Volunteer work helps your career while you help others

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We are entering the age of volunteerism. Generation X has shifted charity from the hierarchical, corporate-backed methods of the Red Cross and United Way, to a grassroots, episodic volunteerism of, say, tutoring neighborhood children. And Generation Y is donating more of their time to charitable causes than perhaps any generation in history. According Leslie Lenkowsky, professor at The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, 90% of college-bound high school students volunteer.

Young people are determined to make a difference; they accept only a mission that is close to the heart and take action only when they can get their arms around the whole project. These attitudes affect choice of both charity and career, and increasingly the two overlap in ways that finally dignify the word “synergy”.

Melissa Krodman graduated from Boston University with a communications degree and joined a casting agency in England. But she found that industry was no match for her values. She wanted to do something larger in media, but she wasn't sure what. “Also,” she says, “I was faxing and doing things where I wasn't learning very much.” So she moved back to the United States to regroup, and she volunteered at What’s Up magazine.

Bruce Tulgan studies the working lives of young people, and he sees Krodman's criteria as typical for recent entrants into the workforce. “Mission is especially important for both career and charity, but then they want to know what they'll be doing. They ask, What will I learn? Who will I work with?”

In many cases, volunteering can add both mission and key experience to one's work life. Enter episodic volunteering: short-term, project-based, local, and hands-on, this is the type of charity that can improve your karma as well as your career.

Aaron Hurst is president and founder of the Taproot Foundation, which provides ways for people to donate their skills to discreet projects for nonprofit organizations. He says, “In the first ten or fifteen years of a career people have limited money giving ability but can give a relatively significant donation of time and skills. The average Taproot volunteer donates five to seven thousand dollars in work, and they could have never given that much in cash.”

For some volunteers, time with a nonprofit can shine light on a true calling. Krodman explains that, “For a long time I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. Volunteering at What's Up gave me a much more clear focus. What's Up introduced me to media that inspires activism. That's a part of the picture I didn't have.”

Even those who know their true calling can expand their skill set by volunteering for challenging projects. Hurst says, “Experiential learning is the best way to teach adults, especially when it comes to soft skills like leadership. Law firms have used pro bono work as a great training tool, and now it's spreading to other industries.” Hurst gives an example of a graphic designer for Hewlett Packard who had used the same font and colors for five years. Volunteering was a good way to stretch his design skills.

One of the most frustrating aspects of an entry-level job is the lack of responsibility. Krodman points out that volunteering is a good way to gain responsibility fast: “In an organization where you have bosses and work for someone else there is a certain amount of climbing you have to do. At What's Up, I am my own boss and I get to do work that I would not get to do at a big corporation until years down the line.”

And no matter where you are in your career, volunteering is a way to build a network. A typical Taproot branding project, for example, combines a project manager, brand strategist, graphic designer, and copywriter, each from a different company.

This benefit is not lost on Krodman. She used the contacts she made through volunteer work at What's Up magazine to find her ideal job — one that provides solid mission as well as solid salary. But what would she do if she landed that dream job and didn't have to work at cafes to pay rent? “Volunteer more,” she says. “There's so much to be done.”

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How to choose a career to get the lifestyle you want

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Sarah Kenny wakes up at 5am six mornings a week to get to Back Bay Yoga where she practices ashtanga — a genre of yoga known for acrobatic lunges, feet tucked behind the head, and almost fifty pushups in one session. After that, she goes to work as a senior operations specialist. For Kenny, both pieces of her life are important. “I am good at my job and I am good at yoga and I had to figure out how to balance both,” she says.

One of the most liberating moments in career planning is to realize that you don't have to get paid to do your favorite activity in order to be happy. One of the constipating situations is to think there is only one career that can be fulfilling to you. Get rid of the idea that the most important thing to a worker is work, and you free yourself to make work just one portion of a fulfilling life.

Kenny's success comes, in part, from the fact that she has structured a life that caters to two aspects of her personality — the organized, office manager type, and the athletic, live-in-the-moment type.

Paul Tieger, co-author of the best-selling career guide, Do What You Are, advises that you pick a career based on your personality type, which nearly ensures that you'll have passion for what you do. Tieger's book helps you to understand yourself very quickly in a way that allows you to nail down your personality type and then find many careers that cater to it. You can even give the system a free test drive.

What is clear form Tieger's system is that a personality is multi-faceted, and a career need only cater the dominant aspects of your personality in order to be fulfilling. The passion you have that you won't get paid for is something you can do in addition to your job, and in the best scenario, each portion of your life caters to a different aspect of your personality.

