Make your own luck

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To celebrate St. Patrick's Day, acknowledge that you are not a leprechaun and that you have to create your own luck. Sure, luck can make or break a career, but those who make their own luck can make their careers shine. St. Patrick's Day is a great day to assess where you stand in the lucky-person parade.

1. Being lucky is a way of looking at the world.

You can look back? on your life and see the luck in it or see the failure. But all good interviewers know that past performance is the best indicator of future performance. They want to know about your successes, so why doom yourself from the start? View yourself as having lead a charmed life, and you will find yourself becoming the recipient of more lucky charms. Optimists know this intuitively. Our lives unfold the way we see them. If you expect bad things to happen, they will. But if you expect good luck, it likely will come your way.

2. Know what luck looks like

The luckiest people knock on the door of opportunity and it opens. Throughout your life, though, you’ll knock on hundreds of these opportunity doors. Sure, this is a figurative statement, but put on your metaphorical walking shoes.

One caveat: You must be clear on what you want for this rule to work. Doors will open to you constantly, and unless you know what you want, you won't know if you have been lucky enough to get it.

To be a lucky person in this world you must have a vision of your life. Otherwise you will walk through any door, and whims, aimlessness and fate will direct your life. [I didn’t understand this last phrase]

3. Entourages make opportunities for luck

You’ll find more four-leafed clovers if everyone is hunting them for you, than if you're searching alone. So invest in yourself by hiring people to help you create luck. An assistant at work, a cleaning person at home — whatever you need to free up clover-hunting time. Examine every task you do that does not, in some way, allow you to knock on doors that might open to big-time luck. Delegate the luckless work so you can concentrate on your vision. Consider using the money you might spend on movies or lattes to pay an assistant. And every entourage should include trusted advisors – a mentor who will steer you to the good clover patches. Don't go picking without one.

4. Surround yourself with lucky people.

Successful people have successful friends. There is, of course, the chicken and egg question. For example, did Sam Waksal befriend Martha Stewart *because* she was rich and famous or because he liked her? You and I will never know, but they did hang out together — along with all their other rich, successful friends (whether either is truly lucky is debatable and probably depends on your personal value system). And that's where the odds come in. Don't worry about why or when lucky people find each other. Just play the odds, and make sure you are hanging out with lucky people now.

5. Don't tell other people they were lucky

We all want to believe that we have accomplished some great feat through personal skill and ability — not luck. If you say it was because of luck, then it seems as though we had nothing to do with making something happen. So don’t tell someone who’s just achieved an important goal that they are lucky. Maybe they are, but you should focus on the skill they used to make their luck Besides, showing respect and admiration for others — not to mention hanging around with a winner — makes you look good..

If you hate your acquaintance for being lucky, stifle that feeling until you get home and can curse and scream until you feel better. But remember that no one seems very lucky while jealously screaming about his or her neighbor. And don’t forget Rule No. 4. Stop screaming and go out hang out with this person.

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Consider the commute before you take a new job

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If you have a bad commute, you are probably not very happy. A bad commute spills over into all aspects of your life. Raymond Novaco, a psychologist and professor at the University of California, Irvine, found that bad traffic on the way home makes for a bad mood in the evening. This is true regardless of age, gender, income, and job satisfaction. In fact, your commute might even kill you, because an increase in driving distance relates directly to an increase in blood pressure.

Many people don't need to wonder if their commute is ruining their lives: It's obvious. When I commuted from Los Angeles to San Diego, I sure knew. Even though I made that drive ten years ago, the two hours I spent going each way was so bad that I still talk about it. I didn't eat well because I was driving during breakfast and dinner times. My love life suffered because the only thing that excited me was sleep. I called my friends from the car, and my repeated interruptions (“Hold it, I have to change lanes”) annoyed them so much they would use any excuse to get off the phone.

I justified the commute by telling myself that the job was great. In fact, the job *was* great, and when I later took positions at companies closer to my home, it probably helped me to make huge leaps up the corporate ladder. But that period in my life is a black hole — figuratively and literally — because I never traveled in daylight hours (too much traffic). When I left I was so relieved that I wished I had made the decision sooner.

If you're wondering how bad your commute is, try asking the people you come home to at night. If your roommate says you're a monster until you've had two beers, you know you're in trouble. If your roommate is a cat, you might not get such helpful feedback, but you can take a look at averages.

