Does Less Time = Greater Productivity?

by Rebecca Fraser-Thill Have you ever noticed that the more free time you have in your day, the less you get done? If so, you're not just imagining it; many of us experience the same thing.

Does that mean we're all a bunch of lazy fools who cannot manage to get motivated without hard-and-fast deadlines nipping at our heels? Maybe. Maybe not.

Get Your Time Crunch On

Before we get into the laziness issue, let's establish why having less time tends to make us more productive:  because it stresses us out – in a good way.

We need good stress, called eustress, to perform optimally, according to an old psychology maxim called the Yerkes-Dodson law. Not enough stress and we’re like sacks of potatoes on the couch. Too much and we’re a bundle of ulcer symptoms.

But I think there’s more to our “laziness epidemic” than a lack of stress. In fact, it’s just the opposite. It all comes down to an improper understanding our “Optimal Time Crunch Zone.” (It’s not as scary as it sounds – promise!)

But how do we know how much time crunch is “too much” and how much is “not enough”?

How to Find Your "Optimal Time Crunch Zone"

What feels like a ton of free time to me (a whole HOUR today?!?) may feel like nothing to you – or vice versa. So we have to do some trial-and-error to find what amount of free time works best for each of us.

We can do that totally randomly. Or, if you’re a dork like me, you can be a bit more strategic about the process, say, like this:

1. Identify your current Time Crunch Status.

• Signs of low Time Crunch Status = not bothering to do the things you want to be doing (e.g., the blogging, going to yoga and cleaning that you mention, Isabel), fatigue, lack of motivation
• Signs of high Time Crunch Status = irritability, forgetfulness, exhaustion, missing deadlines, physical ailments like headaches and digestive issues (all sorts of fun!)
• Signs of being in the "Optimal Time Crunch Zone" = You aren’t worrying about this issue at all! Things are just flowing.

2. Jot down your Time Crunch Status AND how many hours a day, on average, you currently have “free” (i.e., the hours you get to fully determine what you’re doing).

• Put these notes somewhere you can refer back to them months – or even years – later.

3. If you’re not currently in your "Optimal Time Crunch Zone," tinker with your Time Crunch Status.

• If you are experiencing low Time Crunch Status:  try adding a bit more requirements to your day, such as by taking on a volunteer position.
  • Notice I said “adding a BIT more” – I’ve seen many students take this too far too fast, passing right by the Optimal Time Crunch Zone into danger territory. I must admit I did this at the start of my first few semesters of college:  workload felt so light during the first two or three weeks that I signed up for a ton of activities so that I didn’t have so much free time. I’m sure you can imagine what happened to me by midterms. Ugly.
• If you are experiencing high Time Crunch Status:  Uh, yea. This one is difficult and I’m no master here. In theory, we should list everything we have on our plate, prioritize that list based on what each brings into our lives (both extrinsically and intrinsically), and then pare off the bottom items one by one until we hit our "Optimal Time Crunch Zone." In practice…uh, yea.

4. Continue to tweak and keep track until you see your personal pattern emerging. Then you’ll know what’s too little free time for you – and how many hours is too much!

• In my experience, our “need for time crunch” remains remarkably stable over time. When I think to my friends from high school, I can think of some people who LOVE to be crunched to an extent I couldn’t stand, and others who wouldn’t want to endure my pace. Although just about everything else about us has changed in 20 years (good bye frizzy hair!), our individual "Optimal Time Crunch Zone"s haven’t moved much at all.

The Scoop on “Laziness”

Now that we're clear on why we're more productive when we're busy, and how to optimize our productivity, let's finally tackle the laziness issue.

Although Peter from Office Space claims he’d “do nothing” if he never had to work again, I don’t believe him. Nobody is that inherently “lazy.” All humans have what psychologists call stimulus motives, which are motivations make us feel horrendous if we’re not stimulated “enough.”

I believe “laziness” arises from a simple lack of understanding of our "Optimal Time Crunch Zone."

I'm convinced this lack of understanding is epidemic. We’re a culture so obsessed with being busy, we experience tons of burnout that LOOKS like laziness.

In other words, we operate so far above our "Optimal Time Crunch Zone" for so long that when we finally get a moment to chill out, our bodies scream for us to STOP. Completely! Then we berate ourselves for not getting anything done.

Pretty ridiculous. (But I am SO a victim of this - at this very moment in time!)

