We all want to feel successful, but how that looks is changing. Do happiness and success go hand in hand?

It is commonplace these days for business owners and those looking to climb the corporate ladder to hire a business coach. But this looks a lot different today than even a decade ago. Rather than simply focusing on tactics that can get you more views, sales, likes, or subscribers, coaches these days are sharing a new viewpoint.

Happiness and joy in what you do is at the forefront of modern business coaching. Our priorities are definitely shifting and bringing a different view of success along for the ride. What we used to deem a successful life (good job, family, house, car, vacations, retirement) now looks more like health, fulfillment, and happiness. How you define that happiness is up to you.

The move toward a more holistic way of thinking and living has almost made “success” a bad word. Many business/life coaches steer clients away from using the term because of its vague and negative bottom line implications.

Is money, renown, and lots of cool stuff the equivalent of success? Sounds pretty great, right? But what if you are miserable at your job every single day of your life in exchange for these things? This may not feel successful even if it looks that way on the outside.

For example, would you feel truly successful as a dentist because it makes your father happy, when you’d really like to become a writer? Dentists make pretty good money. You’d likely be able to afford a nice house and live a more than decent lifestyle. You’d also garner the respect that goes along with being a doctor. But you absolutely cannot stand working on people’s teeth and miss the satisfaction you get from writing. Success? Maybe. Feeling successful? Not so much.

As Alain de Botton explains in his TEDTalk on this modern day conundrum, the true feeling of success boils down to one thing. And that one thing can only be determined by you. What is important to you?

Business and life coaching guru Marie Forleo says what you do for work doesn’t equal your worth, it comes from who you are as a human being. Aha! Check out the video for the rest of Marie’s steps on defining your own personal version of success.

So it seems modern day success looks a lot more like happiness and peace of mind. Not only does a higher measure of personal happiness make you feel more successful, it may actually rub off on a larger scale. Corporate happiness, or a more positive work environment, can mean greater business success organization wide.

As author, Paulo Coelho, puts it “What is success? It is being able to go to bed each night with your soul at peace.”

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Working in a male-dominated field taught me a lot about leadership, culture and success. Now, as a career coach, I have some advice for women.

After 20 years coaching both women and men through career advancement and transitions, I have learned a lot about how women are holding themselves back at work—especially in male-dominated fields, because that’s where I started my career.

I was one of the first female traders on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. When it comes to career, it would have been hard to choose a more aggressive, male-dominated field—especially in the ‘80s when I was starting out.

I faced many double standards in the workplace. At the time, there were no real laws or standards governing sexual harassment and politically incorrect behavior. I simply accepted this for what it was, as I believe most women did in that era. Whether it was projected or real, it always felt like I needed to be twice as good as the men. I loved the competition and believed if I produced the same results I would get the same monetary rewards and opportunities for advancement. Repeatedly, I found that was not the case.

After 15 years in that testosterone-driven environment, I made a change. It was fueled by a desire to wake up every morning and love what I was doing—to help people become more effective leaders, create transformational change personally and professionally, and embrace and foster accountability.

Based on my own experience and listening to the stories of more than a thousand leaders, from aspiring to world-class, here is my advice for women who want to thrive in the corporate world.

Know the Difference Between Truth and Perception

First, it’s important to remember that words and actions are filtered, received and assessed differently by men and women. If you are a powerful, decisive, assertive female leader, you are often perceived as a ball-buster, or worse. This is a cultural nuance and not always conscious—even a very enlightened man might not realize that he’s experiencing and processing men and women differently and not necessarily equally. It’s the soup of our culture but remember, an assessment is merely an assessment—it’s not the truth.

Increase Your Emotional Intelligence

Research shows that raising your emotional intelligence will take you further personally and professionally than anything else you can do. We’re often blind to ourselves and we don’t accurately perceive how we’re being experienced by others. We’re not aware that the impact of what we say and do is often wildly different than our intent. Read up on emotional intelligence, learn how to read a room or engage in individual coaching to accelerate your growth in this area.

