Tag Archives: Productivity

25 tips for professionals under age 25

27 Apr 406295610_6ac305b653_z

As a big sister, I’ve had the privilege of mentoring my 10-years-younger little brother as he went through high school, college, several internships with my company, and eventually joined my company. He is now on a full-ride scholarship in grad school at Notre Dame. I couldn’t be prouder.

I’ve also worked with a number of younger professionals throughout my career, and I remember keenly being one of those young professionals—as a journalist, I was usually the youngest person in my newsroom (by far). There was so much I didn’t know, and wasn’t taught to me in college, about how to succeed in the business world.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the advice that I, at 35, would give to my 25-year-old self or other young professionals in their first few years of post-college employment. I don’t always follow this advice, but the results are infinitely better when I do. Here are 25 tips for success for young professionals under age 25:

  1. Take initiative. This is the most important thing you can do in any job, in any role—in life. Don’t wait for permission or a request, just see a need and propose a solution…better yet, start working on the solution!
  2. Dress for success. Senior professionals want to see you as an up-and-coming professional, not stuck in your college gear (and they’ll assume, your college mindset). Invest in a wardrobe that mirrors the executives (and by shopping sale racks and seconds stores like Nordstrom Rack and TJ Maxx, you can do this on your current salary). Don’t imagine “casual Friday” equals jeans and sneakers—choose better-than-casual shoes, slacks and a casual jacket to demonstrate your professionalism.
  3. Be polished. A dry cleaner and tailor will help—and don’t wear anything that is revealing, too tight/ill-fitting, or dirty/stained/torn. Iron your shirts, shine your shoes, file and polish your nails, get a good haircut. Carry a high-quality bag. Each small detail adds up. Look like the kind of person an executive would be proud to introduce to a client.
  4. Be polite. Manners count in business lunches, in thank-you notes and in small interactions. Read a book on modern manners—seriously! When flustered, keep your cool and be nicer than necessary.
  5. Polish your communications. Send emails that are properly capitalized, spelled and signed. (Don’t lower-case your name or the letter i—this reads a juvenile chat-room behavior.) Double-check documents and communications before sending—a small grammatical error or typo will make you look less smart than you really are, especially if you know better. Continue reading →

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“No” gives you power over your priorities (and the power to push back)

23 Jan OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Hi. I’m blogging about work, purpose and time, and inspired in this series of articles by a Harvard Business Review blogger’s post on “No is the New Yes,” in which he sets out several strategies for taking greater control of your time and as a result, focusing on what matters.

In my last two posts, I talked about the blind spots that crop up for people with various work styles. In this post, I wanted to make a point about priorities.

Make what matters to your boss what matters to you.

No matter your work style, it’s easy to get caught in a trap of working on the things you value. They might be what you assume is expected of your role, or something you’ve always done, or something you think no one else can do as well as you can. You might do them simply because it would take more time and effort to assign them and mentor that person into executing the task to your satisfaction.

But we ultimately report to a higher level—be that a manager, an executive, a board or shareholders—and so it’s critical to take the time to find out what these people see as important. Continue reading →

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How to say No: Validate people and projects, and say it bravely

20 Jan Office tower

Hello, we’re talking about saying ‘No’ at work and how to finesse this with respect to work styles. I’m using Market Force styles—Control, Influence, Power and Authority—to illustrate how handing a deluge of projects and requests at work by saying no can challenge each work style.

In my last post, I listed these two lessons:

Lesson one for Controls: Balance time discussing what you’re working on with a healthy debate on why. This is because Controls often handle being overwhelmed by becoming micro-managers.

Lesson two for Influences: People are more important than projects. Influences will be sure they know it, but must be sensitive to people with other styles who might feel like they’re wasting time in meetings. They must also avoid over-promising (a habit because they value relationships).

And now here are the rest.

Lesson three: It’s not about time, it’s about value: validate your projects and contributors.

