Five ways to feel less guilty quitting — and why Gen Y feels guilt giving notice

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I write posts about how to quit because so many people ask me for advice, but I marvel that this is such a big issue.

I have no memory of any of my Gen-X peers having this problem. Maybe because when we were in our twenties there were not jobs to consider quitting. But I think the real issue is that Gen Y is one of the most loyal generations to come along in a while.

Just because young people job hop constantly doesn’t mean they are not loyal. In fact, the reason they job hop is undying loyalty to the values their parents raised them with: Value your time (remember those overscheduled after-school superstars?) and always learn new things (Gen Y is the most educated generation, ever).

So Generation Y leaves a job when there is not great personal growth. But in each job they have, they are great at asking people to help them, so they generally feel guilt when they leave one of those people for a new job offer — because Gen Y feels loyal to people who help them.

And, one more guilt factor: Gen Y are great team players. Team players in a way that Gen X and the Baby Boomers can’t touch. So quitting a job to Gen Y is jilting the team, and they feel bad.

Mangers need to understand these issues when a young person is quitting. That young person probably has a lot of guilt, and you could make their life better by congratulating them on their new move and thanking them for their work and assuring them things will be fine when they leave.

If you are a young person worrying about quitting, though, here’s a reality check. The company is going to be fine when you leave. There’s no need for guilt. And here’s why:

1. Money talks.
And at the entry level it says: “Easily replaced.” If you are paid a low salary then the office is not going to be disabled if you leave. If you are so important and so difficult to replace then they can pay more and hire someone quickly. That’s why essential people are highly paid.

2. If you have a good boss, your boss knew you were looking.
Most people under 30 are job hunting – at least passively – all the time. It should not be news to your boss that you are in an entry level job and would quit if someone offered you a better job. And if you are entry level then most jobs are better than what you have, so the odds of you leaving at any moment are huge, no matter how nice your boss is to you.

3. Your company has little loyalty to you.
If your company laid you off, they’d give you two weeks’ notice. That’s how the work world works. Play by the rules. Give two weeks notice. If your boss is so desperate without you she can double your salary to keep you there, right? And she probably won’t do that. The two weeks’ rule is there because once people know about an upcoming separation, the workplace dynamic changes, and the less time you have to deal with this dynamic the more productive everyone will be.

4. Good mentors care about you and want to see you grow.
If someone has been a good mentor to you then you owe it to them not to screw them. This means, don’t let them go to bat for you to — like, get you a raise — if you’re quitting the next day. But if someone has been a good mentor and you have been a good mentee, then you don’t owe the person more than telling him or her when you have a new job. Two weeks is fine.

5. A don’t-ask-don’t-tell approach works.
Do not tell your boss you are looking for a new job when you do not have a new job. There is nothing she can do in response to that. She can’t hire someone new yet, because you’re not gone and you have no idea when you’ll actually get another job. So telling her doesn’t help anyone, it just adds tension at work.

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My 9/11 day. My husband. The meaning of my to-do list.

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I was standing at the bottom of the Word Trade Center when it fell. I was standing so close that I didn’t know it fell. I thought earthquake, until I couldn’t breathe. Then I thought nuclear bomb.

Now, when I let my head go back to that day, there are two moments I most easily go back to:

Moment 1: At one point I was with five men in dress shirts and ties totally covered with debris. We had each climbed into a bank next to the World Trade Center site. Debris coated our throats and we had all just fought over who got to drink water out of the toilet. When it turned out there was enough water, we went together to a hallway and sat on the floor. I started crying. The guys looked at me like I was going to be trouble and moved away. But one guy put his arm around me.

Moment 2: Minutes later. The men and I split up outside and lost each other quickly. None of us had any idea where we were. There was no one walking. I was all alone. I was still so disoriented that I didn’t know the building fell, even though I was walking at the site. Then some woman, wearing completely clean clothing, took my hand and told me to walk with her. She shepherded me nearly ten miles on foot, patiently waiting through my many screaming panic attacks, to her apartment on the Upper West Side.

Those are the two scenes I usually think about when I think about 9/11. But sometimes, if I am feeling like it might be an okay time to cry, I’ll let myself go to other stuff. Like, the part right before I heard someone break a window in that bank. The part when I thought I would die. I remember realizing my mouth was open but I was not taking in air. So I shut my mouth. I remember thinking I wish I had shut my mouth sooner so maybe I could have held air in my body a few seconds longer.