It’s Not About “Acting Like a Man”

We lose our authentic selves when we try to model what the male version of power looks like. Yes, women need to get comfortable with confrontation, stand strong in convictions and make decisions quickly, but those are not exclusively male traits. It’s a stereotype that women make emotional decisions and men make analytical decisions. In reality, we all work with three brains. We actually have brain cells in our hearts, stomachs, too. Don’t diminish the power of your instincts—a recent study shows that when it comes to decision-making, instinct may even trump analytics.

Manage Your Emotions

There is no more important leadership skill than the ability to manage yourself. Dave Ulrich, a thought leader in management, once believed that the most important skill for a leader was the ability to inspire teams. But, he found that the self-management of one’s thoughts and mood states was actually more important. Controlling your inner world makes the biggest difference in executive leadership. Women may be more emotionally based; couple that with low self-esteem, a problem many women face, and it’s a career-threatening combination.

Build Your Confidence

If self-confidence is an issue, tackle it. For me, sports made the biggest impact on my ability to succeed in a male-dominated field. I felt like I had an edge because I was fearless and competitive in a way most women were not. All great leaders possess authentic confidence. One of the best ways for women to build confidence is by setting a goal they think is out of their reach and then achieving it. Improv classes are a great way to practice discomfort and learn to think on your feet while building self-esteem.

Toot Your Own Horn

In contrast to men, women are less comfortable showcasing their accomplishments and do less to promote and strategize their personal brand. This has a domino effect because women are not only more humble, they discount their talent and success, while men tend to accentuate their talents. The divide between what an employer thinks an equally qualified man and woman are worth starts with how they present and value themselves in the interview process. Look for opportunities to strategically highlight your achievements.

Stop Being Too Nice

As women, we tend toward being nice and accommodating. You will never be seen as a leader if your primary mode of engagement in the workplace is caretaking. One of my favorite books on this subject is “Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office”—every woman will identify with at least one of its eye-opening lessons.

Control the Conversation

Leadership occurs every time there is a conversation, and each conversation offers the opportunity for impact and influence. Your words hold the possibility for building your self-esteem or destroying it. In fact, your leadership, your future, your success—and even what’s possible for you and not possible for you—they are all created by these conversational moments. How aware are you of these moments? Words are the building blocks to creating the life you want. Choose them carefully.

The most powerful and transformational shift you can make is in how you perceive your environment, respond to your environment and move through hard times.

At the end of the day, find your voice and nurture your strengths—be fearless and be bold.

 Jody Michael is a Chicago-based career coach. Get more leadership advice on her blog.

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ColumnJill Abramson, The New York Times’ top dog, and first female executive editor, was fired.

We should have seen this coming. Jill ABRAmson. Bra is right there in her name!

As the scandal started to unfold, it seemed like a clear case of sexism at work. The New Yorker reported that the trouble for Abramson may have escalated when she found out that her pay and her pension benefits as both executive editor and, before that, as managing editor, were less what her male predecessor received.

An associate told the magazine that when she spoke up, it reinforced her reputation as “pushy,” a term used almost exclusively to talk about women.

Issues surrounding “significant” pay discrepancy have been widely disputed by the Times, and the New Yorker has since updated its report. But, what we’re left with is another “pushy” broad pushed out of the C-suite. And, so far, that seems to be a story that’s sticking.

The Times reportedly wanted her departure to be less dramatic than it has been, but Abramson insisted they fire her — because that’s what was happening. It was the truth and she wanted the truth to be out there. Pushy indeed! Now, because of social media and Abramson’s daughter, #pushy is now a hashtag, joining the ranks of #BanBossy.

As the scheduled keynote speaker at Wake Forest University’s graduation this week, Abramson had to do something all editors are familiar with: a rewrite. According to the Washington Post, a Wake Forest official said the original draft of her speech focused on the importance of media freedom.

While I imagine she wasn’t conceptualizing her topic in this way, it’s interesting to think about media freedom in terms of her right as a woman leading her field to run her newsroom — hard-assed news guys are legendary — as she saw fit.

