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The Six Enemies of Greatness (and Happiness)
These six factors can erode the grandest of plans and the noblest of intentions. They can turn visionaries into paper-pushers and wide-eyed dreamers into shivering, weeping balls of regret. Beware!

 

 1) Availability

We often settle for what’s available, and what’s available isn’t always great. “Because it was there,” is an okay reason to climb a mountain, but not a very good reason to take a job or a free sample at the supermarket.

 2) Ignorance

If we don’t know how to make something great, we simply won’t. If we don’t know that greatness is possible, we won’t bother attempting it. All too often, we literally do not know any better than good enough.

 3) Committees

Nothing destroys a good idea faster than a mandatory consensus. The lowest common denominator is never a high standard.

 4) Comfort

Why pursue greatness when you’ve already got 324 channels and a recliner? Pass the dip and forget about your grand designs.

5) Momentum

If you’ve been doing what you’re doing for years and it’s not-so-great, you are in a rut. Many people refer to these ruts as careers.

6) Passivity

There’s a difference between being agreeable and agreeing to everything. Trust the little internal voice that tells you, “this is a bad idea.”

Runner Michael Wardian is a master of both road and trail running, with more than 150 marathons, 60 ultramarathons, and 20 triathlons under his belt. He has been the leading member of the U.S. 100K world championship team and has won races from the 50K North Face Endurance Challenge to marathons in San Francisco, Miami, Delaware, and Washington, D.C. He also holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest marathon run in a superhero costume, which he clinched as Superman in the 2011 Lower Potomac Marathon.

1. TRAIN FOR TRAILS

Trail running takes a different skill set than jogging on roads, but it’s not hard to learn. “A lot of people say the only way to get good at running on trails is to run on trails, but a lot of us don’t live in the mountains,” says the Arlington, Virginia-based runner. “What I do is jump curbs or little fences or run on cobblestones just to break it up a bit.” Or take any little trail you find—it could peter out or connect two roads you never knew existed, says Wardian. The important part: Break up your strides so you’re landing on your feet differently, mimicking the hazards of trails.

2. MANAGE FEAR

On a quick lunch-break run last year, Wardian took a flying spill and wound up in the emergency room with a busted tooth and 12 stitches in his face. Still, he’s committed to learning how to run faster downhill. “You have to overcome that fear,” says Wardian. “You basically have to become comfortable with almost falling downhill and knowing that your feet are going to get there to catch you.” Practice will build confidence but there are also a few tricks that can help improve technique. First, don’t wear sunglasses while running trails, says Wardian, because dappled light can distort depth perception. Second, focus ten feet ahead on the trail. “When you’re running on bike paths, it’s easy to zone out and listen to your iPod,” he says. “But on technical trails, you have to pick your feet up.” Look about three strides ahead, and your feet will follow.

3. ATTACK YOUR WEAKNESSES

In 2009, Wardian returned to the 50-mile national trail-running championships to defend his title and had a reckoning. One competitor, a man who trained in the mountains, smoked him, gaining some 18 minutes in four uphill miles. “I ran the second fastest time ever on the course, and he broke the course record by like 20 minutes,” says Wardian. “I wasn’t running slow, but he didn’t slow down at all. I was like, hmmm, I’m not as good as I thought I was.” It’s a lesson we all could learn: Even the best runners have room for improvement. Pinpoint your own weaknesses by running with other people, whether it’s a race or with a local running club, then focus on improving, whether it’s climbing, descending, sprints, or endurance. “That’s what’s nice about running,” says Wardian. “Once you become good at one thing, there’s always something you can work to improve on.”

4. COMMIT TO A RACE

Wardian raced a mind-boggling 48 times in 2011, from Death Valley to South Africa, in search of the best competition he could find. But you don’t need to sign up for competitive races in order to reap the benefits of a game day. A race can give you something to focus on, an opportunity to be part of the running community, and a way to celebrate your training. “It’s cool to go out and run ten miles, but it’s really neat to run ten miles with 15,000 other people,” says Wardian. “Even if you’re not competitive, it’s pretty neat to be a part of that massive humanity moving toward the same goal.” Wardian suggests finding events, whether 5K races, marathons, or charity runs, on sites like marathonguide.com, active.com, and coolrunning.com.

5. CHANGE YOUR KICKS

It’s an age-old truth—repetitive motions can lead to overuse injuries—but Wardian has a novel and effective solution: Change up your shoes. “It keeps you from striking the same way,” says Wardian. “I love it, especially if you have the means to be able to get a couple different pairs.” He has a variety of shoes, including racing flats, hybrid road-and-trail shoes, burly trail runners, and even spring-loaded sneakers. Especially on days when he runs twice, Wardian switches up his kicks. “With different weights, you place your feet differently, and it helps keep it fresh.”

Mammoth, California-based Deena Kastor is the equivalent of running royalty. She set the American record for the half marathon—twice—won the 10,000-meter national championships four times, and snagged a bronze in the marathon at the 2004 Olympic Games, among a laundry list of other achievements.

