Category Archive 'Career'

When Do You Give up on a Crappy Job?

Career

“Great jobs, world-class jobs, jobs people kill for — those don’t get filled by people emailing in resumes.” — Seth Godin

Most of us get stuck in some crappy job. It just happens. One day you’re miserable and unemployed. Then someone hooks you up with an interview. Now you’re happy and employed. Some time goes on. Now you’re miserable and employed. How did this happen?

Somewhere along the line the euphoria of finally having a job fades away. You’re stuck with the reality of how much you dread your work and can’t stand your co-workers. You feel stuck. You’re not sure of what to do next. I want to help you here.

When do you know that it’s time to give up on a crappy job?

You have no control over anything.

We all want some control in our lives. We always feel so helpless. It feels great to have some control at work. What if your job doesn’t give you any control at all? Then maybe it’s time you went somewhere that gives you the respect that you deserve.

How much control do you want?

You engage in toxic habits.

I’m not here to judge anyone. There’s nothing wrong with a beer or a cigar after work. We all like to chill out. The problem arises when you feel the need to get completely drunk or engage in any other habit after a day at work. That’s not natural. Your job shouldn’t force you into drinking.

If you find yourself trying to escape all of the time or engaged in toxic habits, perhaps you ought to plan your exit strategy. Your health is priceless. Everything else can be bought.

You get extremely depressed before work.

Once again, your job shouldn’t depress you. We all feel down when a project isn’t complete or if we have bad day. However, it’s not worth getting depressed after work. This transcends into other areas of your life. Do you want to be the guy that’s always complaining about work? It gets really annoying. Your friends love you but you shouldn’t always be miserable.

There’s more potential out there.

Are there other opportunities out there for you? Of course there are. We can all switch careers or do something different. There’s so much potential out there in this world. Why waste one second feeling miserable about yourself?

That’s when it’s time to get out of that crappy job. You owe it to yourself to be happy.

Are You Stuck in a Low Paying Job?

Career

Do you feel like you work too hard for far too little money?

Back in the day when you ran into a buddy post-college working at Starbucks, you wondered what was wrong with this person. Had they not been networking? Now it’s far too common to walk into a fast food joint to see a buddy from college working and hustling to meet end’s meet.

I just read on CNN Money that low-paying jobs are here to stay. The portion of this article that stuck out to me the most was the following line:

“Some 28% of workers are expected to hold low-wage jobs in 2020, roughly the same percentage as in 2010, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute.”

What’s the deal with so many folks holding low-paying gigs?

I don’t have the answers here. I’m not an Economist. I’ve done my best compile answers on why so many young folks are stuck working jobs that just don’t pay well.

  • Times have changed.
  • There was a recession.
  • People lost jobs.
  • More folks have an education these days than ever before.
  • Student loans are such a burden that young people are forced to work any job that they can find.
I’m sure we could add more to this list. Those were the most frequent responses that I found for why young people were stuck making minimum wage and simply not making enough money.

Is education the solution?

Not always. Many folks with degrees are mopping floors and cleaning dishes.

While an education is recommended, there are other ways to land a better paying job. For example: you can start your own business or pick up a skilled trade.

You don’t have to pick up massive amounts of debt to attend college. That model is long gone and obsolete.

How can you get out of a low-paying gig?

The solution is pretty simple. Pursue an education with ample high-paying job opportunities. While doing this it also makes sense to find a way to save money on college tuition.

CNN Money also wrote about the degrees with the highest paying jobs post-college. Pick one of these, try to do work terms, and work your butt off when you’re young.

I’m just curious to hear from you — do you know someone stuck in a low-paying job? What advice would you give them?

Don’t Ruin Your Life on Facebook Please

Career

Do you use Facebook? Obviously you do. We all do. Everyone is on Facebook. My mom has Facebook. My cousins on a farm in Europe have it as well. There’s no running away from Facebook.

I just read a fascinating article over at CNN Money about oversharing on Facebook.

I’ve been a victim of this many times on Facebook. I go out, have a good time, have a few drinks, and then the next day I get tagged in a bunch of photos by friends that love doing that sort of stuff (not sure why).

My experiment for today is to ensure that you’re not ruining your life on Facebook.

Before I go any further, I want to explain how you actually screw yourself over on social media. I’ll share a few possible scenarios that have occurred to far too many people:

  • Saying something negative about a boss and then getting fired.
  • Posting up drunk photos and then ruining job opportunities.
  • Not getting hired because of a scandalous profile on social media.
  • Embarrassing yourself.
  • Annoying your friends and having them delete you with your serial updating.

Do any of these sounds familiar? It could happen to you. I want you to avoid this.

How can you avoid ruining your life on Facebook? Below are a few of my tips:

  1. Don’t go on social media inebriated. Stay off when you’ve been drinking.
  2. Stop updating everyone with every single mundane detail of your boring life. Nobody cares.
  3. Send a text message or call a friend. Your comments don’t need to go to public. Call a buddy and vent. Get it out of your system.
  4. Get social media off your smart phone. Delete those apps. All they do is kill productivity and make you look like you have no life. That’s just my opinion though.

I’m not a social media expert but I’ve been working on it. I want you to work on this as well. Social media is relatively new. You don’t want to get screwed out of a job offer just because you started ranting on Twitter after a few shots.