The average commute in the U.S. is about 25 minutes. The shortest commutes are in the 17-minute range for people living in the Great Plains states (Wichita, Kan.; Tulsa, Okla.; Omaha, Neb.) New Yorkers have the longest commute, clocking in at 38 minutes, six minutes longer than workers in the Windy City, who came in second.
I’ve heard many terrible suggestions for making a long commute seem shorter, or at least more pleasant. For example, learning a language. But really, who has ever learned a language this way? With luck, you may learn how to say, “How much does this cost?” or “Do you want a date?” Another favorite, talking on the phone while driving, is about as safe as driving drunk. The one I tried, listening to a book on CD, required very good listening skills. You don't realize how much you tune in and out of conversations until you spend an hour listening to a book and have no idea what happened. I realized that if I had good enough listening skills to follow an audio book, I could make enough money to have a chauffer drive me to work.

Which is really the best idea. Commuting seems less stressful if someone else drives. Take New Yorkers, for example. Many take the train or subway, so even though Big Apple employees have the longest commutes in the U.S., they’re stoic about it.

But 90 percent of U.S. workers go to and from work in a car. My experience tells me that once you’re in the car, there's not much you can do to make the commute tolerable. So the shorter the better. And the best way to get a short commute is to choose a job that’s closer to your home (or move closer to work, but who’s going to do that?).

Not convinced this is a valid job-selection criterion? It would be if you think about what that car time is worth to you. For instance, if you were earning $40,000 a year, would you accept a two-hour one-way commute (four hours round trip) to make an extra $100,000 a year in salary? In other words, would you work an extra four hours daily at a terrible second job — driving in traffic — to make $100,000 a year? Sure, it’s a lot of money if you have nothing else to do with your four hours a day. But if you have to miss seeing your kids every day, the money might not look so good to you.

Sure, I’m being dramatic; most peoples' commute choices are less black and white. But when you really think about what you’re getting — and what you’re losing — because of your miserable commute, you may decide you’re better off working as the night manager at your neighborhood McDonald's. Maybe you could even walk to work.

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Career lessons about grit (and nepotism) from Oscar-nominee Sofia Coppola

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When the Oscars run (probably overtime) on Sunday, I'll be rooting for “Lost in Translation” for best picture. Not that I have seen the other competitors, but I loved this particular movie. In fact, I was so impressed that I read up on Sofia Coppola. In the process, I learned more about career management by how she managed hers.

Of course, Sofia has had more advantages than most fledgling directors. Her dad, Francis Ford Coppola, provided her with a stunning apprenticeship, including giving her a part in “The Godfather: Part III,” screenwriter lessons and producing “Lost in Translation” for her.

But before I launch into a celebration of Sofia Coppola, I need to say that the U.S. is not a meritocracy: Rich people are better connected, so they get better jobs. And rich people who are not well connected tend to get better jobs because they have an easier time envisioning themselves in a successful career than poorer people. An example: My younger brother, now 21, did almost no homework in high school, and he recently landed a job most college graduates would covet — investment banking in Europe.

He used connections and a lofty vision of himself to get it. He started on his career path in high school by getting a management job at a Blockbuster store? This was easy in the wealthy community where we were raised because no adults there wanted (or needed) this type of job. That left the entry-level management jobs to high school students. At my local Blockbuster store in sort-of-rough-and-tumble Brooklyn, the managers are in their thirties. So the first moment of inequality is that rich kids can get great jobs in high school.

Since he had been an actual manager before, I was able to give him a management job in my own company during the summer after his freshman year of college. And I concede he did an outstanding job. But only a sister would give a 18-year-old a management job in a software company.

The next year, my cousin, a high ranking guy at a big ad agency, gave my brother a summer internship even though my brother missed the deadline for applying and wasn’t in business school like all the other interns. And to be honest, my brother did a great job of mending fences with a basically estranged cousin. He also had a stellar resume written by yours truly.

So by the time my brother graduated from college, he had a great experience on his resume that helped him land his new job in Europe. I don’t begrudge him that. And I admit that with a lot of effort and even more luck, a poor kid could land the same positions as my brother. But it’s clear he had a million advantages that poor kids don't have, so he didn’t need as much luck.

Speaking of people who don't need luck, let's get back to Sofia. Tracing the career of a person who had every advantage in the book can make one a little peevish. So how do people act when they have every advantage? That’s the relevant question, because probably we should all act the same way.