1. SHAKE UP YOUR ROUTINE

Humans are creatures of habit, but when it comes to running, those habits can slow you down. “I think the most common mistake anybody makes, no matter what sport you’re into, is we get into a routine, whether it’s going to the same place or going the same pace,” says Kastor. “My advice to people when they’re feeling stale or unmotivated is to switch it up.” Hop in the car and drive someplace new, even if it’s simply another neighborhood, or pick a landmark a hundred yards away and sprint there before resuming a normal speed. Kastor says running the same ho-hum pace every day not only leads to burnout but can also contribute to overuse injuries, so be playful. “It’s all about keeping refreshed and keeping a healthy spirit, whether it’s a change of scenery or a change of pace,” says Kastor.

2. POUND CALORIES

When Deena Kastor finishes her twice-daily training runs, she has one thing on her mind: food. “It sounds gnarly, but when you’re working out, you’re actually breaking down tissue,” she says. “It’s really in the recovery phase that your body supercompensates and gets stronger.” Kastor always keeps a Marathon Bar (an energy bar for which she’s a spokeswoman), an apple, and nuts in her bag for a mix of protein and carbs. She eats something within 30 minutes of a run in order to stop the breakdown process. She’s also a gourmet post-workout and is currently working on a cookbook with healthy recipes like butternut squash soup and avocado enchiladas—perhaps motivation enough to sprint to the finish.

3. SPLURGE ON A COACH

Sometimes breaking out of a rut requires a second opinion, and Kastor says coaches aren’t just for the elites. “I really think a coach or a mentor is a huge asset for anybody,” says Kastor. “If you really do have fitness goals, you don’t necessarily need a team of people around you, but you need someone you can rely on to create a plan for you.” Nowadays, online coaches are relatively inexpensive and can design workout plans for specific races or goals. Often they’ll coach multiple people training for the same race to create a community. (Look to the Road Runners Clubs of America for coach listings.) “If an online running coach is coaching five to six people for a race, you can have people there to answer your questions, whether it’s your coach or a teammate,” says Kastor. “It’s nice to know that you’re not alone.”

4. FIND YOUR PERSONAL ROCKET BOOSTER

A large part of any sport is mental, and running is no exception. For Kastor, inspiration can be as simple as a lyric she picked up from a song—one of her favorites is U2’s “It’s a beautiful day, don’t let it get away”—but she also picks up lines from her coaches. One key phrase, in fact, informed a career-changing win—her first marathon gold in Chicago in 2005. “My coach is very inspiring and long-winded and philosophical, but on that morning he just simply said ‘go out there and define yourself,’” says Kastor. “Just those two words—define yourself—kept replaying through my mind that whole race.” Continually seek new inspiration in your own life, whether it’s a line from a book, a quip from a friend, or an electrifying song, advises Kastor.

5. DREAM BIG

Without dreaming, there’s no incentive to accomplish something special. “When you have that goal in your mind, you’re making positive choices to get there every day,” says Kastor. For some, it’s completing an Ironman or the New York City Marathon. For others, it’s a charity event, a great destination race, or even a running vacation in a far-flung locale. This year, for example, Row Adventures is debuting raft-supported wilderness running trips. Run some 55 miles over six days, camping each night on Idaho’s Middle Fork of the Salmon, or run 40 miles over three days, staying in remote lodges along Oregon’s Rogue River. “That’s on my list for 2012,” says Kastor. The value, however, doesn’t lie only in the goal but also the effort, she says. “Even if you’re not reaching those dreams, you’ve become so much better in pursuing them.”

“Barefoot” Ted McDonald played a lively and central role in Christopher McDougall’s breakout book, Born to Run, with a simple but revolutionary message: “Some of the best technology you’ll ever own when it comes to footwear is the one you’ve already been given by your ancestors,” he says. The barefoot-running guru still runs shoeless, coaches barefoot newbies in Seattle, and owns Luna Sandals, a barefoot-sandal company. He has also become a leading spokesman for the wonders of barefoot running, particularly for those with injuries stemming from footwear. But there’s also the pure pleasure of running as we were designed. “There’s this feeling of lightness and connectedness to our own bodies,” says McDonald.

1. TRANSITION SLOWLY

McDonald coined a term for an affliction that hits many novice barefoot runners: the overexuberance factor. “So many people are so completely blown away at how comfortable and amazing it feels to start moving this way that they overexuberate,” says McDonald. It takes time to transition to barefoot running, and there is no one-size-fits-all plan. Often it can take more than a year. Instead, McDonald encourages new barefoot runners to shoot for a different goal—honing body awareness—rather than building mileage or speed. Gather advice from others who have made the transition at online forums like Minimalist Runner, a Google group that McDonald founded.

2. BE SILENT

The first rule of tuning in to the body is simple: Be silent. When McDonald coaches newbie runners, he asks them to cup their ears while they walk in their shoes. Then they remove their shoes and do the same thing. When walking barefoot, humans intuitively move their weight into their forefoot to decrease the impact on their heels. All of a sudden, the sound of movement ceases. “My joke is there’s a hall in heaven of people who raise their hand when the question is, ‘Who didn’t hear when it was coming?’” says McDonald. “All great hunting animals are extraordinarily quiet when they move, and the reason is they’re extraordinarily efficient. We are definitely one of those.” Running quietly translates to running gently—a must for barefoot runners.

