Ode to the backup plan

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The idea that someone will stay at one company for a whole career went out the window more than a decade ago. Now most people will have more than eight jobs between the time they're 18 and 32 years old. To Baby Boomers, this is a shift in thinking, but for those of us who came after them, it's business as usual.

In keeping with my fellow Gen-Xers, I changed jobs ten times in the ten years just after college. And I adapted well to the Internet economy where star players switched jobs every year or so to gain those (now incredible) 25% raises. But at this point, I have to confess that I feel a little worn out.

At first, the free-agent no-one-owns-me attitude seemed great with all that flexibility, room to move up, the brand of you rah-rah. But the reality of a free-agent nation is hard. Friendships made at work are generally short term because the jobs are short term. Frequent insurance changes mean frequent changes in doctors. And there are too many times when the gaps between full-time jobs for free agent hunters are too big for a savings account to bear.

At this point, the free agent nation feels alienating, unstable, and financially risky. I long for a company that I can stay at for the next fifteen or twenty years even though I know the odds of that happening are slim.

It won't happen because most companies that have jobs that last forever take forever to make any other changes also: Slow and boring. Gen-Xers and Ys expect more from careers than any workforce in history. Fun, flexible jobs with new challenges around each bend are the typical goal, and like my peers, I am prepared to give up stability in exchange for that.

But I feel like maybe things need to be more calibrated. I have lived through layoffs, dot-com bankruptcies, and terrible economies. And I have lost jobs because of my own stupidity, too; pushing too hard on a good boss for more flexibility than was reasonable. All these situations have added up to constant, low-grade worry that I have no idea where I'll be five years from now.

I spend a lot of time figuring out how to keep this worry from overpowering me.

I have a five-year and ten-year plan for my personal life and my career. That helps a little because even though my career is not predictable, I have a steady vision for where I'm aiming to be, so I can adjust my tactics to accommodate both unexpected opportunities and unexpected setbacks.

But the thing that really has helped me succeed in the free agent universe is that I am always working on two or three ways to reach my career goals. I have found that putting all my eggs in one basket is too much pressure — I become too scared to take action on anything, because I start feeling like every phone call, every meeting, means so much.

Keeping a few eggs in my basket is like job insurance. I am never sure what will work out, but something always seems to go well when I have a few options. For example, when I was running my own software company I wrote articles on the side. And I also taught college courses. I didn't know what would come of any of that. As it turns out, the teaching never amounted to much. But the writing took off after 9/11 when my software market fell apart.

Now most of my income comes from a book contract. But I continue with lots of freelance projects because I never know what avenue I'll end up taking to get to my long-term goals. I admit that I also peruse help wanted ads. I don't think I'd take a corporate job now, but in a free agent nation, I wouldn't rule anything out.

Having a long-term vision for my career gets me excited about the possibilities in my life, but having a backup plan keeps me from going nuts over the lack of stability in the workforce of the new millennium.

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6 ways to give your job hunt spunk

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Hunting for a job is almost always difficult. So it's unfortunate that the truism that good things happen to optimistic people cannot be overstated when it comes to job hunting.

Of course, I've had my share of announcing to the world there were no jobs for me and sleeping until mid-afternoon. But experience with misery breeds experience with how to beat it, and here is a list of things I have found helpful to do when the job hunt starts feeling desperate:

1. Check your attitude.
Write a list of things that are going well in your life. You are not your job, and you are not your savings account. There are many facets to yourself and some remain unscathed, even during a terrible job hunt. Don't just think the list. Writing is a powerful tool, because whatever you take the time to write will feel more important to you than if you just thought about it. In fact, you should write a list of your personality traits that you like, too.

2. Check your focus.
Decide if you are looking for the right kind of job. If you are applying to tons of jobs and not getting them, think about if your resume stands out enough to get a job in this field. Be honest. After applying to 200 jobs and not getting one interview, it's safe to say that you need to change what you're doing. Ask for outside advice to figure out if you need a new resume or a new field. Start with friends and colleagues. If no one gives you new insight, hire a professional. Resume consultants are everywhere, and good ones end up giving career advice when a resume is obviously going nowhere.

