Planning your ‘career curve’
The Gig’s Nadira Hira features a book on Generation Y at work – how they can manage their career path and make it suit their needs. “Older adults have tended to think about one career curve. It used to be that the progression of a career meant a steady rise at one workplace through the years, and then a sharp and abrupt end ― rather like falling off a cliff ― when workers retired. That pattern is being replaced, by and large, by more of a bell curve: entry-level, full involvement and advancement, and then a winding down or deceleration phase as workers transition out of work. Gen Y’s, however, should be thinking of multiple curves. Quite likely, you will have ups, downs, and do-overs. For you, the career curve framework might better be called career carillon, because the line of your career is likely to resemble a series of bell curves.”

The Lazy Man’s Guide to Getting Things Done
Sounds like a paradox, but Jonathan Mead claims that we can go on our merry, lazy ways while still being productive, and he shares how on Zen Habits: “The indigenous lazy tribesman knows the value of hard work. But he also knows that he can get more done easily and more efficiently by being effective. That means focusing on the things that matter. What matters more to you, having a color coded underwear filing system, or writing that world dominating book you’ve been talking about for the past 12 years?”

5 Ways social Media will change recorded history
Ben Parr of Mashable lists some of the possible repercussions of our collective digital footprints, good and bad: “History tends to remember only pivotal moments in time, discarding the day to day struggles. Even when the occasional diary survives, it only archives what one person does – it doesn’t track his or her interactions with others. But with social media, that information is readily available and, furthermore, that information archives how we interact with others over time. For the first time in human history, the day-to-day interactions between people are being permanently recorded and formatted in easily organizable segments of information.”

Enterprise SaaS buyers want more uptime
Exceptional service is the name of the game for shear survival in the SaaS arena, as noted by Richard Adhikari of Internet News: “People expect the system to be up and running 24×7, 365, but even if we do that, it’s possible for a customer not to be happy because they may have an expectation beyond pure quantitative metrics,” Trisha Gross, CEO of SaaS integration solutions vendor Hubspan, said during a panel discussion here at SIIA On Demand, the Software Information Industry Association’s conference on SaaS. “Customers want to know if the solution solves the problem they have, and that’s the qualitative aspect,” Gross said. “It’s even more important than the quantitative aspect because, in SaaS, we’re there for the long haul and the customer must be happy with what we offer.”

Most users don’t office in the cloud: 1% use Google Docs
Jacqui Cheng of Ars Technica reports on a study that confirms what we mortals already know: Google is a long way from seriously threatening Microsoft’s hold on the office suite crown: “Google Docs has yet to take a bite out of Microsoft Office’s slice of the productivity pie, according to new data from Clickstream Technologies. The market research firm surveyed its standing panel of 2,400 US Internet users and found that, not only was Google Docs usage relatively low compared to other suites, those who used Google Docs continued to use Office alongside it.”

Who is the Leader of the Future?
On Inverted Wisdom, Vineet Nayar asks about the qualities of those who could lead us out of this recession, and the new opportunities that await those who will survive the storm: “Looking at the nuts and bolts of business management, in order to carve success, a future leader would need to focus on sustaining a healthy balance between business and technology; taking advantage of the unique opportunity of emerging markets coming centre-stage; finding ways to enhance and monetize innovation; creating a lean business that optimizes efficiencies without sacrificing quality; and finally – and most importantly – aligning employees with business.“

Report: Millenials will route around IT departments
Frederic Lardinois of ReadWriteWeb shows why millenials are unfazed by barriers to their favorite sites in the office – they’re smarter than your tech people (probably): “According to a new report by Accenture, a large number of Millennials (those born between 1977 and 1997), expect their companies to accommodate their IT preferences, including their preferred computers and applications. More than a third of Millennials also indicated that they were dissatisfied with the technologies their employers currently provide.”

Do workaholics always lose touch?
Matt Elliott gives his views on stress and creativity in an article on Y-Working: “It may not seem like much when your overworked co-worker tells you they haven’t seen a movie in years, haven’t finished that book they started five years ago or that their RSS reader has over 40,000 unread items in it, going back months, but these things don’t just happen in a vaccuum. Any employee that far removed from the world at large is, at best, going to be operating at a diminished capacity for creativity.”

Outsource the parts of your life that you dread
In another post, Matt Elliott shares his experiences with outsourcing what used to be daily routines: “A couple of months back, my girlfriend and I hired someone to come clean our apartment. We went through a service, of which there are a zillion in this city. After setting things up, getting a key made, and working out a schedule, it’s been pretty much a set-it-and-forget-it kind of thing. Every other Monday, we leave our house and, when we return in the evening, it’s much much cleaner than it was before. I’ve gotten some pretty extreme reactions from people I’ve told about this arrangement. Most just think it’s funny ― something Matt has to do because Matt’s messy. Others understand, usually because they had a cleaning service come to their house growing up. Some people, though, react almost with a hint of disgust ― like I’m doing something wrong by doing things that way.”