One reason I have achieved so much in my own career is that I’ve taken shortcuts. For example, I played professional beach volleyball without learning how to play indoor sixes very well—I can really only play doubles, which is what people play on the sand. But it allowed me to skip a lot of years of indoor volleyball training and still play pro.

I'm always fascinated by people who find shortcuts. Tim Ferriss is a shortcut taker, but he totally annoys me because he pretends his shortcuts don't mean he still had to do hard work. One of the reasons I was initially attracted to the Farmer is that he is good at knowing what shortcuts to take and he values hard work.

Just last week, in fact, he moved his pigs to a new barn, where they will be able to mix with the cattle herd. It's not something anyone in our area does, but he had a hunch it would work, and now he manages one herd instead of two. I love that I'm learning the rules of farming by watching the Farmer cut corners.

In lists of the most common New Year’s resolutions, most are career-related. So I thought I’d take a look at the most common things people tell me they want to do, and I’d tell you shortcuts to getting to that goal. Because I'm pretty good at learning the rules and then figuring out how to work around them. This still means you have to do some hard work, of course, but it's a smarter way to spend your energy and still get to what you want.

Goal: Get a book deal
First of all, I'm not convinced that people need to get a book deal. That said, if you want to get a book published, don’t write the book until you write the proposal. That’s how you get a book deal – from a ten-page proposal, not an actual book. So here’s what you should do: Write a proposal and if you don’t get a book deal from it, write another. It’s a lot easier to write ten proposals to get one book deal than to write a book that no one bids on. And, if you don’t invest tons of time in one, single proposal then you won’t feel bad if you find out the proposal sucks. Because you’ve got another in the hopper. Here are tips from my agent on how to get a six-figure book deal.

Goal: Sell your company
You don’t actually need to have a big exit. You just need to build something and then, well, sort of give it away. Because the idea of “selling a company” is actually just the idea that you build something that someone else wanted. Sure, $10 million would be great. But so few people get that much money for their company. It’s much more common to get somewhere around $100,000 when all is said and done.

And yes, that’s a lot of money, but you’d probably still work after that size exit, and you’d probably change very little in your life. The value would be that you built something that someone wanted. So sell your company by finding someone who can use what you’ve built and will give you a small, token fee ($10) but a good job at the company. You can use that staff position as a break while you figure out what company to do next. And maybe you'll start a company and sell it all over again.

Goal: Change careers
You’re going to need to show you’ve done the new job before you can get the new job. It’s not fair, I know. But it’s how the world works. So just make up a job, do it, and then put it on your resume. You don’t need pay or permission to do the job you want. Just start doing it. And if you already have the job you want on your resume, you’re much more likely to get hired for the job you want.

Are you worried about being exposed as a fake in an interview? First of all, there’s not a law that says you can’t have unpaid jobs on your resume. And you can have freelance jobs. So that’s what a made-up job is: freelance, for free. And then keep at it so that when an interviewer wants to talk about this job and what you gained from doing it, you will look great. Because you’ll say you made the job up, to get yourself experience, and here’s what you did, and here’s what you learned, and you’ll look like a self-starter and a results-oriented super-performer. Because only that sort of someone would make up a job and then do it to gain experience.

Goal: Skip entry-level drudgery
Start a blog. Think of a blog like a high-end resume. Most peoples’ resumes are a list of the jobs they’ve done that never show how you bring great ideas wherever you go. A blog, on the other hand, is a list of your ideas. You tell the world your opinions regarding your industry or interest. If you have good ideas, people will start listening. But you have to keep writing, to keep trying to find your niche and the audience for your niche. When you get the influencers in your industry to read you, then you become a respected voice in the arena. And that’s your ticket to a beyond-entry-level job because people who listen to you will also be willing to help you get a job. (Want to get a jump-start on your blog? Try Blogging Bootcamp.)

Goal: Launch a consumer product
Don’t sell the product direct to consumers. That’s the hard route because you have to build your own sales channel. Instead just make a prototype and sell it to retail buyers. Those buyers have a lot more power than a single consumer. And if your core-competency is product design, then you don’t want to spend all your time marketing to consumers. So get the prototype done and if you have no bites, then make another prototype and try again.

This will make your failure cycle go fast, which is one of the key factors in finding huge success. It’s rare to have a big win on your first try. But it’s universal that the way to get through failure is to keep trying when other people would stop.

