My Gen Y Life

There is a short span of time where you are no longer a teenager and not yet have all the responsibilities of adulthood, marriage, and mortgages. This can be the best time of your life or it can be a waste. Before you plunge into “full” adulthood take my advice as someone who has passed through this era.

You will make more critical decisions in these years than at any other time in your life. Take a second to let that sink in. Think about it – you decide where to get your degree, what career to pursue, where you will go after college (and possibly meet your future spouse), and what friends you will let influence your life. My life would be so different right now if I had tweaked any of these decisions.

Make the most of your college years. Not just the partying part, but take advantage of the opportunities you have as a college student to travel abroad, compete in a sport or club, take part in a variety of eye-opening experiences, and enjoy every day you have. It won’t be long before every day starts to look the same and the years just fly by.

Open up as many choices for yourself as you can. While this could be a detriment by having too many good choices to choose from, it’s better than not having any. Don’t pigeon-hole yourself into one area or one route because if you change your mind, it may be too late. Although I had to turn down a couple great opportunities, I was able to choose the one that felt right and didn’t feel like I was pushed into it.

Lastly, try not to worry about the “what-if’s” too much. There is a sense of destiny that things will happen and opportunities will present themselves as they were meant to be. But who wants to stand around waiting?  You’re more likely to find what you’re looking for if you try than if you just wait for it to come to you.

Millennials are a new breed of consumers who are well connected – to their families, friends, and online “communities”. They spend time with the people that matter to them, whether virtually, on the phone, or in person. These connections are influential to Millennials at work, home, and in the consumer world.

Don’t underestimate social networking
Getting connected with this generation is less push and more pull. No longer does one-way communication work. Instead you have to tell us “what’s in it for me?”, and then we might include you in our comparison process. The result if you can connect with our generation is a very loyal and influential network. Something not to be underestimated.

If you’re a young professional, you have likely been asked by your boss (or you asked them) to attend an industry conference to expand your knowledge and receive relevant training. I recently attended a week-long conference in New England and by the time you hit Hump Day your head starts to hurt. Instead of getting overwhelmed by all the information and “useful” techniques, try to focus on how to get the most out of it for yourself.

1. Be adventurous. The conference will be more memorable if you can enjoy your surroundings. Being that you’re far away from home you will have a lot of time to spend outside the conference and should take advantage of that opportunity by exploring the city. Ask the locals where the best places to eat or favorite sites to see are.

2. Attend a session that is completely off the subject. It’s easy to overload yourself with information that is tied to your job. Hearing about other topics outside of your sphere can actually stimulate you to think differently about what you do in your job. It’s also refreshing to change your frame of mind and think about something else.

3. Think practical. Oftentimes speakers hype up the topic and give you best-case scenarios for fixing a problem. Ask yourself if this is something realistic and accomplishable at your organization, and if not, how can you tailor it to meet your organization’s needs. Seeing and doing are completely different things.

4. Do a brain dump. Even if you took good notes on the slides, it’s hard to remember what it meant six months later if you just stash your conference materials into the bottom of your file cabinet. As soon as the conference is over and you’re back in the office, compile your notes and the concepts you learned into a document, sorted into categories that are relevant for you.

5. Don’t try to boil the ocean. It’s cliché, I know, but seriously don’t try to accomplish the impossible. Pinpoint a few simple things from the conference that you can implement right away, and then prioritize 2-3 larger concepts for implementation.

Your boss won’t expect you to come back and revolutionize the workplace. You can prove the value of the conference by implementing a few key concepts that you may not have thought of otherwise. Hopefully the conference exposed you to new ideas or paths for your career and new people that helped you grow not only professionally, but personally too.

I love my day job. I review and comment on my company’s websites, looking for ways to make the sites more user-friendly and up to design standards. Call it a gift or a curse, but now I look critically at almost every website I encounter. I recently came across possibly the worst website ever, so bad in fact that I refuse to use their services in person anymore.

One evening my DH and I were lounging around the house when we thought it would be a brilliant idea to order pizza online. My laptop was conveniently within arm’s reach so we figured it would be easier than getting up to grab the telephone or using our precious cell phone minutes. We typed in www.dominos.com and found what we thought was a really interactive Gen-Y-geared site. They even list 68 creative reasons why you should order online. Homepage is good - engaging, easy buttons, quick.

Once you click on the order page it’s a totally different ballgame. First they require you to enter in your full address - not just your city/state or zip code. I don’t see why when it just brings up a list of stores to pick from. So you pick one and then it tells you need to sign up. The site doesn’t even remember the information you’ve already given them.

So fine, I enter in my address and my e-mail and proceed to the sixth page of pre-ordering sign-up screens. Then it tells me “Sorry, you’re store is not currently available for online ordering.” Give me a break! I just gave you all this information about my name, my address, my e-mail, my preferred store location, and all I get is an error screen? Can’t you at least give me the number to call my order in? Uggh.

Oh, and if they do serve your area, the site gets even worse. You have to indicate how you will pay (why the heck does it matter when I’m gonna go pick it up) and if you change your mind it will erase your whole order. Bad implementation Domino’s!

Note to websites trying to tap into the Gen-Y market - the site better be pretty slick or it could quickly discredit not only your site but your brick-and-mortar store too. We frankly don’t have enough time to sit around waiting for slowpokes to figure out technology - we’ll go to the place that has.

This is the view that I perceived of Americans when traveling in Europe recently, and I can’t say it’s completely false. I wish all Americans had the chance to go abroad and see how other people lived and take a minute to look at themselves.

 Americans are fat

We all know there is an obesity problem in the U.S. We see it on TV (“Biggest Loser” reality show), in the news about all the obese children, and all the fad diets that are perpetuating in the media. An outspoken German woman on the flight over to Europe spelled it out simply - all the processed food we eat. You see, in Europe (and many other areas of the world) you go to the store more than once a week so you always have fresh fruit, vegetables, and bread. You would be hard-pressed to find much “light” or “fat-free” Healthy-Choice-type food in their supermarkets, yet they’re not gaining weight like Americans are. It’s because they eat food in moderation, and likely, because the food is fresh and doesn’t contain all the preservatives. They also sell most things in small packaging, meaning that you either will have to use less of it or come back frequently. Either way, you’ll probably shed some calories.

Americans are fake

A European friend of mine once it explained it to me like this: Europeans are like Oranges - they may be rough on the outside, but are sweet on the inside. On the other hand, Americans are like Peaches - they seem nice and friendly on the outside, but are hard on the inside. I liked this because it’s true - in capitalist America we try to be the most customer-friendly people but really we are just trying to up our profits. In our views and actions too - we say that we are eco-friendly if we own a recycling bin and buy energy-saving appliances.  But we forget that we also drive around gas-guzzling SUVs, don’t sort our own recycling (in Europe they have four standard bins in public places), and continue to build huge homes and have huge appliances for all our huge Costco-size food.

Americans are uncultured

You probably know this already, too. Most Americans’ only exposure to foreign cultures is high school Spanish class. Granted, we are not surrounded by very many other countries (I counted two), but we are also ignorant and expect when we go to other countries that they will speak English and cater to Americans. I was not surprised when I saw a sign at an Italian restaurant that said “No Tourist menu. Locals only” spelled in English of course. Listen to the news or watch a TV show and you will notice that we rarely ever mention anything that is not related to the U.S.