All of this has gotten me thinking about my own experience in various editorial settings. So, in solidarity with Jill Abramson and women everywhere, I offer you this list of four anecdotes from my professional life between 2000 and today to illustrate that shit like this happens to the Jills of the world, and also to the Libbys.

1. As the Editor-In-Chief of a magazine, I worked directly for the publisher. He referred to me exclusively as “Girl.” When we disagreed about something, he would say, “Girl, you’re a cunt.” Sweet, right?

2. I once received this unsolicited performance review from a superior at an office party: “It’s not you I don’t like, it’s your face.” My read on this was that it was a version of, “Why don’t you smile?” which is something I hate. I was part of an opinionated, smart leadership team — consisting mainly of men — and many of us were quick with an eyeroll. As far as I know, I was the only one made to justify my physical reactions to conflict.

3. A publisher I worked for owed me three months’ pay. When I finally refused to stop working until I received said payment, he pointed out that the company wasn’t doing well and he had a wife and family to support. He kind of trailed off waiting for me, I think, to put my right to get paid to the side to support him in his plight as a big manly provider. This illustrates one of my favorite recurring sexism at work themes: the idea that women work for fun, not for money.

4. I worked for one media company where drinking heavily was just kind of what we all did on group outings. One night, I overheard a middle-aged male VP say this to a group of 20-something female employees: “I’m feeling kind of hand-jobby.”

What I learned from all of these experiences is that even when you’re working with primarily good people — which most of these guys actually were — gender bias sneaks in. In some cases, it punches you in the gut.

As leaders, we can’t laugh it off when we’re called a bitch for disagreeing with something, when we’re labeled as pushy or reprimanded for being too difficult.

When we are hired to lead, we must be allowed to be leaders.

I’m not an insider in the Jill Abramson scandal, and I am not saying that she was fired because she is a woman. I don’t know. But I do know that in her speech to the new graduates, her first public comment on her departure from the Times, she said to, “Show what you’re made of.”

Maybe her speech was actually about media freedom after all.

That Happened is Libby Lowe’s weekly column for EcoSalon analyzing media, news and pop culture through a feminist lens. Keep in touch with Libby @LibbyLowe.

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Is your professional ambition leading to disconnection in your love life?

After decades of second-class citizenship, professional ambition is now at the forefront for many modern women. The mind of an ambitious woman is like having 2,743 browser windows open all the time. The average workweek sucks up 72 hours of our life, and it can be hard to let go without feeling like you’re slacking off – especially if you’re passionate about your career and thrive on the validation of success. That’s when the ambition teeter-totter starts giving you motion sickness: At work, you feel guilty about your love life, and at home you feel guilty about your career. Oy.

“Ambitious women often focus on the other aspects of their life over romance,” says Elizabeth Lombardo, Ph.D., bestselling author of A Happy You: Your Ultimate Prescription for Happiness. “They view their love life as a luxury they’ll focus on after they’ve achieved their goals. The problem is, they never achieve what they think they need to in order to allow themselves to start focusing on love.”

Ambition has always been my partner-in-crime and the bane of my existence, since what it’s given to my career it’s taken away from my love life (i.e. I don’t have one). Here’s four ways to work with your ambition so you can have a thriving (and guilt-free) love life:

1. Identify the source of your ambition.
A recent study published in the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology found that adult children who have at least one workaholic parent are likely to suffer from an abundance of ambition (which in my case, explains everything). I’d been using ambition as a cover for the personal insecurities I didn’t want to face about myself. Once you know what you’re avoiding by working so much, you can take charge of your life – and start creating a whole one.

2. Funnel your ambition completely into work only.
“Women who are overachievers tend to see relationships and family as a ‘goal’ or ‘achievement’ rather than a process,” says psychotherapist and relationship expert Kimberly Moffit. “They tend to focus on getting the perfect man, and their feelings of love can get lost in the process.” (Oops.) Streamline your ambition into your career and let your love life happen naturally. Letting go of all expectations will make you look forward to your time off because there won’t be a to-do list attached.

