life@work

Welcome to life@work

life@work is a 7-year collection of blog posts written about job search, career change, career happiness, career trends, managing, motivation, goal setting and all kinds of other topics that you the Careerist want to know more about.

To find a post you're interested in, use the Categories cloud at right, type your query in the Search box or peruse the Archives.

In the meantime, here are links to 10 of my most popular posts:

Top Ten In Demand Careers in the Next Ten Years

Build Your Strengths Rather Than Fix Your Weaknesses

How to Stand Out in a Job Interview

The Best Free Job Search Apps

Can't Stop Working? Try These Tips

Five Keys to Finding Motivation

How to Boost Your Self Confidence During a Job Search

What to Do When You're Overwhelmed by Too Many Career Ideas

How to Give an Effective Performance Review

How to Get the Most Out of an Informational Interview

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How to Revive Your Job When You've Just About Had It

Are you tired of the "same old same old" at work? Do you have a thousand complaints about who you work with and how things are done? Are you constantly stressed about the security of your job?

Work negativity can take many forms, and they all feel pretty terrible. When you're feeling blah, angry or afraid much of the time, your job performance suffers and so does the overall quality of your life. 

You may be tempted to jump right into a job search, but often it's possible to give your current job some CPR and revive it.

Here are some ideas of what you can think about and do, depending on what form your negativity is taking when you're:

Feeling Bored

If you're not interested in your work anymore (assuming you once were!) you might be able to get back some of what's missing or you might need to think about a new way you could make your work more interesting.

What project could you take on that would be more interesting?

Who could you delegate an uninteresting part of your job to (who might find it interesting)?

How could you change your approach that would breathe new life into part of your job? (For example, can you enlist others to work with you, can you learn something new,  could you revise the way you do it, or how about reminding yourself about the value of the work?)

Feeling Critical

If you're criticizing everything and everyone you're hurting yourself and helping to create a toxic environment for others. Even if you're justified in your complaints, the more you tell yourself how awful it is and allow your anger and hositility to build, the worse you're going to feel. Doing something to alleviate your distress is your best option.

Strategize about what you can do that's in your control. Can you "manage up" more effectively? If you feel critical because everyone around you is critical, how can you stop taking in their complaints? What problem that's driving you crazy could you help solve? If there's someone on your team whom you can't stand, how can you change your thinking so they don't get under your skin quite so much?

Focus on anything that's going well. We often overfocus on the negative and forget to notice the positive (we're hardwired to do so!)

Amp up your networking. Talk to people on the outside and remind yourself that there is an outside. Don't wait until you've decided to leave a job to begin networking. It starts with email or coffee dates to reconnect with people you don't see often.

Feeling Fearful

Fear spreds through an organization like a virus and has been especially prevalent in the last few years. Reorgs, new management, layoffs - they all feed the grapevine and cause a lot of drama. No wonder you're stressed and panicky. Here are a few suggestions:

Dispute catastrophic thinking. Notice when you're brooding about worst case scenarios and dispute those thoughts on paper. Is it really true that you're this close to losing your house? Be honest about what worries are unlikely to happen.

Focus on what's in your control. Is there a way you can sock more money away and increase (or start) your rainy day fund? Who can you reconnect with to touch base about what's happening elsewhere in your field? What's a way you can contribute even more value to your organization? 

Small changes can lead to big results. Try some of the above ideas, but if you're still negative most of the time then explore opportunities outside your team or organization before you become completely burned out.

How have you been able to breathe new life into a job you've had?

The Top Lists of the Hottest Careers of 2011

It's graduation time, a time when millions are thinking about what they will do with their freshly minted degree in hand.

I've compiled here a "list of lists" that you can peruse if you're still in the brainstorming phase of what the heck you will do now. They're also useful for those of you who graduated a short or long time ago who want to (or have to) shop for something new to do.

To get the most out of these lists, record your findings on a spreadsheet and create your own ranking system so you can put your spin on what you think is hot and what is not.

These lists of hot careers are just a springboard for further thinking, research and networking. They can spur inspiration and creativity, but reviewing them is just the beginning.

The 50 Best Careers of 2011 

(US News)

This is a general list, created by compiling data on job growth, salary, and perceived job satisfaction. Categories of jobs listed include business, creative and service, healthcare, social service and technology.

200 Jobs from Best to Worst

(Jobs Rated Report, CareerCast.com)

OK, this is a big list! They've looked at five key criteria: work environment, income, outlook, stress, physical demands, using data from government sources, trade groups and private organizations.

At first glance there are the usual suspects near the top (Software Engineer, Actuary, Mathematician) although I was a bit surprised to see Philosopher holds the #16 spot.

