Change Agent - Issue 47

Situation report: At Reader's Digest in the 1950s, Lila Wallace used to walk from office to office and say, "It's a beautiful day. Turn off the lights and go home." And it was 4 -- PM! Maybe if you left the office once a week at 4 PM, the decisions that you would make the next day would be a lot better. Go home. Have dinner with your family. You'll be glad you did.

My recommendation: If your current job environment is one where the only way to avoid getting fired is to work all the time, then hey, get fired. The unemployment rate is still only 4%, and if you're smart enough to be reading this magazine, well, there are plenty of jobs out there that reward you for being smart -- not for digging the most coal.

Seth Godin (sgodin@fastcompany.com) is the author of Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends, and Friends Into Customers (Simon & Schuster, 1999) and Unleashing the Ideavirus (Do you zoom inc., 2000). Get his latest book for free on the Web (www.ideavirus.com).