How to Shake Quarterlife Malaise

Sept. 2, 2003 — -- How can beleaguered quarterlifers escape their funk and find meaning in life? After all, they've got a lot of good years ahead.

For starters, quarterlifers might want to consider being more realistic, says Tom Johnston, managing partner of WorldBridge Partners, a national executive search firm. Young people who were in college during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, especially, have a distorted view of the workplace, he says.

"People were making salaries far beyond what they should have gotten. They could go to work in jeans, with dogs running around," said Johnston, who also counsels college students and other young job seekers.

"That created false expectations. They think, 'I don't want to live in a crappy little apartment and work for $25,000 a year. Where are those $80,000 a year jobs when I went into college?'"

Disaffected young workers should also be careful about what they expect to get from their jobs, said Stephen Pollan, the author of Second Acts: Creating the Life You Really Want, Building the Career You Truly Desire.

"Don't make fulfillment the sine qua non of your career," he said. "By any chance if you redo the Sistine Chapel, that's great. That's just gravy today."

Look for fulfillment in books, church, family, friends, he says. Your employer is not your guru.

Abby Wilner, co-author of the book Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties, agrees. "Work should not be your life, you should not forget about all the hobbies you had as a kid. Doing things outside of work that make you happy, make you feel good about yourself, are important," she said. "Train for a marathon," for example.

That's not to say, however, that quarterlifers should just accept a life of misery working for the man. Instead, Pollan suggests excelling at your job, even if you hate it.

"Every day renew a vow to be the best employee they have, to be preoccupied with the success of your manager before your own success and act like it's the first day at the job," he said. "Be a walking suggestion box."

At the same time, Pollan added, bored and dissatisfied workers should always be looking for work — something better and more secure.

"Is that disingenuous? No," he said. "They'll fire you. You're playing the game, they're playing the game."

Armed With Information

College students could prevent a lot of future problems by doing more research into potential careers, Johnston said.

"Find out what you do want to do," he said. "Unfortunately for a lot of young people, you don't know until you do it."

When Johnston's 20-year-old daughter said she wanted to go to law school, his career advice was: "You need to have a compelling case for me that you want to be an attorney." So Johnston's daughter set up an internship at a law firm, and shadowed different types of lawyers. She'll have another internship over winter break.

"You've got to do research," Johnston said. "If you can't see yourself doing that, maybe you need to look around. Don't make decisions without information."

Of course, Johnston does not underestimate how hard it is to prevent the quarterlife crisis. "How many of us knew what we wanted to do when we were 19 or 20?" he said.

Such insight is indeed rare for a college student, but some quarterlifers learn by experience how to shake the malaise.

‘We Control Our Destinies’

Usher Lieberman, 31, lost a "miserable" public relations job in April 2001, then took a job at a startup software company for eight months, but wasn't happy there either.

"Rather than be miserable in another job," he said, "I chose to start my own company." Now, he's at the helm of an eponymous PR firm in Denver, Colo.

He took the leap, he says, even though he had a lot to lose. "I have three kids, my wife isn't earning a salary. It was a huge risk."

Lieberman thinks about his former co-workers from the job he hated — they're still there, they're not happy, but they're risk-averse, so they stay.

His advice — from the other side — for quarterlifers in crisis? Stop whining and get to work.

"You're spending probably more than eight hours at your miserable job. What's the point of that? We control our own destinies. We're responsible for our own actions," he said.