The key to making this sort of life work, though, is finding a job that leaves room for a life. Kenny, for example, will not work at a company that does not respect her yoga schedule. Leslie Cintron, assistant professor of sociology at Washington and Lee University, says that workers like Kenny are not aberrations, “We have a generation that is clamoring for more balance in their lives.”

But this is a different sort of balance than the baby boomers aspired to. According to Cintron, “Baby boomers were talking about issues that they had to deal with when women moved into the workforce and polices didn't acknowledge that fact. Today one difference is that men in their 20s also are saying they want balance. They want extra space to be able to develop themselves as individuals.” Another difference is that baby boomers asked, “Can we work and have a family?” The new generations ask, “Can we work and have a life?”

For some people, “having a life” means having time for friends or developing a connected relationship. Other people might seek meaningful pursuits outside of work, such as a particular sport or extensive travel. Whatever “having a life” means to you, take solace in the fact that you don't need to get paid for it, you just need to find an employer who will give you room for your personal passions.

Be bold when it comes to getting what you need. Ask yourself what parts of your personality you need to address. Ask your employer to accommodate your non-work needs. The new generation is rife with people like you. Management advisors across the country are warning companies that if they don't make the workplace flexible they will face a shortage of willing workers.

Trust yourself to identify your personality type and your passions, and have the confidence to require that your employer afford you space to grow. Cintron encourages asking, even if it looks like a risk: “There is a lot of untapped flexibility that might be offered if one makes that first attempt to ask.”

Tread very carefully near a company that will not give you enough control over your time to enable you to pursue passions outside the office. Having control over your time and your work are some of the most important factors in job satisfaction; it is almost impossible to be happy in a job that gives you no control.

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I’m moving out of New York City

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It used to be that people moved to where their job was. But where you live has a lot of impact on how happy you are. So it makes sense that today people pick a city first and then find a job, and cities maven Wendy Waters thinks this trend will increase. I will be part of this trend on Monday, when I move.

I have spent the last six months studying statistics about cities and matching them with statistics about happiness. This is serious scientific research that is changing how universties teach and how city planners think.

Here are the two guiding principles of my research:

1. People are very bad at predicting what will make them happy.
We overestimate how bad the bad will be, for example. We think we will be really sad if we lose a leg, but in fact, people who lose a limb are not any sadder, as a population, than people who have not lost a limb. I learned this from an interview with Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology at Harvard, and I quote him so often he is practically my guest blogger.

2. The studies about happiness will most likely apply to me (and you).
This I also learned from Gilbert. He says that even though most people think they are exceptional, most people are normal. Of course. That’s what normal is. But most football players think they are above average (they are not) and most people think they are below average jugglers (they are not). We are all basically average. (You can read more about this in his book, which I also constantly hype.)

Here are the two things that I thought were most important when we talk about the intersection of geography and happiness:

1. People are happy if they earn what their friends earn.
Relative income, rather than any certain level of income, affects well-being, according to Daniel Kahneman, who won the 2002 Nobel Prize for applying the principles of psychology to economics.

I remember a piece I read in the New York Times (which would be a link you’d have to pay for so I’m not even going to bother looking for it.) It was a story about how real estate agents know way too much about their clients. One agent talked about when a husband and wife were looking for summer rentals in the Hamptons. They walked into a five million dollar home and the wife said, “We wouldn’t have to live like this if you’d get a decent job.”

It’s not about how much you have, it’s about how much your friends have. So you should live in a place where you will have as much money as the people you meet. My husband and I are constantly examining our jobs and our childcare setup, so I know we need a city with a low cost of living in order to guarantee that we never fall below the median during our trials and errors.

2. You will like what other people like.
I want good schools because I have two young kids. I checked out lots of school rankings. The more I pored over these different rankings, the more I distrusted them. Every list had different results, and the whole process seemed to be pretty subjective.

Gilbert is doing a study right now that shows that if you want to know if you should date a given person on Match.com, ask the last person he dated. If the last date liked him then you will like him. So I decided that choosing a school district is like dating, and the most important thing in picking a school is that other families love the school district.

Finally, as a tie-breaker, I looked at how economic development experts rated cities. I love the economic development people because their job is to think about how to leverage the community to make life vibrant.

I focused on the rock star of economic development, Richard Florida. He ranks cities according to how creative they are. You can search by topics like how technology-oriented the city is(technology=innovative business), or how gay it is (gay=diversity=open minds for new ideas). Each city gets a score that reflects the level of creative thinking among its population.

So, where did I choose? Madison, Wisc.