3. QUICKEN YOUR CADENCE

Barefoot runners have an unmistakably different stride than road or trail runners. It’s not only lighter and quieter but the strides are shorter and faster. “There’s all these people who have numbers and digits and times and ways to quicken your cadence, but I believe it comes perfectly naturally by just simply tuning into yourself.” McDonald says that transitioning to about 180 steps per minute softens impact on rough, hard, or rocky surfaces. “Being able to tolerate and move over those surfaces, you begin to recognize and remember that feeling of lightness and then carry it over even when you’re wearing shoes,” says McDonald.

4. FINE-TUNE YOUR BALANCE

Picture this: You’re standing on a balance beam with a basket on your head. Your knees are bent and springy, your head is stacked on your shoulders, and your core is engaged. This is perfect balance, a miraculous piece of human software we all have. “Balance isn’t something you have to think about, it’s something you tune into,” says McDonald. “I want people to learn to preserve that feeling of balance, like they’re walking on a balance beam, when they’re running.” That razor-reactive sensation not only helps runners stay upright on challenging terrain, but it also keeps the body light and agile.

5. TUNE IN TO YOUR BODY

McDonald’s biggest piece of advice is seemingly simple: Cultivate an awareness of your body. But it’s easier said than done. Put away the headphones and consider running alone to block out distractions, says McDonald. “Trying to reconnect to your own body and particularly your foot, which is a very complex thing, is not something where you just buy something and you’re done,” he says. “It’s not like that at all. It’s a rethinking about what it means to be human.” In other words, barefoot running is a change in mindset as much as a change in stride. “Ultimately, once you can no longer maintain any of these three things that I consider to be the hazard lights on the dashboard of this ancient technology—anytime you are no longer able to move gently, no longer able to have as quick a cadence, no longer able to maintain that balance—it’s time to pull over,” says McDonald. “It’s not in your head, it’s how you feel.”

Clayton Christensen On How To Find Work That You Love

BY Clayton M. Christensen | 05-14-2012 | 6:30 AM

This article is written by a member of our expert contributor community.

When we find ourselves stuck in unhappy careers, it is often the result of a fundamental misunderstanding of what truly motivates us, says Clayton Christensen, co-author of the new book "How Will You Measure Your Life?"

Back in 1976, two economists, Michael Jensen and William Meckling, published a paper looking at why managers don’t always behave in a way that is in the best interest of shareholders. The root cause, as Jensen and Meckling saw it, is that people work in accordance with how you pay them.

Many managers have come to believe this, too: you just need to pay people to do what you want them to do, when you want them to do it.

The problem with thinking about incentives in this way is that there are powerful anomalies that it cannot explain. For example: some of the hardest working people on the planet are employed in charitable organizations. They work in the most difficult conditions imaginable; they earn a fraction of what they would if they were in the private sector. Yet it’s rare to hear of managers of nonprofits complaining about getting their staff motivated. The same goes for the military.

So how do we explain what is motivating them--if it’s not money?

Well, there is a second school of thought, which turns this thinking about incentives on its head. It acknowledges that although you can pay people to want what you want, incentives are not the same as motivation. True motivation is getting people to do something because they want to do it, in good times and in bad.

Frederick Herzberg, probably one of the most incisive writers on the topics of motivation, published a breakthrough article in the Harvard Business Review focusing on exactly this. Herzberg noted the common assumption that job satisfaction is one big continuous spectrum--starting with very happy on one end, and reaching all the way down to absolutely miserable on the other--is not actually the way our minds work. Instead, satisfaction and dissatisfaction are separate, independent measures.

This means that it’s possible, for example, to both love your job and hate it all at the same time.

This thinking on motivation distinguishes between two different types of factors: hygiene factors and motivation factors. On one side of the equation, there are the elements of work that, if not done right, will cause us to be dissatisfied. These are the hygiene factors: status, compensation, job security, work conditions, company policies, and supervisory practices. It matters, for example, that you don’t have a manager who manipulates you for his own purposes--or who doesn’t hold you accountable for things over which you don’t have responsibility. Bad hygiene causes dissatisfaction.

But even if you instantly improve the hygiene factors of your job, you’re not going to suddenly love it. At best, you just won’t hate it anymore. The opposite of job dissatisfaction isn’t job satisfaction, but rather an absence of job dissatisfaction. They’re not the same thing at all.

The Balance of Motivators and Hygiene Factors

So, what are the factors that will cause us to love our jobs? These are what Herzberg’s research calls motivators. Motivation factors include challenging work, recognition, responsibility, and personal growth. Motivation is much less about external prodding or stimulation, and much more about what’s inside of you and inside of your work.

The lens of Herzberg’s theory gave me insight into the career choices that my own classmates made. Some of them had chosen careers using hygiene factors as the primary criteria; income was often the most important of these. On the surface, they had lots of good reasons to do exactly that. They had given up years of their working lives and viewed their education as an investment; they wanted to see a good return on that investment.

