I’ve always advocated that loving your work is the key to being happy and successful.

My good friend, CM, doesn’t agree. He says, “Do whatever will make you a lot of money, and then you’ll have the money to indulge your passions.”

My problem is that if you don’t love your work, you’ll spend 40 to 60 hours a week doing something that bores you — to me, a miserable existence.

A recent article in the Daily News says that “people who are happy with their jobs are 4 times more likely to be happy with their lives” … a fact that supports my position.

The article also notes that 65% of those surveyed by Salary.com are dissatisfied with their jobs at least part of the time. Yikes!

How about you?

Do you work to live … or, like me, live to work?

Do you love your job … or just tolerate it to make money?

It amazes me that people get paid much more to talk about their job, skill, or area of expertise — as professional speakers — than they do to actually DO their job.

Example: As Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan holds the fate of the U.S. economy in his hands, and in return is paid $180,000 to work the entire year managing it.

When he retires from the Fed, I heard on the radio today, he will join the pro speaking circuit — where he will get paid $150,000 to give a one-hour talk about the economy.

Am I the only one who sees a disconnect in these disparate payscales?

An article from CareerBuilder.com lists the “25 top jobs for 2006.”

They include some careers I’d expect or wasn’t surprised to see on the list — software engineer, sales, nursing — and some that struck me as odd choices, including waiter and janitor.

Notably absent from the list: marketing manager, advertising manager, writer, copywriter, editor, publisher, journalist, and most of the other jobs people reading this blog are involved in.

So … are our careers no longer hot or even desirable? Would you encourage your kids to follow in your footsteps — or tell them to pick a profession other than yours?

What say you?

I was reading the Daily News today and came across a 2-page spread that is part of AT&T?s new global positioning campaign.

The headline is in small blue type. The body copy is in reverse, in tiny white type. Both are on a black background.

Using reverse type in body copy, at best a risky proposition in magazine advertising, is a deadly sin in newspaper advertising.

Reason: the ink spreads more on the cheaper newsprint paper, encroaching into the white letters, and making the body copy almost unreadable.

I am sure that AT&T uses a big Madison Avenue ad agency to handle their advertising — and it is amazing to me that a professional art director on Madison Avenue does not know this simple design principle.

A recent mailing for the National Constitution Center noted somewhat cynically that more teenagers can name the members of the Three Stooges than can name the three branches of government.

What this tells us, I think, is that young people find the government and politics increasingly irrelevant, incompetent, evil, or some combination of these ? and that popular culture plays a more important role in their lives.

I know readers of this blog can name the three branches of government. But is pop culture also important to you?

Answer the questions below and judge for yourself:

1. What is Herman Munster?s home address?
2. What is the serial number on the original U.S.S. Enterprise?
3. Name the three teenage boys who have teamed with Batman as Robin?

And of course, searching the Internet to get the answers is cheating.

Several direct marketing gurus have said: “If you want to understand what your market is thinking, read the supermarket tabloids.”

But I’m not sure that’s true any more, after reading some tabloids and finding the headlines below.

By the way, 4 of these headlines are real, and one I made up. Can you spot the fake?

1. Man Poses as CPR Dummy to Meet Women.

2. New James Bond Actor is a CIA Spy in Real Life.

3. Man is So Cruel He Has Ice Water In His Veins.

4. Possessed Pepper Shaker Terrorizes Family.

5. Aliens Settle in San Francisco; Refugees Call Their New Home “Little Mercury.”

Having just been given an assignment to write a letter aimed at seniors, and rapidly approaching that status myself, I paused to think about what seniors (and near-seniors, like me) think, feel, and believe.

Here?s what I think senior believe:

1. Idiosyncratic, gruff, even crabby behavior is more accepted in the old than the young.
2. The old days were better than today.
3. The moral decay of society is accelerating at an almost exponential rate.
4. Young people think they know everything, but in fact know almost nothing.
5. Society has become coarse and crude.
6. Technology scares them. They don?t understand it. But they wish they did.
7. Their number one fear: outliving their retirement savings and being financially dependent on others.
8. Their number two fear: old age, illness, and death.

Are these on the money? Or are my assumptions off base?

What other beliefs, feelings, desires, and attitudes do seniors hold that you might play upon when selling or marketing to them?

Semantics ? the language you use to describe your product and offer ? can make a huge difference in bottom-line results.

If that were not true, no car dealer would advertise ?pre-owned automobiles.? They would just sell used cars.

Another example: Collin Street Bakery, headquartered in Texas, was struggling to generate sales for its fruitcake.

The cakes are delicious. But ?fruitcake? has a negative image.

One of the reasons Collin Street fruitcakes taste so good is they are made with pecans grown on the Texas river banks.

So Collin Street Bakery repositioned their fruitcake, calling it a ?Native Texas Pecan Cake.?

The results: response rates to direct mail selling the cakes increased 60% ? and the promotion was so successful, the bakery mailed 12 million pieces of mail.