Then I accepted death. That does really happen. You quickly run through everything that matters. It is so fast how you do that. Because I know you know this: Not much matters. I had no kids. I thought of my brothers and my husband. I felt sad. Then I felt fine. And I waited to die. I could not find anything else to do. I could not see or breathe.

Then I did not die. Then I climbed in that bank window.

People wonder what the hell I’m still doing with my husband when things are so bad between us right now. But I have been one minute from death, and all I wanted in that moment was to see what life would be like with him. That’s what I wanted. I felt enormous disappointment that I would never know.

I just wanted to see things with us unfold. So I’m not giving that up. Not now.

And here’s what happened when I got to that Upper West Side apartment. My husband walked ten miles to pick me up. I told him I was fine and he took me straight to the hospital. He told me, later, that even though the woman put me in the shower, even though I did not say what happened, he could still see debris stuck deep in my ear and he knew that things had been bad.

Doctors bandaged my eyes shut. My husband held my arm for three days, showing me where to go. For a week, he stayed by my side every moment. I didn’t shower. I barely slept. My ability to stay in reality was limited. And he was there the whole time.

And then, months later, I went to trauma recovery group. A lot. And then I started reframing the story. I stopped blaming myself for walking toward the World Trade Center when I heard there was danger. I stopped thinking of the trauma as derailing my life and started thinking of it as a new path. And then, I started working. A little at first. But soon, at full-throttle.

So, look, it’s true that I know what it’s like to be on one’s death bed. That saying that you never say, “I wish I worked harder.” It’s absurd. You don’t have any thoughts like that at all. You just have your family in your heart. You see there is not a lot of room for stuff there. Your family takes up everything in those last seconds.

And then, you go back to work and it’s totally stupid. Right? What is more important than being with your family? That’s what you say to yourself.

But here’s what I am giving up. The idea that every second could be my last second. Because then you are not living life. Yes, it’s true, work is not as meaningful as family. And yes, it’s true, I did not think about my to-do list when I faced death. But if you’re not dead, your to-do list matters. Because that’s what life is. Life is getting up and going to work on things that are high on your list. Work in your pajamas, maybe, or in a corn field, or in the car to drive the kids to school. It’s all work. It’s what we’re doing here. And it’s a treat.

So what has changed? I appreciate kindness more. The kindness of an arm around my shoulder, the kindness of a warm shower from a stranger. The kindness of my husband. And I appreciate the daily routine of life. Waking up. Tending the to-do list. And not treating every moment like it’s my last. Because it’s not. This is my life, unfolding. It’s my dream come true. It’s not unfolding like I thought it would, but I’m getting to watch it. Thank god.

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Me and Stephanie, talking

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Stephanie Roberts and I hung out at the BlogHer conference, and she recently posted a recording of our conversation on her blog. She asks things people are scared to ask me in person, like how can I keep blogging about my husband? She asks me things no one ever asks, like how do I write a blog post? She also asks stuff people ask all the time that I never have a good answer for, like, how do I manage kids and a career? But this time I have a good answer.

Here’s the link to the interview.

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A.J. Jacobs: Career lessons from the Encyclopedia

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By A.J. Jacobs – For my last book, The Know-It-All, I tried to fill in the huge gaps in my learning by reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. I read from A to Z. Or more precisely, from a-ak (East Asian music) to Zywiec (a town in Poland) — a total of 44 million words. Admittedly, there were quite a few slow parts — the 21 pages on Portuguese literature comes to mind — but overall, I learned a tremendous amount of fascinating information. Including lot of great wisdom about jobs and careers. Here, a distillation:

If you’ve got a business idea, hurry the heck up.
Here’s a disturbing story: There once was a brilliant man named Elisha Gray. Ever hear of him? Probably not. That’s because he filed for a patent for the telephone on the morning February 14, 1876. Problem was, a couple hours earlier, another man filed patent papers for the telephone. That would be Alexander Graham Bell. Gray should have known: File for patent, then go grocery shopping. (In fairness, some claim that Gray did beat Bell to the patent office, but still lost the patent).

I’m no Gray or Bell, but I did have a troubling conversation with a fellow writer about a year ago, a nice man from Texas. He told me that when my book deal was announced, he was in the midst of writing a proposal for a book on reading the encyclopedia. There’s no such thing as a unique idea. It’s all about execution and timing.