Top 10 Careers for 2011

(Bloomberg Businessweek)

A brief list of diverse careers that aren't the same ones you see on every other list.

Top Jobs for Grads 

(National Association for Colleges and Employers, as reported by Huffington Post)

Um, hopefully you majored in some kind of engineering.

Best Jobs in America

(Payscale.com and Money Magazine)

They're looking at just pay and growth for this list of 100 jobs.

Top 10 Best-Paying Jobs for Women in 2011

(ForbesWoman)

Unsurprisingly, tech and healthcare is where the money is at.

The New Best Jobs for Retirees

(SmartMoney.com)

Suggestions for how to parlay your former career into something new and part-time.

High-Paying Jobs for Generalists

(Monster.com)

OK English majors, how does selling sound to you?

This is less a list and more a helpful article about what to consider in your career exploration and job search when you have a liberal arts degree.

I'd love to hear: What will you do next with the information you see on one of these lists?

Please share in the comments below or over on the Dream Big Coaching Facebook page wall.

 

 

 

Consciously Choose Better Work-Life Balance

What kind of balance do you want to strike between your professional and your personal life?

Harvard business blogger Ron Ashkenas wrote an article in December in the Harvard Business Review that a key to minimizing regret regarding your work-life balance (or lack thereof) is to consciously choose the tradeoffs you're willing to make to achieve personal and professional success.

Absent that, we're likely over the years to make hundreds of small and subtle decisions about when to stay late, when to make it home for a family dinner, when to work through a weekend and whether to take vacations that create an overall pattern we could be profoundly unhappy with.

This is a conclusion Ashkenas came to after studying a group of academic physicians. Even though none of the physicians had consciously chosen to sacrifice their families to advance their careers, some of them ended up doing just that.

It was an accumulation of small choices that gradually created a new reality of work-life balance, a reality that made them wonder, "How did I end up like this?"

Now It's Your Turn

Think back a few years and try to remember what your life was like.

• Were you working more hours than you are now? Were you closer to your friends or significant other? Did you see your kids more often? Were you sleeping better? Were you in worse health?

Now think about the kinds of choices you've made over the last few years that led to the changes you've experienced.

• What did you tend to choose and why? What patterns can you see? Do you want to continue these patterns of decision making? If not, what could you choose differently?

Ashkenas suggests several good questions we should be asking ourselves continually, so that we create a relationship between our personal and professional life that we're satisfied with on the whole:

1. What's the balance you want to strike between personal and professional success?
2. If you had to honestly choose, is one more important than the other?
3. What are your goals in each of these spheres, and what can you do to optimize both?

These are not questions you can answer easily. But I believe exploring these can affect whether your marriage, health, and career succeed or fail.

No one sets out to stall in their career or become estranged from their kids. By being introspective and making conscious decisions about your work and personal life, you're much more likely to avoid either extreme.

I'd love to hear: What are you choosing that is resulting in a good work-life balance for you? And if you're not in a good place with this, what could you be choosing differently?

Leave a comment here or head over to the Dream Big Coaching Facebook page Wall!

Flickr photo by scribbletaylor

Hot Careers for 2011

A new year may have you thinking about a new career, or it may just have you wondering how "hot" your current career is.

The folks at JobDescriptions.net have done a whole lot of homework to present you with their 2011 Hot Jobs Guide, a free PDF e-Book you can download immediately.

Twenty careers in healthcare, technology, business and education are reported on, with helpful information on what they entail, salary information and why it's "hot".

I recommend the e-Book especially for college students who are in the process of narrowing down their career options.

The JobDescriptions.net website is a terrific resource overall for detailed information on all kinds of jobs, and they write an informative blog, too.

Here are more places you can read about the "best" jobs this year:

• Best Paying Jobs for 2011

Time to enroll in medical school and become a specialist. But just remember, after $75,000, money doesn't buy happiness.

• 11 Hot Skills for 2011

We're talking IT here.

• Occupations with the Largest Job Growth

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' findings, many of which do not require a college degree.

• 5 Quick-Change Careers for 2011

If you want to move onto something else, perhaps one of these options is worth pursuing.

• Hot Fields for Hiring in 2011

We've all read that jobs won't be plentiful this year, so aim for the industries where the jobs are most likely to be. Selena Dehne cites Laurence Shatkin's book, "2011 Career Plan: The Best Moves Now for a Solid Future".

• Best and Worst Jobs for 2011

This is CareerCast's take on the best and the worst. Roofers, lumberjacks, construction workers, EMTs: we salute you.

