You know, I’ve found that being too focused on your employer’s goals can distract you from you own. That’s not to say that your goals and your employer’s can’t be similar or overlap. Nor am I suggesting that your employer (large or small) is controlling your future, however, you do need to make sure that you are attending to your own agenda to ensure your own growth.
Too Involved
Being deeply involved in your job can be very rewarding to many. I for one really liked being an important team member in my department – I was able to recommend or bring solutions to the table for difficult problems. The more successful you are at your job, it sometimes leads to overworking yourself and keeping you away from family, friends and, generally, life itself.
Time Out!
This is where I want to suggest that you take a minute (hour?) and think about what your goals are in your life. Go ahead, I’ll wait…
Ok, now that you’ve thought a bit – have you ever written these ideas down? Have you ever sat down with a notepad or journal and created even an abbreviated overview of your life & career goals? If you’re married, have you and your spouse sat down and outlined a plan? While not a requirement, it can help alleviate some unknowns or uncertainties and can foster conversations on finding those dreams and wishes for the future.
Planning
Every successful business, organization, or project starts with a planning session. The more intricate, expensive, or critical, the more a plan is important in it’s success. The same is true of your life & career, without some kind of plan you’re likely going to wander through life without as much enjoyment as might be possible.
Having an overall plan can help keep focus of what your next step should or might be. There are so many things that come up in life that you can’t plan for, but you should always be able to see that you’re off track, or that your views and goals are changing. Being able to refer back to a plan from time to time can help in motivating oneself as well.
Map It Out
One way to start could be to simply draw a map. Think about how you plan a road trip with start/end points, rest stops, points of interest, etc… Starting with today as your starting point and pick something that you wish or dream for as an end point. Next you could start identifying points along way that you need to get to your dream, roadblocks that could keep it from happening, and detours to get around them.
Change Is Good
Don’t be afraid to change those goals either. It’s important to really allow for growth and maturity that changes one’s opinions and possibly one’s goals. You may be satisfied as a single professional, but what if that one special person turns up next week? Life is a never ending series of events to be experienced. Plan that things will change. Hey, the best part here is that you don’t have to negotiate a “Change Request” for your project – regardless of the budget.
All this is just an exercise in planning and contingency management. My whole point is to get you thinking of your agenda (family, kids, college, retirement, recreation, etc…), as much as you think about your employer’s agenda. It’s great to be the go-to person for an organization, but remember that it’s your future that you’re really working for. Enjoy the trip, don’t let it sneak up on you!
In communication it is easy to “over-do” it. We all use email, voice, IM, RSS, and more. The trick is to manage your time, and other’s expectations at the same time. We’ve grown used to instant contact to nearly everyone in our address books over the last decade (or more) to the detriment of productivity.
While we have increased our productivity over the last 10+ years, I think we have hit a plateau as far as communicating with each other. It has become so easy to ask a person a question, to get an answer that we often forget the implications of doing so. The more we communicate, the more we interrupt and distract each other. Now I’m repeating a lot of what many are saying, but I’m also going to be following these methods to gain back what could amount to several hours in a week.
Email
Take the ubiquitous email for example. We all abuse it on a daily basis, hoping to steal attention from one another to perform some task or other. Most of the time, the answer is already available to use, but we seem to feel like pestering a coworker or friend is a better use of time than looking up the answer ourselves.
As recent Lifehacker post Limit your email messages to 5 sentences details, you can work towards brevity. An elegant explanation can be found at five.sentenc.es if you care to link to it. Going even further going back to setting expectations, you can train people to expect shorter messages.
Another technique that is becoming common lately is to process your email (and feeds for that matter) once a day. Again, when you set the expectation that you will respond within a day, you can pick the time that works best in your schedule to read/reply to email. Process later in the day to get a jump on the next day, or mid-morning to answer any critical questions for the day. Depending on your responsibilities, I’m betting you’ll find the right time.
Feeds
News & Blog feeds are a fantastic way to increase your information consumption. A good reader also makes a big difference here too. The amount of information that one can process through feeds as apposed to individual web pages is amazing. I literally increased my ability to consume information more than ten-fold with feeds (and Dave Winer’s “river of news” layout). Combine that with a an reader like Google Reader that is available anytime, anywhere and you have a powerful news appliance.
