Career adjustments: Tips from Liz Phair

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Liz Phair has just released a new CD, titled Somebody’s Miracle. I’m not saying you should go out and buy it, but you have to respect Liz Phair’s ability to manage her career.

For those of you who did not spend 1991 listening to her widely touted CD “Exile in Guyville,” go buy that CD now. It is about mainstream, upper-middle class women who wish they were beautiful and fun and loved by people much cooler than they are. For men who worry that the album is like a chick-flick, no worries: You can skip to track 14 where she sings about being a sex goddess.

The latest CD is an expression of the fact that Phair never did make it to the mainstream, but she really wants to. And, in a rare moment of reality from a musician, she has confessed to needing to make enough money to support her son. That’s when I started thinking about her CD releases like a career path instead of a pop-rock event.

Her last CD, released in 2003 and ominously titled Liz Phair, was a disaster, trashed by music reviewers across the country. Not trashed like, “track two is insufferable” but trashed like “this CD will kill her career.” Diehard fans were upset that she was giving up her edgy self to make as much money as Britney Spears.

And now, here’s another CD, in the same genre that people hated. I give her a lot of credit for doing it again. The difference between people who have huge success and people who do not is ability to cope with failure. People with huge success are more able to take risks because they have less fear of failure. And then, when this type of person does fail, like Liz Phair, she tries again.

Don’t misunderstand. I don’t like the new Liz Phair music. But I like watching her perform what was basically a career change — or at least a shift. And there’s a bit we can learn from her about career shifts for non-rock stars.

1. Don’t let other people steer your career
No one wants to see Liz Phair selling out. But she ignores that. She has the maturity to decide that she knows what’s best for her life, and she has faith in herself to execute a vision, even if people around her don’t like it.

At some point or another you are going to want to change what you’re doing in your work. You’ll have to put up with people around you saying you shouldn’t change. (“Why go into marketing? You’re a great programmer.”) And then you’ll have to put up with people denying that you’ve changed. (“Even though you got promoted out of your horrid assistant job, can you get me some coffee?”) These will be good times to remember how strong Liz Phair is about sticking to her new vision of herself and forcing us to see it.

2. Be true to yourself
Liz is not, in fact, an indie queen, but rather, an accidental tourist on the indie road. Even on her indie CDs she sings about wanting to be rich and famous. So she had to ditch the indie crowd and become her rendition of girl-pop-star because that’s really what she’s about.

It’s much more important for you to figure out what’s right for you than for you to act out a rendition of what someone else thinks you should be — your mom, your friends, your mentors. They can’t know what’s best for you. Be honest with yourself and have the strength to disappoint your fans.

3. Find a new mentor to help you change
Phair is known for her spare recordings that have a tiny-recording-studio feel. (Quote from my mass-market brother: “Couldn’t she afford some recording equipment?”) For her recent CDs, Phair enlisted people who could get her a more polished, mass-market feel.

Part of taking yourself seriously in a new position is getting people to give you coaching on how to look like the new part you’re taking on. Maybe this means bringing your friend’s girlfriend to go shopping with you for new work clothes. Or maybe it means getting coaching on how to speak with more authority. The more you start looking and sounding like the new you, the more people will believe you have changed.

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Learn to love cold calling

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Cold calling is for champions. It used to be that cold calling was for the losers so low on the corporate ladder they were falling off the last rung. But today it's clear that cold calling is an art form, and people who are good at it can do a lot for themselves — most notably get a job.

Skeptical? Well, I'm not sure you have much of a choice. Fewer than half of all available jobs are advertised and most people don't get jobs through listings. So how are you going to find them? Your best odds are networking. But most people exhaust their network in a month, and most job hunts last at least four months. So after networking, the best thing to do is probably cold calling.

Everyone knows that it's really hard to make a cold call, so people will respect you for trying. But you'll get self-respect, too. Because if you only respond to ads, then you are basically running a passive job hunt, waiting for something to pop up on your computer screen. If you approach companies you're interested in, whether or not they post jobs, then you are taking control of your hunt, and actively trying to attain your goals.