Be totally inappropriate
The best networking story in the Encyclopedia comes courtesy of poet Langston Hughes. The man was ballsy. He was a busboy at a hotel in Washington D.C. While in the dining room, he slipped three of his poems beside the dinner plate of established poet Vachel Lindsay. The next day, newspapers announced Lindsay had discovered a — busboy poet. In other words, he refused to let his dreams be deferred.

Work anywhere
The British-born author Hugh Lofting wrote Dr. Dolittle while in the trenches of WWI. As shrapnel burst around him and his friends died, he wrote this lovely story about a guy who talks to animals. So if Hugh Lofting can do that, you can concentrate on a big project when you’re at a train station. In fact, I recently realized my work sometimes improves when I’m in chaos. It somehow lessens the pressure — it removes the crippling burden of perfectionism — which is key for writing.

Sometimes right, sometimes wrong, always certain
That’s one of the big things I learned in my quest to be a know-it-all. Say it with confidence, and you will be believed. If someone asks you what country had the greatest total number of Catholics, and you say, Mexico, without a hint of doubt, then few will question. The right answer is Brazil, by the way. Without a doubt.

Stick with your strengths, and bend the situation to cater to them
Be like Duilius, a Roman military genius. The Roman troops were excellent ground fighters, but were terrible at naval warfare. So Duilius came up with the idea: Turn the sea battles into land battles. The Roman ships would paddle up to the enemy boat and slam down a plank. The soldiers would board the enemy boat and go to town with their swords. In short, land battles on the sea.

The stakes in most of our lives are lower, thank God. But the strategy still works. Today, I was writing an article for Spin magazine. This, despite the fact that I know embarrassingly little about post-80s music. But since I just wrote a book about living by the Bible (The Year of Living Biblically), I had pitched a story about music and the Bible. That allowed me to board Spin and go to town with my word processor.

Juggle jobs
All the great figures of the eighteenth and nineteenth century had at least two simultaneous jobs, maybe more. My favorite was a woman named Virginia Woodhull, who was both a psychic and a stockbroker (a brilliant mix. Who wouldn’t want to invest with her?) But other combos were just as strange:

Lyricist/Mollusk scientist
Lawyer/Astronomer
Shipowner/Sociologist
Typographer/Puppeteer.
Buccaneer/Scientist

Granted, it was easier back then. I imagine it took about three weeks to learn all there was to know about mollusks.

A friend of mine (and Penelope’s) named Marci Alboher recently wrote a book called One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model For Work/Life Success. It’s filled with tales and advice on the art of simultaneous professions. The double-job trend is making a comeback, and this is good news — at least for those who love a smattering of everything as I do.

A.J. Jacobs is an editor-at-large at Esquire magazine and the author of the new book
A Year of Living Biblically.

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New guest blogger: A.J. Jacobs, from Esquire magazine

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There’s a new guest blogger on Brazen Careerist: A.J. Jacobs. He is an editor-at-large at Esquire, and from what I can tell, it’s one of the cushiest jobs in the world. He doesn’t go to meetings, he seems to have some sort of tenure-track thing where he would never be fired, and he doesn’t even have to write for every issue.

So you want to know how he got such a great job, right? He specializes. Which you need to do, by the way, if you want to have control over your career. And one of the best ways to find a specialty is to find what area you excel at that pays well, and find what personality traits of yours make you quirky. If you can place your career at the intersection of those two things, you’ll have a successful, specialized career.

So anyway, about A.J.’s specialty. He’s a great writer. But there are plenty of great writers who don’t have great careers.

Surely A.J. could write well in a lot of situations. Like, he would be great at writing ads for used microwaves — in fact, I might even subscribe to a daily dose of those ads from AJ because they’d be so funny. But the market for this would be very small.

Instead, A.J. decided to go the route of immersion journalism. The immersion journalist that you probably know is Barbara Ehrenreich. She does things like work in menial job for a year in order to write about how hard it is to live like that. Ehrereich does important work, to be sure, but I don’t think anyone would call her fun.

Though A.J. has never worked as a hotel maid like Ehrenreich, he wrote about outsourcing his life to a team of people in Bangalore, India, (reprinted in the 4-Hour Workweek), and he spent a year reading the encyclopedia and writing about it in his book titled, The Know It All. This book is hilarious and endearing, and every time I go to the book store I pick up a copy and read a few pages as a pick-me-up.

