Send: Etiquette for apologizing in an email

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By Will Schwalbe — Email is great for minor apologies – especially when you think your transgression might not really need an apology at all. A classic is the, “I’m so sorry I didn’t spend more time with you at my party” kind of apology, which is usually greeted with the classic, “Don’t be silly, I had a blast, and it was lovely of you to invite me” response. Any time you get a “No harm, no foul” email in return, you know that either you did nothing wrong after all, or that your email apology has won you forgiveness.

But if you are thinking of apologizing in an email for a more serious transgression, keep in mind that very bad behavior obviously requires a major amount of contrition. For example, if you’ve said something awful about someone and suspect it got back to him; hurt someone’s feelings; missed an important meeting or occasion; accidentally destroyed someone’s stuff; forgot to do something important — all of these are big things, and an apology that is seen as insincere or insufficient could compound your crime.

Before you hit send on your “please forgive me’ email, here are some things to keep in mind:

1. Is email really the best way to apologize – or are you just hiding behind a computer screen?
Because it is so easy to email an apology, people don’t always take email apologies seriously. Sometimes the very fact that you are apologizing on email can add salt to the wound. If you don’t receive a reply to your email apology, it’s generally a good indication that it fell short.

2. Email’s speed and ease make it a great way to start an apology.
Remorse is a dish best served hot. Just make sure, though, that the person to whom you are apologizing knows that you will be saying sorry in other ways, too. You can always email, “I wanted to let you know right away how sorry I am about spilling coffee all over the architectural model you spent all weekend building.” But make sure to add something to your email like, “I’m willing to stay all weekend to help you build another. And you will find a bottle of wine waiting for you when you get home.”

3. Put the word “Sorry” or “Apologies” in the Subject line.
If you don’t do this, the aggrieved party might not even open your email.

4. This is one of the many times you don’t want to Cc without permission.
The person you offended may want everyone to know you apologized. Or, he may want to keep it secret. Promiscuous Cc’ing can compound the original offense. For example, “I’m so sorry I blurted out that comment about your personal hygiene problem” is all very well and fine – unless you Cc a whole mess of people and thus send the indiscretion out even wider.

Start focused and ask permission to expand the list. “I’m so sorry I blurted out that comment about your personal hygiene problem – please let me know if you want me to apologize to all the others who were present at the meeting, either by email or in person or both” is a much better way of handling it. Also, always write an apology with the expectation that it will be forwarded without your permission. Oh, and do remember that a true apology is, by its very nature, an admission of guilt.

The bottom line: Email does not mean never having to say you’re sorry. Sometimes, you have to say it and show it, not write it and send it.

Will Schwalbe is the co-author with David Shipley of Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home.

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Breaking the perfection habit

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I’m not a perfectionist. In fact, when I painted my walls I didn’t paint near the windows because I didn’t want to do the detail work. When I accidentally address an envelope upside down, I don’t get a new envelope.

You know what? Doing those things hasn’t made my life any worse. It hasn’t made me unhappy, and it’s freed me up to do other things besides worry about if what I do is perfect.

I have a good eye for how well something has to be done in order to accomplish what I need to accomplish, and it’s one of my favorite traits about myself. The good that comes from a lack of perfection is that I can set a lot of goals for myself because I get them done.

Here are the reasons I can’t stand perfectionists:

  • Perfectionists procrastinate because they’re scared of not being perfect.
  • Perfectionists are hypercritical to the point that they can’t support people around them.
  • Perfectionists can’t finish a project because they can always think of a way to improve it.
  • Perfectionists are phony, because no one’s perfect and they can’t handle showing that in themselves.

Here are four things to think about if you’re letting perfectionism dictate your life:

1. You get more done if you don’t sweat the details.
My disdain for details started when I looked around at all the people who are disappointed with their lives. For the most part, these are people who wish they’d done something that they didn’t do for fear of failure. In the worst cases, these people have whole lists of such things. Then I saw a bumper sticker that read, “What would you do if failure were not an option?”

When I went through my own list of what I would do, I decided that if I stopped worrying about failure I’d be able to do a lot more. So I started focusing on just getting stuff done instead of getting it done perfectly. Details fell by the wayside.

I also noticed that once I stopped worrying about doing something perfectly, I didn’t have nearly as much reason for procrastination. It’s easy to start something if you tell yourself that getting it done 70 percent perfect (as opposed to 100 percent) is OK.