Yet, many of those same classmates had written entrance essays on their hopes for using their education to tackle the world’s most vexing social problems or pursue their dreams of becoming entrepreneurs. Periodically, as we were all considering our post-graduation plans, we’d try to keep ourselves honest: “What about doing something you really love?” “Don’t worry,” came back the answer. “This is just for a couple of years. I’ll pay off my loans, get myself in a good financial position. Then I’ll chase my real dreams.”

But somehow that early pledge to return to their real passion after a couple of years kept getting deferred. It wasn’t too long before some of them privately admitted that they had actually begun to resent the jobs they’d taken--for what they now realized were the wrong reasons. Worse still, they found themselves stuck. Their lifestyles had expanded to fit their incomes, and that’s a trap that can be very hard to find your way out of.

The point isn’t that money is the root cause of professional unhappiness. It’s not. The problems start occurring when it becomes the priority over all else, when you’ve satisfied the hygiene factors but the quest remains only to make more money. Herzberg’s theory of motivation suggests you need to ask yourself a different set of questions: Is this work meaningful to me? Will I have an opportunity for recognition and achievement? Am I going to learn new things?

Once you get this right, the more measureable aspects of your job will fade in importance. As the saying goes; find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.

Excerpted from How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon, to be published May 15, 2012 by Harper Business, an imprint of HarperCollins.

Clayton M. Christensen is the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, and is regarded as one of the world’s foremost experts on innovation and growth. James Allworth is a graduate of the Harvard Business School, and worked formerly at Apple Inc and Booz & Company. Karen Dillon was formerly the Editor of the Harvard Business Review and Deputy Editor of Inc Magazine. Their latest book, How Will You Measure Your Life? (HarperCollins, May 2012), aims to teach readers how to think--about life and purpose--by sharing powerful research theories about success and failure.

Get the Recipe!

[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, unless otherwise noted]

Want to know how to grill a steak? Here's my advice: DO NOT DO IT THE WAY THEY DO IT AT STEAKHOUSES. It seems counter-intuitive. Surely a restaurant with years of experience cooking hundreds of steaks a day knows a thing or two about how it's done, right? Well yes. They know how to cook a steak in a steakhouse setting where their goal is consistency, quality, and more importantly—speed. Hungry customers don't want to have to wait for their meat, and a steakhouse has equipment and techniques designed to meet those parameters.

At home, on the other hand, consistency and quality are important, but speed? Not so much. The fact that you can take some time to treat your meat right means that it's possible to cook a steak at home much better than it can be done at any steakhouse. True story. We'll get to the details of how in a bit.

Summer's here, I've got a brand new balcony to grill on, and a fridge full of beef,* so now seems like as good a time as any to re-examine some of the things we know (or think we know) about grilling beef. Sure, we can all agree on what our end goal is: A perfect steak should have a crusty, crunchy, well-browned exterior surrounding a core of perfectly pink, juicy, tender meat that spans from edge-to-edge. (You well-doners can go eat your hockey pucks on someone else's lawn). A perfect steak should be a nice contrast between the smoky, almost charred exterior and the deeply beefy interior. A perfect steak should be chin-drippingly juicy, and melt-in-your-mouth tender.

*For those of you wondering, the beef is all from Pat LaFrieda and Double R Ranch, who we're working with on a series of giveaways and recipe posts. I plan on having LOTS of al fresco dinner parties over the coming week

We all know where we want to go. The real debate is, what's the best way to get there? You've just dropped $50 on some prime aged beef, and you're rightfully nervous about screwing it all up. After all, there's a lot at... ahem, wait for it... steak.

Ready to dive in? Let's go!

This is a long one, so if you want the quick pay-off, here are the 11 tips we're going to discuss:

1. Start with the right cut (I prefer ribeye).
2. Check for marbling (you want plenty of intramuscular fat).
3. Buy a thick steak (at least 1 1/2 to 2 inches).
4. Bone in or boneless, it doesn't make a difference—this is totally a matter of personal choice (I prefer bone-in).
5. Get dry aged beef (unless you don't enjoy the extra tenderness or slightly funky flavor of dry-aged meat).
6. Salt in advance and salt well (I season mine four days in advance, but you want to go at a minimum of 40 minutes).
7. Use hardwood coal if you've got it, but briquettes will work just fine.
8. Cook your meat gently, then sear at the end (this'll give you more evenly cooked meat and a better crust).
9. Flip your meat as often as you like (the whole thing about only flipping once is utter nonsense, and we can prove it).
10. Use a thermometer if you have one, but if not, go ahead and poke or cut-and-peek (it won't adversely harm the end product).
11. Let your meat rest (your meat should rest for about 1/3 of the time it took to cook in order to prevent excess moisture loss).

For those of you who want more details, here we go:

Tip #1: Start With The Right Cut

You can't end up with a great cooked steak if you start with a crummy raw steak. For the record, we're talking high-end steaks here—those are the tender ones cut from the loin of the cow that generally command the highest prices at the market.

There are four different high-end steaks that you should know and each one is a little different.