People like my brother, who have relatively few advantages compared to someone like Sofia, ask for everything — just to see if they'll get it. He asked my parents to pay for him to attend an expensive college even though he didn’t do a lick of homework in high school. Even though he knew he wasn’t qualified, he asked my cousin for an internship. He could do this because he could envision himself getting it. Poor kids have to stretch to imagine having food on the table every night.

In Sofia’s world, though, you don't just ask for something — you operate as though you’ll definitely get it. The difference is that my brother and others like him still need to make contingency plans, whereas really well connected people don't. Thinking this way is what helps them to succeed.

So Sofia Coppola wrote “Lost in Translation” for Bill Murray before he said he'd make a movie with her. Once she finished the script it took her months to finally get it to him. Then she left messages on his 800-number for five months before he responded to the script.

We should all believe in ourselves so much. How many of us would spend months on a project that might not happen? It's her belief in herself that impresses me. It doesn't matter if your last name is Coppola; if your screenplay is terrible, Bill Murray won’t do it. In that sense, Sofia did, in fact, take a gamble, even though she wasn’t in danger of starving like some screenwriters are. And with the biggest risks come the biggest rewards.

Maybe rich people can afford to take more risks. But my point is that by believing in yourself, as Sofia Coppola did, you may be able to leap career hurdles you once thought were impossible. How can you not root for her on Sunday?

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List of ways to ruin a list

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The goals you have for your life are only as good as your daily to-do list. You can make all the grand plans you want, but if you don’t stay on track each day, you won’t reach those goals. To-do lists are for people who believe in their dreams and their ability to reach them. List makers create daily plans for success. In other words, everyone should have a daily to-do list.

If you aren’t careful, however, your list will become more of a procrastination aid than dream machine. Here are seven typical ways you can undermine your list:

1. Ignore it. This is my pet thing to do. If I can’t handle my life that day, I don’t look at my list. This allows me to think I don’t need to do anything. But then the rest of the week is hell because I’m compensating for stuff I ruined by ignoring it. It would have been easier to review my list, accomplish the most pressing items, and then go back to bed.

2. List vague tasks. Take, for example, “work on presentation”. When is this job finished? How many things need working on? Why would you start this chore if you have no plan for completing it? This item is like poison ivy — you see it and go another direction. Break down the items on your list into manageable parts. Besides crossing items off the list is fun, and the more to cross off the better.. I’ve been known to write “buy envelopes” as one of the tasks needed to send resumes. It’s an easy step in a hard process — makes me feel like I’m getting something done in my big-picture goal of landing a job.

3. Create a wish list. A wish list is not a to-do list. It’s important to have life goals and it’s nice to be lofty, but no point in putting “buy a house” on your to-do list. If you really can buy a house, try listing an easier item like, “call mortgage broker” If you can’t get that far, make a list of things you’d like to have in 10 years. Include “buy a house” and post this list on your fridge. Then get back to your to-do list — every 10-year plan is the culmination of 3,650 daily to do lists.

4. Switching manically between types of tasks. E-mail, phone, errand, e-mail, phone, errand. This is not a productive day. A good day is e-mail,e-mail, e-mail, phone, phone, phone, errand, errand, errand. So organize your to-do list so that you do all your e-mails in one or two sittings.

5. List items you’d like to do but shouldn’t. These are fun things like learn 1000 words in Italian or knit an extra-large sweater. Most working professionals do not have time for these in a typical day. Unproductive adults indulge themselves in doing them anyway because it makes them feel productive. I know I do not have time to make cupcakes for my husband’s birthday and I should buy him a cake from the local bakery. But I put “making cupcakes” on my to-do list anyway, and then, when he comes home, I’m annoyed because making his cupcakes ruined my workday.

6. Lose sight of the big picture. How many people are unemployed but don’t have “get a job” on their list? If you’re among them, good for you — because “get a job” is too vague. But you should include job-search-related tasks, such as “Send out six resumes” or “make two networking calls”. So many people omit chores related to their most important goal because they seem obvious. But if you don’t put them on the list, they won’t happen.

7. Write a novel. A list is not a novel. It is one page.

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A Valentine for my husband

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In honor of Valentine’s Day, this is a love letter to my husband. But apparently, he is too busy to read my column, so he won’t see the letter.