3. Check your pace.
If you have a strong network, set a goal of three networking opportunities each week. They can be a lunch, a conference, even a coffee break as long as you're meeting someone who might be able to help. If you are not particularly good at networking, you'll have to rely on your resume. So send it out as often as you can. One resume a day would be a reasonable goal. If you can't find a job to apply to, send a resume, cold, to the CEO of a company you like. You never know what will happen from a shot in the dark like that, but if you send nothing, then you do know what will happen: Nothing.

4. Check your personal life.
Don't forget to see your friends. Don't forget to kiss your boyfriend. It's always easier to retreat into misery when you're in the midst of a job hunt. But you need a home base, so stay connected to the people who provide one. These are people who love you even when you are living off your retirement savings.

5. Check your spending.
You can get a lot more time for your hunt if you keep your spending down. The faster you run out of money the faster your hunt is over — and you don't want to be in a bind where you have to take the only position you can find, and it entails flipping burgers. Also, if you can keep your spending down permanently, you open yourself up to opportunities that are a good next step for your career but require a cut in pay.

6. Turn off the TV and read.
One of the hardest parts of unemployment is the lack of intellectual stimulation. Spending a lot of the time in front of a TV reinforces your feelings of doing nothing. Networking is a pain, rewriting your resume to fit each job opening is monotonous. Read books that have new ideas. Try something that stretches you; gaining new knowledge is one of the best antidotes to feeling stuck.

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List of things I hate

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Here is my second annual list of things I hate. However, it seems to have morphed into a list of types of people I hate. But this seems fair; no one's animosity should be limited to inanimate objects.

1. Perfectionists.
These are people who have lost perspective and get nothing done.

Of course, you can guess that I am not a perfectionist. In fact, I am a person who painted my own walls and didn't paint near the windows because I didn't want to do the detail work. I am a person who accidentally addresses the envelope upside down and doesn't get a new envelope.

But there is good that comes out of a lack of perfection: I can set a lot of goals for myself because I get them done.

Let me just cut to the chase:
Perfectionists procrastinate because they are scared of not being perfect.
Perfectionists are hypercritical to the point that they cannot support people around them.
Perfectionists can’t finish a project because they can always think of a way to improve it.
Perfectionists are phony because no one is perfect but they can’t handle showing that in themselves.

2. People with messy desks.
I didn't used to hate people with messy desks. I used to just feel sorry for them. Now I have disdain, because after I wrote a column about the University of Texas study that showed that people with messy desks are not creative, all the messy desk people wrote to me. I realized, from the onslaught of mail, that people with messy desks don't think they have a problem. They are in denial. I wrote about a study. They argued with me. They did not do a study. They told me they are proof that the study is wrong. The emails were so disingenuous and defensive that they actually caused me to have less respect for people with messy desks.

3. People who complain their job is not creative.
It's not your job, it's you. Creative people bring creativity to everything they do, no matter what. It is inside them and no job can stifle it. Some people are driven to do art and will do it no matter what their job is: Think Kafka holding down a job as an insurance company drone. But creativity is not just art, it's also problem solving. If you are good at your job you are undoubtedly creative because any form of success requires some sort of creative problem solving.

4. People who think their problems are unique.
Women in finance who think they are the only ones who suffer sex discrimination. People in government who think they have a corner on bitching abut bureaucracy. Teachers who think they are the only people who have to be “on” all day long. If you have ever told people that your job is especially taxing for one reason or another, you are lame. Your job is not special; all jobs are hard for people who have a hard time doing a job. If you can't cope with sex discrimination in your job, you couldn't cope with it in someone else's job, either. If you can't cope with high standards in your job, you wouldn't meet anyone's high standards. Stop thinking your circumstances are unique. I can't think of one situation where that sort of thinking will help further your career.

5. Grammar mavens.
As a person who is not a sticklers for detail, I tire of people who call out a grammar error like they are a second-grade overachiever who will never get picked in kickball.