Goal: Become a writer
People ask me about this goal more than any other. And here's my advice: Just write. No one can write more than three hours a day. And most of us can find an extra three hours to do what we love. You are already a writer. No one has to give you permission to do what you love.

Of course, this is the problem with most New Year's resolutions – that the only thing between us and our goals is self-discipline.

I know you’re thinking that the workplace is dead between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but actually, December is a great time for careers. Here are five reasons why:

1.     Job hunting is great in December.
January is the biggest month for hiring, but December is the second-best month for a job hunt. This is because people have budget allocated for jobs on a yearly basis. And if they don’t fill those jobs, they lose the position in the new budget. So all those hard-to-fill positions have to get filled no matter what this month. Also, people have money they did not spend in other areas that they can put toward a new hire. But they don’t know if they have that money until the end of the year. This all makes for a hiring frenzy in December, and since most candidates don’t realize this, the candidate pool is not as full in December either.

2.     The path to a promotion is shortest in December.
It’s true that everyone who has lots of power at your company is gone by the middle of December. And it’s true that you will spend a lot of time wishing you did not have to work in December. But there are plenty perks from being at the office in December. And one of them is that if anything important flies through the door, the person who usually handles important stuff will be gone. This is an opportunity for you to step up. Keep an eye out for something big. Something too big for the people who are left in the office. And that’s when you should volunteer to work late. Take on that job. You’ll look like a great team player, and you’ll get great experience to boot.

 3.     Jewish solidarity feels strongest in December.
In general, the Jews lay low. We don’t like to draw attention to ourselves at work. And we don’t like to bug people about being Jewish. We don’t want you to become Jewish. We just want you to leave us alone when we need to do things like take off seven, random days in October for a slew of Jewish holidays that are not nearly as well marketed as Chanukah. This doesn’t mean, though, that we are not annoyed with all the Christmas stuff. We are annoyed when you say “Happy Holidays” because we know it means “Merry Christmas to those of you who don’t celebrate it.” In fact, we are annoyed by a lot in December. And it makes being Jewish feel a little bit better, in a Woody Allen kind of way.

4.     Everyone has their kids home.
I spend most of my days going nuts trying to do homeschooling and work at the same time. It’s pretty safe to say that my career has taken a hit  and that I am going nuts trying to figure out how to do both. So I’m really looking forward to the two weeks that everyone has their kids out of school. Those two weeks I’ll look like the queen of managing parenting and work while everyone else is more discombobulated than I am because they only do this two weeks out of the year.

5.     Hookups!
It turns out that 40% of people have had hookups at holiday parties, according to Ruth Houston, an infidelity expert. And Trojan reports that most men are willing to have sex with someone they meet at the holiday party. (But then I wonder if Trojan ever did a poll to find out when men aren’t willing to have sex with someone they meet?)

I told this to my brother and he pointed out that most people have been to ten holiday parties by the time they are thirty. So he thinks people are underreporting their hookups.

Whatever the true number, here’s some advice.

Men: women who earn more money are accustomed to receiving more oral sex. So choose your target with your own capabilities in mind.

Women: If you are not the same age as the guy then let him make the first move. Statistically, the match is more likely to stick if you follow that advice. And here’s some more advice about how to get the guy  you work with.

When things got really bad — me trying to do everything, and me having marriage trouble — Melissa said, "You need a vacation." So the boys and Melissa and I went to Hermosa Beach. We stayed at a hotel called The Beach House. It's right on the ocean, and it's in front of volleyball courts I used to play on when I was on the pro circuit and too poor to stay in hotels as nice as this one.

I thought the best part of the vacation would be the hotel. It's dreamy – with a perfect balcony and a fireplace, and soft thick towels that I never had to wash.

But it turned out that the best part was watching the kids learn. The hotel was the facilitator.

The first thing the kids did was line up their Pokemon everywhere so the place felt like home.

Then we went to the ocean. I taught them about the undertow, and the way the water rises when a wave comes. And I told them that one kid dies every day in the dangers of the ocean. I made up the statistic, but I think it must be true, in some way.

I had this idea that I was not going to go in the water. I had this idea that the kids would be intimidated by the waves. But every time they got knocked over, they loved the waves more. And then I found, so did I.

