Read her article in the June 2013 issue, here…

Believe in yourself to light the spark of excitement

“There is no scientific answer for success. You can’t define it. You’ve simply got to live it and do it.” Anita Roddick, Founder, The Body Shop

Lately, when I first open my eyes in the morning, I remember what day it is, and do a quick mental scan of what I have planned. Then, as I’m enjoying those final moments with my pillow and quilt, I feel the simultaneous pull of excitement to enter my day.

by Daisy Swan

Taking that action to step into the day isn’t always easy; it doesn’t always seem so inviting that we leap into it with a burning desire to make something of it. I’ve had mornings when, lacking in energy, I didn’t believe the rest of my day was going to make much of a difference for me or anyone else. We’ve all had those mornings that, if we’re not conscious, can snowball into days of simply going through the motions. Those are lousy days. When I think back on them, I reflect on moments that had the potential to ignite in me a little spark to act; to start or finish something that may have eventuated into an accomplishment. This realization is important – it’s the identification of that almost imperceptible thought-moment of, “What if?” and doing something with it. Careers, companies, books, products, services, websites, and designs are borne out of moments like this.

When we don’t love our work, it’s likely we see a dull opaque blur in front of us. Just as dust settling on a wet windshield blocks our ability to see anything in sharp focus, we may not be able to identify what we are longing to sink our teeth into in order to feel satisfied. We may experience a hollow feeling that we’re missing what everyone else has (comparison deepens the sense of lack), creating an even deeper trough to dig ourselves out of. This stagnant place offers a most important message: By paying attention and taking action to gain back our belief, our trust, and our confidence, we have the ability to do something that matters. It’s this belief in our selves, or something beyond the self, that can light the spark.

The mystery is that we don’t always know what to do to jumpstart ourselves when we have hit that dark, dank place. Taking a step, even a little one, and committing to something challenging, in a fun and even eccentric way, can re-engage us. It could mean picking up a hobby from years ago, or taking a new interest in people who you had lost touch with. Perhaps offering to help someone you never would have thought to talk to before, or choosing to start a project you’ve put off for far too long. The act of “doing” makes the difference. Human resilience is amazing – we really are all wired to bounce back, and action brings us back to life. Even if we aren’t quite clear on what our purpose is, when we take one step and then a second, we’re moving towards it. A shift in perspective or curiosity can make all the difference.

Trust in the knowledge that in waking up with a sense of excitement for the day ahead, all it takes is a moment of thought and a subsequent action to effect a change. All of sudden it is happening. It found us, or we found it. It doesn’t matter because we’re doing it.

Daisy Swan, founder of Daisy Swan & Associates and author of Making Work Work: Secrets from a Career Coach’s Office works with clients of all ages who are motivated to find the lifestyle that authentically works for them: daisyswan.com.

Remarks delivered on Friday, May 11, 2012 at University of Southern California’s Annenberg School Commencement Ceremony

Good morning, Annenberg graduates — and congratulations! You’ve made it through one of the most prestigious universities in the world. You are accomplished — and, yes, you are blessed.

Blessed to be stepping out into the world with your degrees in journalism, PR, and Communication — right at the moment when it seems like everything in the world is about communication.

We’re communicating like never before — across borders and time zones — on platforms, devices, computers, tablets, phones, apps, games, you name it.

Communicating 24/7 — wired and wirelessly — talking, texting, and tweeting — trending and friending — to the other side of the room and the other side of the planet — spitting out the old, in order to consume the new.

Every minute you’re awake, you’re reaching out beyond yourself — way out beyond. It feels like the entire universe is an extension of your own nervous system.

You communicate instantly, automatically, and effortlessly. For you…communicating is like breathing.

And today, you’re rarin’ to go. Rarin’ to go out into the “real” world — to get a job and transform the world of communication yet again. It’s a race to be next, to be first, to be new. Sorta scary, isn’t it.

I get that — because when I close my eyes, it feels like just yesterday that I sat where you are, and I remember exactly how I felt.

My boyfriend had hidden a bottle of champagne under his graduation robe for the celebration afterwards. But me? I was anxious, and I was scared.

I had applied for a job in TV news, but I hadn’t heard back. And I remember everybody was asking me, “What are you going to do after graduation? Do you have a job? What’s your job?” — and I felt so bad about myself, because I didn’t have the answer.

I graduated in May, and for months I was asked “What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do?” — which got me beating the living daylights out of myself, all the way until I landed a job in October.

Back then, I didn’t realize that that question — the “What-are-you-gonna-do?” question — dogs us all our lives:

When you get that assignment desk job in local TV, everyone asks you, “When are you going on The Air?” And then it’s “When are you going to the Network?”

After you meet that special someone, people ask you, “When are you going to get married?” Then right away, it’s “When are you going to have a kid?” After that: “When are you going to have the next one?”

I remember when I wrote my first book, people would come up to me at book-signings and ask when the next book was coming out.

Right in the middle of the Women’s Conferences I produced, people would ask me, “Who are you gonna get to speak next year?”

Even today at my age, people come up to me all the time asking, ‘Maria, What are you doing? What’s your job? Are you going back into television? Are you writing another book?

Are you gonna run another women’s conference? What are you doing?’

It’s like what we’re doing at this precise moment doesn’t even exist. Everyone is focused on the next thing. Everyone is racing to the Next Thing.

Well, I got caught up in that for a really long time — so much so, that I could never really enjoy what I WAS doing, because I was always worried about what I was going to be doing.

I tell you all this, because I know right now everybody’s asking you those same questions: “What are you gonna do after graduation? Do you have a job? Where will you be working? How much are they paying? Where are you going? Where will you be living? Who are you seeing?” Oh, my God — so many questions!

And here you are: sitting there ready to hit the Fast Forward button and find out the answers. I get that. I was just LIKE you: I lived on Fast Forward.

But today, I have one wish for you. Before you go out and press that fast foward button, I’m hoping — I’m praying — that you’ll have the courage to first press the pause button.

That’s right: the pause button. I hope if you learn anything from me today, you learn and remember — The Power of the Pause.

Pausing allows you to take a beat — to take a breath in your life. As everybody else is rushing around like a lunatic out there, I dare you to do the opposite.

I’m asking you to do this, because I believe you have an important opportunity in front of you, graduates of The Annenberg School of Communication.

I’m asking you to learn how to pause, because I believe the state of our communication is out of control. And you? I believe you have the incredible opportunity to fix it.

You have the power, each and every one of you, to change the way we as a nation speak to one another. I truly believe you can change our national discourse for the better.

You have the chance to change the way we talk to one another, what we read on the Web and newspapers and magazines, what we see on TV, what we hear on radio. You can help us change the channel.

I’m hoping you young men and women dare to bring change to our community by changing our communication.

Change it from criticism and fault-finding to understanding and compassion. Change it from nay-saying and name-calling to acceptance and appreciation.

Change it from dissembling and dishonesty to openness and explanation.

Change from screaming to speaking.

