Most of you know that I’m a huge fan of the 21st century — I love the fact the old standards which governed our parents and grandparents are out the window. Gone are the days of suit-and-ties and corporate songs, our workforce is ever-shifting and change is the only constant.

Much like working in jeans, the new trend is talking openly about salary … with friends. A new article from the New York Times highlights how young workers the salary of their friends just as they know birthdays and the names of spouses.

While salaries may be disclosed casually among friends, that doesn’t mean most young professionals brag about their incomes at a cocktail party. There is still an etiquette to sharing the information — a proper way to divulge.

Yea, of course. I’m only so comfortable talking about salary, even with my close friends. My rule is that I would never ask or tell a friend unless I’ve seen him in his underwear — that’s a good barometer of our friendship. [Bonetti being a notable exception, although we did work as lifeguards for all those years]. And I wouldn’t mind discussing salaries with someone older like a mentor or my parents.

You know what’s funny, if someone asked me what I made right now, I would tell them. But if I somehow got a better job or a raise, I’d be reluctant to tell them. For some reason, I’d like to leave the illusion that I live frugal — that way I can bust out the “I have $40,000 in the bank” card if I ever need it.

Hey, remember when I talked with Kristen Fischer about her book, Ramen Noodles, Rent, and Resumes: An after-college guide to life? Well, now the book has a blog, where you can keep track of the latest news and reactions, and get in touch with Kristen and the others working behind the scenes. Check it out!

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In 41 years of compounding at 10% annually, $20,500 ($15,500 in a 401(k) and $5,000 in an IRA) will turn into $1 million. And you’ll never have to contribute another dime.

The math is a bit more complex, I imagine, but the point is sound — saving now makes for a big payday later. The trouble is having the excess cash to put away. Most twentysomethings are struggling to pay the rent and have a bit left over for a pint or two, so it doesn’t seem entirely possible to set aside $20k. I suppose the best way is to ease into it. Try setting aside $200 from each paycheck, then try to set aside $300. Eventually, you’re only using half of what you make. Or something.

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Everyone’s talking about Politics, with an capital P, so let’s take a minute to examine politics with a lowercase p. I’m talking about workplace politics, and how to co-exist with the many strange types of folks you’ll be sure to encounter.

An article from BNet runs down 7 maneuvers that you can employ in your day-to-day, and how they’ll affect the staff. Here’s one I like:

The Silent Strategy
When you present a new idea, it’s human nature that some colleagues will play devil’s advocate. Let them. They’re not necessarily against you, they’re just stress-testing your idea. Say enough to show you’re receptive (“I see your point,” or “right, uh-huh, yes …”) but don’t argue. “The more you talk, the more they come out with counterpoints,” Coughlin says. “If you just stay quiet, a lot of times the group or the individual will come up with reasons they should help you.”

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Well, the internet said it, so it must be true.

The BBC is reporting on a new study that says how caffeine has magic brain powers to prevent Alzheimer’s and other diseases.

“Caffeine appears to block several of the disruptive effects of cholesterol that make the blood-brain barrier leaky,” said Dr Jonathan Geiger, who led the study.

It’s a bit more sciencey than that, so check out the article »

I didn’t need an article to tell me that caffeine is good for the brain, it makes us smarter! Have you ever played Tetris while your riding high on a caff wave? It’s awesome.

Description:
Highly creative, conceptual designer with experience in advertising, branding, web design, business collateral, packaging and environmental design. Designer should have excellent interpretive and communication skills, with the ability to present ideas to staff. Individual will work with Senior Art Director to brainstorm ideas but must be a self starter with acute time management skills to keep projects on schedule. Individual must be able to deliver from concept through production in various media. Must be comfortable and clear communicating with vendors and have a clear understanding of the printing process including press checks.

Accountabilities:
- Creates and produces a wide range of design related projects while adhering to high standards of creativity and innovation
- Works with vendors to ensure quality and accuracy of deliverables, including mechanicals
- Must be able to work independently within a team environment
- Scheduling and resource management
- Excellent production skills in being able to bring ideas to life at every phase of the design process
- Must work well under tight deadlines while maintaining integrity in design
- Other duties include proofing and archiving electronic production files

Skills:
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills
- BA or BFA from accredited university in graphic design
- Proficient in InDesign, QuarkXpress, Illustrator and Photoshop
- Some experience with Flash required, HTML a plus.
- Minimum of 3 years experience in agency or in-house corporate creative department

Wow, anything else? I love how they use the oxymorons like “work independently within a team environment”. Do people actually read this any say to themselves “that’s not for me, I don’t work within a team.” I know job ads are supposed to be aspirational, but seriously.