Think of all the times in life you regret. Usually it was when you didn't take a more active role in your life. When you didn't take control of your life. In this sense, you can't lose making a cold call. No one ever says to themselves, “I wish I hadn't been so aggressive in trying to get what I wanted.” If you are aggressive, and you don't get what you want, you probably weren't going to get it anyway. So might as well go down swinging.

The easiest and most obvious cold call is not really even cold. It's a follow-up call. This is what you do when you've been sending tons of resumes out and you are receiving no interviews: After you send your resume, call the hiring manager to say you really want the job.

You will probably have to dig a lot to find the hiring manager. But hey, you have all day to dig, right? You'll have to call human resources. Maybe some random dialing within the department. Maybe some Googling. But you can find someone who sounds like they might be the hiring person and ask who the hiring person is. Sooner or later someone will tell you.

Once you get that person, pitch yourself on the phone. That pitch has to be good. Friendly, informative, fast. This is the crux of the art form. Then, ask if you can come in for an interview. Even though the advertisement says no calls, a call is a great way to get someone to pay attention to you when there's a huge pile of resumes.

You can use this same tactic even if there is no job offered and you have not sent a resume. Just call someone in a department that interests you. Business development in an advertising agency. Marketing at a Fortune 500 company. Tell the person you're interested in that industry, and you really admire the company and you'd like to schedule an informational interview. If you ask for a job the person can say no, outright. But information? That's not so easy a no. Of course, the person has information. And you'd be surprised how many people are willing to give it if you just ask.

Then you need to be charming. And smart. If the person loves you, she might make a spot for you in her department. Or maybe she has a friend who is hiring. Who knows? You never will until you try.

It's all about odds. You need to have the ego strength to dial these people all day. You only need one person to say yes. That yes means you expanded your network that day. And all those people who say no, you'll never see them again. They are gone. No need to feel bad or embarrassed. It's over. Move on.

Of course, the odds are not great that the cold call will work every time, but you only need it to work really well once and then you're done. You have a job.

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You need an entourage

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Anyone who owns a small business knows that if you don't reinvest in the business, the business dies. So why do so many people fail to reinvest in themselves? Even if you work for someone else, you are running a small business: The business of you. You provide a product and you have to market it and make it better and better so you earn more and more money.

If you put all your money into savings, you are like a business with a lot of cash on hand but only small potential for growth. If you spend all your money on fun and toys you're like a business run by executives who throw lavish parties they can't afford and drive the business into the ground. Your aim should be to save a little (for security's sake) splurge a little (for sanity's sake) and reinvest most of your money back into your business: You.

You the careerist that is. Here's what the business of you needs in order to expand: Headcount. Here's what you need in ascending order, depending on how much money you have.

Childcare — pay the highest rate in your neighborhood
The first thing you need to grow a career is to clear your head so you can think. If you have to worry about childcare, if you have to argue with your spouse during the workday about who is picking up the kid, you are spending time in ways that don't grow your business. Pay enough money for a caregiver who can do the job without you micromanaging.

Personal Assistant – $10 an hour
Take a look at your to do list. Think about how long each task will take, and whether or not a person can do it for $10 an hour. Your time is worth more than $10 an hour. So why are you doing tasks that you can pay $10 to have done? Don't tell me you need to do everything. If it's not integral to your life plan, you don't need to be doing it. Examples: Shopping, dry cleaning pickup, waiting for a plumber.

A therapist – $125 per session, but try to get your insurance company to pay
I'm a big fan of therapy. The more you know about yourself the more likely you are to make good choices for your career. Also, the problems you have outside the office usually pop up inside the office also. So go to a therapist to deal with non-work problems and your work life will improve.

Speaking coach – $300 per session
Charisma can make up for a lot of shortfalls, and good speaking skills gives you more charisma. You probably think you're charismatic already, but there's always room for improvement. People believe that a charismatic person is better to work with than a non-charismatic person. You'll also learn to speak in a way that makes people trust you and believe in your judgment. Scary, but true: This is teachable.

Publicist — $1000 month
Most people who are quoted by the press actually have publicists. For a CEOs publicists are a packaged deal with the job: A PR department. For other executives, and even up-and-coming managers, a publicist is someone you hire. Your name will get into the world and you will have an easeier time getting a new job, easier time making sales, and more justifcation for asking for higher wages. I know, you're thinking, how crass. But it's the way the world works. If you want to be noticed in your field, hire a publicist.