3. Instead of creating work goals and personal goals, create one big picture.
It’s about creating harmony. If you level the playing field and make your personal goals as important as your career goals, you’ll be more likely to thrive in all areas. Don’t categorize your goals: allow your career and personal life to intertwine and benefit from each other. “Ambitious women need to realize that love isn’t just a distraction,” says Moffit. “A good relationship will provide steady and stable support which will help you work more effectively when you’re on the clock.”

4. Add your personal life to your to-do list.
Adding your personal life to your to-do list is an easy mind-trick that kills two birds with one stone: it helps you prioritize your personal life and gives you a sense of accomplishment when you check “Watch Scandal” off your list.

“It doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing: career or love,” says Lombardo. “You can prioritize love while at the same time excelling at other areas of your life.”

What about you? Does your ambition get in the way of your love life? Tell us about it in a comment.

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Image: parisharing

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Do you have trouble going after what you want? Have you been offered a big opportunity but don’t know if you have the confidence to make it happen? Learn seven of the most common reasons that women lack confidence, and how to bust through each one.

Far fewer women than men are entrepreneurs because women are generally more afraid of failure than men, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2012 Women’s Report [PDF]. In the battle of the sexes, women fall short in terms of confidence, which is unfortunate because self confidence plays an important part in both personal and professional success.

So why are women more likely to lack confidence than men? And more importantly, what can women do to break the cycle?

1. The world around you.

Confidence is your inner perception of your own ability to fulfill a particular job or role in society and it’s influenced by the world around you. This includes crazy families, downer friends, non-supportive partners, and negative employers.

What to do:

Surround yourself with support. Pick a spouse who believes in you, a boss that sees your success, and supportive friends to push you in the right direction when you need it the most.

2. Not living up to goals.

When a goal is accomplished it inspires confidence, but in the same regard, when a goal isn’t accomplished it leads us to question ourselves further.

What to do:

Create a list of well thought out values that you want to achieve in your life. And over time set achievable goals over fixed periods of time. Being a goal oriented individual will do a lot to help you achieve success and even more importantly, build confidence through that success.

3. Faking it until you make it.

Everyone says that you should fake it until you make it, but the fact of the matter is false confidence is no better than lacking confidence.

What to Do:

Take steps to build real confidence. Don’t duck at meetings, speak up. Don’t wait to be chosen. Admit what you don’t know but emphasize the strengths that demonstrate your potential for success.

4. Women assume others are smarter than them.

Women often think that they’re surrounded by people that are smarter than them. There’s a fear of their employer “finding out” that they’re not deserving of their position. Men are less likely to waste time on this sort of thinking.

What to do:

Realize when negative self talk takes over. You’re just as deserving of your position as the dude to your right so stop wasting time on repetitive negative thinking.

5. General pessimism.

Those that lack confidence also tend to think negatively. Just like you think that everyone else is smarter than you, you also think that everyone is prettier, kinder, and has their sh*t together.

What to do:

The power of positive thinking is real. Take a bad situation and try and imagine the positive outcomes that could come from it. Step by step, have faith in either a higher power or yourself (or both). You’ll be shocked at how much more positive the outcome can be. And don’t settle for negative people, they just bring you down.

6. Hormonal surges.

Unfortunate but true. Women have hormonal surges that men don’t have to deal with because of the flow  of estrogen and progesterone in the brain. Sometimes the way we interpret feedback has to do with where we are in our cycle. In fact, 90 percent of women experience some form of low self-esteem two to four days before they start their period.

What to do:

This is a hard one but there are some steps that you can take. Cut back on sugar, alcohol, and caffeine, which all impact mood. Get enough sleep and realize that your moods aren’t you they’re just a part of you. It’s easy to believe the bad when you’re in a bad place.

7. Half genes and half surroundings.

Our personalities are half our genes and half our surroundings. If your parents lacked onfidence than you’re more likely to struggle with it. Additionally, if your parents didn’t demonstrate a belief or interest in your abilities than you won’t either.