When people talk about their job, they are really talking about their learning. When we say, "What do you do?" we really mean what do you learn? Because that's what makes a person interesting – what they are learning. No one wants to answer the question what do you do if they have a job where they  are not learning. That's how you know it's the learning that matters.

I've noticed that when I coach people, they are really looking for a job that will allow them to learn in the area they are most suited to learn. So, for example, an ENTJ (me) learns best while leading people. And an INFP learns best by talking one-on-one to other people. An ISTP (the Farmer) learns best using their hands. (Wondering what your personality type is? Take this free test.)

I'm also fascinated by the impact our surroundings have on our ability to learn. So often people blame their surroundings for the fact that they are not learning, and in this case, I think the calm, peaceful surroundings made us our best learning selves. That night, Melissa edited photos, and I sorted links to research I like, and the boys read themselves to sleep, sand still spilling from their hair.

The next morning, the kids took ownership of the vacation. I thought we should go back to the beach. "We are never at the beach," I told the kids. But my youngest son noticed the bike rental place next door to the hotel. There is such great research about how if you leave kids alone, they will learn what is best for them to learn right at that moment. And I realized, I was seeing that research in action, right now, so I gave up on my idea of going to the beach.

We moved to the farm at the time in my son's life when he would have learned to ride a two-wheeler. But we have no roads to ride on at the farm. So he learned on the boardwalk in front of our hotel.

He fell 100 times.

It was amazing to watch him get back up on the bike, over and over again. It was also amazing to watch people watch him. People passing said, "Pedal! Pedal! That's it!" And when he gathered some speed, people clapped and cheered.

We all love to learn and we love to watch it. We just have to find our best spot to do it. If you don't know what job you should do next, ask yourself what you'd like to learn next. And if you don't know that, ask yourself how you feel most comfortable learning.

You were born knowing what you'd like to learn at any given moment. When you get stuck, it's the shoulds that hold you back — what you should be when you grow up, what you should earn, what potential you should fill — all the shoulds get in the way of you being who you really are.

We are all bike riders falling 100 times in a day.

This is probably where the drama should be: The Farmer is essentially starting a new business. I have always thought he would do a great job on his own and it's been fun to watch him.

He is experimenting, trying to figure out what he wants. This summer, for example, he let the pigs graze in our field of sweet corn after the season was done.

It's hard for me to understand how revolutionary this is. Knowing very little about pigs or sweet corn, it seems logical to me that the pigs are next to the field, so why not let them eat what they want? But the Farmer keeps telling me that other farmers would think he's crazy.

Then I think, "What? More crazy than you living out here with me and the kids?"

The Farmer will earn less money farming his smaller farm instead of combining it with his parents' farm. But it's a no-brainer. The pay cut is a small price to pay to get emotional independence.

To me and the Farmer it's obvious that he's making a good move for himself. Yet I see lots of other people in this situation: start over and take a pay cut or keep finances stable. The majority of people choose stability, even thought they shouldn't.

So this post is about when it's okay to take a pay cut.

If you want to change careers. Look, you are stopping doing something that you know how to do, and you are going to start doing something you have not done before. Why would you think you will not take a pay cut? Don't be a brat. Take the cut.

If you are over 40 years old. Pay peaks about age 40 for everyone except surgeons and lawyers. So if you are 40 and job hunting, take a pay cut. It's not going to kill you, but holding out for a raise might lead to fears of starvation.

If you have been unemployed for six months. Statistically speaking, you will have to take a pay cut to re-enter the workforce. So instead of holding out to be a superhero of job hunts, just take a job. So much of our self-worth comes from working that ditching unemployment far outweighs avoiding a pay cut.

If you're relocating back to family. Research from Nattavudh Powdthavee of the University of London shows that to make up for the decrease in happiness that you experience when you leave family and friends, you would need to make $133,000 more than you were earning before the relocation. So it stands to reason that you can take a substantial pay cut to move closer to family and still gain a net happiness benefit because close relationships are so important to one's happiness.

If you will get a great boss. When it comes to the job hunt, getting a boss who will be a great mentor matters more than the job you'll be doing for that boss. The number-one factor that determines your earning power is your schooling. The number-two factor is the quality of mentoring you get. Since most of you are out of school, mentoring should be your number-one concern, and you'll more than make up for a pay cut by gaining a good mentor.