Once we get clear on our "Optimal Time Crunch Zone," however, we know precisely how much we need on our plates to feel productive and energized. THEN we can work on breaking the “overly busy/overly tired” cycle by respecting our needs.

That said, the “respect” part is something I’m still very much working on! My strategy? Intentionally spending time around people who operate in their "Optimal Time Crunch Zone" on a regular basis and hoping they rub off on me. (Still hoping...)

That’s the best we can do, though:  become aware of our patterns, look for healthy models to help us break those patterns, and forgive ourselves when we (inevitably) slip up.

One day at a time. One hour as it comes. One great Time Crunch moment behind us yet again.

We’d love to hear from you in the comments below:

How do you find the balance between being stressed and being bored?

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About Rebecca

Rebecca Fraser-Thill is the founder of Working Self, a site that helps young adults create meaningful work - that actually pays the bills! She teaches psychology and is the Director of Program Design for Purposeful Work at Bates College. Her work has been featured throughout the media, including on The Huffington Post, The Chelsea Krost Show, and Stacking Benjamins. Follow her @WorkingSelf.

Longing for the Start of School...sort of

by Rebecca Fraser-Thill

When you think of autumn, what springs to mind? Crisp evenings? Shortening days? Earthy scents? Halloween pranks?

Oh come on, you're holding back. Just try to convince me you don't think of school.

And no wonder you do:  after umpteen-odd years of trucking off to pencils, books, and dirty looks at the first drop of a leaf, autumn and school are strongly associated in our minds.

Which is fine and all. Until this association starts making us think we want something that we don't.

The Dangerous Fall/Grad School Link

Let's get this out of the way up front, lest I be labeled an anti-gradschoolite. There are many valid, terrific reasons to attend grad school. For instance:

• Working toward better placement/career potential in a field in which you have proven and sustained interest
• Increasing your knowledge of a subject about which you have proven and sustained interest
• Engaging with the brightest minds in an area in which you have proven and sustained interest

(Sense a theme?)

If everyone were attending grad school for valid reasons, though, I wouldn't see a sudden surge in "hey former prof, I'm thinking of going to grad school!" emails every darn autumn. Which I do. Every year. The onslaught is a-coming.

To understand why the "huh, grad school is sounding good" blitz is a seasonal phenomenon, we must travel back in time to our childhood falls. In particular, to the prelude of our first day at school. (Cue the wavy lines and do-do-do-do music.)

The New-School-Year Scene:  Your mom is ironing the brand-new outfit you’ll wear on your first day, and you’re loading your crisp, clean backpack with all manner of school supplies. Your erasers are pink and four-cornered. Your pencils are sharp and smell like a day in the words. Your notebooks are ripe with blank pages so fresh and new that they stick to one another in their spiral spine.

Can you feel it?

I'll bet you can.

For twentysomethings, The New-School-Year Scene is as irresistible as the (ever so brief) 'N Sync reunion.

Why Twentysomethings Crave Autumns from the Past

Why is the draw of school in the fall so overwhelming to us when we're in our twenties (and perhaps far beyond)? Because those are the years when we're positively unmoored by the lack of what I call The 3 P’s:  possibility, predictability, and purpose.

When we conjure The New-School-Year Scene, those 3 P's become tangible all over again. We remember what it felt like to be poised on the edge of an entire new existence. Life seemed organized, opportunity-filled, and oh-so-beautifully structured.

No wonder, then, when autumn comes lugging its conditioned associations to The New School Year Scene we think:

“Oh! I could have those feelings again! I want that! I think I’ll go to grad school!”

Sorry to break it to you, but once college ends, the days of experiencing an externally-imposed sense of the 3 Ps are over. Period.

The twenties are all about accepting that very point. And then figuring out how to create our own internally-driven sense of predictability, possibility and purpose all the same.

This process is often termed "becoming an adult." And it sucks. Totally sucks. No sugarcoating there.

Thing is, going to grad school solve the underlying issue of needing to learn how to create for yourself what the world once created for you.

It only defers it.

(Full disclosure:  I write this not as someone who took my own advice, but rather as a recovering Autumn-Allure Addict. Yes, a AAA. As bad as it gets. To avoid facing the fact that my days of externally-derived 3 Ps were over, I jumped into grad school AND teaching. That's right, I'm here to scare you straight.)

The Problem With Going to Grad School To Relive the Fall of Our Childhood

Point number two why grad school is the wrong answer if the idea is only hitting you in the fall:  not only does grad school fail to provide the 3 P's for the long run, it also fails to square with nostalgia.

