Author and workplace expert Tamara Erickson — someone many of you longtime Gig readers will remember from posts such as “Job-hopping Gen Yers aren’t disloyal. They’re smart,” and “Money v. meaningful work, the battle continues” — has a new book out, and since she’s been such a source of good advice, we thought we’d give you a sneak peek. 

Plugged In: The Generation Y Guide to Thriving at Work focuses on Yers’ advantages — our fresh perspective, motivation, and willingness to take risks — and offers some guidance to help Yers fully connect to their colleagues and engage in the changing work world. In the following excerpt, Tammy introduces the “career curve” framework, one she says can help Yers identify the best job and career path to meet their work and life needs. 

What shape will your career take? The line of your career is not an even progression. The amount of time, the intensity of your involvement with the work, the pulls of family, and many other concerns all influence the shape at any given moment of that path — what I call the career curve.

The career curve framework guides you in thinking about the practical reality of what will work for you. How much money do you consider enough (or need so that you can pay off the debt that you are carrying from school loans)? How much time would you like to devote to work? What role would you like it to play in the mosaic of your life’s other activities?

Older adults have tended to think about one career curve. It used to be that the progression of a career meant a steady rise at one workplace through the years, and then a sharp and abrupt end — rather like falling off a cliff — when workers retired. That pattern is being replaced, by and large, by more of a bell curve: entry-level, full involvement and advancement, and then a winding down or deceleration phase as workers transition out of work. Gen Y’s, however, should be thinking of multiple curves. Quite likely, you will have ups, downs, and do-overs. For you, the career curve framework might better be called career carillon, because the line of your career is likely to resemble a series of bell curves.

As you think about different options for your career curve(s), consider these issues:

• Time: What other priorities do you have for your life? How much time would you like to devote to work? On the surface, this question is probably the most straightforward of all the considerations, although it’s also one of the most dependent on other choices you make. To a large extent, the amount of time you choose to devote to various activities, including work, will end up depending on how much you enjoy each one relative to the others. Nonetheless, it’s important to consider that, realistically, some careers are far more time-consuming than others.

• Rhythm: Lots of people say they’d like more flexibility in their work arrangements, but what would that really mean for you? How much spontaneity or predictability do you need to accomplish the other priorities in your life? Do you anticipate having other activities that are highly regular (for example, training for an athletic event that could be conducted at the same time every day), or are your other priorities more likely to be spontaneous (for example, going on an impromptu trip)? Would working four long days every week — the same four days — be more appealing to you, or would you rather work in episodic bursts? Various career choices allow very different rhythms.

• Economic reality: Get out your pencil or spreadsheet. It’s time to set some approximate financial goals. How much money do you need at this stage of your life? What standard of living will be comfortable for you? This is not a book about financial planning — there are plenty of those — but I encourage you to do some now. Be sure to take into account not only living expenses but also money required to pay off any student loans and to save for dreams you may have for the future. Consider the amount of help that you can realistically expect from your parents and family. Having a rough sense of your economic requirements will shape the choices that make sense.

• Challenge: Consider the extent to which you do want (or don’t want) to take on difficult or challenging roles at this point, including the level of commitment you would be willing to make to learn new skill and capabilities. How new and how difficult do you want your future work to be?

• Responsibility: Responsibility is a measure of the interdependence of your work with that of others. How willing are you to take on roles, including managerial tasks, that directly affect others? Are you comfortable having others depend on you? Are you willing to have people look to you for leadership or direction?

These questions help you shape the tangible reality of the work you prefer. Time and money may not be all that counts, but they are an important reality to factor in as you search for your passion.

Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Press.  Adapted from Plugged In: The Generation Y Guide to Thriving at Work by Tamara Erickson.  Copyright 2008 Tamara J. Erickson.  All rights reserved. 

What a day, right? I’m on my way to vote and, frankly, I look a little crazy because I’m so excited that I hardly slept a wink. And it isn’t difficult to see why. So much of the Gen Y discussion we’ve had over the last year or two has been about our entitlement, our coddled youth, our lack of accountability, perspective, and work ethic. Our generation, I’ve been told so many times, hasn’t really been through anything. (Sure, there was 9/11, but could that one day compare to  prolonged coming-of-age crises like Vietnam or the Great Depression?)

Well, I think it’s about time we put that argument to rest. Maybe two wars and $4-a-gallon gas this summer weren’t enough to get us the generational street cred, but surely the last few months have finally elevated us to that highest echelon of suffering. As Thomas Friedman put it in his column on Monday, “Never has one generation [i.e., them] spent so much of its children’s [i.e., us] wealth in such a short period of time with so little to show for it as in the Bush years.” Thanks, Mom and Dad.