If you are having mental health problems from not working. Work provides a lot of things:  a sense of belonging, sense of purpose, structure and balance to a day, as well as financial security. You can get all these things by short-circuiting your job hunt and taking a lower-paying job. Wondering if you are having problems big enough to qualify for this one? Are you gaining weight during unemployment? That's a sign that you're masking new emotional problems. Get a job.

If you need better insurance. Taking a pay cut to get better insurance is like buying peace of mind. And at a bargain rate, really. If all you need to do is take a pay cut to know that you will not go bankrupt from medical bills (the most common cause of bankruptcy, by the way) then it's worth it. Also, I often contemplate becoming a customer service rep at Microsoft so I can get to their amazing health coverage for kids with Autism. (Asperger's is genetic, and Microsoft knows their employee pool, you've gotta give them that.)

Okay. Look. Can you tell by now that a pay cut is always fine? Really, the only exception would be when you have a job you love. Because we are all looking for a career that provides stability, engagement and a way to support us financially, and often that comes in the form of a pay cut.

You are not your salary. You are not worth less in the world because you are paid less in your job. Get your self-worth from a wide range of things and a pay cut won't matter to you. Focus on the components of a good job: learning, personal growth, friends at work, and a good family life. All those things are worth a lot more than a pay cut.

I keep thinking I want to put this picture online. And then I think, I can’t. I’m too sad. I need a picture of me moping.

This feeling reminds me of  when I was younger, it was very hard for me to get a job, and also hard for me to keep one. I was job hunting all the time.

Job hunting is an insane way to live. You are a depressed, scared, unemployed person and the key to getting out of it is to make yourself into a happy, confident, go-getter.

When I was job hunting, I had tricks for giving myself confidence. I’d try to schedule interviews in the late morning. This would give me time to get my spririts up, but it would not require me holding them up for too long — for say, an end-of-the-day interview.

Other stuff I would do that works:

Go to the gym. The emotional boost you get from the gym can last a few hours if you work out hard enough. When I’m at the gym to change my mood, I do intervals.

Shower and put on makeup right away so that I know the day is serious and there’s no crying.

Don’t eat. If you don’t eat, you are happier. This is not true for people who are starving and dragging themselves across the desert in search of a refugee camp. You know that. But you might not have known that being hungry helps you focus and connect with other people. It’s probably a survival instinct. If you don’t have berries you have to get someone in the group to give you berries. (Which, come to think of it, is not far from the workplace interview situation.)

I am trying to remind myself that I am great at turning things around. Every time I thought my life was hopeless and I’d never get a job and I’d never be happy again, I'd always get a job. Eventually. And things would turn around. At least for a little.

Today, when work isn’t going well, I have this magic place I can go in my head where I just trust that things will work out. I will figure out a better way to make money, I will find someone I want as a business partner. People will forget that I did something stupid.  These are things I tell myself.

The most powerful career tool I have is faith in myself. It allows me to move through ups and downs with the grace I did not have when I was younger.

But I don’t have that with my personal life. You know that feeling you have that you are going to die if you don’t get a job? That’s what I have almost every day living with the Farmer.

Some days are good. And I try to write about those days. I want to show you the same optimism with my personal life that I have with my career.

But I actually feel hopeless. I have that feeling I used to have when I was unemployed. Like I wished the world would end. I think I am not alone — other people have this feeling when they are unemployed. But people do not talk like this when they are unemployed because they’ll never get hired.

I know that if I don't do anything to make a change, then nothing will change. So today I decide that we should talk. He is in the field. Baling hay.

So I walk out there, a few feet onto the field, which is the universal signal on a farm for "I want to talk to you when you come around to this side of the field."

The Farmer gets out of the tractor to talk with me. But after a couple of minutes he realizes he doesn’t want to talk with me. (We have this problem a lot.) So he  walks away, gets back on the tractor and starts to drive off.

I walk in front of the tractor so he will stop and talk to me. He drives it into me, so I jump on top of the front. He keeps driving. It is very hard for me to keep from falling off.

I am screaming, "Stop driving!" and he is ignoring me.

I think that’s the picture of our relationship, right there. I want to talk, he doesn’t, so we do terrible stuff together. I put myself in danger, and he goes along with it by saying that I’m crazy.