Show us the way, Annenberg graduates. Take us out to what I’ve been calling “The Open Field”. Go there! Go beyond! I know you can do it — because a communications degree means nothing today unless you know how to go beyond the easy into the unknown — unless you know how to pause, how to listen.

You know — I know quite a bit about the communication business. I’ve done it through my TV news work, my books, my website, in magazines, speeches, blogs, and conferences. And if you thought I was going to come here today to tell you how I’ve done all that, the answer is pretty simple: I worked my butt off!

You’ll have to work your butt off, too, but today, I’m saying that while you do that, it’s really important to pause along the way and take a break from communicating outwardly, so you can communicate inwardly, with yourself.

PAUSE — and take the time to find out, what’s important to you. Find out what you love, what’s real and true to you — so it can infuse and inform your work and make it your own.

PAUSE — before you report something you don’t know is absolutely true, something you haven’t corroborated with not just one, but two sources, as I was taught. And make sure that they’re two reliable sources.

PAUSE — before you put a rumor out there as fact. Just because you read it or saw it on TV or the Web — no matter how many times — doesn’t mean its true. Don’t just pass on garbage because you want to be first. There’s no glory in being first with garbage.

PAUSE — before you hit the “send” button and forward a picture that could ruin someone’s life — or write something nasty on someone’s Wall because you think it’s funny or clever. Believe me, it isn’t.

PAUSE — before you make judgments about people’s personal or professional decisions.

PAUSE — before you join in and disparage someone’s sexuality or intellectual ability.

PAUSE — before forwarding the untrue and inflammatory tidbits that have made it so difficult for would-be public servants and their families to step up and lead. Edmund Hillary once said, “It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”

Sometimes when you pause, you’ll realize you’re gonna have to hold yourself back from acting out on your ego and your first impulse.

Remember this: You have a degree from a prestigious Communication School.

Communication has so much power to do GOOD. Look at Kony-2012. And what about Egypt and Libya! In almost an instant, communicators toppled dictators and governments in place for decades!

That’s power — and with power, comes responsibility.

So remember to pause and reflect — before you sign on with someone or some organization whose work you don’t admire and respect. Who you work for is as important as what you do.

And if you don’t have a job yet and someone asks you “What-are-ya-gonna-do?” Just pause, and be aware of this fundamental truth: It’s okay not to know what you’re going to do! It’s okay not to have all the answers. You don’t have to be like I was at your age and beat yourself up for not knowing.

It’s okay to go with the truth and tell people, “You know what? It’s a tough job market out there. I’m not sure what I’m going be doing. I’m pausing, I’m open, and I’m looking at my options.” Hey, that’s exactly what I’m saying to people these days — and so far, so good!

And while you’re waiting for that perfect job — know this: There are so many incredible nonprofits out there doing important high-impact life-changing work. They can use your brains and talent in the meantime to help them communicate their mission and message.

You know, I didn’t invent this stop-everything-and-pause idea.

Jesus fasted for forty days and nights in the desert. Henry David Thoreau went to Walden Pond. Ann Morrow Lindberg went to the sea. Buddha, Gandhi, Mother Teresa — the greatest and wisest have often stopped and withdrawn from active lives to journey within themselves. The wisdom they garnered there and shared with us has impacted the world.

But, hey, don’t worry! I’m not asking you for 40 days and nights! I’m only asking you to stop every so often and turn off your mobile device, put down the Angry Birds and the Words with Friends and take a moment. Stop to look up and look around. Pause and check in with yourself — and spend a moment there.

Feel your strength and your vulnerability. Acknowledge your goodness, and don’t be afraid of it. Look at your darkness — and work to understand it, so you’ll have the power to choose who you’ll be in the world.

Women: look at your toughness and your softness. You can and should make room for both in your life. The world needs both.

Men: find your gentleness, and wrap it into your manliness. You, too, can make room for both. The greatest men do.

Today, I pray that you will be able to pause and spend time with yourself to give thanks for the journey that has brought you here. Express your gratitude today to all those who made your journey possible.

Be grateful for all the love you have in your life and all the love you’ve ever had.

And while you’re at it — how about pausing and doing something refreshingly different?

Like talking to your mother or father or someone else you care deeply about — not just texting them — but talking to them with your mouth!

And dare I suggest that you pause and write an actual thank you note — with a pen on paper? Believe it or not, there are people like me who never hire anybody who didn’t send them a hand-written note thanking them for the interview.

As for me, the truth is that today, I am deeply grateful. Grateful for the life I’ve lived that has brought me here — and all the experiences I’ve had that have made me the communicator I am.

Today I’m pausing to be in awe of this moment, that I’m attending my first child’s college graduation. Katherine, I’m in awe of you — where are you? I’m in awe of the woman you are — your grace and courage and strength. I’m so proud of all of you and what you’ve done to get here.

Oh, how this world needs you — young men and women with the guts to pause and acknowledge where you’re at and how you got here — and then to change course if you need to — and trust me, sometimes you’ll need to change course! But know you’ve got the strength to do it.

So today, as you head out into the Open Field of life, keep your mind open, keep your heart open. Don’t be afraid to be afraid. Courageous people often are afraid. In fact, that’s why they need courage in the first place!

Have the courage to go beyond your fears. Have the courage to go beyond judgment.

Have the courage go beyond shoulda-could-woulda — go beyond others’ rules and expectations.

Live and write your own story and then be brave enough to communicate it authentically.

Trust me, someone else will be inspired by it and learn from it.

Be committed to communicating the truth. Don’t get so caught up along the way in what you’re doing and where you’re going that you lose sight of your core values: who you are and what’s important in your life.

And finally, remember this: Whenever you’re in doubt: PAUSE — take a moment. Look at your options — check your intentions — and THEN? Take the high road.

Got it?

OK, then — that’s it! End of lesson.

Get out there and start communicating!

Fight to make a difference in this world.

Fight for good. Fight for fairness. Fight on!

Source – Maria Shriver Linkedin
© Maria Shriver, All Rights Reserved

To Encourage Interaction and Innovation, Companies Try Smaller Spaces, Games; Trivia Helps Break Awkward Silences

By RACHEL EMMA SILVERMAN

Companies aren’t leaving serendipity to chance.

Firms are thinking up new ways to encourage interactions among employees who normally don’t work with each other. The hope is that these casual face-to-face chats among people with different skills might spark new ideas, lead to new solutions or at the least, increase workplace camaraderie.

To make those connections happen, some firms are taking a scientific approach—collecting and analyzing data about their teams and mathematically computing the likelihood that employees will meet. In some instances, they are squeezing workers into smaller spaces so they are more likely to bump into each other. In others, they are installing playful prompts, like trivia games, to get workers talking in traditional conversational dead zones, such as elevators.

But despite all the buzz around serendipity—several panels at the popular tech conference South by Southwest Interactive discussed the topic—it is hard to know for sure whether any of these efforts really work. The real challenge, companies and workplace scholars say, isn’t merely connecting workers with their colleagues so much as it is connecting them with the right ones.

“The most productive relationships are difficult to engineer,” says Jason Owen-Smith, a University of Michigan sociologist who studies employee collaboration.

