9/11: Digging myself out of the debris

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I was at the World Trade Center when it fell. At each anniversary that passes I write my story, and each year it changes a little. This year, I have been thinking about that moment when I accepted death.

I was at the corner of Liberty and Broadway when the first tower fell. I was too close to the building to be able to see what was happening. It sounded like a huge bomb, and it felt like a snowstorm of dirt. Everyone ran. But in just a few seconds, the world became dead silent and no one could see. I crawled over piles of people. My mouth was full of dust and I could barely breathe. I had no idea where I was or how to preserve myself. I thought I might be the only person alive. As breathing got more difficult, I settled into the idea of dying.

Time got very slow and I seem to have had an hour’s worth of thoughts in seconds. At first I worried that my family would be sad. But then I was disappointed. I would not see my brothers as adults. Would not know what I was like as a mom, or what it was like to grow old with my husband. My to-do list was overflowing with things I wanted to achieve, things I had been looking forward to. But the minute I thought I was going to die, that list didn’t matter. I was sad that I would not get to hang out and watch family life unfold.

It’s surprising because like almost all New Yorkers, I was not the hang out type. And in case it’s not clear from the obituaries and essays that have come from 9/11, the World Trade Center did not attract the slow-lane types.

Like many New Yorkers, I went to a World Trade Center recovery group. The groups were divided into the kind of trauma you experienced. People who watched the scene on TV were not in the same group as people whose spouse died. I was in a group with people who were there the ten minutes or so before the Tower fell. Some of the people in my group felt the impact of the plane while sitting at their desk. Some of the people ran from their building and were splattered by body parts from jumpers. All of us felt lucky to be alive.

All of us vowed to make life more meaningful after 9/11. Almost all of us changed jobs to do something that gave us more personal time. The few of us who could, had a baby.

Now I know that if I die tomorrow, what I’ll regret is not getting to watch my life unfold. So I have been changing my life, a little at a time, to give myself more time to watch life go by. I made a career change from Wall St.-based business development to home-based writer, I had two kids, and I encouraged my husband to reject jobs with long hours. We vowed to cut back our spending 70% to create a more simple life.

But cutting spending is not so easy, especially in New York City. It required making a lot of difficult choices. Finally we decided we could not reach our goals without moving. So this year, on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, I am making a new home in Madison.

Sure, I’m still competitive and ambitious when it comes to my career, but what 9/11 gave me the strength to make the scary decision to slow things down. Slowing down means missing opportunities, missing a chance to shine or a serendipitous meeting. It’s hard to simplify life because a complicated life is so stimulating. But nearly suffocating in the rubble showed me that what I want most is to be present: Consciously watching while my life unfolds.

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Don’t post naked photos of yourself. From work. Duh.

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Check out this experiment, which shocked even me. Here is the description of it from Waxy.org:

A Seattle web developer named Jason Fortuny started his own Craigslist experiment. The goal: “Posing as a submissive woman looking for an aggressive dom, how many responses can we get?”

He took the text and photo from a sexually explicit ad (warning: not safe for work) in another area, reposted it to Craigslist Seattle. In 24 hours he received 178 responses, with 145 photos of men in various states of undress.

In a staggering move, he published every single response, including full names, phone numbers, and email addresses. Read the responses (warning: sexually explicit material).

So why is this on Brazen Careerist? Because among the many responders was a guy who used his Microsoft company email address. And included a naked photo of himself. Or at least a part of himself.

Casual sex on Craigslist is a lifestyle. Whatever. But the work email address. That’s another story. My first reaction was, what an idiot. But then I decided that it’s not that idiotic.

At this point in the history of the Internet, adults understand not to use their work email to send naked photos of themselves. Adults know this will come back to haunt them. So I am convinced that people who flagrantly ignore common workplace precautions are actually looking to get caught.

Guy Kawasaki addresses this issue on a smaller scale. He didn’t back up his computer, and it crashed, and a friend recommended he read Why Smart People Do Dumb Things. The four reasons people do stupid things apply to Mr. Kawasaki and Mr. Microsoft as well: Hubris, arrogance, narcissism, unconscious need to fail.