I bet you're saying, “Penelope is out of her mind. This is so much money.” But if you reinvest 20% of your cash back into your career, which is, in fact, very low as small businesses go, then this list starts looking reasonable. I have hired each of these people at some point in my career, and the return on investment for each easily exceeded cash output. Really.

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Status symbols for a new generation

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Hey all you women! Looking for a way to look good at a party? Forget bragging rights to house with a picket fence. Forget a plastic-surgeried body that defies gravity. Here are the status symbols for a new generation:

1. A flexible job. This is practically a pre-requisite for being able to successfully balance work and personal life. Ironically, most of these jobs come from years of conniving and strategizing under the guise of being a power-mongering ladder climber. After all, most companies do not capitulate to flexibility until they have fallen in love with you for your performance and ambition.

2. An awesome nanny. Everyone brags about their nanny because if you don't think your nanny is great then how can you leave her with your kids?

But most nannies are not that great. Here is what a status-symbol nanny looks like: She never calls in sick, she can plan and execute a dinner without your input, she doesn't berate you when your kid has a cut from falling off the bed under your care. And longevity counts — if you can keep a nanny for more than two years, the implication is that you are a great manager.

3. A competent husband. Household competence, that is. Delegate everything you can to your assistant. But there are some things that would be heartless to delegate, like choosing a birthday present for your nine-year-old son. This is where a husband comes in. What if your husband knows so much about your kids that he remembers the birthday and decides what to buy, but also makes time to forage for it in the stores? That is real competence.

When it comes to a status symbol husband, you do not delegate to him so much as confer, and you make a similar amount of time in your lives for taking care of your home life. If you find this kind of husband, women will drool over him as if he were the captain of the high school football team.

4. A caffeine-free life. Sure, a lot of women do this during pregnancy, but as soon as the baby pops out, the caffeine ramps up. I don't know any non-pregnant woman who works in business and has kids and abstains from caffeine. Except for Sallie Krawheck, chief financial officer of Citigroup. I don't know how she does it, but she seems so stable and organized to live without caffeine.

I tell this to myself every night at 9pm, which is when I have to get ready for bed in order to get eight hours of sleep and wake up with my son at 5:30 am. But there's always one more very important thing that I haven't done. Sallie must do her very important things first thing every day. Which is what we all should do.

5. A reputation for helping. The standards for women have changed. The status symbols have changed. But all that talk of women “playing like men” is nonsense to me. Women have been helping each other forever, and now is no exception. The women we look up to are those who have a track record for figuring out how to leverage their power and resources to help other women. Give advice freely, mentor someone, share your experience at the glass ceiling so another woman can go higher. A fulfilling career requires that you give as well as receive.

There's a good reason that women brag about the stuff on this list: It's the stuff that really does impact one's happiness. This is a list of things that will improve your life more than a raise or a top-tier vacation. These are things that will pave the way for you to have fun during the day and rest well at night.

Big goals require big plans: Losing weight after pregnancy

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The fact that good-looking people make more money is truer for women than men, which is especially unfair, because it is very hard to not gain a million pounds when you're pregnant; I gained sixty. This column is about my two-month quest to lose that weight, and the importance of making a plan for any large and difficult goal.

I happen to have a book deal that is predicated on a grand speaking tour, and the speaking tour is predicated on me not being overweight, and the bookings need to start in September. If I can't line up speaking gigs, I can't promote my book, and if I don't promote my book, it won't sell and I won't get another contract. So losing weight became my number one job.

This is what my agent said three days after I delivered the baby: “I don't mean to be harsh, but you look terrible.”

This is what my husband said two days later: “The stress of you having to lose so much weight so quickly will kill us both. Give back the money you got for the book.”

I did what works best for me when I'm in trouble: I wrote lists and schedules. I wrote a schedule for two visits a day to the gym and lists for what I would do there each day. I wrote a schedule for the babysitter, who had to come to the gym with me because the baby is not on a bottle. (Yes, I got off the treadmill to breastfeed.) I wrote a list of food — what to carry with me each day, and when to go food shopping, because if I'm starving in front of a bakery with no food in my backpack I'll do the bakery. Finally, I scheduled the date I would go to my agent's office to show her that I lost the weight.