Believe it or not, in most cases 70 percent perfect is fine for what we do. The trick is to balance fearlessness with attention to detail and understand when you need to concentrate on each.

2. You do better work if you aren’t worried about perfection.
Here’s a story I heard from Alexander Kjerulf, who was talking about David Bayles’s book “Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking“:

A ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of the work they produced. All those on the right would be graded solely on their works’ quality.

His procedure was simple: On the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the quantity group; 50 pound of pots rated an A, 40 pounds a B, and so on. Those being graded on quality, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an A.

At grading time, the works with the highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity.

It seems that while the quantity group was busily churning out piles of work — and learning from their mistakes — the quality group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of clay.

Think about this in your own life, even if you’re not using clay. The more you practice, the better you’ll get. But you can’t practice if you think only of perfection. Practice is about making mistakes; perfection comes from imperfection.

3. Working the longest hours doesn’t mean you’re doing the best work.
Usually, the hardest worker in an office is a perfectionist. This begs a few questions: Why does this person need to work harder than everyone else? Is she slow? Is she stupid? Is she avoiding her home life?

The people working the hardest are usually stuck on getting all the details perfect, but they’ve lost sight of one of the most important things — which is that you look desperate if you work more hours than everyone else. The person working the hardest looks incompetent, either at managing their workload or at managing their family life.

Of course, you don’t want to work the least number of hours, either. But you want to fall somewhere in between. People who work very long hours are inefficient and sometimes get so little sleep that they’re performing at the level of a drunkard at work. So cut back your hours, and even if you do things with less attention to detail in order to get them done faster, they might actually get done better because you have a better handle on the time in your life.

4. Stop procrastination by stopping perfectionism.
One of the biggest productivity problems is procrastination. And one of the biggest contributors to procrastination is the feeling that we need to do something perfectly.

The key to ending procrastination in your life is to be honest about what you’re really doing with your time and energy. Look closely at why you’ve made the bar so high that you can’t even start. Procrastination can only flourish in a situation where perfection is so clearly demanded and so intrinsically impossible that inaction seems preferable to action.

So be honest with yourself about why being perfect is so important to you. Perfectionism doesn’t make people happy, and often makes them nutcases.

And remember those clay pots — they represent all the creativity and excitement you could unleash if you’d let the attention to detail slip a little.

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Cupcakes go far at work

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You need to be nice at work. This doesn’t mean holding the door. Well, it does, but you need to do more than that. You need to do high-profile, from-the-heart niceness. People who are popular at work do better at work. Yes, it’s true, the popularity contest never ends.

So why not try cupcakes? Wait. Stay with me here. Cupcakes are good because they are easy to make. You can leave them in a central location in the office, or even on your desk, and people can just pick one up. They will be impressed and touched that you cooked. (I use the recipe in Joy of Cooking and believe me, I am no cook.)

Don’t tell me about Dunkin Donuts or store-bought-popcorn. You need to bake. It shows you really care if you take the time to bake. And for most of you, it will shock your office and show a side of you that people don’t usually see. The more you can show people that you are human and caring, the easier it will be to ask for major concessions.

You might say, why not cake? Why not cookies? Cake is hard to transport and hard to dole out. And cookies are not as fun. You want people to think you’re fun. People like fun.

For you overachievers, here’s a cheat sheet for cupcake decorating ideas.

For you who think you’re too cool for cupcakes, here’s the cupcake blog, written by an editor of Penthouse Variations.

For all of you who think cooking cupcakes is not in line with your workplace image, ask yourself: Why cultivate an image that cannot accommodate such a sweet and giving act?

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Twentysomething: Paychecks are boring

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By Ryan Healy — Unless you are a professional athlete or working on Wall Street, an entry-level salary is not very exciting. When you couple this with the fact that the average college student graduates with tens of thousands in student loan and credit card debt and the cost of renting a place in any major city is an absolute rip off, a paycheck does not go very far. If I am paying an arm and a leg just to have a roof over my head and pay back an education that wasn’t exactly optional, how can I possibly save any decent amount of money? Realistically, I can’t. But that is alright.

If I stay in the corporate world, the paychecks will keep coming, I will pay down debt, I will pay my rent and I will spend the majority of the rest on food, entertainment and happy hours. The remainder will go to savings. One thing I will not waste my money on is “stuff.” Nothing bothers me more than seeing people living in houses above their means and driving cars they can’t afford.