• Ribeye, also known as a Delmonico or entrecôte is my personal favorite. It comes with a large, tender eye of meat surrounded by a swath of fat and a cap that comes from the spinalis muscle. This cap is far and away the juiciest, most flavorful piece of meat that you'll find on any steak. Some folks might find a ribeye to be a little too rich and fatty. Some folks may well be lacking joy in their life.
• Strip, also known as New York Strip, Kansas City Strip, or contre-filet is similar in texture to that central eye of meat in a ribeye steak. That's because it comes from the exact same muscle, just a little further back down along the cow. People enjoy strip steak for its relatively tender texture and good amount of marbling (more on that in a minute).
• Tenderloin, also known as filet mignon is the most tender cut of meat on the cow. When cooked, it has a buttery, almost spoon-tender texture. But what it has in tenderness, it lacks in flavor. as a nearly unused muscle in the cow, the tenderloin generally has very little fat, and almost no flavor to speak of, despite its crazy price tag.
• T-Bone, also known as Porterhouse when the tenderloin section is at least 1 1/2-inches wide
is simply a slice of rib with both the strip and the tenderloin still attached. It's certainly an impressive and daunting cut of meat, but I reccomend avoiding it. See, the problem is that with relative little fat and a smaller profile, that small tenderloin section ends up cooking much faster than the larger strip section. What this means is that by the time your strip is perfectly medium rare, your tenderloin is overcooked. You're better off cooking your strip and tenderloin separately if you want both.

Here are more tips for choosing a cut of steak.

Tip #2: Check For Marbling

All beef that's sold in the U.S. is graded by the United States Department of Agriculture on a scale according to its tenderness and degree of marbling. At the top of the heap is Prime, which denotes an abundant degree of marbling in a cow under 42 months of age. Only about 2% of the beef sold in this country is designated Prime, and most of it goes to restaurants, specialty butchers, and high end supermarkets. Below that is Choice, followed by Select, which are the two grades you'll find in most supermarkets.

The grades continue to go down all the way to Canner, which generally comes from very old cows with little fat in their tough meat. Luckily for us, you won't find that grade in stores (it's reserved for such savory applications as school lunches and dog food).

While checking the grade is a quick and easy indicator of the quality of the meat, what you should really be checking for is the degree of marbling—that's the interstitial fat that shows up in white spiderwebs throughout the meat.

Why, you might ask, is marbling important? Two reasons: moisture and flavor. As well-marbled meat cooks, the fat will slowly melt, adding juiciness built right into the meat. Non-marbled meat might have plenty of fat on the exterior, but it doesn't enhance the steak in the same way. Sort of like the difference between drinking a glass of chocolate milk or drinking the milk then shooting the chocolate syrup.

Flavorwise, almost all of the compounds our tongues sense that give us the thought "ooh, that's beefy" are found in the fat. In fact, if you take the fat out of a piece of beef and replace it with lamb fat, it'll taste like lamb. Want chicken-flavored beef? Cook lean beef in chicken fat.

If flavor is what you're after, fat is your friend. Look for meat that's got plenty of marbling.

Tip #3: Buy A Thick Steak

The thickness of a steak is not just about portion control. Without an adequately thick steak, it's very difficult to get that contrast between exterior and interior that is so desirable. Thin, thin steaks will tend to overcook before they can finish developing a nice crust, even over the hottest fire you can muster.

I try to get steaks that are at least an inch and a half thick, if not two inches. This does mean that each steak ends up weighing in at between 12 ounces and a pound—that's big, even for someone with a big appetite for red meat. But remember this: It's better to cook one large steak for every two people than to cook two smaller steaks. Learn how to share.

Tip #4: Don't Listen To What People Tell You About Bones

Talk to most chefs and they'll tell you that it's always better to cook meat with the bone-in because it adds flavor. I've always been pretty skeptical of this one for a number of reasons. First of all, the exterior of a bone does not have much flavor in it at all—you have to dig down into the marrow to get at it (just ask my dogs). Secondly, meat muscle fibers are pretty tough customers when it comes to allowing molecules to move around within them.

If an overnight marinade can only penetrate meat by a few millimeters, fat chance that flavor from a relatively flavorless bone is going to make much difference.

Indeed, I tested this out with a few prime rib roasts a couple months back. One I roasted bone-in, another I removed the bone and tied it back on, a third I removed the bone and tied it back on with a layer of aluminum foil in between (to completely prevent any potential transfer of flavor), and the third I roasted boneless.

All three of the roasts with bones tied on them were indistinguishable from each other in both texture and flavor, so there's that myth smashed for ya. On the other hand, the boneless roast did come out a little dryer in the specific region where the bone was missing. Really, a bone accomplishes two things: It prevent some moisture loss by reducing the surface area of a steak, and it keeps that section of the steak from overcooking by acting as an insulator. Ok, three things if you count looking-really-awesome as an accomplishment.

I personally still go with bone-in cuts when I have the option because I enjoy chewing the crispy bits of fat around the bone, but don't let anyone force you to do it if you aren't interested.