The last time I complained about his disinterest, he said, “Okay, fine, read me your columns.”

So I read a column out loud to him. And in the middle of it, he fall asleep.

To test him, I said, “So, what do you think?”

He jerked his head up, like a college kid in an 8 am class, and he said, “Uh. It got slow after the first couple of paragraphs.”

Fortunately, my affection for my husband isn't based on his listening skills. I love him for other reasons, including his fearlessness when it comes to changing careers. He isn't afraid to reinvent himself professionally so that he always does something he finds interesting. His excitement about his work makes our life together more fun.

My husband's first job was as a composer. When he was ten. For most kids this wouldn't be a job, but his parents couldn't afford a private school in Los Angeles, so my husband got a scholarship to a top-tier school for his musical talents.

In college, he decided that to be a great composer you need to have something very new to say, and he did not have something that new to say about music. So he quit music.

He went to film school and earned spending money by editing soft-core porn: “The Magic Blanket Bikini.” (He says it was very, very, soft because the star announced midway through filming that she wouldn't take her clothes off.) He made video art for his master's thesis, and his work became so well known that it is part of the curricula at UCLA's film school.

But he grew tired of the film industry after one too many Magic Blankets. So when he graduated, he took a job designing video games. He learned to say Ka-pow! and Ouch! in four languages, and he got to wheel and deal with big budgets from major gaming companies.

I married a game designer with a penchant for piano and a portfolio of films that featured ex-girlfriends being constrained. (“The director,” he explained, “always dates the actress.”)

On September 11, my husband found himself looking over me, dust-covered and shaken in a hospital bed. Suddenly, he wanted to save the world. He became an unpaid volunteer for nonprofits until one hired him. Now he helps prisoners establish safe, fulfilling lives when their sentence is up. His job would stretch my patience (admittedly, thin) to its limits.

My husband drives his parents nuts: “We drove to all those music lessons and then you go to film school! We paid for five years of film school and you make video games!” He drives my parents nuts, too: “What is his job? Video is not a job! Volunteering is not a job!” But my husband’s approach to work makes me excited; Members of my family picked a career and stuck with it forever, even when they stopped being fun.

Our careers are not who we are. But what we choose to do with our days reflects our values. I picked a partner who tolerate being bored or uninspired, and his standards for life encourage me to raise my own. His career choices also reveal a bigger heart than I saw when I married him — except when it comes to reading my columns.

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Improve your performance by lying to yourself

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Maybe it's time to set aside all those “know yourself” advice books, and try lying to yourself about who you are. You are a finance wiz. You are a sales guru. You are a genius writer.

Any successful careerist needs to be these things. But most of us are not really all of these things. The skills are too diverse even for the mind of an overachiever like you. But why not try telling yourself you are all these things and see what happens? After all, the first step to being great at something is to believe that you're great at it. Then you will attack the task at hand expecting yourself to succeed.

Sales
You can say you don't like selling. You can say you're above it. But you may never get the chance to know, because people who can't sell themselves can't get jobs. So, okay, you don't have to sell cars (though you should study the people who do — the best are incredible sales people and could sell anything to anyone.) But you do have to sell yourself to get a job, and you have to sell your ideas in order to keep your job interesting. (Singles, take note: Dating is, in fact, the most important sales game of your life.)

The hardest thing about sales is taking the time to understand what the person you're selling to cares about, and under which scenario that person is a good listener. People who say, “I'm bad at sales,” are people who, for the most part, refuse to take the time to understand people. How embarrassing. So even if you are bad at understanding people, don't announce it to the world by saying you can't sell. Call yourself a salesperson and practice all the time.

Finance
I first learned the importance of faking it when I had to present financials to my angel investors. I had to pretend that I did not score in the bottom 20% of the math section of the GRE. I had to say confidently, “Oh, I have everything explained in an Excel spreadsheet.” And then I had to hire someone to teach me to use Excel.

Today, I don't run numbers as fast as a real finance wiz, but I have confidence because I told my investors I knew what I was doing thereby forcing myself to learn. Thank goodness, because each of us needs to be a finance wiz.

You need to understand broad corporate financial goals in order to place your own projects in context. You need to understand how to manage a dynamic budget without tripping on the question, “How did you get to the number on line six?” Most CEOs did not move up the ladder via financial positions, but you never hear a CEO say he's bad at finance. In an ambitious career there is no room for financial weaknesses. So don't ever say you don't do numbers.