I am not foolish enough to believe a paycheck will ever make me rich. The only reason I get excited about a 3% raise is because of what it represents; my hard work. The increase in money is barely noticeable and will disappear into my 3% lifestyle increase. Sure, I could invest that 3% in stocks, mutual funds or better yet an IRA, but what exactly am I saving for?

It’s a forgone conclusion that I will never retire, and anyone my age who believes they will, is mistaken. First of all, by the time I have children to send off to college, the average tuition will probably be around $100,000 a year. If I have “2.5 kids” that is $1 million dollars out of my pocket (or more realistically out of loans). Even if I deprive myself of vacations, entertainment and fun to save throughout my twenties, I can’t possibly save enough money to retire.

I can’t imagine what I would do if I ever did retire. Sure you may be thinking that I’m barely out of college and wouldn’t be saying this if I had been working for 10 or 20 years. But this is exactly why I am so desperate to find meaning and happiness out of work, rather than just a paycheck.

I guess if the end goal is riding off into the sunset and retiring, then you can put up with a boring, well paid job for 30 years (I guess). This is not my end goal. I would rather find fulfillment in a job that gives me flexible hours and is accommodating to my lifestyle.

Of course, if I am lucky enough to make it to my golden years, I will cut back on the amount I work and supplement my smaller income with the earnings from the smart investments I made along the way. But I certainly won’t be moving south to sit around and do nothing for the last ten years of my life.

The way I see it my life will turn out one of two ways.

1. I will get lucky somewhere along the way and strike it rich. I will pay for my kids’ education, I will buy a moderate house and moderate cars and I will make smart investments for the future. I will use the money to make a difference in one way or another. I will be happy.

2. I will find meaningful, fulfilling jobs with decent salaries or start a mildly successful business. My kids will take out loans for their education, I will buy a moderate house and moderate cars and I will continue to work and invest a reasonable amount. I will donate my time rather than my money to make a difference in one way or another. I will be happy.

Before you assume I am a naïve kid, who needs some financial education, keep in mind, I have a degree in accounting and finance and I regularly read financial books, magazines, newspapers and blogs. Despite all of this, I have come to the conclusion that life is too short to spend worrying about how much money is in my bank account. I will not chase a paycheck.

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10 Ways journalists can use LinkedIn

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A few months ago, I saw Guy Kawasaki’s blog post, 10 Ways to Use LinkedIn, and it made me realize that you can use LinkedIn for a lot more than just networking. For example, journalists can get value from LinkedIn both as a research tool and as a tool for career development:

Here are ten ways for journalists to use LinkedIn:

1. Get noticed for the work you do
I’ve seen a lot of journalists with pretty sparse profiles. This is a mistake. You don’t have to write a novel, but at least put information about your areas of interest so that people know what to contact you for. The text that you include is searchable, so if you’re looking for travel-writing gigs, make sure you include this somewhere in your profile. Also, listing your past employers and education makes it easier for old colleagues and classmates to find you. Here’s an example of a well crafted profile: David Lidsky, Senior Editor of Fast Company.

2. Build a network without making networking your full-time job
To use LinkedIn well, you need at least 20 connections. But, this doesn’t mean you should connect to every publicist who sends you an invitation. LinkedIn works best when you connect to your top sources, important industry contacts, coworkers, and people who know you well. These are the people who can help you do your job, find new opportunities and pass on story ideas that are more likely to be of interest to you.

3. Network without suffering the deluge of requests to “write about me!”
Journalists and high-profile bloggers tend to be highly coveted individuals. In fact, TechCrunch blogger, Michael Arrington, is the second most contacted person on LinkedIn (after LinkedIn’s founder). Control who makes it to your in-box by going to LinkedIn’s Accounts & Settings page to alter your notification preferences. If you find yourself overwhelmed with requests, you can opt to receive notifications once a week or only when you log into the LinkedIn website.

4. Use a connection to get a great assignment.
If you’re a freelancer or looking for a job, perform a search in the “Writing and Editing” industry sorted by “Degrees away from you” to see who might be able to help you in your network.

5. Find an expert fast
The advanced search feature is the most powerful tools you can use on LinkedIn. You can search for any combination of keywords, job title, company, location, industry, and you can sort by “degrees away from you” to find people close to you in your network. This is a great way to find experts in almost any field or subject matter. You can also track down executives at companies.