I call ads like this the “everything” ad. They want everything. They want someone with all types of skills who can wear every type of hat. Generally, I consider myself an all-arounder so it’s not a problem. This sort of ad is common, but there’s also another sort of ad I see that is likewise common: the “specialist”. Here’s an excerpt from one I found:

Major Pharmaceutical advertising agency seeks a graphic designer to join them team in a fulltime capacity.

The ideal candidate will have a minimum of 2 years experience at an ad agency servicing pharmaceutical clients.

In this case, they’re pretty much targeting seven people in the world. Do they think that most people who work in the narrow niche of pharmaceutical advertising want to stay in the field? And people from outside that world are automatically unsuitable? Cmon, get your head out of your arse.

Any thoughts?

•• Article Here »

via Dumb Little Man

My advice: Avoid the word “synergy” at all costs!

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What are you doing this Spring to change your life?

In this episode, Scott talks with Kristen Fischer about life after college. Kristen is a New Jersey-based freelance writer and author of the upcoming book “Ramen Noodles, Rent, and Resumes: An After-College Guide to Life”. Join Scott and Kristen for a chat about classes, debt, freelancing, working, making friends, paying rent, living with parents, and maybe going to grad school.

Drexel University - a career-oriented school
Stockton College - a school in the woods
FreelanceSwitch - website and podcast featuring Kristen
Jobcast I and JCII from Summer 2006
Creatively Self-Employed, Kristen’s first book
Merlin Mann on MacBreak Weekly
The Cost of Living, with Lindsay Campbell
Grad school: beast, blessing or burden? A post on SpeakUp
“The After-College”, similar to the “Quarter-life Crisis”
TPS Reports
Facebook
NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month (November)
Garden State, the movie
FreelanceRadio, with Kristen

Listen Now

Download Episode 037 (.m4a, 58.47, 27.5 MB)

Let’s be honest, you’re not the healthiest eater. But switching to a diet of lettuce and Crystal Light isn’t for everyone. From ZenHabits comes a sensible list of 12 ways to eat better and feel better. Here’s a sample:

7. Nuts instead of chips. If you normally snack on chips, try unsalted peanuts or raw almonds.

A pretty good plan since the calories in nuts are split between carbs, fats, and proteins as opposed to potato chips which are almost all fat calories. As an amateur nutritionist I say go for one step at a time. I reckon if you can knock down 8-10 you’ll be fine … at least until your 30th birthday! Have a look.

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Advertisers and marketers love watching college students because in spite of having no money, their spending habits are an indicator of how the next generation thinks as consumers.

In this article from AdAge, we see that more and more college students are demanding better food, often from local and organic sources. Unfortunately, the lines are still somewhat blurred as they don’t often know the true definition of organic, local, seasonal, etc.

Worth a read. Via Brand Noise

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We’ve covered this before, but in case you haven’t bookmarked a similar page, here is a list of various drinks and their caffeine contents:

Table Here »

As you may guess, a Starbucks regular brew (grande) tips the caff-scale at 320mg. Ouch.

via LVHRD

Bro, she’s way out of your league.

Nowadays, we spend more and more time at work, so it seems only natural that we begin to develop romantic relationships with co-workers. Of course, this is usually discouraged, if not banned outright. Why? Potential drama, I suppose.

However, research shows that it might actually be useful. An article from the Sun tells how “the thrill of a fling ‘raised energy levels and led to better professional capacity’.”

Makes sense. I know if I could see my sweetie during the day I’d generally be in a better mood. The trouble is in arranging the romance in the first place — if you try-but-fail to court a co-worker, it could set off a serious chain of events disrupting the delicate social ecosystem of your workplace (i.e., if you ‘choose’ one of the girls, you’ve automatically blown it with the remainders. It’s called the Law of Exclusion).

You could always just wait for the christmas party, get drunk, and then if things don’t go well, blame the alcohol. No chance that could ever backfire.

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I’ve been saying for years that Baby Boomers ruined the Internet. Or at least adults in general. Not us geeky kids. First, they felt the need to monetize everything leading to the boom in advertising online. Next, they, in their gullible ways, allowed Spam and Fishing scams to flourish, and now they have the dubious honour of being trend-killers. Once your dad tries to friend you on MySpace, you know it’s time to go someplace new.

The sentiment is shared, it seems. News.com.au tells us about how late teens and twentysomethings are finding it annoying when their parents, grandparents, and adults in general are encrouching on their [virtual] turf.