It worked. I lost twenty pounds just by delivering the baby. But I lost forty pounds in two months. People are shocked to see me, and they ask me how I did it. First I tell them that if you had to lose weight in order to earn a living, you'd be able to do it, too. I gained insight into ultra-thin Hollywood; not being able to work if you take too many bites of cookie gives you a lot of self-discipline.

But the bigger factor here is that I came up with a schedule and followed it. And I realized that I could do this for any goal, not just weight loss.

Many times we are scared that we won't meet our most important goals. Decision points cater this fear— they open the door to self-doubt and inaction. But meticulous scheduling up front, and a belief in your planning abilities will allow you to relax; tune out your worries and just follow the plan.

You can't take this advice for everything in life. But making an extremely detailed, well-thought-out schedule to support an ambitious plan, is a great way to ensure you meet your most important goals — the ones that will make or break your career.

Some of you will realize that your career really is stalling because your weight makes you look out of control. For most of you, though, weight loss will not be all that important. But you might have other goals that you worry you won't achieve, such as switching careers, going back to school, or growing your consulting business.

Make a commitment to yourself and to your most important goals by reserving time in your day and space in your head to meet your goals. Great ambitions are not met haphazardly, and many times are not met at all. You can increase your odds tremendously by planning meticulously.

My next step is finding good places to book my speaking tour. I had been worried that this would not work out. But now I feel more confident. I am making a plan, as detailed as I made for the weight loss. And I know if I execute the plan on a daily basis, I will end up with a speaking tour that I like.

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The organization man of the new millennium

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Recently I read about a company which has three full-timers whose only job is to make employee life fun. They plan outings, parties, raffles, all reportedly in an effort to “stave off headhunters” and to keep engineers working “12- 15 hours days.” Here is a little note to the hundreds of employees at this company:

HELLO OUT THERE? Are you people morons? Why are you at a company that consumes all your free time with work and then, as a bonus, sucks up the only hours you have left to sleep and shower? This is not an office with perks. This is serfdom. This is paternalism. This is the organization man of the new millennium.

If you're at a company like this one, you need to get a life. The only people who are willing to work at this kind of place have no life outside of work. If you have friends who are not at the company, they are probably no longer your friends. If you have a family and you work at a company like this, you will get what you deserve: Kids who have no relationship with you.

And do not, I repeat, do not tell me that you have to work at a place like this because of the incredible projects you get to work on. People who are truly talented do not have to suffer draconian hours and insulting “perks” in order to get on good projects. In fact, you can bet that the people who are amazing at their job, are smart enough to live a life outside of their job.

So check this out: You are surrounded by sub-par workers when you work at a place that does not respect employees' personal lives because only sub-par workers put up with that.

Here's another thing some of you will tell me: You have to “pay dues” in your profession. But you know what? That's an excuse you use for having someone else take care of your career path. Sure, you can play the law firm or consulting firm game, and put in huge number of hours just because the rule is that you put in huge number of hours to get to the next level. But you don't need to do that.

You can make your own path, which is not so far fetched if you are good at what you do. You can freelance, you can work at a small firm, you can intern for someone who will mentor you, or you can become an entrepreneur. The demographic starting businesses at the fastest rate is 18-34. Now you know why.

My brother, Erik, is at an investment banking firm at the grunt level. He has been working twenty-hour days without anyone batting an eye. When he looks above himself in the ranks, it doesn't seem to get better. People don't have a lot of control over their workloads, or the timing of their work, and people don't seem particularly happy. So he's leaving the bank for a smaller firm where people have lives.

And this is why: Because the smartest people in the world are in a position where they have control over their work and room to grow a personal life. It's a fact. You might say, “But they paid their dues.” To this I say, Who cares? It's a new world out there, and there's no reason for you to have to pay dues just because the generations before you were not creative or independent enough when they thought about their careers.

And wait. Everyone who is about to send mail to me about how “young people need to learn to work hard” think about this: There are many ways to work hard. Thinking rigorously, and putting one's heart into a job are different than working long hours. In fact, I'd say of those three ways to work hard, long hours is the biggest cop-out.

