By Will, Dan, James and Trina

So we’ve been quiet on the blog lately and not posting as regularly. The reason for this? We’ve been working away quietly in the background on a new enterprise from the Leading Associates team. We’re not ready to pull back the curtains on this one just yet, but while it’s in development our regular postings maybe turbulent at best.

So, stay tuned and we’ll let you know what’s coming next.

by James

I’m cautious by nature. I put money in to my savings first before spending; am always early as I’m afraid of being late (actually scared of it!) and d…
This is the way I am and I don’t intend to make a radical u-turn any time soon, but I do sometimes wonder what my life would be like if I did spend all my money on having a good time, turn up when I felt like it and let my hair down completely (this is obviously just a metaphor as I don’t have any hair to let down!).

By Daniel

Work was piling up on all fronts and I was on a collision course for classic burnout. Climbing up the corporate ladder, dedicating nights and weekends to a start-up, and of course blogging in between really left no time for anything… Then, she called me.

I hadn’t seen her in years, but she was just as I remembered her.

Sunday brunch was the request and it was exactly what the doctor ordered. A dose of champagne/mimosas, taken with great conversation and a small crush. It was refreshing and fun. I hadn’t felt so relaxed in months.

As we got up to leave I felt like that first grader running around the park and hearing the dreaded bell that ended recess. Is it over already?! Yes, sonny, it is… and she went leaving on a jet plane back to LA. I’m not sure if it was the champagne or the fact that it was my first deep conversation in months. I found myself standing there asking the question what should I do with my life now?

By Trina

Recently, a few posts on Brazen Careerist about work-life balance have caught my attention. Many people have strong opinions on the matter. Jake on Jobs is of the “work now, play later” mindset. He says, “…Work/Life balance is not something 20-somethings should be worried about. Instead, my suggestion is to work your butt off until you find a job that doesn’t feel like work.” Whereas Jenny Blake talks about looking at your overall quality of life, “…part of the reason I was feeling so tired was that I let work completely take over my life…the more I let things that energize me fall out of my routine, the more tired I become, and the less able I am to perform high-quality work.” My stance: I don’t think you can get to a place where it doesn’t feel like work unless you have a good quality of life. In other words, good personal life is complementary to good work life.

Guest Writer - James Shelley

You have seen them thousands of times before: hungry, forlorn children on the television screen. And then, like a divine ray of numerical hope, up flashes a promising 1-800 number and the opportunity to “sponsor a child” in a developing country. You do not even have to be watching TV to encounter this humanitarian plea: child sponsorship organizations promote at concerts, put ads on Facebook, plaster billboards and syndicate material through the most distained communication medium in the world: junk mail.

It is hard to argue against the benefit of child sponsorship in the eyes of a fly-infested, belly-extruded child. What kind of cold-hearted bastard would not hand over their credit card number immediately? Very real and natural instincts provoke us with an emotional response (which, not ironically, the producers of these ads know full well as they go for your emotional jugular). However, this article exists…

By Trina

Right now I am in this fabulous life stage: I’m educated, single, emancipated from my parents, employed, full of life, cute (I have to give myself some credit), and blessed with a derriere that rivals JLO and Kim Kardashian (I’m learning to embrace rather than hate it). This is the time when I am supposed to be dating these great guys and going out for cosmopolitans with my fabulous girlfriends.

Instead, I find myself going through the same routines and doing unglamorous things like drinking wine alone and watching the BBC Pride and Prejudice miniseries (I nearly tackled the delivery guy when it arrived from Amazon). Where do the cute boys and dates come in?

By Daniel

Seeing her was always the highlight of my day. She was one of those girls that had her own style and always found a different way to wear her clothes. She was eccentric, fashionable, unique, or whatever cliché that never described her perfectly. Admiring her from a distance, I realized she had something that I didn’t have. In all its glory, high school produced in me feelings of paralyzing self doubt. This girl, however, was incredibly confident, and that in itself was intoxicating.

Self confidence is what we all lack, what we all want, and what we all need. That’s why when we meet someone that has it, we can’t help but be drawn to it. I was a late bloomer. My old high school crush was just one of those experiences that pushed me to find my own. What I’ve realized is that finding self confidence is a lifelong…

By Will

We received the inevitable during the week. An email from Corporate announcing that there would be an indefinite freeze on merit pay increases due to the current economic pratfall (the word downturn is becoming hackneyed…and pratfall is both grammatically correct and comfortingly appropriate to me). Being honest this wasn’t unexpected and it makes sense. Although I was initially annoyed - 2008 was a tough work year for everyone - it did remind me of a conversation that I had a few weeks back with a colleague - how do you reward or recognise employees these days without just throwing money at them? And given that my place of work is filled with GenY-ers, I couldn’t help but think about how rewarding my generation in the workplace needs to be different than just relying on cash payments…

So what is the basis for saying that Gen Y is different from any other generation?…