Every Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance or other book of interest. Also available is a complete list of the hundreds of book reviews that have appeared on The Simple Dollar over the years.

Unless you’re intentionally sticking with purely entry-level jobs or greatly restricting your career choices, you’re going to eventually find yourself in a position where you have to publicly present your ideas. It might just be to a room of peers, it might be to a large crowd, or it might even be to a large television audience, but in any of those events, you’re going to be practicing the art of public speaking.

I’ll be straight with you. The best way to become a good public speaker is to practice at it, but practicing at it involves a lot more than standing in front of a mirror and looking at yourself while you’re talking. There are a lot of little pieces that need to come together for effective public speaking.

Scott Berkun has been a public speaker for a long time. It was actually his talk on the myths of innovation that convinced me to find out more about him, and it was the strength of his public speaking style that convinced me to give Confessions of a Public Speaker a read.

It was well worth it. Confessions of a Public Speaker is probably the best book I’ve ever read on the art of public speaking. It balances the entertaining and anecdotal nature of such a book perfectly with hard-hitting and useful advice on getting up in front of a crowd and sharing your ideas.

I can’t see you naked
The trick to a good presentation is to realize that the audience mostly just wants for the presentation to be over so they can do other things – maybe get back to their work, maybe network with other people, maybe goof off. Because of that, they’re mostly not going to notice the small mistakes you make, so don’t worry about them. What about the big mistakes? Just try to roll onwards from them, preferably using them as a launching pad. For example, if you make a blunder, say, “You think that was bad? …” then share an anecdote that ties you to the audience and (hopefully) helps you to get back on track.

The attack of the butterflies
The best way to relieve nervousness before a talk is to practice it enough beforehand so that it feels natural and to eliminate little things that can make you nervous beforehand. Do things like getting a good night’s sleep the night before a talk, eating a healthy meal a couple hours beforehand, chatting with people in the audience before a talk (so that they seem friendly and not oppositional), and getting there in plenty of time so that you don’t have to rush and little hiccups become easier to deal with.

$30,000 an hour
What’s a justifiable amount for a public speaker to earn? Berkun breaks down a $30,000 speaking fee and really lays out how it’s not all that unreasonable for a 60 minute speech. It requires two days to create the presentation, the stress of speaking for that long, the time to travel there and handle the logistics of getting from your home to the venue and back home, and the career effort it took to reach a point where you can command a nice speaking fee. He makes a great case for why good public speakers ought to earn a lot.

How to work a tough room
The best defense against a tough room is on-site preparation. Get to the room as early as possible and get a feel for how you’ll sound in there. If there are other speakers, watch them and see how the crowd reacts to them. Are they an easy crowd or a tough crowd? If you’re the first speaker, encourage people to sit near the front, not spread out throughout the room (this way, you have a smaller area to focus on with your gaze and attention). The more you know the room and the crowd, the better off you are.

Do not eat the microphone
There are four key parts to assembling any good presentation. Take a strong position in the title of the presentation. Think carefully about your audience. Make your specific points as concise as possible. Know the counterarguments from an intelligent audience and address them. If you do these things, you’re going to have a presentation that grabs their attention and makes your case as well as possible. A good way to start is to simply list the five key points to making whatever case you want to make, honing those key points down, then making sure you’re able to handle the inevitable counterarguments.

The science of not boring people
The shorter your presentation and the faster the pace of it, the less likely you are to bore people and the more likely you are to make them leave with a positive impression of your message. Presentations that go on too long or dwell too long on specific points are often easily forgotten, which completely undoes the entire point of your presentation. Make it snappy.

Lessons from my 15 minutes of fame
My favorite point from this chapter is that memorization and teleprompters are evil for the vast, vast majority of speakers. If you have your speech memorized or are just reading it, you’re almost always not sounding genuine or human. Focus on knowing your points cold and delivering them naturally without reading a single thing. This sounds much more conversational and much more interesting to the person receiving the message.

The things people say
The best way to improve on your presentation is feedback, but feedback isn’t as easy as you might think it is. Having someone just watch your presentation and critique it doesn’t really help. A much better tactic is to ask people how your presentation compares to other ones, as it’s much easier for people to compare and contrast two things (plus it feels less insulting when pointing out your flaws). Another great tactic is to simply videotape your own presentations, then watch the tape and see what’s wrong with the presentation.

The clutch is your friend
If you’re not connecting what you’re talking about to the lives of the people you’re presenting it to, they’re not going to be very interested. How is this relevant to their lives? Another key: you can’t just tell them it’s relevant. You’ve got to show them. Doing something is the most powerful way to learn, and you’ve got to get as close to having the audience do something as you can in the format of your presentation.

Confessions
The remainder of the book is almost like a blog. It addresses a bunch of very specific points about presenting, such as choosing the right pointer (this one) and how to properly put a wireless microphone on (clip it to your neck, then hide the cable inside your outer shirt). There’s just a bunch of good little tips here.

Is Confessions of a Public Speaker Worth Reading?
If you are on a career path that is going to involve making presentations in public at any point, Confessions of a Public Speaker is going to be well worth reading. It’s the best single volume on public speaking I’ve yet read.

The only complaint is that there’s not a whole lot on actually creating slides and building a presentation. Thankfully, a book I reviewed earlier, Presentation Zen, does that wonderfully. These two are great complements to each other.

Check out additional reviews and notes of Confessions of a Public Speaker on Amazon.com.

If you’ve been watching the news the past few days, you’ve probably seen the infamous video of the FedEx deliveryman who just tosses a computer monitor delivery over a fence. Here’s the video if you haven’t seen it:

As I write this, FedEx has said that they’ve merely “disciplined” the driver, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that he didn’t have a job come January.

So why am I mentioning this on here?

I want you to step back for a moment and put yourself in this guy’s shoes. Right now, it’s Christmas, so his working conditions are pretty miserable at the moment.

He has a ton of packages deliver and a lot of pressure from his boss to make the deliveries as fast as possible – and probably personal reasons to get done quickly, too.

He has a computer monitor, strolls up to a front door of a gated house that looks pretty nice – probably in a nicer neighborhood than he can afford to live in.

He’s likely not allowed to leave the package unoccupied on the front step, so the only option is to put it over this rather tall fence.

He could try climbing up to put it over the top, but that would take him a few minutes – putting him behind schedule and probably facing the wrath of his boss and perhaps his family – and perhaps he’s afraid of heights.

He’s frustrated, he’s tired, and he just doesn’t want to deal with it, so he makes a bad call.

That one bad call has probably cost him his job and has also made him the target of a viral video and a lot of sarcasm.

I’m not justifying the behavior of the guy in the video. He obviously could have handled the situation much better than he did.

Instead, I want you to take a second and imagine one of your worst days at work. Your boss is making tons of demands on you, you’re swamped with work, you’ve got a lot of personal worries, and it looks like you’re never going to leave.

In the stress of the moment, you make a bad call.

Most of us never have that moment broadcast all over the internet. In fact, most of us are never caught when we make that bad call.

Could you have handled that situation better?

I can certainly think of my own situations like this, where I’ve simply thrown away piles of paperwork rather than dealing with them and other boneheaded moves.

Those are the moments that I do not want myself to be judged on.

I would far rather be judged by my best moments, or at least be seen as someone who can handle a challenging situation. When people judge you in this way, it can only be a benefit for your career, not a job loss.

The challenge is that, for most of us, the camera isn’t running at work.

My suggestion? If you want to establish a career reputation that will win you raises and promotions, act as if the camera is always running.

Now, imagine that FedEx video if it showed the guy carefully climbing the fence, then gently lowering the box on the other side, then ringing the doorbell. It might have never went viral, but it just might have been sent to the people at FedEx and helped out his career a little bit. I know I’ve certainly reported good work on my behalf to companies in the past.

When you’re stressed out at work and thinking about cutting corners, imagine that there’s a camera running, watching what you do next. Do you want to make a video of you looking foolish? Or do you want to make a video you’d be happy to have sent to your boss? Can you overcome the stress of the moment and do things right?

Make the best choice and your career will thank you.

I got a great email recently from Marjorie:

My husband’s father just gave him a huge speech about how he doesn’t dress appropriately for work and how he will never get promoted or “become a manager” dressing the way he does. My husband is a computer programmer who works with a bunch of engineers. He wears dress slacks and polos or button-up shirts everyday to work, while most of his co-workers wear jeans and t-shirts. This confused me, but my husband exaplined to me that what his father is saying that since he doesn’t wear designer clothes and because he doesn’t wear a tie everyday that he will never be promoted. We buy his clothes at JC Penney, but the cheaper brands. I can’t tell the difference between them and the nicer dept. store brands, other than the price. Do you agree with my father-in-laws assessment? What about if my husband wants to advance his career, but has no interest in managing people? I realize he would make more money if he eventually became a manager, but he enjoys his computer programming work, and probably wouldn’t enjoy managing people, and I would never want him to work a job he didn’t enjoy if he didn’t have to.

I think what’s happening here is that your father-in-law is substituting his own goals for his son’s goals and he’s trying to guide his son towards those goals.

Your husband seems to have his own set of career goals. He’d like to advance his career as a programmer, but he has no interest in being in management. Your husband also has familiarity with the culture of the career path that he’s chosen.

I think it’s absolutely vital that people have a set of career goals. They need to have a sense of where they want to go and what they need to do to get there. For those reading this, ask yourself those questions. Where do you want to be with your career in five years? In ten years? In twenty? What do you need to be doing to get there?

Yes, attire can be a part of those goals. The usual advice is to dress in the attire of the position you want to eventually attain. If you want to be in management, dress like management. If you want to be just part of the senior staff, dress like part of the senior staff. I consider that to be pretty good advice.

It sounds like your husband is dressing for the position he wants to attain eventually, which is a senior programmer. He should note what people in his desired position wear and emulate it.

Your father-in-law has his own goals and he probably envisions certain outcomes for his son, for various reasons. For those goals and outcomes, the advice your father-in-law is giving his son is probably good advice. He likely envisions his son eventually moving into management and wants to prepare him to do so.

The challenge here, as it often is, is communication. For this type of disagreement to occur, both people aren’t articulating what their goals are and the paths they see toward those goals.

Your husband can fulfill his part by simply making it clear that his goals do not involve moving into management. He needs to make it clear that he’s dressing for the role he aspires to, and that something he values deeply is a job that he enjoys doing and he’s willing to accept non-executive pay for that position.

If your husband can’t clearly articulate his career goals and his plans for achieving them, he should spend some time thinking about his plan for the future. Can he clearly state where he wants to be in five or ten years? What exactly is he going to do to make sure that happens? The more thought he’s given to this and the more detail he can give, the better.

Your father-in-law should be able to accept that. If he’s not, then your next move is to simply disregard his advice with regards to a career path. If he’s still giving advice that seems to be guiding your husband toward a management role, your husband needs to just nod his head and then follow his own path.

I actually sympathize with your husband. I have little interest or desire to be involved with personnel management, and knowing that about myself has driven many of my choices, both in the past and even today. I don’t want to manage people and it sounds like your husband doesn’t either.

However, it’s important to remember that (likely) your father-in-law cares deeply and desires a successful life without want for his son. Keep that in mind as you address this situation and handle everything with care and without anger or aggression.

A few days ago, I was chatting with someone who was telling me how he only shopped for Black Friday sales online. He didn’t like to go out to the stores, and I completely agreed with him.

After that, the conversation switched to Cyber Monday, and he told me of the long checklist of websites that he checks on that day. He talked about how the guys in his office spent a lot of the day emailing those deals to each other.

When I heard about that, I grew quiet. It seemed to me that a lot of people were burning their day hunting down a deal or two. The people he had described were in an office, meaning they were at work, and they were emailing lots of deals to each other, meaning they were spending a lot of time online finding those deals and emailing them to each other.

I’m the last person to say that it’s bad and horrible to spend some of your time doing that. If you work in an office environment with an uneven work flow, you’re going to find yourself with pockets of time without anything immediate to do, and it’s up to you to decide how to use that time. A lot of people end up web surfing during that time.

Here’s the thing, though: people who figure out how to use that time more effectively at work are going to build up their career.

Think about it this way. Alan spends Cyber Monday at work surfing the web looking for deals. He finds a $20 bargain on something he was going to buy for his kids for Christmas and a couple $5 or $10 bargains for things for himself. A few work tasks back up, but nothing big. His office is a bit messy and some paperwork needs filed, but it can wait.

Bill spends Cyber Monday at work getting his filing done and handling emails from the long weekend. He gets the things in his inbox done. At the end of the day, he does have a few extra minutes to look for bargains, but he mostly just looks through the emails for the bargains coworkers have sent out. He does some Cyber Monday searching in the evening at home, too.

On Tuesday, a huge project comes down the pipe, one that, if done correctly and with quality, will catch the eye of the boss. Who’s going to be more prepared to just knock that project out of the park, Alan or Bill?

If you want to have job stability and earn raises and promotions, look at your actions from the perspective of your employer. Is the thing you’re doing right now creating a positive value for your employer? If it’s not, why should they continue to employ you?

Here’s the key thing to always remember: employers are always going to want to hang on to people who provide a positive value for their business. Most of the people who are “downsized” are either filling a position that isn’t providing that positive value or aren’t producing enough work in that position to be a positive value for the company.

If you want job stability and raises and promotions, you need to focus on making sure that the company is getting more value out of you than they’re paying you. If you’re not doing that, you might as well start spending your time building a side business or looking for a different job.

If you’re reading this late on Cyber Monday at work, as many of you will be, you have a fundamental choice to make.

You can spend the rest of the day surfing the web, hunting down deals on things you don’t really need, and providing little or no value at work.

On the other hand, you can spend the rest of the day taking care of some unfinished things, providing some real value to your employer.

One route might be more enjoyable, but the other one helps you build a more valuable and more secure long-term future.

Craig writes in:

I just found out that I’m being “downsized” at the end of the year. While I have a small emergency fund, I do have a mortgage and a bit of credit card debt. I also have three kids at home. My wife will continue to work, but she has only a part-time job with minimal benefits. I am receiving a pretty good severance package, though.

Rather than panicking, I’m trying to be calm and rational about figuring out what’s next. This made me think of you and The Simple Dollar. If you were in my shoes, what would you do?

Here are the steps I would take in your situation.

Start living cheaper immediately. This means cutting back on or eliminating non-essentials in your life. Cancel your Netflix account. Pare back on your premium movie channels. Start eating at home more. Start brown-bagging your lunch. Just use good old fashioned frugality to your advantage, because you’re at a point where every penny matters more than ever.

Move to minimum payments on all debts. If I’m making any payments larger than the minimum on any of my debts, I’d pare them down to the minimum right now. This might involve adjusting automatic mortgage payments or other such things. I just couldn’t afford those excess payments if I were in this type of situation.

Build up my emergency fund. Every excess dime I earned between now and leaving my job would go into here. Then, during my actual period of unemployment, I would use this account as a supplement to what my spouse was bringing in, if needed. This arrangement would allow me to survive a fairly long period of unemployment without getting into real trouble.

Investigate my COBRA options. If there was a health insurance need, and it sounds like there is, I would look into the COBRA options at work. COBRA is a federal law that allows you to use the health insurance provided by your former employer for a period if you pay for the insurance. If my family needed my insurance, I would strongly consider using COBRA to extend my insurance.

Polish up my resume. I would focus on actual accomplishments over the last five to ten years rather than just a long job history. I’d be better off listing things I’ve achieved and skills that are very clearly marketable than just listing all of the jobs I’d done over the years. Employers don’t care about the irrelevant job I was doing in 1993, so I’d save that line for a description of something I achieved at my most recent job.

Send an individual email to each person I know well in my field. I’d suggest that I might be looking for greener pastures and ask if they know of any relevant positions that might be available. Social connections are the most valuable tool you have for getting your foot in the door at a new job.

Hit the social networking sites, especially LinkedIn and Twitter. I’d use LinkedIn to build up professional connections, starting with the people above that I emailed. I’d use Twitter to dive into professionally-oriented conversations with people in my field. LinkedIn does a great job of shoring up the connections one already has, while Twitter does a great job of starting to build new connections.

Start building a side gig. Even with all of these things, you’re going to have some time to burn. Use it productively. Make an effort to start a side business in an area you’re passionate about, whatever that might be. I know one person who moonlights as a high school sports referee. Another person I know makes art that he sells on Etsy. The key is to start something that will bring you some income now, but more importantly has the possibility to grow into something later.

In other words, this is a time to be busy. Get started now.

Every Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance or other book of interest. Also available is a complete list of the hundreds of book reviews that have appeared on The Simple Dollar over the years.

One of the best discussions I’ve ever had with a reader was with Emily. Emily worked in an office environment where the supervisor position was going to become available soon. She felt as though she had the skills to take on that position and the track record in the workplace to win the competition for it, but something else worried her.

She felt that she had a great relationship with a lot of her coworkers. They were her friends and confidants, and she was worried that becoming their supervisor would damage those relationships.

I felt as though that were a valid concern. Quite often, the job requirements of being a supervisor can really interfere with relationships you might build with people in the workplace. You might like your boss or you might dislike that person, but there’s still an inequality between the two of you in the workplace hierarchy.

I encouraged her to talk about it with her friends and make up her own mind. She decided not to seek the supervisor position after some time reflecting on it, which was probably the right move for her.

Recently, I discovered a book that would have been just about perfect for Emily. From Bud to Boss by Kevin Eikenberry and Guy Harris covers this exact scenario. How do you transition from being “one of the gang” to being a successful leader? It’s not an easy path for anyone to take.

Succeeding in Your Transition to Leadership
The most profound idea that Eikenberry and Harris set out in the book comes early on, when they focus on the difference between control and influence from a manager’s perspective. If you focus on controlling people, the amount you can actually control is pretty limited. People don’t like to be controlled and the more controlling you are, the more they’re going to squirm away. Instead, you should focus on reducing your control and instead focusing on your influence. Instead of telling people what to do, instead talk about what needs to get done as a whole and break it down in front of everyone so everyone knows the role they have to play. Give them some slack and let them know that you really believe they can do what they need to do. Many people thrive under those conditions and it doesn’t have to rely on “putting the hammer down.”

Change
The best way to handle this kind of transition is to talk about it. Ask questions. Ask people in the office what they’re feeling, what they’d like to see done differently, whether they’re happy with their job right now, and so on. Talk about your own challenges in this new role so that they understand that you’re both facing new challenges in this changing time. Candor really pays off during times of change.

Communication
As you establish communication lines during the transitional period, keep them open after the transition has happened. Talk to people often – and not in a Bill Lumbergh top-down-do-what-I-say approach. Ask them what their challenges are. Let them know what you can do – and what you’re doing – to make it possible for them to succeed.

Coaching
This section focuses on the difficult task of giving feedback to people based on their performance. The key, as always, is to look for both positives and areas to work on for everybody. The best supervisor I ever had told everyone in the office, all at once, that he was going to tell each of us about the things we’d done well and give each of us one area to work on to improve our job performance in the coming year. That’s exactly what he did and that made all of us feel as though we weren’t being singled out for bad performance while also hearing about the thing we needed to improve on.

Collaboration
A key part of success in any workplace is hinged on the success of collaboration. Are people able to work together well? My experience – and this is right in line with this section – is that success often is hinged upon each piece of the collaboration understanding clearly what is expected of them and what the other collaborators expect. Again, it all comes back to clear communication.

Commitment to Success
In the end, it all comes back to you. What’s your commitment here? Are you committed to building a career here? Are you wanting to build a track record of success? It’s really up to you. A key thing, as always, is to be clear with yourself – and with others around you – with what your goals are. Hidden games rarely work. Hiding in your office doesn’t work, either. Instead, be clear with what you’re doing and what you expect from others.

Is From Bud to Boss Worth Reading?
Much of the content of From Bud to Boss is just a primer on how to be a good boss with some material included to make people feel more comfortable with the transition from coworker to supervisor.

That doesn’t make it a bad book. In fact, it makes it a very good book for people in Emily’s position. If you’re thinking of trying to take on a supervisory role but are afraid of how it will impact your workplace relationships, this is an incredibly valuable read.

Check out additional reviews and notes of From Bud to Boss on Amazon.com.

About twelve years ago, I had a job as a computer lab monitor at the college I attended.

The job was easy. All I had to do was go to that room during designated hours, sit at a particular desk, and answer user questions, along with a few other minor tasks such as reloading printer paper and changing print cartridges. The vast majority of the questions were very basic.

This left me with quite a bit of time where I wasn’t really doing anything but filling space.

Those hours – and there were many of them – are actually one of the biggest regrets I have of my college years.

I spent a lot of that time just sitting there web surfing. Occasionally, I’d dig into a homework assignment. Once in a while, I’d read a paperback. More than a few times, I stared at the wall and the clock.

I was underemployed, in other words. While there was a need for someone to be sitting in that seat, most of the time there wasn’t enough actual work for me to be doing.

I’m not alone in this. One of my closest friends used to work the graveyard shift as a convenience store clerk. She said that customers would come in at a rate of about three an hour during the night and she spent most of her time staring out the window or moving bags of potato chips around aimlessly. She usually had a nighttime checklist of things to accomplish, but those tasks were usually out of the way in the first two or three hours of her shift.

In each of our cases, we wasted our underemployment. Instead of taking advantage of open time where we’re actually being paid to just sit there and use that time for some sort of self-improvement, we just wasted that time.

I would give almost anything to have all of those wasted hours back. Those hours held the key to a lot of different potential avenues in my life.

Here are four incredibly useful distinct things you can be doing if you find yourself in an underemployed situation.

Look for useful things to do
There are always things that can be cleaned or organized better. There are always procedures that can be improved a little bit. There are always things that can be documented.

Sure, one might argue that these things aren’t really your job. And you’d be right. That’s not the point of doing them, though.

The reason to do them is twofold. First, you’re being paid to do something, not just sit there. You are earning money for your time there, so you might as well do something with it. Second, doing things like this earns you positive attention at work from your supervisor, which can help a lot if you’re in an emergency situation or if you’re hoping for a raise or a promotion down the road.

Improve your skills for this job
What skills are on display at this job? Communication skills with customers? Efficiency at making food or pouring drinks? Techniques for the technical field you’re involved with? Can these things be practiced or improved upon?

There are always ways to work on the skills you use in the workplace. Working on those skills when times are slow is a sure way to make sure the job goes much more smoothly when times are busy. Plus, an effective employee is one that stays around and is often in line for promotions and raises.

Prepare for your next career step
If this job is a jumping-off point, use your idle time to prepare for whatever it is that comes next.

There are a multitude of things you can do in this regard. Put in some extra studying time for a class. Work on that novel you’ve always wanted to write. Investigate a topic area you’ve always been curious about. Polish up your resume. Find leads on new jobs.

Improve yourself
If all of those fail, you can always spend the time there improving yourself. I know one person who used to take a barbell to work with him and do various exercises with it during downtime to build up his arms and shoulders. You can always take and read a challenging book – one that forces you to think deeply about the world in some way. Perhaps you can spend some time writing a handwritten letter to someone you care deeply about. The key here is to leave work a better person in some fashion than when you arrived.

Underemployment doesn’t have to mean idleness. In fact, it usually means opportunity.

A few days ago, I was standing by the bus stop waiting for my oldest child to arrive home from one of his first days in kindergarten. There were a few other parents of kindergarteners there and I struck up a conversation with one of them. We shared what we do for a living, what our spouses do for a living, and where we live in the area.

The person I was talking to sighed and said, “You know, if you had told me I’d be here in ten years, being a stay-at-home mom waiting for my kid at the bus stop with these two little ones, I would have laughed at you.”

I agreed with that. Ten years ago, I was still in college, single, and without a career path. Five years ago, I was fully embedded with a career path that was totally different than the one I’m on.

I then asked her a question that had been floating in my mind a lot lately. “Where do you think you’ll be in five years?”

She stood there for a second. “You know, I’ve really enjoyed making a lot of my children’s clothes. I would love to figure out a way to make that into a business.”

Ten years ago, she was a single college student. Seven years ago, she was a married career woman. Today, she’s a stay-at-home mom. In five years, might she be starting a clothes business?

The truth of it all is simple. Our lives don’t always follow an orderly path. For an awful lot of people, you’ll be doing something with your life in five years that you completely don’t anticipate today.

Another interesting element of this is that I can see, both in my own path and in the path of the person I was talking to, that we were constantly training ourselves, either directly or indirectly, for what came next.

As a student, I trained myself for what would become my first career path. While working in that career path (and before), I spent a lot of my spare time writing.

As a student, she trained for her career path. As a professional, she started planning for a family. As a stay-at-home mom, she’s spending some of her spare time prepping for a potential clothing business.

Right now, what am I preparing myself for?

It’s an interesting question. If I had to guess, I would think I’m preparing myself to be a fantasy writer, but honestly, my fingers and actions seem to be in a lot of different pies. I’m working on presentation skills and making presentations. I’m involved with creating e-books. I’m always working on The Simple Dollar.

Just as importantly, I’m building and maintaining savings. When a change in my life direction comes along, I have the cash on hand to do with the flow of whatever it is that comes along. Why? Because, quite frankly, I know something is going to eventually happen and change my direction in life.

What are you doing in your life right now that might prepare you for the next stage?

Do you have a healthy emergency fund? Do you have cash in hand for an unexpected move because of a career shift, seed money for a business, or living money because of a job loss?

Do you have little or no debt? If your debt isn’t under control, you’re tied to your current job pretty tightly. It’s hard to take a risk if your bills are eating up the vast majority of your income.

Are you building new skills? Time management? Information management? Communication skills? Photography? I can name thousands of potential skills you might be building in your spare time. The key thing is that you’re building something that’s exciting to you.

Are you building new relationships? Do you hide from your professional peers, your neighbors, and the people in your community? Or do you head out and meet these people and embrace them?

All of these things (and much more) are key parts of building whatever it is that comes next for you. It could be anything and it’s worth your while to be ready for it.