But, any list of hated things would not be honest unless the author admits that we only hate the things that somehow remind us of ourselves. So, now that I've admitted that, I will tell you my grammar pet peeve: You should not, ever, in any situation in the whole world, say, “and myself” in the workplace. Use “and me” or “and I” instead. The only way to correctly use “and myself” is if you are doing something directly to someone else and to yourself, so it is a grammatical construction that is basically appropriate for nothing except pornography.

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How to succeed in a new job

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The majority of people who fail at their job will fail in the first 90 days. So take special care to make a good start. Here are areas you need to manage carefully.

1. Assume everything in the interview was wrong.

Don't come to work with a preconception of your job description. You'll be disappointed at best and annoying at worst.

During the interview process, a hiring manager tells you a job description that will make you want to take the job. The description is not likely to be an accurate summary of what your boss really wants you to do. After all, no one says in an interview, “You'll have to pick up pieces when my disorganization gets our team into trouble,” or “As a newcomer, you will take the projects no one else wants, which may or may not be relevant to your interests.”

Also, during your initial meeting, you probably asked your perspective boss about his management style. The answer he gave was really the management style he thinks she *should* be using.

People do not generally say what they want. (This is so true that focus groups have to be run in a way that consumers are not asked directly what they want because they say the wrong thing.) So watch your boss, read nonverbal cues, and understand what is motivating him. Once you really truly understand your boss you will be able to constantly adjust what you’re doing in order to meet his or her needs.

2. Get your goals in writing. And meet them.

Find out what your boss wants you to accomplish in the first 90 days. You need to know how you will be judged during this crucial time. Initiating this discussion shows that you are goal oriented and you want to be part of your boss's agenda. Ask for detailed descriptions and quantified expectations and get them in writing. Even if your boss does not create an official document, do it yourself, in an email — an informal summary of the conversation, but in your mind, treat this as a formal agreement.

Of courses, you must meet these goals, but forget about the phrase “hit the ground running” because you'll slip and fall. If you are running have no time to double check where they're going, and there's no time to make sure you are moving similarly to everyone else. Pace yourself for the first few months so you have a chance to learn how the company operates.

3. Manage your image.

Here are questions you'll hear every day for your first three months: Where were you before this company? How did you get into this business? Where are you from? These are general, fishing-for-information questions. It is an opportunity for you to package yourself to your coworkers.

So get your spiel ready. Only a few people interviewed you; most people in the company know very little about you. Have a short, snappy answer for general, tell-me-about-yourself questions. People are going to make judgments that stick, based on this seemingly casual conversation. So prepare in advance.

Everyone will make a snap judgment about you — this is how people operate. Even good people. We can't help it. If you're lucky, they'll ask you a question. But most people will just take a look. So you have no ramp-up time when it comes to image. You have to look right on the first day. Dress like the other people at your level in the company. Set up your desk to present a crisp, organized image from day one. This means not barren but nothing cutesy.

Your desk and clothes are an expression of your competence, not your personality. Express your true personality at home, with your friends who are not evaluating you during the next 90 days.

People should perceive you as a listener. Ask questions, observe carefully, and meet as many people as you can. Instead of spouting off about how great you are, which only serves to show people that you are insecure, try listening to people, which makes them feel important, and consequently they will like you more. And in those first 90 days, who likes you is what will matter the most.

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Make a plan to manage your success

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I got a book deal. So this is, undoubtedly, the first of at least a hundred columns that will plug the book, which is not coming out until spring 2006. Far away, yes, but not too far for you to make a note in your planner: “Buy Penelope’s book.”

I got a big advance for the book. Not big like Bill Clinton, who received four million dollars. But big enough to buy a nice house (if I didn't live in New York City, which I do) and big enough to stop fights with my husband about money (no small feat, believe me).

Yet for all my recent success, someone asked me last night, “So, what do you do?” and I didn't say anything about a book. Lame. That's when red lights went off in my head. Experience tells me that one needs to manage career success as carefully as one manages failure. So I am making a plan to manage the book success.

