Tag: goal setting

Broaden Your Horizons and Build Your Career with One Perspective Change

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When we talk about things like work/life balance or work vs play, we immediately assume that the two things are opposed and competing. This is a huge problem, firstly, because it means that it’s pretty well accepted that you hate your job but stick to it because it funds your lifestyle and, secondly, because life doesn’t have to be like that at all. 

When you change your perspective and begin to think of work as a part of your life, and not an inconvenience you have to put up with, you give yourself a chance to push for something more compelling and more fun. If you’re not convinced here are two stats to change your mind: American spends 90,000 hours at work over their lifetime and yet, 87% of Americans have no passion for their jobs. 

Convinced now? Here’s what you should do.

Make Contacts Wherever You Go

If you want to improve your social life and your work life, building your contacts is essential. Now, how you do this is up to you but it’s a good idea to go to a mix of different sorts of events. Meeting friends of friends is a good way to broaden your social group but going to events for people with similar interests or networking events for more industry-specific stuff is a good idea too. 

Building your contacts is especially important if you want to move up the job ladder without sending a million applications out. Executive search often comes down to who you know and how much they rate you, and not who is lucky enough to see the ad online. 

Follow All Your Interests

Your career probably comes with a few prerequisite skills and if you are going down a particular niche pathway, you could be forgiven for focusing on building those skills and nothing else. But increasingly, life isn’t like that. Our jobs tend not to last our entire career and you could go through a wide range of roles and industries in your working life.

If you want to enrich your career and your life, a better approach is to follow your interests. Sure, flower-arranging or tinkering with an old motor might not have anything to do with your job in IT but both hobbies could lead you elsewhere. Plenty of people get into jobs by accidentally becoming an expert in a hobby or interest. You’ll only get there if you pursue your interests first.

Be Determined But Flexible When Setting Your Goals

Life goal setting is difficult because what you want to achieve isn’t often a concrete thing but a more complex idea. For example, everyone wants to be happy and that’s a worthwhile goal. But how on earth are you going to achieve ‘happy’? 

Having big, undefined goals is actually a good thing as long as you can identify achievable, smaller goals along the way. Setting smaller goals will help you see your progress but they can also be more flexible and change as new opportunities present themselves. 

There’s no one way to live your life but once you allow yourself to broaden your horizons, you’ll find that more good things come your way.

What You Should Do When Your Team Needs Motivating

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If you want your business to be flying high, you need to have the right people with you. You need the best possible contacts that can assist you in your pursuit, and you need to have excellent employees that can put the work in and provide the right results. When you planned everything out at the beginning, you probably thought you could solely take on the world. You’ll soon realize that it’s a group effort and, without a crack team of fully motivated employees, you won’t get anywhere near what your fantasies are picturing. 

Bringing in the right people is one thing, but keeping them on track and focused can be a whole new challenge. They’re only human after all. Having a driven workforce can be pivotal in a business taking off, so keeping them upbeat and hungry to work is so important. As a boss, you’ll always be looking to keep them going. Here are a few ways you can do so.   

Make The Workplace Beautiful 

Nobody functions well in an ugly environment, so make the office/warehouse/factory/etc. a little nicer of the eye at least. It doesn’t have to be the most perfect place in the world, but a clean area with little problems would go a long way. Make sure everyone and everything is organized, too. Clutter around desks and workspaces will only lead to more problems.  

Set Little Goals

When people have a goal in front of them, they immediately become more motivated. Working towards nothing other than a big collective goal at the end of a big project can be tiresome for most. You’ll know the feeling yourself. You’ll also know that completing even the smallest challenge feels good and makes you want to hit your next target in order to get the same feeling. Perhaps you could give them little daily or weekly goals to hit. 

Don’t Pile On Pressure 

At some points in our professional lives, we’ll hit certain times where we need to get our heads down and ride the pressure. It’s not all of the time, though, so don’t make your staff worry all of the time. There are some people that thrive under pressure, but a lot of people crumble.  

Acknowledge Their Work

When somebody is working hard or getting their jobs done, it doesn’t hurt to recognize their efforts. Put yourself in their shoes: it would feel nice, and it would assure you if the person overseeing you told you that you’ve done an excellent job. 

Be Positive At The Right Times

As a boss, you’ll need to know how to behave at different times. It’s not something you are born with, it’s something that you learn over time during the course of your leadership development and evolution. If things go a little south, a lot of the time you need to put on that happy face and gee up the employees. How they’ll behave will be based on how you behave – you are the conductor, after all. 

