Of course I have to open this post with something about how stupid college is. Colleges are finally responding to the problem they charge tons of money and then graduates are unemployable and in debt. Colleges are responding by becoming job preparation centers. And Frank Bruni, opinion editor for the New York Times, says this is a waste of time and resources. Here’s what’s better:

1. Skipping college.
The real issue we have with admitting that college is not a path to the work world is then we have to ask ourselves why we send our kids to high school. There is plenty of data to show that teens are able to manage their lives without the constraints of school. The book Escaping the Endless Adolescence is chock full of data, and a recent article by my favorite journalist, Jennifer Senior, shows that high school is not just unnecessary, but actually damaging to teens who need much more freedom to grow than high school affords.
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One of the first things I wondered about the Farmer when I met him is why he was even reading my blog.

He told me, “I’m an entrepreneur.”

I was hooked. I had no idea what he was talking about. But I could see that I was going to learn a lot from him, and nothing gets me going like a steep learning curve.

That was five years ago. Today, I read all the farming magazines that come to the house, I sit in on meetings with the seed salesman and the accountant who specializes in farms. The Farmer has a rule that I can listen but I have to wait until the end for questions, because people in the farm community are too nice to tell me when I’m asking too many. “But you are,” he tells me. “Just trust me that you are.”
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This post is about productivity. I have to tell you that because this is a career blog and career blogs need topics that fall into the career space. You can’t have a blog that doesn’t have a topic. Even Mark Cuban, who seems to not have a topic because he writes about basketball and colleges and eating at the iHop still has a clear topic: How to make a ton of money.

1. Life is easier if you embrace hardship instead of trying to avoid it.
My blog topic is not how to make a ton of money. It used to be. When I was in my twenties, and early 30s, my focus was money.  But somewhere I realized that I wanted an interesting life more than money. I think it was when I was at Ingram Micro, a Fortune 50 company, and I was blown away at how boring and risk averse everyone was. The Fortune 50 is a study is seeking safety in product lines, in workplace practices, and in a stable life.
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The wage gap, of course, is the gap between men and women. We don’t talk about the wage gap between, say, black men and white men because the causes are so visible. Like, most black boys do not grow up with a father, and in some cities 50% of black men have been in prison.

But we talk about the wage gap between men and women like it is some Escher puzzle that we can solve through infinite stories in the media.

But in fact, the wage gap between men and women is as big a red herring as the gap between black and white men. Women don’t care about workplace stuff and men don’t care about home stuff.

I know that’s a stereotype, a cliche. But it’s a cliche for a reason. I’m right.
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This webinar will help you get the job you thought was out of reach. It could be a position two levels up or something totally new. I’ll show you how to figure out your best next job and get it. It includes four days of of video sessions and email-based course materials. You can purchase this workshop for anytime, on-demand access. The cost is $195.

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I’m going to give you an outline below, of all the stuff I’m going to cover. But one of the things we’ll cover is that you need to solicit advice from people you trust, and then you need to take it, even if it’s hard.

The first piece of advice is that someone said I put too many unflattering photos of myself on my blog. So I hired Tamara Bell, a photographer for the Chicago Bulls, to take my portrait. And I dragged her to the bathroom at my son’s music lesson building because I love the lighting. See? I take advice.
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So much of the world is based on how much people like you. For example, when you are in a job interview, there are three or four other candidates. All are qualified, because no one interviews people who cannot do the job—that would be a total waste of time. This means that interviews are about being enchanting. Whichever of the four candidates who the hiring manager most wants to hang out with all day is the one who gets the job.

The same is true for getting a promotion. Whoever the person in charge likes the most is the one who gets the promotion. And the rent control apartment. And the best match for a tutor. And the best coaching for Little League. It’s always about who is most enchanting. They get all the benefits.

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No one wants to seem old and outdated. The key to avoiding this is learning how to think like the next generation. So recognize what you care about that younger people don’t care about. Not like a house and mortgage – that stuff is dependent on what stage of life you’re in. I’m talking about things that are not dependent on stage of life - values and your outlook, which tend to be more generational.

When it comes to Generation Z, the most jarring shift  is that they’ll be obsessed with the bolstering of public institutions. This is a generation that cares about consensus-building and sticking with the systems that bind us together. And in order to rebuild after crisis, the generation will stress conformity – because noncomformity is a guilty-pleasure of a generation with no crises (like the Baby Boomers growing up in the 50s). Generation Z will focus on being part of the whole rather than differentiating themselves as special.
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I get up at 5am to drive my son to his cello lessons in Chicago. On Saturday he’s in lessons for four hours. I wake him and he says, “No. It’s too early. It’s too hard to drive to Chicago all the time. I can’t do it.”

I don’t say anything. I sit on the side of the bed, in the dark, and I can’t force a seven-year-old to drive sixteen hours a week for cello. This is crazy. I can’t do it.

My son glances over at me from his squishy warm pillow. I decide I’ll let him sleep.

Then he throws off the covers, bounds out of bed and says, “I’m just like the kids in the video! I have to work hard if I want to be great! All great artists suffer! I have to suffer on the drive! Let’s go!”
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I get so many books in the mail to review, and the way I evaluate which ones are worth my time is to first read the jacket flap. So I’m not even going to pretend that I have read Tipping Sacred Cows, by Jake Breeden, but I’m going to tell you that it has an amazing jacket flap.

He lists sacred cows in corporate life that we should reconsider:

Balance: Disguising indecision as a bland compromise that attempts to achieve many things but ends up accomplishing nothing

Collaboration: Creating a culture of learned helplessness with little individual empowerment and accountability
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I’m at my son’s cello lesson, thinking about this week’s Time magazine. Sheryl Sandberg’s on the cover.

I never used to write about women on my blog. I wrote for three national magazines about careers before I even acknowledged that I was a woman aside from saying

1. I got the column because I was a woman running tech companies. (Rare back then.)

2. I got a promotion because I leveraged the sexual harassment my boss dished out in order to climb the ladder (around him).

Other than that, I tried very hard to not mention women. I could see that women who had kids got very little respect at the office and I stayed away from them. I only hired men. Even after I had kids, I only worked with men.
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