To see what I mean, please join me again in my time machine. This time we're traveling back to about two months into any given school year.

The Two-Months-Into-School Scenario:  You’re back to wearing hand-me-down clothes that fit awkwardly and get you teased. Your backpack’s bottom has blackened and the zippers have begun to show signs of rebellion. Your erasers have turned into dark, amorphous blobs that are inexplicably sticky. Your pencils are perpetually broken and smell of cheese puffs. And your notebooks? Oh, your notebooks. Once a stack of possibility, they now hold words and symbols you barely care to try to understand and their voluminous ranks have been decimated from notes passed to friends and paper airplanes flown at substitutes.

Had you forgotten that scene? Ours minds are convenient like that, scraping the moderately crapping portions of life from our memories. Hence the onset of Twentysomething School Nostalgia.

This delusional nostalgia is a major issue. I’d wager it causes a good portion of poor-grad-school choices, with desire to impress and social comparisons being the other major reasons. (Or you can be really "awesome" and go for the trifecta like I did!)

The reality is that grad school consists much more of the Two-Months-Into-School Scenario and barely any of the New-School-Year Scene.

In fact, you don’t even get The-New-School Scene beyond the first year of grad school - if you even get that - because you work your behind off year-round. And you’d better be damned sure that you care about the words and symbols that you’re writing in notebooks because you won’t only be jotting them down, you’ll be creating some of those jammies of your very own.

(For the record, the same could be said of teaching, so don’t even go there unless you have a “proven and sustained interest” in pedagogy. Identical urge, different cloak.)

How to Fight the Annual Siren Call to Go to Grad School

So if you now recognize that your sudden desire to go to grad school is born more of the leaves a-changing than your purpose calling to you, how can you fight the insincere urge?

1) Start by accepting what you’re actually craving each autumn:  a return to a life you’ve outgrown. Allow yourself to grieve the loss of the rhythms of childhood and the comforts those rhythms brought.

“Our twenties can be like living beyond time. There are days and weeks and months and years, but no clear way to know when or why any one thing should happen. It can be a disorienting, cavelike experience.” –Meg Jay, The Defining Decade

2) After grieving, create ways of infusing your current existence with hints of seasonality. It’ll take the edge off the false allure of autumn. For instance:

• Schedule a day-long clothes shopping trip every fall.  Bonus:  take mom with you - nostalgia and financial support in one fell swoop!
• Go back to using a paper planner and choose an academic year one even though you now live on a calendar – or fiscal! - year
• Reinvigorate your office supplies every fall with a fresh infusion of pens and desk organizers. And some of those big rubber erasers. Just for kicks.

3) Make a concerted effort to construct the 3 P's – purpose, possibility, and predictability – for yourself. This is, of course, a humongous task. No wonder I've devoted an entire website to the process.

All in all, do whatever you have to do to experience the clear path, opportunities, and “my life is all in order” feeling of your childhood autumns…without jumping into grad school. At least until grad school, not nostalgia, is truly what's calling you. Your wallet, social life, and mental stability will thank you for it.

We’d love to hear from you in the comments below:

What are you going to do to create a sense of purpose, possibilities and predictability this Fall – without entertaining the sudden notion of going back to school?

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About Rebecca

Rebecca Fraser-Thill is the founder of Working Self, a site that helps young adults create meaningful work - that actually pays the bills! She teaches psychology and is the Director of Program Design for Purposeful Work at Bates College. Her work has been featured throughout the media, including on The Huffington Post, The Chelsea Krost Show, and Stacking Benjamins. Follow her @WorkingSelf.

Age 30 Is NOT a Deadline

Written by Rebecca Fraser-Thill

You know what drives me insane? "Under 30" lists. "Young movers and shakers" awards. "Rub It In Your Face That These People Got Their Acts Together Faster Than You" roll calls.

Under 30 lists are everywhere. Forbes has one, Inc. has one, GQ has one. Even "hot seller" Realtor magazine has one. And how many people are on each list? You guessed it:  30. The lack of originality astounds.

These lists make it seem like doing things younger means doing them better. Like there's no point in trying when you pass the ripe ol' 30 mark. Like we might as well throw our diplomas in the shredder and join Dancing With the Losers if we're not markedly successful one-third of the way into our lifetimes.