I'd love to hear: How "hot" is your career? Do you care? Why, or why not?

Share in the comments below or head over to the Dream Big Coaching Facebook page and share on the Wall!

photo by ReSurge International

Why Career Happiness Still Matters

I've been writing life@work for over five years, and I notice that many of the posts I wrote "BR" (that's Before Recession - you remember - when people actually had jobs and were focused on advancement and improvement), seem so quaint now.

In the summer of 2005 when I started this blog, the nation's unemployment rate was just 5%. We were picking and choosing among job offers. We were getting promotions and raises. We were even considering changing careers. The tagline for this blog was "The blog about finding career happiness".

Today's career advice and employment news have an entirely different tone. Many of us are having a very tough time and feel like weary, job searching soldiers after months of fruitless searching. Others of us are exhausted at work, having performed the jobs of two or more people as companies have tightened their belts.

But always there are kernels of optimistic news to be found and inspiring demonstrations of the resiliency of the human spirit.

Today I challenged myself to find one of the posts from before the financial meltdown whose message is still relevant. The one I selected to share is about career happiness - what it is and why it matters.

It's still relevant because Americans haven't stopped caring about putting their highest strengths to work, even during tough economic times. Legions of employees are working in careers they enjoy and continue to pursue an engaging work life, even as the grim employment news drones on.

I know this because throughout the recession I've continued to work with innovative, creative, hard-working people who are pursuing their dream of finding their "right work" or are adjusting how they approach their current work so that it better suits them.

I also have friends and family who have landed new jobs and even a few who have changed careers during the last couple of years. Maybe you have, too.

I hope this post inspires you to reflect on your current job, or the one you are pursuing, and how it allows you to use your signature strengths.

-Heather

************

I hesitated putting the word "happiness" in the tagline of this blog.

"Happiness" can seem a bit unrealistic with regard to careers, right? Maybe even with life in general. How many times have you heard someone say (or said yourself), "I just want to be happy"? And then you thought something like, "Get over it!"

Because let's face it, many of us feel that "happiness" is for kids. Happiness is too simple for the complex, adult world of tough choices and major trade-offs.

Happiness is reserved for events that last minutes or days, not years. Weekend getaways, a really fun party, watching your dog splash with joy in the lake - these are legitimate contenders for happiness.

Careers are contenders for experiences such as "not too hateful", "OK most of the time", or "I just try not to think about it more than I have to."

However I happen to see career happiness differently, and I am not alone. I believe it's possible for many people to achieve an enduring (as opposed to momentary) level of happiness in work, as well as in life in general.

Martin Seligman, a researcher and professor of psychology, supports this claim in his book Authentic Happiness. The scoop on happiness in general is that it's a product of our inherited tendency to be happy, plus our circumstances (there are some astonishing surprises in this section of the book - for instance that money and education are far less related to happiness than once thought), plus (most importantly) factors that are under our control.

The key to happiness at work is to use our so-called "signature strengths" on the job, preferably every day.

Examples of strengths include curiosity, enthusiasm, creativity, leadership, social intelligence, and 19 others. (To learn what your top signature strengths are, take this survey. It's free, and will take you about 25 minutes).

By the way, the five "key strengths" correlated with general well-being are curiosity and interest in the world; capacity to love and be loved; gratitude; zest, enthusiasm and energy; and hope, optimism and future-mindedness.

Once you have taken the survey and have a rank-ordered list of the 24 signature strengths in front of you, zero in on the top five. Of each of these strengths, ask yourself these questions:

• Is this "the real me?"
• Do I feel invigorated rather than exhausted when I use this strength?
• Am I continually learning new ways to enact this strength?
• Am I involved in personal projects that revolve around this strength?

If you answer yes to one or more of these questions, chances are the strength is a "signature" of yours. Look for ways to use it in as many situations as you can to experience enduring happiness.

One thing I've learned about career happiness is that it usually doesn't just arrive - you need to know how to find it. And that's what this blog is all about.

originally posted fall 2005

photo by Pixie Led

Better life@work Tip: Be a Good Delegator

Today I begin a series of "Better life@work" tips, inspired by real clients of mine and their challenges to create a better life at work for themselves.

While I've changed names and identifying information, the issues and solutions remain the same. I'm selecting themes that many people face at work in hopes you can get a fresh idea or two to try out at your own workplace.

Delegation is an art that requires practice and commitment, and therefore time. Many of us feel that we don't even have a spare minute to pet the dog, so delegating remains a pipe dream.

Don't confuse delegating with dumping. Dumping work involves taking your most tedious or least appealing projects and handing them over to someone with little thought or explanation. Dumping work gives you the illusion of efficiency, until you're called in to fix the messes that follow.