Tip #5: Go For Dry Aged (Unless You Don't)

There are two types of aging. So-called wet-aged meat is meat that has been placed in a vacuum-sealed bag and allowed to rest for a few weeks (usually while in transit from packing plant to distributor to supermarket). A wet aged steak shows some improvement over a standard non-aged steak in terms of tenderness—there are enzymes present in the meat that will break down tough connective tissue over time.

Dry-aged meat is meat that has been stored in a temperature and humidity-controlled room for anywhere from a week and up to 10 weeks or longer. During this time, three things happen:

• Moisture loss is a major factor. A dry-aged piece of beef can lose up to around 30% of its initial volume in water loss, which concentrates its flavor.
• Tenderization occurs when enzymes naturally present in the meat act to break down some of the tougher muscle fibers.
• Flavor change is probably the most relevant. Due to numerous reasons including enzymatic and bacterial action, properly dry-aged meat will develop deep nutty, cheesy aromas.

Whether you want dry-aged meat or not is a matter of personal choice. I personally love the funky, blue cheese notes of a very old dry-aged steak and am willing to shell out the extra 20 to 25% it costs. Others prefer the cleaner flavor of fresh beef.

And despite what some folks may tell you, it is pretty much impossible to dry age properly at home. To age a steak, you require an intact, untrimmed portion of beef (the outer layers become inedible and must be trimmed off). You can leave a steak in the fridge for a few days and some amount of tenderization will occur, but this is hardly the same thing.

Tip #6: Salt in Advance, And Salt Well

Should you salt your meat right before cooking, well before cooking, or how about after cooking? This is another point of contention amongst home cooks and chefs alike, and one of the ones for which steakhouse-methods often get cited as evidence. At (most) steakhouses, they salt the steak right before throwing it on the grill or under the broiler, so that must be the best way to do it at home, right?

Well, consider that at a steakhouse, when a customer places an order for that giant côte du bouef, It's gonna take a minimum of 20 minutes to get it to medium rare in the very center. That's a lot of minutes in waiting-at-a-restaurant-for-your-food-to-come time. They salt right before cooking because they don't have the time to let the meat sit after salting.

Truth of the matter is that you should salt your meat about 40 minutes before it hits the grill. When the salt first hits a steak, it sits on the surface. Through the process of osmosis, it'll slowly draw liquid out of the mat, which you'll see pool up in little droplets. As those droplets grow, the salt will dissolve in the meat juice, forming a concentrated brine. At this stage in the game—about 25 to 30 minutes in—your steak is in the absolute worst shape possible for grilling. That moisture will evaporate right off, leaving you with a tough, stringy crust.

Give it a bit more time, and eventually that brine will begin to break down some of the muscle tissue in the meat, allowing the juices to be re-absorbed, and taking the salt right along with it.

What does this lead to? Meat that is both better seasoned and more tender and moist when you cook it.

Personally I season my steaks at least a few days in advance, to give the salt maximum time to work its way into the meat. Why steakhouses don't do this is a mystery to me.

Tip #7: Choose Your Coals Wisely

[photograph: Josh Bousel]

Plenty of grill-snobs will insist on only using hardwood coal for their grilling, claiming superior flavor in the finished product. And it's true. Given the same amount of coal and the same exact treatment, a steak cooked over hardwood will have a better, crustier sear and a smokier flavor. This difference largely has to do with the relative densities of the two products.

Hardwood is not nearly as dense as a briquette and is thus better ventilated when burning. This leads to a hotter, faster burn. Measure the heat at grill level from a chimney full of briquettes and a chimney full of hardwood, and the difference can be as much as a hundred degrees or more.

On the other hand, charcoal briquettes are easier to find (I can't get real hardwood within a 20 block radius of my apartment), more inexpensive, more reliable, and longer burning (making them great for extended grilling sessions).

That said, there's an easy way to get more flavor out of your briquettes: just use more of them. I use about 1 1/2 times the amount I'd use if I were going with standard lump charcoal, and it gets plenty hot.

Pro-tip: Avoid the lighter fluid (and, for god's sake, the Match-Light), and invest in a good chimney starter.

The same argument applies to gas vs. coals. Gas is far more convenient, but it will not burn nearly as hot as even briquettes do, nor will it impart the same smokiness. In the end, it's a tradeoff between convenience and flavor. For me, the convenience of briquettes trumps the minor flavor advantages of hardwood.

Read more about hardwood vs. briquettes here »

Tip #8: Cook Your Meat Gently, Then Sear At The End

At this stage in the game, I don't think I need to tell any of you that the old saying that "searing locks in juices" is utter and complete nonsense. You can prove this quite easily by cooking two identical roasts, one seared first then finished at a low temperature, the other started at a low temperature and seared at the end. If searing really locked in anything, you'd expect the one seared first to retain more moisture. In fact, you find that the exact opposite is the case.

In reality, the amount of juices a steak loses is directly proportional to the temperature you cook it to (note: not the temperature you cook it at). So why does a slow-start, sear-at-end roast lose less moisture? It has to do with the length of time it takes to build up a good, crusty sear. Throw a raw steak on the grill (or in a pan), and the cold, moist meat takes a long time to heat up to the point where it can begin browning and crisping properly. By the time it's well-seared, the outermost layers are already overcooked and you've lost the battle before you've even begun to cook the steak through to the center.

