One of these friends in particular works for the state, and he goes into panic mode any time there’s even a hint about any sort of possible job loss. He goes through these phases of intense stress and worry several times a year. Even between these phases, there’s a certain amount of constant stress in his life due to his job.

Because of all of this stress, he loathes his job. His way of “escaping” from that job is to spend his paycheck on fun things. He has a very nice motorcycle, two different ATVs, a snowmobile, several 50+” televisions, a beautiful new truck, a set of golf clubs where each club costs more than my entire set, and on and on and on. He’s always eating out or going on weekend trips for golfing or for ATV conventions or to Vegas or something.

Looking at his lifestyle, I can’t see how he doesn’t just blow $15,000 per year on completely non-essential stuff. The total is almost assuredly a lot higher than that.

Now, let’s take that $15,000 a year and invest it over the ten years he’s been working at that job. Let’s give it a 7% annual return. He would now have almost $300,000 in hand. That would be enough to cover his living expenses until he was well past retirement age.

That’s not even the biggest value here for my friend. The biggest value for him would be that within just a year or so of saving at that rate, his job stress would drastically decrease and, within a year or two after that, it would vanish.

So what if he got fired? He would have months – even years – before he had to find another job. He could even start down a completely new career path if he so chose. After all, he’d have the money on hand to do it.

All the time, I see people talking about spending their whole paycheck as though spending money rampantly is some great example of personal freedom. They’ll say things like “you only live once” as they go sign up for another debt or plunk down another fistful of cash on something that’s fun in the moment.

Yet those same people wake up on Monday morning and trudge off to work at a job that they hate, one where the mere hint of losing their job or having their hours cut back fills their heart with fear.

To me, having money in the bank so that you’re not in fear of your boss is a much better expression of the “you only live once” maxim. I have no interest in ever again being in a position where my boss has that kind of power over the day-to-day aspects of my life.

Every single working person out there has the power to put themselves in a position where they don’t have to take heat from an abusive boss and they don’t have to be constantly in fear of having their hours cut back and they don’t have to bootlick or play office politics.

They just have to make the conscious choice to stop spending their entire paycheck.

Most of the time, significant portions of that paycheck are used as salve on the psychological wounds of the workplace (and, often, other aspects of life), and walking away from that salve is often the hardest part. I’m not going to kid you – cutting back on short-term pleasures is never an easy thing to do.

The reward on the other side, though, is incredible. You don’t have to worry about the office politics – just be pleasant to others and get the job done. You don’t have to fear your boss or loathe your job, either – if your job is miserable, start hunting for another one and realize that a pay cut isn’t the end of the world at all. If you want a new career, you can just go for it.

What I’ve found is that when you’re in a position where your paycheck isn’t hanging over your neck like a guillotine, a lot of the little workplace stresses kind of melt away. They just don’t matter that much any more.

If you hate your job, the most powerful response you have to that situation is to start spending less money and building up some savings. If you give yourself the power to be able to change employment without stress, life becomes much easier. If you keep going and give yourself the power to completely reboot your career if you so choose, life becomes easier still.

Buying things might be a nice short term salve, but you still have to go into work and suffer through a stressful environment every single work day. Cut back on buying things for a while and build up some money in the bank and you’ve found yourself a permanent salve.

The post The Danger of “Needing” a Job appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

I usually swap an email or two with them, but they don’t usually like my responses.

Here’s the truth, though. If you graduate and your resume says nothing but “B.A.” or “B.S.” in your field of study and doesn’t include a single additional thing relevant to your career path, you’re not getting a job. In a competitive job market, with lots of people coming out of college with a freshly minted degree in your area along with lots of people in your field looking to move around to a new position, just having a degree is not going to cut the mustard.

Your degree alone is not a ticket to a career. Your degree alone is a ticket to stocking shelves at the grocery store during the night shift.

It’s a painful truth, but that’s the reality of it. That was the reality of it when I graduated, too. Ten years ago, I watched a big group of my friends graduate all together at roughly the same time. Some of us found jobs in our career path quickly. Others didn’t.

Our degree basically didn’t matter in this. All of us had degrees, but nowhere near all of us found work. The college degree we held was merely a baseline. It was just considered one required part of a resume, and if you didn’t have other parts to go along with it, you weren’t getting a job, not when there were others with more accomplished resumes out there.

What made the difference, then?

Did we have jobs or internships that related to our desired work? Do we already have some sort of professional workplace experience in the field that we hope to work in? A job at Burger King is useful in demonstrating that you’re willing to work, but it doesn’t mean half as much as someone who actually worked at a job in their field during their college years.

If you want work in your field, start looking around your community. Start with your professors. Do they have research labs that could use an undergraduate assistant? You’ll probably wind up filing scientific papers or washing glassware for a year, but that year is far more valuable in the hiring process than a year at Wal-Mart. Are there businesses or organizations in your community that might employ you?

Do you already know some people in the field? If you can actually describe genuine relationships with people already in your field, you have a big leg up. Those people might be able to help you find work. Even if they can’t, being able to mention those relationships in an interview helps because it shows you’re a person already looking seriously at what you’re doing for a career path.

This overlaps heavily with work in your field. The more you work in your field, the more people you’re going to meet that are professionals in your field, and the more relationships you’re going to have.

Do you have valuable extracurricular activities? Do your extracurriculars line up well with the work you’re hoping to do? At the very least, do those extracurriculars point toward transferable job skills that might be of use to the employer?

Clubs related to your major are a good place to start, as are volunteer groups. Taking leadership positions in those groups really helps as well.

Have you completed noteworthy projects? Can you show an employer the results of a major project that you played a primary role in developing (or developed entirely by yourself)?

Class projects are okay here, but the ones that are really impressive are the ones outside of the classroom, either from your free time or from your time at a job related to your work. Those kinds of projects demonstrate a willingness to take charge of a situation and make something big happen while also balancing the challenges of classroom work.