And for the record, it’s only just beginning. Whatever entitlement we have exhibited will, I think, be quickly quashed by the rapidly approaching obligations of our future. Not only will it cost far more (and be much more necessary, given the competitive landscape) to put our kids through college and beyond, we will also be caring for parents who are living longer and saving less, often because of the circumstances they’ve faced, like layoffs, rising healthcare costs, and of course, the high price of raising us.

All that to say, please, for the love of goodness, go vote. Whatever the immediate stakes for our country, the long-term significance of this day for us simply can’t be overstated. When sociologists look back at the formative moments of our lifetime, will 2008 be the year whose financial crisis began all our troubles, or the one whose election set the tone for our country’s recovery? Every election, there’s big talk of the youth vote, and just about every election, it amounts to a big pile of hype. (Howard Dean, anyone?) So this year, think of it as a life vote. Whatever your views, whomever you support, you actually do have a chance to shape the rest of our collective life today. Take it. Or don’t — and your friends (and I!) will hold you personally responsible for every calamity that befalls us forever more.

I saw snow for the first time this season last week. I was on a train from Philadelphia back to New York and — after spending the night listening to Phillies fans in the streets and waking up at 6 a.m. to spend the stormy morning on a Gen Y panel – I was exhausted. But when I looked up from my book (Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere) to the snow swirling against the rust and mustard of autumn trees and a winter-gray sky, it gave me a little rush of joy.

While it certainly meant the onset of winter and, as we say in my family, a *suckster* commute, it mostly reminded me of being a kid. Those of you from comparable climes will know what I’m talking about: waking up to white everywhere, waiting with bated breath for the local radio or TV guys to confirm school was canceled, and clambering into your snow-day finest to go act a (frozen) fool outside with your friends.

But as lovely as that memory was, it also made me think of a conversation I’d had with one of the panel attendees that morning. A thirtysomething father of three living in the Philly area, he came up after the talk to ask what I thought the youngest Yers would be like as they grew up. But before I could get a word in, he started talking about his own kids. I’m going to kick them off the games and the phone and send them outside, he said. “None of that.”

And then he told me about his three-year-old, who had been wreaking barefoot havoc on his tricycle on the curb recently, and attracted a neighbor’s concerned attention. “He comes running across the street,” the Xer dad told me, laughing, “meanwhile his 12-year-old is wearing a helmet on his Razor scooter in the driveway. He said we just have different parenting styles.” And while coddling parents worried this Xer, something else really stressed him out: A friend complained recently that his 16-year-old had sent 11,000 text messages in one month – “My wife and I calculated,” he practically yelled, “that’s 366 a day!”

When people ask me what I think will be Yers’ challenges moving forward, I often cite technology. And not because of the technology itself, but because of all it enables. Parents now have to work to get their kids out of the house, instead of working to get them in, the way our moms used to at dinnertime. And as much as tools like texting and Facebook have made it possible for us to maintain more “friendships” than ever, I’d argue that those same technologies have made it more difficult to cultivate the few close relationships that shape every person over a lifetime. There’s something about actually being together, talking all night, and even getting in fights that can’t be replicated on a laptop or iPhone — and that’s essential to being a person, never mind a success.

After all, how can you lead or manage if you’ve never learned to really, substantively, fundamentally connect to other people, in the truest sense of the word? And let’s be honest, you can’t do much of that and send 366 texts a day. (Which, incidentally, speaks to something else I’ve been getting angst-mail about lately: Mom and Dad, take your grown kids off your cellphone plan! Sheesh.)

It’s nothing that’ll be solved in a day, and maybe some of it is nostalgia for a simpler, less wired past. (Hah.) But I’m already hearing some working Yers say that they’ve started carving out downtime from all the pinging and buzzing in an effort to stay sane and centered. As it stands, we’re at that moment when — with so many new and exciting tools and not much sense of what their long-term effect will be — we’re more or less letting it all run wild. But that can hardly go on forever, and I can’t imagine it’ll be too long before we reach an equilibrium where we can exploit the great aspects of these tools without falling victim to the more problematic ones.

That occurred to me, too, on that train: Sitting in the “quiet car” on the Acela — where the woman next to me actively shushed other people on the train, pointing imperiously to the “Quiet Car” sign above — I was struck by how annoying the endless click-clacking of BlackBerrys and laptops became, and how much I missed the low hum of, you know, people that used to make travel fun and interesting for me. But perhaps most disturbing was that I succumbed to it myself, curled up in my book like some sort of sad sleeping snail passing time till more favorable conditions emerged. And that’s why it was so nice to look up, surprised, and be reminded that there’s a world out there, and I used to – and should – enjoy it.