Designs for Google Inc.’s new headquarters, expected to be completed in 2015, set out to maximize casual employee conversations, which the firm says were responsible for innovations such as Gmail and Street View. “We want it to be easy [for] Googlers to collaborate and bump into each other,” says a Google spokeswoman.

Not surprisingly, the plans are driven by Google’s obsession with data. One feature: Every worker within the 1.1 million-square-foot, multilevel complex is expected to be within a 2½ minute walk from each other. The firm and its architect, NBBJ, looked at how fast people can walk and measured the diameter of the space from multiple angles. (An “infinity-loop”-shaped pathway slopes through the building, connecting employees to each other.) In addition, the floor plan is narrower than typical offices, keeping teams in sight range of one another.

Studies have found that having colleagues work in close proximity to each other does correlate with increased collaboration. Researchers at the University of Michigan studying 172 research scientists recently found that when the scientists shared the same buildings and overlapped in their daily workplace walking patterns—moving between lab space, office space, and the nearest bathroom and elevator—they were significantly more likely to collaborate: For every 100 feet of “zonal overlap,” collaborations increased by up to 20%.

The more frequently you see and bump into a colleague, the more likely you are to eventually strike up a conversation, says Dr. Owen-Smith, the lead author of the study. “If that person knows stuff you don’t, that process can lead to information transfer,” he says.

Online retailer Zappos is encouraging employee collisions in its new 200,000-square-foot downtown Las Vegas headquarters, which it expects to occupy this fall. Inspired by dense cities, which allow for more interactions than sprawling suburbs, Zappos will allot workers about 100 square feet per person, instead of the 150 square feet in its current suburban office. Break rooms will be “really small, so people literally collide,” says Patrick Olson, Zappos’s senior manager of campus development. (The smaller space per person is also a cost-saver, to be sure.)

The headquarters are also designed to put its 1,500 staffers in close contact with the city at large. The company is closing off a skybridge connecting the parking garage to the office building, so workers will have to walk a longer route to get to the office, passing pedestrians along the way. Zappos is also opening up its lobby as a free co-working space, like a trendy hotel lobby, so that employees can mingle with workers from other companies and visitors. In its elevators it hopes to install digital games, such as trivia challenges, to help break awkward silences, says Mr. Olson.

“Those ground-floor connection points, we see that as magic,” says Mr. Olson, who switched from a technology job to a real-estate job after a chance conversation with his current boss and met his fiancé by bumping into her at a work event.

Other firms are trying ice breakers to bring workers closer together. David Rose, a researcher at MIT’s Media Lab, has teamed up with the design firm Gensler and exhibit-design firm Tellart to design a series of interactive installations expected to be set up later this year in the Portland and San Francisco offices of tech firm Salesforce.com and eventually in other companies as well.

Among the installations is a “lunch button” kiosk, which matches up employees with common interests to have lunch together that day. And there is a “conversation portal”—a two-way videoconferencing system attached to the end of a long cafe table—to help “spark informal conversation” among diners from offices around the world, Mr. Rose says. Another is a “conversational balance table” where an animated floral display provides instant feedback on whether someone is hogging a conversation.

And workers in Salesforce.com’s Portland office may eventually enter and exit through “voting doors,” in which a question is displayed such as “Cake or pie?” or “Is your work tapping into your inner genius?” for which staffers must choose a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ door to walk through. Salesforce.com declined to comment on the plans.

Efforts don’t always have to cost a lot of money. In the last two years National Public Radio has held six “Serendipity Days” in which about 50 employees from different departments, including digital, engineering, HR and news, volunteer to come together and think of new ideas and projects over a two-day period. One idea behind the program is to “work with groups you wouldn’t ordinarily work with through the course of your week,” says Lars Schmidt, NPR’s senior director of talent acquisition and innovation, who says in past sessions he has helped develop a new social-media training program for staff.

At Boston marketing agency CTP, employees swap desks and offices each summer. The company started the initiative to encourage more cross-departmental contact between creatives and account executives, who don’t normally sit near each other and interact much.

Attempts to engineer serendipity aren’t entirely new. Steve Jobs famously designed the Pixar headquarters with central bathrooms so that people from around the company would run into each other. And firms have increasingly adopted open plans and even unassigned seating to get workers mingling more widely. In announcing its recent telecommuting ban, Yahoo Inc. noted in a staff memo that incidental encounters in the hall or around the cafeteria can lead to new insights.

But most companies are “still really primitive at this,” says Greg Lindsay, a visiting scholar at New York University who studies interactions in the workplace. “They compress people in the same space, put in a coffee machine and just hope that something good happens.”

Source Wall Street Journal.

Is This How You Really Talk?

Your Voice Affects Others’ Perceptions; Silencing the Screech in the Next Cubicle

By SUE SHELLENBARGER

It is hard to hear the sound of your own voice. But that sound may affect other people’s impressions of you even more than what you say.

A strong, smooth voice can enhance your chances of rising to CEO. And a nasal whine, a raspy tone or strident volume can drive colleagues to distraction. “People may be tempted to say, ‘Would you shut up?’ But they dance around the issue because they don’t want to hurt somebody’s feelings,” says Phyllis Hartman, an Ingomar, Pa., human-resources consultant.

New research shows the sound of a person’s voice strongly influences how he or she is seen. The sound of a speaker’s voice matters twice as much as the content of the message, according to a study last year of 120 executives’ speeches by Quantified Impressions, an Austin, Texas, communications analytics company. Researchers used computer software to analyze speakers’ voices, then collected feedback from a panel of 10 experts and 1,000 listeners. The speakers’ voice quality accounted for 23% of listeners’ evaluations; the content of the message accounted for 11%. Other factors were the speakers’ passion, knowledge and presence.

People who hear recordings of rough, weak, strained or breathy voices tend to label the speakers as negative, weak, passive or tense. People with normal voices are seen as successful, sexy, sociable and smart, according to a study of 74 adults published recently in the Journal of Voice. “We are hard-wired to judge people. You hear somebody speak, and the first thing you do is to form an opinion about them,” says Lynda Stucky, president of ClearlySpeaking, a Pittsburgh coaching company.

Other common vocal irritants include “uptalk”—pronouncing statements as if they were questions—and “vocal fry”—ending words in a raspy growl. Such quirks “make the listener think the person who is speaking is either uncomfortable or in pain,” says Brian Petty, a speech pathologist at the Emory Voice Center in Atlanta.

Annoyed listeners often assume nothing can be done to change an irritating voice, and the speakers are often unaware of the problem. But in most cases, people’s voices can be strengthened or improved through therapy, coaching or feedback.

Some voice problems have a medical cause, such as nodules on the vocal folds, or cords. A hearing impairment can cause people to talk too loudly, says Edie Hapner, director of speech-language pathology at the Emory Voice Center at Emory University. Also, advanced age can cause a person’s voice to lose volume, she says.

But many voice problems can be eased through therapy, including exercises to support the voice through improved breathing, or to strengthen laryngeal muscles or change the way they work.