The question is, degree. If you are very [arrogant, narcissistic or in need of failure] you will do something very big and stupid. Most of us just do small stupid acts. I immediately recognized my problem as unconcsious need to fail. I wish I could say it was arrogance, because I think that might sound better.

But, as usual, understanding what motivates someone to do something stupid at work automatically makes me have more empathy and less judgment. Understanding peoples’ motivations is a good exercise to keep you evenhanded and compassionate at work — two skills that are essential to leadership success. And if it can work with Mr. Microsoft, it can work with anyone.

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The new wave of entrepreneurship: Three things you need for success

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Matt Rivers became an entrepreneur at age 17 when his favorite surf shop went out of business and he used his dishwashing money to buy it. “At first there was only one T-shirt rack and one shorts rack and when I sold a T-shirt I bought two more.” Today his Cape Cod-based business has one of the most recognized names in east coast surfing thanks to his sponsorship of the Pump House surf team. And of course, Rivers surfs every day.

It used to be that people started out in a large company, and after ten or fifteen years of little fulfillment, they tried entrepreneurship as a way to get out of a bad spot. Today many young people recognize right off the bat that corporate life will not be fulfilling, and according to the Entrepreneur's Organization, the most common age for starting a business has shifted from 35-45 to under 34.

A new view of entrepreneurship has swept through a generation that has seen their parents' loyalty rewarded with layoffs and their parents' pensions destroyed with impunity. The goals and values of today's younger workers make entrepreneurship look more appealing than ever as the bad rap of the twentieth century fades. Consider these comparisons:

Twentieth century: The hours of an entrepreneur are insane and you live at your office.
Millennial: Entrepreneurship provides flexibility necessary for a balanced life. Harris Interactive reports that men in their 20s and early 30s value making time for their family more than they value landing a powerful job. For women, the numbers seeking a career with flexibility are even higher.

Twentieth century: Entrepreneurs need a trust fund or an appetite for living on the edge.
Millennial: Working for yourself is not that risky. Dun & Bradstreet estimate that 76% of new businesses survive more than two years, which is hardly high-risk odds. Andrew Zacharakis, professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College, says, “You can make a nice living,” and besides, “there is no longer such thing as a stable, corporate job.”

Twentieth century: Entrepreneurs are self-aggrandizing. (Think: Colonel Sanders on all the buckets.)
Millennial: Starting a business provides a way to give back to the community. Ask Nate Wolfson, founder of Thrive Networks, what makes him most excited about this IT consulting firm and he says, “We're a two-time winner of the fifty best places to work in Boston.” Ask Rivers how many employees he has grown to and he says, “It's not like that. We're a family here. Each year the store grows, the surf team grows.”

Most of you under the age of 34 have contemplated, at one point or another, the idea of starting your own business. Rich Farrell, founder and CEO of Boston-based technology company FullArmor, says it's easier if you do it earlier. He started his business right out of school, when his parents' basement seemed like reasonable living quarters. “I couldn't do that now. My wife wouldn't live in the basement and my parents wouldn't live with my two-year old 24/7. If I were starting today I'd have to raise money from angels or VCs.”

Do you wonder if you have the entrepreneurial chops to forward? Andrew Zacharakis, professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College, cites three traits that make successful entrepreneurs:

1. Strong knowledge base in the arena you want to enter. Rivers, for example, grew up working at the very store he purchased. On top of that, as an expert surfer he's able to build a surf team that garners national attention for the store.

2. An extensive network both inside and outside of your field. A strong network can give you leads to customers, suppliers, and partners. Networking is something you need to feel comfortable doing every day. Don't underestimate the value of a surf team, but don't overestimate the value of knowledge you cannot leverage at a cocktail party.

3. Commitment. As in Ramen noodles every night. Zacharakis' warns, “you need to be prepared for some lean years during which you draw little or no salary.” Wolfson adds, “When you're an entrepreneur you're never not working. You're always trying to think about what you can do next. I drive my fiancé crazy because I talk about it nonstop.”

Do you think you have what it takes? Not so fast. The first step, for everyone, is finding your passion. According to Zacharakis, “Passion is something you have to look for every day of your life. It’s likely to change over time, but finding your passion is good practice.” It’s the first step to finding a balanced life, and the first step on the path to a committed career.

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TIME Magazine mentioned my blog. Now what?

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Yep, it’s true. This week TIME Magazine quotes me, tells tidbits of my life, and pretty much makes it sound like my job is blogging.

So next time someone asks me that all-important question, “What do you do?” I’m thinking of saying, “I’m a blogger.”

Right now, when someone asks me what I do, the conversation goes like this:

“I’m a career columnist.”

“Oh. Where is your column?”

“I write for the Boston Globe, and my syndicated column has appeared in about 100 publications.”

“Oh.”

That’s it. No fireworks. Maybe a nod. And then I ask the person what he or she does.

But if someone asked me what I do and I said, “I'm a blogger,” we’d talk about it. They’d remember me. And maybe they’d check out my blog. To most people, being a blogger for a profession is like being an astronaut: Shockingly cool.

But I’m starting to think that no one really is a blogger. In my quest to understand the blogsphere, I have easily spent 100 hours combing though Technorati to understand the ranking system. (I have a spreadsheet full of stats on all career-related blogs like I am playing fantasy baseball or something.) I have a good understanding of who the top bloggers are, and let me tell you, they are not blogging for a living. They are using their blog as a tool.

For example, Guy Kawasaki’s blog is part of his venture capitalist brand: He is in the know and you need to know who he knows to be in the know. Curt Rosengren’s blog, is a platform to launch a book career, speaking career, one of those multi-pronged adventures in passion that he promotes through his writing. Seth Godin’s blog, fuels his book sales which fuel his consulting business.

Let’s look outside the work world, though. Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, who writes DailyKos is not a blogger per se, he’s a political pundit, and maybe a political fundraiser, or political gate-breaker. But you can’t just be a blogger and get all that attention. Cory, at BoingBoing, quit his day job to blog. Maybe is the closest thing we have to blogger, only blogger. But really, he is a cultural critic. Maybe a community organizer. Or, you could argue, blogging gatekeeper, since it’s hard to hit blog paydirt without getting a link from someone like BoingBoing. (HintHint)

But I don’t care that blogging is an amorphous job. I want to call myself a blogger because I want to see what happens when I do that. The way you answer the question, What do you do? tells the world how you see yourself and what’s important to you. And the world responds differently, depending on what you project. Maybe I’ll think of myself or my career in a fresh light. At least I will get to talk to people about blogging, which is what is at the front of my mind right now.

But one thing is for sure: My syndicator will tell me this is not a good idea. He is adamant that my blog is an offshoot of my print columns and not the other way around. I am not so sure. But, as always, it comes down to this: I get paid for the columns, not for my blog. So I’d be hard-pressed to talk about my blog if the question were not “What do you do?” but, “How do you keep a roof over your head?”

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What to do in college to be successful in your career

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For those of you about to start another year at school, here’s a list of things to keep in mind: Twenty things to do in college to set yourself up for a great job when you graduate.

1. Get out of the library.
“You can have a degree and a huge GPA and not be ready for the workplace. A student should plan that college is four years of experience rather than 120 credits,” says William Coplin, professor at Syracuse University and author of the book, 10 Things Employers Want You to Learn in College. Many people recommend not hiring someone with a 4.0 because that student probably has little experience beyond schoolwork.

2. Start a business in your dorm room.
It’s relatively easy, and Google and Yahoo are dying to buy your business early, when it’s cheap. Besides, running a company in your room is better than washing dishes in the cafeteria. Note to those who play poker online until 4am: Gambling isn’t a business. It’s an addiction.

3. Don’t take on debt that is too limiting.
This is not a reference to online gambling, although it could be. This is about choosing a state school over a pricey private school. If that’s still too tough financially, then consider starting at a community college or look into online degrees vs traditional ones. Almost everyone agrees you can get a great education at an inexpensive school. So in many cases the debt from a private school is more career-limiting than the lack of brand name on your diploma.