For those with the Power work style, busybusybusy is kind of a drug. When they say, “Oh, I have a million things on my plate right now! I’m working 60-plus hour weeks and still have more to do,” they’re not complaining. They’re bragging. The subtext is “Look how important and indispensible I am!” Continue reading →

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Just say No? It’s not that simple: your work style’s blind spots

18 Jan Birds on wire

In today’s Harvard Business Review blog, Tony Schwartz has a great post about “No is the new Yes: Four practices to reprioritize your life.” In it, he describes a typical executive workday filled with meetings, email and hair-on-fire requests that keep their wheels spinning endlessly.

The tyranny of the urgent over the important seems like an unchangeable force, as if we are constantly running on a hamster wheel. But doing so will leave us tired—or fired—unless we can find a way to hop off the wheel.

I observe that for some executives, the hamster wheel bleeds into relationships with colleagues and subordinates: they never seem to be present for the people they are leading. That’s why I wanted to offer five lessons I’ve learned about managing time, work, people and priorities that embraces Schwartz’s fundamental argument about saying no more often … but does so with finesse based on the styles of people you’re working with.

You might be familiar with a work style framework from DiSC, Meyers-Briggs, Kolbe, or others—my personal favorite is Market Force, taught by the folks at aPriori International. I’ll explain each type of style and their blind spots related to saying no.

Lesson one: Balance time discussing what you’re working on with a healthy debate on why. Continue reading →

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Ten more work-from-home tips (what are you missing?)

2 Dec WFH coffee

I honestly couldn’t believe it when I sat down to blog for fifteen minutes on “work from home tips” how many would swiftly come to me. I ran out of time (the fifteen minutes per day I set aside for blogging) before I ran out of tips yesterday, so today, here are ten more:

  1. Buy a beautiful water pitcher, put cut lemons or cucumber in it, and put it in your line of vision to help you instill good habits (drinking lots of water).
  2. Make your walls work, too. On a wall near your workspace, install a magnetic white board, use it to write up key projects or things you’re thinking about. I also like long, magnetic strips that I can easily clip papers to. Don’t forget to hang professional certificates, plaques, etc., just like a “real” office. The more real you make it, the more it will serve your purpose: inspiring work.
  3. Avoid housework during the day, or just schedule yourself thirty minutes to do it. I sometimes tidy up the kitchen while waiting for my lunch to cook, but little else. I have a housekeeper come every other week so I can maintain my focus where it belongs.
  4. You probably won’t take a lunch break, so take a SOMETHING break. When my daughter was tiny, I scheduled a mommy-baby outing, like meeting other moms or taking the baby swimming once per week for two hours, instead of going out to lunch once per day for a whole lunch hour. (Here, I laugh, thinking of how infrequently I did that when I was in a corporate office.)
  5. Eliminate distractions. Don’t even consider trying to work with kids around. Your work will be sub-par because your focus just won’t be there. Don’t work with TV on in the background. I love reading blogs and playing on Facebook, but I focus that time in short, 15-minute spurts during a break.
  6. Shop for food carefully. You have the freedom to eat anything in your fridge, not have to pack lunch, and cook your lunch. Use it and shop accordingly and help your diet along, then you can splurge a bit extra when you go out.
  7. Have happy hour with friends often. It makes you stop work and gets you out. Also, be sure to schedule regular coffee dates, lunches, and attend networking events to stay connected to professionals in your area.
  8. Walk 10,000 steps per day. One of my best mentors is a strong advocate for this, but it’s easy to walk only 1,000 or 2,000 steps per day if you’re working from home, because even the walk from the parking garage to the office counts as exercise from those who don’t WFH. Get a pedometer to keep track, or find another physical challenge. You must make it a point to exercise and be active.
  9. Connect with your colleagues. Use every tool you can—email, IM, Skype, social networks like Yammer, webinars and desktop sharing to be as connected as possible to your work people by communicating proactively about projects. I am obsessive about being on time for meetings to ensure folks feel that I am here, present and without distractions.
  10. Put everything in the cloud, so when your laptop dies, you’re not toast. I love the integration of Dropbox with my iPad, iPhone and PC laptop.

Finally, here’s one bonus note: Working from home is an enormous privilege, and one I don’t take lightly. I started doing it because I couldn’t physically move to Seattle to accept a job promotion, so it was a compromise to stay with my company.