Madison is inexpensive, the people who live there love the schools, and the city comes up on best places lists all the time.

For all the research I’ve done, though, I have no idea where to live within the city. So it’d be great if there’s a Madison native out there who could post some suggestions.

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The measures of our success

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It's very hard to tell how you’re doing in the blogosphere. I am, by nature, competitive, so I am always looking for ways to measure success. To this end, I’ve been using Technorati, the grand ranker of all blogs.

So let me just take a moment to say that I made it into the top 100,000 in just four months of blogging. When I told this to my husband, who wonders why I spend so much time on this blog when I am not getting paid, he said, “You’re in the top hundred thousand? Is that good or bad?” I had to remind him that it’s 100,000 out of more than 50 million.

Meanwhile, I was interviewing Robert Wright today, and he mentioned a new way to think about blogging success. He said the letters he receives from his Bloggingheads.tv audience are just as intelligent as the letters he received when he was editor of the (magazine-to-the-intelligentsia) New Republic.

I like that way to measure success because I get such good comments on my blog.

This also seems like a good time to mention that the reason going to work is easier than staying home with kids is that at work, we get structured praise for meeting defined goals. At home, no matter how great a parent you might be, you get screaming kids who break rules. There is no standard way to measure success as a parent, which can be very frustrating.

But everyone needs official recognition for their work and you don’t get it as a parent. In this respect, blogging for no revenue has unfortunate parallels to the worst parts of parenting.

So thank goodness for Technorati. Now I’m aiming for the top 50,000.

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Two office haikus

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One last minute task
My job description expands
Paycheck still itty-bitty

I am a writer
I planned to be a princess
It did not work out.

– From That Girl Who Writes Stuff via Monster Blog

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Navigating the quarterlife crisis

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Scott Newberg flew into Logan airport in the middle of the night. He went straight home to his office, and in the dark room the blue light of his computer glared — a screen full of unfinished work that piled up while he was gone. He sat down at the keyboard, and that's when he had the revelation. He gave notice. He has no other job lined up. He has no real plan for how he will make money. But the career he had was not fulfilling.

One of the contributions Generations X and Y have made to the workplace is the quarterlife crisis. It's not the midlife crisis, typified by a baby boomer in a Porsche obsessively speeding. The quarterlife crisis happens in one's twenties and more likely involves takeout pizza and obsessive IMing.

The journey toward crisis begins at college graduation, when the typical student has about ten thousand dollars in loans and no skills to land a decent job. Frank Furstenberg, professor of sociology at University of Pennsylvania, says the transition to adulthood is “more arduous today than it was fifty years ago.” Employers are not hiring people in their early 20s for staff jobs. “Employers hire temps for positions that don't require experience. Society can incorporate people only when they get some experience working and there is a better match between employee and employer.”

With little to lose, most twentysomethings use their post-college time as an opportunity for finding oneself, seeing what's available, and trying a lot on for size. (Which translates to more than eight jobs before turning 32.) The new behavior, which looks remarkably like flailing, is appropriate for the new workplace. Jeffrey Arnett, psychologist at Clark University and author of Emerging Adulthood says, “People have different personal time tables and it's nice that people can make choices that are right for them.”

Yet this new phase in one's career is unnerving in light of the stability of previous generations of people in their 20s. And if the job-hopping doesn't stop by age thirty, the stress intensifies to crisis.

Emerging adults “have high expectations for work. It is not just a way to make a living,” says Arnett. They want work to be fulfilling and to be an expression of their identities.”

This is true for Alexandra Robbins. She took the first job offered to her after college because she was “seduced by the trappings: Short commute, friends at the company, office with a door. The pay was fine, but the work was not rewarding.”

She realized that in the post-college world, people are judged by their answer to the question, “So, what do you do?” And she knew she needed to do something that could define her.

Typical of her generation, she does not claim to have extravagant dreams: “I never had a big dream. I wanted to make a living writing. Dreams that are too specific lead to missed opportunities.” As a writer she has become a sort of spokesperson for the generation of lost college graduates. Her recent book, Conquering Your Quarterlife Crisis, chronicles the ups and downs of people like her, who finally found their way.

Like Furstenberg, Robbins sees that previous generations were more equipped to make the transition to adulthood. “We cannot gain a foothold in society until age thirty. But our parents' generation has twenty in their head. The crisis is a clash of generations.” Fifty years ago, people expected to find a job for life right after college and be married with kids by 24. But for the current generation, Robbins declares, “Thirty is the new twenty.”

