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Cure burnout, lose 25 lbs: The perks of taking a real sabbatical - Sep. 12, 2014. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) While not a commonly offered perk, many of the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For do offer extended breaks to their top performers. Those who take advantage say the experience gives them new motivation, more creativity and a healthier lifestyle - complete with a smaller waistline. That was also the takeaway from folks who created their own sabbaticals between jobs. Here are just a few lessons CNNMoney readers learned from their time off: 1. He spent his time at NASCAR races, in the Montana wilderness, visiting Yellowstone and the Grand Teton national parks, and "locating the next microbrewery or hot springs location" along the way. And when he came back, he felt "enthusiastic and recharged. " "I can't even explain how different it is when you get back to work. 2.

So he decided to take a seven-month sabbatical in Peru, during which he taught English and traveled. For awhile, he said, the experience was "magical. " "Whatever problems you have travel with you. 3. 4. 5. 6. Jeff Bezos, The Post’s incoming owner, known for a demanding management style at Amazon. He favors a nimble, loosely organized company in which “two-pizza teams” execute important corporate tasks, because a work group requiring three pizzas over a lunch meeting is inherently too cumbersome. And he often requires employees pitching new ideas to write mock news releases for their product’s imagined launch, a way of focusing their minds on what will most excite customers. Annual salaries at Amazon are modest by the standards of the technology industry, with compensation weighted toward lucrative stock benefits designed to instill a sense of ownership and long-term purpose among employees. The key is measurable performance. His management team produces what some have called ruthless annual evaluations; top performers get larger stock benefits while laggards sometimes face pointed suggestions that they find new jobs.

The recruiting motto: “Work hard, have fun, make history.” But he added: “He has the patience to invest if he believes the strategy is the right one.” The Jobs Of The Future Don't Require A College Degree. We’re all talking about the “jobs of the future” and “winning the future” and transitioning to a “knowledge economy.” Since predictions are hard, especially about the future, it’s a good idea to look at some data. And it looks like we have some of it: the BLS has a handy chart of the fastest-growing jobs in America (h/t Erica Grieder), and the vast majority are not the “knowledge economy” jobs we usually think of. In fact, this chart seems to prove things that we already know: the rising importance of the healthcare sector to the economy (especially with an aging population) and the transition of the economy to services, where “services” is not a euphemism for “computers” but, like, actual services.

So the list has your odd “Biomedical Engineers” (fancy!) And, at the bottom, your “Medical Scientists, Except Epidemiologists” (sorry epidemiologists!) , but the vast majority of jobs are jobs like “Home Health Aides” and “Reinforcing Iron and Rebar Workers.” More on Forbes: Time to Scrap Performance Appraisals? Is The Cover Letter Obsolete? Are cover letters necessary anymore? There are some who claim that the Internet era has made them obsolete. And when you're applying to dozens of jobs online, it isn't worth the extra effort; all that employers look at are the resumes. Don't believe them. A resume alone will rarely get you the job-- no matter how stellar your credentials. The reality is that there are so many job applicants for each position you must distinguish yourself above and beyond the competition. A cover letter can help you do that very thing. Composing a unique cover letter for each opportunity you seek allows you to tell your story and showcase your value-add.

Here are some basics to consider when writing your letter: Use the job description as a guide. Whet their appetite. More: 7 Part-Time Jobs That Pay Up To $40 An Hour Tell them why you are valuable. Keep it to one page. Read it out loud. Unless the posting explicitly says "no cover letter" and some do, always send a letter. Don't Miss: Companies Hiring Now. 6 Things Jeff Bezos Knew Back in 1997 That Made Amazon a Gorilla. 3 essential ways CEOs can innovate now. By Scott D. Anthony, contributor FORTUNE -- Leaders often perceive innovation as the province of the few, isolated to white-lab coat wearing research scientists or "out-of-the-box" thinking marketers. That's not right. In today's quickly changing world, innovation should be a corporate-wide capability. Isolating innovation hurts a company's ability to compete. Further, it isn't just the way in which companies compete that needs to change; it is the way in which people fundamentally do their work.

Companies like Apple (AAPL) and Amazon.com (AMZN) seem to have innovation in their DNA; others like Procter & Gamble (PG) and General Electric (GE) have spent decades developing systems to support innovation. MORE: How Microsoft grew into a giant Forming and spreading a common language of innovation. Here's a simple test to determine if your organization is lacking a common language. Once you have a common language, spread it through formal and informal mechanisms.