Every time I convince one of my students that they don't have to conquer the world by 25 (or 30, or even - gasp - 35) - heck, every time I convince myself that I don't have to - one of these damn lists comes out and messes with our heads.

Why else would 86% of twentysomethings say they feel the need to be successful before age 30? It's the ridiculous lists. And, I suppose, the youth-obsessed culture that eagerly produces and consumes them. But that's not as much fun to blame.

For our sanity's sake, let's get some things straight:

The People on "Young and Successful" Lists are Freaks

The 20somethings lionized on "wow, look at 'em doing so much so young!" lists are on there precisely because they're non-normative. If they were like average people - or even like typical above-average people - the lists would be bloated and pointless.

These people are the 0.001% of the population who have managed to do something remarkable early in life. Trying to be like them is like trying to look like Gisele Bundchen or Tom Brady (or, most likely, their offspring...can we say genetics?).

We've accepted that we can't all be gorgeous, or pro athletes, or live a life of luxury. Yet we somehow feel that we all should be making our mark by 25 or 30. How unrealistic is that?

"Earlier" Doesn't Mean "Better"

Malcolm Gladwell did a pretty convincing job of striking down the "earlier = better" notion in his article Late Bloomers and book Outliers.

"Genius, in the popular conception, is inextricably tied up with precocity—doing something truly creative, we’re inclined to think, requires the freshness and exuberance and energy of youth." - Malcolm Gladwell

He goes on to assert that someone can be a prodigy - an individual who demonstrates remarkable abilities at a young age - and yet do little with those abilities in the long run. Prodigies simply develop earlier than their peers, that's what makes them stand out. Once their peers catch up, many prodigies blend into the background.

So those people on the "I'm Young and Awesome" Lists? They better watch out because we're coming for 'em.

Age of Success Varies by Field

Another reason Under 30 lists are ridiculous is because what's remarkable in one field is ho-hum in another.

Physicists, poets and chess masters tend to create their best work early in life. I think I'm safe in saying that most of us are not those things. That means that the fields we're in have mid-life or later peaks. In fact, the more "ambiguous and unclear" the field's concepts are, Max Fisher writes in The Atlantic Wire, the later important work is produced.

So figure out what's the norm for your field, not what's the remarkable exception for some other field (which is what's usually portrayed on the youth-centric lists). To focus on the latter is to pile meaninglessness on top of meaninglessness.

Time Pressure Paralyzes

Here's the true bottomline to the entire "young is amazing!" issue:  the more time pressure a person perceives, the worse their performance is. In other words, our obsession with succeeding young may be the very thing standing in the way of our success.

Granted, time pressure findings are usually found in laboratory psychology studies in which there's short-term pressure on a concrete task. But I'd argue that these findings are applicable to long-term time pressure, too. As one researcher on the topic, Michael DeDonno, said, "If you feel you don't have enough time to do something, it's going to affect you."

Notably, it's our perception of not having enough time - not the actual amount of time we have - that makes us perform poorly. To combat this, DeDonno told Science Daily, "Keep your emotions in check. Have confidence in the amount of time you do have to do things. Try to focus on the task and not the time. We don't control time, but we can control our perception. It's amazing what you can do with a limited amount of time."

Stop aiming to be a success by 30 and you just might become one. Or, at the very least, you'll be freed from a life spent obsessively tracking birthdays, leaving you mental space to instead focus on your life's work itself.

But, hey, what do I know? I already went over the youth hill. Which is a relief. Life’s much better over here on the “I’ll Never Make a 30 Under 30 List” List.

A little bitter, perhaps. But better.

Want to explore this topic further? Then check out this panel discussion I participated in on HuffPost Live.

We’d love to hear from you in the comments below:

Do you feel like age 30 is a deadline? Why do you think we have that idea in our heads? And how can we fight it?

Photo Credit: bicameral

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About Rebecca

Rebecca Fraser-Thill is the founder of Working Self, a site that helps young adults create meaningful work - that actually pays the bills! She teaches psychology at Bates College and is a career coach. Her work has been featured throughout the media, including on The Huffington Post, The Chelsea Krost Show, and Stacking Benjamins. Follow her @WorkingSelf.

Why We Don't Actually Want to Like Our Jobs

Written by Rebecca Fraser-Thill

Most of us don't want to like our work. We say we do, but we actually don’t.

Especially when we're recent graduates.

Millennials switch jobs about every two years largely out of a search for meaning and purpose at work.

The goal is excellent:  we definitely lead a happier life when we have meaning than when we have scads of money.

