We often hear about the importance of comprehensive reports or arguments that include every possible angle. We learn to make persuasive arguments in school, building a careful case with multiple key points and copious evidence.

When navigating disagreement, we think if we can overwhelm opponents with the sheer weight of our position, we can change their thinking.

We hear “the weight of the evidence,” and that sounds like it must be a lot! We’re told to anticipate and address concerns and objections, bolstering weak areas. So more must be better, right?

The problem is that’s exactly wrong. We live in a society driven by the mantra of “more, faster, better,” and we can be forgiven for thinking that more always is… well, more.

Yet, when it comes to advocating for a desired outcome, such as our fit for a new job, fewer yet stronger points make a better case.

A resume is a marketing tool. That’s it.

A resume is a personal marketing tool aimed at selling your skills, talents, and abilities to someone who needs those things. It’s a document that we want to show us at our very best.

So, we cram it with every conceivable accomplishment, thinking that name-dropping a prestigious school, competitive internship, or past publication will make us look impressive; hobbies, volunteer work, and naming ourselves “CEO” of our side hustle will show that we’re skilled and well-rounded.

All of our favorite things, the achievements we most enjoyed and are most proud of, suddenly seem “relevant,” and we add them into a resume that, before we know it, is spanning half a dozen printed pages.

In our attempt to impress, we inadvertently dilute the power of our most relevant experiences, leading to a cluttered and unfocused presentation.

Kill your darlings. Kill them all.

In fiction writing, there’s a saying: “Kill your darlings.” It means that your favorite things aren’t always the best things to tell the story.

Though there is important information in the things that fill us with joy, listing them all may not be the most compelling way to present ourselves as the best candidate for a job. Remember, a resume isn’t a comprehensive life history, but a strategic tool designed to secure an interview.

Research by social scientist and Organizational Behavior Professor Niro Sivanathan has found that highlighting a few strong points is the best way to make your case.

Including additional data that doesn’t directly support your argument weakens your case. This means someone with less – or even less relevant – experience may get called over someone with more expertise simply because their relevant experience didn’t get lost among other achievements and accolades.

To avoid this your resume should only include your most relevant experience. But how do we know what’s most relevant? Luckily, the employers tell us! Every job listing is a wish list of the knowledge, skills, and experience of the ideal candidate. By studying a few listings in your chosen field, you’ll see common themes and terms that tell you what is most relevant to potential employers. 

Any of those skills and experiences should go on your resume. Everything else – unless it fills a career gap – should be cut out!

As a career changer or job seeker, the best thing you can do is highlight only your most relevant expertise. Save the rest for water cooler stories to build rapport with your new colleagues. By adopting a less-is-more approach, you can craft a compelling resume that showcases your experience and lands interviews.

I just got back from a family vacation on the Oregon coast. We escaped the heat and smoke of the cities and met for five days of exploring beaches, watching wildlife, and eating chowder.

The air was bracing and briny and cold. We went to bed each night the good kind of tired – when the mind is full and still with pleasant experience, and the body is fatigued by exertion. We slept in, lingered over coffee. There was no rush, no deadline, no place we had to be, and no task to accomplish.

As Americans, we have such an urge toward productivity though. I wanted to find some way to take the experience and condense it into something “useful” that I could bring back to my every day; to be extra rested, so I could be more productive; to make some previously unnoticed connection that could be built on; to gain all the commodifiable benefits business articles hail as reason for companies to treat their employees well.

It can be hard to embrace moments of peace and relaxation as equally valuable on their own – if not more so.

There were moments in the week when we had set some objective – get to the lighthouse or restaurant or some other location – and were so focused on getting there that we nearly rushed by…

seals playing in the surf…

whales dancing in the kelp beds…

And I fell into a complete funk halfway up a mountain hike that was steeper and more challenging than I had anticipated. I nearly gave in to the urge to give up, let the others go on without me; to be angry and disappointed and bored while waiting to be collected on the way back.

