The main purpose of a resume is to convince an employer to grant you an interview. There are two kinds. One is the familiar “tombstone” that lists where you went to school and where you’ve worked in chronological order. The other is what I call the “functional” resume—descriptive, fun to read, unique to you and much more likely to land you an interview.

It’s handy to have a “tombstone” for certain occasions. But prospective employers throw away most of those un-requested “tombstone” lists, preferring to interview the quick rather than the dead.

What follows are tips on writing a functional resume that will get read—a resume that makes you come alive and look interesting to employers.

【G1】 Put yourself first:

In order to write a resume others will read with enthusiasm, you have to feel important about yourself

【G2】Sell what you can do, not who you are:

Practice translating your personality traits, character, accomplishments and achievements into skill areas. There are at least five thousand skill areas in the world of work. Toot your own horn!

Many people clutch when asked to think about their abilities. Some think they have none at all! But everyone does, and one of yours may just be the ticket an employer would be glad to punch—if only you show it.

【G3】Be specific, be concrete, and be brief! Remember that “brevity is the best policy.”

【G4】Turn bad news into good:

Everybody has had disappointments in work. If you have to mention yours, look for the positive side.

【G5】Never apologize:

If you’re returning to the work force after fifteen years as a parent, simply write a short paragraph (summary of background) in place of a chronology of experience. Don’t apologize for working at being a mother; it’s the hardest job of all. If you have no special training or higher education, just don’t mention education.

The secret is to think about the self before you start writing about yourself. Take four or five hours off, not necessarily consecutive, and simply write down every accomplishment in your life, on or off the job, that made you feel effective. Don’t worry at first about what it all means. Study the list and try to spot patterns. As you study your list, you will come closer to the meaning: identifying your marketable skills. Once you discover patterns, give names to your cluster of accomplishments (leadership skills, budget management skills, child development skills etc.). Try to list at least three accomplishments under the same skills heading. Now start writing your resume as if you mattered. It may take four drafts or more, and several weeks, before you’re ready to show it to a stranger (friends are usually too kind) for a reaction. When you’re satisfied, send it to a printer, a printed resume is far superior to photocopies. It shows an employer that you regard job hunting as serious work, worth doing right.

Isn’t that the kind of person you’d want working for you?

[A] A woman who lost her job as a teacher’s aide due to a cutback in government funding wrote: “Principal of elementary school cited me as the only teacher’s aide she would rehire if government funds became available.”

[B] One resume I received included the following: “Invited by my superior to straighten out our organization’s accounts receivable. Set up orderly repayment schedule, reconciled accounts weekly, and improved cash flow 100 per cent. Rewarded with raise and promotion.” Notice how this woman focuses on results, specifies how she accomplished them, and mentions her reward—all in 34 words.

[C] For example, if you have a flair for saving, managing and investing money, you have money management skills.

[D] An acquaintance complained of being biased when losing an opportunity due to the statement “Ready to learn though not so well educated.”

[E] One of my former colleagues, for example, wrote three resumes in three different styles in order to find out which was more preferred. The result is, of course, the one that highlights skills and education background.

[F] A woman once told me about a cash-flow crisis her employer had faced. She’d agreed to work with-out pay for three months until business improved. Her reward was her back pay plus a 20 percent bonus. I asked why that marvelous story wasn’t in her resume. She answered, “It wasn’t important.” What she was really saying of course was “I’m not important.”

If we are indeed nostalgic for the weight of clock time, it is worth remembering that the standardized time that most of us know has only been around since the mid-nineteenth century. It was invented for the railroads. Prior to the institutionalization of standard time, clocks were set using local meridians or local mean time, and they varied widely.【G1】__________

The railroads needed standardized time; as a result, the technology of train travel shaped the way everyone gets up, eats, goes to sleep, and calculates age.【G2】________________One earth, one metronome. Or, as a character in Maud Casey’s novel “The Man Who Walked Away” put it, “The universal day was established, like the slicing of a pie.”

【G3】________________

The day is not a pie but a vapor, a tenuous notion. Standardized time’s regulatory powers are fading. We seem to have entered the Age of Relativity, wherein we finally experience time as Einstein imagined it, contracting and expanding relative to the velocities of observers.

