In the olden days, ten years ago, when I was a dot-com upstart displacing workers twice my age, I could hear people grumble about the workplace behavior of Generation X: We demanded foosball tables, non-hierarchical structure, tons of authority and exciting projects. In exchange, we worked extremely hard and fast, played well in teams, and felt a huge sense of ownership.

There was a generational clash at the office, and I remember thinking, “So what? I am making more than my 50-year-old co-workers and I get to wear jeans to work.” I felt sorry for the people who couldn't teach themselves how to do HTML.

Now I'm getting a dose of my own smugness because a lot has changed in ten years. I am not always the slick up-and-comer in the room with a strikingly new perspective. Sometimes I am just the Gen-Xer bombarded with the extreme optimism and potential of the Millennials. (Another insult: These people used to be called Generation Y, but they don't like to be associated with Gen Xers, so they prefer the term “Millennials.”)

According to Neil Howe, one of the authors of the book, “Millennials Rising,” this newest generation — born from 1975 to 1988 — has never known a recession and has been coddled toward success by overly invested Yuppies and soccer moms. Gen Xers, on the other hand, were latchkey kids, famous for neglect, and left hanging after college in one of the worst job markets since the Great Depression.

One of my brothers is sixteen years younger than I am, and therefore solidly a Millennial. I used to think all his self-confidence was due to the fact that my mom loves him best. But now I think it also as a result of his generation. He expects to always have work, always have fun, always have success. He works as hard as a Gen Xer, but has none of the cynicism. I used to think the cynicism would come (after all, he *is* my brother), but now I see it's just not part of his makeup.

Here's another snapshot of a Millennial — one I mentor. He got a great job out of college (as did all of his friends.) Then he quit his job and moved in with his parents so he could follow his dream career — acting.

When I moved back in with my parents because I couldn't find a job in a hideous economy, it was so embarrassing that I basically stopped talking to my friends. And my parents, for that matter, since we couldn't get along. But this guy, like most kids of his generation, is happy to go back home. He gets along great with his parents, they want him to succeed at whatever he likes. It's a love fest.

This is what I've been thinking: It's not fair that the Millennials had better timing in history and now have more confidence in the workplace. They are hard to manage because they make me see myself as the Xer I am: Cynical, hedging and a little bit exhausted.

But once I admitted to myself that I was jealous of the Millennials, I was able to see things more clearly. I decided to just adopt their way of thinking. There’s nothing stopping me. I put myself back in the time when I was the lucky upstart. And what really bugged me about the Boomers who watched me take their jobs in the 90s was that I thought they could teach themselves the same stuff that I taught myself: Web programming, interface design, viral marketing. But many Boomers didn't teach themselves — they just lamented the decline of the worth of their skills, and complained about how quickly things moved in the Internet economy.

So I'm going to start thinking like a Millennial: Optimism and self-assurance; believing that I can do anything, can make a difference, can get what I want. I am not sure I can transform myself completely, but it's better to try than to just be jealous. Besides, learning HTML was not all that great because it turned out to be the slave labor of the new economy. So maybe I'll be happy being a Gen Xer with a bit of Millenial, but not all of it.

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.

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.

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.

Career success depends on how you cope with failure. Whether it's a big failure or a small one — you must be able to bounce back. Much of the grand success in life comes from grand opportunity, and you don't find that opportunity unless you keep looking. People who are easily discouraged get fewer opportunities.

But how does one become good at failing? How do you bounce back quickly? Martha Stewart provides some good lessons in this area. Because whether or not you think she should have gone to prison, you have to admit that prison does not seem to have gotten her down. When it comes to scope of failure, most of us would have crumbled way before we got to prison. So take a look at the steps she took to ensure she would bounce back, and use them to create your own career resilience.

Of course, it's easier to have resilience when you have millions of dollars. But Martha made four tactical moves that you can do yourself, even on your relatively penurious budget.

Use your network as a safety net.
Networking isn't only for a job hunt. It's also for failure, which tends to make you feel alone, even if others fail with you. A circle of your own informal advisors and supporters can make you feel less isolated and help you to bounce back faster. You need a range of friends when you fail. Sometimes you need a lawyer, sometimes you need someone to hang out at a bar all night with you. When you are failing, and you think the damage is irrevocable, your network will help you get perspective.

And don't forget your family — the people who are usually last to abandon you when you do something stupid. During Martha's ordeal she was dependent on her daughter, Alexis. Alexis showed up for court every day, as is customary for families of the rich-and-famous-and-accused. But Alexis also visited Martha in prison and served as her mouthpiece to the media. (“Martha is fine. She is eating out of vending machines.”) Martha shows us that we are never too important to need family in our network.