There was supposed to be a payoff, but the hard part was taking too long.

At the top of that rise, the trees opened up to a view of riverine marsh and rocky sea, split by a volcanic escarpment. A mother elk and faun stepped delicately down a facing hillside.

I found myself laughing with unbridled joy.

Finally, I noticed the beauty of the forest path itself on the way back down.

And I had almost been willing to miss it.

We do this to ourselves often. Or at least, I do. What’s the shortest, most direct, most efficient path? How do I achieve my goal with greatest success for least difficulty and smallest expenditure? We want to maximize and up-level and scale everything.

Time and attention are our most valuable assets, and how we spend them matters. Sometimes when striving for efficiency, we can miss the things that can truly pay dividends in experience, joy, and memory.

Sometimes it’s better to take the slower route, to look around, to be open to a momentary wonder.

I wasn’t inspired to some brilliant new piece of writing, I didn’t figure out how to resolve a niggling problem, and I didn’t gain any business insight. There are no time-saving or money-making conclusions, no creativity hacks derived from my vacation.

Only, when getting from one objective to the next, when it’s slow going or arduous or boring…

don’t miss the whales.

The last several weeks have been really busy for me on the personal front. I set myself the goal this year to stretch myself to tell different stories, learn different tools and structures of narrative, and connect with people in big and small ways. Stories bring me joy and are also my bread and butter – I want to do them well!

So, I auditioned for a play. But not just any play; it was Shakespeare. And not just any Shakespeare play, but Lear. And I was cast! And I learned a lot.

That’s not what this is about.

The last few weeks were our final rehearsals, Hell Week (for those not familiar with theater parlance – I wasn’t – that means a solid week of intense dress rehearsals leading right into performances), and then two long weekends of shows.

At that time, I also moved web hosting providers – which was awful. But there is a happy ending!

While transferring my domain and hosting, I was told not fewer than half a dozen times that my entire website had been lost forever, all my files were gone, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

And my email was disconnected.

In all, my website and email were down for about ten days. As a small business owner that was… anxiety-inducing.

As a less-than-tech-savvy individual, I was angry and confused most of the time. And also felt like a complete idiot.

Like beating a dead horse and other horrible analogies.

We’ve all fallen into the shame spiral, and I was no different.

I had thoughts like: What made me think now was a good time for this? Maybe I’m not cut out for this entrepreneur thing. I should have done more research. I should have spent more time understanding the steps involved. I should have figured it all out before I got started. I’m such an idiot! Why can’t I figure this out? I understood the individual words tech support was telling me but strung all together, it might as well have been ancient Egyptian. I work with the English language every day; I should be able to understand this!

And now I would have to double down to meet my current project deadlines and also rebuild my website from scratch. While rehearsing and performing four nights a week. While keeping on top of housework. While hosting family from out of town.

And if I didn’t, well, I was just being lazy, not trying hard enough, not being productive enough. Not doing enough. Not good enough. Not enough.

Stress is a reaction NOT a solution.

Many of us – it’s not just me, right? – tend to think the way to motivate ourselves to change, to grow, to meet the next challenge, is to focus on everything we’re doing wrong; to “crack the whip,” or just “buckle down.” Just stop procrastinating, work harder, be better.

But the data show the exact opposite is true.

We procrastinate because something about our goal feels out of reach. Maybe we haven’t broken the task into small enough steps, or maybe we just need a glass of water.

We feel overwhelmed, yet spinning our wheels faster just makes us more prone to mistakes and adds more things to our to-do list when we have to clean up those messes.

And we tell ourselves we should be doing more, different, better – all things with no concrete definition, by the way, and therefore not actually achievable. We literally demand an impossible task of ourselves, and rather than motivating, a stressed mind is less focused, less creative, and less productive.

So, what do we do? I had family in town, mounting housework, project deliverables due, a nightly show, a web address showing an error of doom, and an email account connected to nowhere.