What I love about A.J.’s writing is that he is immersing himself in something crazy but he does not sound like a crazy person. His book reads like hanging out with a good friend. Who happens to read the encyclopedia for a living. He is working at the intersection of what he is great at (writing) and what makes him quirky (his ability to create a weird life for himself and write about it in a way we can all relate to).

No one with A.J.’s great sense of career management would be blogging without a purpose. This week he’s blogging about the encyclopedia, but in the coming weeks, it’ll be the Bible. That’s his new book, A Year of Living Biblically, which he is promoting, of course. He spent a year living according to the Bible. Literally. So he followed the Ten Commandments, but also the lesser known laws of the Bible, like don’t wear clothes of mixed fibers. And stone adulterers.

Sometimes I read A.J. to remind myself what is important about work. What A.J. does that no one else can do is write on insane topics with sentences full of joy. He is smart and funny but the thing that makes me absolutely adore his work is that everything he churns out is bubbling with enthusiasm and fun. And I think that, on some level, this is what we all want our career to be about.

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What’s a good question? What’s a good answer?

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The best questions are not necessarily those that get answers, but those that lead to sharper questions.

My friend Marci Alboher, who writes for the New York Times, often calls me to ask questions about blogging and personal branding. I usually give her strongly opinionated answers and add a little emphasis about how I know that I’m right.

Then she usually does not take my advice. But these are great conversations because she asks really interesting questions – like how do the brand of a journalist and the brand of the publication interact? And my best answers to Marci are when I ask more questions.

Mark Halpern reported in Vocabula (subscription) about a study on expert advice. He says that people who call themselves experts are no better at making predictions about the future than anyone else, but experts talk more confidently about their opinions, and generally don’t get penalized for being wrong.

This makes me think we look to experts more to frame conversation. Experts ask questions similar to those that are burning in our own heads, but the experts ask sharper questions; the answers we can take or leave, but the questions change us.

For example, I ask myself all the time, Am I fat? Do I look good? What number am I on a scale of one to ten? They are insane questions, I know. And there is no good answer. But so what? I ask myself anyway. And sometimes, if I’m feeling comfortable about showing my most pathetic, desperate side of myself, I’ll ask a friend. But to be honest, no answer ever surprises me.

Then I saw Dove’s fun and fascinating video of what it takes to get a woman ready for a billboard photo. I watched three times. I love the video because instead of telling me “don’t worry – you look fine” it implicitly suggests some sharper questions I could be asking. (Hat tip: Indie Bloggers)

And did you know that women’s eyes are digitally enlarged on billboards? This is interesting to me because a man can tell instinctively when a woman is interested in him by the way her eyes dilate, according to Barbara and Allen Pease, authors of The Definitive Book of Body Language. Asking someone if they want to have sex is not usually straightforward and clear, but looking at whether or not her eyes are dilated is a primal way that men sharpen the question.

Here’s another video I love: Did You Know? Shift Happens, by Karl Fisch. This video is fun because I learned so much about how the world is changing. Fisch asks questions and answers them. Here are some examples of those answers:

  • If MySpace were a country it would be the 11th most populous in the world (right above Mexico) and the average MySpace page is visited 30 times a day.
  • One week of the New York Times is more information than someone would have come across in a lifetime in 1800.
  • The department of labor says the top ten jobs that will be in demand in 2010 did not exist in 2004.

One interesting thing about these answers is that they only feel satisfying if you use them to create better questions.

When I encounter someone or something that forces me to ask sharper questions, the first thing I do is check in with myself. Am I excited or scared? I hate having to hear that the world is not what I thought it was. Everyone has cognitive dissonance, even me. But I also would hate to be in a world where nothing changes. And the best thing we can do to keep up is to accept that sharper questions are often more satisfying than quickie answers.

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Do you have a good job? Take the test

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Today’s job market favors employees. The attitude of most workers is that they should have a job that makes them happy. So it’s no surprise that at any given time 70 percent of the workforce is job hunting, according to the Wall St. Journal.

Everyone is looking for the right position. But what exactly does that mean?

Here is something it’s probably not: Prestigious. People who chase fame and prestige are generally not as happy as other people. If you’re after fame, you are setting goals that are dependent on other peoples’ approval. Conversely, goals about self-acceptance and friendship make you happy because you have more control over them.

You might think you’re different – that you have a legitimate shot at fame. Ninety percent of young workers think they are in the top 10 percent of all workers, according to Business Week. Also, 40 percent think they will become famous. The reality is 1 or 2 percent ever achieve a modicum of fame.