The strategy for reaching that goal, though? Not so terrific.

Let me say this up front:  I'm not someone who believes in staying in a job or career path when it's no longer leading us toward the impact we want (need!) to have on the world. Heck, I just coached my own husband out of a decade-long career in public education, financial risks be damned.

That said, I do believe that too often we take the easy route, walking away from jobs that still have a whole lot of untapped potential on the table.

That's why when a career coaching client comes to me and says they want to love their work, I suggest starting with his or her existing job.

The process typically goes something like this:

Together the client and I brainstorm a viable strategy for making their current work life more fulfilling, such as improving interpersonal dynamics, changing the way or the order in which tasks are done, intentionally altering perceptions of the environment, or - shocker! - talking out frustrations with the boss and suggesting concrete changes.

During check-in the next week, though, the client has usually done nothing to make the existing job better.

Instead she's spent oodles of time looking into new jobs or career paths.

Why?

“Because I don’t want to get to know anyone who works at that godforsaken place,” the client often says. Or “The tasks at my job stink so much, I have no interest in making them any better.”

Sure, some work environments need to be ditched. Toxic jobs are a notable example.

But the majority of jobs I've seen have the potential to be more fulfilling than they currently are.

So why fight making it better?

While the exact answer varies person to person, I’ll hazard one guess: Because we’re afraid of liking our jobs.

We're scared that if we start to enjoy our tasks or to think highly of our co-workers we may not - gasp - ever leave.

I totally get it. I felt the same way when I started teaching at Bates College at the ripe young age of 25. I’d just ditched a doctoral program in search of a life beyond academia…and then ended up back in academia.

The last thing I wanted was to like my work tasks, environment, or colleagues! I truly believed that if I started enjoying things the teeniest bit, I’d wake up and find myself 60 years old, doing the same old job, saying, “Where did my life go? This isn’t what I had planned!”

So I sheltered myself from my work and made myself miserable. For years.

Here’s the secret I eventually discovered, though:  The more fulfilled I allowed myself to feel in my day job, the more capable I was of carrying out my life’s “big plans.”

When I was down in the dumps, my motivation and energy took a dive right along with my mood.

Once I stopped fearing that I might get stuck in my job if I found it fulfilling and started allowed myself to squeeze the potential out of it, lo and behold, my desire and ability to "be bigger than" that job began to fall into place.

To be clear, I still teach at Bates. And why wouldn’t I? It’s an awesome gig - I love what I do, where I work, and the people with whom I work. How I didn’t let myself see that during my first few years is not only slightly mysterious, it’s sad.

The key thing, though, is that in the past six or seven years I’ve crafted an entire work life for myself that extends far beyond the walls of the job that I didn’t - and still don’t - want to be my entire work legacy.

In other words, those big plans I always had for myself? I’m making them happen.

Not in spite of my day job. Because of it.

So here's my challenge to you:  what if you opened yourself up to liking your current job?

What if you mustered the courage to ask your supervisor for what you want and need, long before mustering the "guts" to turn in a letter of resignation?

What if you tapped into the reasons you accepted the job in the first place, remembering what you hoped for and doubling down on making those hopes realities?

What if you tested the theory that dream jobs are built, not stumbled upon?

What if you learned to fear being serially unfulfilled more than you fear "settling down"?

What's the worst that could happen? You'll either end up moving on knowing - 100% knowing - that you've wrung every last bit of potential from your existing position.

Or you'll stay put. In the job you always wanted, that you created one change at a time.

We’d love to hear from you in the comments below:

Have you ever resisted liking your job? If so, what did you do to overcome that resistance?

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About Rebecca

Rebecca Fraser-Thill is the founder of Working Self, a site that helps young adults create meaningful work - that actually pays the bills! She teaches psychology at Bates College and is a career coach. Her work has been featured throughout the media, including on The Huffington Post, The Chelsea Krost Show, and Stacking Benjamins. Follow her @WorkingSelf.

What If I Waste My Potential?

Written by Rebecca Fraser-Thill

At college graduation festivities, one question bounces around repeatedly:

What if I waste my potential?

It's not spoken. Not even in a slightly reworded form. But it's there, in every graduate's insistence "...and in a couple of years I'll go to grad school," in every tight smile that doesn't involve the eyes, in every murmur along the lines of "it'll all work out."

I saw it time and again this past weekend as I attended my eleventh graduation at the selective college where I teach, and I suspect I'll see it for years to come.