Speech pathologist Jayne Latz says she often receives requests for voice coaching after performance reviews in which a boss raises the issue as a problem for co-workers or customers. She uses sound-level equipment and audio recordings to make clients more aware of how they sound. She also teaches vocal exercises and helps clients replace filler words such as “you know” with a pause for emphasis, says Ms. Latz, president of Corporate Speech Solutions, New York City.

New York financial executive Gerard Vignuli consulted Ms. Latz because he knew he spoke too fast, clipped the ends of words and often used filler words such as “like” to give himself time to think, he says. “When I was speaking, people didn’t know what the hell I was saying,” he says. With coaching, “I learned to step back and pause rather than saying, ‘Uh, uh.’ ”

His friends noticed the difference: “People didn’t tell me until I started taking lessons, then they said they saw a difference. They said, ‘Oh, we used to hate it when you said ‘X,’ ” he says. “I said, ‘Great! Why did you wait until now to tell me?’” Now, he asks friends to help him practice, telling them, “Call me out” when they hear him lapse into old speech patterns.

People don’t hear their own voices as others hear them. The voice must travel through the bones of the head before reaching the speaker’s ears, changing the way it sounds, says Dr. Hapner.

Raising the issue can be touchy, Ms. Hartman says. Some people become defensive about their voices, saying, “That’s just the way I talk, and people shouldn’t judge me,” she says. Also, sensitive factors such as gender, ethnicity, age and cultural background play a role in how people talk, and so managers should take care not to discriminate against an employee based on those characteristics, she says.

It helps to raise the topic on a positive note, such as, “I admire the way you talk to clients. I’ve learned a lot by listening to you,” Ms. Hartman says. She suggests using an “I-when you-because” formula when raising the problem, saying, “I’m unable to think when you talk loudly because it’s distracting to me.”

Work teams can sometimes help raise an employee’s awareness, says Gillian Florentine, a human-resource consultant with Howland Peterson Consulting in Pittsburgh. A publishing-company sales team she worked with two years ago was disrupted by a rep whose voice boomed so loudly that co-workers couldn’t hear clients on the phone, Ms. Florentine says. Co-workers in team meetings shared recordings of their calls, so the rep could hear himself in the background. He toned it down a bit, and agreed to a plan to rearrange their desks and place soundproof panels near his desk, she says. The problem was solved and the team has since been able to work smoothly together.

Ms. Florentine advises employers to screen job seekers based partly on their voices. Hiring managers typically focus on other factors, such as skills and experience, only to realize later than a new hire’s speech patterns are annoying to co-workers or customers, she says.

When Jim Roddy interviewed Jon Dudenhoeffer five years ago for a recruiting job, he liked everything about him but his voice, says Mr. Roddy, president of Jameson Publishing, an Erie, Pa., publisher of trade magazines and websites.

“After the first half-hour, I had to put down my pen and say to him, ‘We have a lot of high-energy, engaging people here, and I don’t think they’re going to like working with you because I can hardly hear you,’ ” says Mr. Roddy, author of “Hire Like You Just Beat Cancer.” He added, “How about loosening up? People are going to think you have no pulse.”

Mr. Dudenhoeffer says he learned to speak in a low-key, deliberate tone during his 20-year stint as an investigator and trainer in the Air Force. He is also naturally reserved and has a calm, controlled manner. He was surprised that Mr. Roddy made an issue of his voice, but promised, “Sure, I’ll give it a try.”

He had to make an effort at first to put more energy into his voice, but “after I got more comfortable, my personality just came out,” he says. He has since been promoted to senior director of sales.

Ways to Improve Your Voice

Good habits and vocal awareness can make a difference.

Record your voice on your phone and listen to how you actually sound.

Ask a friend or co-worker to signal to you discreetly if you lapse into bad habits such as using ‘um’ or ‘you know.’

Increase your fluid intake and avoid frequent throat-clearing to keep the vocal cords healthy.

Ask a voice coach for breathing and vocal exercises to make your voice more resonant and relaxed.

See a speech pathologist or physician for persistent problems such as vocal fatigue or hoarseness.

Learn to warm up and rest your voice before and after intense use, such as teaching or coaching.

Have your hearing checked if your voice is too loud.

By SUE SHELLENBARGER

Source: Wall Street Journal

Office Taboo Fades as Younger Staffers Openly Compare Pay; Wanting to Know ‘Have I Settled?’

By LAUREN WEBER and RACHEL EMMA SILVERMAN

At Brian Bader’s orientation for a tech-support job with Apple Inc. three years ago, he says, human-resources managers ran down the list of guidelines workers were expected to follow. Don’t use explicit language on calls with customers. Treat other employees with respect. And, he says, they told the assembled recruits, don’t discuss your pay with co-workers.

That last requirement backfired. “It just made me more curious,” said Mr. Bader, 25 years old, who had been offered $12 per hour. Throughout the day’s breaks, he surveyed his new colleagues about their wages, and learned that everyone was earning somewhere between $10 and $12 per hour. Apple declined to comment on internal policies.

That information became the basis of his decision to leave his job just three months later, after he realized—thanks to the performance data managers shared with their teams every week, detailing such metrics as how many calls each employee had answered and problems solved—that he was twice as productive as the lowest performer on the team, yet earned only 20% more.

“It irked me. If I’m doing double the work, why am I not seeing double the pay?” said Mr. Bader, who is about to graduate from California State University, Sacramento.

Comparing salaries among colleagues has long been a taboo of workplace chatter, but that is changing as Millennials—individuals born in the 1980s and 1990s—join the labor force. Accustomed to documenting their lives in real time on social-media forums like Facebook and Twitter, they are bringing their embrace of self-disclosure into the office with them. And they’re using this information to negotiate raises at their current employer or higher salaries when moving to a new job.

Not surprisingly, many firms want to keep salary information private. They hope to retain the upper hand on salary negotiation and hope to keep flawed or even discriminatory compensation systems under wraps.

But for workers, information is power, and young people recognize this. “People are much more willing to talk about pay than they were even 10 years ago,” says Kevin Hallock, director of the Institute for Compensation Studies at Cornell University and author of the 2012 book “Pay: Why People Earn What They Earn and What You Can Do Now to Make More.”

Still, revealing pay can be risky business.

Pay differentials, when they become public, can engender resentment, envy and dissatisfaction among workers, especially those who find themselves on the low end of the scale. One 2012 study by researchers at University of California, Berkeley and Princeton University examined more than 6,400 University of California employees once they became aware of a database listing staffers’ salaries. Employees who were paid below the median were unhappy once they learned their colleagues’ pay and were more likely to look for other jobs.

While some of this information—such as salaries of certain state employees—has long been a matter of public record, the Internet has made it far more accessible, too, says Mr. Hallock. Sites where people post salaries and other feedback about employers, such as Glassdoor.com, also contribute to the sense that pay is no longer a private issue.

When Dustin Zick, 25, was ready to leave his job in 2012 as a social-media specialist at BuySeasons Inc., a Milwaukee-based online retailer, he compared notes with “five or six” trusted co-workers about their pay, and found most of them happy to divulge.