A good rule of thumb when choosing a job to make you happy is to pick one that is based on the following list of attributes.

To test a job to see if it’s good, give the job points for each attribute it has:

1. A short, predictable commute – 1 point
The problem with a long commute is that it is long in a different way each day. Sometimes it’s the rain, sometimes there’s an accident. Sometimes traffic is backed up for no apparent reason. Humans can acclimate themselves to a lot of traumatic stuff – even being a paraplegic, according to Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness. But you cannot acclimate yourself to something that is bad in a different way every day.

2. Workflow you can manage – 1 point
This is not about doing work. This is about managing your personal life, which you cannot do if you have no control over your workflow. You need to be able to predict when things will be difficult and when it’s safe to focus more on your personal life. This is why management consultants are generally happy – they oversee their own schedule. But those who hold client-heavy jobs, such as lawyers or financial analysts, have to jump at a clients’ whim.

3. Clear goals that are challenging – 1 point
Goals that are not challenging result in boredom, not happiness. But challenging work without a clear goal is a bad job waiting to happen because people want to know how they’re doing. But you can’t get feedback from a boss who does not set clear goals to manage your progress.

It is worth noting that the primary cause of workplace burnout is not the amount of time spent working, but whether the work you did can make a difference. For example, nurses on the pediatric burn unit have high turnover because it is exhausting to be taking care of children without being able to stop their suffering. Conversely, entrepreneurs are typically happy because they have so much control over workflow and goals.

4. Two co-workers you’re close friend with – 3 points
If you have two good friends at work, you are almost guaranteed to like your job, according to Tom Rath, the author of Vital Friends. This is, in part, because you can process the bad parts of a job more productively with friends by your side to help you.

So finding a job you like or turning a bad job in to a good job might actually be totally under your control; you can decide you are going to be likable and make friends, or not.

Test results:

0-2 points, probably not a good job

3 points, probably a good job

4 – 6 points, probably a really good job

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Gen X updates outdated work and family goals

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Every generation revolutionizes something, and Generation X is revolutionizing the intersection of family and work. There’s a new emphasis on keeping families together over career aspirations, and it’s what makes me most proud to be a part of Gen X.

Generation X knows that the belief that both parents in a family can have demanding, time-consuming careers outside the home is an antiquated one. Time has shown that it just doesn’t work.

Sure, girls can grow up to be anything, and boys can start companies and become millionaires. But there’s a limitation that no one talks about: Two parents working more than 60 hours a week each is bad for the marriage and bad for the kids.

Thanks to Gen X, the power-couple-as-parents setup will likely go down in history as just another terrible idea conceived by baby boomers.

At this point, it’s clear that families are better off when one person takes care of the household full time. Statistics support this conclusion, and it’s also intuitive.

The problem is that not many people want to stay at home full time. We already did that in a widespread way in the 1950s, and the cliche of the housewife who takes valium to cope exists for a reason: Staying at home with kids every day for 20 years isn’t a first choice for most people.

Today, 60 percent of mothers say they want part-time work, which means that when you account for women who want to work full time, only a small percentage of them want to stay home with kids all day. And nearly 70 percent of men say they would consider staying home, although men who succeed at staying at home usually have some other work or significant hobby on the side.

So most people want to stay home with their kids part time and work part time. This isn’t surprising, because work is easier than parenting — it’s more peaceful and more intellectually stimulating, and it has a predictable, structured reward system.

Also, it’s hard to get past the fact that society values work in business more than work at home; as wrong as this is, we all like to be valued in the society in which we live. It’s natural, then, that people want to have some kind of work in their lives that’s outside the home. What’s surprising is that there are people who still think that having two parents working 60-hour weeks is OK for children.

To begin with, very few families have a real financial need for two parents to be working that much, and the majority of the families that do don’t read Yahoo! Finance. So the couples who leave their kids with a caretaker for 10 hours a day are making a choice, and the strongest evidence that it isn’t a great one for kids is that Gen Xers who didn’t have both parents at home hated it so much that they don’t want to do it to their own children.

One indication of how Generation X is revolutionizing family and work is in the language we use. In middle age, baby boomers came up with the terms “yuppie” and “latchkey kid,” while in the same time of life Gen X coined “stay-at-home dad” and “shared care.”

And while Gen Xers have been labeled as slackers by workaholic media types, they actually value family and friends more than anything else. They won’t work the extreme hours boomers put in because they’ve seen the impact of not taking care of family, and they want no part of it.