I recognize the expression because I spent most of my twenties fearing I’d waste my potential. Intensely fearing it.

Thinking about it every time a room went quiet. Avoiding “successful” friends because they reminded me of it. Experiencing cardiovascular conditioning over it, without moving a single muscle.

Yet I never spoke this fear to anyone.

I’d picture myself old and gray, sitting on a porch talking to some faceless person, saying

“I could’ve been anything. I could’ve done so much with my life. Instead it all slipped by me.”

I came to hate the word “potential” itself, resenting it and all that it symbolized. “Potential” was the concentrated pill containing crushed-up remnants of my hoped-for adult life.

“Potential” also felt so darn patronizing. Like, “oh, there’s Georgia. She has so much potential," which 9 times out of 10 is said in that tone that implies “and she’s not doing a thing about it.”

I actually had a guidance counselor come up to me in high school and say, “I saw the colleges you applied to. Sure undershot your potential, didn’t you?”

Did I? Well maybe in his book I did, but not in mine. I applied to schools that were a genuine “whole person” fit for me.

Which is how, for the most part, I lived my 20s – making choices that resonated with something deep within me and that squared with a subtle awareness of my identity and deeply-held desires.

The rub was, I felt guilty about every single decision. Like I was “letting everyone down” by being true to me.

Like I was wasting my potential.

Smart people get PhDs, don’t they? Star college students get high-paying jobs, don’t they? Good daughters stay close to home, don’t they?

At my core, I knew the answer to all of those questions is not necessarily and that the answer for me personally was hell no.

Yet I felt pushed to live up to those stereotypical goals. Lest I waste my potential.

“Potential” felt like an imposition of another person’s storyline on top of my unfolding story. (Cue Sara Bareilles’ King of Anything).

I’m writing all of this not to complain but rather to say what I would have loved to tell the graduates this past weekend:  you do not have to live in fear of wasting your potential.

The only person who is going to be sitting in your rocking chair at 90 years old is you. Not your mom. Not your dad. Not your teacher or brother or best friend’s aunt. YOU.

What will feel like wasting your potential then isn’t having failed to live up to their standards for you. It’s having lived someone else’s story.

So the real challenge before you? It's not mastering office politics nor jumping pointless grad school hurdles nor even keeping a job for more than three months.

It's simply figuring out what you want your story to be.

Which is great news because, deep down, that's something you already know.

We’d love to hear from you in the comments below: Do you think about possibly wasting your potential? If so, how do you combat those thoughts when they pop up?

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About Rebecca

Rebecca Fraser-Thill is the founder of Working Self, a site that helps young adults create meaningful work - that actually pays the bills! She teaches psychology at Bates College and is a career coach. Follow her @WorkingSelf.

An All-in-One Guide to Finding a Mentor

Written by Rebecca Fraser-Thill

What's all this hype about having a mentor?

Today we'll break it down, one question at a time.

Why Bother?

First, the obvious question:  is the "mentor search" worth the energy? In a word, yes.

People who have mentors tend to get salary increases and promotions faster than workers who don't have mentors. Graduate students in psychology report that peers who have mentors meet more influential people, move faster through the program, have a better sense of direction, and present at national conferences more often.

Although men seem to benefit from mentorship more than women do, women are in greater need of mentors because they still occupy fewer high level positions. It's a shame, then, that Levo League found 95% of Gen Y women have never looked for a mentor.

What Type of Person Isn't a Good Mentor?

Overstretched people make the worst mentors.

They may seem like they have it all - family, career, local fame - and you want to know how they do it. Since they have so much going on, though, they probably don't have the time to give you the mentoring relationship you need.

For instance, Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo!, may seem like an interesting mentor given her high-profile career/family juggling, but with all she's got going on, how much time for mentoring does she actually have?

Who Makes a Good Mentor?

On the flipside, the best mentor may be someone who is just a few years or levels ahead of you in the industry.

You might think they don’t know “enough” but in fact they're more attuned to your needs because they just went through what you're facing. Plus, they usually have more time than more senior colleagues to devote to you.

For instance, the guy who is a late draft pick to the Patriots shouldn’t look to Tom Brady for mentoring, but rather to the guy who rode the bench "well" last season.

What Can I Expect of a Mentor?

Let's start with what NOT to expect:  weekly meetings. Sheryl Sandberg, CEO of Facebook, writes about this in a chapter on mentorship in Lean In:

“That’s not a mentor, that’s a therapist.”