What to do:

You can’t help your genes but you can completely help your surroundings. It’s for this reason that number 1 is so darn important.

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Image: Victor1558

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An interview with Christine Gilbert, co-creator of the upcoming documentary “The Wireless Generation.”

Want to travel? Is work keeping you doing it? How would that change if you could work from anywhere? As we featured last week, that’s the lifestyle Christine & Drew Gilbert have crafted for themselves, and it’s the subject of their upcoming documentary The Wireless Generation that they’re funding the release of with a public-backed Kickstarter campaign, ending this Wednesday.

We managed to catch a moment with Christine to ask her about the surprises, challenges and popular misconceptions surrounding a career on the road – and how budding digital nomads might take those first few steps towards doing it themselves…

1. What’s the biggest pleasant surprise you’ve encountered in shifting to a nomadic lifestyle – something you never saw coming during the planning stages?

It came when I had my son, after about two years of being nomadic. Having two stay-at-home parents has been a gift. It’s made everything so much better. When he was little and I felt tied to him all day long, we’d just travel around and I’d carry him in a sling. If he was up all night, it was okay, we just slept in the next day. It made that first year an absolute joy – between the support of having my husband there and getting to continue to travel with a very small child – we loved it. It’s an absolute luxury that most people don’t get to experience and we made a lot of sacrifices to get it. We live frugally, we work hard on our businesses, we own very little stuff. But to us, it’s the best part of having a completely flexible lifestyle.

2. What’s the biggest misconception you’re hearing about working on the road, from people who haven’t tried it?

I think a lot of people assume that we live out of suitcases all year long. My husband and I love to travel but we get burned out on moving around and will pick a place to settle down, renting an apartment, unpacking our things, buying kitchen gadgets. We’ll spend as much time in a place until we get that “feeling” again and decide it’s time to try some new adventure. I know people who travel very hard and others who have been expats in the same place for years. It’s not so much about being a nomad, but the flexibility that comes with that, even if that means heading back home and doing something completely different. It’s about choice not necessarily how or where you travel.

3. How has filming this documentary made you feel about the nature of the traditional corporate model of working, in an office or cubicle?

Before I left my job, I worked at GE as a manager, overseeing software installs and we worked with mostly virtual teams – meaning we would install the software remotely, have all of our meetings over voice or video conference and sometimes we’d even do our training via video. GE did that because, I think, they realized that it was cheaper for them and the client. The client didn’t mind once they realized they didn’t have to pay to fly out a dozen consultants and pay for us to eat reheated eggs at the Hampton Inn.

So I came into this with a strong feeling that the only thing holding back most companies was fear. Mostly it’s managers who think they can’t manage without face-to-face time (it does take practice but you can absolutely do it). During the documentary I heard the same thing, they tried to work with their boss but it was an uphill battle and one person, a professor at a university was let go when he brought it up. Now, that’s changing. One big website the Web Worker Daily just pulled their design and said they were over-hauling it, because these concepts of “how do we communicate virtually” or “how do teams collaborate remotely” have become so normalized that it’s no longer “working online” it’s just working. The tools, even if you work in an office, have just become part of our workflow.

4. How has working while traveling, assembling your mobile office and opening your laptop in so many different places, affected your work habits?

It was a big shift for me in the beginning, but not for technical reasons – it was easy enough to get online and do my work – but for emotional ones. I was lonely in the beginning. I think for most working adults a big piece of our social interaction comes from our workplace and if you jump into working from home, you’ll find this empty spot that you used to fill with little conversations with coworkers or just having other people around. I’m not sure how long it took me to get over it, but I did try to work in cafes in the beginning – anything so I didn’t feel so disconnected. Slowly overtime I built a new network of friends, most of them online, who are there to chat with when I’m procrastinating and some of them I’ve met in real life, others I’ve just known online for years.

5. What’s the most surprising thing your research for the film uncovered?

We tried to find people who came from completely different education, career and economic backgrounds because we suspected that this wasn’t just a 20-something web designer phenomenon, it was broader than that. The surprising thing was hearing the same message over and over again, about how this lifestyle change quickly became routine, meaning it wasn’t that big of a deal. They didn’t constantly think about “working online” or travel.