“As parents, we have to figure out where to draw the line between encouraging and allowing our teens to have autonomy, to experience their separate culture, and when we need to monitor their use of media,” says Montgomery, a professor of communication at American University.

It’s an interesting topic, and something that perhaps needs to be looked at family-by-family. I know that my father and I have sort of bonded over my teaching him bits of Photoshop here and there. He hasn’t yet discovered Flickr, etc., but that might help a bit to open his mind. He does, however, know where to find all the great conspiracy theories from ultra-left websites. Eeek.

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We all want to be rich. While a million dollars isn’t what it used to be (especially not in New York), it’s quite an aspiration and one that is more achievable than ever. One component for a successful financial future is saving, and more importantly, to begin from a young age!

An article from Yahoo! Personal Finance challenges us to “tuck away a little bit on a regular basis [so] you can party when you’re 19 and 99.”

It also goes on to crunch a few numbers about how powerful saving and ‘passive’ investing can be:

Let’s say that, beginning at age 25, you put the equivalent of seven $4 grande lattes a week toward retirement, setting aside $121 a month. If you invest it in a stock mutual fund with annualized returns of 9 percent, you would see $23,415 after 10 years, $80,814 after 20 years, $221,520 after 30 years and a whopping half-mil, or $566,440, when you retire at age 65.

Read the article here »

It goes by many names, the “lull”, the “itis”, the “valley of fatigue” to name a few, but by any name we all know the feeling of getting totally exhausted during the day. Whether a student or a worker, the need to sleep can conflict directly with your day’s to-do list. I have often remarked that falling asleep in class is the oldest college tradition; fuck road trips! Of course it can be a problem because most workplaces place sleep as the #1 cardinal sin, right behind porno. Drinking? I have at various points been offered beer, wine and hard liquor during the work day, but I have never been offered a nap. And while sunglasses may hide you in a crowded lecture hall, they rarely work when the boss comes around to your desk.

OK, so how do we stay awake during the day? Aside from the obvious points about getting enough rest the night before, eating breakfast, etc. a few good tips turned up on a post from Dumb Little Man, yet another rediculously named blog about general life. Here’s one that sounds reasonable:

8. Get Help from Colleagues. If you have some buddies at work, confide in them that you need their help with staying awake. See if there are any things you can work on together. Talking with co-workers will help keep your mind engaged and alert.

I’ve been there. I’ve been there. Jessica and I used to throw crumpled up post-its at one another when we’d see the head starting to bob.

The tactic I like to employ at work, school, and on the road (although don’t fuck with falling asleep behind the wheel!) is simply to drink loads of water. Get yourself a gallon, or at least a litre bottle, and start drinking! When was the last time you fell asleep having to pee like mad? Yes, you’ll have to take a trip to the toilet every ten minutes, but the walking will also help to wake you up. And if that fails, get yourself an apple. The effort required to eat an apple is sure to keep you going, to say nothing of the natural sugars, etc. And the odd thing about apples is that you have to eat them in a certain amount of time or else they turn brown, so no dozing off between bites!

Coffee also does the trick. That is, if you don’t use it every half hour.

Check out the article and add your comments about what keeps you awake during that afterlunch dip.

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Eeek, no more buying coffee for the ladies, turns out caffeine can double the likelihood of miscarrying. A new study out of Chicago has shown that drinking two cups of coffee while pregnant is a terrbile thing to attempt. In fact, caffeine of any type, including soda, tea, etc. can be problematic and should be avoided.

“Women who are pregnant or are actively seeking to become pregnant should stop drinking coffee for three months or hopefully throughout pregnancy,”
—Dr. De-Kun Li, Kaiser Permanente Division of Research

So ladies take note, if you’re trying to have a baby, you need to phase out that morning cuppa and take it slow for a year or so. And chances are you’ll need that caffeine once the baby is borne, so best not to have a high tolerance, you know.

It’s a short, but interesting article.

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Casual Gaming? No, that’s not a euphemism for butt-sex, it’s playing those “little” video games that take up just a bit of time here and there. Tetris, Bejeweled, etc. are common examples.

Traditional says that these games are mainly for ladies, and men prefer to tackle “real” games like Hal or Tomb Raider. But as it happens, men play ‘em too, but hate to admit to it. The news comes from GamePolitics.com.