Several of his colleagues, also looking for new opportunities, strategized together about what salaries they were aiming for and how to negotiate to get there. The conversations helped Mr. Zick achieve his target salary at his new position as a social-media manager at a hospitality company, he says.

“There’s a culture of transparency in my generation,” he says. And “the younger you are, the more likely an employer will try to get you for cheap. So to know what your peers are making benefits all parties involved, except maybe the employer.”

Companies may not like transparency, but they cannot outright bar rank-and-file employees from disclosing their pay internally or externally, under the federal National Labor Relations Act, says Fort Lauderdale employment lawyer Charles Caulkins of law firm Fisher & Phillips. That means that an employee handbook or social-media policy barring workers from disclosing their pay is generally a violation, he says. (The rules are different for managers and supervisors, who can legally be prevented from disclosing pay.)

Ultimately, says Mr. Hallock, compensation is an inexact science, determined by labor-market conditions, company budgets and individual employees’ performance and turnover risk. Companies use salaries and raises to retain their high performers, but measuring performance itself is difficult, especially in fields that defy simple metrics like widgets built or customer-service calls answered.

So one way for employers to head off internal politics: Be even more transparent.

New York data-analytics company SumAll makes pay scales and individual salaries open to everyone in the company. The company says that employees work more efficiently when no one is trying to guess whether their colleagues are making more than they are.

And in his current tech startup, Jay Adelson, a co-founder of several tech companies, including the social-media site Digg, is experimenting with peer-based bonuses and clear salary bands to help employees feel they are getting paid equitably, although individual salaries aren’t published.

Workers and employers who support transparency argue that it helps ensure that people are paid fairly, and reduces discrimination based on gender or other characteristics.

Of course, not every employee is, or would be, willing to spill.

Lucy Bayly, 43, a copywriter for an advertising agency in Oneonta, N.Y., compares discussions about income with conversations about sex: “You’re dying to know, but it’s too rude to ask.”

Such conversations run the risk of inspiring a corrosive kind of jealousy, she says. “You think you’re satisfied and then all of a sudden, you find out someone is paid a little more, and it ruins your day because you start wondering, ‘Have I settled?’ ”

How to Discuss Pay at Work

Tips for bringing up the subject in a constructive way:

When talking about salary with coworkers:
1. Reserve these conversations for people you trust

2. Know your motivation—don’t bring up the topic if you just want to brag. That never goes over well.

3. If you plan to use the information to negotiate with your boss, ask your colleagues’ permission first.

4. Be willing to be disappointed or embarrassed. You might find out that your salary falls short of your peer’s.

When talking about salary with a manager:
1. It’s acceptable to ask a manager about the company’s pay philosophy and pay practices. Leaders should be able to explain why they pay the way they do.

2. If you’re asking for a raise, do it after acing a project.

3. Understand the company context. Don’t ask for a raise if the company just announced a terrible quarter.

4. Don’t betray your co-workers’ confidence.

Source: Rusty Rueff, career expert at Glassdoor

Source Wall Street Journal.

The Happiest People Pursue the Most Difficult Problems

By Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Lurking behind the question of jobs — whether there are enough of them, how hard we should work at them, and what kind the future will bring — is a major problem of job engagement. Too many people are tuned out, turned off, or ready to leave. But there’s one striking exception.

The happiest people I know are dedicated to dealing with the most difficult problems. Turning around inner city schools. Finding solutions to homelessness or unsafe drinking water. Supporting children with terminal illnesses. They face the seemingly worst of the world with a conviction that they can do something about it and serve others.

Ellen Goodman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist (and long-time friend), has turned grief to social purpose. She was distraught over the treatment of her dying mother. After leaving her job as a syndicated columnist, she founded The Conversation Project, a campaign to get every family to face the difficult task of talking about death and end-of-life care.

Gilberto Dimenstein, another writer-turned-activist in Brazil, spreads happiness through social entrepreneurship. When famous Brazilian pianist Joao Carlos Martins lost the use of most of his fingers and almost gave into deepest despair, Dimenstein urged him to teach music to disadvantaged young people. A few years later, Martins, now a conductor, exudes happiness. He has nurtured musical talent throughout Brazil, brought his youth orchestras to play at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, and has even regained some use of his fingers.

For many social entrepreneurs, happiness comes from the feeling they are making a difference.

I see that same spirit in business teams creating new initiatives that they believe in. Gillette’s Himalayan project team took on the challenge of changing the way men shave in India, where the common practice of barbers using rusty blades broken in two caused bloody infections. A team member who initially didn’t want to leave Boston for India found it his most inspiring assignment. Similarly, Procter & Gamble’s Pampers team in Nigeria find happiness facing the problem of infant mortality and devising solutions, such as mobile clinics that sent a physician and two nurses to areas lacking access to health care.

In research for my book Evolve!, I identified three primary sources of motivation in high-innovation companies: mastery, membership, and meaning. Another M, money, turned out to be a distant fourth. Money acted as a scorecard, but it did not get people up-and-at ‘em for the daily work, nor did it help people go home every day with a feeling of fulfillment.

People can be inspired to meet stretch goals and tackle impossible challenges if they care about the outcome. I’ll never forget the story of how a new general manager of the Daimler Benz operations in South Africa raised productivity and quality at the end of the apartheid era by giving the workers something to do that they valued: make a car for Nelson Mandela, just released from prison. A plant plagued by lost days, sluggish workers, and high rates of defects produced the car in record time with close to zero defects. The pride in giving Mandela the Mercedes, plus the feeling of achievement, helped the workers maintain a new level of performance. People stuck in boring, rote jobs will spring into action for causes they care about.

Heart-wrenching emotion also helps cultivate a human connection. It is hard to feel alone, or to whine about small things, when faced with really big matters of deprivation, poverty, and life or death. Social bonds and a feeling of membership augment the meaning that comes from values-based work.

Of course, daunting challenges can be demoralizing at times. City Year corps members working with at-risk middle school students with failing grades from dysfunctional homes see improvement one day, only to have new problems arise the next. Progress isn’t linear; it might not be apparent until after many long days of hard work have accumulated. It may show up in small victories, like a D student suddenly raising his hand in class because he understands the math principle. (I see this from service on the City Year board. You can find dozens of these stories on Twitter under #makebetterhappen.)

It’s now common to say that purpose is at the heart of leadership, and people should find their purpose and passion. I’d like to go a step further and urge that everyone regardless of their work situation, have a sense of responsibility for at least one aspect of changing the world. It’s as though we all have two jobs: our immediate tasks and the chance to make a difference.

Leaders everywhere should remember the M’s of motivation: mastery, membership, and meaning. Tapping these non-monetary rewards (while paying fairly) are central to engagement and happiness. And they are also likely to produce innovative solutions to difficult problems.

Source Harvard Business Review.

Angelenos are a creative bunch, on the whole. We tend to be people who are a little daring — hard workers who like to play hard, too. And yet, I hear from clients all the time that they would like to have more creativity in their lives. Many of these people are suffering from an abundance of familiarity. Stretching ourselves to experience something new, creative, and visually beautiful…now that can really expand our being.

