Category Archives: Time management

How a budgeting problem can help your job search (or job)

Posted on September 23, 2013 | Leave a comment

I was overspending by 20% every month. I had an absolutely fixed income.  So I bought a notepad and kept track of every expense.  In one week it was obvious where the money went.  In a month it was unavoidable.  The truth? 20% of my very limited income was going for lemonade from cozy little shops in Murcia, Spain.

Your time is very limited.  You only get 24 hours a day.  You can’t buy more time. Do you really know how you use it?

Buy a small notebook.  Exert incredible discipline for one day or one week.  Every time you shift tasks, write it down.  A phone call is a shifted task.  An internet link can be a shifted task.  Write it down.

It may help to create 15 minute intervals on the paper and write down what you did for each 15 minute period.

Now get out the chainsaw.  What was really REALLY productive?  Do you spend 2 hours daily trying to avoid offending people by chatting amiably or reading their useless emails.  Cut out the unproductive stuff.

Make sure you do what is important.  Education—essential. Networking—critical.  Talk about the NCAA tournament with Larry—don’t kid yourself.  That email of funny things kids do—delete it.

I did a 2 month experiment.  Years ago I took all my job openings off the internet.  I found I was spending hours each day with email that wouldn’t do any good.  Instead I found alternate sources of good candidates.  In the recruiting business that is taking a chainsaw to your daily schedule.  Nothing neat and clean, I just cut 25% of my schedule off with a chainsaw.  It worked.

I did a new experiment.  For two months I posted jobs to minor job boards.  I wanted to see if things have changed.  I used logs, discipline, and experimentation to see what worked best.

Your job search and your day at work can probably use some scientific discipline too.  Track your time occasionally.  See where your time is being spent and where the greatest return on your time is.

Create the time log.  Keep it for a day or a week.  Get your chainsaw out.  Cut off the termite riddled, least productive part of your schedule.  Use the time you save to get the most useful things possible done.

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Something To Do Today

Create a time log.  Use it for your job or your job hunting.  Keep it. Analyze it.  Chainsaw it.

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Later:             Unbelievable networking facts.

Take unfair advantage of those networking facts.

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Posted in Focus, Time management

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6 critical things to do when you start a new job

Posted on August 12, 2013 | Leave a comment

How to screw up you job start

Just fired from his second job in 2 months, Frank can’t figure out why those 2 employers don’t like him.  He came in late a couple of days a week, but only when he had to.  And he only left early when it wasn’t going to hurt because there wasn’t much left to do.  Frank took 3 or 4 days off a month for real family needs, not because he was lazy.  Both times he was fired he denied it was his fault. He cannot understand why I refuse to find him another job.

Perception is everything

Someone with years of history on the job may get away with what Frank did. A new person will be fired every time.  Work was obviously his last priority 2 or 3 days a week, but Frank was being paid for work to be his first priority for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.  It didn’t matter how good his excuses were, his performance shouted his lack of commitment.  He was fired because perception is everything, intention is camouflage.

In your first couple of months at work you create the perception you will be known by for years. That is the time to build a reputation that will cover a few slips for the rest of your career.

Rules to start excellently

1. Come in early and start work early. Make sure people see you.

2. Stop working late and leave late. Make sure people see you.

3. Have your family covered so you never have to take a day off.

(Every time you break one of these first 3 rules right after you start a new job, it is like breaking them 5 times after you have been there a year.)

4. No personal calls at all. Go outside and make them at lunch only, and only on your cell phone.

5. Leave your job wound behind. Never, ever criticize your last employer. Not once. Not for any reason.  If you do, your coworkers will expect you to criticize them also.

6. Give your boss a weekly report of what you worked on and what you got done. Otherwise, he may only remember the times you asked for help and all the training you needed, and not how you contributed. Turn your weekly report into a weekly job review.

It doesn’t matter how hard you have worked if others feel you are slacking off.  Leaving early three days a week will be perceived as lazy even if you work late one day a week to make up for it.  You have to be very careful of perception, especially for your first few months at work.

Something to do today

Prepare a report of what you accomplished last week for your boss.  Start the monthly report you will give him at the end of this month.

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Coming up

New and better or cheaper

How everyone else sees you

The difference between fertilizer and ****

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Posted in Focus, Promotions, Time management

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Don’t let “perfect” stop your job search

Posted on June 4, 2013 | Leave a comment

Getting things done is usually more important than getting them perfect.