1. Take time to be happy.
In the past, I have been at points of great success and been too driven toward the top to see how far I had come. For example, when I was a professional beach volleyball player signing autographs and smacking a volleyball in Bud Light commercials, I was always unhappy that I was not in the top twenty players. Now, as someone who makes a living sitting at a desk, I am amazed at my former athletic achievements (and muscle mass). But I never enjoyed them when I had them. I focused too much on what I didn't have.

So I am taking a month to bask in my book success. I am telling myself that my hard work and tenacity with my book proposal paid off. I am patting myself on the back, which I always tell other people to do, but rarely do myself.

2. Tell people about the success.
One of the people I mentor amazes me with his diligence when it comes to telling me about his success. I don't have a very close relationship with him, and sometimes I think to myself, “Why is he telling me this? Why is he sending me links to his stuff?” but I always end up thinking better of him when he tells me his achievements. He has taught me that there is very little harm in letting people know what you're doing that is great.

When it comes time for me to send emails to announce my book deal, my first instinct is to be hesitant — thinking with each email, “Does this person really want to know? Does she care?” But my mentee has taught me that I shouldn't think twice. I should just send the email. If someone is offended by my announcement then they were probably never going to be helpful to me anyway. Being shy about my success will get me nowhere.

3. Draft a strategy to leverage the success.
Too many times in my life I have followed up success with worries — that I would not get to the next level, that the achievement would slip out from under me. My worries about leveraging success undermined my ability to do it.

Take, for example, the time when I was running my own company and hiring all my friends and family and we had tons of money and great press. I spent my days so worried about where to take the company next that my hair started falling out. Really. I never even knew that women could lose their hair from stress until my shower drain clogged.

This book deal has great potential for worries because really, a book deal is all about sales. I have to make sure people buy the book. Also, I can't help thinking about the next book deal. Writing is a business; there's no point in launching one product and calling it a day because a thriving business is a bunch of products.

So this time, I'm going to use my success as a starting point for strategic thinking instead of fearful thinking. And the first thing, in this vein, will be to craft a new answer to the question, “What do you do?” I need to get my book into the answer.

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6 ways to dodge long hours

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Get more control of your time. It's hard to leave the office at a reasonable time of day when your workplace culture centers on long hours. But the cost of not leaving work is high: A half-built life and career burnout.

Of course, if you never work long hours, you will never appear committed enough to get to the top ranks. So your job is to work enough hours to look committed but not so many hours that you risk your personal life and your ability to succeed over the long haul. People cannot work full-speed until they die. Pace yourself so you don't burnout before you reach your potential.

1. Find the back door. Figure out what criteria people use for promotion. It is never only how many hours you work. In many professions you need to work a lot of hours, but there is always a way to be impressive enough to cut back on hours. In the realm of superstars, achievement is based on quality over quantity. Figure out how to turn out extremely impressive work so that you can get away with fewer hours. For example, if you're a lawyer, you could pick up one, very important client for the firm, and then cut back a little on your hours.

2. Be clear on your schedule and clear on priorities. Once you figure out which projects matter a lot and which don't, get the high-priority work. Then you can jump at the chance to tell someone handing out low-profile projects that you're booked – working on something that is a higher priority.

3. Go public. Tell people about your schedule ahead of time. For example, “I have Portuguese lessons on Thursdays at 7pm. The class is important to me.” When you plan a vacation, announce it early and talk about it a lot. The more people know about how much you have been preparing and anticipating your trip the less likely people will be to ask you to cancel it.

4. Find a silent mentor. Look for someone who is respected but does not work insane hours. This will take careful hunting because this person is not likely to be obvious about it. Watch him from afar and figure out how he operates. Few people will want to mentor you in the art of dodging work — it's bad for one's image. But you could enlist the person to help you in other areas and hope he decides to help you in the workload area as well.

5. Find a new specialty. There are some careers that hold no hope for shorter hours. Video game production and surgery come to mind. At the beginning of your career, you're in a good spot to change your path if you see no hope for a personal life on the horizon. A career change is easier when your career is new. Don't take this opportunity for granted; it will be much harder to change when you're in you’ve invested a decade in the career.