We repeat this cycle over and over again. (Here's another example.) And the people who are suffering the most are the kids. They did not see the field today. But I'm not kidding myself: There is no way we are hiding the larger problem from them.

It’s insane that I just opened up a huge discussion about homeschooling when I don’t feel like this is the right home for the kids. It’s insane that I’m starting a company when I know the company will take time away from my marriage when marriage is already sucking.

I feel insane right now. The only thing that grounds me is my ability to earn money. I know I can do fun, meaningful things in my career, and even though I'm not great at money management, I can support my kids.

The person I want to be is the person who believes in the strength of my family no matter what confronts us. I want to feel, in my heart, that things will be fine, and then it'll show in my face all the time. But I am only that way about my career.  I wish the skills were transferable, but I don’t think they are.

We picked Sparky at the pound because my son wanted a lap dog. I am not a fan of lap dogs. They scream Paris Hilton to me. A study at the University of California at San Diego confirms our hunches that people pick dogs that resemble them, and sure enough, the rat terrier is like my son in that they are both delicate and jumpy. I think I am more labrador—strong and fun—so I thought I was being an extra good mom getting a dog I would never choose myself.

At the dog pound, Sparky sat in my son’s lap, but as soon as we got him home, he looked for larger laps. It turns out, Sparky prefers adults. At first we thought it was my son’s jumpiness. We told the kids to be calm around the dog.

But the dog got snappier as the week went on. And growly.

During this time, however, the Farmer and I were becoming attached to him. Sparky jumped into our laps every chance he got, and his rat terrier nature meant that  he would find a snuggly part for his nose every time he sat down. He is kissy and cuddly and loving. To adults.

So I said we had to give him back. I am mercenary in this way. Very practical. The point was to get my son a dog because dogs are calming for people with Aspergers. And the dog hates kids, so the dog has to go.

The Farmer, who does not have Aspergers, fell in love with the dog. And the Farmer, who said when I met him that he did not want animals in the house, now proposed that we get two dogs. One for the adults and one for the kids.

So, the Farmer was at my goat mentor’s house, and she needed to get rid of her dog because he bit a goat. The dog was big and good with kids, so the Farmer brought him home as a surprise: Max.

If Max and the Farmer were in that University of California study, everyone could have pegged them as a pair. Max is strong, sturdy, a little scraggly and has a sort of a slouch like he holds the weight of the world on his shoulders. Just like the Farmer.

It turns out that Max wants to be petted every second. He wants to sit in the kids’ laps. He follows the kids around. And, the truth is he has no interest in the goats—he just wanted someone to play with.

Sparky sees all the attention that Max gets, and it turns out Sparky can be nice to kids after all. He doesn’t want to be left out.

So now, everyone is happy. Sparky is nice to the kids, and Max is no longer nipping goats to get attention.

And I can’t help noticing that this illustrates three truths about hiring and firing employees:

1. Initial selection is largely dependent on being similar to the hiring manager. The term for choosing people (and dogs) who are like you is homophily. Miller McPhearson, a sociologist at University of Arizona, confirms that race and ethnic background are the biggest factors in this selection process. But those of you who are upper-middle class have a different set of hiring criteria to meet. Lauren Rivera, at Kellog School of Management, shows that when it comes to the upper-middle class, hiring managers discriminate based on extracurricular activities and how you dress rather than on race and ethnicity.

2. If the boss likes an employee, it doesn’t matter how terrible he is to everyone else. The employee will not get fired. So often people write to me to tell me that their co-worker is terrible but never gets fired. This is how the world works. It's such a ubiquitous problem that Bob Sutton, professor at Stanford Business School, wrote the book The No Asshole Rule to quantify the costs of keeping a jerk instead of firing him. (The cost, by the way, is about $150,000 year.) The only thing you can do is work to become as well liked by your boss as the terrible co-worker is.

3.  Bringing in someone new to the team can make everyone change, in unexpected ways. People are always responding to each other—everyone changes as other people enter the picture. Sometimes this means the leader introduces someone who is not as talented as others, but has a good personality, to help the team. Sometimes you have to experiment. We got lucky with Max. Which is good, because I don’t think I could handle a third dog.

Photos by Melissa Sconyers.

