Newspaper Columns
Between 2012 and 2019 I wrote a column in the MyCareer section of The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. It was called Benign to Five.
The brief? “Do your blog thing, but make it about work”.
Heree’s some of what I wrote:
The Haught guide to mystery shoppers
When I asked at the start of this article have you ever been mystery shopped,…
The Haught guide to procrastination
Yes, I procrastinated about procrastination. And I left it for such an exotically long period…
Preparing for Trump – a time capsule piece
Imagine the smell It’s been exactly a year since Donald Trump…
On Leonard Cohen
He traipsed through this “lost illusions boulevard” in his trilby and his double-breasted suit, smiling…
The Haught guide to Big Brother watching you
I’m not afraid to admit it: I loved being surveilled at work. Without Big Brother…
The Haught guide to learning fast
…the restaurant manager, a man I once found in the men’s toilets vehemently accusing a…
Pranker or wanker? (I still don’t know if I was being stooged)
My antagonist was a preposterous cliche who hid his ulterior motives with the same discretion…
The Haught guide to end-of-year parties
Rule 2: Don’t dance. Dancing was invented in 1971 by Dr Hubert van de Waggelen…
How good words turn bad
The items that we now categorise as weasel words, wank language and corporate buzzwords weren’t…
The Haught guide to burning career bridges
Several times I’ve approached the edge of the career abyss and thought, “Oo, that gaping…
ParentHaught: Lessons learnt from the University of Fatherhood
Parenthood is a classroom like no other, and much that you learn within it is…
Is Mondayitis real?
Is Mondayitis an actual, serious psychophysiological illness or just a throwaway malady akin to man…
On being a strange generational hybrid
I’m generationally awry.
I have the Birth Certificate, digital literacy and firm buttocks of a Generation…
Regrets? Surely you have a few
Some people ask me while I’m signing autographs or they’re basking in the fresh-baked-bread warmth…
The Haught guide to “too much information”
There’s an acronym doing the rounds on the interconnected network of digitised information at the…
The Haught guide to people who love drama
A little while ago a friend thought one of my articles was a pointed reference to…
“How’s working at McDonald’s going for you?”
“So what do you do for a living, Johnson?”
“Uh… it’s Jonathan… I’m a… well, a…
The Haught guide to “deep dives”
I’m all for metaphors. If variety is the spice of life then metaphors are the…
The Haught guide to resigning
We often look back on the decision to resign from a job as a happy…
The Haught guide to bringing stuff to life
I went into the [Smorgy’s] cellar to look for the propane torch we sometimes used…
What made the 1980s great
The subtext is dance like nobody will remember your lycra-clad thrusting because they’ll all be…
How to become a thought leader
Thought leaders always use megaphones My new year resolution was to…
What is content?
“Content” is one of those words that gained popularity so quickly, people fell over themselves,…
The Haught guide to summer fashion
Of course, 1970 was a different time. I was minus 12 years old back then,…
The Murphy’s Law truth about your Year 12 results
If you bugger up your final exams and get a score that doesn’t reflect your…
The Haught guide to inadvertent plagiarism
I had one of those abject moments of deflation last year. You know the ones:…
The Haught guide to “downsizing”
One day, in the not too distant future people will be coming home from work…
The Haught guide to Jehovah’s Witnesses
Years before I became a worldly, cynical and wildly popular blogger, Jehovah’s Witnesses preyed on…
The Haught guide to lying
Lying during job interviews is now par for the course. Well, it might be par….
The Haught guide to competition
To be truly competitive in a professional setting you must see each of your colleagues…
“There are no stupid questions” is a lie
I walked into the storeroom at Burwood Smorgy’s and found the manager wearing only a…
The Haught guide to meetings
…What ensued was a kind of Stalinist purge, but instead of people vanishing, it was…
Chucking a spickie
Is it OK to let a weekend’s sport result affect your mood at work? Absolutely…
Life coaches
A life coach? What in buggery does that even mean? She doesn’t coach volleyball or…
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Re Benign to five
23-24 May 2015
“The curious case of the columnist who cried wolf”
from my experience – “socialise” means to circulate a document in draft or to float an idea, at noblest to seek comment and criticism from outside one’s silo and at basest to stifle opposition and to identify opponents within one’s silo before proceeding to “authorise”
Thanks for your education and smiles
Thanks Peter. I’ll now socialise your definition around the Haught office (my head).