Therefore, when I do travel for work, I do my best to never complain. Sure, I have my share of drama en route when I travel to our global headquarters office in Seattle on a regular basis, and I hate spending nights away from my family. However, I will gladly take these hassles on a monthly or twice-monthly basis as a great trade-off for the hassles of commuting on a daily basis.

If you’ve worked from home, I’m sure you have more tips and ideas. Share them in the comments! I’d love to hear from you.

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Busting the myth of “PJs, soaps and bon-bons” for work-from-home

1 Dec WFH laptop

Hi! I’m here with another fifteen minutes about work, purpose and time.

I’ve been thinking a lot about productivity, especially since I work from home and am always trying to make a greater impact with the hours I have. Ultimately, I am not judged by how long my rear is parked in my chair, but by the quality and quantity of my final deliverables.

Perception vs. reality - this might be how some people imagine working from home, but the reality (at least for me), is and must be intensely focused.

Often, when I tell people I work from home, they say, “Oh, that must be nice. Working in your PJs, setting your own schedule.” The implication is that it’s easier than working from an office.

But after five years of doing this, I conclude that’s it’s just the opposite. Although WFH creates tremendous freedom, it comes with a price: tremendous accountability.

That means if you beat your head against a brick wall for forty hours trying to produce something that really should have only taken eight, that’s what you get credit for. Eight hours. And no matter how hard you worked on that forty-hour project, everyone will assume you spent eight hours working and the other thirty-two watching soaps and eating bonbons.

It’s often a can’t-win situation. So, if you work from home sometimes or all the time, here are a few tips I’ve developed to help me make the most of my time.

  1. Establish a work schedule. Since I generally need to end my workday by 5:30 or 6:00 because that’s when daycare closes, I often do extra work in the evenings after the kids are in bed.
  2. Set limits. I am willing to answer my office and mobile phones outside of work hours, but I don’t answer during dinner, don’t obsessively check email while away, and I rarely work weekends to maintain balance.  
  3. Jealously guard your workspace. Make it the prettiest, tidiest, most user-friendly area in your house. I painted my office terra cotta orange, bought a custom desk, got dimmer lights and more.
  4. Keep up appearances. My home office is in a very large bedroom—so large it accommodates a 13-foot L-shaped desk, two monitors, two printers, four filing cabinets, two book shelves, a white board and two cork boards. It looks like a real office. The problem is, the room is so large that we put an extra bed on the opposite side (we have a separate guest bedroom). Since my webcam is set up on my computer monitors, it points away from my great desk and office space, and directly toward the bed. It looks like I’m attending a meeting from a bedroom (so tacky!). So, I hung a small curtain rod in the middle of my ceiling and bought two beautiful silk drapes. Now, on videoconferences, I look like I’m in a studio.

    Do NOT work from the couch. It will kill your back.

  5. Invest in your space. Buy a space heater, foot stool, cozy blanket, coffee warmer or whatever to keep yourself comfy and at your desk. Don’t work from your couch, it will kill your back and arms.
  6. Establish a hygiene routine. For me, it works to get up, immediately review and reply to e-mail, check my daily calendar, then go get ready, shower, change and eat breakfast.
  7. Think differently about wardrobe. Instead of a workweek/weekend division in your clothes, your closet will morph into ultra-casual (think yoga pants) for WFH, cute casual (jeans and jackets) for any reason to leave your home, and dress-up (for office visits/going out). Keep your PJs as PJs (that is, always dress for work, even if it’s just yoga pants), and always dress well when leaving the house or having people over.
  8. Dress nicer than necessary when visiting an office. They’ll think of you that way even when you’re at home in yoga pants.
  9. Open your windows, be sure you get a lot of sun and connect to the outside. Otherwise, you might start to feel like a mole underground. My desk overlooks my whole backyard and some seriously busy squirrels.
  10. Light a candle while you work. Let it be a centering reminder of what’s important. I also use a handwritten task list to keep me focused.

I’m out of time, but not out of tips. (Again, working from home demands I’m strict with myself about time management.) Tomorrow, I’ll be back with ten more ways you can improve your work-from-home experience and productivity.

What is your work from home experience? What tips do you have to share? Comment below!