6. Respect your personal life so that other people will, too. If you don't create a life outside of work that is joyful and engaging then you won't feel a huge need to leave work. And if you don't project a passion for life outside of work then no one will think twice about asking you to live at work.

So get some passion in your personal life. If you can't think of anything, start trying stuff: Snowboarding, pottery, speed dating. The only way to discover new aspects of yourself is to give them new opportunities to come out.

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I should be sleeping now

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Even though you know you need eight hours of sleep a night, you probably sleep much less than that. Me, too. Tonight, for example, when I should have been going to bed I made cupcakes for my son's classroom. I was so tired that I doubled the amount of sugar, and baked them anyway. They came out squishy from so much sugar, but, per my son's request, I added green frosting and silver sprinkles on top anyway. I said to myself, “These are absolutely the most disgusting cupcakes ever.” Then, two hours later, when I feared I was too tired to stay up to write a column, I ate three cupcakes.

I told myself I would never stay up late for work again. But then I worried that I was probably lying to myself. So in an effort to really reform myself I have constructed a list of things to remember next time I see the clock strike 10 p.m. and I make no move to go to bed.

1. Sleep deprivation makes you act drunk. Occupational and Environmental Medicine reported that if you stay up for 18 — 20 hours in a row, your mental capacities are the same as those with a blood alcohol level of 0.1 percent, which is the legal driving limit.

2. You are smarter if you sleep enough. Scientists at the University of Luebeck found that when you sleep eight hours you solve problems that you cannot solve when you have not slept enough. So pulling an all-nighter seems fine, if you don't have to be smart the next day. But a lot of sleep-short nights mean a lot of stupid days. And sooner or later, it won't matter if you have the capacity, somewhere, to be brilliant. If you don't ever exhibit it because you never sleep, then for all intents and purposes, you are a slow thinker.

3. Creativity happens after a good sleep. Maybe the manic can get away with no sleep, but for the typically calibrated worker, sleep allows the brain to synthesize in ways that precede a great idea. Dmitri Mendeleev came up with the periodic table of elements by dreaming it. And Laurie Halse Anderson won a National Book Award Nomination for Speak, a book she dreamed and then woke up and wrote.

4. People who don't sleep are in denial. I have heard so many people say, “I don't need eight hours.” Okay. Fine. You need seven. But unless you're over 65, you need at least seven hours. You lie to yourself when you say you don't need the sleep, and the person who is hurt by the lie is you, because you never allow yourself to be your best self during the day. You never get to see what you can really do.

4a. I, by the way am not one of those people who says I don't need sleep. I always want more sleep. But I'm still in denial. I am in denial all day, leading up to the sleep deprivation. I have opportunities to get the most important stuff done but instead, I do easy, unimportant things, like answer random emails. I keep saying to myself, “I have time, I have time.” But I don't have time. Not if I'm going to get eight hours sleep.

5. The just-before-sleep part is magic. One of my favorite sensations is lying down to sleep but not falling asleep right away. My mind clears up, and I see all kinds of things that the tumult of the day obscured. Lying on the pillow with nothing to do is a luxurious feeling. But if I'm not getting enough sleep, that time is gone; I fall asleep the second my head hits the pillow.

Like all good addicts, I am telling myself, as I do this sleep deprivation thing tonight, that I'll never do it again. But really, I think getting enough sleep takes a huge commitment. You need to reorganize your life so that when it's time to go to bed, you've finished all the essentials. And you need to make getting enough sleep and essential. I say “you” because I'm not quite sure that I'm there yet. But now at least I have a list of reminders for next time I see my bedtime slipping by.

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5 overlooked rules of management

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All managers have one, shared goal: Get a promotion. But many times, the job of a manger is so multifaceted and detail-laden that the manager loses site of that big picture. Here are five jobs of a manager that are often lost in the muddle of managing smaller, day-to-day issues.