Instead, use your occasional time with your mentor to problem solve. Come in with a clear and specific issue you want to address and ask your mentor to help come up with possible solutions.

Also, keep in mind that you can get great problem-solving help from one-off mentors, which Jenny discusses in her post The Best Way to Thank a Mentor.

Where Can I Find a Mentor?

Look local. Often your best mentor is right in your existing network, or directly adjacent to it.

He or she may even be a relationship you’ve already built – a teacher, former boss, colleague – but that you just need to re-invigorate and label “mentor” in your own mind.

How Should I Approach a Mentor?

Don’t ever ASK for a “mentor.” Just start building a relationship!

Sheryl Sandberg writes that being asked to be someone's mentor is her big pet peeve:

“If someone has to ask the question ‘Are you my mentor?’ the answer is probably no.”

There are 3 ways to approach a mentor, depending on your situation:

• If you're looking for an internship, ask up front whether the position will set up a mentorship for you. If not, you might look elsewhere for a better internship, or else actively negotiate the inclusion of a mentor.
• If you're looking for a mentor in your workplace, make an effort to stop by and chat with the individual once in a while (in an unobtrusive way!) and perhaps to invite him or her to coffee or lunch - when you have a specific problem in mind that you need advice about.
• If you're looking to change careers and want to find a mentor in another industry, informational interviewing is a good first step.

How Can I Retain a Mentor?

Once you have a mentor, how can you keep him or her active in your life? Three pieces of advice:

1.  Be your best! In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg cites research showing that mentors select mentees based on "performance and potential." This leads her to the following advice:

“Excel and you will get a mentor”

2.  Be open to feedback! If you won’t listen, a mentor will not keep working with you.

3.  Don't complain! You don't want your mentor to feel like seeing you is a drag. It's one thing to ask for advice, it's another to rehash every awful piece of workplace politics. Stay positive and you'll have a mentor who isn't just putting up with you, but who looks forward to assisting you for the long haul.

We’d love to hear from you in the comments below: Do you have a mentor? If so, how did you find him or her? If not, how do you think having one might help you?

Photo Credit: ffaalumni

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About Rebecca

Rebecca Fraser-Thill is the founder of Working Self, a site that helps twentysomethings create meaningful work - that actually pays the bills!She teaches psychology at Bates College and is one half of the Life After College coaching team. Follow her @WorkingSelf.

7 Career Myths Twentysomethings Need to Ditch

Written by Rebecca Fraser-Thill Career myths stick in the college years like hand-clapping games stick in primary school.

So when my college students drop by my office to talk about "the future" (cue ominous music), the same falsehoods spill out year after year. I certainly can't blame them; I believed these myths myself in my early twenties.

Here's the trick, though:  the sooner we purge our minds of career misunderstandings, the less the ominous music is needed. So let's dispel these bad boys, shall we?

7 Common Career Myths

1. You're about to choose your "forever"

This is far and away the most common myth I encounter. It's usually phrased along the lines of, "But I don't know what I want to do for the rest of my life."

Neither do I! Neither does most anyone I know. How boring would our lives be if we did know what we'd be doing forever?

We don't have good data on just how much career and job change is normative, but it's safe to say that change is the rule rather than the exception.

Skeptical? Then dedicate the coming month to this activity:  ask everyone you encounter how they got to their current career. The stories will likely fascinate and amaze you. Plus make you feel a lot less pressured to figure out "forever" and instead simply choose what's next!

2. Networking is about sharing your resume

When we focus networking efforts on resume sharing, we fail miserably.

In fact, networking is all about building relationships. Plain and simple.

Keith Ferrazi and Tahl Raz describe this well in their book "Never Eat Alone":

"Over time, I came to see reaching out to people as a way to make a difference in people's lives as well as a way to explore and learn and enrich my own...Once I saw my networking efforts in this light, I gave myself permission to practice it with abandon in every part of my professional and personal life. I didn't think of it as cold and impersonal, the way I thought of 'networking.' I was instead, connecting - sharing my knowledge and resources, time and energy, friends and associates, and empathy and compassion in a continual effort to provide value to others, while coincidentally increasing my own." - Keith Ferrazi with Tahl Raz

Haven't talked to someone in a while? Pop him or her an email or text for a coffee date. The conversation doesn't have to center on careers or job searching for it to count as a "networking."