So work with your heart and your mind, and make sure you have time to use both of those in your personal life, too.

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Organize your days around your goals

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Periodically, a college student sends an email to me asking if he or she can interview me for a term paper. I always say yes, and I always learn something about my work by answering student questions about my career.

Invariably, within the list of questions, there's a stumper. This week, the stumper was, “How do you spend a typical day as a journalist?”

I started to answer the question. But every time I started to write an answer, what I wrote sounded terrible. The truth is that I never set out to be a journalist, so I have never been particularly organized about my typical day.

I was a marketing executive who happened to have landed a column. The pay for the column was paltry compared to my corporate salary, and consequently, I devoted a paltry amount of time to the column —writing it during a sales meeting, on my way to an office picnic, or at my in-laws' home in between shopping and dinner.

Part of the reason for my cavalier attitude toward making time for the column is that initially I did not understand that having a nationally distributed column is a big deal; I was in a business where a big deal equaled a big paycheck. But after I left corporate life for a writer's life, I started to understand how lucky I was. So you'd think, after three years of writing full-time I'd have developed good work habits as a writer, but I haven't.

This is surprising to me because in my corporate life I had very good work habits. As I was climbing the corporate ladder, it became clear that you can only move up as fast as you can adjust your work habits to the next rung. For example, the move into management means you have to learn to finish your own work in a way that leaves room for you to help other people with their work. You have to restructure your workday to make other people a priority.

There were times when I distinctly remember changing my workday in order to accommodate a new position. For example, my boss told me that if I could offload all of my responsibilities as a marketing and software production manager, then I could take seed money from the company and start my own company. I realized that the faster I could reorganize my workload and delegate, the faster I could move on with my career. So I did that. Within weeks, and astounded even my boss with my speed.

Achieving long-term goals and tactical plans all depends on work habits. You need to devote time to getting short-term projects done, to managing long-term projects, and to thinking both strategically and creatively.

Each time I've wanted to make headway in my career the fastest path has been by changing how I spend my days; if nothing else, how you organize your days is one of the few things most people can really control.

Which brings me back to explaining to the college student about my work habits. It was untenable to have to confess to her how I was working. I was such a bad role model because in terms of organizing my day, I still treated my writing career like it's a sideshow.

I could accomplish so much more if I would get more organized. So I worked backwards. I said to myself, what kind of answer would I expect from a successful career columnist as to how she manages her days to make her career bloom?

I think it would look like time slots:
Writing email
Working on projects with deadlines
Thinking about long-term projects
Publicity
Networking

Once I started having days like this, there was immediate change — I accomplished more than usual and the work was higher quality because my days were organized around particular long and short-term goals.

I ended up confessing to the student that I started with sloppy work habits. But I told her that I was reforming myself. I told her about my carefully scheduled days and strategically organized weeks. Then I sat down to write this column, which I now have a special time each week to write. And I was just a little bit more calm than usual because having a detailed work plan in hand makes me feel like I really am going to meet the goals I have for myself.

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4 worst mistakes of a first-time manager

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First-time managers are generally nightmares to work for. They are people who got promoted by doing a non-management job well, and in fact they probably have little experience in management. Here are four of the mistakes that will undermine a new manager the fastest.

1. Focusing on tasks instead of people.
Before you were a manager, your number one job was to accomplish tasks. You were someone with skills to get something done. Maybe media buying, or programming, or selling. Now your number one job is to help other people to accomplish the tasks in an outstanding way.

Sure, you’ll have tasks, too. As a manager you’ll have weekly reports, budgets, planning. But your tasks are secondary to helping other people to do their tasks. Your job as manager is to get the best work from the people you manage. The measure of how well you’re doing as a manager is how well each individual on your team performs.

Ideally, you should be able to show each person you manage how to see themselves differently so that they are able to produce at a higher level than they ever imagined. For one person this will mean you need to teach organization skills. For another person, you will help her discover what she loves to do and then set her up doing it for you. Each person wants something, and you need to find out what that is. Then help them get it.

In return, your employees will do great work for you. This level of management is superior to task-management; helping people perform at their best impacts the quality of your team’s work as opposed to just getting the work done.