6. Confirm a rumor
One of the best ways to find out the inside scoop on companies is to find former employees who are willing to talk to you. To do this, use LinkedIn’s advanced search for the company’s name and uncheck the “Current companies only” box. The results will include both current and past employees.

7. Get responses to queries from non-PR types
Often, if you send a query to a place like PRLeads, you get mostly public relations people answering you. This works fine in most cases, but sometimes you need something different – for example a quote from a type of person who would not typically hire a publicist. LinkedIn’s Answers service allows you to ask questions to the network and get answers from a wide range of people. Answers are tied to the professional profile of the person who responded so you can quickly assess credibility and determine whether to contact the person. Here’s an example of a journalist’s question on LinkedIn Answers.

8. Get ideas for sources, topics and trends
If you don’t want to post a question, LinkedIn Answers has a search box that allows you to search the archives. This is a great way to search for sources. A search for keyword “Des Moines” will likely find you folks in the city who like to talk about it, a search for “iPhone” will show you some of the buzz around the product. A great way to get ideas for stories is to peruse through the various categories of LinkedIn Answers to find out what people are saying about topics and trends. For example, here are a few of the many categories: career development, personal finance, technology.

9. Qualify pitches
If you find yourself getting daily pitches from the “hottest new [insert industry buzzword] company,” try searching for the company on LinkedIn. Take a look to see if you are connected to any of the employees, check out their profiles, their backgrounds, and their relationships. If they’re really hot, then they’re probably connected to key industry movers and shakers.

10. Promote your book!
LinkedIn allows you to publicize websites. There are a few pre-selected categories like “My Website,” “My Company,” etc. If you select “Other” you can modify the name of the link. If you have a book, you can create a link to a webpage that promotes it or directly to an Amazon page where people can buy it. You can bet that I was all over this feature: My new book: Brazen Careerist.

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You don’t need to love risk-taking to start your own business

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A lot of people who would like to start a business think the task is too daunting. But following a passion is not as high risk as you may think. Conventional wisdom about entrepreneurs being big risk takers and living on the edge is not all that realistic. In fact, there are ways to minimize the financial risk and emotional drama of going after your dreams. And, most of the skills you need to be an entrepreneur, you can teach yourself.

Alex Shear founded the production company Projectile Arts, in order to produce the documentary, “Kokoyakyu: High School Baseball.” The topic of baseball appealed to Shear, in part, because of the risks involved. “There is so much failure” in baseball, says Shear. He wanted to know how players deal with it. In the meantime, he had to deal with those same issues himself, starting a business to make the documentary.

Like many people, Shear is not a fan of huge risk: “I didn’t know what I was getting into. If I knew I was going to have to move twice, sell my car, and go broke,” I probably wouldn’t have done it. “You need to be stubborn and thickheaded and not think things through all the way,” advises Shear.

In a case like this, Saras Sarasvathy , professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, told me that she asks her students to look inside themselves: “Why do you want to open a restaurant? Is it because you love to cook? Then you can have a catering business out of your home. Is it because you have a great location? What else can you put at that location that would be more likely to succeed?”

Have basic skills in the field you are choosing. Sarasvathy uses the analogy of cooking a meal to describe the entrepreneurial way of thinking. Some people have a list of ingredients on a recipe and follow its steps exactly. Other people walk into a kitchen, see what ingredients are on hand, and whip something up. If you want to start your own business, you should be a person comfortable with no recipe. “But,” Sarasvathy cautions, “you need to know how to cook.” Both types of people probably will come up with good meals if they have cooking skills, and both will come up with bad meals if they don’t

Not knowing exactly what you will create is OK. Sarasvathy told me: “Entrepreneurs don’t believe in planning because they don’t want to be in a future that is predictable. If you want to create something new, then the future is unpredictable. If you can predict what will happen, there is no room for creativity.” This also leaves room for genuine partnerships, which you will need.

Get help in a partner. Finding a business to launch is a soul-searching venture, because you have to be passionate about your choice. But “part of your search for passion should be a search to know your skill set. Ask your parents, mentors, and friends. Then try to match skills you have with your passions and fill in what you need,” said Andrew Zacharakis, professor at Babson College. Most feelings of risk come from doing things you have not done before, so surrounding yourself with people who complement your skills can minimize risk.

Relax. The point of entrepreneurship is to have fun doing something you’re passionate about. But a small-business owner’s mind can race constantly. Learn to control this and business will feel less risky.