Students who come out of college with a degree and these kinds of things on their resumes find jobs. Quite often, though, I’ll see resumes from students who list just their degree and a few jobs they had at chain restaurants, and then they wonder why they can’t find work. When you’re competing with people with these things on their resume, you’re going to have a very, very difficult time coming out on top.

The post Your Degree Isn’t a Ticket to a Career appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

At my new job, everyone dresses incredibly well. Everyone is wearing expensive – or at least expensive-looking – suits and other businesswear. My wardrobe is simply not up to snuff. Catching my wardrobe up to the level of everyone else is going to be really expensive. Do you have any suggestions?

First of all, I view it as a completely reasonable thing to dress at an appropriate level in the workplace. If your workplace has a dress code, whether informal or formal, then you should measure up to that dress code.

That being said, I don’t think it’s realistic nor expected that you immediately have a $10,000 wardrobe if you’re new to the environment. There may be a subtle expectation that you eventually reach that level, but I don’t think you need to go out tomorrow and get thousands of dollars in debt to play catch-up.

If I were in your shoes, I’d actually use this situation as an opportunity. You are in a great position, being new in the workplace, to establish some relationships in the office, and your clothing situation is a great opportunity to do so.

Look around your office and identify a few people that you consider to be very sensible and potentially compatible with your personality. If you pay attention, you’ll be able to find people who are more sensible than others. What people use mass transit for their commute? What people drive more sensible cars? What people are solid and reliable in the workplace and are liked by everyone? Look for those people.

Then, approach those people individually and privately and ask how they put their wardrobe together. Where did they shop? How do they seem so well put-together? Don’t be afraid to add some compliments when you ask, as everyone likes to be flattered.

Be honest about your financial situation. Make it clear that you’re new and that you don’t have a lot of accumulated money.

I have approached people – and been approached by people – in situations very much like this one. Each time, it has become the source for a good relationship. Most of the time, people like to help others, and they particularly feel flattered if you’re coming to them specifically for advice. That’s a great first step for a good workplace relationship and/or friendship.

Another point of advice: buy modular clothing, especially at first. Buy clothes that can be easily mixed and matched to give the appearance of different outfits so that you’re not having to buy as many articles of clothing at once.

I’ll openly confess that I find this pretty easy to do for my own dressy clothing, but I am rather unfamiliar with the specific needs of professional clothing for women. My only experience in that department is through Sarah’s clothing, and she seems to indicate that mixing and matching works reasonably well for her, too.

For myself, anyway, I have a suit and several pairs of dress pants, but I have several shirts and a number of ties. Most of the permutations of shirt, pants/suit, and tie work well together, so it can appear like I have a lot of dress clothes when I actually have very little. Since there are clearly some combinations that don’t work well, I don’t wear a combination unless both Sarah and I think it looks good.

The result of this is that I don’t have to invest in lots of different clothes to make a variety of nice clothing work. I just have to maintain compatible clothes and replace the individual pieces as needed (which isn’t too often – I rarely have to “dress up” for professional or personal purposes).

If you use that clothes-buying strategy along with the tactics and tips suggested by your new workplace acquaintances, you’ll not only build a solid wardrobe at a very passable cost, but you’ll also build a much stronger professional network.

The post Dressed for Success appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

That’s money you can use to pay off debt, buff up an emergency fund, improve your retirement savings, or pretty much anything else you can imagine. The best part is that frugality is accessible to everyone. There’s virtually no one reading this site that cannot afford to trim their spending in some way.

No matter how effective frugality is, though, it has limitations. There’s only so much of a difference you can make using frugal tactics, and if you want to continue to improve your financial situation, you have to turn your eye to generating more income.

While improving your income is an incredibly powerful tool as well, it also has drawbacks. There are only so many hours in a day, for one. For another, many avenues for improving your income don’t see immediate returns.

I think it’s worthwhile for everyone who’s serious about improving their financial state to spend at least some of their time and energy improving their income generation. However, the exact method you use depends a lot on what your needs are.

For example, if you’re in a situation where immediate income is really needed, a part time job is probably the best option. You can, of course, also sell off extra items around your home to make ends meet very quickly, but aside from that, gainful employment is the quickest way to get cash on the table.

The benefit of a part time job is really clear. It gets you a paycheck, usually at a pretty fast rate. if you are worried about making ends meet for the next few months, this is the best method for getting that cash in hand.

The drawbacks are numerous, though. Over the long run, a minimum wage job isn’t going to be the most productive use of your time. Also, it’s going to demand an investment of time and energy immediately, and the amount you make from a part time job directly correlates to the time and energy you invest in it.

I’d only use the part time job route if you need some very quick additional cash to start your turnaround and make it through some tough months right now.

If you’re not on the precipice of financial doom, though, there are a couple additional options to consider.

One path is to maximize your current career trajectory. Whatever path you’re on, invest in that path. Build relationships at work, both in your workplace and outside of it. Put in plenty of extra effort to put extra polish on your work projects. When you’re idle, find productive things to do. Seek additional training or education in your spare time.

The catch here is that the return is rarely immediate. Sure, it can help to shore up your job security a bit, but it rarely leads to quick raises and promotions and job opportunities. You can spend years building up your networking and your professional accomplishments and not see a dime of return during that period. Eventually, you will (virtually always) see some sort of positive return for the time and energy you’ve put in, but it’s certainly rare for it to be immediate.

I usually view this path as the best option for people who are strongly comfortable with and happy with their current career trajectory.

For others, building a side business or a second career is a good option. With freelancing opportunities, you can often start to build an income on the side while you still work at your primary job.

This is something of a middle ground between a part time job and career advancement. You can usually earn a little bit using this path, but many side businesses tend to have a slow build. You earn just a bit during the first months, then it gradually increases as you continually contribute effort to it. Sometimes, it grows into your main career.

The correct path here really depends on your life situation. In any case, I think any financially wise person who is not already in a position of full financial independence should be following one of these paths. If you’re not investing extra time and energy into increasing your income and securing your financial life, then you’re simply guaranteeing yourself a longer path to the prosperity you dream of.