Quantum mechanics has long posited that the universe is made of space, not time. Culture, with its usual sensitivity, is responding to the new atemporality by melting down and recasting clocks for audiences now accustomed to inhabiting several different kinds of time simultaneously. Communication can be as fast as the sending of an emoji, and an art piece can take twenty-four hours to “see,” or even longer—one recent example is an enormous Sphinx made of sugar, which was intended, as the author said, to be “very temporary,” to dissolve, eroded by time. One could see time acting upon it as the weeks passed, which was part of its appeal. All temporal bets are off, including, given climate change, the seasons.【G4】__________________

However, if standardized time was a fiction more or less driven by capitalism, it might be possible that atemporality is a fiction more or less driven by capitalism, as well.【G5】______________But we do sleep, and we still die, putting an end to our shopping. All beings are, in fact, temporary, composed of cells that grow, age, and perish. The Internet may not be subject to time, but we are, and so is everything around us. As the Japanese Zen Master Dogen said, in the thirteenth century, “all being is time.”

[A] Imagine the world as a whole, ticking reliably, with reliable deviations, according to the beat of one central clock in a physical location.

[B] By setting all clocks with standardized deviations from a central meridian, such as Greenwich Mean Time—in 1855 in Britain, in 1883 in the United States—train schedules could make sense nationally.

[C] Railroad time coincided with the Industrial Revolution, with the division of labor and the rise of the machine, with the valorization of efficiency. Internet atemporality has coincided with globalization, with a vast market that never closes; its ideal citizen-consumer would never sleep and never cease to spend.

[D] It’s still one earth, but it is now subtended by a layer of highly elastic non-time, wild time, that is akin to a global collective unconscious wherein past, present, and future occupy one unmediated plane.

[E] The Internet, however, doesn’t need standardized time to function. It can use it in forecasting delivery times of packages, say, or in time-stamping messages, and so on, but it also does much of what it does in a state of atemporality.

[F] At the same time, as it were, there is no real time on Facebook; that eternal Now might as well al-so be Never.

[G] There are more clocks than ever—clocks on computers, on cell phones, on televisions, on any screen available, telling time to the digital second—but they all seem to matter less.

Since Microsoft became the first big foreign company to set up shop in Hyderabad in 1998, the southern Indian city has emerged as an IT center. But it has earned the attention of terrorists as well. On Saturday, Hyderabad was targeted for the second time in four months as two bombs exploded in crowded areas of the city, leaving at least 42 people dead and more than 60 wounded. Authorities blamed “external agencies” for the attacks, particularly Islamic militant groups. “We are not cowed down,” Home Minister Shivraj Patil said at a press conference after visiting the bombing sites, vowing to take steps to eliminate terrorism.

【G1】____________________

The key economic centers of Mumbai, Bangalore and Coimbatore have all been attacked in recent years, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people. Since 2004, The Times of India reported Monday, India has lost more lives to terrorism than any country other than Iraq.

【G2】_________________

It also faces an armed Maoist rebellion that causes troubles in vast areas of territory across 16 of its 28 states, and that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the country’s “single biggest challenge to internal security.” In addition, several militant and insurgent outfits are active in the country’s northeast. Meanwhile, the disputed territory of Kashmir remains a time bomb of conflict six decades after independence.

【G3】___________________

The country’s benchmark Sensex stock index actually rose in the days following the blasts, its growth not restrained by the disaster. “The fundamentals of the economy are strong, and there is a high degree of resilience,” says Viren Mehta, Mumbai-based partner at the financial services arm of accounting giant Ernst & Young.

In fact, the high-risk, high-return nature of India’s economy is part of the reason many foreign investors are here in the first place. “Investors have come in and stayed after factoring in the security problem,” says Soumitra Choudhury, an economic advisor. “I don’t think small-scale attacks will affect growth in the long run.”

【G4】____________________

“India is one of the most under-policed states in the world,” he says, “the U.N. norm is for 222 police personnel for every 100,000 people. In India, it is 122 for 100,000. Moreover, rural policing has almost collapsed, so that those targeting cities are able to use rural bases without fear.”

【G5】__________________________________________________

Retired Brigadier B.K. Ponwar, who heads the Counter-Insurgency and Jungle Warfare College in the eastern state of Chhattisgarh, points out that vast areas of the country are unable to attract investment due to various security threats. “Chhattisgarh has a wealth of mineral resources, but who wants to go there?” he asks. “The tea and oil industries in the northeast are barely limping along.”

Even in its wealthiest cities, India’s poor can still bear the cost of its security lapses. “It is usually the poor who get killed in terrorist incidents, and the value of their lives is marginal,” says Sahni. “That is why there is no effect on politics, economy or governance.”

[A] Some have criticized the government for its underperformance in fighting against terrorism in India. But the government is not willing to admit it.

[B] But India’s grim security situation hasn’t hindered its growth. Since 2004—the same period considered in The Times of India’s terror report—India’s economy has grown by more than 8% a year, among the fastest rates in the world.