Ian’s is located right on the Wisconsin State Capitol, where 70,000 people are protesting that Governor Walker is repealing almost all collective bargaining rights of public workers. For the last six days of protests, Ian’s has been taking orders from all over the world — Korea, Egypt, New Zealand, and 51 states – to deliver pizzas to the protesters. Ian’s keeps track of worldwide pizza support on a blackboard:

It’s a nice story. But the issue in Wisconsin is more fundamental than pro-labor or anti-labor. The issue is that the workforce is changing. Some of the groups having the hardest time dealing with this change are the unions, and protesting change is not going to help.

1. Recognize when you’re in a dead sector, and shift.
I don’t think we need unions anymore. I think they are leftover from a different type of workplace and a different type of economy. I am not revolutionary in saying that we don’t need unions.

In general, I’d have to say that the non-union part of the work world is sick of unions wielding insane powers that are anachronistic and unrealistic. Maybe I could understand this if it was 1880 and we had children working in factories. Maybe I could understand this if all government work were as unappealing as being a garbage collector. But in fact, government jobs are so insanely cushy, for their stability, that it’s one of Gen Y’s favorite sectors to work.

So many people are frantically reacting to a shifting job market – journalists, travel agents, lawyers, all these sectors are changing rapidly right now, and careers are being destroyed. But other opportunities are growing. Instead of lamenting that your job is changing for the worst, find out what new jobs are emerging because of the change, and make a change yourself.

2. Create stability for yourself with new career tools.
A sustainable career today involves constant job changes, lots of career changes, and an entrepreneurial spirit. For example, the average Gen Y-er starts looking for a job on the third day of their current job. Not because they are disloyal, but because they are realistic in that no job lasts forever, and few last even two years. Career changes used to be something saved for mid-life crises, but today, people can expect to change careers five times, which means that the idea of a pension is off the radar. Finally entrepreneurship is so popular today because it’s a safety net for an unreliable workplace.

Unions are not part of this equation. Unions trade on their ability to protect peoples’ jobs over the long-term. But this assurance is ananchronistic and not appropriate for the reality of today’s workforce.

3. Stop focusing on the meta. Just fix your life.
So many people say they can’t get a job because it’s a bad economy. But you know what? There are enough jobs. You can’t get a job because you’re bad at job hunting. You’re bad at marketing yourself and you’re bad at shifting as the economy shifts.

No career was ever saved by blaming someone else for your troubles. So look, it’s true that Scott Walker was selective in the unions he’s trouncing. He’s picking on teachers and leaving police alone. So, yes, it’s conniving, but so what? Of course he has to be conniving to disband government unions.

But it doesn’t matter, because the demise of government benefits is inevitable. It’s inevitable that unions would be killed – either by lack of interest or government action. Their time has come. Stop blaming people and just move on.

4. Stop picking jobs based on long-term benefits.
This is a worldwide problem, not a Wisconsin problem. So if you think it’s not gonna happen to you, you’re wrong. The era of benefits is over, so stop picking your jobs based on the benefits.

Here’s the math: Baby boomers are huge, Gen X is relatively tiny, which means demographically speaking, there are not enough people in this country to support the generation that is retiring.

(I will now quote tons of economist things from my brother, Marc, who has a PhD from University of Chicago in economics and he’s smart enough to go into hedge funds instead of teaching, but not so smart that he doesn’t stop talking to me even though he thinks every time I write about him on my blog I misquote him.)

Anyway, he says this demographics thing is a worldwide problem, and it is worst for countries like Japan, France, and China, where the birth rate is tiny compared to the earlier generation. (The developed economies that do not have this problem are the Middle East and Israel.

“What? I said to my brother. We don’t put Israel in the Middle East?”

“Economist consider Israel’s economy to be tied to Europe’s.” )

The only way to fix this problem is to renege on the benefits that states have promised government workers. The US economy simply cannot grow enough to solve the problem any other way.

5. Getting fired is a gift.
It is absolutely insane that teachers in unions cannot be fired. One of the first things Michael Bloomberg, mayor of NYC, did when he got control of the public schools is that he started firing teachers who did not perform well. He had a knock-down drag-out fight with the union and he won.

Because how else can schools improve if teachers can’t lose their jobs? You know what? Some of those tenured teachers suck. We all know that. And it’s not helping anyone – the teachers or the kids – to keep teachers who can’t teach.  One of the best part of a fluid workforce is that you have to find where you fit well in order to get some security.

