All The Right Moves: Your Next Move

6. In a down economy, am I better off as a specialist or a generalist?

Most people would likely vote generalist: If you don't know where your next gig will come from, better not to be typecast. Not so fast, argues Ezra Zuckerman, professor of strategic management at MIT's Sloan School.

Zuckerman and his colleagues did a three-year study of the film industry to see if typecasting -- a term that elicits howls of anguish from actors -- could work to one's advantage. The result: For most actors, being identified with a genre helps maintain a foot-hold in a tough industry. (In the study, less than one-third of actors who got a film credit found any further movie work over the next three years.)

So what does that mean if you're the Sly Stallone of enterprise software? "You have to fit into a category that intermediaries like headhunters understand," says Zuckerman. "If you start off as a generalist and try to avoid typecasting, you may not get to play in the first place."

That said, your best bet for standing out is to demonstrate a neighboring set of skills that may be rare for someone in your category (think Jim Carrey in The Truman Show). Then, once you land the job, you can leverage those skills into a position with more range. Linda Tischler

7. There's less work to get done, so how can I spend less time at the office?

One of the great mysteries of the downturn is how seemingly every company complains that there's not enough business to go around, yet most of us still feel overworked and overwhelmed. Here's a four-step guide to using the downturn as an opportunity to slow down.

Step one: Admit to yourself, "I am not indispensable." Repeat over and over. Most people don't want to admit this. Most people are wrong.

Step two: Take a vacation. If you're not used to vacations, start with a four-day weekend. Plan it months in advance, and share your intentions with your boss and colleagues. That way, a last-minute crisis won't easily derail your getaway.

Step three: Get out more. "I cut back a few years ago," says Robert Drago, professor of labor studies at Pennsylvania State University and a longtime advocate of a federally mandated shorter workweek. "It was the most difficult thing I had ever done. First, I had to force myself not to think about work all the time. The easiest way to do that is to get involved in another organized activity -- something outside of work that actually requires you to be there at a certain time. For me, it was coaching soccer. It could be getting involved in a church activity or taking a class -- anything that requires a concrete commitment with real demands."

Step four: Restructure your work. This is the toughest step of all, not just because most people are wedded to self-imposed overtime, but because many bosses demand it. "You would have to make it financially worthwhile for your employer," Drago says. "Employers save money when people work longer hours," because the alternative is hiring more employees and paying more in benefits.

One option is to present your boss with a plan for a job share, which, in many cases, can be costless to the employer. Another, more drastic, possibility: Quit the job and refashion yourself as a consultant. Your hours will be your own. More or less. Keith H. Hammonds

8. Is this a terrible time to leave a job you don't love?

We were hoping for a counterintuitive answer to this one -- you know, some rah-rah exhortation that you shouldn't let a slow economy dull your ambitions. So we sought the advice of the irre-pressible Jeff Taylor, founder and chairman of Monster, the recruiting Web site.

But even the high-energy, pro-change Taylor cautions a go-slow approach. No matter how much extra work has been dumped on your desk or how grim things seem at your company, now may not be the ideal time to start shopping for that new interview suit.

"You could sit around and focus on how your job feels like it has hit a dead end," he says. "Or you could look at this as an amazing time to double down at your company."

Double down? "Look, your company has a lot fewer employees," Taylor says. (Monster, for example, had to cut 25% of its staff during the past year.) "There hasn't been a better time to push your career forward within your company and take on additional responsibility." But Taylor says that you won't see that opportunity if you're focusing on how bad things are relative to the glory days of the late 1990s.

There's no question that there are lots of unhappy people in the office these days. In polls of its Web-site visitors, Monster found that 73% of people say that their work has taken a turn for the worse in the past year. Only 14% say that their work has improved.