Jim Fannin is a success coach whose clients include more than twenty Major League Baseball players. He told me that research has shown that wildly successful people have 1,000 fewer thoughts a day than others, which allows the successful people to have exceptional focus on their goals.

Shear says he tried to focus on his next step instead of looking at the whole project, which would have been overwhelming. “If you think too much about the big picture it can paralyze you — mess you up in the moment.”

Fannin agrees. There are so many things you can worry about, so “I tell people to go on a mental diet,” says Fannin. “Cut out thoughts that won’t make you better because they hold you down.”

You need a sense of peace to perform well. Fannin says that just taking deeper breaths will slow your thinking and help your focus.

Stay optimistic. People who have big success have optimism. The key is to manage your thinking. When something bad happens, “learn from it and move on.” If you let yourself replay bad situations, you will get used to seeing your life that way.

Seventy-five percent of people report that negative thinking goes away if you look toward the sky. So for those would-be entrepreneurs trying to fend off negative thinking, Fannin says: “Chin up.”

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A week of journalism: Why journalists misquote everyone…or do they?

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I met my husband when he was in film school at UCLA. He was doing quirky video art instead of mainstream feature films, which made me think he’d be good to date. So when he was interviewing people for a video about memory, I was happy to participate.

I tried to be really charming in the interview – scintillating, funny, adorable – all the things he might want in a date.

Then a year went by with no contact.

Then I got a call from him. He ended up making the whole video about me, and the video was being shown in Europe and winning film festivals and it was part of UCLA film school’s curricula. He said he spent a ten months editing my interview and he felt like he’d been talking with me the whole time.

Of course, I knew this was my cue.

On our second date, I saw the video. He had footage of me telling all the most important stories of my life. He cut up the footage, reordered it, and created a tool that allowed viewers to recombine stories as they unfolded.

He basically made me sound like a lunatic. Like I was probably a liar and maybe delusional, depending on how someone ordered the video.

I fell in love with him immediately. I thought the work was genius commentary on storytelling. We each tell stories that matter to us. We take in the world, and tell it back in a way that creates meaning. My husband’s video is an extreme example, but it resonates in a lot of different contexts, including journalism.

The reason that everyone thinks journalists misquote them is that the person who is writing is the one who gets to tell the story. No two people tell the same story.

Not every example of this is so extreme as my husband’s video. Look at David Sedaris and Amy Sedaris. They grew up in the same house, but they don’t have the same tales to tell from it. They are both great writers who see different stories in the same facts.

Journalists who think they are telling “the truth” don’t understand the truth. We each have our own truth. When you leave out details, you might leave out what is unimportant to you but very important to someone else, and things start feeling untrue to the person who wishes you included something else.

Recruiters, by the way, know this well. If I get fired from three jobs but I only report that during that period I taught dance lessons to toddlers, I am not lying. I am merely telling the part of the story that I want to tell. No one can tell every part of every story. The details are infinite. But in this case, the fact that I left off the details most important to the recruiter makes the recruiter feel like it’s lying. But it’s not. I’m telling my version of the story.

So everyone feels misquoted because people say twenty or thirty sentences for every one sentence that a journalist prints. It’s always in the context of the journalist’s story, not the speaker’s story.

Here’s my advice: If you do an interview with a journalist, don’t expect the journalist to be there to tell your story. The journalist gets paid to tell her own stories which you might or might not be a part of. And journalists, don’t be so arrogant to think you are not “one of those” who misquotes everyone. Because that is to say that your story is the right story. But it’s not. We each have a story. And whether or not someone actually said what you said they said, they will probably still feel misquoted.

And this problem is not limited to text-based journalism. When my husband and I got married, we had a big wedding. When the photos came back, I said to my husband, “These are terrible. He missed all the good photos.” And my husband said, “They seem fine. They’re the photographer’s version of the story.”

Other posts from “A Week in Journalism” series:

How to be a freelance writer without starving

How to move from print journalism to online journalism

Seven ways to get an agent’s attention (by my agent, Susan Rabiner)

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A week of journalism: Seven ways to get an agent’s attention

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This list is from my agent, Susan Rabiner.

I love Susan because she just sold my second book proposal to the same editor who bought Barack Obama’s book. Susan also represents the author who just won the Pulitzer Prize for biography. So you can be certain that following Susan’s advice is a good idea if you want to sell a book.