2. Being slow to transition.
Moving into any new position requires that you get rid of the stuff from your old position. This means delegating. It means getting over the idea that you were indispensable on any of your old teams. You can’t do you new job well if you’re still doing your old job.

Delegating your old job should take three days. You find people who are taking a step up when they accept pieces of your old job so that they are excited. You give them an explanation of how to do it and tell them where to go when they have questions.

You are going to tell me that one day is not enough, that you have a very complicated job. But think of it this way: If you died today, your job would be delegated in a couple of days.

Delegating is not enough, though. You have to stop caring. If you are no longer on a project because you got a promotion, then you have to stop obsessing about how the project is doing.
Remember how quickly the girl who dumped you hooked up with her next-door neighbor? You need to move that fast, too.

3. Forgetting to manage up.
Managing up means steering your team to hit goals that the people above you care about. Figure out what matters to your boss, and your boss’s boss, and make that stuff matter to you, too, because you can only impress your boss with your management skill if you are accomplishing things she cares about.

And be loud about your accomplishments. Set measurable goals for yourself and let people above you know that you’re meeting them.

Do this it right off the bat. People’s perceptions of you as a manager will be made during your very first actions. That saying, “People judge you in the first two minutes they meet you,” is true for management, too. So give people reason right away to think you’re doing a good job.

4. Talking more than listening.
My sister-in-law, Rachel, has been a manager for a while. But she just accepted a position where she is managing three times the number of people she had been managing. Her first step was to go on a sort of listening tour of the organization. She had lunch with people to find out what matters to them, she sat in on groups and even visited some people at home, all in the name of figuring out what matters to whom, and how she should set up goals for herself.

Consider your own listening tour as soon as you start in a new position. After all, there’s no way to figure out what people want without getting them talking. And the most annoying thing about any manager — new or seasoned — is when they just won’t shut up.

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Moving back home with your parents is a good career move

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In the list of what’s hot and what’s not, blowing all your money on an overpriced apartment is out and sleeping on the twin bed at your parents’ house is in. Bobby Jackson is a senior at Williams College who will graduate this June. He will load up a moving container, head back to Washington, D.C. after graduation, and look for a public relations job from the comfort of his parents’ home. Jackson typifies the remarkable shift of inter-generational attitudes when he declares, “I love hanging out with my parents.”

According to market research company Twentysomething Inc., 65% of college seniors expect to live with their parents after graduation. The job web site MonsterTRAK reports that 50% of the class of 2003 continues to live at home. “Boomerangers” is what analysts call the twentysomethings moving back home, and the consensus among researchers (who grew up in an era when moving back was a sign of failure) is that being a boomeranger is a strategically sound way to head toward an independent life.

Neil Howe, author of Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation says that moving back with parents is a way to avoid wasting a lot of time. According to Howe, when it comes to careers, “Boomerangers want to get it right the first time.” If you don’t have to worry about paying rent, you have more flexibility to wait for the right job and to take a job that feels very right but pays very poorly. The rise of the prestigious but unpaid internship intersects perfectly with the rise of the boomeranger.

Today it’s almost impossible to become self-sufficient on an entry-level salary, especially in coastal cities like Boston, where rents are skyrocketing. Barbara Mitchell, professor of sociology at Simon Fraser University and author of the upcoming book, The Boomerang Age: Transition to Adulthood, says, “Most entry-level jobs won’t be permanent or stable,” so saving money is difficult. Twentysomethings have to manage the costs of rent, college loans and insurance premiums all of which are rising faster than wages.

With these economic factors, it’s hard for a boomeranger to leave again, and according to Mitchell, many underestimate the amount of time they’ll be staying. Jackson, for example, estimates that, “Most entry level jobs pay thirty thousand dollars, so I’ll stay at home for six months and save ten to fifteen thousand.” This plan would work only if he didn’t buy work clothes, go out with friends, or pay taxes — at least not with his own money.

And this is where the problems start. Boomerangers who think their time with mom and dad will last fewer than seven months are statistically delusional, and setting themselves up for emotional crisis. The typical stay is so long that researchers don’t even count someone as a boomeranger until they’ve been home four months.