1. Manage conflict
Avoiding conflict is for people who want to lay low and move up by dint of inertia. This plan will take you only so far. At some point you have to meet conflict head on and show that you can resolve it. Think about this: At the highest levels of management, leaders are essentially gathering competing opinions from the very informed and making a decision based on conflicting recommendations. Conflict at your level, e.g. “Karen is late on every project and I don't want to work with her on the next one,” is preparation for the next level. Don't shrink from this stepping-stone by hiding in the sand until the conflict resolves itself. Managing conflict allows you to become an arbitrator and negotiator, and most of all, someone who has developed good judgment on hard calls.

2. Manage your personal life.
You are kidding yourself if you think people don't see what's going on with you at home. Are you getting drunk every night? Are your finances a mess? You might live a fantasy that you are hiding bad behavior from co-workers, but stress shows up in nonverbal, unexpected ways that make people uncomfortable to be with you and worried about your competence. People who seem to have shaky lives at home seem like time bombs at work. So instead of trying to hide your personal life, redirect that energy toward improving your personal life. You might not have as much focus for work in the short term, but in the long term you'll be in better shape to manage effectively.

3. Manage hearts and minds
Sure, you need to manage budgets, schedules, and strategy. But if you don't have peoples' hearts on your side, your team won't over perform for you. The easiest way to win the hearts of your team members is to genuinely care about them. You can't fake this. So if you don't genuinely care about people who work for you, ask yourself why you are in management. (There are plenty of big, rewarding careers that don't include management.) Management is about helping people to be their best. Once you genuinely care about people, you will be able to find out what excites them, and you will help them reach their goals at work. Which, invariably, will shine favorably on your own workplace performance.

4. Manage diversity'
Diversity is not popular right now, when so many people worry about their job going overseas. But study after study shows that diverse teams perform better than homogenous teams. And besides, diversity doesn't mean hiring someone in Mumbai. Managing diversity starts by hiring someone who is not like everyone else on your team. Then do it again and again and find a way to make the team gel. Diverse teams are more difficult to manage — there are more opinions, more preconceptions, more quirks, and more conflicts. But top managers can leverage these difficulties as a means to establish more innovative planning. After all, no one became great by surrounding themselves with people who think like everyone else.

5. Manage a successor
If you're doing a good job, it's hard to convince your boss to promote you; he has no idea who will take your place, and he risks his own job performance by letting you replace yourself with someone who might not be as capable. Instead, train someone in-house to take over your job as soon as you have a handle on it yourself. The person should be practically doing your job so that you can find areas where you can take on more responsibility before you ask for a promotion. Managing a successor allows you to first lead without the title, and then to ask for the new title. And more money.

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7 ways to decrease your hours without harming your career

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It is possible to work fewer hours without hurting your career, but you need to get serious about systematically changing how you approach your work. First, don't blame your long hours on your boss, your CEO, or your underlings. Someone who does not make a conscious, organized effort to take responsibility for the number of hours they work can be thrown off course by anyone. But the person who systematically follows the steps below will not be thrown off course, even by a workaholic boss in a workaholic industry.

1. Concentrate on quality of work over quantity.
The person who builds a career on doing the most work commits to living on a treadmill. The work will never be done, and you will become known among your co-workers as someone who never turns down an assignment. Read: dumping ground.

Quality is what matters: people don't lose a job for not working unpaid overtime, they lose a job for not performing well at the most important times; and a resume is not a list of hours worked, it is a list of big accomplishments.

2. Know the goals of your job.
You need to know the equivalent of a home run in your job. Get a list of goals from your boss, and understand how they fit into the big picture. Judge if your work is high quality by what people need from you and how they measure success. Be sure to get goals that are quality oriented and not hours oriented. Suggest replacing, “Devote eight hours a week to cold-calling” to “Find six qualified leads in three months.”

3. Refuse bad assignments.
Figure out what matters, and spend your time on that. Once you have clear short-term and long-term goals, it's easy to spot the person you don't need to impress, the project that will never hit your resume, or the hours worked that no one will notice.

And then say no. Constantly. The best way to say no is to tell people what is most important on your plate so they see that, for you, they are a low priority. Prioritizing is a way to help your company, your boss and yourself. No one can fault your for that.