Don’t ruin your life on Facebook please.

Are You Competitive?

Career

I might be a bit odd, but I love to compete. I don’t play for second place. I want to win. I want to win all of the time. I hate being apart of a weak team. I just enjoy the feeling the comes from winning and knowing that you succeeded.

I was playing beach volleyball the other day in the sunny Puerto Plata. The game was fun, but there were just too many weak links on my team. I would get frustrated when they wouldn’t take the game seriously or they would mess up a play. I hate losing. And yes I do realize that it’s just a game. The thing is that when someone says, “it’s just a game,” it’s usually an excuse for not being good. It’s usually an excuses for losing and trying to not feel bad about the loss.

I enjoy competition. I find that competition is what pushes you to go harder and push through the tough times. When you don’t have a competition or anyone going against you, then you just don’t try as hard. When you know that failure is an option, it keeps you accountable and on track with your goals.

I read blog income reports because I get jealous. When I see how much money bloggers are making online it makes me jealous. I want to compete. I want to make as much money as them. I don’t want to make less money. I don’t want to be in second place. I look at the success of others as motivation to see what I can accomplish.

Without having any goals to chase after or someone to compete with, I just don’t go all out. Being competitive is the drive that gets you out of bed in the morning. It’s what keeps me up late at night. It’s what has me drinking that extra cup of coffee.

I just find that there’s not enough competitive people around these days. Everyone wants to be nice and take it easy. I don’t believe in taking it easy. I want to go all out all of the time.

Why leave the gym without doing that last set?

Why go to sleep before finishing that blog post?

Why not try something new?

I just want to know, are you competitive? What are some examples of how competition has forced you to work harder?

The Recession Generation

Business & entrepreneurship, Career, Parenting, Personal finance

I saw an article on Yahoo News that stated the the Recession has affected people in their twenties and thirties the worst.    I am of this generation.  Generation Y.  The Recession Generation.  I wasn’t surprised by the study cited in the article.  After all, my generation graduated from college during the worst economy since the Great Depression.  My friends have lost their jobs because they were the last hired.  The world changed.

But a lot of the comments at the end of the article were from older generations.  These folks said the “Young Generation” can’t find employment because we’re lazy, obnoxious, and essentially lacking the general attitude, aptitude, and work ethic to keep a job. A typical comment went something like this: “of course they can’t find a job—they are happier playing video games living in their parent’s basement.”

Occupy Wall Street was also cited in the comments as a justification for my generation’s unemployability.  Such arguments are not unique nor endemic to modern times.  Even in Greek philosophy it’s not rare to read how, in an older generation’s mind, the younger generation is worthless.  Those Baby Boomers who, perhaps are more to blame for the current state of world affairs than any other generation, were themselves once decried by their parent’s generation as “hippies” or “radicals.”  The circle will, I’m sure, continue.  I know I was surprised to learn that the generations younger than mine are no longer taught to write in cursive.

But the more I tried to justify my generation in my mind, the more I began to wonder about the cumulative affects of the modern age.  This: post-modern age.  Maybe it’s because I just read Don Delillo’s White Noise, but I began to suspect maybe there’s more truth to those comments then I’d like to believe.  How much time does the average person in my generation devote to entertainment versus the average man or woman one hundred years ago?  I’m not sure, but I suspect it’s a great deal more time.  And has the “helicopter parenting” nature of my parent’s generation as well as their financial success created a “generation of losers,” as one poster called us.

I know that I am not personally immune to such weaknesses.  I was raised to value education over almost anything else—including knowledge.  I know what you’re thinking and yes, they are not mutually exclusive.  I went to college because a degree was thought to be a ticket to somewhere: namely the suburbs.  Graduate school was, for me, just more of the same.  It was just me following a roadmap somebody else created. But it wasn’t until the last few years that I’ve actually taken an interest in knowledge.  Maybe it’s maturity or just the fact that I am more of an independent studier, but I find myself relishing reading or learning things I used to curse back in college.  And I regret all that I wasted by floating by during my college years.  All that time trying to fit in with a crowd I don’t even talk to anymore.

Now that I have my own business, I feel upset with myself for reading histories, biographies or other works outside my industry.  I should be spending all my time reading about the law, or practice management, I think.  But other times I feel so ignorant in general that I can’t help but continue on my quest for knowledge, no matter how tangential it is to my most important priorities.  I am twenty-eight years old, and I am ignorant—both in and of the world.  Seven years of higher education and all the schooling before it hasn’t changed that.  I’ve never read the Bible all the way through but I can name the five best picture nominees from each of the last twenty years.  And I don’t even own a video game system or have cable.

Some argue that Americans have been dumbed down over the decades.  Take a Life Magazine from the 194o’s and it will seem as hard to decipher as Shakespeare.  When Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea was first published in Life Magazine, that copy sold something like 5 million more copies than usual.  People were hungry for good fiction.  Is that still true today?

The grammar, style and vocabulary of even a few decades ago is a world apart from where we are today.  Clear writing and clear thinking are more linked together than we’ll ever know.  I sure wish I had a more crystallized notion of each.

We are the Recession Generation, and I worry that we’re bankrupt in more ways than we can even understand.