Instead, in their own ways, they were talking about finding meaning in everything except their work. It shifted how they thought of themselves, their place in the world, and their priorities. You might talk to someone back home at a cocktail party about their life and they’ll say they got a new job or they might get promoted and they bought a house. Talking to these folks they were focused on these other things – learning something new like photography or surfing or yoga, where they want to volunteer next, the things they want to show their children in the world, the side projects they are working on, experiences they want to have like hiking Everest base camp or getting a Master Dive certification. They’re just as hard working and ambitious as our cocktail-hour friends from home but there is a shift from working and acquiring things to chasing meaningful experiences that was universal.

6. After speaking to so many people who have taken the same itinerant career route as you have, what do you think are the most common psychological hurdles in the way of creating a location-independent lifestyle?

Fear of what people will think of you. Fear of failing miserably and publicly. Fear of not being able to pull it off. I was petrified, myself in 2008. I got a $200,000/year job offer two weeks before I was scheduled to move to Madrid, after I had quit my GE job and my family thought I was an IDIOT when I said no. I mean, they were really just disgusted with me. I said at the time, “I’ve been working in this field for eight years now. I made a lot of money. I saved. When do I earn permission to do what I want with my life? When does it end?”

There was stunned silence at the table and I think I finished my glass of wine very quickly. It was hard to do, especially as someone who grew up in a poor family with a single mother. I was throwing away all of the sacrifices she made for me. I knew though, in my heart, I had to do it. It worked out. I was lucky. Being a writer is not the easy way to go about this, but somehow I’ve made it work. I will say this though, that tremendous fear disappeared when I landed in Madrid. My husband and I drove around on a motorbike through the city and I’ve never been so happy in my life. We ate tapas, we took photos, we traveled around and tried to learn Spanish. As much as people are afraid to do it, they have no idea that those feelings can be just as strong in the opposite direction once you make the leap: pure joy. That was my story anyway.

7. Apart from watching the film when it’s released (or seeing it ahead of release by pledging $25 or more to the campaign), what advice would you give budding digital nomads on what to do and where to go to learn the basics?

Don’t be a writer! Ha. It can take 3-5 years to break into writing, so while it seems to be the most popular path, it’s actually quite hard. I’d look for work doing practical things in the beginning like teaching English (if you don’t have a college degree you can still teach English in some countries – Vietnam is one) or working as a virtual assistant. Then I’d work on your passion project at night, whether it’s writing or photography or starting your own online business. If you’re American under 30 you can work & travel in Australia with their working holiday visa. If you’re a manual worker or you’d like to try out working on farms there are tons of opportunities with WWOOF. Bars, hostels and resorts hire lots of young people under the table during high season.

Before you do anyone of that, start living cheap now! Save everything you can, it helps to have 1-2 years of expenses to start out, especially if you’re starting a new career. If you’re already working in a remote-friendly job like IT, design, editing, etc already, then you’re in good shape. If your current boss won’t go remote, you can look for other work, even if it’s a lower salary (it’s much cheaper to live overseas than it is to live in the U.S. or other western countries). Don’t let your first no scare you off. Assume it will happen and doggedly pursue your goal until it does. It worked for everyone I interviewed (even the laid off professor who later found online teaching work for a different university before moving to Thailand).

Thanks, Christine!

(Become a backer of The Wireless Generation here).

Image: katerha; Editor B; Powderruns.

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The soup got torched, again. Zesty flavored whence removed from the can, the now smoky-flavored Trader Joe O’s went to school, anyway, in a pink thermos in the tin Blow Pop novelty lunch box. This, after a cursory taste test confirmed the impossible: She wouldn’t know the difference. Never mind that the cauldron it bubbled fiendishly in was tortured beyond repair. Never mind that she dissects her green beans to remove the bad parts before eating. I was reasoning with the clarity of Lenny from Mice and Men? Show me the rabbits, George. Nah, better not. I’ll probably burn them critters, too.

