So, sitting outside during lunch today led me to think again about the opportunities presented to each of us for improving our working conditions. It’s not entirely our employer’s responsibility to improve things.
Ok, maybe you don’t have the kind of job where you can walk away from the desk and still get work done. Maybe you should look for one! Regardless, many businesses have remote work opportunities via remote access technologies. Take advantage of them when you get a chance.
There is nothing worse than having the opportunities in front of you and not using them. Get out there! Take your laptop, a notepad, your phone or whatever the minimal toolset you need to do some work for an hour and just GO.
Grab an iced latte, take 15 minutes to unwind, and 30 minutes to brainstorm, organize, think, ponder, work, or whatever. You’ll be refreshed and the 2nd half of the day will go much smoother because of it. Trust me.
Sometimes it’s hard to let go of what we do. What I mean is that it can be hard sharing everything that you know, and teach other people what your job entails. The natural reaction is to hang on to that knowledge, be the expert, the guru that can do it all.
However, are you getting any real new chances, or does everyone believe that because you’re too valuable doing what you’re doing that they don’t send opportunities in your direction? Holding on too tight to what you know can be detrimental to learning and growing. Sometimes it’ll keep you from being able to try new things.
Hand it over
In order to gain real traction to take advantage of new opportunities, you need to start offloading what you’ve been doing. It’s time to stretch yourself, challenge your skills with something outside your comfort zone. To do that, you’re going to need to have more time to focus and learn. You can’t do that holding onto what you do today. It’s time to start mentoring those that want your job.
Create Change
To get started, you’ll need to create an environment for this change. You have new habits to learn, and you should talk with your manager so they know what your plans are. Odds are your company already has much of this in place, it’s your job to step in and let them know that you’re interested in something new. By letting your managers know that you’re interested, and by doing things like sharing knowledge and cross training staff you show that your serious about it too.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot of work, and it takes time to get it done. However, it’s very rewarding to see people perk up at the opportunity to learn something new. They’ll be more receptive to your ideas and you’ll find interactions with co-workers be less stressful if you’re sharing.
Sharing
This is true of nearly every successful person. Sharing knowledge and enabling others to achieve their goals makes you a valuable person. More so than if you hang onto that guru-level knowledge, keeping it for yourself in a vain attempt to make you indispensable. Sharing makes you more valuable because it demonstrates your ability to learn new things and convey them to others – teaching. Over time, you also learn the art of delegation, how to distribute workload to associates tasked with assisting you. This allows you to focus on more forward looking work – the fun stuff.
So letting go of the control over the knowledge you’ve accumulated for your job can be beneficial. There are many variations and taking some leadership, organizational, interpersonal, and project management skills classes is a must to facilitate the change you’re looking for. Just don’t be afraid of sharing that hard-won knowledge. The rewards you reap for stepping out and taking the lead will be greater than staying where you were.
Life is the great adventure. At times it can also be a bit perplexing, like how do you know when you’ve turned a corner in your career? Especially in these interesting times when social media is attracting so much attention, but has so little meaning in the “real world”.
Exploration of blogging and connecting people is a lot of hard, but rewarding work. It can sometimes be challenging to keep up with both the real work and the need to connect with people and learn new things as a human being. Where is the reward for all this work?
That’s where I’m at right now. I’m a technology geek that’s really good at big-picture problem solving – been doing that for 20 years. However, I’ve spent the last two or three years learning that I like interacting with people and seeing them connect with peers to accomplish new things. I have no pretensions that I’m critical to any of this, only that I enjoy it.
So what’s the next step? I blogged about that awhile ago, and am becoming more convinced that, for me, a move towards blog consulting and working with corporate blogging efforts is needed. It’s one direction that I’ve been exploring and I see many possibilities of such a shift. Especially as new discussions of blogging and it’s value have again started turning up in the blogosphere and the MSM again. Of course it’s what we’ve always known about new media, it’s just people taking another look at a disrupting technology rather than dismissing it.
Most bloggers start blogging for many reasons, I happened to start because I needed an outlet. (Blogging friend Steven Hodson has a great related post titled What do I owe my readers? that I recommend reading as well.) I also started a couple other blogs because I thought (like many) that it was an easier way to make a living. I’ve since figured it out that it’s really very hard work that requires a substantial time investment. However instead of the monetary payoff I thought I’d find, it turned into something that I’m passionate about.
After a few years of blogging and trying to find my path, I realized that I’d been following it fairly well but hesitant to commit to exploring it. I’ve been holding back from what lies over the edge. It’s something I now need to explore vigorously.
The biggest thing I’ve discovered that brings me to the crossroad I mention is that I like to teach, to share. I really enjoy communicating technology and concepts to people to help solve a problem or grow their opportunities. It’s an incredible feeling to see the connection made, a concept take root and someone realizes something they didn’t the moment before.