The post Is a Second Job the Right Decision for Increasing Income? appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

While Sandberg’s focus is on women – particularly mothers – balancing personal and professional demands, I think the point she’s making about “leaning in” and “leaning out” makes valuable sense for everyone, but perhaps not in the specific way that Sandberg is talking about.

I’ll use my wife Sarah as an example here. While she’s very dedicated to the work that she does, she’s made the personal decision to “lean out” in some aspects of career advancement so that she could “lean in” in other areas, particularly motherhood. It’s something she values and something she chose. I had nothing to do with that decision other than talking through it with her regularly and working through logistics of any such choices, as she does with me when I’m deciding what areas to focus on.

The core idea that Sandberg is sharing here – that people need to consciously “lean out” in other areas in order to really succeed in the areas they choose to “lean in” on – really applies to almost everyone. Her specific focus, that of working mothers who have to make a difficult choice between “leaning in” on a career or on motherhood (or figuring out some other balance), is simply an incredibly good example of a very useful idea (she’s also using that application to make some interesting observations about career paths and gender).

In any case, the core idea of “leaning in” and “leaning out” deserves some attention in everyone’s life. Every adult in America has to make some choices about what’s important in their lives, and if they “lean in” on too many things, they get out of whack and fail in some key area, often with disastrous consequences.

Quite often, people do this without even thinking about it. Unconsciously, they choose to “lean in” in some areas and “lean out” in others.

The basis for that choice is often urgency, particularly in the lives of the vast majority of Americans who don’t have an emormously strong financial net to catch them. The shouting and threatening boss gets the attention, or the crying baby gets the attention because they’re the urgent demands.

In some situations, people are essentially forced to “lean in” in some areas due to the responsibilities they have compared to the resources they have. If your child has special needs, it’s often going to be up to the parent to “lean in” hard to get that child the support he or she needs, for example. Another example: if you don’t have much money to begin with, you’re often forced to “lean in” at work because, without your steady paycheck, you’re going to find it difficult to take care of the people in your life.

I think the real valuable point to take away from Sandberg’s book and speech is that there is tremendous value in stopping for a while and really thinking about where you want to be “leaning in” and where you want to be “leaning out.” Where do you want to be investing your time, your energy, your money, and your talent?

Do you want a great career? You can have it, but you’ll have to balance it by “leaning out” in other areas.

Do you want to be a great parent? Do you want to have a thriving and varied social circle? Do you want to make a large positive social difference? For each of those things you want, you’re going to have to back down in other areas to give yourself the space to achieve it.

It’s often hard to choose between these areas because we feel conflicting demands. I know I do. I know Sarah does, based on the many conversations we’ve had about these topics.

The trick is to realize that some of those demands simply have to trump other ones. If you don’t accept that and try to take care of all of them, you’ll have to settle for doing things in a mediocre way instead of in a great way. A person who is dividing up their energy and focus and time and talent among several different things will have an incredibly difficult time competing against someone who sticks to one big thing and holds the other ones back.

This is a difficult problem, but breaking through it, figuring out what areas to “lean in” on and “lean out” on, and knowing how to revisit them and maybe change your leanings a little is an invaluable key to getting your money, your career, your time, your personal needs, and your energy in balance. It requires some real soul-searching, but if you give it that soul-searching, you’ll get the rewards you need.

For me, the most valuable resource I’ve read for digging through these issues is David Allen’s Making It All Work, which I’ve written about extensively in the past. It has been invaluable in terms of helping me figure out where to “lean in” and where to “lean out” in my own life.

Where are you “leaning in” more than you should? Where are you “leaning out” too much? Figuring out those questions will help you immensely in your career, your finances, and your life.

The post Does “Leaning In” Make Sense? appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Since I didn’t have a real grasp on how to maximize my own levels of energy and focus yet, I would often find myself going through tired periods at work where I couldn’t focus on what I needed to achieve. This sometimes meant spending late evenings at the office or taking work home with me, neither of which I enjoyed doing. I’d spend periods at work doing very little because of an energy-focus valley and spend evenings working when I should have been spending my energy and focus on my wife and family or on other personally-fulfilling projects.

Eventually, I did figure out how to escape this routine and it had a transformative effect on my career and on my personal life. I found time and energy and focus to strengthen my marriage, be a better parent, and build The Simple Dollar essentially out of thin air.

One of the things I did to climb out of that rut was to become more effective at managing my time, largely thanks to the ideas found in David Allen’s Getting Things Done.

The other big factor in fixing that rut was to figure out how to maximize my daily energy and focus. In other words, I started to take a serious look at how my energy and focus ebbed and flowed throughout the day and began to map my high-energy and high-focus tasks, as well as my low-energy and low-focus tasks, to that ebb and flow.

Here’s exactly how I did that.

First, I kept an energy diary for two weeks. Every thirty minutes, I wrote down in this diary how I felt my energy and focus were doing on a scale of one to ten. I also noted whenever I ate and slept. I used a stopwatch to constantly remind me to do this.

Next, I analyzed that data. I figured out my average energy and focus level over the course of a day and in relation to meals and sleep. I made a chart that included every half hour interval throughout the day over two weeks so I could compare all the days side by side, along with the averages.

What I found was quite valuable. My energy level and focus were highest in the mornings between 7:30 and 10 AM, provided I woke up at my normal time (around 6 AM) and quickly ate something for breakfast after awakening. My energy would bottom out for about two hours after lunch, then rebound in the middle of the afternoon. I’d valley again in the early evening before dinnertime, but then rebound again at about 8 PM for a few hours until I quickly became tired and went to sleep.

So, my high focus and energy periods were in the early morning, the mid-to-late afternoon, and the post-supper evening. My low energy and focus periods were in the early afternoon and the early evening.

This actually has held true ever since then. As long as I get up at a consistent time (around 6 AM, usually) and eat a breakfast of some kind within an hour, my energy flow over the course of a day looks something like that.

Sleep affected things as well. If I got a bad night of sleep, I could usually knock a little bit of energy and focus off of my levels during the morning of the subsequent day and then again over the entire course of the day two days later. So, if I slept terribly from Monday into Tuesday, Tuesday morning would be a bit slow, as would all of Wednesday.

