They Don't Teach Corporate in College (28 page)

Don't forget to reward yourself for beating procrastination and finishing a task. Instead of moving on to the next assignment right away, block out time to do something you enjoy. Long hours of hard work will pass by much more easily when you can anticipate a fun activity at the end of the process. As I was writing this book, for example, I'd tell myself that each time I finished a section, I would spend a few hours watching a movie on cable or playing a video game. We all have our mindless vices. Remember Jack Nicholson in
The Shining
? All work and no play makes Jack a dull (not to mention psychotic) boy. So if you've earned it, go ahead and indulge!

Thanks to good old Microsoft, I became a pro at scheduling meetings for my team, which was dispersed across the country in four different offices. Somehow I thought that a meeting equaled progress on a project. It took me about five meetings to realize that we were always discussing the same topics, but never making decisions or creating action plans around any of them. It was like the clock had stopped. No matter how much we talked, we never accomplished anything. The meetings were actually a huge productivity drain because they took up so much time that they prevented us from getting our individual work done.

Seth, 27, Texas

Have you ever noticed that the most stressed-out folks at work are habitually disorganized? In their defense, it's easy to lose track of an important document, project, or deadline when your smartphone is beeping every second. However, there are only so many things in the professional world that you can control, and the way you organize is one of them. When you're organized, you're more confident, efficient, and dependable. You're also much less likely to be forced into early retirement by a heart attack or a nervous breakdown.

Before I launch into a discussion of ways to preserve your sanity by incorporating organization into your daily routine, let me admit something. I do tend to believe that organization is one of those pesky inherited traits. If you have it, it's likely that you've had it all along, and you probably skipped ahead the second you saw this section's header. If you don't, these suggestions might not be as easy to implement as they sound. Take heart, though. If you can take one thing away from this section and use it to become more effective at work, reading it will have been worthwhile.

In
Chapter 2
, I talked about utilizing good organizational skills as you begin a new job, and I recommended starting at home base: your desk. To briefly recap: please do not buy into the misconception that an Armageddon of a cubicle makes you look super busy and hardworking. Remember that the professional world judges performance by results, not effort, and your managers will doubt that you can achieve such results in the midst of total chaos. For those of us in a constant state of information overload, keeping a neat workspace requires vigilance. I suggest thinking of every new item arriving on your desk as an insect that is infiltrating your territory. Your job is to dispose
of it as quickly as possible, either by chucking it in the nearest recycling bin or putting it in its proper place. The only material on your desk should pertain to the task you're working on at that very minute. Everything else should be labeled and filed for easy access.

Treat your email inbox the same way. Delete spam and other messages you don't need as soon as they pop in, and if you know you have to respond, get in the habit of doing so immediately. When you receive a new task via email, don't let it linger. Add it to your master “to do” list. Should a message require follow-up at a later time, flag it, and place it in a subfolder that you review on a daily basis.

I'm frustrated with a few people I work with who don't read their email and always seem to be unavailable. I've tried everything from tagging messages with read receipts to automatically re-sending messages that bounce back with one of those cheerful “Out of the Office” replies. I'm sure these email neglecters have their reasons, but think about this: If I know they're not staying on top of their mail, other people, including their managers, must know it too. Even if these people haven't been seriously burned yet, their reputation is being compromised as we speak. Don't get tripped up by this one. During the business week, unless you're on vacation or in a meeting or seminar in which checking your phone would be rude, make it your business to read and respond to email several times a day.

These 21st-century productivity hacks will ensure that you have more time for the important things and can stay at the top of your game.

Smartphone:
If you're similar to me, sometimes the smartphone can be more trouble than its worth, especially when the old Wi-Fi connection is spotty. However, as an Android user, I recently discovered Tasker (tasker.dinglisch.net). Apps like Tasker essentially allow your phone to read your mind by using certain contexts to trigger tasks or setting changes. A context could be something as simple as the day of the week, a headset being plugged in, having a certain battery percentage, or entering a certain location. Once a context takes place, it triggers an action like turning off auto-sync, loading Pandora, or sending a text message to a certain person. Next, there is the Holy Grail of automation that is the If This Then
That, also known as the IFTTT app (
ifttt.com
). IFTTT connects up to Google apps and others and allows them to talk to each other without your intervention. Basically, you create your own recipes such that if a particular trigger is present, an action is generated. One example of a recipe? “If I am endorsed on LinkedIn, publish a tweet on Twitter.”

Social Media:
Once you arrive at the office, take a vow against spending too much time on social media and not enough time working. Fortunately, there are tools to help. Use Hootsuite (
hootsuite.com
) or Tweetdeck (
tweetdeck.com
) to schedule social media posts, retweets, and anything else you want to publish or respond to that day. You don't have to bother logging on multiple times to see if someone mentioned you either. These apps will tell you automatically so that you can respond appropriately in real time. Real-time too much for you? Try Twilert (
twilert.com
) to alert you to any Twitter keywords you may want to track, several times or just once a day, just like a Google Alert.

Storage and Backup:
At the end of a busy day at work, you've probably accumulated more paperwork than is useful to anyone. How about automating your note-taking and document storage via a tool like Evernote (
Evernote.com
)? Evernote not only allows you to save your ideas, things you hear, and things you see throughout the day, but you can also scan the day's papers directly to an Evernote virtual notebook. Two major advantages of Evernote: it works with every kind of mobile device and computer, and it allows you to encrypt confidential data. As for all of those business cards you've collected, consider downloading an app like ScanBizCards (
ScanBizCards.com
) that allows you to automatically input card data right into your online contact database so you don't have to worry about losing or storing the physical cards. One hard drive crash in a lifetime is too many. At the same time, you don't want to spend your days thinking about backup. Fortunately, you can automate regular backups of your devices to an external hard drive using software such as Acronis (
Acronis.com
) and to the Internet using a service like CrashPlan (
Crashplan.com
). You should also make a habit of backing up important content to the cloud via an app like
Dropbox.com

Several twenty-somethings have told me that they have difficulty coordinating projects with multiple tasks and individuals involved. Learning to do
this well is a prerequisite for getting ahead in the professional world. I have a few years of project management experience under my belt, and this has been my strategy:

As soon as I leave my boss's office with a new mission, I consider the scope of the project and the general approach I want to take. I then create a rough outline that breaks the project down into smaller components.

Conducting an initial project meeting allows me to turn the assignment of tasks into a team activity. By brainstorming with my teammates about the best way to accomplish various phases of a project, I encourage them to approach the work with enthusiasm and commitment. Note that team meetings should not be called indiscriminately. As much as I love the people I work with, if I want to hang out and chitchat, we'll go to happy hour. Remember that the real project work gets done outside the conference room and that, most of the time, you do not accomplish things simply by talking about them. In general, I don't usurp an hour of my colleagues' time unless the meeting will serve a combination of the following purposes:

Generates ideas that will result in an appropriate project strategy.

Delegates each required task so that every member of the team is personally accountable for something.