I took a nap.

And I drank water, ate healthy food, went to my favorite lake in my kayak, and spent time with my family.

The laundry got stuffed into a basket in the bedroom. The sink stayed full of dishes.

And by resting and letting go of the way things were “supposed” to be, that made room for the way things were to simply be.

I had a lot on my plate, including a lot that I just quite literally did not have the expertise to do anything about. Recognizing the simple facts of the situation and letting go of the narrative that something had gone wrong – and that I had caused or allowed something to go wrong – let my mind relax enough to see what was available to me that I could do.

The internal error message of doom.

Overwhelm, stress, and anxiety, or any “negative” emotion, are uncomfortable, and we aren’t taught to process them. As kids many of us were taught to stop crying, to be nice, to forgive and forget, and so, to “be good,” we learned to bury our more difficult emotions.

Over time, burying and avoiding those things leads us to conclude that they must be terrible, dangerous, and more than we can handle. We learn to rush into action, push ourselves harder and faster to make the feeling go away.

But science says an emotion only lasts about ninety seconds if we don’t feed into it. I don’t know about you, but I think I can handle most anything for less than two minutes.

So, I did all the “proper care and feeding” things my body needs to support my brain. I gave myself those two minutes to let myself feel frustrated and stressed. And I made a plan.

I did my shows. I talked to tech support day after day after day. I called in someone with more expertise than I had to help translate the tech support.

And I got my website back – no lost files – and my email up-and-running again.

The happy ending.

If, like me, you are hitting a wall of stress, you already know rushing to action and going harder doesn’t help. Taking the right, intentional next step is more important and more effective than just getting away from an uncomfortable feeling.

Much is said about self-care and self-compassion. But taking steps to meet your own basic needs (when was the last time you stood up from your desk and just took a deep breath?) and to have your own back (I promise there is almost nothing in the world that can go so wrong, it can’t be fixed), is the most effective way to perform at our best, whether as an employee, a freelancer, or a business owner.

Or even on stage.

Top tips for showing your business to advantage.

People go into business for many reasons, but there is always a story behind the specific product or service they’re selling. People want to buy from someone who understands them and their needs, whether for a designer handbag, professional painting services, or web copy.

One of my favorite things is to talk to passionate people about work they love doing. My favorite questions lead to stories that reveal not only what they love about what they do, but how they see their clients and customers, who their ideal client is, and – just as importantly – who’s not. This helps everyone – business owners and customers – find what they need!

Ten Essential Questions to Ask.

Here are my favorite questions to ask when I talk to an entrepreneur about their work.

1. What’s your story? Because people are so rarely asked, let alone listened to when they share about the meaningful events that shaped their business path. It’s so valuable to know the history behind the first sale, to know someone had a love nurtured by generations or fell into a role and found it filled them with delight! Different customers relate to different stories. The best thing businesses can do to create lasting customer relationships is build genuine connections.

2. What drew you to this industry or role? Starting a business doesn’t happen by accident, and everyone has a story about why they started this particular kind of business. This tells us more than that a baker loved cooking with his grandmother and gets to the deeper heart of what makes it worth running a bakery.

3. What do you enjoy most? This bridges the gap between the product and the people. As a writer, I’m able to take a friendly conversation and share what is special and unique about a specific business owner with their potential customers. I help connect someone who has a need with the person who can best meet it. In my conversations, I find time and again, what drives business owners is the ability to be of service. The answer to this question shows how they see their work doing that.

4. What does your day-to-day look like? Day-to-day, business owners help their clients, and each part of running a business is in service to that reason for being. This tells customers what they can expect when they come into the shop or schedule a consult. And what this specific business’s priorities and processes are that may be different from their competitors.

