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The Best, Worst, and Somehow-Best-AND-Worst TV of 2011
The end of the year naturally brings reminiscences – fond memories, shared moments with loved ones, arcs of personal and professional growth. Of course, my brain is way too addled by thousands of hours of television to remember any of that other crap. My reminiscences extend (for the purposes of this barely breathing blog) to the best and worst things I watched in 2011.
The usual caveats of course apply – rankings are arbitrary, how can you compare a manic comedy to a deliberately paced drama, yada yada, harrumph harrumph – and I doubt I’m going to surprise anyone by compiling a “best of” list that mainly comprises the very shows I’ve taken the time to write about throughout the season. But of course, I am bound by Internet Directive #543 to nevertheless present a year-end Top 10 list of some fashion. So here we go after the jump:
Listicle: Harvard Business Review Headlines That Sound Vaguely Porny, If You Think About It For A Few Seconds
How to Recover Your Core Rhythm
Yes, You Need More Gadgets
Yelp is Leaving Chains Behind
Hot Conflict Can Be Healthy, Even in China
The Ambidextrous CEO
Create Shared Value with a Trampoline Approach
A Female-Dominated Workplace Won’t Fix Everything
Need to Find a Job? Stop Looking So Hard
Getting Japanese Women Back on Track
Moving from Transaction to Engagement
Maintaining Physical, Social and Mental Fitness for Peak Performance
Stop Thinking Outside the Box
*All headlines pulled from @HarvardBiz tweets
Hot Stove TV
Earlier today on Twitter, critic Ryan McGee kicked off the hashtag game #HotStoveTV – applying the deal-making madness that grips professional sports in their off-seasons (such as Major League Baseball’s ongoing winter meetings) to the wide world of television. And you know what? It’s amazing how efficiently you could swap a few key players around and really bolster a show’s line-up.
Below the jump, a few I came up with:
How the biggest risk of my life paid off
On February 24 of this year, I left my job.
I wasn’t a casualty of the economy, and I wasn’t decamping for a better position (not immediately, at least). I left because I was worn out by a job I wasn’t suited for, in a line of work I didn’t want to pursue long-term. I left because months of trying to maneuver into a more satisfying role—either internally or externally—had come up empty, and because my existing role was a big reason behind that futility. I wasn’t learning the sort of skills I desired.
I was approaching my 30th birthday, with a resume that looked nothing like the person I wanted to be. And the longer I stuck around, the longer that ersatz resume got, the deeper that false impression sunk in. I needed to make a change. I needed to take a risk. Even if that meant giving up a steady, well-paying job and plunging into the lousiest labor market in years.
Andrew Daglas 