I recently stretched myself by attending my first glass blowing class at Revolution Glass in El Segundo. I love the medium of glass and have a large collection of glass paperweights, so I was thrilled when I was given this class as a gift. Josh Gelfand, who owns, teaches, and creates at Revolution Glass, offers classes in glass blowing as well as studio time for those who already work the craft.

Read the rest of the article here.

By MICHAEL WINERIP
Published: March 17, 2013

I have not had it all.

I have had a lot. I feel lucky to have had a successful career as a journalist and author while being the primary caregiver of our four children for a decade.

But I definitely did not have it all.

And unlike most people written about in the media who don’t have it all, I’m a male who didn’t have it all.

I, the dad, had to make career “sacrifices” to run the family’s domestic life.

And my wife, also a journalist, made those same “sacrifices.” She anchored the first decade; I did the second.

When asked to climb the editors’ ranks, I declined.

I use the word “sacrifice” in quotes because I don’t think of myself as having made a sacrifice. I wanted to coach my kids’ teams and help with their homework. I wanted to be in the principal’s office by their sides, as they faced a five-day suspension (not a hypothetical, unfortunately).

And I wanted a career where I’d feel that I was helping make the world a little better.

It’s turned out pretty well. Stories I’ve written have made a difference. Being there for my children has too, I think.

And both my wife and I have held challenging full-time jobs through most of it.

The key: I was able to work out of our home for 30 years. We never could have done it otherwise.

It’s been striking how strong and sustained the reaction has been to the recent decision by the chief executive of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer, to end telecommuting at her company.

Bill Gates noted in an interview this month how effective it had been having his salespeople based out of the office. In the current New Yorker, James Surowiecki argues the opposite, that having people working together and sharing ideas in the same office fosters innovation.

My own feeling is that every situation is different, varying even within a company from job to job.

Ms. Mayer’s decision at Yahoo struck a nerve. She is a rarity, a mother with a newborn baby running a major corporation. And here, one of her earliest decisions as chief executive was to take away one of the most useful tools many women have for advancing their careers.

Anne-Marie Slaughter also created a stir with her essay in The Atlantic last summer, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.” Ms. Slaughter, a onetime high-ranking State Department officer and currently a Princeton professor, wrote that because the American work place isn’t parent-friendly, women’s careers are stunted. Forced to choose between job and children, she wrote, women feel a domestic pull that is not as strong in men, driving them to sacrifice high-powered careers for home and preventing them from reaching the top tiers.

“Here I step onto treacherous ground, mined with stereotypes,” she wrote, adding, “I do not believe fathers love their children any less than mothers do, but men do seem more likely to choose their job at a cost to their family, while women seem more likely to choose their family at a cost to their job.”

An important part of the solution, she wrote, is for companies to create a more parent-friendly culture, and No. 1 on her list is working at home.

I think her essay is mostly right, but misses on two points. First, the message is that women are disadvantaged because of the social pressures weighing on them to be at home. Not said is that those very same social pressures weigh on men to be the primary bread winners, a burden of similar scope.

Having been both — the primary bread winner and the secondary earner anchoring the household — I’m here to tell you the latter (more home and less work) is often more fun.

The other questionable premise for me is the implication that a more parent-friendly work place will catapult women upward.

I’ve seen very few people — myself included — reach the top or even near the top while working full time at home.

I do not blame job discrimination for blocking my path. I knew what would happen when I made these decisions. I knew there were jobs that, by their nature, were too inflexible for me if I was going to achieve the balance.

You can’t cover a war and be there for your children. Do not believe it when people say they can travel and still keep up with their kids at home by talking on the phone or Skyping.

“What happened in school today?”

“Nothing.”

“Who did you play with?”

“No one.”

Because I was able to work at home, I could put in 60-hour weeks and still coach and all that other stuff.

It was also crucial for me to have control over which long hours I worked. To do that, I had to be selective about the reporting positions I took, and I earned that freedom by working so hard there was no question I was working so hard.

Fortunately, my balancing act didn’t feel hard because I love what I do.

I’d put in an hour or two before waking the four of them each morning, made their lunches and got them on the bus. Then I’d work until they came home, oversee the activities, cook dinner and make sure they were on top of their homework and in bed on time. When they became teenagers — a decade-long hormonal storm a parent absolutely must tend to in person — I’d enforce the curfews, police the drinking, keep an eye on the friends.

Then I’d return to work around 9 p.m. and go past midnight, until I nodded off in front of the computer.

Ms. Slaughter of Princeton offers several suggestions to make companies more parent-friendly besides working at home: lots of teleconferencing; no Saturday meetings; less travel; leaving the office by 6:30; a school day that matches the work day.

But these same benefits that lift you also hold you back. Foreign correspondents can’t cover a war and travel less. A reporter’s interview is going to be better if it’s done in person instead of teleconferencing. News is as likely to break out on Saturday morning as Wednesday at noon when the kids are in school.

The workplace, I believe, can be made more parent-friendly, but it’s not going to be all that friendly, which is why they call it work.

The core problem isn’t the workplace, it’s work.

Those jobs that refuse to be friendly are often the hardest, most time-consuming, most unpredictable, require the most personal sacrifice and, to me, deserve the best compensation and most corporate status.

Which does not mean that these are the people whom I admire most or want to spend my time with. When I see a man who has reached the top of a company only by making work his entire life, I think, what about the kids, what about the wife? And it’s no different when it’s a woman.

In the mid-1990s I was given the opportunity to advance as an editor. I liked it. I was pretty good at it. Then one Friday night I got off the train at maybe 9 p.m., and when I walked into the house, there was my wife in bed with our three little sons watching “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.”

In that instant I knew what I wanted, and not long after, I went back to reporting.

Source: The New York Times

Chronic Tension Hurts Mental Clarity; For Women, a ‘Tend and Befriend’ Response

By LAUREN WEBER AND SUE SHELLENBARGER

Too much work, too little money and not enough opportunity for growth are stressing us out on the job, according to a new survey from the American Psychological Association.

One-third of employees experience chronic stress related to work, the survey found. Women report higher levels of work stress than men, as well as a gnawing sense that they are underappreciated and underpaid.

Fifty-four percent of the 1,501 employed adults surveyed say they feel they are paid too little for their contributions, and 61% said their jobs don’t offer adequate opportunities to advance. Only half of the adults polled said they feel valued at work.

Women feel especially stuck and tense, the association survey indicates. Thirty-two percent of women said their employers don’t provide sufficient opportunities for internal advancement, compared with 30% of men. Women are more likely to feel tense during a typical workday, reporting more often that their employer doesn’t appreciate what they do.

The annual survey, conducted in January and released Tuesday, found the proportion of chronically stressed individuals has shrunk to 35% this year, compared with 41% in 2012, suggesting an improving economy and job market are making some people’s work lives easier. But smaller percentages reported satisfaction with their jobs and work-life balance compared with 2012—two areas that had been on the upswing.