Baby boomers divorced at a higher rate than any group in history, yet from 1970 to 1990 divorce decreased by almost half for people with college degrees. Gen X takes care of family at the expense of top-tier careers, and it’s paying off — when it comes to keeping families together, Generation X has succeeded where baby boomers failed.

What exactly is the payoff? Happiness. Nattavudh Powdthavee, an economist at the University of London who studies money and happiness, points out that earning a lot of money and maintaining intimate relationships both take a lot of time. So you have to decide where your time is best spent.

Powdthavee shows how to calculate how much money you need to earn in order to replace the happiness from a close relationship. He concludes that for the same amount of time spent, you get more fulfillment from nurturing relationships than from earning money.

Clearly, everyone in the family will be happier if one or both parents tones down their career aspirations and pays more attention to their personal life.

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How to start a business from your corporate cube

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Starting a company is cheap enough that you don’t need to raise a lot of money to do it, but you still need to feed yourself. A popular route is the in-between step of being an entrepreneur while still working in a corporate job.

This means there are a lot of people running companies from their cubes. Sort of. It’s contrary to just about every company policy for you to set up your widget shop inside your cube and solicit your co-workers’ business. But most startups can skate past the corporate policy restrictions because the founder works after hours. So the entrepreneur is sitting in the cube even if the company is not, and it makes for a difficult balancing act.

Here are ten ways to manage entrepreneurship from your corporate cubicle:

1. Don’t tell your co-workers.
You will want to tell them. They will say, “How was your weekend?” and you’ll want to say, “I got two new clients and I am feeling like a startup stud!” Don’t say that. Even if you’re not doing your company at your work, it still feels like cheating to a co-worker. They don’t want to hear you’d rather be working on something else besides their stuff. You need to keep a positive profile at work even while you do your startup: The best entrepreneurs have solid networks.

2. Don’t blame your problems on lack of time.
It’s certainly a luxury to have tons of time on your hands to focus on your company all day. But most people don’t have that. Most people who start companies have kids or a day job or a girlfriend or college courses – something that distracts them. Don’t tell yourself you would do better if you had more time. Just do better now. Be smarter. Everyone is short on time all the time. It’s not an excuse.

3. Don’t have guilt.
Yes it is morally questionable to be a salaried employee and turn your cube into a call center for your other business. But you can do a ton of personal business from your cube – like call your landlord or the plumber or make plane reservation – in order to make more time to do your business from home. Most cubicle workers spend two hours a day surfing for personal reasons. And these people do not have side businesses at home. So it’s fair for you to do it, too.

4. Get on a stupid project at work.
When you have your own business you think about it all the time. You are responsible for everything, so there is no coasting while someone else deals with a problem or a project. Fortunately, that sort of coasting is rampant in big companies. So if you are starting a business at home, get on a project at work that lets you coast – that will give extra mental energy to let thoughts of your own company jump around in your head.

5. Look for like-minded people at work.
In most companies there are some people thinking like you – trying to get something off the ground while they spend their days in their cube. It’s so hard to keep believing in yourself when the startup is more idea than business. It’s hard not to toss in the towel, but you are less likely to give up if you have other entrepreneurs in your life. To sniff out the other entrepreneurs look for people who dash outside the building every day to take calls. (Reality check: If the calls are ten minutes, it’s a startup. If the calls are a half-hour, it’s a new girlfriend.)

6. Go to the gym on your lunch break.
You think you are doing something so big and so challenging and you are even holding down a full-time job while you do it, so of course you have no time to go to the gym. But exercise provides mental traits of an entrepreneur: You think more clearly, you are more self-confident, resilient to setback, and you become a person who inspires confidence in other people.

7. Sit on a yoga ball instead of a chair.
Everything you need to do to have a startup and a corporate job at the same time requires self-discipline. And this might be why entrepreneurs are happier than most people — because they have good self-discipline and people with self-discipline are more likely to get what they want in their life.

You can get self-discipline by working on your posture. No kidding. So get a ball chair for your cube. Psychologist have found that if you make one, small change in your life that requires self-discipline, like improving your posture, then you are more able to make other changes in your life that require self-discipline.

8. Partner with a stay-at-home-parent.
In general, when I have started companies, I tried not to hire people with kids because they are less able to jump for investors, more torn between where their head and heart are at any given time, and anyway, today’s parents generally do not work insanely long hours. (Yes, this is an illegal hiring practice. But it’s common.)