5. What sets you apart? Separate from the last question, this highlights what the business views as most important. Just as this will vary from business to business, even within the same industry, it will also vary from customer to customer. Highlighting what a business owner sees as the most important part of their work is a clear call to customers with the same values and perspectives. It’s also a valuable signal to those who are not the right fit. Rather than seeking to be everything to everyone, the most successful business owners lean into their strengths and provide the best possible service to the right customers.

6. What are the common misconceptions about your work? Every industry has things that are obvious to those in-the-know, but clear as mud to those outside. This question helps clarify and define what’s important about the product or service and how it helps its target audience.

7. What do you wish more people knew? This question goes beyond clarifying incorrect beliefs to what makes a product or service truly valuable and special and what sets it apart from similar offers.

8. What’s your favorite part of the job? Often what business owners enjoy most is the rapport with customers, building a piece of work, and a job well done. But their favorite part of the job is the transformation they see in others’ lives.

9. What’s the most challenging part? Running a business is not always easy. Rather than revealing a shortcoming or failing, considering the challenges of a particular business can reinforce human connection, and help customers understand why occasional delays and interruptions may occur.

10. What else do you want people to know? This allows the business owner to share final thoughts or touch on any topics they may not have already mentioned. This may also include things like storefront hours and location, how to engage services, or any other call to action.

A business profile can enhance your client relationships.

A business profile describes what a business does, to generate interest and draw in customers. I’ve written many profiles of small businesses and found the best way to help people connect with their ideal customers is to share a bit of the person behind the brand.

A business profile can be a meaningful way to help small businesses connect with their local community and ideal customers. Whether writing for your own business or someone else’s, thoughtfully digging into these questions will clarify the motivations, priorities, and strengths of the business. That can help highlight what a business truly has to offer its ideal clients and turn return customers into lifelong customers.

The ability to call on skilled professionals to deliver high-quality work and meet deadlines is indispensable. Increasingly companies are turning to freelancers for various projects, ranging from blog writing, web copy, and design, to full marketing campaigns.

Working independently requires freelancers to hone their self-awareness. They know their values, strengths, and weaknesses, how much they can take on and can communicate effectively while remaining open to others. Those are all skills any manager would prize on their team. Freelancers are used to greeting challenges with openness, curiosity, and genuine interest.

If you’re a business owner or manager, hiring a freelancer can be one of the smartest decisions you make.

Cost-effective

Hiring a freelancer can save you money compared to hiring a full-time employee. With a freelancer, you don’t have to pay for benefits, such as health insurance, paid time off, or retirement plans. You also don’t have to worry about taxes or other expenses associated with hiring an employee. Freelancers often work on a project-by-project basis, which means you only pay for what you need.

Freelancers also work from their own space and with their equipment. They don’t require a designated desk, computer, and other related office expenses. Office space and equipment amount to the second largest overall expense for a business, and is the largest fixed expense over time.

Hiring a freelancer can be a huge cost-savings for small businesses or those working within tight budgets.

Flexibility

One of the biggest advantages of hiring a freelancer is flexibility. Freelancers set their schedules and can build their hours to accommodate the demands of a given project. Freelancers are also often available for short-term projects, which means you can hire them only when they’re needed. This is a huge advantage for businesses that experience seasonal demand or have one-time projects.

As experts in their field, freelancers can complete projects more quickly than full-time employees. Additionally, freelancers often have a network of others they can tap for assistance, which can speed up the completion of a project. This faster turnaround allows businesses to anticipate needs and become a trusted resource for customers.

Specialized Skills

As noted above, freelancers are highly skilled in their specific areas of expertise. If you need a website designed or a marketing campaign executed, you can find a freelancer who specializes in those areas. This means you’re getting someone who has the experience and knowledge to get the job done quickly and efficiently. Freelancers also prioritize continuing education and stay up-to-date with the latest trends and technologies in their field. This benefits the companies they work with without the hit to the operating budget.