How did I use this information?

First, I shifted all of my high-focus tasks to the morning and all of my low-focus tasks to the afternoon. Writing computer code and reports filled up the morning. Sifting through email and doing backups would fill up the afternoon. By simply shifting my day around in this fashion, I actually found myself getting far more done than before. I would get almost a full day’s worth of coding done in the morning, then I’d end the day caught up on all of my emails, backups, routine reports, and other mundane things. I began to take less work home and found myself with more energy and focus in the evenings for my family.

Second, I started harnessing that late-day peak for productive things. That post-supper energy and focus peak that goes on for two or three hours is the exact period in which I launched and grew The Simple Dollar. I devoted that period to The Simple Dollar for years while I was still working at another full-time job.

Today, I harness it for other projects of various kinds. Over the last year, I’ve used it to work on two projects in particular that I look forward to discussing in detail on The Simple Dollar in the future.

Finally, I use those early morning hours for “deep focus.” When I start my workday, usually around 7:30 after the children have left for school, I set things up for a period of “deep focus.”

I turn off all of the distractions around me – my cell phone, the ringer on the house phone, and so on. I get all of the materials I might need in a pinch open in front of me. I start up my “work profile” on my computer, which blocks almost all distracting websites.

Then, I get to work.

Many days, I slip into a “focus zone” where I get a lot of things done in just a few hours. I take care of my Simple Dollar articles, any freelance things I have going on, and some personal responses to emails. Usually, the focus will break when my stomach starts rumbling for lunch at around 11 AM. This is the true heart of my workday and I try to jam as much productivity into it as I can.

I know I’m not nearly as focused in the afternoon, so I often do things that don’t really require focus. I’ll take care of household tasks or go on “field trips” that I use to generate writing ideas. I mostly just try to keep moving during my low-energy and low-focus period. In the late afternoon, I usually spend focused time with my children and with my wife, which is a fairly high-energy and high-focus period. I use the late evening period for an hour or two of focused work on any other projects I’m working on along with some time spent with Sarah.

Simply knowing how my body handles energy and focus enables me to get far more done in a given day than I would have before. I used to waste an incredible amount of time trying to do high-focus and high-energy things when my body and mind weren’t geared up for them. Now, I realize I’m far more productive if I listen to my body and mind.

You can easily apply this in your own life, too. Make your own focus and energy diary, then see what patterns you can figure out from that. If you can, position your work throughout the day to take maximum advantage of your peaks and valleys, and do the same for your personal life and time at home. Get the mindless things out of the way during low-energy and low-focus times, and save the rest of the time for the tasks that deserve your focus, like the hardest parts of your job, your family, your children, and your projects of passion.

The post Managing Your Daily Energy and Focus for Maximum Return appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Let’s say you’re a relatively skilled high school baseball player. You dream of playing in the major leagues someday. Here’s a stark reality for you: only 0.5% of high school baseball players are ever drafted by a major league team. Of players drafted, only about 10% ever play an inning in the major leagues, and significantly fewer than that have enough of a career to be able to make a living off of the proceeds and prestige of their career. Yes, of course, there are other paths to a professional career in baseball, but if you look at the number of players who train and dream, the actual percentage of players that make it come true is startlingly slim. You can see that same type of trimming in many other career paths, too.

The usual advice given to people in such high-risk career paths is to have a fallback career. In other words, if a person gets a scholarship to play college baseball, they’re usually encouraged to pick a major that will offer them an alternate career path should their baseball career end at the collegiate level.

Many people in many different career paths are given that same advice. Writers. Artists. Entrepreneurs. They’re all told that it’s a good idea to have a “fallback career.”

Here’s the thing, though. When I think back to the times in my life where I felt like I truly succeeded, it was almost always during situations where I didn’t have a “fallback.”

When I find myself in situations where I can just shrug my shoulders and easily take another path if things don’t work out, I don’t perform at my best.

When my back is against the wall and I know that I must pull through here, I tend to perform better than ever.

It might sound like I’m advocating throwing a “fallback career” to the wind and just going for it.

For some people, I am.

I wouldn’t encourage anyone with dependents to do it, especially if the dependents rely solely on you. If you have kids, you have an obligation to have many fallbacks in place to protect those little ones. They’re your responsibility.

I wouldn’t encourage anyone with health issues to do it. If you’ve got ongoing health concerns that could easily go awry without medical care, I wouldn’t take a leap into a void where you have to forego that care.

I wouldn’t encourage anyone not willing to live in poverty to do it. When you take on something really challenging, you might very well fall flat on your face. That might mean an extended period without income and it might really challenge your resourcefulness. If you’re not willing to make do with some very lean times, then you shouldn’t take a leap.

I wouldn’t encourage anyone without a dream and without a work ethic to do it. Have you spent many days doing nothing but completing an urgent project? Do you have something inside of you that you want very badly? Some people have these things. Some people don’t. It’s not wrong to not have them… it’s just a matter of personal wiring.

When I think about this question, I think about my own children.

A lot of parents talk big about wanting their children to chase their dreams, but when it comes down to it, they usually push their kids toward “safe” careers.

That’s the last thing on earth I want to do. I want them to take that leap when they have their youth, their energy, their lack of dependents, and their passion. I want them to stand up there and try to make whatever it is in their heart into a reality.

If it doesn’t work… well, that’s a bridge they can cross a little while later in their lives. They’ll still be relatively young, and they’ll have the experience of knowing a lot more about how the world works.

Even more importantly, they’re going to have a set of rather unique skills and some very interesting resume elements for whatever might come next in their life.

For the icing on the cake, they won’t lie awake at night wondering “what if…” They’ll know that they gave it their all.

If it does work… then they’ve launched themselves into the life of their dreams.

If they want that dream to really take off, though, they need to be devoting every ounce of their energy to that success for a while, and that means not building a “fallback career.” They’ll need to throw everything they have at it and then face forward knowing that they didn’t leave anything on the table.