Writing
Here's a scenario: you write an e-mail that consists one, 25-line paragraph with no breaks. No one reads it. At best it looks unintelligible because it's too long a paragraph for email. At worst, it *is* unintelligible. But still, in this case you are a writer, you are just a terrible writer.

The list of scary scenarios is endless: If you send a disorganized report to your boss, she won't understand it; If you have typos in your resume you'll lose interviews. Everyone's career is dependent on their talent for communication. And in the age of email everyone's a writer.

So take responsibility for your own communications and function like you are a top-tier writer. This means outlining first so that you are organized, writing to the point, and proofreading. A few of you will need to take a grammar class. Some of you, who have made some of my past projects miserable, will need to take ten grammar classes.

So lie to yourself. Tell yourself you are great at sales, writing and finance, and you might not be great, but you will get a lot better. And even a small improvement in each of these skills will add up to a large improvement in your career trajectory.

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How to do workplace sports talk

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For those of you who cannot shut up about this weekend's Super Bowl, think about your impact on the workplace atmosphere: A study of Harvard Business School graduates found that in 85 percent of the cases — drum roll, please — men initiated sports talk. This is because female population does not care about spectator sports with nearly the fervor of the male population.

Of course, small talk should be easy, inclusive, and non-offensive. The weather comes to mind as a safe topic — unless someone's mother just died in a hurricane. The price of gas is safe — just don't start placing blame. Commenting on the new furniture in the office is a good tactic because it affects everyone.

Sports talk is not like the weather. Those who initiate sports talk at work alienate people who do not follow sports. And when sports-talk gets to the metaphor stage, the whole company is in trouble. When the sales manager says, “We’re using a long-pass strategy,” the sports-ignorant may continue to go after small accounts, and then there is no strategy at all. So those of you who initiate team-building meetings with talk about sports should consider the fact that you might be undermining teamwork by talking about other people’s teams.

I do not differentiate watching soap operas during the week from watching sports on the weekend: both strike me as a vapid escape from ones own reality. But people who want to be in charge are the people most likely to enjoy competing, so it’s natural that the leaders of the workplace talk sports. And it makes sense that if you want to be friendly with the leaders of the workplace, you need to be able to talk sports.

Luckily, you don’t actually need to be capable of playing the sport to understand it. Exhibit A: the beer-bellied couch potatoes who pontificate on football. Exhibit B: me. I play basketball very well and have never played football, and when it comes to analogies, I feel equally competent in both arenas.

Another step I’ve taken to fit in at work is to follow the soap-opera aspect of sports. This is not difficult to do because:

1. It satisfies my need for intrigue, which would otherwise require hours with the National Enquirer.

2. Personal problems (Mike Tyson has a temper) are much easier to remember than personal statistics (Mike Tyson had X knockouts in X number of years).

3. The New York Times Magazine (registration required) does an amazing job of covering sports as if it were drama. (My favorite — a recent article about a grade school aged skateboarder who won sponsorship from Nike. Now I can talk for hours on the perils of corporate sponsorship for athletes.)

The great thing about the drama of sports is that once you read a story, it’s good for more than a few years of workplace chatter (e.g., Venus's stint at fashion school or Michael Jordan’s family life).

If you can’t stand the idea of reading about sports, try this: Go to a gym. Learn a lot about weight training; people love to talk about their workouts at work. You can impress someone with your knowledge of squat techniques to the point where you will get out of having to talk about other sports-related trivia. Because, after all, people who talk about sports at work are just looking for an easy, non-threatening way to connect with people that is not as obvious as talking about the weather.

So okay, sports talk is workplace behavior that is non-inclusive of women, but so are a lot of other things, like, impromptu meetings in the men's room and posters of naked women in cubicles. So battle the latter when you can and capitulate to the sports talk. If you can't figure out how to fake it in a sports talking office, check out the book Talk Sports Like a Pro, by Jean McCormick. If you are one of the sports talk promoters in your office try reading a section of the newspaper that is not sports. It'll give you something else to talk about even when the Super Bowl looms large.

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Learn to give a compliment

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The problem with being nice is that it is not very interesting. It's the people with dirt to dish who are magnets at the water cooler.

