didn’t want me to know, they’d speak French. The language seemed so sophisticated and mysterious. Plus, you earn extra James Bond points when you can order in French in a French restaurant.

6. Get handy. I always wanted to be one of those guys who, whenever something doesn’t work, straps on a tool belt and says, “I’ll fix it.” I like the Walden-esque idea of complete self-reliance. Build my own house, clean out the carburetors, find out what carburetors are. Recently my washing machine broke and flooded my entire downstairs. I was forced to stand idly by waiting for a plumber to arrive while water rose around my ankles because I didn’t know how to shut off the water. That’s the kind of experience that makes you have your testosterone levels checked.

7. Be patient. Impatience is the official language of youth. When you’re young, you want to rush to the next thing before you even know where you are. I always think of the joke in Colors that the wiser and older cop (Robert Duvall) tells his impatient rookie partner (Sean Penn). I’m paraphrasing, but it goes something like: “There's two bulls standing on top of a mountain. The younger one says to the older one: ‘Hey pop, let's say we run down there and screw one of them cows.’ The older one says: ‘No son. Let’s walk down and screw 'em all.’” Now, to counter the profane with the profound, one of my favorite quotes is from the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer: “Talent hits the target no one else can hit; genius hits the target no one else can see.” I think the key to seeing the target no one else can see is in being patient, waiting for it to appear so you can do the right thing, not just the expedient thing. Learning to wait is one of my greatest accomplishments as I’ve gotten older.

8. Listen more than talk. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

9. Career is never as important as family. The better you are at your job, the more you’re rewarded, financially and spiritually, by doing it. You know how to solve problems for which you receive praise and money. Home life is more chaotic. Solving problems is less prescriptive and no one’s applauding or throwing money if you do it right. That’s why so many young professionals spend more time at work with the excuse, “I’m sacrificing for my family.” Bullshit. Learn to embrace the chaos of family life and enjoy the small victories. This hit me one night after we’d won an especially emotional game against the Celtics. I’d left the stadium listening to thousands of strangers chanting “Kareem! Kareem!” I felt flush with the sense of accomplishment, for me, for the Lakers, and for the fans. But when I stepped into my home and my son said, “Daddy!” the victory, the chanting, the league standings, all faded into a distant memory.

10. Being right is not always the right thing to be. Kareem, my man, learn to step away. You think being honest immunizes you from the consequences of what you say. Remember Paul Simon’s lyrics, “There’s no tenderness beneath your honesty.” So maybe it’s not that important to win an argument, even if you “know” you’re right. Sometimes it’s more important to try a little tenderness.

11. Cook more. After I got divorced I missed home cooked meals and the only person I had to rely on was the guy in the mirror. Plus, I found it impressed women if you could cook a good meal. Once, very shortly after I started cooking for myself, I had a first date with a woman I really wanted to make a good impression on. Of course, I could have done the usual celebrity thing: fancy restaurant, signing autographs, wait-staff fawning. But I wanted this to be special, so I decided to cook for her, everything from soup to dessert. Some women get a little freaked seeing a 7’2” black man with a carving knife and butcher’s apron, but she appreciated the effort. Which was good because the soup was a little salty, the steak a little overcooked, and the flan a little watery…

12. When choosing someone to date, compassion is better than passion. I’m not saying she shouldn’t be passionate. That’s a given. But look for signs that she shows genuine compassion toward others. That will keep you interested in her a lot longer.

13. Do one thing every day that helps someone else. This isn’t about charity, this is about helping one individual you know by name. Maybe it means calling your parents, helping a buddy move, or lending a favorite jazz album to Chocolate Fingers McGee.

14. Do more for the community. This is about charity, extended to people close by whose names you don’t know. You can always do more.

15. Do one thing every day that you look forward to doing. It’s easy to get caught up in the enormous responsibilities of daily life. The To Do List can swallow your day. So, I’d insist to my younger self to make sure he has one thing on that list that he looks forward to doing.