4. Get involved on campus.
When it comes to career success, emotional intelligence — social skills to read and lead others —get you farther than knowledge or job competence, according to Tiziana Casciaro, professor at Harvard Business School. Julie Albert, a junior at Brandeis University, is the director of her a-cappella group and head of orientation this year. She hones her leadership skills outside the classroom, which is exactly the place to do it.

5. Avoid grad school in the humanities.
Survival rates in this field are very close to survival rates on the Titanic. One in five English PhD’s find stable university jobs, and the degree won’t help outside the university: “Schooling only gives you the capacity to stand behind a cash register,” says Thomas Benton, a columnist at the Chronicle of Higher Education (who has a degree in American Civilization from Harvard and a tenured teaching job.)

6. Skip the law-school track.
Lawyers are the most depressed of all professionals. Stress in itself does not make a job bad, says Alan Krueger, economist at Princeton University. Not having control over one’s work does make a bad job, though, and lawyers are always acting on behalf of someone else. Suicide is the leading cause of premature death among lawyers. (Evan Shaeffer has a great post on this topic.)

7. Play a sport in college.
People who play sports earn more money than couch potatoes, and women executives who played sports attribute much of their career success to their athletic experience, says Jennifer Cripsen, of Sweet Briar College. You don’t need to be great at sports, you just need to be part of a team.

8. Separate your expectations from those of your parents.
“Otherwise you wake up and realize you’re not living your own life,” says Alexandra Robbins, author of the popular new book The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids. (Note to parents: If you cringe as you read this list then you need to read this book.)

9. Try new things that you’re not good at.
“Ditch the superstar mentality that if you don’t reach the top, president, A+, editor in chief, then the efforts were worthless. It’s important to learn to enjoy things without getting recognition,” says Robbins.

10. Define success for yourself.
“Society defines success very narrowly. Rather than defining success as financial gain or accolades, define it in terms of individual interests and personal happiness,” says Robbins.

11. Make your job search a top priority.
A job does not fall in your lap, you have to chase it. Especially a good one. It’s a job to look for a job. Stay organized by using Excel spreadsheets or online tools to track your progress. And plan early. Goldman Sachs, for example, starts their information sessions in September.

12. Take a course in happiness.
Happiness studies is revolutionizing how we think of psychology, economics, and sociology. How to be happy is a science that 150 schools in the country teach. Preview: Learn to be more optimistic. This class will show you how.

13. Take an acting course.
The best actors are actually being their most authentic selves, says Lindy Amos, of communications coaching firm TAI Resources. Amos teaches executives to communicate authentically so that people will listen and feel connected. You need to learn to do this, too, and you may as well start in college.

14. Learn to give a compliment.
The best compliments are specific, so “good job” is not good, writes Lisa Laskow Lahey, psychologist at Harvard and co-author of How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work. Practice on your professors. If you give a good compliment the recipient will think you’re smarter: Big payoff in college, but bigger payoff in the work world.

15. Use the career center.
These people are experts at positioning you in the workforce and their only job is to get you a job. How can you not love this place? If you find yourself thinking the people at your college’s career center are idiots, it’s probably a sign that you really, really don’t know what you’re doing.

16. Develop a strong sense of self by dissing colleges that reject you.
Happy people have “a more durable sense of self and aren’t as buffeted by outside events,” writes Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California-Riverside. When bad things happen, don’t take it personally. This is how the most successful business people bounce back quickly from setback.

17. Apply to Harvard as a transfer student.
Sure people have wild success after going to an Ivy League school but this success is no more grand than that of the people who applied and got rejected. People who apply to Ivy League schools seem to have similar high-self-confidence and ambition, even if they don’t get in, according to research by Krueger.

18. Get rid of your perfectionist streak.
It is rewarded in college, but it leads to insane job stress, and an inability to feel satisfied with your work. And for all of you still stuck on #6 about ditching the law school applications: The Utah Bar Journal says that lawyers are disproportionately perfectionists.

19. Work your way through college.
Getting involved in student organizations counts, and so does feeding children in Sierra Leone or sweeping floors in the chemistry building. Each experience you have can grow into something bigger. Albert was an orientation leader last year, and she turned that experience into a full-time summer job that morphed into a position managing 130 orientation leaders. A great bullet on the resume for a junior in college.