But if you want your boss to like you, give him compliments. I know, that sounds like I'm telling you to brownnose. Instead, I'm telling you to find genuine ways to compliment your boss.

I never knew how important it is to compliment a boss until I complimented mine, mostly by accident. My boss gave a speech packed with bad news to employees, and I knew it had been hard on him. So after the meeting, I stopped by his office to tell him privately, “You delivered the bad news really well. People were shocked, but they listened to you, and you made them hopeful.”

His face brightened, and he said, in a surprised voice, “Really?”

I realized immediately how much my input had meant to him. How surprised he was to know I thought he did well and how much he respected my assessment. It seemed pathetic, really. I had thought he was a more confident guy than that. But that's the thing about complimenting your boss: It's disarming and makes your boss think of you as an equal

Studies show, in fact, that powerful people think that people who praise them are smarter and more likeable than those who don't. This may be because powerful people receive fewer compliments than the rest of us.

Not surprisingly, it is the job of powerful people act as though they don't care what anyone else thinks of them. But everyone likes — and needs — compliments, and one reason for the dearth of them at the top is that men give fewer compliments than women, and we all know who dominates the top ranks.

So start crafting your compliments now.

But don't brownnose. The difference between a genuine compliment and a desperate brownnosing attempt is empathy and insight. If you understand what worries your boss, and what she is trying hardest to achieve personally, then you will easily spot opportunities for praise. Don't just say “good job” for the sake of it. And don't just say “good job” either. Carefully craft a compliment in an area that is particularly important to your boss.

Why? The most effective compliments are very specific. And creative words are more memorable than standard words, according to research by Mark Knapp of the University of Texas. Praise of character is the most rare and most memorable praise of all. For example, “Nice job of being compassionate while you were laying everyone off.”

That said, your boss needs to view you as a trusted resource. This means you need to be able to give him bad news as well as good news. I will never forget the employee who told me, “You know how everyone laughs at your jokes at the staff meeting? Well, the jokes are not that funny, but since all those people report to you, they laugh. You should stop with the jokes.”

I was crushed to hear that I was not funny. But it would have been worse if I had been allowed to go on and on. (Though sometimes I tell myself that I really was funny and that particular employee just didn't get my humor.) Still, this person's subsequent compliments meant more to me because I knew she was honest.
I also remember when a boss pulled me into her office and said, “Joe (not his real name) is accusing me of leading him on romantically. This is a serious accusation since I am his boss. Do you think other people perceive me as leading him on?”

I was floored that my boss would ask me this question. Especially since she may have already been in a legal mess. But I was flattered that she trusted me to give her an honest answer. (The guy was a nut case.)

So give genuine compliments, but offer insightful criticism, as well. And remember, if you compliment your boss, she'll view you as a smarter person than she did previously and begin to take all your comments more seriously.

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Trying to network like a guy

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Everyone says, “Penelope why don't you write a book?” and I always reply, “Good idea.” And then I say, “I mean, I *am* writing one.” Because that's what you're supposed to say when someone asks if you’re close to accomplishing your next big goal — that you’re “working on it.” But I wasn't working on it. For a while, the only thing I knew about writing books is that to get a publisher’s attention, you first need to write a proposal, and 99% of book proposals are terrible.

I figured if I was going to write a book, I needed to know how to create a proposal. The bookstore seemed like a good place to start. But all the how-to books I read about writing a book weren’t helpful.

I read things like, “Writing a proposal in five easy steps,” and “How I sold ten thousand books.” After reading this advice, I wondered why, if proposal writing is so easy, all the agents complain that 99% of the proposals they receive are intolerable?

Since the how-to books were so unhelpful, I enrolled in a class on how to write books, conducted by a professional writers' organization. All the participants in the class were women. Immediately, my sirens went off. I know my next remark is sexist, but women earn 75 cents for every dollar a man makes, so I figured this class was not my ticket to making tons of money.

Yes, exceptions do exist. But salaries in typically female professions are lower than salaries paid for typically male occupations. Think elementary school teachers vs. university teachers, nurses vs. doctors, education sales vs. technology sales, and so on.

So on balance, my feeling is that a class attended solely by women will not lead me to grand career success.

I also was deterred that the instructor wasn't even male. Catalyst, the women’s research organization, notes that women who succeed in reaching their career goals typically have better mentoring experiences than women who don’t reach their goals. Since I planned to write a business book, and men are still further up the ladder in business than women, I wanted a male book-authoring mentor, because I felt I would reach my writing goals faster.