What’s your stance on casual gaming? Personally, I admit to being a Tetris junkie just as bad as anyone else — male or female. There was a time when I would play Solitaire for speed, throwing in a quick game here and there, but these days there are thousands upon thousand of Flash games on the web to choose from. Here are a few of my favs:

Desktop Tower Defense
Solitaire
Pillage the Village
Chaos Theory
Bloons

In my 26 years I have spent many a night hour with friends (and alone) playing video games. It does strange things to one’s physiology — we forget to eat, ignore the need to sleep, tune out external stimuli, and somehow eradicate the need to use the bathroom. But since we’re not teenagers anymore, it might be a good idea to maintain proper diet and health, even when fiending a game to it’s end.

Check out this article about 23 snack foods that will keep you going without too much effort. Warning, this will make you hungry, so best to read it on a full stomach.

One of my personal favs:

Bagels and cream cheese. This combo is satisfying if you’re feeling more than peckish but not all-out hungry. You have lots of flavors to choose from, and you could replace the cream cheese with smoked salmon (above), or tomato or cuke slices sprinkled with a bit of salt and pepper.

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The start of a new year brings with it new optimism and resolutions, which often mean hitting the gym. If you are among the masses that flock to the gym in January, or as I call them, “The Jannuarians”, take a moment to read this article from ABC News.

Based on Better Business Bureau findings, gyms and health clubs are often crafty buggers who have long, intricate contracts aimed at swindling you out of your cash.

One national chain holds customers to their contracts unless they are gravely ill, badly injured or move more than 50 miles from the nearest branch of the gym. Can you imagine driving 50 miles to work out? I have some exercise gear in my basement and I have a hard time summoning the willpower to use it.

The bottom line is simple: do some research and ask questions. Gyms are like any other endeavor, you don’t want to be attached if it turns out to be a bad move.

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Whoa, my life just changed. Well, sort of. It seems that a post on DietHack has just tackled 12 Myths about various beverages including coffee, soda, tea and alcohol. Of course, this is the internet so I’m not sure if the ’science’ behind this site can be trusted. I would feel more comfortable if these entries linked to independently-funded university research projects.

But check this out, did you know:

“café au lait” or coffee with milk is indigestible.

True: Because of the amount of tannins it contains (less than tea though), which precipitate casein and cause it to clot which render its digestion very difficult. Casein is a protein that is found in milk and used independently in many foods as a binding agent.

That explains why a latté goes through me like a hot knife through butter. Too much info, I know. Read the rest of the post if you’re interested.

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I include myself in the above blanket statement. As is the case with people I have spoken to recently, I resolve to achieve small, attainable goals rather than lofty shifts. And with twentyhood specifically (ie, the website and podcast) I have a few to numerate. So here’s to you, readers and listeners, helping me keep my resolutions.

Here are my plans to twentyhood for the year 2008:

1. Ten full-length episodes. You know, the ones that are 40-60 minutes and often feature a guest or two. I need to get back on topic, because it seems all the shows have been ‘general’ for quite some time.

2. Two or three mini-episodes. These are fun, and very easy to do. Therefore, I have no reason why I can’t pull these off. The challenge here is to keep them ultra-efficient and topical so listeners/subscribers aren’t left saying “what the hell was that?”

3. Ten blog posts per month. There was a time when I was posting close to twenty, but that’s really a lot of work on top of my regular blogging duties. I think that a post every third day with a useful article or resource is plenty.

4. Original content. I’ve been saying this for a while, but I need to post more stuff like this, by me. Original content is the reason blogs exist — otherwise they would just be specialty news aggregators.

5. Fix the CSS. hopefully you haven’t noticed, but this site is held together with the coding equivalent of chewing gum. I would love to sit down and re-do the whole theme to make it tighter and more functional. Maybe I’ll just borrow from perezfox.com and change it up. Any suggestions?

6. Have fun again. At some point, twenythood became an obligation rather than a hobby. I don’t know how to change this except to get you all more involved. So comment, write in a leave feedback. Digg us and tell your friends, bitches.

Need further evidence that college bafoonery has escaped it’s brick-and-ivy cage? The World Series of Beer Pong is currently underway in Las Vegas. Perhaps the most shocking revelation is that this is in fact the third WSBP, so the event is gaining traction.

Check out the official site for BPONG.com, who organise the event, and a coverage article from openpresswire.com

I think the most cheeky part of this whole … affair is the logo itself. It seems baseball is no longer the national pastime.

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Interested in taking your work life up a notch for the new year? Best to get into one of these fields. US News and World Report has the rundown of some ahead-of-the-curve careers perfect for the taking. Here’s an obvious but insightful example: