LITTLE THINGS YOU DO THAT SHOOTS YOU TO THE TOP (1)

When it comes to your career, it is usually small things over a long period of time that add up to the success that you achieve. Getting into the habit of making small improvements on a daily basis will reap huge rewards in the long run. If you find yourself with nothing to do, whether at work or at home, here are 32 actions you can take to help improve your career.


Get Knowledge, Get Certifications
Knowledge they say is power so get adequate knowledge and rare ones at that and sty on top of your game. Certifications are aproof to your claims on knowledge areas that set you apart from the crowd so the more certifications you have, the more proofs of your proffessionalisms and adequacies, International certifications would add value to your portfolio and you will find them handy in all countries of the world. Do call 07029114260 or e-mail [email protected] for a guide on the right certifications for you based on your aspirations or enqiuries to already chosen trainings and certifications that suit you.

Who Do You Respect?
If you do nothing else on this list the first time you find yourself with some free time, find yourself a mentor. Pick someone (or preferably several people) that you respect and ask them to mentor you. Most people will be more than happy to pass along advice that they have learned over the years which can be invaluable in helping your career. They will also be great people to use as a sounding board with ideas you have and help you figure out the best way to obtain the goals you are seeking to accomplish. A mentor can help you in many other ways during your career including making your advancement much easier. Finding a mentor is actually sound advice for all aspects of your life including finding a financial mentor.

Support The Support
Learn who the support staff are and go out of your way to be helpful to them. They do a lot of the grunt work and don’t get nearly the amount of appreciation that they deserve, so they notice when someone treats them well. When an emergency happens (and they always do) having the support staff on your side can be the difference between failure and pulling out success. From clerks and secretaries to cleaning staff, treat them well and you’ll never regret doing so when crunch time comes.

Get Them To Come To You
This is a little trick that I learned that produced great result for little effort and just a bit of money. Create a candy jar for your co-workers. Don’t get the cheap candy. Get the good stuff that you know everyone loves. It took me some time to perfect my method of deploying the candy jar and you may have to experiment to get your deployment right. I put it out only when I had free time to chat, otherwise I would be interrupted too often. I also learned to lock it away when I went home or it would be empty when I arrived the next morning. What it did do was keep me up to date on all the happenings in the office. When people stop by to grab some candy, they will tell you things that are going on that you may otherwise miss. I found that keeping abreast of this information helped me to better understand the dynamics that were taking place which helped with my career.

Don’t Do It Later
Procrastinating has always been a major problem for me and something that I still work on today. If you can identify how you’re procrastinating and create a system to discourage yourself from doing so, you will dramatically increase your productivity. My big vice was watching TV far too much and I’ve had to ween myself from spending too much time on social networking sites as well. Once I find one place where I procrastinate, I’ve learned that I will eventually replace it with another, so it’s a continual process. I have a whole list of things I have done to improve my productivity. Once you have identified places that you are spending too much time, take steps to reduce the amount of time you spend on them and instead use that time to further your career.

Timing Is Everything
It may not seem like a big deal to be on time when all meetings start 15 minutes late, but it is if you are the person that is causing the meeting to start late. One boss I had would actually lock the door of the meeting room once the meeting began. If you were late, you were out of luck. While this is a great way to quickly learn to be on time, it’s not a method that most people are subjected to and they may not realize that being a few minutes late can get them a bad reputation.
Being on time actually means arriving to meetings a few minutes early. Co-workers that are running the meeting will appreciate your promptness and you will get a reputation of being reliable. The same goes for work that needs to be handed in to your boss. Learn to hand it in before it’s due — this will show your organizational skills and get the reputation of being highly responsible. If you find that you are always a bit late or rushed to get things done, use your free time to get ahead instead of waiting until the last second.

Pinpoint The Essentials
One of the biggest myths in business is that those who work the hardest are the ones that get ahead the most. Working hard is important, but working smart is just as important. Working smart means pinpointing the areas within your job that are essential to your group and to the company. Once these have been identified, focus most of your resources in those areas. This is one of the best pieces of advice I ever received from my mentors. Take some time to look at your job and understand what parts of it are the most essential to others both inside and outside your work group. If you can pinpoint those important areas, you become the person that people come to when things need to get done.

Become A Listmaster
I used to think that making lists was useless, until I started making them myself in a way that was useful for me. I actually have two lists – one is a list of all the things I want to do and one is my daily must-do list. On the daily must-do list, I only place the three most important things I have to do that day and I will work on those three things until they’re done. Once finished, I can go to my general list and choose projects from there. If I don’t finish, then I keep working on that list of three the next day and until it’s done. This ensures that I get done the things that I may not like to do as much so that they don’t constantly get delegated to the end of the longer list. How you develop your own list may be very different, but creating a system will help you to accomplish more at work in less time. Once you complete something, don’t throw the list away. Instead, date and file them in a work completed folder. This will allow you to have a documented list of all the tasks you’ve accomplished which you can take out at your next performance review or when asking for a raise.

Who’s The Boss
I’ve had both bosses I liked, and ones that I could have certainly lived without. Even the ones that I didn’t particularly like, I found that talking with them and discussing their expectations was always a better career move than trying to avoid them. For the bosses I did like, it was a great way to get their support for the career advancements I wanted to make. No matter what the relationship, being able to talk with your boss about work expectations will almost always help your career much more than not talking. If you haven’t talked with your boss lately, set up a time to do so and spend some time writing down the topics you would like to discuss.

Second & Thirds Can Be Good
Even though I was the worst student ever when it came to foreign languages in school, I’m living proof that absolutely anyone can learn a second language. I have no doubt that all of my high school language teachers would roll over in their graves if they knew I was proficient in Japanese. Being proficient in a second language can open up a lot of career opportunities and is well worth pursuing if you have an interest in one. There are plenty of resources online including those developed by the Foreign Service Institute to help you along. Learning a foreign language can give you a huge leg up if you have thoughts of working for your company in a foreign country.