Start a steak out on the cold side of the grill, on the other hand, and by the time it's reached within a few degrees of the proper final temperature (more on that in a moment), its exterior has already gotten a good head start on the browning and crisping phase. All it takes is a moment on the hot side of the grill to crisp up.

You end up with meat that is as crusty as you could hope for, and perfectly evenly cooked from edge to edge.

Tip #9: Flip As Often As You'd Like, And Go Ahead—Use A Fork

If there's one piece of steak-grilling advice that people seem to get more persnickety about than anything, it's that your steak should only be flipped once.

False. This is another hang-on gleaned from steakhouses in which it's simply impractical for a cook to flip more than once given the number of steaks they have cooking on a grill at the same time. At home, you're probably only cooking a few steaks at a time, and it's ok—indeed, it's better—to flip your steaks more often.

You don't have to take my word for it either. Famed food scientist and author Harold McGee has been advocating this method for years (and has the data to prove its efficacy). Dave Arnold over at Cooking Issues has replicated his tests, as have I (with hamburgers). You can quite easily do the test for yourself.

By flipping a steak multiple times—as often as once every 15 seconds or so—you not only end up with meat that's more evenly cooked, you also cut down on your cook time by as much as a third, and develop a great crust on top of that. This is because with multiple flips, neither side is exposed to intense heat for too long, nor does it lose much heat to the relatively cool air above. It's the equivalent of cooking it from both directions simultaneously.

That said, the difference in the end result is not too pronounced, so if you want to leave the steak alone and enjoy your beer, or if you feel the need to placate that annoying uncle who gets visibly angered by mutli-flippers, go ahead and use the one-flip method—it won't destroy your steak.

Similarly, using a fork to lift and flip will absolutely not destroy it. To hear people balk at the fork-flippers, you'd think that a steak is something like a water balloon, ready to shed all its moisture from a single puncture. This is not how a steak behaves. Rather than a balloon filled with liquid, a steak is actually a series of many many thousands of long, skinny balloons filled with liquid. Puncturing a single one will have no effect on its neighbor, and the amount of juice contained in a fork-poke-ful of punctures is small enough not to be noticed.

Tip #10: Use a Thermometer!

I can't possibly emphasize this one enough. Use a thermometer! Use a thermometer! USE A THERMOMETER!.

Yes, you may look a bit less macho when you whip out a nifty Thermapen Splash-Proof Instant Read Thermometer from your back pocket, swing out the slender probe and insert it gently into the very center of your steak to register a reading, but believe me: perfectly cooked meat will earn you more praise and appreciation than macho posturing any day of the week.

I like my meat at around 130°F—the medium-rare point. Many folks like their meat rare, but to me, that's a waste of a good, well-marbled cut of beef. You want your fat to be warm enough that it starts melting a bit, lubricating your meat and adding flavor and juice to every bite. With meat that's too rare, your fat remains solid. You end up with all the calories and not nearly as much flavor.

On the opposite end of the spectrum with medium-well to well-done meat, not only have your juices been squeezed dry like water from a sponge, but your liquefied fat has already bought itself a one way ticket to the bottom of your grill.

Remember: Thick steaks will continue to rise in temperature after you pull them off of the grill. Heat from the exterior layers will travel in as your steak rests. Make sure to pull it off the grill a good five degrees before you reach your final target.

But what if I don't have a thermometer?

I get it. Thermapens are pretty expensive. With the amount of use mine gets (pretty much every time I cook), it's worth the price, and you can always get a slightly slower inexpensive model like the CDN ProAccurate Quick Read, but what if you're stuck in the woods with no thermometer in hand? Is there anything you can do?

Yes: just go ahead and cut the sucker open to take a peek.

Even slicing won't release too many juices.

I know that everyone tells you you shouldn't poke the meat lest you "risk losing valuable juices," but honestly, the loss is not much. Certainly not enough for you to notice once the steak is done. And given the alternative (overcooked meat that will have lost a noticeable amount of juice), it's the best alternative out there. (More on that subject here.)

Tip #11: Let It Rest!

[Photograph: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

Since I last wrote about resting your meat, there have been some questions called as to the validity of the science behind it. Here is the prevalent theory as to why resting your steak is important (pulled from an older article of mine):

As the steak cooks, the muscle fibers on its exterior tighten, squeezing juices out of its surface. This creates an imbalance of juice in its interior, with most of the liquid being concentrated at the center of the meat. If you cut the steak open as soon as it comes off the grill, the juice has only one place to go—onto your plate. On the other hand, allow the steak to rest until its temperature has normalized, and the juices will distribute themselves more evenly throughout its interior. Cut the steak open, and the juice stays put exactly where it's supposed to be: in the meat.

However, Nathan Myhrvold of the James Beard Best Cookbook Modernist Cuisine (see here for some behind-the-scenes shot of their lab) says otherwise. His claim is that it's not so much about redistribution of moisture, but that it's about the relative viscosity of hot vs. cool liquids. The juices stay in place because they've managed to thicken up a bit as they cool.