[C] Cross-border terrorism—blamed for most of India’s recent attacks—is not the only threat to India’s internal security.

[D] That may be a tall order, given that terror attacks are becoming more and more unchecked.

[E] Home to more than 200 IT multinationals today, its success has earned it the nickname “Cyberabad”.

[F] Security experts do not share this optimism. Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management, points out that India has invested dangerously little in its internal security apparatus.

[G] The security situation might well prevent the benefits of India’s economic boom from reaching its less developed parts.

[A] Hit the gym

[B] Leave the room

[C] Have a BMW

[D] Break your bad habits

[E] Give yourself a treat

[F] Let yourself off the hook

[G] Accept the fact of life

Everyone gets into a bad mood sometimes. I’m talking about the kind of mood that throws a spanner in the works, has you fuming at every little thing and threatens to ruin a perfectly good day. Sometimes these moods happen just when you don’t want them to and they can get in the way of doing what you want to do in the way that you want to do it. Here’s how to shake them off quickly so that you can get back your life.

【G1】_______________________________________________

Get a change of scene. Right now. Bad moods can be triggered by all kinds of things and often it’s something around you that ticked you off, and if you stay in the same environment, it’ll continue to nag at you and play on your mind. Go to a new environment, surround yourself with different things, different people and different sensations and it’s easier for you to leave your bad mood behind you.

【G2】__________________________________________

When you’re in a bad mood, it’s easy to look for things to fuel that bad mood or reinforce it. Why? Because you want to feel like your bad mood is valid, so you look for things to validate it and make it right. Break that habit by doing the opposite, no matter how strange it might feel. Watch a funny movie, play your favorite song, go for a walk in your local park, grab a coffee and a slice of pie in that great coffee shop. Do something that feels good and puts a smile on your face, and your bad mood will be history.

【G3】_______________________________________________

When I’m in a coaching session with someone, it’s pretty obvious if he is in a bad mood. When that happens, I say to him, “Right. You have 4 minutes to Bitch, Moan and Whine all you want. When the 4 minutes is up there’s no more moaning, deal?” Then he lets rip for 4 minutes. Taking just a couple of minutes for a BMW (as I like to call it) can get everything right out there, everything that’s bubbling away. The key is not to pause or think—a BMW session is just getting it all out there. Often you’ll find that you run out of steam before the 4 minutes is up and sometimes you’ll just end up laughing. Either way, when you’re done, you’ll feel lighter.

【G4】________________________________________’

Physical exercise has a direct influence on our mood, and countless studies have shown that exercise releases endorphins and serotonin (the body’s pleasure chemicals) that positively affect your mood. Hitting the gym not only releases those feel-good chemicals, but it’s a great distraction, diverting your attention away from your bad mood and giving you something to do that occupies your body and mind.

【G5】____________________________________________

Fact of Life No. 37—Bad moods happen. Sometimes, it’s just fine to let the bad mood ride. If things are niggling you and bad moods are a familiar deal to you, then it’s a good bet that something’s not quite right somewhere in your life. Letting the bad mood ride allows you to go to those dark placeswhere you wouldn’t normally go and see what’s there. You don’t have to wallow in it, but letting it happen can be surprisingly liberating. Your bad moods are just as valid as your good moods, and when you come out the other side you might just have learned something about what’s really going on.

[A] This interpretation was challenged in a recent paper. After reviewing the research literature, the authors concluded that narcissism and self-esteem are much more distinct than conventional wisdom has led us to believe. Statistically speaking, they are only weakly correlated. Narcissists can be low in self-esteem, and high self-esteem does not imply narcissism. Narcissists feel superior to others, believe they are entitled to privileges, and crave admiration. They think the world would be a much better place if it revolved around them. And when they think it doesn’t, they lash out aggressively. High self-esteemers, by contrast, feel satisfied with themselves as a person, but don’t see themselves as any better than others.

[B] Since the 1970s, Western parents have become increasingly concerned with building children’s self-esteem. Parents intuitively believe that high self-esteem is key to success, health, and well-being, and they try to raise self-esteem by telling children that they are unique and extraordinary. Unfortunately, there is some evidence that since the very same decade, Western youth have become increasingly narcissistic. The conclusion would seem obvious: in raising our children’s self-esteem too much, we have necessarily turned them into narcissists.

[C] Narcissism is cultivated by parental overvaluation: parents seeing their child as unique and extraordinary individual. Overvaluing parents have been found to overestimate, over-claim, and overpraise their child’s qualities. Overvaluing parents think their child is smarter than he or she actually is. They claim their child has knowledge of a wide variety of topics, even topics that cannot possibly be known by the child. And they lavish their child with praise, even when the child doesn’t perform well. Over time, these practices can teach children to see themselves as unique and extraordinary individuals.