Wisconsin public schools are among the lowest performing in the country. So it makes sense to me that this is one of the first teacher’s unions to get dissolved. And, this is a great example of how a union has outlasted its usefulness to the community.

6. Change is exciting. It opens new doors.
Look at Ian’s. They watched changed and they figured out where they fit in, and they actually did well by embracing change. You can do that, too. Don’t blame other people for your problems. Don’t try to stop the path of change. Each of us has gifts that we can use in any type of workforce. We just need to be flexible enough to see our own potential.

Two months ago, I wasn't satisfied with my job. I was a communications/administrative assistant. I'd been with the company almost two years, and it was clear there were no opportunities for advancement.

So, just weeks after turning 26 years old, I took a temp job.

I'm not a risk taker, and I was hesitant because accepting the new job meant giving up paid sick time, vacation time, and health insurance, which my employer paid for, and I have no guarantee that I'll be employed in January.

But the enjoyment I have after a 10-hour day confirms that I made the right choice. And I'm not alone. Nearly 28,000 people became temporary workers in September, and I don’t think it’s all due to people not being able to find full-time work. I think it’s because in many cases, a temp job is better than a full-time job.

I know no one dreams of being a temp worker, but it might be the best alternative in today’s economy. Here’s why you should do what I did:

1. Focus on building your resume.
Presently, I work with HTML and XML for a well-known Internet retailer, instead of answering phones and ordering office supplies. My temp job is better for my resume because I'm building skills. The full-time jobwas a dead end. The skills I'm acquiring make me more qualified for full-time jobs I want, at this company or other companies in Seattle.

2. Think of your network in a job, not your longevity in a job.
A temp job where you do interesting stuff with interesting people is better for your network than bad full-time job. Right now, I enjoy my work much more than what I was doing before, so I have a better disposition for meeting people in my professional life.

Studies rarely cite long-term viability as a key component of job satisfaction, but liking who you work with always makes the list. My coworkers are intelligent, highly motivated people who take initiative — and they're young. Everyone in my department is under 35, including my boss. The company culture is driven and innovative. Ideas are encouraged. The department has expanded greatly within the past year, so a lot of people are new. They are learning what works together, and working very, very hard to accomplish common goals.

3. Get your own health insurance.
When I was a kid, health insurance through my mom's job was too expensive, so I didn't have insurance until I was 22, when I started my first job after college.

My previous employer paid for my health insurance, which I think is rare. I knew I wanted health insurance, even if it was less coverage than I had before. I did the math, and purchasing my own health insurance was several hundred dollars cheaper than a monthly COBRA payment.

Now I pay for a plan with a higher deductible and fewer benefits, through the same health insurance company. I don't have dental or vision coverage, so I'm relying on the glory of being 26 and generally healthy.

4. Shore up finances.
I can defer student loans while I'm unemployed, and save almost $300 a month by doing so. And I can file for unemployment. After this, I will be able to cover rent and groceries, but nothing else. So I think I'll be able to scrape by for a few months, or I'll take a retail job with a significant pay cut, while I look for suitable full-time work.

5. Look for stability somewhere else.
The stability of my personal life counters my unstable work life. Having a long-term boyfriend who is supportive helps keep me calm and look at the big picture. My friends, also in their 20s, are trying to find what work they enjoy, and what they want from their careers. We commiserate about working jobs we don't like to pay the bills, and celebrate promotions or new jobs. Having a sense of community makes a big difference. A supportive social circle counters the weight of looming unemployment.

This is a guest post from Ali Brown.

We read about how scared young people are, and how desperate they are for a job, but we don’t hear the other side: That young people are optimistic about their careers, their future and are doing well in the American economy. Underreported stories: Washington, D.C. is the easiest city to find a job, and young people love government jobs; farming is in a renaissance, and the local food movement is teeming with young people; healthcare and teaching are both booming; and while service-oriented work is hated by the top-down, rank-oriented mindset of baby boomers, Gen Y is much more collaborative and happy to work in the service sector.

Here’s another bit of evidence of Gen Y optimism: The Wall Street Journal reports that applications to business schools are down 2%. That’s a small decrease, but business school applications historically go up in a bad economy, and they stay up until things get good again. That applications are down is evidence that young people do not perceive the job market as terrible.