Despite all my belly-aching, I took the class, learned a lot, and even made a friend. But still, I mentally ran through my list of networking contacts hoping to think of a man who could help me write a book proposal. Eventually I thought of Bob Rosner, author of several books, including “Gray Matters: The Workplace Survival Guide.”

Since Bob also is a career advisor, I felt he wouldn't be afraid to give me some straight talk. For the most part, the only people who tell me how to run my career are my brothers (“Here's a good column topic: [Insert brother's name] and his perceived greatness.”) and my husband (“I'm sure your readers are sick of hearing about me in your column all the time, so could I have a little privacy?”) But Bob had some good advice. His first: “You should call me more often.”

He's right. Because he’s the one who usually calls me. And I need to be reminded to pick up the phone and network. Women are not as effective as men at networking, and I may be a good example of this.

There are many reasons for the gulf, a few mentioned recently in a CareerJournal.com article: For the most part, women aren’t included in the old boy’s network, the so-called real sphere of influence in business today; women are more often the primary caretakers and caregivers, so they have less time for networking; and finally, women are more reticent than men to mix business and pleasure — to women it seems inappropriate to use a friendship for business purposes.

But Bob and I talked a long time about book publishing and writing good proposals. He was willing to share information about royalties, agents and ways to cut corners. He even shared his ideas for a next book.

I felt great when I hung up. I thought perhaps I might be able to do a proposal after all. But after speaking with Bob, I understood why men are better networkers than women. Bob and his wife had a baby, with a difficult delivery, the same week his latest book was published. Yet after only a week, Bob was back on his feet and milking his network for publicity and book reviews. His wife was not back on her networking feet so fast.

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10 counter-intuitive career tips

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1. Don't be the hardest worker.
No one can work 70-hour weeks forever without losing their mind — or at least their perspective. You need to pace yourself. Besides, at this kind of pace, you may not always the best worker, but you’ll surely look like the most desperate.

2. Hire people you wouldn't want as friends.
Diverse business teams are more successful than homogenous teams. Creating diversity doesn't mean hiring one guy from each fraternity. It means hiring people who scare you, disagree with you and think in totally different ways than you.

3. Don’t fear failure.
Most people who have wild success have wild failure first. Have your failure early and significantly so that you're primed for success.

4. Learn to write direct mail.
A resume is a piece of direct mail. At best, it will get a 10-second scan from a hiring manager trying to decide whether to interview you. Know how to control what happens in those 10 seconds. Hint: You don't want the person to spend that time reading “References available upon request.”

5. Bake cookies for your team.
Surprise people with your caring and kindness. They will view you — and your mistakes — much more generously. Also, showing your soft side at the office is risky. Cookies are softness without the risk that you're revealing too much.

6. Give the brand of you a rest.
You cannot get to the top alone, so stop looking at yourself like you're a one-man show. Education is the No. 1 factor in determining who will be successful. The caliber of your stable of mentors is the No. 2 factor. So start looking outside yourself. You need help.

7. Blend in.
Do not stand out for how your dress. Stand out for your intelligence and creativity. If you dress in a way that makes people look at your clothes, then you say “look at me for my clothes”. If you dress in a way where no one notices what you are wearing then you force people to look at you for your brains. Remember, though, that boring, frumpy fashion stands out as much as flashy, funky fashion.

8. Toss the business books: Read fiction.
Your career is as dependent on your people skills as it is on your professional skills, so read books and magazines that help you to understand people. Read novels your co-workers recommend, and you'll have reliable repartee for weeks. Besides, most non-fiction tells you about peoples' mistakes, but fiction describes what’s achievable.

9. Say no frequently.
Be choosy about how you spend your time so that each project you work on becomes a great bulleted item on your resume. Don't work on projects that don't matter, will get killed or are clearly mismanaged. When your boss asks you to do something you don't have time for, remind her of her priorities and say you want to work on what’s most important to her. This is a professional way of saying no to unimportant assignments.

10. Ignore the urgent stuff.
Most urgent items on your to-do list are not big-picture items. But it’s the big-picture tasks that will make a significant difference in your career. So block off time each day to work solely on big-picture aspects of your to-do list. You don't have to be a visionary at work. But if you aren’t a visionary for your life, who will be?

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