So anyway, if you are starting a company from your cube you are missing exactly what a stay-at-home parent has: Flexibility during the work day. One of the things that make for a successful entrepreneur is partnering with someone who can fill in the spots where you are weak, according to Andrew Zacharakis, professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College.

9. Stop fantasizing that a credit card could fund your cubicle escape.
Especially in the current credit crunch, it’s important to be conservative in how much you bet on this side-business of yours. The most successful entrepreneurs are not actually huge risk takers but people who intuitively mitigate risk wherever they can, according to Saras Sarasvathy, professor of business at the University of Virginia. The point of entrepreneurship, after all, is to get out of the cubicle, not tie yourself to it forever paying off your debt.

10. Believe in yourself.
Entrepreneurship is lonely and frustrating. This is not something people talk about a lot because the thing that makes entrepreneurs successful is a crazy optimism that they can create something big from nothing. But underneath that optimism, is a fear that things will never work.

The feelings of loneliness and fear will be exacerbated in your cubicle, where you will be surrounded by people who are satisfied with stable jobs, regular paychecks, and having someone else take responsibility for the ultimate bottom line.

In your cube is the time you will have to be your best self: Confident, productive, disciplined and optimistic. No small feat, for sure, but that’s why entrepreneurship brings out the best in us. That’s why it’s so enticing.

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Twentysomething: Be responsible, go back home after college

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By Ryan Healy – According to Monster.com, 60 percent of college graduates move home with mom and dad after graduation and the trend is on the rise. The statistic holds true with my friends from the class of 2006. More than half moved back to the suburbs to start adult life, much the same way they ended high school life — with their parents. A lot of people say generation Y needs to grow up and take some personal responsibility and that we have been coddled by our helicopter parents (see the comments section).

But when you look closely, it is glaringly apparent that moving back in with parents is one of the the most responsible things a new college grad can do. By sucking it up at home for a year or two, young people give themselves the opportunity to take control of their career, take control of their finances and transition from the care-free college fantasy world to the real-world of work, marriage, kids, mortgages and car payments.

Take control of your career
To live comfortably in a big city like New York, students are forced to take a high paying, but less than satisfying job. Often, top graduates end up working for the best paying investment bank or law firm. I’m sure you could find a small minority of conservative students who had dreams of becoming an I-banker since middle school, but for the most part these jobs are going to the top tier students who are trying to make a quick buck before they retire at 30 (or so they say).

By moving home after graduation, you have little or no rent which allows for more freedom when searching for a job. There is no need to sell out to an investment bank if your real goal is to work with underprivileged children. Depending on where your parents are located, you are probably missing out on the big city night life and social scene, but you have lots of opportunities to find the perfect job, regardless of pay. If ditching the social scene for career sake doesn’t demonstrate responsibility and independence, I don’t know what does.

Take control of your finances
Real wages today are lower than they were for the past two generations of workers. Couple that fact with today’s insane housing costs and an increase in contract workers not receiving benefits, just getting by on forty or fifty thousand a year in a major city is nearly impossible. Attempting to save any reasonable amount of money the first few years is a joke.

However, moving home with mom and dad will immediately save you about $700 a month in housing costs. At least there is some extra cash flow. In two years, you can save up enough to move out on your own without worrying about going into credit card debt for basic necessities like fixing your car or buying groceries.

Take an appropriate adjustment period between college and the real world
People really do struggle adjusting from college to the real world. A good friend of mine just fulfilled her life long dream of moving to New York. She still loves the city, but she is overwhelmed and doesn’t exactly like her day job. Sure, many people go through this tough transition period, and chances are she will eventually enjoy it, but the transition from child to adult is different, and oftentimes, more difficult for today’s youth.

“This period is not a transition, but an actual life stage, according to Jeffrey Arnett, associate professor at University of Missouri and author of Emerging Adulthood: A Theory of Development from the Late Teens through Early Twenties . Arnett describes the period between college and adulthood as, “a self- focused stage where people have the freedom to focus on their own development.” Notice he calls this period of stage in development and not just a transition between two stages.

So why do we still try to go from adolescent to adult in a matter of weeks or months?

Moving home for a while enables an appropriate and productive transition. Rather than focus on rent, bills and kids, emerging adults living at home with their parents have the ability to focus on the most important aspects of emerging adult life: figuring out who they are and what career is right for them.

Ryan Healy’s blog is Employee Evolution.

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