16. Don’t be so quick to judge. It’s human nature to instantly judge others. It goes back to our ancient life-or-death need to decide whether to fight or flee. But in their haste to size others up, people are often wrong—especially a thirty-year-old sports star with hordes of folks coming at him every day. We miss out on knowing some exceptional people by doing that, as I’m sure I did. I think the biggest irony of this advice is that it’s coming from someone who’s black, stratospherically tall, and an athlete: the trifecta of being pre-judged. And I have a lifetime of hurtful comments to prove it. Yet, that didn’t stop me from doing the same thing to others. You have to weigh the glee of satisfaction you get from arrogantly rejecting people with the inevitable sadness of regret you’ll eventually feel for having been such a dick. A friend of mine told me he routinely attends all of his high school reunions so he can apologize to every person he mistreated back then. He’s now on his fortieth reunion and still apologizing.

17. When breaking up with a woman, you can’t always remain friends. I have managed to stay friends with many of the women I have dated because I truly liked and respected them. But sometimes emotions run too deep and efforts to remain friends, while that might help you feel better, actually might make the other person feel worse. Take the hit and let it go.

18. Watch more TV. Yeah, you heard right, Little Kareem. It’s great that you always have your nose in history books. That’s made you more knowledgeable about your past and it has put the present in context. But pop culture is history in the making and watching some of the popular shows of each era reveals a lot about the average person, while history books often dwell on the powerful people.

19. Do more yoga. Yes, K, I know you do yoga already. That’s why you’ve been able to play so long without major injuries. But doing more isn’t just for the physical benefits, it’s for the mental benefits that will come in handy in the years ahead, when your house burns down, your jazz collection perishes, and you lose to the Pistons in a four-game sweep in your final season.

20. Everything doesn’t have to be fixed. Relax, K-Man. Some stuff can be fixed, some stuff can’t be. Deciding which is which is part of maturing.

Credits: Esquire Magazine
Read more: Life Lessons with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - Kareem on What He Wished He'd Known - Esquire 
Visit us at Esquire.com

----
Visit my site www.utopia46.com for more UX info!

Cost and SANITY Saving Tip of the Day!

Every now and then you will get a tip from me and most likely because something happened to me and I want to share the love :)

So this one falls under the Parenting and Money Savings Category.

My husband and I decided to do a quick getaway with the kids for just the weekend. So we went to Mystic, CT. It's great. Highly recommend it for a quick getaway. Very walkable, lots of New England charm. Plus they have a fabulous Aquarium. Really fabulous.

So what's the problem you ask? No problem at all but what I learned by going with a 2 and 3 year old was that my husband and I probably enjoyed the Aquarium more and learned more than the children AT THIS AGE.  Perhaps common sense to you all!

We sort of got caught up in the "we need to expose our children to more museums" mode. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. The more you expose your children to, the better. Expand those little brains of theirs as much as possible.

BUT, if you are looking to save a dime here and there... keep in mind a single ticket goes for $29.00.
Yes, multiply that by 4 and you are talking $116. Again fabulous if you are going to be there for the majority of the day and experience all the fabulous things they have there. Not so much when your toddlers attention span is not that big and they start losing steam faster than you realized they would from all the stimuli.

To be completely honest, they loved it. But here's what they loved:

Seeing the fish and turtles for about 10 minutes (they didn't really care they were all different and what their names or their history)

Playing in the playground for about 40 minutes (and they could have stayed longer)

Seeing the penguins (for about 5 minutes) I was probably more excited about this than them.

Seeing the jelly fish (for about 5 minutes)

We pretty much walked around with them the rest of the time (about an hour) more for our sake than theirs.

And then of course the obligatory gift shop... I don't need to expand on this one. But let's just say that we were there longer than we needed to be and the kids left crying and well I think we might have been too!


So what's my point here? My recommendation is to take the kids to the aquarium when they are just a tad bit older for your sake and theirs. You both will get so much more out of it...

Ok and here's the cost savings tip:
Take them to a pet store to see the fish and other animals... it's free and they are just as excited!!
Take them to a playground right after. 
Boom, you save $116.

Again - this is just my perspective. I'm sure there are toddlers out there that are different - do what's right for you and your kid. This was just my experience!

Just enjoy your time with them - that's what they really want at this age, to spend time with YOU!

----
Visit my site www.utopia46.com for more UX info!