Women’s stress is rising as families rely more on women’s earnings. An employed wife’s contribution to family earnings has hovered, on average, at 47% since 2009. But in that year, it jumped from 45%—the biggest single-year rise in more than two decades, said Kristin Smith, sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire. The comparable figure in 1988 was 38%.

Emotional responses to stress often divide along gender lines, with men more likely to have a “fight or flight” reaction while women are more likely to have a “tend and befriend” response, seeking comfort in relationships and care of loved ones, according to research by Shelley E. Taylor, health psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and others.

Physically, the body responds to stress by secreting hormones into the bloodstream that spur accelerated heart rate and breathing and tensing of muscles. People who experience stress as a positive often have increased blood flow to the brain, muscles and limbs, similar to the effects of aerobic exercise. Those who feel frightened or threatened, however, often have an erratic heart rate and constricting blood vessels. Their blood pressure rises and hands and feet may grow cold. They may become agitated, speak more loudly or experience lapses in judgment.

Either way, too much stress is harmful to individuals and companies, says David Posen, a physician and author of the book “Is Work Killing You? A Doctor’s Prescription for Treating Workplace Stress.”

“Chronic stress reduces all of the things that help productivity—mental clarity, short-term memory, decision-making and moods,” Dr. Posen says.

Karen Herbison, 46, experienced symptoms of chronic stress after management changes in her department three years ago, and her management style was criticized as not tough enough, she says. She says she was told that while her bosses liked her, “there’s just something missing.”

She stretched her 45-hour workweek to 55 hours. Even so, Ms. Herbison recalls. “I felt like I was doing everything wrong.”

She began to experience insomnia and irritability, and she had heart palpitations at work. “I was short-tempered and yelling at my kids,” she recalls. “I felt like I was losing my mind.” She saw a psychiatrist briefly and decided, “I have to remove myself from the situation. This is not who I am.”

Ms. Herbison’s stress vanished as soon as she left her former employer earlier this year to open a senior home-care company, Visiting Angels, with her husband in Eau Claire, Wis.

Such a reaction isn’t uncommon in healthy individuals who leave a highly stressful situation. But if harmful levels of stress continue for too long, a person may lose the ability to relax, a condition linked in research to numerous health problems.

Women tend to “internalize,” which contributes to their stress, says Lois Barth, a New York-based business and relationship coach. Many women hesitate to speak up for themselves or challenge behavior they see as unfair. “Women have to give themselves a voice,” she says.

Sarah Broadbent Manago, 41, was used to meeting deadlines as an information technology consultant. But she says she began to doubt herself when she felt undermined by a manager. She now works as a senior information-technology project manager for another company and says the experience left her believing women in particular “feel stressed when they are challenged or devalued by their managers.”

Women managers in male-dominated fields sometimes find the stress of juggling family responsibilities intolerable. Interior designer Kay Keaney, 40, rose fast at a California medical group, taking on responsibility for interior and facility planning and construction management for health-care facilities. With her 60-hour workweeks, plus early-morning and late-night meetings and a 1.5-hour commute each way, she seldom had time with her two small children. Yet she hesitated to complain.

“There was too much work to be done, and playing the Mommy card was bad form,” Ms. Keaney says.

Whether stuck in traffic on her way to a 6 p.m. pickup at day care, or torn between her children and urgent work emails, “I just wanted to crawl out of my skin,” she says. “I was overwhelmed.”

Ms. Keaney had feelings of panic, headaches and a racing heart. It was a wake-up call, she says, when her 2-year-old son Stanley grabbed her BlackBerry from her while she was cooking dinner and hurled it angrily across the kitchen.

The Keaneys moved from San Jose to Media, Pa., where Ms. Keaney now works as a consumer-experience specialist for a homeopathic products company. She is home with her children after school, she has shed 20 pounds, and her kids are much happier, Ms. Keaney says. Her stress is near zero, she says. High-paying jobs seem to require “selling your soul,” she says. “We decided the rat race wasn’t really worth it.”

Work has invaded every hour of the day, including time once reserved for personal care. Experts say we can’t even count on vacations to help us decompress.

A survey released last week by the consulting firm Accenture found 75% of respondents work frequently or occasionally during paid time off. The most common activity was checking email—71% reported doing this—but 30% said they participated in conference calls, and 44% said they use these nominal days off to catch up on work. “The running joke is that you can take time off, but when you come back, you pay the price for it,” said Nellie Borrero, Accenture’s managing director of global inclusion and diversity.

Source Wall Street Journal.

By TEDDY WAYNE

Every generation has its own anthem of making the journey from youthful
naïveté to adult reality, whether it’s Neil Young’s “Old Man,” Nirvana’s
“Smells Like Teen Spirit” or most recently, perhaps, the Taylor Swift song
“22.”

“Tonight’s the night when we forget about the deadlines,” it goes. “It
feels like one of those nights, we won’t be sleeping.”

If only it were as easy for Ms. Swift’s less affluent contemporaries to
blow off their deadlines as it is for the singer-songwriter (now a
slightly more seasoned 23). Sleepless nights are more likely because they
are on the clock, not at the club.

“If I’m not at the office, I’m always on my BlackBerry,” said Casey
McIntyre, 28, a book publicist in New York. “I never feel like I’m totally
checked out of work.”

Ms. McIntyre is just one 20-something — a population historically
exploitable as cheap labor — learning that long hours and low pay go hand
in hand in the creative class. The recession has been no friend to
entry-level positions, where hundreds of applicants vie for unpaid
internships at which they are expected to be on call with iPhone in hand,
tweeting for and representing their company at all hours.

“We need to hire a 22-22-22,” one new-media manager was overheard saying
recently, meaning a 22-year-old willing to work 22-hour days for $22,000 a
year. Perhaps the middle figure is an exaggeration, but its bookends
certainly aren’t. According to a 2011 Pew report, the median net worth for
householders under 35 dropped by 68 percent from 1984 to 2009, to $3,662.
Lest you think that’s a mere side effect of the economic downturn, for
those over 65, it rose 42 percent to $170,494 (largely because of an
overall gain in property values). Hence 1.2 million more
25-to-34-year-olds lived with their parents in 2011 than did four years
earlier.

The young are logging hours, too. In 2011, according to the Bureau of
Labor Statistics, full-time workers ages 20 to 24 put in just 2.1 fewer
hours a week than those 25 and over. That’s not a big gap of leisure for
the ostensibly freewheeling time in one’s life. Or, to quote Lena Dunham’s
24-year-old aspiring writer in “Girls,” “I am busy trying to become who I
am.”

A recent posting by Dalkey Archive Press, an avant-garde publisher in
Champaign, Ill., for unpaid interns in its London office encapsulated the
outlandish demands on young workers. The stern catalog of grounds for
“immediate dismissal” included “coming in late or leaving early without
prior permission,” “being unavailable at night or on the weekends” and
“failing to respond to e-mails in a timely way.” And “The Steve Wilkos
Show” on NBCUniversal recently advertised on Craigslist for a freelance
booking production assistant who would work “65+ hours per week” (the
listing was later removed after drawing outraged comments when it was
linked on jimromenesko.com).