Be Stern At The Right Times

As much as calm, cool and positive vibes are the go-to way of behaving most of the time, there will be times where you need to put your foot down and apply some seriousness. An arm around the shoulder doesn’t really work if someone is slacking off or misbehaving.

How To Become A More Skilled And Talented Individual

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It’s safe to say that everyone in the world wants to be at the pinnacle of their potential in every walk of life. It’s only natural to want to be the best at whatever hobby, discipline or work you’re involved in – and if not THE best, then certainly one of the best. It can be quite frustrating not achieving what you set out due to lack of skill – it could even bring someone down. We all want to have the skills to get through challenges that we face and live the best possible life with all the confidence in the world.

If you’re wandering through life not quite getting to grips with how to improve yourself and whatever skills you have, let’s take a little look at a few simple ways to solve that puzzle.      

Research

The first thing to do is, like a lot of things, to look into what it is that you need to do. It sounds simple, but the answer is often very simple – especially when you’re stuck in your own head worrying about what the next action is.

Be More Organized

Being able to plan out your life and the steps you take in it is a significant skill in itself, but keeping to an organized routine will ensure that you can plot out when to take specific steps in achieving your goal.

Go Back To School

Perhaps you need to take a step back and hit the education scene again? People all over the world are taking this route, and it makes a big, positive difference in a lot of their lives. You’re never too old to learn new things.

Change Career

You might find that a huge change in your life is needed in terms of your job. Perhaps you’ve hit a wall with where you are, and you need to be able to learn new things in an entirely new environment. You often get the best out of yourself when you do something you enjoy. Perhaps you’ve always wanted to be a pilot? You might find yourself doing a masters in aviation one day and, in the process, you’ve achieved a whole lot using a whole range of talents from different facets of your work history. Sometimes change is helpful.  

Set Goals

A way to keep focussed on the things you want to do and to keep motivated on them is to set goals along the way – small goals and big ones. Looking at the bigger picture and reminding yourself what is it that you’re hoping for every day will keep you on track. Setting out little challenges also helps you as it enables you to track your progress. Also, the feeling of reaching goals and ticking off challenges is a great feeling – it keeps you going.   

Embrace Failure

Something that a lot of people tend to do is they get down at failure. When things start to go bad they feel negative and that it’s all pointless. No. Failure is great. Keep on failing. The way you progress and progress and progress is to keep messing up and trying again.

This Is How You’re Going To Organize Your Way To Success

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Getting overwhelmed with work is normal. Yet when it happens to us, we freak out. We feel like a failure or a fraud, and find it hard to get ourselves back on track. And, in all honesty, it just sucks! In a world where possibilities are endless, and we really can pave our own way if we want, why should we let the pressure bring us down? Instead, we need to take action. One of the best ways to do that, is to make sure that you’re organized. When you know where you are with your work, it can make you more productive, more confident in your abilities, and help you to actually work on your success. So if you’re lacking motivation or a sense of direction, try these tips for getting back on track.

  1. Create A Career Plan

First of all, you’re going to want to come up with a career plan. Because we all know that planning really is a crucial part of bring your success into fruition. If you have no idea what you want to achieve, how can you possibly achieve it? Whether you work for yourself or you’re climbing the career ladder, sit down and really think about where you’d like to be in five or ten years time. Then, you can work backwards and consider what you will need to do to get there.

  1. Stick To A Daily Schedule

The next thing to do is to have a daily schedule that you can rely on. When you are self-employed, you can often take that idea of freedom too far. But if you’re going to find success, you have to hold yourself accountable and get the work done. Organization really helps with this. Some draft a daily schedule that will work for you and help you to stay on track.

  1. Use Software, Apps & Equipment

Another thing that can be really handy is the equipment that you’re using. If your work is a mess, it’s hard for you to get anything done. So look into the benefits of USB 3.0 flash drives and cloud storage so that you can keep your files organized. Then, take a look at the apps and software packages that help you to boost productivity or manage your projects better too.

  1. Bring In Help

If you’re really stressed out about time, then hire someone. Don’t try to do everything yourself and struggle as a result. This is going to make you feel anything but organized. Instead, when you have someone to lighten the workload, you can keep your stuff more organized, get it done, and sail your way to success.

  1. Set Goals & Reassess Regularly

Now, one final thing that will help you to really stay on track with what you’re doing, and feel more organized, is to have goals. You can set these as part as your overall career plan, or you can set smaller goals monthly or weekly that can keep your workload and schedule organized on a micro level. Either way, you’ll want to make sure that you’re assessing them regularly. You need to check in with yourself to make sure on track, and this helps that overwhelming feeling to stay at bay.