Elina Furman knows this problem first hand: She ended up living with her family until she was twenty-nine, and she does not describe the time as a constant joy ride. In fact, she says, after the initial thrill of college graduation and the return of home-cooked meals, boomerangers find themselves in the midst of crisis — usually financial or relationship-oriented — and suffering from feelings of isolation and loss of self-esteem.

As a veteran of boomerang life, Furman supplies methods for success in her book, Boomerang Nation: How to Survive Living with Your Parents…the Second Time Around. She recommends making changes to your bedroom so it reflects who you are now. Otherwise, it becomes a “permanent purgatory” of high school trophies and reminders that you are not where you want to be. Also, “Do your own laundry and cook for yourself” because it’s more empowering than reverting to living like a seventeen-year-old. Chapters on financial planning and exit strategies belie other dangerous pitfalls of boomerang life.

And Furman warns, “The stigma is more than people realize.” (Which explains why the only people willing to be interviewed for this column are people who are just starting or have made it out of the house again.) Older generations are often stuck in outdated attitudes about the transition to adulthood, and they ask grating questions like, “You live where? At your age? What’s wrong with you?”

But in fact, moving back home is probably the first step in the post-boomer revolution of the workplace. Expectations for work are higher than ever — it should be fulfilling, fun, and accommodating to a substantial personal life. The logical way to meet such revolutionary expectations is to start out on a revolutionary path. So hold your head high as a boomeranger, but don’t leave your dirty dishes in the sink.

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Career change is inevitable, so plan for it

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Everyone should plan for a change in career. Statistically, you are likely to wish you could change. Financially, you are likely to be too scared to take action, unless you plan for change early, before you want to make a leap.

Today people start working when they are 22 and don't stop until they are 65 or older. It makes sense that the career you pick when you are a 22 will not be appropriate when you are 44. People change. Thank goodness, or else we would get bored being ourselves.

Many people are already aware of this problem: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 67% of American workers don't like their jobs. One look at the Amazon.com business books bestsellers list reveals the biggest career problem — at least for people who buy business books: Fear of changing careers. People get to a certain point in their life, somewhere between 35 and 55, and they want to switch careers, but it's too scary.

No one is immune from the desire to change career — even people who love their job. Maybe your heath will dictate change, maybe relocating for a spouse will. If you're still feeling smug that you will never stop loving your job, remember that the divorce rate is 50% and those people felt love at first, too.

So part of everyone's planning should entail leaving doors open for career change. And the biggest barrier to career change is money.

When you have worked in one field for a while, you become an expert, and your salary reflects that. When you want to change careers, you will likely take a cut in salary. Fine for someone who is in their twenties. But for a 35-year-old, who has kids and a mortgage, almost any salary cut is terrifying.

You need to do something to ensure that you are not terrified. Otherwise, career change will be out of the question. For most people this preparation means living way below your earning power starting immediately.

Phyllis Moen, professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota, says that one of the most common barriers to changing career paths is having to pay a hefty mortgage. She says, “The one thing that people seem to equate with adulthood is buying a house. This is true for single people, too. In the past – for Boomer generation especially — advice was to buy the best house you can afford. But now it's an albatross.”

Another career trap is a job that entails very bad conditions for what people tell you will be only a limited period of time — associates at law firms, medical residents, consultants who travel nonstop are all examples of this sort of position. Be careful planning for the future by telling yourself you're “paying dues” now for more fulfillment down the road. If you pay dues for too long then switching careers means, in a way, paying dues for nothing, which is a large psychic cost to come to terms with.

Many people in very lucrative fields say: “I am going to earn so much money that I can save enough to switch careers.” This may be true, if you don't want to switch careers too early, and if you are realistic about how much money you have to save. However this level of self-discipline is rare; Richard Easterlin, professor of Economics at University of Southern California finds in his research that people are hard-wired to always want more money. For most people, saying, “I could live on a lot less money and be fine,” is like saying, “I could stop drinking any time I want.” Theoretically it should be easy, but in practice, it's not. So start doing it immediately to make sure you can.

The Baby Boomers had midlife crises because they were so frequently trapped in careers that felt wrong. The next generation has a chance to be visionaries with their careers so as to not repeat the Boomers' mistakes. Hopefully, twenty years from now, the bestsellers list on Amazon.om will be filled with books about a new career problem — one we could not have foreseen.

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