“Did you burn it while you were working on the computer in the basement?” she inquired, in that accusatory, sassy tween tone reminiscent of the damaged young stars of twit-coms. “Yes, I did it while working in the basement,” I confessed. “I’m so sorry. It won’t happen again.”

Appallingly, I also was exposed at school upon pick up time. The school secretary reported there was something wrong with the way the kid’s soup smelled. “It smelled off,” shared Juanita, scrunching her nose like my Pug dog, Mr. Jones, when ordering him to stop licking the Bounce sheets. Yeah, lady, what smelled off was my motherhood. Time to set some boundaries, right? Or at least install a kitchen timer in the basement.

Truth is, working from home via the computer is certainly a good way to go, but understand the perks and pitfalls. You save huge amounts of money and fuel by going about your business online. Commuting to work by car and writing it off is still commuting. No, telecommute if you can, even if the mouse in your house is a huge distraction – keeping you from becoming the Alice Waters you aspire to be.

Clearly, more of us are clicking with that mouse to earn a livelihood. The U.S. Census Bureau reports sizable increases in the number of Americans working out of their homes. It shot up from 9.5 million in 1999 to 11.3 million of us in 2005.  Half of all home workers have college degrees and earn at least $75,000 a year, and also work longer hours than the average worker to make that dough, about 11 hours per day.

Studies also show growth in the number of employees telecommuting on multiple days of the week, from 2.3 million in 2005 to 2006 up to 2.8 million workers from 2007 to 2008. Chances are it will keep rising, and want-ads will reflect that rise rather than the sprinkling of telemarketing options available now.

In the year 2010, telecommuting is hugely viable and still not always acceptable to backwards employers, who argue nothing replaces relationships formed at the cooler. Not even forgoing costly commercial rental space.

But those who understand the benefits admit technology has outmoded the need to traverse the country in jet planes and rack up business class frequent flier miles to do business. It has outmoded the need to show up to a cubicle every day with your tail wagging to get a bone. That way of doing biz is up in the air and destined to being grounded for good if we keep it up. I know you know what I mean by keeping it up.

Meanwhile, back to the soup. There are unavoidable pitfalls and some avoidable ones to multitasking in too comfortable of an environment, namely, one that you control 100 percent.

Unavoidable

You will find the cut-off time to be elusive when your office is where you also shower, cook, social network, pay bills, wash clothes and generally manage your own life and or the lives of children and other living things. Yes, plants count.

You often cough up your own medical insurance unless the employer has it covered, struggle to squeeze in exercise which actually is easier to do once you are already out and about, and may decide to screw the housework which you would ordinarily fit in before work in the morning or when you get home. Ah ha. See, you don’t leave and you don’t come home. Hello piles of dirty clothes and towels, sink of dishes, unmade beds. Wouldn’t you rather work than tackle those unpleasant chores? Isn’t it because you hate housework that you dive into work in the first place?

Avoidable

Over-scheduling. Don’t do it. It will lead to overwhelm which will lead to wine with lunch on the couch. You can still stick to a schedule like any office rat, just give yourself a window of completing must-do tasks and prioritize as you go. Then visualize the stop button on the treadmill and push it when the time comes to clock out. Warning. If you devote time to social networking during much of your down time, there will be no down time. Limit that as well.

And do place that timer in the home office. My sister gave me one years ago and when I reorganize the kitchen drawers I bet I’ll find it. No school secretary deserves to smell rotten soup. Sorry Juanita. If I can hyperlink, download images, Facebook and Twitter, I should be able to time a pot of pasta soup on the stove. I won’t give up, won’t  resort to peanut butter and jelly and return to the cold and rigid environs of a corporate work setting.

Keep telling yourself that. Better yet, send a Gmail reminder to your Yahoo account, print it and tack it on the bulletin board in front of your computer. Add the affirmation, Telecommuters rule. Then get out of your pajamas, have some lunch, do a load of laundry, say hello to the mailman, and get back to work.

Images: Fabio Bruna; SuperFantastic; Shari Thompson

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