In either case, the fact remains: resting your meat work. I recommend resting your steak for about a third of its total cooking time for best results.

Keeping connections fresh is entirely about giving. You are giving someone attention, and you are not asking for anything. It is a pleasant contact for them. And it makes a huge difference. If someone hears from you, even once a year in an email when you don’t need anything, then when you ultimately do need something, it is very comfortable for both parties. But if you haven’t connected with them at all in five years and suddenly, out of nowhere, ask them for something, it becomes very uncomfortable for you and potentially annoying or easy to ignore for them. You may recognize this situation from having been on one or both sides of the exchange.

If you have kept the connection fresh and updated, not only will it be much more natural and comfortable when you need to reach out, but the other party will be much more inclined to actually help you!

Several people who used to work for me check in once or twice a year; they let me know what they are up to, ask how I am doing, send a photo of their family or vacation trip. When one of these people needs a reference, not only am I really glad to do it, but I also do a better job of it than I would for an “out of the blue” contact because I feel like I am not talking about a stranger.

In contrast, there are a few people in my network who contact me every two or three years only when they need a reference, but then never follow up and say thank you or let me know what happened. In one case I had heard through the grapevine that this guy got the job. I sent him a congratulations note, asked about his family, gave him some ideas about people I could introduce him to who might be helpful in his new role--you get the idea. Never heard back. It got to the point where this guy contacted me four times over about six years for a reference, and I never got a single contact other than that. I will forgive people for being busy sometimes, but no one is too busy not to check in or say thank you even once in six years! I still get requests from him; I have just stopped responding.

When I talk about giving things to your network, what I mean is making a connection, offering value, doing a favor, and not asking for anything in return. Here is a list of specific things you can do:

1. Hello: Just say hello or give people a quick update when something interesting happens. Be the one to stay in touch. You are not asking for anything. You like to hear from people; so do they. People appreciate it when you are the one to make the effort to stay in touch.
2. Remember things: Listen. Then follow up later: “Did your son get his black belt?” “Did you buy those Acoustic Audio speakers?” “How is your daughter doing in New York?” It feels good when someone remembers your details. When someone tells me something about their work, their hobbies, or their family, I put a note in my contact database, so the next time I connect with them I can remember and ask.
3. Offer to help: “What is your challenge right now? How I can help you?” I know some really effective salespeople who start every single meeting this way, asking, “Before we get on with the agenda for our meeting, what is going on with you, and how can I help you?”
4. Positive feedback: Most of us live in a professional world with very little positive feedback. How often does someone go out of their way to tell you they admire or appreciate you? When you do this, it stands out, is appreciated, and is memorable. “I was really impressed with [that article, that talk, something gutsy you did in a meeting]—It really made a difference to me. Thank you.” Unsolicited positive feedback is a gift.
5. Say thank you: I can’t tell you how many people don’t do this. There are people I only hear from when they need a reference, and then after I let them know I gave it, I never hear from them again. Saying thank you is a big deal in your network. Thank people a lot and often. For example, keep a list of all the people you contacted during a project or a job search, and send out a note at the end letting everyone know what happened and saying thank you.
6. Follow up: When you ask someone in your network for something (like a reference, advice, an introduction) and she follows through, let her know what happened. Did you get the job? Did the idea work? Most people don’t do this either. I do all kinds of things people request of me and I rarely hear back about what happened. When I do, it is the exception, and I am thrilled. Once I got a call from an executive recruiter while I was driving; a referral I’d made had led to an actual placement, and she wanted to thank me. I almost drove off the road! That’s very rare, indeed.
7. Make an introduction: Be astute about helpful introductions you can make. By doing so you give not just one, but two people a valuable gift without asking for anything in return. Make sure, however, that it’s valuable for both parties; introduce only people you are certain will both benefit from the introduction. That is giving. If you are making an introduction because one of the people needs help and the other can give help, just be clear; in one case you are giving and in the other you are taking.
8. A point of interest or enjoyment: If you remember what is important to people and what they like, it gives you an opportunity to point them to great stuff that you run across like articles, movies, books, music, and events. Food also works! These can be pointers to business articles or resources that relate to their work, or something you think they will enjoy personally, like pointers to music, videos, recipes, photos, podcasts, and so on.
9. Photos: It’s amazing how much of a difference photos can make. A colleague of mine at an agency tried to get a response from a prospect for over a year. Finally he decided to attach a photo from a trip to Italy to one of his emails and he got a response within minutes, thanking him for sharing the photo and opening the door for a conversation. Use photos of things you’ve seen and done, yourself, your family. You always look at them when people send them to you, don’t you? It is a real personal touch. But make sure to either send a link or resize them. Don’t email 8 MB photos!
10. Video mail: Video mail is an excellent way to make a contact as well. And it comes across as a much bigger deal than it actually is! The trick is to think of it and do it. It is a personal and standout way to say hello to someone, and people remember it. Just search the Internet for “free video email.”