MORE: The future of innovation. The Best Drug Companies Of The Past 15 Years. How to Accomplish More by Doing Less - Tony Schwartz. By Tony Schwartz | 7:40 AM December 13, 2011 Two people of equal skill work in the same office. For the sake of comparison, let’s say both arrive at work at 9 am each day, and leave at 7 pm. Bill works essentially without stopping, juggling tasks at his desk and running between meetings all day long.

He even eats lunch at his desk. Sound familiar? Nick, by contrast, works intensely for approximately 90 minutes at a stretch, and then takes a 15 minute break before resuming work. Bill spends 10 hours on the job. By 1 pm, Bill is feeling some fatigue. It’s called the law of diminishing returns. Nick puts in the same 10 hours. Nick takes off a total of two hours during his 10 at work, so he only puts in 8 hours. Because Nick is more focused and alert than Bill, he also makes fewer mistakes, and when he returns home at night, he has more energy left for his family. It’s not just the number of hours we sit at a desk in that determines the value we generate. Five Predictions For Biotech And Medicine In 2012.

Michael Moritz: The best advice I ever got - Dec. 22. Michael, Moritz, Silicon Valley's VC visionary, could have taken a different career path without a little help from his friends. FORTUNE -- "Steve Jobs told me that you should never go to a meeting or make a telephone call without having a clear idea of what you're trying to achieve. And Don Valentine, the founder of Sequoia Capital, told me to trust my instincts, which lets you avoid getting dragged into conventional thinking and trying to please others. "But the best advice I ever got came from Bill Deedes, who was editor of the Daily Telegraph and a grand old figure of Fleet Street. Prior to leaving college, my heart was set on working on Fleet Street. I went to see Bill one rainy day in his office. Michael Moritz Age: 57. 7 Things Highly Productive People Do.

Analysis: Big Pharma gets a driving lesson from carmakers. Lipitor And The Future Of Pharmaceutical Innovation. What's Killing the American Entrepreneur? Old-school entrepreneurship didn’t care about how the entrepreneur was wired. It assumed one could walk up to a buffet of business strategies served up by gurus, educators, experts and consultants - try a bit of everything - and see what works. That is where the systemic frustration, which we see now in the entrepreneurial community, comes from. Based on my study of "Entrepreneurial DNA",I found that there are four distinct groups of entrepreneurs, not just one. Each encompasses their own unique modus operandi, strengths, weaknesses, needs and buying behaviors. Here are some of the highlights from this project. “The Builder”, or B DNA, make up 10% of business owners. These are the individuals who create highly scalable companies and grow them to millions (and billions) of dollars in revenues almost effortlessly.

Knowing your Entrepreneurial DNA allows you to filter decisions, people and solutions to find the ones best suited for you. How to Think Creatively - Tony Schwartz. By Tony Schwartz | 8:00 AM November 14, 2011 I grew up hungry to do something creative, to set myself apart. I also believed creativity was magical and genetically encoded. As early as the age of 8, I began sampling the arts, one after another, to see if I’d inherited some gift. Eventually, I became a journalist. For many years, I told other people’s stories. The first hint I might have sold myself short came in the mid-1990s. When Edwards peered down at the self-portrait I had drawn on the first day, she smiled. From an early age, we’re taught in school to develop the logical, language-based, rational capacities of the left hemisphere of our brain, which is goal-oriented and impatient to reach conclusions. The left hemisphere gives names to objects in order to reduce and simplify them.

The right hemisphere, by contrast, is visual rather than verbal. But what did that have to do with creativity? 1. 2. 3. 4. How to Be an Optimist in a Pessimistic Time: A Techonomy Manifesto. Analysis: Lipitor, legendary cash cow, prepares for fadeout. What Bill Gates Says About Drug Companies. Is not available. Is not available. Contrary to myth, new college grads don't need a 3.7-or-higher GPA to get hired at Google, says a new book. What they do need: Passion for technology and a track record of stellar achievement. By Anne Fisher, contributor FORTUNE -- Dear Annie: I will be graduating from an Ivy League college in a couple of months and I'd really like to go to work for Google. The only problem is, I've heard that the company won't even interview anyone whose grade point Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. average is below 3.7, and mine is barely 3.0.

That's mostly because I've spent a lot of time working at a tech startup in Boston instead of studying, just because it interests me more. Dear BOC: Your timing is terrific, since Google (GOOG) announced in January that it is embarking on a hiring spree this year. Before launching that business, McDowell interned at Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (AAPL). You'll be heartened to hear that a 3.0 GPA doesn't necessarily wreck your prospects at Google. Unraveling the web of Spain's sweatshops. In a series this week, CNN shows the struggle against human trafficking through the eyes of the investigators at Mossos d'Esquadra, the police agency for the Catalonia region of Spain. They wear football jerseys, T-shirts, jeans and sneakers. They look like ordinary customers having a beer at the corner pub but that ability to blend in is also key to their role in the fight against human trafficking.