This article uses the example of a newspaper editor that applies to job search.

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Posted in Attitude, Focus, Time management

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Rules of war for gutsy job seekers

Posted on May 28, 2013 | Leave a comment

Here are your rules if you have the guts to declare war on your job search.  They are not for cowards.  This is how a real proactive job search can be done.

Check it out here.  It is on LinkedIn.  If you aren’t on LinkedIn yet, then link to me bryan @ dilts.us

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Posted in Finding jobs, Perseverance, Time management

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The single most important trick I use to get myself to make phone calls

Posted on March 28, 2013 | Leave a comment

My telephone weighs 470 kilograms if I do not pick it up and make a call out by 8:30 in the morning.    I get nervous.  I can’t pick it up.  I make my living calling people and sometimes I just can’t do it.

So I use a rubber band to help pick it up.  I put the rubber band around my wrist.  Every time I start to think about being nervous I snap it hard against my wrist.  If I pause before picking up the phone, I snap it and pick up the phone.  If I feel nervous, I snap it and pick up the phone and dial somebody, anybody.  The real trick is that I interrupt my thought patterns.  I have a mechanism to deal with nervousness.  The little snap of pain also trains me that nervousness is unpleasant.  More important than the pain. is that I interrupt my negative thoughts.  I start concentrating on the positive, and do something positive.

When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them. (Confucius)

I should have told my daughter how to use a rubber band to change her thought pattern when she and her friend were talking about their fear of needles.  It might have helped her channel her thoughts so she wouldn’t cry before the needle touched her.  Irrational fear or just nervousness can ruin an hour, a day, or a lifetime.  Control the negative by finding something to interrupt the negative thoughts and think about the positive.

You really are what you think about.  If you need to think about something else, figure out a way to do it. I use a rubber band to help pick up the phone.  What do you use to get over nervousness?

Something to do today

Research ways to interrupt your thought patterns and channel them positively.  There are a lot of great books on the subject.  The classics are The New Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz, or Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.  Read it. Absorb it.

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Later: Fledging falcons on the DEP building

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Posted in Attitude, Networking, Perseverance, Time management

Are you passively employed ?

Posted on February 5, 2013 | Leave a comment

Thinking of yourself passively — as being employed and, therefore, subject to the dictates of someone else — can be fatal to your long-term success. In reality, you’re the president of your own personal-services corporation. You’re completely in charge of production, quality control, training and development, marketing, finance, and promotion.

Seeing yourself as self-employed forces you to recognize that you are also self-responsible and self-determining. That everything that happens to you happens because of your conduct and your behavior. You’re in the driver’s seat. You’re behind the steering wheel of your life. It’s up to you to decide how to utilize your talents and abilities in such a way as to bring you the very highest return on the investment of your time and energy.  (Brian Tracy)

read the whole thing here.

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Posted in Attitude, Focus, Raises, Time management, Training

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I’ll do this today to get more done

Posted on January 30, 2013 | Leave a comment

As one of my Mastermind members said at our last meeting, “If I could get half as much done as you, I’d be happy.”

Well, it’s not that hard. It starts with doing the right things, right now. Too many people do the wrong things all day. Doing the right things starts by knowing what the right things are. And that all starts with your daily secret weapon revealed by Mark Ford in his guest essay below.

read more here.

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Posted in Time management

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The quickest, surest way to become a superstar

Posted on November 30, 2012 | Leave a comment

An ex-NFL football player told me how he got to the big league.  He chose a player he wanted to be just like.  Then he learned to hold his hands just like him.  He placed his feet just like his hero.  He ran like his hero.  He exercised like his hero.  He did everything he could to play football just like his hero.  He started in 9th grade football and continued through college.  He made it into the NFL.

When I met him in Denver, he was a couple of years into a new career selling real estate.  He was doing the same thing.  He picked one of the best real estate salesmen in Denver and was doing exactly what the new hero did.  Once again he was becoming a superstar.

There’s a hint there.  Find someone who is successful at what you want to do.  Become like them.  If they do something, you do it.

One more thing.  Watch very carefully what your hero does NOT do.  What does he avoid?  What does he refuse to do?  Too many people try to become a success doing the things that a successful person refuses to do.