The problem, of course, is that you can easily become a news junkie – always hitting refresh and watching for new bits to come through. While entertaining, it’s a waste of time. The industry news doesn’t change from 9am to 3pm, so why watch it all day? Why not process your feeds once a day, similar to email? Later or earlier, it doesn’t matter – it’ll keep you up to date on your industry and help you gain back hours in the week.
IM
Instant Messaging is another essential business tool that we abuse. I’ll allow to some former coworkers that it is potentially HUGE time waster (Tom, Craig – ya listening?). BUT the flip side of that is that IM is one of the most important productivity tools that an individual or company can leverage. The trick is managing the tool to your advantage. Every IM tool allows you to set your presence as “Busy”, “Do Not Disturb”, “Offline” or some other status that indicates you are not available.
The biggest mistake is that, like email, we feel like we need to answer any request immediately. Start using your status to reflect your actual work status. Are you trying to get that report done? That presentation polished? That document formatted? For crying out loud – that means your “Busy” – set your status and revel in uninterrupted bliss.
Micro-Blogging
Now micro-blogging platforms like Twitter (and Jaiku, Pownce, and Hictu) are a different breed. They cross boundaries like covered by blogging, IM, and SMS (text messaging). The result is a literal fire-hose of status updates and thought streams from dozens, hundreds or thousands of individuals depending on how many “friends” you have. The concept can be hard to get your head around, but the beauty of these platforms is their brevity.
While not the case with some competing services, Twitter restricts each post (called a Tweet) to 140 characters. This will train you to be concise and descriptive. This is very good, because it helps you hone your communication skills by communicating only the information that is required.
Summary
So in explaining what I’ve been learning and thinking about for several months, I’ve written a verbose and wordy description about how not to be. I hope the hypocrisy of the post helps drive the point home. The basic thing to keep in mind no matter what communication tools you use is to leverage the tool to your benefit. Think about time as much as you think about what you communicate.
Ah, another productive Friday. Sometimes I’m surprised at the amount of work I get done on Fridays. A little sunshine, a little Van Halen, WiFi, Coffee, and the work gets done.
This is something that I just couldn’t do in corporate – the dirty secret is that I could have if only allowed to. Working off-site is better than working at home, better than an empty office with a door, better than booking an obscure conference room for the day (week!?).
Just get out of the office, away from home, out where nobody is going to bother you. Try it. You will be amazed.
Finding your passion is one of the most important things that you can do for yourself. Being productive, hard working, and loyal to your employer is great, but for you to really push past any boundary, real or imagined, you need to find your passion.
Each of us have a passion for something. Sometimes we subdue that passion, push it into the background because of some more important issue or problem. When that time passes, do we go back and pick up where we left off? If you’re like most people, probably not. Other times we just don’t have the time to explore them in depth to begin with.
The problem for many people is that they get so tied up in being a “good employee” that they forget to think about going after what makes them happy. Its hard, and it requires thinking about things outside one’s comfort level. Many times going after your passions requires stepping outside one’s area of expertise. It could also mean leaving a “sure thing” and putting your future at risk. All these things combine to make it difficult to say the least.
As you delve into the process of exploring what really makes you tick, take it all into account. What you enjoyed doing back in high school & college, your hobbies, your family, your job, your career path, your dreams & desires. Don’t leave one thing out otherwise you’re not going to get to the bottom of what matters most to you.
What I found was radical change after an 18 month process of evaluation of work, values, and employer. It culminated in a business trip, a tech conference, that really demonstrated what else I could do. It was an awakening, reminding me that there was more to the technology than just making it work. What did I find? That I’m a communicator and a teacher. That I can redefine what success is. That my innermost dreams and ambitions are achievable.
An important part of finding your passions is to make them part of your career, or make them your career, period. By doing this and finding the right balance, you can bring enjoyment to every working day.
@MAC_Arms Pay taxes when you make your money, pay taxes when you spend your money, pay taxes when you successfully invest your money, pay taxes when you save enough taxed money to afford a house, pay taxes to live in your house, pay taxes when you sell the house that you paid taxes on to
Yup, taxes are criminal and we need serious reforms. I've always said that if you want to see a tax revolt, make withholdings illegal and have Americans write a tax check every payday. They'll revolt for sure. You don't miss what you never had.
Sen. @berniemoreno says voter ID and proof of citizenship are simply common sense.
“We’re talking about a very low threshold — identify who you are and prove you’re a U.S. citizen when you register to vote. I think we’re getting closer to