They are the men and women of an elite human trafficking unit in Spain's Catalonia region and they have to get key players in criminal gangs to trust them. The region is a hot spot for traffickers. Large-scale criminal organizations from Eastern Europe, Africa and China are setting up shop - bringing people into Spain under the guise of giving them jobs, then keeping their passports and forcing them to work in nightmarish conditions, either in prostitution or labor exploitation.

"To investigate criminal organizations, what one cannot do is solve the crime. The process was complicated. Game theory. Game theory is the study of strategic decision making. Specifically, it is "the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers. "[1] An alternative term suggested "as a more descriptive name for the discipline" is interactive decision theory.[2] Game theory is mainly used in economics, political science, and psychology, as well as logic, computer science, and biology. The subject first addressed zero-sum games, such that one person's gains exactly equal net losses of the other participant or participants. Today, however, game theory applies to a wide range of behavioral relations, and has developed into an umbrella term for the logical side of decision science, including both humans and non-humans (e.g. computers, animals).

Modern game theory began with the idea regarding the existence of mixed-strategy equilibria in two-person zero-sum games and its proof by John von Neumann. Representation of games[edit] Extensive form[edit] [edit] Chaos theory. A double rod pendulum animation showing chaotic behavior.

Starting the pendulum from a slightly different initial condition would result in a completely different trajectory. The double rod pendulum is one of the simplest dynamical systems that has chaotic solutions. Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future. Chaotic behavior can be observed in many natural systems, such as weather and climate.[6][7] This behavior can be studied through analysis of a chaotic mathematical model, or through analytical techniques such as recurrence plots and Poincaré maps. Introduction[edit] Chaos theory concerns deterministic systems whose behavior can in principle be predicted.

Chaotic dynamics[edit] The map defined by x → 4 x (1 – x) and y → x + y mod 1 displays sensitivity to initial conditions. In common usage, "chaos" means "a state of disorder".[9] However, in chaos theory, the term is defined more precisely. Where , and , is: . Drug theft goes big. Organized gangs are stealing prescription medicine in increasingly audacious heists. That's a problem for Big Pharma and for patients, who can unknowingly buy stolen -- and sometimes dangerous -- medications. By Katherine Eban, contributor FORTUNE -- A few years ago a security expert visited Eli Lilly's vast warehouse in Enfield, Conn., one of the pharmaceutical giant's three U.S. distribution sites, where hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of prescription drugs are stored.

The expert was surprised to see the facility lacked a perimeter fence. There wasn't even a $10-an-hour guard stationed outside. But Lilly officials assured the consultant there was nothing to be concerned about. He then looked up at the ceiling. Sure enough, Lilly's (LLY) Enfield warehouse became the site of a headline-making heist -- the largest pharmaceuticals theft in history. Security was so lax that they pulled their tractor-trailer directly up to the loading dock and parked there for hours. A real solution. Corporate finance. Investment analysis (or capital budgeting) is concerned with the setting of criteria about which value-adding projects should receive investment funding, and whether to finance that investment with equity or debt capital.

Working capital management is the management of the company's monetary funds that deal with the short-term operating balance of current assets and current liabilities; the focus here is on managing cash, inventories, and short-term borrowing and lending (such as the terms on credit extended to customers). [citation needed] The terms corporate finance and corporate financier are also associated with investment banking. The typical role of an investment bank is to evaluate the company's financial needs and raise the appropriate type of capital that best fits those needs.

Financial management overlaps with the financial function of the Accounting profession. Outline of corporate finance[edit] Investment analysis[edit] Maximizing shareholder value[edit] Leveraged buyout[edit] Financial modeling. Industrial engineering. Industrial Engineer. Why Steve Jobs' Magic Doesn't Work In Medicine. Does perfectionism work for you or against you? - Ask Annie. How to Break Up with Employees. Four Destructive Myths Most Companies Still Live By - Tony Schwartz. Pay cuts: How to deal. How consumer tech is transforming IT.

Why execs turn to grandma for business advice. Nine Things Successful People Do Differently - Heidi Grant Halvorson - The Conversation. Six Common Misperceptions about Teamwork - J. Richard Hackman - The Conversation. Changing Careers at 55+ - The Career Advice. Business Analysis: Become A Numbers Person | Brian Tracy's Blog. Overworked? Make a Leap to America’s 10 Least Stressful Jobs. Bachelor's Degrees: Just What Are They Worth? - PayScale Resources. Parents go overboard to help college kid get job - Business - Personal finance - Careers. Steve Jobs and the Seven Rules of Success.