3. You need to be born into connections to get a good job

This one makes me crazy. Crazy! And I hear it all the time. (I also once adamantly believed it...)

Yes, much of the successful job search process results from "who you know" rather than "what you know." That's not a cynical statement, it's a natural reality (wouldn't you rather hire someone who's been vouched for by someone you know?).

That said, we all have opportunity to create connections, if we're tenacious and creative about doing so. By virtue of attending college alone we acquire a network of thousands upon thousands of people. It's up to us to make use of those networks appropriately (see #2!) and to not let shame over our unconnected roots stop us from pursuing the life we want.

4. Your major dictates your career

In some highly-skilled fields, such as engineering, a particular major and set of training are necessary to gain entry.

For most industries, however, employers simply want people who can work in a team, make decisions effectively, plan and organize their work, and verbally communicate well. In other words, major doesn't matter one bit.

It's up to us to package ourselves to make a case for any particular job. We must not let the content we learned overshadow the skills and sensibilities we gained.

5. No job is better than the wrong job

I've seen many seniors turn down job opportunities because they were afraid they'd get set on "the wrong path."

I'm all about being selective and intentional in our decision making. That said, doing is better than thinking.

When we work in any capacity, we gain new skills, contacts, and understandings of what we do - and don't! - like. That information can't be gained by simply "mentally trying on" a job or industry. This is why even the cruddy coffee-fetching internships are worth something; perhaps seeing a boss behaving badly will spur you to become a corporate trainer. You simply never know.

6. Money matters more than meaning

When asked what is essential to them, 74% of first-year college students mentioned "being very well off financially" while 43% said "developing a meaningful philosophy of life." That's an exact switch in values from the late 1960s.

Is that such a bad thing? We all need money to survive, right?

Well yes, but beyond a "good enough" level, money doesn't translate into career satisfaction. When Psychologist Karl Pillemer interviewed 1000 older adults about what made their lives worthwhile for his book 30 Lessons for Living, he found:

"No one - not a single person out of a thousand - said that to be happy you should try to work as hard as you can to be able to buy the things you want. No one - not a single person - said it's important to be at least as wealthy as the people around you, and if you have more than they do, and if you have more than they do it's real success. No one - not a single person - said you should choose your work based on your desired future earning power." - Karl Pillemer

In contrast, one interviewee after another mentioned meaning as being essential to satisfaction, which matches scores of studies on true happiness.

7. A multi-year plan is necessary for success

We don't need a detailed plan to succeed, we need a vision:  a well fleshed-out sense of WHERE we'd like to head and WHY.

The HOW, however, tends to be largely beyond our control. It's often a matter of what job openings happen to exist at a given moment; who we stumble upon who knows someone who knows someone; whether the perfect internal candidate for a position drops out, leaving the opportunity to us.

If we trust that knowing WHAT we want is enough, then we can make intentional choices while letting the details take care of themselves.

We’d love to hear from you in the comments below:

What is your #1 hard-and-fast belief about careers? Do you think it's accurate - or a myth?

Photo Credit: tokyoform

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Life After College Coaching — Limited Spots Available for Spring!

Speaking of getting clear on vision, Jenny and I have created a Spring Coaching Program for recent grads to address this exact issue!

Who it's for:  Those of you who are unsure about what you want to do next, what your strengths and values are, and how to harness them into energizing and meaningful work. Even if you do know what you want to do (or at least what industry you want to work in), you may feel lost on the practical next steps of how to actually make it happen.

When:  We're in the process of accepting 10 applicants for our program that kicks off in April.

What:  Jenny and I have over 20 years combined experience working with twenty-somethings. Both of us care deeply about helping clients find meaningful, thrilling work (and lives to match), and work collaboratively on every step of the coaching processes we’ve each refined over the years. When you sign-up to work with one of us, you’re actually getting the shared wisdom and mastermind power of both!

How:  If you're interested, you can learn more about how our coaching works here, and click here to apply. If we think we might be a fit for working together, one of us will reply to schedule a complimentary 30-minute get-to-know you call to go over your goals, the program details, and answer any questions. No matter what, you'll leave the call with greater clarity and a handful of resources to move you forward.

We look forward to hearing from you!

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About Rebecca

Rebecca Fraser-Thill is the founder of Working Self, a site that helps twentysomethings create meaningful work - that actually pays the bills! She teaches psychology at Bates College and is one half of the Life After College coaching team. Follow her @WorkingSelf.