It reminds me of a moment in art class back in 9th grade. There was another student who was having problems getting the perspective “just right” on a drawing of his family’s farmstead that he was working on. He said that it just didn’t “feel right” in his drawing and thought that the silo would look better on the other side of the drive leading up to the barn. So our art teacher looked up from the picture at him and said “so…, move it”. I saw it in my classmate’s face, he got it. He suddenly looked around the room and proclaimed (loudly I may add) “I CAN MOVE BUILDINGS!”
I’m sure you’ve seen something similar, but it’s that moment of realization that is what I want more people to experience with technology. To understand what I’ve known for years. To see the usefulness of the technology, and not for the technology itself, but because it actually solves a need or problem. That is one of the things I want to do.
The work I’ve don to date has been fulfilling and rewarding. It’s taught me many things outside the scope of technology. It’s pushed me in all the typical, usual business-oriented things that any cube-dwelling, corporate ladder climbing individual might need. It did not, however, bring the warmth and excitement to my heart of seeing just one person “get it”.
That is what I believe I need to do – help people have those moments, help them connect with peers to make that happen, and be there as a resource along the way.
It’s something that I’ve been thinking about recently. For how much all these nifty tools have helped us become more productive, I think there is a percentage of creativity or inspiration that we give up. All productivity tools are things that can do harm to our work habits as much as they simplify a task.
Maybe it’s that most of these tools are single-task automation or simplification utilities and from that perspective are inefficient solutions. Take a close look at all your “social media†or “Web 2.0†tools and services – I bet most really only solve one real task with a few frivolous extras sprinkled on top.
I’m not sure what to do about this, but I look at my productivity today and compare it to a year ago. Back then I was chewing through thousands more feeds, had more ideas and, it seems, more time to write posts for my blog.
Today, I have client software installed that automatically checks my Twitter and FriendFeed accounts for updates. It notifies me with a pleasant tone that triggers me to quickly switch windows and check out the latest possible news like a rabbit hitting the feeder bar for a food pellet.
How is this productive? How is this helping me? I have Twhirl updating the main Twitter feed every 2 minutes – how many times am I interrupted in an hour? Right. 30! Think about that. Now add FriendFeed into the mix on its own (similar) updates schedule. How many times can you be interrupted in a day without losing focus?
Now I don’t mean to beat up on Twitter and FriendFeed – heck, I can come up with dozens of reasons why they help more than hinder my daily life. Email used to be the same. I used to use Microsoft Outlook. If the computer was on, so was Outlook – and what was that nice feature introduced in Outlook 2003? Pop-up notification… great. So that is where that bad habit was developed for me. Since changing to web-based email about three months ago, I find myself checking email much less often. I’m no less effective or timely in my communication either.
So it’s really how we use the tools – their convenience allows us to lean on them for help. Sometimes a little too much. As we’re creatures of habit it’s up to us to develop, groom, and manage those habits. If we start developing bad habits, it’s ourselves that needs to correct them.
So that’s what I personally need to do. Simply change how I use Twitter and FriendFeed. There are others, but those are the two that I really need to manage my time with the most.
How about you? What are your tricks & tips in managing these productivity tools?
It’s that simple. I want to see people rise to their full potential and reap the rewards of their efforts. Why more people don’t work towards their goals rather than their employer’s is confusing to me. So in this post I’m going to share a few thoughts that I hope will inspire you to leverage the most important resource in your arsenal: You!
Security
It’s comforting to have a secure job, one that you can count on being there a month or a year from now. However, without careful planning, you can easily get trapped in the mindset of climbing the corporate ladder. I should take a moment and admit that it’s not entirely a bad thing if it fits your career plans and life goals. I also believe that in many situations it reduces your chances for personal success.
The Matrix
Often, I like to compare the corporate environment to “The Matrix”. Companies do provide a framework for people to not only produce for the company, but to move forward as well. Good companies know a bit about this and work to change that perception. They create an environment that is safe to share ideas. They build teams. They help people grow in their careers. They reward hard work. They also make it easy for a person align their personal goals with the company’s. For the most part that’s good, but it also tricks the employee into believing that they key to the success of the team/company. That is what makes it hard to work towards your agenda.
Awakening
At some point though, many people come to an awakening. They realize that there is nothing more to learn at a given organization. People find that their “secure” position at “the company” has become too easy and has actually become detrimental to their success. They figure out that they’ve been working towards the company’s agenda without much regard for their own. Even if your ultimate goal is some “Chief” level corner office – you still need to have an agenda of your own and work towards it aggressively.
What’s Next
Start thinking of where you want to go in the future. Find your specialty and start working on how to capitalize on it. Odds are that you’ll identify something that you are passionate about. Look around in your current job, watching others to find out what skills you still may need to acquire before going out on your own. Make sure to have a support network of friends and associates that you can offer suggestions and answer questions. Prepare to have money put aside to live off of while getting going. Don’t burn any bridges – that former employer may be a prospective client at another time.
You
Where are you in your career? Have you made a move, planning to do it sometime in the future, or content in where you are? What can you share with others to help them succeed? What is your next move?
@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.
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