As the country moves to a knowledge-based economy, most Americans can no longer expect to earn more than the generation before them. In fact, Don Peck, writing in the Atlantic, explains that as the economy recovers it will look permanently different. This will not be a recovery where the skills of older people come back into demand; the jobs that emerge will be in new sectors, and the financial expectations of employees will permanently shift because of the new realities.

Young people know this. They are not waiting around for things to change, to get back to how they used to be. Young people accept the realities of today and jump right in. This is why young people on a whole are optimistic about their ability to get a job and find their place in the world. The 2010 MetLife Study of the American Dream finds that young people are more optimistic than older people about securing a safety net if they don't already have one. Also, while Gen Y is in terrible shape financially – increased college loans and lower entry-level wages-this is also a generation that defines the American Dream in terms of family, rather than financial security, so Gen Yers feel confident they will achieve their own version of success.

Additionally, the demographics of the U.S. workplace favor Generation Y: As baby boomers retire, Gen X, which is only half the size of Baby Boomers, cannot replace them. So there will be a significant worker shortage in the U.S. by 2015. Generation y will benefit from the worker shortage. They will get higher paying jobs faster, they will go up the corporate ladder faster, and they will be able to remake the workplace in their own image without much resistance.

You can call Gen Y entitled, or delusional, or self-centered, but Gen Y has a gift for reframing situations in a positive light. This is a gift that stems from the parents of gen Y being obsessed with self-esteem. Self-esteem breeds optimism, and this optimism makes Gen Y emotionally able to fend off the recession better than other generations.

Even better, optimism helps fight the bad economy in real ways as well. Psychology Today shows that people who are optimistic are more likely to create their own luck. We all know that a successful career is a combination of hard work and good luck. So maybe if you thought more like Gen Y, you'd be doing fine right now as well.

Here’s why:

1) Structure leads to achievement
People who add structure to their day are more likely to get other stuff done. There’s a ripple effect. This is probably why most highly successful people are early risers. It’s not that you can’t be a night owl to be successful. It’s that if you start your day with structure, you are more able to reach a wide range of goals. Happiness is about structure and self-discipline, not a good job.

2) You don’t need time to job-hunt.
Often, people think they need an open day to job hunt. That doesn’t make sense. Job-hunting does not take all day. You could think of job-hunting as something we do nonstop – which means you can do it when you have a job. You can also think of job-hunting as doing the difficult work of connecting with people and looking for an opening in your network, and that’s certainly not something you can do all day. It’s too hard. So a bad job does not interfere with a good job hunt. (And if you are wondering if you know how to run a good job hunt, take this test.)

3) Telling yourself you can do anything is paralyzing
If you tell yourself the world is at your fingertips and you must get a good job, you end up not taking anything. Sheena Iyengar, professor at Columbia University who studies how people make choices, says, "When there are too many choices the process can be confusing and frustrating, and instead of being overwhelmed by choice we become afraid. Choice turns into not opening opportunities but offering constraints." Because of this human trait, it's important just to take action – see what's in front of you and make a choice, even if you think there are many better choices there. A job is not marriage. It might not even be a long-term relationship. And that's okay.

4) Picking jobs is a lot of luck
You know the saying that lucky people create their own luck? For the unemployed, that means taking almost any job. People get lucky at work – someone mentors them, a big project lands in your lap, you catch a huge error and save a lot of money. But no one gets lucky in a job without actually being in a job. Also, Iyengar points out the inherent struggle of deciding between jobs: There are many things factors that are simply unknown. We usually have no idea, for instance, about the things that really make or break a job - like if you will get good training on the job, or if the job description will even turn out to be true.

5) A job does not define you
You are not going to find happiness from your job - that comes from personal relationships. Most importantly, a lot of people get paralyzed while they are unemployed because they feel like they are not living up to their potential. But I've got news for you: Living up to your potential is BS. What does that mean, really? I think it means impressing your friends, or, worse, your parents, and you have better things to aim for in life than that.

The good news is that when you're unemployed you are at an inflection point. Something new has to happen in order for you to move you to your next step in your life. And that's always exciting, even if it takes a long time. And if you keep looking at it this way – unemployment is an opportunity – then you'll do well because, frankly, optimists get better jobs.