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The building blocks of accomplishment (not just work)

28 Nov Office blocks

Hi there. I’ve got fifteen minutes to write, and I thank you for taking a few minutes to read. This is fun, isn’t it?

I’ve been thinking about the way I organize my days lately, and how I set up my schedule to accomplish the most possible in the time I have. I’m sure you’ve had days when it seems like there are a constant string of interruptions, emails, instant messages and alerts.

When I have those days, it feels like nothing gets done. Instead of getting just one big thing accomplished, I tend to myriad little things, and at the end of the day (or even just the end of the hour) I look back and can’t really point to anything that I’ve accomplished that’s significant.

That bugs the heck out of me.

So, how can I make an impact?

One blogger and novelist suggested that the way she writes is called “time blocking.” She outlines the key things she wants to get accomplished, and estimates how long each will take. Then her blocks of time are stacked, rearranged or pushed forward based on her own whims.

This makes a ton of sense to me. Following her structure, my day might look something like this:

  • Meet with boss – 1 hour
  • Work on RFP content –  2 hours
  • Update marketing class – 90 minutes
  • Revise video graphics – 90 minutes

And so on. (You think those are the only things on my plate? HA!)

The point is that I have a sense of my key projects and the time I need to devote just to get them done. Interruptions slow me down. Answering questions from email drains precious minutes from those time blocks.

So my goal is to change the way I work. Instead of bouncing in and out of email, I’m ignoring it (gasp!) for an hour and just getting a single project done. Without those interruptions, I complete the time block faster and with greater depth of thought.

And, as my friend Nancy Morris reminds us, it’s not about time. It’s about priorities. Even though it looks like I’m just arranging my schedule and time, what’s really happening is that I choose to place a priority on accomplishment, that I let myself go deep deep deep into what really matters at the exclusion of all else, at least for that hour or two.

How do you manage your time and priorities? Do you toggle back and forth between screens on your computer when email messages pop up? Consider how depth of focus in these time blocks might make you more productive, or at least take a little frenetic energy out of your day.

GO.

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What your work style says about you

17 Nov 11.17 Style

Have you interviewed for a job lately?

If you’re like a lot of my friends, the answer is yes.

And you’re probably been hit by the same question that most hiring managers ask: “Tell me a little about yourself.”

Ah. The big one. Where to begin?

When I’m hiring someone, one of the most important things I want to know is what that person’s work style is. How do they behave with groups? Under pressure? Left to their own devices, where would they start in a project?

Answer this: If you were planning a party, which of these roles would you be most comfortable filling?

You come up with the big idea—the party theme, the reason for having it.

You get everyone excited—call your friends, get people on board

You make it happen—call the caterer, the DJ

You make sure it works—check to be sure you bought ice, vet the DJ’s playlist to be sure it’s not lame.

If you could only pick one of these, which would you most like to do? Which would you be least likely to do? This is the type of question I ask to try to assess a work style.

The question of styles is answered by dozens of frameworks, including Meyers-Briggs, Kolbe, the Predictive Index, DiSC … the list goes on. My favorite, by far, is taught by aPriori International and my friend (and kickass coach) Travis Carson. It’s called Market Force.

In Market Force parlance, I’m an Influence. (I’d pick number two on the list above). Here’s what they’d have to say about me:

“The Influence is one of the easiest styles to pinpoint because they’ll be the antsy one at the end of the conference table, itching to end the meeting and talk about what happened in the game last night, especially if the meeting is dragging on. It’s not that the Influence doesn’t pay attention or is lackadaisical, they just have a lot of energy.”

Ha! Energy. My mother often tells people that when I was little, she’d just put her head in her hands and cry because I was such a busy little kid, she just couldn’t entertain me or keep up with me. But all that energy turned out to be a gift. She even goes so far as to tell harried parents of overactive kids, “Don’t worry, my daughter was worse! And she turned out OK.”

Here’s a bit more: “You’ll need to get them to focus that energy on a project. In doing so, watch for the Influence to go at it from a relationship perspective. They like team and social environments because that is what keeps them motivated.”

Right again. Take the people, the interaction, out of the project and you’ve taken most of the fun out of it for me.