Here’s her list of seven things to do to improve your chances of getting an agent’s attention for our book proposal:

1. Think in terms of genre.
To you, it’s a novel. To an agent, it’s a thriller, a mystery, chick lit, woman’s commercial fiction or a literary novel.

The same is true for nonfiction. You’d be surprised how often I read a cover letter that gives me no clue as to whether you are pitching a memoir or a self-help book on the topic.

Why do agents think in terms of genre? First, because most of us specialize. More important, the rules change as genres change, and we can’t make any decision until we know what standards to apply.

So before you go on and on about what’s in your book, either identify its genre, or tell us who you are writing this book for, or modestly suggest the title of a recently published successful book that you’d like your book to sit next to in the bookstore. Nothing makes a would-be author seem more like a rube than going on and on about a book that is ill-defined

2. Tell me who you are.
I want to know something about you in the first paragraph. Why? To eliminate you if I don’t think there is a good enough match between you and the book you want to write. If you are a lawyer who tells me you have always wanted to write about quantum physics, you are heading for the reject pile. There are certain topics where credentials are all important and physics is one of them. But you don’t necessarily have to be a Harvard-trained historian to write a book about a historical event, or a psychiatrist to write about the experience of depression, provided there is some other meaningful connection between the book you want to write and you as the author.

So what to do if you have no tight connection to the topic? Don’t go for a book proposal quite yet. Start a blog on the topic. Prove that you can attract a devoted readership with your commentary. Interview known experts on the topic. They’ll come in handy as outside validation later on. If you really have something to say, your blog will get buzz and then agents will find you and ask you if you might have a book in you.

3. Show outside validation.
The key to self-praise is to have others say it for you. So, for instance, if someone else has called you a gifted writer and that someone is not your wife or your mother, do tell us. Outside recognition could be that your blog gets a gazillion hits a day or was just cited in Time Magazine. This is what we want to hear. There’s an art to bragging and it involves finding someone else who will do it for you.

4. Have a story to tell
Good proposals don’t just communicate facts. They tell the story of how you found this topic and why you became convinced that with all we know about this topic, the most important questions have still not been addressed; the story of how you came to realize the deeper meaning of an experience, the story of an idea that has changed as we as humans have changed. The best proposals read like good mysteries, then they throw out tantalizing tidbits as partial answers so we salivate for more.

5. Check your competition.
Agents can Google. So can editors. If either of us finds most of what you are saying by spending five minutes on the web, we know that we are working with an aggregator not an author. Especially today the question editors ask is: What value does this author add?

6. Tell me why I should care.
Why will readers find what you have written irresistible? How will reading this book change them for the better? Will it make them happier, richer, more at peace with themselves? Will it give them insight into a topic of great interest? Will it teach them about something they have already been curious about but could never quite master? Remember these words. Agents and editors are advocates for the reader, not the author. Impress upon them the payoff for the reader and they will be interested.

7. Answer the question, Why now?
The typical publishing contract gives the author 12 to 18 months to write the book and gives the publisher 8 to 12 months to publish the book. So how do you, as an author, answer the question: Why now, when now is likely to be two to three years from today? By telling agents and editors why the topic is not going to go away and exactly what you will say that will be of interest to people two or three years from today.

So, take use these seven tips to guide you as you write your proposal. And then send it out. How do you know if your idea is good or bad? By the responses. If you haven’t heard back from an agent in 30 days, consider it a no and move on. If you do get a response, take a look at that letter. Agents will only spend time writing something specific when they were truly impressed with what you wrote and want to acknowledge that fact. If all you are getting are form rejections, there is a message in those one sentence letters: Time to rethink that proposal.

Other posts from “A Week in Journalism” series:

Why journalists misquote everyone (and how I met my husband)

How to be a freelance writer without starving

How to move from print journalism to online journalism

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Travel update from New York City

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So here I am in NYC, doing my book publicity stuff. I had grand plans for posting on the blog last night and today, but my Internet connection is terrible. As in, nonexistent. And it was going to be be the first weekday in months that I haven’t posted.

I started feeling withdrawal. So I called my husband to ask him to search online for a computer I could use in between my 1pm meeting and my 3pm meeting, and here I am, in between meetings, posting from Kinko’s: For thirty cents a minute in case you are wondering.

But believe me, the Kinko’s cost is nothing compared to the babysitting costs on this trip.