“The notion of the traditional entry-level job is disappearing,” said Ross
Perlin, 29, the author of “Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn
Little in the Brave New Economy.” Internships have replaced them, he said,
“but also fellowships and nebulous titles that sound prestigious and pay a
stipend, which means you’re only coming out with $15,000 a year.”

Once a short-term commitment at most, internships have become an
obligatory rite of passage that often drags on for years.

“Particularly in some rock-star professions — film and TV and publishing
and media — companies are pushing the envelope to see how much they can
get out of young people for how low a stipend or salary,” Mr. Perlin said.
“And people are desperate enough to break in to do it.”

That’s what Katherine Myers, 27, found when she graduated from college in
2008. After months of searching, she landed a position as a development
coordinator at a cable channel in New York.

“I was willing to put up with anything,” she said. “I never took a lunch,
I came in early, I worked late.”

Still, her experience was more pleasant than that of two of her friends
who successively worked for a major film producer.

“Last year, we threw a surprise birthday party for one, and he had to miss
it because his boss called him in to come to a screening,” she said. “For
a year we never saw him. He’d get up at 5, be there till 1 a.m., fall
asleep at work.”

The other friend left for law school after four months.

“I think she thought it made no sense,” Ms. Myers said. “You have to have
a feeling that you’re doing something good for the world, and that’s hard
to come up with in some jobs. If you’re a doctor or lawyer, or even in
finance, you can justify it. But if you’re in fashion, it’s like, ‘Oh,
boy, who cares?’ ”

But Ms. Myers, now in a higher-ranking position at the Web site
CollegeHumor, is committed to her field, as is Cathy Pitoun, 25. Two years
ago, as a production assistant at a Culver City, Calif., company that cuts
movie trailers, Ms. Pitoun earned $10 an hour with no benefits (though an
overtime bonus), with rotating weekend work. After six months she was
promoted to a position “where one dropped ball could get you fired,” she
noted, and a raise to $12 an hour with benefits. She estimated that she
worked at least 60 hours a week.

“There were days where I stayed until 4 a.m. just to send out one TV spot
to one client in Japan and then had to come in 4 hours later for a whole
new day,” Ms. Pitoun said. “And days where I had to be at work at 5 a.m.
to do voice-over sessions with actors in Europe to make up for the time
change and still stay until 9 at night.”

Her investment, like Ms. Myers’s, paid off: she’s now the assistant to the
chief executive, though she knows that the path to producing, her
long-term goal, “will get worse before it gets better,” she said.

Ms. Pitoun’s job surely would have been less demanding in the pre-Internet
and smartphone age. If she ever turned off her phone for a few hours, her
in-box would be flooded with e-mails or missed calls and texts.

“I had to be reachable 100 percent of the time on an on-call weekend,” she
said, “so I would usually use those weekends to do chores around my
apartment and wait for the phone to ring.”

The assignment could be as small as coming in to send one e-mail and as
onerous as digitizing footage for 15 hours.

Ms. McIntyre, the book publicist, estimated that she receives 300 to 400
e-mails a day and tries to answer at least 80 percent. How does she summon
the energy for this incessant typing, not to mention 16-hour days
traveling with authors on tour?

“I have coffee before I leave the house, there’s a Dunkin’ Donuts
conveniently in the subway station when I get off, and I get another
coffee during the day,” she said. “And they’re large coffees.”

Complicating matters is the fact that it is not yet known how to quantify
or define digital work. Forget e-mail.

“Is a tweet labor? Is a Facebook post labor?” Mr. Perlin, the author, asked.

Ironically, millennials, to whom the burden of monitoring late-night
social media or e-mail frequently falls, may be underestimating the value
of such work. Their habits of consuming culture free of charge on the
Internet, he suggested, have “carried over into the world of work, so
they’re more willing to accept barter or in-kind payment,” like free
lunches. And their primary payment is building “cultural capital,” as
opposed to “capital capital.”

In these “rock star” professions, too, notably in the business-casual
Silicon Valley, many companies “have tried to break down the homogenizing
nightmare of the 1950s,” Mr. Perlin said, replacing cubicles with foosball
tables and other dorm-room accouterments to entice employees to stay late
bonding with colleagues.

“But we’ve got something more sinister now,” he said. “People are working
much more and are convinced to invest themselves body and soul. It tries
to make you lose your sense of your workplace versus home: who are your
co-workers and who are your friends?”

Children of helicopter parents who have been overscheduled since nursery
school might find it especially hard to set professional limits. As part
of the generation “that’s been taught to engage in labors of love,” Mr.
Perlin said, “it’s led us into these fields, and secondly, it’s encouraged
us to knock down that boundary between life and work in the traditional
artist mode.”

“You can’t get a job by saying, ‘I just want a job,’ ” he said. “Your
heart has to be supposedly in it, and you have to demonstrate that by
staying as late as you’re supposed to stay or responding to e-mails at 11
p.m.”

This commitment is what Lucy Schiller, 24, demonstrated over two years in
Denver and San Francisco, yet nothing panned out. Ms. Schiller falls into
Mr. Perlin’s category of a “serial intern.” While working the 4:45 a.m. to
3 p.m. shift four days a week for minimum wage at a cafe (where her
manager would take half her tips in front of her), she interned, usually
for no pay, at five artistic and cultural institutions as she juggled side
projects.

They were never lucrative; at one Web site “there was the possibility of
being paid $3 per article, but that never materialized,” she said. Her 70
hours of work a week netted her about $500.

On her last day at one job, her 75-year-old supervisor asked her to help
move some heavy things in her house. In her garage, the supervisor opened
a door from which issued a blinding stream of light.

“It was a huge room filled with her own field of marijuana plants,” Ms.
Schiller said. “She conscripted me for no pay to harvest it overnight. She
makes $35,000 per crop and it goes straight to her retirement account.”

The intern’s payment the next morning: a breakfast burrito.

At her other positions, Ms. Schiller said, she worked “extremely hard and
wrote a lot, and it pays off in some way, but the fact is, it doesn’t pay
off in the immediate sense.” Her parents, initially excited at her
prospects, grew worried with each additional internship, a cycle she
feared was portraying her “as wishy-washy or not viable for paid labor.”
In January, she moved back home to Urbana, Ill., to save money and apply
for jobs — presumably not at nearby Dalkey Archive Press.

Mr. Perlin pointed out that “some studies show that people in their 20s
work eight or nine jobs in that period, which economists see as a good
thing, but they aren’t looking at the stress and personal toll it takes.”

Ms. Myers’s parents, too, “appreciate and encourage me, but they’re
baffled by” her career in entertainment, she said.

“They don’t think that I’m on a track,” she said. “They think there’s no
point unless you’re making money.

“It’s a legit question,” she continued. “I’m going to turn 30 in the next
few years, and it’s hard to be young and feel like the gap is so big
between my station in this industry and others who are doing so well in
it. To get up every morning, I have to think that I’ll be one of those
people. But I happen to be a delusionally positive person.”

By TEDDY WAYNE
Published: March 1, 2013

Source: The New York Times