Freelancers use their skills in a variety of projects, sectors, and industries, giving them a broad as well as deep well of knowledge. By hiring freelancers, businesses have access to skills that might not be available in a limited pool of full-time employees. Businesses can act with precision and access the exact skillset they need for a specific job.

One of the skills employers often seek is the ability to problem-solve. Freelancers are used to resolving challenges quickly and effectively as they arise. They often start with only their know-how and have experience making the most of tight budgets and limited resources. They can troubleshoot problems as they arise and will save you time, money, and resources.

Increased Productivity

When you hire a freelancer, you’re getting someone who is highly motivated to do their best work. Freelancers often work independently, which means they can see the big picture of the project, from scope to delivery. They’re able to maximize their time and creativity to increase quality and productivity.

Hiring a freelancer can be a smart decision for any business. Freelancers know that not every idea will work but can tease out the important lessons of every effort and apply them to the next iteration. This makes freelancers innovative in a way that employees often can’t be. Freelancers can apply their unique approaches to meet your objectives and set you apart from the competition.

Whether you need a project completed quickly or require specialized expertise, a freelancer can be a valuable asset to your team.

What’s love got to do with it?

Classic wisdom says to find a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life. The modern upgrade is: find your passion. But for those of us who just need to pay our bills, that advice can seem out of touch, if not downright toxic.

Not long ago I was completely burnt out. I was in a job where my skills were underutilized. My strengths and ideas went unappreciated and unacknowledged. I knew I needed to make a change and hired a career coach to help me update my resume and figure out where to begin.

We went through my entire work history. But she didn’t only ask about my daily responsibilities and accomplishments. And thank goodness!

Maybe you’re like I was.

I knew I was turning in projects and completing assignments well and on time. But after years of a culture that rated “above and beyond” effort as the bare minimum, and management practices requiring constant hustling-for-worth against ever-shifting demands, I had a hard time identifying where I had “succeeded.” By that time, everything about the job left me with a sense of failure – no matter how much others told me I was doing good work.

Maybe like me, you know you’re ready for a change. And maybe, like me, you’re ready to take the next step in your career or pivot to something else entirely. But maybe you’re not sure where to begin, and the idea of pulling out your resume is exhausting even to think about.

I just needed to find my next step.

First, take a deep breath. Really. All the way in, and all the way out.

My coach asked me not only to think of the things my former boss might count as an achievement. She wanted me to think more broadly about the things I loved doing: what made me feel happy, what I looked forward to, what I was proud of. She also invited me to think beyond just a professional context to hobbies and volunteering, other things I did in my free time, to explore what really lit me up inside.

We’re taught that work should be hard; that “hard work” is somehow virtuous. Often people doing “dream jobs” in the nonprofit and arts sectors pay an income penalty because, the reasoning goes, being able to do meaningful, or even fun, work somehow should be a reward in itself. If someone does something for the love of doing it, society says, they should do it for free.

What makes something valuable?

But no one has ever paid bills with fun and love! So we learn to devalue those things we enjoy, what we’re good at, the things that come naturally and easily to us. Because if they’re not “hard work,” they must not be valuable work.

Of course that thinking is wrong-headed. There is no inherent virtue in hard things just because they’re hard. It’s the exact opposite. We excel at things that readily make sense to us in ways that they simply don’t to others. And it’s natural to enjoy sharing our expertise. Instead, the very things that are most fun and easy are our superpowers! The fact that no two humans are exactly alike means those things are different for each of us, yet necessary for the benefit of all of us.

Find your secret superpower!

Focusing on the things we most enjoy, the moments we’ve felt most proud, reveals our strengths most clearly. When considering a jump to something new, the most profound way to meaningful contribution is to lean into those strengths. We can find roles with requirements that align with the things we most enjoy. And it’s okay to draw from outside professional work history – experience is experience!

Deciding to leave a steady job can feel overwhelming. But the first step is to reclaim the value of doing work you love and seeing things that come easily as the strengths they truly are.