I took my twenty-one-month-old son with me because last month I traveled without him, and it really felt wrong. Like he was too young for me to be away that long. And the time before that I took him with me but he cried the whole time because I left him with unfamiliar people during the day. So, this time I flew my babysitter from Madison to NYC for a five-day trip.

Expensive, yes, but I have a one-hour window today, and I can use the time for posting on the blog instead of feeling guilt about how I’m taking care of my kids. Feeling guilt takes time. I like to think that the insane cost of the babysitter frees up my mind to do more interesting things than feel guilt. But maybe that’s not totally true. Because look, I spent the time writing about it instead.

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Four ways to make a bad job good

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The best way to be happier at work is to take personal responsibility for your workplace well-being. Once you do that, any job can be better than it is right now.

Here are four ways you can improve your job yourself instead of relying on your boss or your company to change:

1. Make a friend at work

People with one friend at work are much more likely to find their work interesting. And people with three friends at work are virtually guaranteed to be very satisfied with their life, according to extensive research from Gallup published in the book Vital Friends by Tom Rath. These findings are independent of what a person’s job entails, and what their home life is like.

On one level, this isn’t surprising. We’re better equipped to deal with hardship if we have friends near us, and we have more fun when we’re with friends. So a friend allows us to deal with the ups and downs of work much more easily.

We often think of work and life as separate, and consequently fortify our home life with friends. But we need different friends for different contexts. Having someone you can count on at work to care about you and understand you feeds your soul in a way that used to apply only at home.

Of course, once you have this information, you have to figure out the most effective ways to make friends at work. Because friends don’t just materialize in your cubicle — you need to cultivate them.

2. Decrease your commute time by moving closer to work.

More than three million people have a commute that lasts more than 90 minutes. Many of them justify this commute by saying that their job is worth it, or that it allows them to have a bigger house. But the commute may be doing them great harm at home and at work.

Humans can adjust to almost any amount of bad news, according to Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert. In his book “Stumbling on Happiness,” he shows that we think losing a limb will be terrible, but in fact we adjust to it pretty well. In fact, in the long run it generally doesn’t affect our level of happiness.

A commute is different, though. It’s impossible to adjust to because the way in which it’s bad changes every day. So the tension of not knowing what will be bad, and when it will be bad, and not being able to control those things, means we’re unable to use our outstanding mental abilities to adjust.

Here’s the clincher, though: Even though people tell themselves it won’t happen to them, a bad commute spills over into the rest of the day for almost everyone. If you have a bad commute on the way to work and you walk into the office in a bad mood, that’s the mood you’re likely to have all day. And if you have a bad commute on the way home, you’ll probably still be grouchy by the time you go to bed.

3. Know when it’s not about your job.

I’m not certain whether this is good news or bad news, but the connection between your job and your happiness is overrated. In general, the kind of work you do isn’t going to have huge bearing on whether you’re happy or not.

To be sure, your work can make you unhappy (see No. 2 above, for example), but work isn’t going to give you the key to the meaning of life or anything like that.

Still, you can do a quick check to make sure you have a job that’s good for you. A good job:

• Stretches you without defeating you

• Provides clear goals

• Provides unambiguous feedback

• Provides a sense of control

If you have these things in your job and you’re still not happy, it’s not your job — it’s you.

So maybe it’s time to start looking inside yourself to figure out what’s wrong, instead of blaming everything on your job. I’m a big fan of getting help when you feel stuck. Sure, we can all get ourselves through life, but it’s often easier to get where you want to be faster if you have someone to help you overcome your barriers.

To this end, you need to know if you need a career coach or a shrink. And if your job meets the criteria on the above list, you could probably use help from a mental health professional in order to find ways to get happier.

4. Do good deeds.

Help people. Be kind. Don’t think about what you get in return. Just be nice. In this way, you can make the world a better place in the job you have right now.

Take personal responsibility for your happiness during the day, and do things that make you feel good. You’ve heard a lot of this before. If you go to the gym, your mood will get better (and your mind will be sharper). If you eat healthy food, you feel better than if you go to McDonald’s for lunch. And if you do random acts of kindness, you get as much out of it as the person you’re being kind to.

But most importantly, stop looking for your work to give your life meaning. The meaning of life is in your relationships. Cultivate them. A good job is a nice thing to have, but only in the context of larger meaning.

If you’re happy outside of work, where you don’t rely on your boss or your company, then finding happiness at work will be that much easier.

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