20. Make to do lists.
You can’t achieve dreams if you don’t have a plan to get there.

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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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Happiness is being with people who aren’t crazy

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After a short blogging hiatus, I made it to Madison. I can’t tell you that my happiness levels have changed dramatically, but I’m optimistic. And, after decidedly UNhappy traveling with two young kids, I’m ready for a little normalcy, which for me is blogging at midnight…

A company fired someone via text message (thanks for the link, Tommie). A lot of bloggers have written about this event, and mostly people complain about the company and how bad it must be.

There is a saying that there is never one crazy person in a marriage. I have found this to be true — that it takes a crazy person to marry a crazy person and just because it LOOKS like one person is crazy doesn’t mean the other isn’t crazy in a more private way.

The same is true for companies. Who takes a job at a company that fires people via text message? And, if you do take a job at a company like that, if you are not crazy, you leave. If you have stayed long enough to be fired by text message you are as crazy as the person who sent the message.

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How much money do you need to be happy? Hint: Your sex life matters more

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How much money buys happiness? A wide body of research suggests the number is approximately forty thousand dollars a year. I interviewed Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology at Harvard University, and he says once you have enough money to meet basic needs — food, shelter, but not necessarily cable “?incremental increases have little effect on your happiness.

Aaron Karo, comedian and author of the forthcoming book, Ruminations on Twentysomething Life, responds to the number with, “If you want to draw a line in the sand, happiness is having enough money so you don’t have to move back in with your parents.”

To someone who just spent four years in college living off nine-thousand-dollar loan stipends, an increase to forty thousand means a lot — moving from poverty to middle class. But it’s a one-time rush. After you hit the forty-thousand-dollar-range money never gives you that surge in happiness again.

Twentysomethings who are looking for happiness from their careers will benefit from research about their parents’ choices. Richard Easterlin, professor of economics at University of Southern California says previous generations have proven that our desires adjust to our income. “At all levels of income, the typical response is that one needs 20% more to be happy.” Once you have basic needs met, the axiom is true: more money does not make more happiness.

So then one asks, what does matter? The big factors in determining happiness levels are satisfaction with your job and social relationships. And in case you found yourself slipping back to thoughts of salary, according to Easterlin, “How much pleasure people get from their job is independent of how much it pays.”

Unfortunately, people are not good at picking a job that will make them happy. Gilbert found that people are ill equipped to imagine what their life would be like in a given job, and the advice they get from other people is bad, (typified by some version of “You should do what I did.”)

Gilbert recommends going into a career where people are happy. But don’t ask them if their career makes them happy, because most people will say yes; they have a vested interest in convincing themselves they are happy. Instead, try out a few different professions before you settle on one. For college students, Gilbert envisions this happening with part-time jobs and internships at the cost of “giving up a few keggers and a trip to Florida over spring break.” But even if you wait until you enter the workforce, it makes sense to switch from one entry-level job to another; no seniority and scant experience means you have little to lose. So it’s an ideal time to figure out what will make you happy: Use a series of jobs to observe different professions at close range to see if YOU think they make people happy.

It’s simple, proven advice, but few people take it because they think they are unique and their experience in a career will be different. Get over that. You are not unique, you are basically just like everyone else. Gilbert can, in the course of five minutes, rattle off ten reasons why people think they are unique but they are not. For example: We spend our lives finding differences between people to choose teachers, band mates and spouses, so our perception of peoples’ differences is exaggerated… And then Gilbert gets to grapes: “If you spend seven years studying the differences between grapes, no two will look the same to you, but really a grape is a grape.”

So your first step is to stop thinking you’re a special case. Take Gilbert’s advice and choose a career based on your assessment of other people in that career. You next step is to focus on social relationships, because in terms of happiness, job satisfaction is very important but social relationships are most important.

And by social relations, most researchers mean sex — with one, consistent partner. So consider giving your career aspirations a little less weight than you give your aspirations for sex. For those of you who like a tangible goal, David Blanchflower, professor of economics at Dartmouth College says, “Going from sex once a month to sex once a week creates a big jump in happiness. And then the diminishing returns begin to set in.” He adds, to the joy of all who are underemployed, “It’s true that money impacts which person you marry, but money doesn’t impact the amount of sex you have.”

