Career goals are important since you cannot get where you are going if you don’t know where it is. Your career goals is where you intend to go with your career. Where do you want to be at the end of your career?
5 Tips to Help You Manage Your Career
In the modern economy, there is the perception that people are changing companies more often. While it is difficult to tease how true that is (e.g., changing companies versus changing jobs at a company), it has become common wisdom that your organization is not managing your career. It is up to you to manage your own career.
5 Easy Ways to Limit Distractions
Attention and focus have become targeted by companies as if they carry intrinsic value. Focus does not have a value unto itself, but its value varies on its use. You only have so much attention/mental energy you can pay out over the course of the day. When we try to multitask we become less effective. This means you should avoid all the little distractions that clamor for your attention and try to suck you away from your current task.
How to Properly Pushback on Tasking
Your manager has just come by your desk and handed you a task. You know you can’t do it the way he laid out with the resources you have. Should you go back and tell your manager, “No, I can’t do this”? Although you may be tempted, this is neither prudent nor productive. This doesn’t mean you need to suffer in silence and then fail to deliver. You should, instead, have an honest conversation with your manager. And this is a conversation you need to prepare for. Giving your manager pushback on tasking is okay within limits.
The 6 Sources of Your Work
Work comes from a few well defined places and when we get work from outside of those places bad things often happen. We will cover the main places your work comes from and what it means for you.
Effectiveness
Operational measurements fall into two categories: measures of performance and measure of effectiveness. The first is measuring the things you do. The second is measure the results you get. People often measure the former because measuring activity is easy. How many hours did you work this week? Measuring the latter is harder. Did you achieve what you set out to achieve? Results is what we, as professionals, are accountable for. It matters more how effective we are than how busy we are.
How to Disagree with Your Boss
You can disagree with your boss and voice that disagreement. You can create value for your boss and and organization when you do it professionally. You can jeopardize your employment when you do it poorly. There is a time, place, and way to professionally disagree with your boss.
Start on Time; Finish on Time
In the course of your career, you will be called upon to run meetings. While different types of meetings, have some different rules, there are some things that remain constant. The first is start on time. The second is finish on time. Meetings can be expensive affairs. Starting and finishing on time are the first step to making sure they do not take up any more resources than necessary.
How To Do a Time Study
How well are you using your time? Most people have a gut feeling about how well they make use of what time they have. You probably have an idea of your answer. How do you know that it is the right answer? The only way you can be sure is to do a time study. More precisely, I am talking about a Drucker Time Study.
How to Get a Handle on Your Email
Few things are consistent from office to office as the complaining about email. “I get 200 emails a day; how do you expect me to get work done.” Some of you may be laughing at only 200, others are complaining about 40 emails. The problem here is rarely the volume of email. It instead is that post people don’t know what to do with their email.
There are sites out there that recommend only checking email three times a day (I agree). However, if you don’t know how to handle your email, it won’t matter how frequently or infrequently you check it. When you finish checking email and you still have two thousand or twenty emails in your inbox, you still haven’t handled your email.