Sure, GenXers and Ys have high expectations for work, and maybe they're unreasonable, “but the only way to find out is to try,” says Arnett. “Most people will fail. But by the time people are in their late twenties most have made peace with their dreams. Psychologically people tend to accommodate themselves to whatever they have.”

The problems start around age 27 or 28, when most people find a career. For people who do not feel settled, there is panic and what Arnett calls “desperate and dangerous” measures in order to reach their goals.

Which brings us back to Newberg, whose wife is about to give birth. His plan is to stay home with the baby while she supports the family. And he will write music for commercials, though he has scant experience in the trade. And he will “write some novels and shop them around.” He wants to support his family in five years but has not figured out how many novels or musical compositions he would need to sell to do that. Those people who are not turning thirty might bristle at Newberg's plan. But he says, speaking for many in his generation, “I don't want to be eighty and regret not taking this risk.”

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Please, no more studies about getting women to the top

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I hate to dis Catalyst because they have provided great research to support women in the work place. But here’s a bit from their most recent study: “Most large U.S. companies have made scant progress in advancing women…to leadership and top-paying positions over the past decade.”

DUH!!!!

It’s clear at this point that women are basically stuck on their climb up the corporate ladder. In general, climbing the corporate ladder to the top requires giving up your personal life in order to serve the corporation. And research has shown that if women are willing to give up having kids, (or at least have a stay-at-home husband,) they can climb as well as men.

But really, why fight to get more women up a ladder that is basically dysfunctional? We should, instead, focus on helping men to get off the ladder. And then helping both men and women to get meaningful and rewarding work both outside and inside the home.

The Third Path is a nonprofit that addresses these issues. It helps people “redesign work to better accommodate family, community and other life passions.” The interview I did with the founder, Jessica DeGroot , was truly inspiring and made me think about all the possibilities for being a social change leader with my own family.

Another way to address the issues of creating meaningful work inside and outside the home is to go to court. No joke. Lisa Belkin reports in today’s New York Times that a new category of discrimination suit being won is a suit in which plaintiffs claim discrimination at work because they are giving care at home. Mary Still, professor at University of California Hastings College of the Law, coined the term “family responsibilities discrimination,” and both men and women are winning their cases in this area: Hooray.

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Test the waters of self-employment without jumping in

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The odds are that you will probably consider self-employment at some point: Eighty-nine percent of people in the United States who make more than $50,000 a year are self-employed, according to Entrepreneur magazine.

As with all decision points, the way to make the best choice is to know yourself. If you get bored easily, do a lot of different jobs. If you are a type-A hyperachiever, do one business really, really well. If you have a small tolerance for risk, keep a full-time job while you explore other options. All are great ways to make the shift to working for yourself.

One of the most interesting recipes for self-employment comes from self-employment evangelist Barbara Winter. Winter says that it’s easier to have five jobs that generate $10,000 a year than it is to have one job that generates $50,000 a year — the perfect scenario for opening an eBay business, renting out a room in your condo, writing press releases for your friend’s startup, etc.

This is, essentially, juggling five jobs, but Winter’s book describes ways of making it seem manageable: “The juggler walks out on the stage with ten sticks and ten plates, but doesn’t begin spinning them all at once. Methodically, the juggler positions the first plate on a stick and gets it into motion. Once done, the juggler moves on to the next, then the next, and so forth. Eventually, all ten of the plates are spinning away, each with its own momentum.” (This is how I feel about blogging — it’s like throwing another plate in the air for me.)

If you have spent some time in the workforce, consider becoming a consultant, which essentially is making a single, focused business out of yourself. “You should have at least five years of workplace experience before you go on your own,” says Laurie Young, founder of Flexible Resources, “because you are offering your experience.” Also, you need marketing skills to sell yourself. It takes a certain kind of talent “to show people you have skills they can use.”

Find a market niche that you can dominate. Otherwise there is no way to distinguish yourself from all the other consultants, no way to stand out. (Two good books on this: Small is the New Big, and The Long Tail.) Young did this herself, as a recruiter. She is a headhunter for people who want flexible jobs (she herself job shares the CEO position at Flexible Resources). If she were a more typical headhunter, she would not stand out above the crowd as well.

Alexandra Levit worked in public relations for Computer Associates and then struck out on her own, as a consultant in publicity and marketing communications. In terms of making the transition, Levit advises that you “try lining up a few jobs that you can have before you take the leap,” and be prepared to spend “about 30% of your time marketing yourself.”

Levit provides a snapshot of reality for all entrepreneurs when she says, “Don’t expect the drawbacks to be only financial. You need a lot of self-discipline to sit down in your home office and work without any external pressure. Working for yourself means you’re responsible for every aspect of the business,” and this means, ironically, even some of the annoying tasks you were trying to avoid by working for yourself.