Maybe all this research simply justifies the twentysomething tendency to hold a series of entry-level jobs and put off having children. Says Karo: “All we really want is to get paid and get laid.”

 

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5 cautionary ideas about going to business school

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Here’s a collection of interesting ideas from people who are talking about the value of business school:

1. Business school is not an effective means to self-discovery.

Most business school applications require that you tell what you’re going to do with the MBA. This is because most business schools think it is a waste to get an MBA if you don’t know what you’re going to do with it. If you don’t know what you want to do, you can’t rule out that you won’t need the degree. And business school is too expensive to use as a means to simply delay the real world.

2. Maybe you should try philosophy courses instead.

One of the most recent, and cogent critiques of business schools came from management consultant Matthew Stewart in the Atlantic (paid). “Most of management theory is insane,” he writes. “If you want to succeed in business, don’t get an MBA. Study philosophy instead.”

Stewart says that the three most important pieces of advice for business are also topics dear to philosophers:

Expand the domain of your analysis

Hire people with greater diversity of experience

Get good at communication

“As I plowed through my shelfload of bad management books, I beheld a discipline that consists mainly of unverifiable propositions and cryptic anecdotes, is rarely if ever held accountable, and produces an inordinate number of catastrophically bad writers. It was all too familiar. There are, however, at least two crucial differences between philosophers and their wayward cousins. The first and most important is that philosophers are much better at knowing what they don't know. The second is money. In a sense, management theory is what happens to philosophers when you pay them too much.”

3. Business schools are headhunters who charge a fee to the employee.

Stewart says the best thing that can be said about business school is that it is a way for companies to reliably outsource recruiting. McKinsey is a company built on this model. (But you can bet these companies don’t rely on middling business schools for this purpose.)

4. Common sense might get you further.

Charles Handy, a business guru who got way more press in England than the United States, eventually came down on the side of common sense — that business schools overemphasize academics and that’s not what you need to succeed in business.

5. Good networkers reach way beyond business school.

Many people say they go to business school for the network it provides. But be careful of becoming too dependent on that idea. Networking guru Keith Ferrazzi says that you need to be able to network independently of school if you are going to be good at it.

Certainly, there are good and bad things about going to business school. But think about this: If there were something you were totally excited about doing would you do it right now or would you put it off three years to go to business school? If you would do it right now, then you don’t need an MBA, you need an exciting idea.

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Your bad mood at the office is from you, not the job

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The mood you come to work with sets the mood for your workday. This is the conclusion of a study by Wharton professor Nancy Rothbard. (Shout out to Wendy for sending this link to me.)

This study is a rallying cry for personal responsibility. Rothbard challenges you to stop blaming your boss or your co-workers for ruining your day: “The mood you bring with you to work has a stronger effect on the day’s mood — and on work performance – than mood changes caused by events in the workplace.”

This is good news for people who accept personal responsibility for doing the things proven to create a good mood — like a reasonable commute, a morning visit to the gym, and, in a more broad sense, cultivating a sunny outlook. For people who don’t want to take personal responsibility for their happiness, you will have to figure out a way to discount this study in order to continue blaming other people at the office for your bad mood.

This way of thinking works on the other end of the day, too. Keep your commute short so you are not a wreck on the way home, and say hello when you walk in the door to start the evening out right.

This means, of course, that if your personal life is going well, you are likely to be happier at work. Because you are more likely to walk into work in a good mood: “Start-of-day mood may come from myriad sources including persistent life challenges and opportunities, positive or negative family experiences before leaving for work, or even the commute into work,” writes Rothbard. “Non-work and work domains are permeable, and mood often spills over form one to the other. Specifically, start-of-day mood might affect one’s appraisal of subsequent events.”

This is reason number fifty why the term “work-life-balance” doesn’t work. It’s not a balance so much as a synergy that we should aim for. Work and life have to feed each other rather than provide a counter-balance.

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