Fail fast.
Once you see things spiraling downward, face reality quickly and get out. The faster you fail the faster you can move on to the next thing. Denial can derail you. Don't continue to try to fix the unfixable because you can't face the fact that you failed. Martha had the benefit of many paid advisors to help her out of denial. Though you will have to depend on unpaid friends who may not be experts, listen to them to gain some perspective on how deep a hole you're in. It's always easier to see someone else's trouble than your own.

Once you see recognize big trouble, focus on speed. Martha could have dragged the court battle out even longer. She could have stayed out of prison while she appealed. But for the public, the drama will be over when Martha leaves prison, so she went in quickly.

Don't hide.
Failure is loud. If it weren't no one would have to admit to failing. So once it's obvious, face the crowd and show that you can handle it. The most interesting failures are when people completely fall apart. If someone looks resilient, and not likely to fold, failure is not as interesting to watch. That's what you want: Such flair for failing that no one pays attention.

As soon as Martha left prison, she took steps to show the public that she was her same old Martha self- and maybe a little bit better. She took a chartered jet home wearing fashionable clothes. She strolled the grounds of her home feeding her horse and serving drinks to the media circus surrounding her home. She also took questions from reporters, which is brave thing to do in a situation when most people would be too embarrassed.

Frame failure for yourself.
Failure is subjective. You can frame failure as career killing, but you gain nothing from this outlook. A better decision is to frame failure as a learning opportunity. Martha announced that she's a better person after her time in prison. Most of us, in fact, are better people from our failures, but if you don't frame it that way to yourself, you lose the opportunity to consciously put the learning to use.

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.

Those who have mentors are twice as likely to be promoted as those who don’t, says Ellen Fagenson Eland, professor at George Mason University and 2003 Winner of the Mentoring Best Practices Award. So start taking the mentoring process very seriously — it should be a cornerstone of your overall career strategy. Here’s a plan to get you started:

Step 1: Identify a potential mentor. This person can be any age, but the most effective mentor is someone approximately five years ahead of you in your career. A person at this level will know how to navigate your organization at the spot you’re in, and the person will remember what it is like to be where you are. This person should be someone you admire and someone who has good communication skills.

Step 2: Have good questions. Would-be mentors are most receptive to people who ask good questions. What makes a good question? It should reveal that you are both directed and driven. But the question should also demonstrate that you understand the mentor’s expertise and you can use it well. So, a question like, “What should I do with my life?” would be out.

Step 3: Don’t expect miracles. A mentor is not going to rescue your whole career, even if she can. People want to mentor a rising star, so look like you’re on track when you ask for help. Ask, “What skills should I develop to earn an education policy analyst job with a Senator?” rather than, “Can you get me a job with a Senator?” even if the mentor is Caroline Kennedy.

Step 4: Be a good listener. This person is not your therapist. You ask a question, and then listen. If the mentor needs to know more, he’ll ask. Do not tell your life story. It is not interesting. If it were, you’d be writing a book or doing standup, right? If you find yourself talking more than the mentor, then get a therapist before you scare your mentor away.

Step 5: Prove you’re serious. You can demonstrate that you’re hungry for counsel by implementing the advice your mentor gave, showing the result, and then going back for more. So, if your mentor suggests you get on project X, get yourself there, do a good job, and report back to your mentor that you are grateful for the advice because you were able to learn a lot and shine. Your mentor will be much more willing to give you her time and energy after you’ve proven yourself to be a quick and eager study.

Step 6: Always be on the lookout. One is not enough. Each person needs a few mentors, because no mentor lasts forever, and each has a different expertise. Two of my best mentors were very different from each other. One helped me to fit in with the guys so that I could succeed at a company where I was the only woman in management. Another mentor helped me to keep my sanity and my focus when balancing work and children seemed totally impossible.

Step 7: Give back. The best way to learn how to rope in a mentor is to be a mentor yourself. You’ll find out first hand what makes a protégée annoying, which will, in turn, make you a less annoying protégée. You’ll also discover why helping someone else grow is so rewarding, which will give you the courage to ask people to help you.

Even though I rarely tell you about the letters I receive from readers, I do receive a lot of mail. Almost all of it is thoughtful and intelligent, and the mail does influence what I choose to write about. Many times I answer questions directly, but today I'm going to answer a reader email in the column. My hope is that if you see how I answer a question, then you can answer your own questions using a very basic but tried-and-true Penelope formula.