4. Know your boss's goals.
Your best tool for saying no to a project is reminding your boss what her goals are. If she cannot keep track of her own goals, help her. Because if you worm your way out of work that doesn't matter to her, so that you can do work that does matter to her, she is more likely to back you up. Also your boss will protect you from assignments from other people if you show her how the other peoples' work affects your boss's goals.

5. Take control of what you can.
Even small efforts at control add up to a lot, and best of all, they usually go unnoticed by others. For example, refuse to make meetings on Monday and you are less likely to have to prepare for meetings on the weekend. Refuse meetings after 4:30 p.m. and you are less likely to miss dinner at home. Ignore your phone while you write your weekly report and you're less likely to stay late to finish it. You don't need to tell people: “My policy is no meetings at x time.” Just say you're already booked and suggest another time. You can't do this every meeting, but you can do it enough to make a difference in your life.

6. Know your own boundaries.
“Wanting to work fewer hours” is too vague a goal because you won't know which hours to protect. Try getting home at 7pm, not working weekends, or leaving for two hours in the middle of the day for a yoga class. These are concrete goals for cutting back hours.

7. Be brave.
Brave people can say no when someone is pushing hard, and brave people can go home when other people are working late. The bravery comes from trusting yourself to find the most important work and to do it better than anyone else.

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5 things to do right before you start a new job

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My husband just accepted a new job, and he had to give his new boss a start date. We agreed that he would take a week off before he starts, but it turns out we had very different ideas about what that week would entail.

We both agree that the stress of a job hunt is exhausting, and anyone who has been through that process needs to recharge before embarking on something new. A real vacation — like Paris or the beach – was not possible to plan because we had no advance notice about this job. In fact, though, one does not need to be in an exotic location in order to recharge.

The problem is that my husband's idea of recharging is haphazard and, in my mind, ineffective. But just because you're married to a career expert doesn't mean you want to hear her advice, which is frustrating to me, to be honest. So here is an open letter to my husband about how I think people should spend the week before a new job.

1. Get out from under your oppressive to do list.
It's no fun to start a job weighted down by a big to do list that has nothing to do with your new responsibilities. Take a week to kill your to do list. Anything you can't get done in that week, delete: admit that you are not going to get done in the next year. You can console yourself with the fact that if it's not important enough to do when you have a week with no plans, then it probably wasn't important in the first place.

2. Clear the clutter by devising a new system.
Get rid of all your piles, all your lists, all the projects, all the things that hang over your head but never get done. But going through this mess once is not enough. Figure out a system so that you don't create new piles and lists once your job starts. Piles and lists and unfinished projects are borne of unrealistic ambitions. Acknowledge what you can do and get rid of the other stuff. The pressure you feel to address your unfinished business drains you every day. Create a system that does not generate unfinished business.

3. Get into a routine that supports the lifestyle you want.
Do you want eight hours of sleep a night? You should. People who get less than seven hours of sleep exhibit the same mental signs as someone who has had a little too much to drink. Do you want to exercise regularly? You should. People who exercise regularly have more successful careers. So get started on this during your down week — the week when you have no other commitments except to get your life in gear in preparation for your new job. It's a lot easier to get yourself into a routine when there is no other pressure. And if you can do a week of the life you want you're more likely to keep it up when you start your new job.

4. Have lunch with friends.
Most people avoid their friends when they are looking for a job. Not that this is the right decision, but it is an understandable decision during a time when morale and self-esteem are low. Now that you have a job, though, reconnect with people and let them know how excited you are. Better to do it now, during your interim week, than during your first month of the new job; you never know what your schedule will be like, especially for the first couple of months. Also, be sure to invite people out to lunch who have helped you in your hunt. Even if their help was not particularly fruitful, if they tried, then you should express thanks.

5. Remember who you truly are.
For people who really, really need a job, much of a job hunt is pretending: Pretending you don't need a job. Pretending you love tedious tasks and long hours. Pretending you get along with anyone. Pretending you feel good about yourself. But most people who need a job and can't find one actually do not feel that good about themselves. Once you do find that job, Take a week to get back to your regular self — the valuable, self-confident person you truly are.

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