Tag Archives: Work-life balance

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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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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You know you’re rich when…

29 Nov Are you wealthy? How do you define prosperity?

I watched with morbid fascination this past weekend as news reporters relayed the following Black Friday-related stories.

  • Stores including Target, Toys R Us and Wal-Mart opened on Thanksgiving night, further stretching the shopping marathon.
  • A couple camped outside of an electronics store from Monday through Friday morning (yep, they spent their Thanksgiving on the sidewalk) to be first in line to get $199 42-inch TVs and $299 laptops.
  • A dozen people were sent to a hospital after a woman pepper-sprayed a crowd during a scuffle involving sought-after items in a large retail store.

Do any of these stories bother you? At some level, each put me on edge.

The name Black Friday originated in Philadelphia, where it was originally used to describe the heavy, disruptive traffic on the day after Thanksgiving, according to Wikipedia. Later, an alternative explanation suggested that “Black Friday” is the point at which retailers begin to turn a profit, or are “in the black”.

That’s really what Black Friday is about—retailers making a profit. But at what expense? This year many national retailers set a new precedent by opening on Thanksgiving. It makes me sad, thinking of my best friend (a longtime retail manager) and how she was never able to spend Thanksgiving with her family 250 miles away because trying to get Black Friday off work was impossible.

The Macy’s CEO tried to spin it another way, saying that seasonal workers don’t mind the extra hours, but I still find it sad that many retail workers have to choose between being employed or being with family.

I also find the decision to camp out for bargains quite sad. Just how much money are they “saving,” anyway? I put a pretty high premium on the opportunity to sleep in (or even just be at home, not away on business), so the idea of spending several windy, rainy nights in a tent on a sidewalk does not appeal to me.

I do this mental arithmetic: How much is my time worth? How much money am I actually saving? The answer to this question informs lots of my choices about money, including whether to hire a housekeeper (it creates time I can spend with my family instead) and myriad other conveniences.

By the same token, when I don’t choose convenience, such as when I choose to make my kid’s birthday cupcakes instead of buying them at a store, it shows how much I value what I am creating.

My core reaction to all of the shopping lust that crops up during this so-called giving season is a real assessment of what wealth is.

Are you wealthy? How do you define prosperity?

Are you rich? Are you wealthy? Are you prosperous? By almost any measure, I am.

I should clarify. Before you imagine me in a totally different tax bracket, I’m not among those with elite wealth, what I’ve heard described as “jet money.” At that level, you aren’t just going on fancy vacations … you’re flying there in your own jet.

Sure, that’s wealth. But I think too many people see that as the only definition of wealth, and fail to appreciate the prosperity in their here and now.

One way I used to describe prosperity post-college was “you don’t have to balance your checkbook before ordering a pizza.” It’s great to be able to splurge—even on pizza—without second-guessing your financial means.

By far, my favorite description of wealth is from my mom. My folks married early, lived frugally and worked tirelessly for years to build a small business and raise two little girls. After more than a decade of work, my folks finally “made it,” which (to me, in middle school) meant the ability to buy clothes at the mall, not just at Goodwill and garage sales.

“I felt like we were rich when I could go to the grocery store and buy anything I wanted,” my mom said.

And isn’t that a great measure of wealth? Consider how few people in the world have access to a wealth of choices in a grocery store, much less the means to buy whatever they want?

So, throughout this holiday season as you enjoy giving and receiving, consider your own definition of wealth. Do you have enough? Plenty? Prosperity? Wealth?

I believe I do, and that alone frees me from the compulsion to shop at 4 a.m. or grapple with other shoppers over some discounted item. I have everything I need.

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Want a reset button? Change lanes.

30 Oct Want a reset button? Change lanes. Photo by Zouny.

It’s 12:01 p.m., and I’ve got fifteen minutes. Let’s get cracking.

Remember the feeling in college at the start of a new term? It was so fresh, so open. You had a nice, thick stack of books, a syllabus and a course schedule. What you didn’t have was a B-minus on a midterm, two missed assignments or a backlog of reading haunting you.

It was as if each term was a chance to hit the reset button. And oh, how I loved that button.

That was college. After nearly seven years with my company and fifteen years in the full-time working world, I notice a key difference about work: there is no reset button.

Sure, you might take a week or two off for vacation, but how hard is that? There are late-night hours spent delivering projects right up until you leave for the break, and stuff that invariably bleeds over into vacation. There’s checking the Blackberry or iPhone until your spouse gives you the stinkeye, and the hundreds of emails that accumulate in your time away.

It’s like being punished for taking a break.

Lesson learned: there is no reset button. And so I often find that energy ebbs and flows—sometimes I’m on a positive high, delivering an exceptional project, or the excitement of brainstorming with smart and passionate colleagues.

Then there’s the low—watching a project get drop-kicked for other priorities, endless do-overs when you’d rather have just done it right the first time, and the frustration the creeps in when you’ve just spent 20 or 40 hours sweating over something that is either not valued, no longer needed or not putting points on the board for your team.

Ebb and flow. And in those times of ebb, I seriously need a reset button.

I love how universities and some companies (such as Intel) offer a sabbatical. That, I think, is the ultimate reset button—a way to so thoroughly disengage from work that you come back refreshed with a new perspective, new research and new skills.

I could put this pipe dream on a wish list, or I could do something about it. And I’m a Firestarter. I make things GO. So I decided to create my own reset button.

Consider that your life is like a wide freeway—maybe four or five lanes, each lane corresponding to part of your life. There’s a work lane, a family lane, a friends lane, a lane for hobbies or for self-improvement. You might have a lane for spirituality or a lane for learning.

Imagine yourself as a driver on that freeway, and each lane is occupied by vehicles moving at various speeds (these could be your boss, your colleagues, friends and family, or a personal goal).

Want a reset button? Change lanes. Photo by Zouny.

How do you navigate through the traffic? How do you get to where you want to be?

My answer is this: when you get stuck or slowed down in one lane, change lanes! Create momentum in another part of your life. If you let yourself get stuck behind obstacles in a single lane, but do nothing to change your focus, you won’t be going anywhere fast.

So if you’re stuck at work, look to your hobbies or your family. Sign up for a class. Plan a vacation. Kick off a kickass project. Call a handful of friends and throw a party for no other reason than to create more positive energy in your life.

Creating this momentum won’t make the work problems go away, but it will add perspective and release the pent-up energy you feel in that lane of life. And with some of the energy released (remember that reset button?), you might feel refreshed enough to regroup and tackle the traffic jam.

GO.

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