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You will like your job more if you make a friend at work

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Here’s some advice for those of you who don’t like your job: Maybe your job is not your problem. Maybe it’s that you are not trying hard enough to make friends 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.

These are some of the findings Tom Rath reports in his new book, Vital Friends: The People You Can’t Afford to Live Without. As a longtime Gallup employee, Rath draws on a massive number of interviews conducted by this polling organization.

Rath says a friend who can change your work environment is “someone you spend a lot of time in a relationship with. And you are probably making a difference in that person’s life, too. If the person were gone, work would be less fun.”

Nikhil Rajpal, at Project: Think Different identified a best friend at work immediately: “My friend Will and I go to lunch together every day. When work gets tough the friendship makes it easier to get through the day. When one of us is stressed or had too much work one of us buys the other coffee and we walk around and talk about it.”

Rath has identified eight different friendship roles. No single person can be all these roles at once, and the fatal flaw people make in relationships is asking that of one person — often a boss or a spouse.

A navigator, for example, is someone who is like a mentor. You don’t need to have regular conversations with the person, but when you do, they are very meaningful in your life. A connector is the type of friend made famous by Malcolm Gladwell, in The Tipping Point, for being able to give you a network. And a champion is the type of friend who thrives on your accomplishments and happiness.

The threshold for gaining the benefits of health and life satisfaction from friendship is three or four friends. Here are some steps to make those friends:

1. Identify someone appropriate.

“When I was in human resources I had a lot of confidential information, so it was no surprise that I became friends with the executive assistant for the CEO, who also had a lot of confidential information,” says Heather Mundell, career coach and author of the blog Dream Big.

2. Be open.

On the Internet, where ranting is de rigueur, it would seem that half of all workers are surrounded by idiots. This way of thinking will not find you friends. “We like to think we can size someone up in ten seconds. But often our opinions of people change over time,” says Mundell.

3. Make time for face-to-face contact.

“If someone stops by your cube and says do you have few minutes? It’s nice if you do. Be a good listener,” says Mundell. “Over time, problem solving together and venting will lead to building trust. You should stop by peoples’ cubes and shoot the breeze, too.”

4. Choose your surroundings carefully.

Find an office that encourages friendships — the structure of workspaces, the quality of common areas, the size of the well-stocked fridge — all these factors can contribute to making an office full of friendships. Rath found that you are three times more likely to have a close-knit workgroup if the physical environment makes it easy to socialize.

5. Find coworkers with shared vision and values.

This situation is probably most common at a nonprofit like Project: Think Different: “Everyone is linked together based on a passion for what we’re doing,” says, Raipal. “We all have a strong desire to change messages in pop culture.”

6. Shift your focus away from yourself.

“People spend so much time trying to manage themselves,” says Rath. Formal education focuses on mastery of topic areas, and graduate school allows you to focus on your own interests. But “when it comes to improving our lives,” writes Rath, “it’s the energy between two people that makes a difference.”

This is going to be a big change for most people. Most workers do not make friends at work. But without a best friend at work, the chances of being engaged in your job are slim. So maybe you should put aside advice about finding the perfect job by searching want ads for your calling. Instead, look for a job and an office that facilitate relationships; friendship is your calling.

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How to find happiness: Listen to scientists who study it

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We spend so much energy trying to decide what career will make us happy, what job to take, what kind of boss we need. But today happiness is actually a science, and we can teach ourselves to make better decisions faster based on what we know about happiness.

This science of happiness is such a popular field that 150 colleges offer courses in it. If you can’t take a class, read this article in New York magazine for a fun introduction to the topic.

The article is slanted for New Yorkers because New Yorkers are more unhappy than everyone else, (which is unfortunate since I live there). But most of the information in the article is useful to everyone.

For example: “No matter where they live, human beings are terrible predictors of what will make them happy.” This is because our mind plays tricks on us: “We are more comfortable with decisions we can’t reverse than ones we can.”

Here is something that really affected me: “Those who seek out the best options in life are called maximizers. And maximizers, in practically every study, are far more miserable than people who are willing to make do.” One way to stop being a maximizer is to move to where you have fewer choices, (which takes us back to the New York City problem.) Another way is to make choices faster, before you obsessively weigh every possibility.

Other zingers: Kids don’t make you happy, losing limbs doesn’t make you sad, and if you have as much money as the people you hang out with you’ll feel like you have enough.

How can you not be curious about this article? I read it three times.

Now, if I could only make better choices…

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