The woman, I'll call her Darcy, wrote that she is a PhD who was hired to do research and present numbers to the Board of her company. The letter is much longer than that one sentence, but the basic point is that the board was getting inaccurate numbers from a lesser-qualified person so the board hired a PhD to make sure the information was completely accurate. Fair enough, especially in the wake of Enron and Aon and all the other number-hiding companies that crashed in recent history.

The problem is that, according to Darcy, the board is frustrated by Darcy's inability to come up with a way to present the numbers that the board likes. And Darcy is frustrated by the board's need to have numbers that are not exactly what she comes up with. After all, wasn't she hired to come up with the truth?

Here is some insight into how Penelope thinks: I look at the letter and say to myself, why is this Darcy's fault? You might think, Penelope you are so unreasonable to always blame the letter-writer. But face reality: You are not going to make a board change. You're not going to make a boss change. The people who write letters to me are generally having trouble with people who are not going to change. So there's no point in saying, “Wow, you sure do work with difficult people. Sorry. Love, Penelope.” Or, worse yet, saying, “Yes. This is a very bad situation. You should quit. That'll really teach your company a lesson. Good luck with unemployment. Love, Penelope.”

The best advice I can give is how the person with the problem can solve the problem herself. In the case of Darcy, she needs to recognize that she has an impossible job. There's a reason why very few Ph.Ds are CEOs. The former is all about detail and accuracy. The latter is all about big-picture and spin. Not that both titles don't require big picture AND accuracy, but very few people can focus on big picture and accuracy at the same time.

Probably, Darcy is never going to be able to re-jigger numbers for public relations spin. My first advice would be for her to extract herself from the spin part of the job — give the numbers to a public relations person before the numbers go to the board, for example. But maybe Darcy really wants to step up and deliver the numbers in a way that the board wants. In truth, people who can juggle details and big-picture go very far in corporate life. So maybe Darcy can do this, but then she needs to stop complaining about what the board wants, and learn to deliver it. Let the board decide if it's proper or not. (Note to ethics mavens: Darcy is definitely at the beginning of her career and in no position to be questioning her board's ethics. She would be ignored and then fired.)

But let's take a step back. Because almost all of my “What should I do?” emails from readers are like this one. When you have a problem with how other people in the office are treating you, figure out how you can change. When you have a problem with how people want you to do your job, change your approach, or change your job description, but don't blame someone else for what they want. This is not going to get you anywhere.

People in corporate life get promoted for their ability to take control of a problem and solve it. If you cannot take control of problems within your own job, you are not going to persuade people you can take care of corporate problems. So on some level, you have to look at your problems like I would look at your problems: Blame yourself first.

Almost one-third of workers do not meet the writing requirements of their positions, according to a survey by the College Board’s National Commission on Writing.

Before any of you get smug with your writing acumen, keep in mind that most workers do not need to write more than a sentence or two to get their job done. For example, I bet burger flippers are meeting their job’s writing requirements by a higher margin than one third. My guess is that at the typical email-intensive office, the percentage of less than competent writers is well above the 50% mark.

Most of the writing we do at work is in the format of an email or a presentation. In both cases, the best way to get yourself into the small percentage of competent writers is to write short. The faster and more concisely you get to your point, the more likely your reader will understand your message. Here are some self-editing tricks for writing shorter:

1. Write lists. People love reading lists. They are faster and easier to read than unformatted writing, and they are more fun. If you can’t list your ideas then you aren’t organized enough to send them to someone else.

2. Think on your own time.
Most of us think while we write. But people don’t want to read your thinking process; they want to see the final result. Find your main point in each paragraph and delete everything else. If someone is dying to know your logic, they’ll ask.

3. Keep paragraphs short.
Your idea gets lost in a paragraph that’s more than four or five lines. Two lines is the best length if you really need your reader to digest each word.

4. Write like you talk.
Each of us has the gift of rhythm when it comes to sentences, which includes a natural economy of language. But you must practice writing in order to transfer your verbal gifts to the page. Start by avoiding words you never say. For example, you would never say “in conclusion” when you are speaking to someone so don’t use it when you write.

5. Delete.
When you’re finished, you’re not finished: cut 10% of the words. I do this with every column I write. Sometimes, in fact, I realize that I can cut 25% of the words, and then my word count isn’t high enough to be a column and I have to think of more things to say. Luckily, you don’t have to write for publication, so you can celebrate if you cut more than 10%. Note: It is cheating to do this step before you really think you’re done.