More: “The Influence can take a project and run with it, and usually can do so without a lot of details. They use their energy to figure it out and are certainly ‘commit first, then figure it out’ types. If you want a project to get off the ground as soon as possible, hand it to an Influence.”

Yep, there’s the Firestarter in me. I make things GO.

But it’s good and bad: “Something to consider about the Influence is their propensity to over-task themselves. When they do, the response is to retreat and subsequently, neglect the request. Although cognizant of it, they’ll use their sharp verbal skills and, aptly enough, influence, to find their way out of a tight spot. They want to work fast and have no problem letting the discussion drift off into disparate subjects. Keep them focused but make sure they’re having fun and are in action as often as possible.”

You know what makes Influences crazy? Slow drivers. You know what makes us tick? Mood. We can smell it from a mile away. If the project’s not fun, if the mood is sour, we’re onto it and either working passionately to change it, or disengaged.

So, tell me about yourself.

Take fifteen minutes to figure out your own style (check out aPriori’s blog posts, mini-articles about each of those styles). I find that by learning more about my style and my natural reactions to stress and challenge, I’m more effective because I see the big picture—strengths, flaws and all. GO.

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Race a friend, race the clock, race yourself

1 Nov Want to get motivated? Race a friend or race the clock. Photo by Easylocum

Hi there. I’m back, and I’ve set my timer for fifteen minutes. What do you want to get accomplished today?

When my dad was a teenager, he worked at Safeway as a night janitor, courtesy clerk and stocker. He used the money to buy a motorcycle and an awesome car and move out on his own at age 19.

When he and my mom started dating (they were high school sweethearts), she would sometimes go into the store and buy something small—even a pack of gum—just so he could carry it out of the store for her. Aww.

At night, he was allowed to eat as many day-old donuts from the bakery as he wanted, because the next day the leftovers would be given to the “Pig Lady” who, you guessed it, would take them to feed her hogs.

But of all the stories he told me about his first job, this one was most memorable:

It was about ten minutes until the end of his shift, and the store was quiet. He and a couple of other guys he worked with were standing around, shooting the breeze, not doing much of anything. Their manager walked up to them and asked for complete silence.

Then, in the next ten minutes—the next strangely silent ten minutes—they watched the manager build an endcap display. That’s the product showcase at the end of a supermarket aisle where you’ll see a tower of soda, or cereal boxes, or canned food on special. You see those all the time. And someone builds them—usually, someone who does a job just like my dad’s.

When the manager was done, he turned to the young men and said this: “You see what I just accomplished in ten minutes? That’s the difference between spending time and wasting it.”

That lesson stuck solidly in my father’s brain for more than 30 years before he relayed the story to me. He often uses the phrase, “The harder I work, the luckier I get,” and I am insanely grateful for the work ethic he imparted.

His story helped drive the development of Fifteen-minute Firestarter. I am a full-time marketer, mother, aspiring novelist, enthusiastic cook. Where do I find the time to launch a blog and actually create content?

Fifteen minutes. I’m taking the first fifteen minutes of each lunch hour to make this happen. I set the timer. I have only three minutes left.

Where do I find the time to work on my second novel? Same answer, almost. I don’t write in fifteen minute chunks, but I carve out little bits from my night, the time I might have wasted watching television, and literally run to my office while the kids are asleep and the hubby is grading reports.

Want to get motivated? Race a friend or race the clock. Photo by Easylocum

I pull up Facebook and send an instant message to my friend Denise, author of several books and a single mother of six (if that doesn’t shut down my “I don’t have time to write” complaint, I don’t know what could). We do a word race: set the clock for 30 or 45 minutes and then just get down to business—we write.

It’s a contest based on the honor system: when time’s up, we count the number of words we’ve added to our manuscripts and compare progress. Sometimes I can boast 500, 600, 850 words. Sometimes I show up with 150. Sometimes she wins. Sometimes I do.

Don’t want to clean the house? Imagine your mother-in-law just called to say she’s on the way, she’ll be there in 20 minutes. Set the timer and go. Don’t want to pay bills? Sit down in front of you favorite sitcom and start ripping open envelopes with the goal to get it all done by the time the show’s over.

Having trouble starting a project? Set the timer. You’ve got fifteen minutes. GO.

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