If they fall… then they can look at another path. However, if they spend a lot of their energy preparing a “fallback career,” they’ll never put themselves in position to actually make that leap at all.

The obvious question people will ask here is about a “side business.” What about people who get the ball rolling on a successful career, then dabble in their dream endeavors on the side?

To me, it’s a good compromise. I don’t feel as though it will lead to success quite as often, since your main career is your fallback career, but it provides a way for people who are in situations where they need stability in their lives (dependents, health issues, and so on) to chase that dream. It’s how I got started with writing, after all.

Still, my biggest regret in life is that I never gave my dreams a wide open chance when I had the opportunity, before other aspects of my life began to require stability. I spent too much time in those days building my “fallback” career and, frankly, wasting time and money because I was lulled by the safety of that “fallback” career.

While I’m certainly not going to demand that my children leap into some risky unknown, I’m certainly not going to stop them from making that leap.

The post The Fallback Question appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

On the few occasions where I’ve talked to film students, one of the things I stress, in addition to learning your craft, is how you behave as a person. For the most part, our lives are about telling stories. So I ask them, “What are the stories you want people to tell about you?” Because at a certain point, your ability to get a job could turn on the stories people tell about you. The reason [then-Universal Pictures chief] Casey Silver put me up for [1998's] Out of Sight after I’d had five flops in a row was because he liked me personally. He also knew I was a responsible filmmaker, and if I got that job, the next time he’d see me was when we screened the movie. If I’m an asshole, then I don’t get that job. Character counts. That’s a long way of saying, “If you can be known as someone who can attract talent, that’s a big plus.”

Stop for a second and ask yourself what kind of story your employer would tell someone about you in a casual conversation. Let’s say your boss is sitting around with other supervisors and they’re telling stories about their employees, good or bad. Most supervisors do this at least some of the time.

What about your other coworkers? What kinds of stories are they going to tell about you when they’re talking about their coworkers?

Are the stories going to reflect well on you?

Are the stories going to imply that you’re a hard worker? That you’re reliable? That you’re pleasant to interact with? That you do your job well?

Or are they going to imply that you do the minimum just to get by? That you’re often late? That you don’t come through on projects? That you’re often unpleasant to deal with?

The story that’s told about you is going to be part of what defines you in the minds of your coworkers and of your supervisors. It’s going to determine who gets promoted, whether or not people work well with you, how good your future references will be, and whether those people will give you a helping hand when you need it.

You contribute to that story every single day.

Do you show up on time? When someone expects something from you, do you come through with high consistency? When someone trusts you, do you stand up for that trust?

Do you say positive things about others at work and avoid backstabbing anyone? Do you deal with situations with good humor?

Do you come through when people need help, even volunteering to help them out when they need it?

When there’s a difficult task, do you handle it? Do you figure out ways to deal with problems that are a bit beyond your current expertise? Do you leave problems for others when you could have solved them?

These questions are the things that make up the story others have about you.

That story will play a big role in helping to define the career opportunities you have and the personal relationships you build.

What story do you want told about you? You answer that question every day through your actions.

The post The Story Others Tell About You appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Last week, though, I happened to be on the campus of the local university for a short visit and I met two sanitation engineers who seemed to be having a lot of fun with their work.

One of them, who I’ll call Alan, was laughing and talking to a bunch of students outside a lecture hall. What I noticed is that as the students walked by, they were tossing trash into the bin that Alan had with him.

I soon realized what Alan had done. He had built up some camaraderie with the students in that lecture and had likely asked some of them to just toss any trash they had from the lecture into his waste bin when they left.

Instead of having to spend more time quietly inside of the hall finding garbage for his trash bin, he got to joke around with students and have some fun while they collectively did much of his work for him.

He made his job fun. Alan was obviously a social guy, so he looked for ways to be social and have a laugh with people while also completing his work.

The other one, who I’ll call Barry, took a different approach. When I saw him at first, he had his headphones on and was deeply in a rhythm of emptying trash bins. He seemed to be moving along at a pretty rapid clip.

Later, when I saw him, I overheard him talking to Alan. It turns out that Barry has a routine that he has to do every two hours where he has to empty all of the trash bins on the north side of the building. Barry tries to set a speed record for doing this each time. This means moving quickly and it also means figuring out optimal paths.

In both of these cases, the workers were figuring out ways to turn their work into play. Alan turned the task of cleaning up a lecture hall into a big social encounter, while Barry turned the task of emptying trash bins into a competitive game with himself.

In both cases, turning work into play inproved their enjoyment of their job. It was pretty obvious from each time that I saw Alan and Barry that they were happy with their jobs. They weren’t morose or silent. They were enjoying their work.

When I spent some time thinking about their situation, I realized that I actually do the same thing and that when I find a good way to make my work enjoyable, I work harder and it doesn’t tire me as much.

I’ve found that there are really three ways to turn work into play.

One, find ways to keep score – and try to break that score. I have a multitude of ways of doing this. I can use word count to measure my actual written productivity. I used subscriber count quite a lot when I was building The Simple Dollar as a measure of my ability to promote the site. I also used visitor statistics in the same way.

You can find ways to keep score with almost any task. See if you can take your most menial task and start timing it. Then, start looking for ways to complete that task correctly in the smallest amount of time. Not only does it become more enjoyable, you’re also getting that boring task out of the way quickly.

Two, find ways to make the job social. I saw a great example of this at a local convenience store recently. A supervisor was giving the two employees in the store some separate instructions for tasks, but when they started, they just started working on the same task together while talking. Together, they blew through the task of restocking the chip section really quickly before they had to check me out (I was waiting for a child to go to the bathroom).

Instead of doing two separate tasks, share the two tasks and work on each one together in turn. Not only does this increase the variety of your work, it gives you a great chance to socialize with someone while completing those tasks.

Three, find alternative goals. For a long time, a close friend of mine worked as a data entry specialist. She found that the job became more fun if she focused on finding ways to work a particular word into a description of an object. For example, for a long time, she would try to find ways to sneak the word “rich” into as many object descriptions as possible while still maintaining accuracy standards.

What that little tweak did is create a different challenge for each point of data entry. It made her think about the data entry in a creative way and made her feel much more in control of the job she was doing.

Remember, the people that succeed in the workplace are people who bring that extra bit of energy and focus to bear to do their job well. If you can tap into ways to make your boring job more enjoyable for you, you’re likely adding to your job security and your promotion potential while also enjoying things more on a day-to-day basis.

The post Making Work Into Play appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

This is a step-by-step walkthrough of my system for managing all of the tasks of a person who manages a fairly complicated freelancing career, an involved parent of three young children, a good husband, an active presence in the community, a homeowner, and a few other personal projects in the spare time that remains.

Things To Do Today: My Daily To-Do List
One of the last things I do each day is to prepare a to-do list for the following day.

For my own purposes, I use TOPS form 2170 for my to-do list. It essentially gives you space to list twelve items with some detail, along with a spot to check them off as you finish. I’ve found that twelve is just about the perfect number for an upper limit on a daily to-do list.

Of course, an ordinary piece of paper will work just fine for this. I would simply suggest that you not make the list any longer than twelve, and that should only occur if the items are a mix of professional and personal tasks. If you make the list too long, there is a strong tendency to simply not do some of the items on the list, and that creates a terrible habit. You’re much better off completing your list each day and then seeking out other less important things to do on your own.

Earlier in the day, I will sometimes start tomorrow’s to-do list and sometimes even the to-do list of the day after that. However, if there’s anything going on beyond that, I save it for other tools.

Things To Deal With: My Inbox
In a given day, lots of things come in that need to be dealt with. Emails. Physical mail. Notes in a child’s backpack. Notes from phone calls. The list goes on and on.

About three times a day, I stop and process everything that’s accumulated. I go through emails, mark the ones that actually need some more attention, and delete the rest. Every physical item – notes, physical mail, and so on – is kept in the metal inbox on my desk, so I dig through that and do the same, keeping the important items and tossing the rest in the trash.

After that, I go through each item that has to actually be dealt with. If it takes more than a minute to deal with and it’s not mind-blowingly urgent, then I usually add it either to today’s to-do list near the bottom if there’s room, or I stick it on tomorrow’s to-do list. If it needs to be filed, I file it.

A side note about filing: if there’s one weak spot in my system, it’s this. I’m not particularly good at keeping up with filing. In fact, my filing cabinet has a “catch-all” drawer where I put things that should someday be filed and organized, but actually doing that is a pretty low priority for me.

Plans for the Future
So, what about all the tasks that aren’t really appropriate for today? What about the lower-urgency tasks? What about the big ongoing projects? How do I handle all of these things?

I use an online list manager for all of these things.

My preferred list manager is Remember the Milk, which I’ve used for many years. I’ve experimented with other systems, but I’ve never found one that just hits home quite like Remember the Milk.

Within Remember the Milk, I keep a big pile of to-do lists. I’ll talk about each one in order.

Tasks is my big list. Whenever I have a task that I need to do that’s not incredibly urgent, not part of a bigger ongoing project, and doesn’t have a specific due date assigned to it, I stick it on my “Tasks” list. Here, you’ll find things like minor home repairs, people I need to write a thoughtful letter to, things I need to research a little and think about, small errands I need to run, and so on.

Dated Tasks is another big list. It’s similar to Tasks, but it’s filled with things that have specific due dates. I keep this list ordered by the due date.

Someday is a list filled with things that are very low priority. It’s just a place to collect all the things that I might want to do someday. Usually, these things are pretty big and nebulous – they would be large projects unto themselves. Whenever I feel like my plate is relatively empty (it does happen!), I go through this list and pick out an item or two to start tackling.

Projects is another major list. It simply lists all of the ongoing projects I have going on in my life. This is more of a reference thing than anything else, though it feels really good to mark something off of here. My novel is an item on this list, as is The Simple Dollar. I have several other ongoing personal and professional projects listed here as well.

Each project has its own to-do list. This is a checklist of steps that I’ll need to take to finish the project. Usually, the next few steps are pretty specific and the later steps become larger and more nebulous. From time to time, I’ll break down an upcoming nebulous bit into more specific steps just to keep things flowing.

So, each day, when I’m making my daily to-do list on a piece of paper, I start with the Dated Tasks and copy over anything that’s due the next day. I then move to the regular tasks and copy down an item or two from there. I then look at each project. I take the very next action needed on each of those projects and add it to my daily to-do list that’s sitting on the table in front of me.

That to-do list ends up telling me exactly what I need to do each day. It moves me forward on a few projects and takes care of the important things of the day.

On top of that, I have four lists that I keep around to simply help me think about my life: Areas of Focus, Goals, Vision, and Purpose/Principles. Each one of these lists has between seven to ten items on it that outline the future direction of my life.

Areas of Focus are the things that I view as important in my life right now and over the next year or two. For example, one area of focus right now is helping my oldest child master reading to the point of being an independent reader of youth fiction and nonfiction books. Another one is figuring out the direction of writing on The Simple Dollar once the “365″ series is finished. These are big things on my mind that usually stretch over the next year or so. Often, these areas of focus help me pick out and define new projects when I complete old ones.

Goals are things I want to achieve in the next five years. Quite often, I’ve talked about how I like to paint a detailed picture of my life in five years. What will it look like? This list is made up of specific things that I would like to see in my life after five years. For example, one goal is to cultivate my children into avid readers and independent and self-directed learners. Often, these goals help me to figure out areas of focus as I outgrow old ones and seek new ones.

Vision is essentially where I want my life to go over the next ten to fifteen years. It’s really a stretch to call these things goals because so much can change between now and then. Instead, these tend to be things that I know I want in a general sense from my future. Here, I have items that broadly describe some of the things I want for my children over the rest of their childhood and far-reaching career and personal goals. One of my visions is for my children to see and understand the world as a broad and diverse and varied place, and also for them to have self-reliance. Again, these visions often help inform my goals.

Finally, Purpose and Principles basically describes what I want on my tombstone at the end of my life. What things do I want people to say about me at my funeral? Was I kind? Was I giving? Was I truly a good parent and a good spouse? Did I help people with my writings or how I spent my time? I hope the answers to all of these questions is yes, and I keep this list as a reminder of those principles. These inform my life all through the other lists I keep.

Once every two weeks or so, I spend some time really reflecting on all of the lists. I’ll spend part of an afternoon going through lists, asking myself if this is what I truly want to be doing, and evaluting whether or not I’m fulfilling the things I want out of life. It really helps me find motivation to take all of the little steps when I see, step by step, how they all tie to the big things I want in my life.

Bringing It All Together
So, when I’m sitting at my desk, what do I do? On a given day, I usually follow my to-do list pretty carefully. If I have an idea, I jot it down on a piece of scratch paper and toss it in my inbox. I process that inbox regularly and put the things in there where they need to be.

Those little steps are each connected to a somewhat bigger thing I have in mind – a project, let’s say. Each piece is connected to something bigger in some direct fashion until everything connects back to the big purposes I have for my life.

Doing this, for me, keeps everything organized quite well and helps me feel deep motivation for even the smallest tasks.

The post How I Get Things Done appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

From that article, I received a fair amount of reader feedback about the issue of benefits. Benefits certainly do add value to any job position. The problem is that it’s not easy to quantify how much benefits are worth.

Some aspects of it are easy to calculate. For example, in the scenario outlined in this article, if two jobs have identical health insurance plans and one job covers all of the premiums while the second job does not, then there’s a clear cash advantage for the first job. Simple enough.

The same thing happens when you compare retirement plans. If one job offers 5% matching and another offers 2% matching, it’s pretty easy to calculate what those benefits are worth.

It gets much trickier from there, however.

Again, take health care plans. The specifics of health insurance plans vary widely. One plan might have a $1,000 deductible for everything, while another plan might cover 80% of all doctor visits and have a $500 deductible on other procedures. What are each of these worth? The value is going to be incredibly dependent on your situation.

To really know what they’re worth, you’d have to get quotes independent of work for health plans and any other benefits you want to match for each of the plans you’re considering.

The “easy” rule of thumb most people use is that the presence of a health care plan has a large, unspecified value. In other words, a job with such benefits is seen as always strictly better than a job without such benefits.

The problem? That perspective can cost you in terms of career advancement or career change. If you tell yourself that you “can’t” switch jobs because of the benefits, then you’re often missing out on chances that could put you in a much better place, both in terms of your career and your life.

For more than a year, I delayed switching to writing as a career because I was concerned about health care benefits. In my mind, I had basically attributed an extremely large value to them and because of that I was very afraid to walk away.

Our solution for this problem ended up involving a switch to the health care plan that my wife uses through her work, though it was more expensive than my own. However, I did do my own shopping around for health care plans during that process, and I found that it wasn’t impossible to find health care coverage. I used such services as eHealthInsurance to find some plans that worked for me at what I considered to be a reasonable cost.

If you are considering a career switch, don’t balk at the idea simply because of benefits. Price them out yourself and see where that puts you. If you’re able to switch to another job that eliminates the need for a commute, for a work wardrobe, and for lunches eaten out, that saved money can be enough to make up for a lost benefit out of your own pocket.

Do your own pricing of the benefits you need, and don’t use the presence of those benefits as an easy reason to not even consider a career switch that could change your life.

The post What Are Job Benefits Worth? appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

For example, my current work pretty much requires me to have an internet connection at home and at least one computer. If I don’t have these things – and I pay for them out of my own pocket – I can’t create posts and get them on The Simple Dollar. I would have to go elsewhere to post, which would create its own expenses.

I’m fortunate, though. My current work has no wardrobe requirements (which means no time or money spent shopping for work clothes, getting things dry cleaned, etc.), no commuting requirements (which means no time spent commuting, nor money spent on fuel and auto maintenance and auto replacement), no travel requirements (which means no time spent flying elsewhere, no nights spent away from home, and no incidental costs), no extra child care costs (because I can watch them from home if needed), and no social obligations to eat lunches outside the home or get drinks with coworkers.

My previous work had all of these expenses. Although it wasn’t an everyday thing, there were certainly days where I had to dress well for work. I had a commute that took me around twenty minutes each way. I had to travel three or four times a year, with those trips varying in length from three days to a week. I had to keep my children in daycare. I ate out with my coworkers a few times a week and went out with coworkers or other professional acquaintances once a week or so.

One way to really dig into this – a method that I’ve described before on here – is what I call the “true hourly wage.” All you do is sit down and figure out two key numbers.

First, how much time do you invest in actually working plus time spent in extra activities related to work, like commuting, travel away from your family, shopping for work clothes, going out for lunch, going out for other social events in the evenings, and so on?

Let’s look at an example. Let’s say you make $50,000 a year at a reasonably high-stress job. If you assume you work 40 hours a week with two weeks of vacation a year, your hourly rate is nominally $25 per hour. Not bad, right?

You might work forty hours a week with two weeks of vacation a year, but let’s say you’re commuting half an hour each way per day (another five hours per week). You also go out to lunch with coworkers as part of a “lunch break,” which eats three more hours per week. You have to properly wash your work clothes, which eats another hour per week. What about the extra time you spend thinking about work or stressing out about work? Do you have to spend some “decompression” time when you get home? Let’s give you another two hours per week for this. Twice a year, you go on a trip that takes you away from your family, which adds up to another eighty hours spent away from home per year. Twice a month, you go out with coworkers in the evening, adding up to another sixty hours per year. There’s also the time spent dealing with extra car maintenance and fueling stops – let’s say another ten hours per year. That’s an extra 700 hours per year that you’re not getting paid for – more than a third more than you’re on the clock.

Now, how much of your salary is devoured by your job? If you drive an extra 15,000 miles per year in a 25 miles per gallon car, that’s 600 gallons of gas plus five additional oil changes plus 15,000 extra miles on your maintenance schedule plus 15,000 miles closer to a car replacement. The federal government estimates the cost for all of this at being around $0.50 per mile – I’ll call it half of that and we’re still looking at $3,750 a year. Do you need work clothes? Let’s say this person needs about $250 in clothes per year. You eat out with coworkers twice a week for social reasons, which eats up $10 per meal, or $1,000 per year. You go out twice a month with coworkers in the evening and burn through $25 each time, which adds up to another $600 per year. Let’s say you have the American average of two kids that require some after-school care which costs $50 a week (we won’t even get into the nightmare of daycare for younger kids) – that’s $2,500 a year. That’s $8,100 in expenses just to keep you going at work.

What about taxes and so forth? You should be looking at your after-tax salary, so let’s lop 20% off your salary when doing this calculation.

So, your starting salary of $50,000 gets 20% lopped off with taxes and $8,100 in additional expenses chopped off, so you’re left with a salary of $31,900. You’re actually working 2,700 hours per year, so your actual hourly wage at work isn’t the nice $25 you thought it was. It’s actually $11.81.

Feel free to calculate this number for your own purposes. Figure up how much time you actually spend doing things that are caused by your job as well as all of the extra expenses associated with it. You might come up with a shocking hourly rate.

This isn’t to say you should live or die by this number. You shouldn’t.

The important thing to keep in mind is that salary doesn’t represent the real value you get out of a job. A job that earns $50,000 a year but has all of the requirements above might actually net you less for your time than a $28,000 a year job that is within walking distance of your house, has extremely casual dress, and allows you to walk out the door each night without a second thought.

Income isn’t everything. It’s just as important to have a job that doesn’t nickel and dime you, doesn’t fill you up with stress, and doesn’t quietly eat up more and more of your time. Those “features” eat up your income like nobody’s business.

The post A Salary Isn’t the Whole Picture appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

If your employer suggested that, for an 18% cut in pay, you only had to be in the office one day a week and could work your other 32 hours a week at your convenience, would you do it?

If your employer said that you could have six weeks of vacation a year, no questions asked, in exchange for a 15% cut in your annual salary, would you do it?

If your boss came to you and said, “I’ll move you into a department where everyone is incredibly nice, there’s no backstabbing, and everyone pulls their weight on projects. The only catch is that your income has to go down 15%.” Would you get on board?

Some people would jump immediately at these offers. Other people would shake their head no. Why? It’s because these kinds of benefits are incredibly hard to calculate directly into dollars and cents. They have different values for different people.

So often, I’ll hear from readers who have been offered a promotion with a nice raise, but that promotion means leaving the department they’re working in and losing some of the scheduling flexibility that they currently have. They won’t be able to conveniently pick up their child from daycare each day, but they’ll be making 30% more. Is it worth it?

Others will get a great job offer with another company with a nice increase in salary, but they’re already working in an office where they like everyone and office politics and backstabbing are almost nonexistent. Is a 25% increase in salary worth jumping into an unknown office environment when you’re in a good one?

These are tough questions to answer.

In 2008, I faced this issue head-on. I was in a position where I could make the leap to writing full time, but my income level would drop by about 50%. I would no longer have to go into the office. My hours would be extremely flexible. When my children were sick, I could be there for them without having to skip a beat.

I chose the lower pay and flexible hours. To me, that’s how valuable the additional time and flexibility with my children really was.

Of course, I spent a lot of time thinking about that transition. Here are some of the questions I really chewed on during that process. Perhaps these questions will help you make the right decision.

In terms of my personal life, what is the real difference between the “good” position and the “bad” position? In other words, what do the good benefits give me that I wouldn’t get from the other position?

In my own situation, the biggest change was really the flexibility in hours, which enabled me to easily stay home with a sick child, take an afternoon off to help with a field trip or a play, or take advantage of other opportunities that might pop up. Other, less significant advantages included a minimization/elimination of work-related travel and a reduction in stress level.

What would I really do with that extra income? One of the jobs would earn you a higher salary. What would you really do with that money?

In my case, I was actually using almost all of that money for debt repayment. In early 2008, we were just tearing through our mortgage, which was our only outstanding debt at the time.

What do I actually give up at the lower salary? If you’re looking at a lower paying option, what do you really lose by taking it?

Our main sacrifice was simply slowing down our mortgage payments to a much slower rate. We were still able to put more toward the mortgage each month than the bill asked us to, but it wasn’t the huge amount we were able to put towards it. It pushed off our mortgage payoff by several years.

What are my long-term goals? Which ones are the most important to me? When you think about your life in five years, are you thinking about the career pinnacles you’ve achieved? Are you thinking about your family? Are you thinking about the new career you’ve built? Which of your long-term goals really drives you more than any other. If you’re undecided as to which path to follow, go for the one that maximizes the goal that’s most important to you.

For me, it was really all about the children. The last thing on earth I wanted to be was an absent father, and I feared that I was becoming one. My primary goal in my life was – and still is – to be the best possible father and husband I can be. When I truly realized that, the decision became much easier.

That’s not to say that my goal is right and other goals are wrong. Different people value different things and are driven by different things. You might be very passionate about parenthood, but when you get out of bed in the morning, you’re drawn to your career (or the new one you’re trying to build).

In my eyes, if the finances work, you should always choose the path that takes you toward your biggest goals in life, whatever they may be.

The post How Much Are Family-Friendly Benefits Worth? appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

This infographic explains some possible warning signs that burnout may be on the way, and some tips on ways to attempt preventing burnout from taking hold and sideswiping productivity—and worse, overall well-being. Read on to find some interesting and potentially helpful tips, and to gauge if any of the offered suggestions, like spending more time in parks, taking breaks every 50 minutes, or even perhaps scheduling a vacation might prove helpful for you.

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<p><strong>Please include attribution to TheSimpleDollar.com with this graphic.</strong><br /><br /> <a href="http://www.thesimpledollar.com/burnout/"><img src="http://www.thesimpledollar.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/120501Burnout.jpg" alt="Six Ways to Avoid Burnout" width="500" border="0" /></a></p>

The post 6 Simple Ways to Avoid Burnout appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

The post The Unemployment Plan appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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.

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