[D] Thus, narcissism doesn’t arise from having too much self-esteem. It arises, in part, from practices that are intended to raise self-esteem but actually raise narcissism. When parents try to raise children’s self-esteem, they intuitively tell them that they are unique and extraordinary—the very practice that raises narcissism rather than self-esteem. The self-esteem movement was right about one thing: raising self-esteem is important. Although certainly not a panacea, self-esteem brings happiness and satisfying social relationships. But the movement was wrong about another thing: raising self-esteem isn’t easy.

[E] This distinction is key to rethinking our efforts to boost children’s self-esteem. Once we recognize the fine line that runs between narcissism and self-esteem, we can help children develop healthy views of themselves. Why do some children believe they’re God’s gift to humanity, while other children like themselves but don’t see themselves as any better than their fellow humans? Narcissism and self-esteem are both partly heritable, but they’re also shaped by childhood experiences. The authors studied the childhood origins of narcissism and self-esteem, and discovered that they’re quite distinct.

[F] How can we effectively raise children’s self-esteem? Psychologists often tell us to trust our intuition, but as we’ve seen, intuition isn’t always the best parenting guide, for what seems intuitively right can breed narcissism. Rather than telling children they’re unique snowflakes, we should make children feel loved and valued, so they grow up liking themselves without seeing themselves as superior to others.

[G] Self-esteem, on the other hand, is cultivated by parental warmth: parents expressing fondness and affection for their child. This isn’t anything like overvaluing children. Warm parents share joy with their child, show interest in the child’s activities, and make the child feel loved and valued. Over time, these practices can teach children to see themselves as worthy individuals—not as any better or worse than other individuals.

【G1】→A→【G2】→【G3】→【G4】→D→【G5】

[A] So far, mandatory on-the-menu calorie counts have been implemented in only three localities: Washington’s King County, New York City and Westchester County. And since none of these provisions have been in place for more than a year, nutritionists have yet to gather empirical proof that they work.

[B] The U.S. Senate reached a bipartisan agreement to include a federal menu-labeling law as part of comprehensive health-care reform. The law, which requires chain restaurants to give consumers the information of calories on their menus, has initiated an intensive debate in the country. The implementation of the law means that when you look at a menu from a chain restaurant, those calorie counts will be staring you down. “Order me if you dare,” the mighty Quesadilla Burger from Applebee’s (1,440 calories) may entreat.

[C] Meanwhile, Yum! Brands, parent company of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, has promised to post calorie information on its menus by next January. If the creator of KFC’s Famous Bowls—fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn, gravy and shredded cheese packed together for your gut-busting pleasure—volunteers to share these numbers, what excuse can other chains claim for not following suit, particularly if Washington lags in forcing them to do so? The writing is on the wall. And perhaps, as a result, fewer calories will be in your stomach.

[D] Although there is no direct evidence of its effectiveness, prominently displayed calorie counts has been found to steer purchases. Last year, researchers in New York City examined consumer eating habits at Subway, which voluntarily posted calorie info in its stores. This study reported that Subway customers who pondered the calorie information purchased 52 fewer calories than those who didn’t.

[E] Nevertheless, the restaurant industry, the biggest opponent of the law, had been pushing a federal bill that would require chains nationwide to post calorie information somewhere near the point of purchase but not on the menu itself. The industry claimed menu postings would be a costly logistical burden and would clutter valuable real estate on the menus. Not surprisingly, chains won’t voice the most obvious argument against high-profile calorie counts, because they’re concerned that consumers will be turned off by what they see.

[F] As the menu-labeling momentum keeps surging, will such policy really improve eating habits? Well, it can do no worse than what’s out there. Researchers observed 4,311 consumers of McDonald’s, Burger King and Starbucks to see if they accessed in-store nutrition data. The info was not on the menu board but in a pamphlet, on a wall poster or an on-site computer. Only 0.1%, of the consumers looked at the numbers. If restaurants are sincere about health, they need to put calorie counts on the menu, straight in the customers’ sight lines.

[G] Further, the forced disclosure of calories could lead more restaurants to change their offerings. A report by New York City health officials noted that since menu-labeling went into effect last summer, some chains have lowered the calorie counts on certain items. For example, in last March, a Chicken Club sandwich at Wendy’s was listed as being 650 calories. In June this year, the item was 540 calories—a 17% drop.

B→【G1】→【G2】→【G3】→【G4】→【G5】→C