6. Refuse to be boring.
Any topic can be interesting, but not if the writer is not interested. Don’t write about a topic just because you think you should – it’s unlikely your reader will feel passionate about reading when you did not feel passionate about writing. Gen Y gets this intuitively and maybe that’s why it’s so easy to hire essay-writing experts.

7. Avoid adjectives and adverbs.
The fastest way to a point is to let the facts speak for themselves. Adjectives and adverbs are your interpretation of the facts. If you present the right facts, you won’t need to throw in your interpretation. For example, you can say, “Susie’s project is going slowly.” Or you can say, “Susie’s project is behind schedule.” If you use the first sentence, you’ll have to use the second sentence, too, but the second sentence encompasses the first. So as you cut your adjectives and adverbs, you might even be able to cut all the sentences that contain them.

I just checked to see if I have modifiers in the column. I do. But I think I use them well. You will think this, too, about your own modifiers, when you go back over your writing. But I have an editor, and you don’t, and I usually use a modifier to be funny, and you do not need to be funny in professional emails. So get rid of your adverbs and adjectives, really.

Avoid telltale signs of a rube.
Passive voice. Almost no one ever speaks this way. And on top of that, when you write it you give away that you are unclear about who is doing what because the nature of the passive voice is to obscure the person taking the action. Check yourself: search for all instances of “by” in your document. If you have a noun directly after “by” then it’s passive voice. Change it.

I met a not-friend at a not-cool-but-not-cheesy restaurant. I was networking, because this is what you must do to further your career. Even if you hate it you have to do it. I did not wear work clothes, because even though networking is work, you’re not supposed to look like you’re on the job. I knew we weren’t really friends, because I wasn’t wearing my really ratty overalls.

We discussed segmented marketing, but in a cool, maybe-we’re-not-working kind of way. For example, we talked about who is using Napster now, and about which bands get downloaded most. We moved a little in the direction of which bands we each like, but my not-friend didn’t share my musical tastes, so we danced away from the topic quickly.

If I were really looking for a friend, I would have gone full-steam ahead into topics that may be controversial, but can weed out inappropriate people: politics, money, sex. These are make-or-break topics. But I could not afford a “break” on this occasion, because this person was one of my best connections in the advertising world.

Early in my career, my boss was having trouble because someone who reported to her hit on her, and was upset that she said no. The story got out, and soon the whole office knew about it. She pulled me into her office one evening and said, “What do people think of what’s happened with ____?” At the time, I was flattered that I was the one she pulled aside. Now I realize that I have to be extra careful to edit myself as I go. Complete honesty is not completely good: It alienates people — specifically, me.

The not-friend I went to dinner with asked me if I liked her yellow scarf. I thought it was gross, but I was afraid to tell her the truth. (In fact, I’m not even telling you the real color of the scarf, in case she ends up reading this.) Maybe if I told her the scarf was awful, we would have immediately become good friends, and she would always love me for my honesty. But maybe not. It was the maybe-not part that kept me from telling her the truth — because I would rather have a good network than a good friend. (I don’t need a Rolodex full of friends; I do need a Rolodex full of contacts: people who will have dinner with me at innocuous locations and help me navigate my career.)

Still, I wanted to tell my not-friend that I hated her scarf. I want to show people who I really am. I want to see if they would still like me. I want to distribute surveys (to be put on file later in my Rolodex) that ask people if they enjoyed my honesty, and if they would be willing to do favors for me now that they know the real me.

Instead, I ordered a cosmopolitan because she ordered one — even though I don’t really drink. And I told her little things about me that she didn’t already know, so she felt like she was getting to know me.

I did not tell her that I find the networking so exhausting, my Rolodex is actually shrinking from atrophy. I decided that maybe a good step would be to buy her a new scarf — a way to express my true feelings in a positive way. If I could only be more positive.

I told her things that are so banal that they would annoy you. When we parted I pretended to take the train home and instead of going straight home I bought a milkshake at a diner and sat in a booth decompress. The most tiring part of networking is having to be clever and interested for so long. And the cruel truth of the work world is that people who love to network don’t need to do it.

People like me, who hate networking, need to be diligent. I tell myself I have to endure one of these nights each month. I remind myself that I might meet the perfect person to help me later, that networking is like money in the bank. So even if someone has terrible taste in music and scarves, I work hard when I’m with her, because you never know when networking will pay off, but I really believe that it always does, even after all my complaining.