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TRY · 14 MIN

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TAIU

Three real options, examined at the same level of detail.

Three real options examined at the same level of detail.

READ · BOOK

Working Identity

Herminia Ibarra

Read this if you have been reflecting on the same possible change for two years and have never once tried a small version of it.

Ibarra followed people through major career and identity change and found that almost none of them thought their way to an answer first. They acted first, in small reversible experiments, and their sense of who they were caught up afterwards. It is the strongest available argument against sitting still until you feel certain.

READ · ARTICLE

One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?

Frederick Herzberg

Herzberg's argument that the things which make work tolerable and the things which make it satisfying are not the same list. Fixing the first will not deliver the second.

READ · BOOK

Quit

Annie Duke

Best for deciding that the honest answer is to stop carrying it.

The counterweight to almost everything else written about avoidance. Duke argues that we are far better at persisting than at stopping, and that most of the cost of a bad commitment is paid after the point where we already knew. If the thing you keep postponing is something you have quietly decided against, this is the book that gives you permission to say so and a way to test whether you are right.

READ · RESEARCH

An Unfolding Model of Voluntary Employee Turnover

Thomas Lee and Terence Mitchell

People rarely leave a job because of accumulated dissatisfaction. They leave after a shock, and often without a plan. Worth reading before you trust your own account of why you want out.