If you want to be a millionaire, I suggest you read one or two books by Thomas Stanley.  The Millionaire Next Door is a bunch of stories about how millionaires became millionaires.  The Millionaire Mind has some stories, but also takes a statistical approach.  It tells what first generation millionaires do, as a group, to get their money.

Better yet, find a millionaire to personally learn from.

Do you want to be a Partner, CEO, CFO, CIO, or Project Manager?  Find the best example you can, and do everything the way they do.  Invite them to lunch. Ask them what they would do in your shoes.  Become just like them at work.

Hero, mentor, example.  Find one so you can become one.

Something to do today

Find your mentor and example.  Learn to work just like they do.

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Later:              But this isn’t an interview

Whistle while you work

Hustle while you wait

The $5 call girl

Where to fish

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Posted in Promotions, Raises, talent, Time management, Training

How to pick the most important projects, and turn down the rest

Posted on October 18, 2012 | Leave a comment

Assignments at work may help your career, mean little or be suicidal.  Here is how another ‘fighter ace” made his career decisions.

Erich Hartmann shot down 352 planes.  He was lucky.  He was on the Soviet front in WWII.  The Soviet MIGs and Yaks were no match for his plane.  “Paule” Rossman taught him how to carefully pick a target and then wait until everything was in his favor before attacking.  Hartmann was most proud of the fact that he never lost a wingman, the plane he fought with as a partner.  He contented himself with, at most, one victory per flight.

Hartmann had all the skills of a great pilot and managed to be where he could make the most use of his skills.  He also listened to his mentor.  At the end of the war he was ordered to move his squadron to the western front and fight the British and Americans.  He refused.  He disobeyed the order.  He felt it was suicide for his entire squadron.

 Indeed, the reason most major goals are not achieved is that we spend our time doing second things first.  (Robert McKain)

What projects should you accept?

Assignments at work may help your career, mean little or be suicidal.  One major contribution of a mentor is to help you figure out your priorities.  What assignments should you chase after? Which should you accept?  Which should you refuse to do?

Find a mentor or two.  Ask the most successful people you know to help you choose your priorities.  Successful people get successful by ignoring and refusing unimportant urgent tasks.

How to say no without being fired

The most important word you may ever learn to say to your boss is, “No.”  In work situations you may need to say, “These are the other things I am working on.  Which of them shall I drop to get that done?”  Don’t forget to use the critical winning phrase, “That is a critical assignment.  I’ll have it done in two days if you give it to me.”

Hartmann became the greatest ace of all time by carefully choosing the targets, missions and battles he would fight.  He even refused a dangerous order. He risked getting shot for disobeying.  If he could pick his priorities in a split second in life and death situations, you can pick your priorities at work.

Something to do today

List your boss’s priorities at work.

List your priorities at work.

Make a list of the things that will get you a raise or promotion the quickest.

Compare the lists.

Now find a mentor to bounce your ideas off of.

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Tomorrow:     My former boss is killing me

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Posted in Accomplishments, Time management

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2 things that create career luck

Posted on October 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

IQ experts say that Thomas Jefferson was the smartest man ever born.  I don’t doubt he was brilliant.  He harnessed his brilliance to the ox of hard work.  Without his hard work, that incredible brain would have been wasted.

I am sure there have been many others born who were smarter than Jefferson, no matter what the experts say.  Those who were smarter were never recognized because they either worked in obscurity or didn’t work much at all.  They used their brilliance to just get by.

So, two things:

  1. You have to work hard
  2. You have to be recognized

Make sense?

I constantly talk to job seekers who have managed to get themselves into a great position.  They work hard, have a great attitude and are willing to take chances.  Interestingly, they commit with all their heart even though they may change jobs or positions frequently.  They commit, work hard and make sure their accomplishments are recognized.

These superstars often hit bumps in the road.  I know one that went from COO, to $24,000 per year junior associate, then back up to senior associate at $70,000 per year in 24 months.  A year later he was CTO.  He makes commitments, works hard and gets recognized.

Something to do today

It is time to look at your habits.  Are you performing at the level you want to be recognized at?  In other words:  work hard and get recognized.

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Next:     Ask and you shall receive

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Posted in Accomplishments, Attitude, Focus, Perseverance, Promotions, talent, Time management

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