Steve, a marketing director at a growing West Coast firm, was a client of mine who desperately wanted to learn how to delegate better. He knew he should have been spending much more time at strategic meetings and gaining more of a bird's eye view of his group, but he was still mired in deliverables and having trouble deciding what to delegate, how to do it, and to whom.

The biggest challenge was his perceived lack of time. In back-to-back meetings much of the workday, he left evenings and early mornings free to "catch up" on email and his own work. If he didn't do this he'd become the bottleneck for essential projects. When would he have time to delegate?

Steve needed to be thinking smaller. He assumed that relief would only come if he figured out how to re-work several large projects. Instead we found one area that offered a pretty straightforward delegating opportunity, where the stakes were fairly low if there were total failure.

Total time to decide on, prepare and delegate in this instance: 1 hour.

Relief felt: immense.

Over time, Steve became a good delegator. Here are his top six tips for success:

1. Know your staff's competencies. Trust them.
2. Look for small tasks and projects to delegate at first.
3. Clearly communicate directions, resources at their disposal, your expectations and a deadline.
4. See delegating as the key to others' development. Support others' development. If you're the only one with knowledge, the team loses and you burn out.
5. Be available for questions.
6. Immediately address any problems or shortcomings.

However, there are certain situations where delegating is not your key to a better life at work:

• Your entire team is completely swamped. (Your priority is managing, redistributing and negotiating workloads).
• Unresolved personnel issues make delegating doomed to fail. (Time to address underperformers and deadwood rather than keep putting up with them).
• There isn't anyone to delegate to because you have no reports. (Outline a plan of what could be delayed, done differently, or done by another team and discuss it with your manager.)

Up until we worked together, Steve believed that it was too risky to trust his team with responsibilities he'd had for years, that delegating took too much time to bother with, and that letting go would mean letting go of a sense of "indispensability".

But when he decided to experiment with delegating he found that it allowed him the freedom to serve the organization at a more strategic level. He began to enjoy his ability to develop and grow his team. He got more weekends and evenings back to spend with his family. In short, his life at work got better.

What about you? What can you delegate? What's holding you back from doing so?

photo credit: lumaxart

What to Read When You're Tired of All the Negative News

 There's a fine line between being informed about current events and feeling saturated with depressing information, and it's not always easy to keep yourself from crossing it.

If you're in the midst of a job search, it's best to stay moderately informed and not to read or listen to too many articles on how hard it is to find a good job right now.

That part of you that is already discouraged and pessimistic doesn't need any more fuel. You don't need to read more stories about how Susie has been looking for work for a year and has run out of money. This information doesn't help you stay focused and positive, nor does it help you network or find leads on jobs.

If you're in the midst of a job search, try to stay away from negative news, period. Skim some articles if you have to, but don't immerse yourself in their grim details.

If you want to read blogs with an entirely different spin, the Masters in Counseling blog has compiled a list of 25 blogs that highlight positive thinking. (This blog is on the list at #8). There are also links to 25 articles on positive psychology as well.

The list is light on New Age stuff and heavy on practical suggestions for reducing stress, dealing with fear, and flourishing. I especially think you'll enjoy the Tough Guide to Work, a smart blog by strategy consultant Alan about how to enjoy work more.

I'd love to hear: How do you stay positive during your job search?

photo by suchitra prints

Can't Stop Working? Try These Tips

What's the difference between hard work and workaholism?

People who work hard, because they want to or because they have to, aren't necessarily workaholics. Hard workers are dedicated to doing good work, yet can enjoy their time off.

If you're a workaholic however, you'll be able to recognize yourself in many of these statements:

• You require control and overreact when you don't have it.
• You have problems with your family because of your job.
• You spend many extra hours at work and/or take work home frequently.
• When you're at home, you spend most of your time thinking about work.
• You don't take your paid vacation days.
• You're only happy if you're working on a work project.
• You don't delegate well.
• You believe you need to work as hard as you do.
• You don't eat well, get enough rest, or get enough exercise.

If you're just not sure whether you're a workaholic, take this short quiz and see how you score.

Workaholism is a very effective way to stay busy and avoid intimacy. And like any behavior that ends in "aholism", workaholism isn't a healthy lifestyle.

If you're a workaholic who wants to stop working compulsively, you might benefit from the resources at Workaholics Anonymous or by working with a counselor.

Or try some of these tips, suggested by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits:

• Stop working after a certain time each night
• Schedule other things into your life (exercise, time with your son, etc.) so you can't work all the time
• Practice relaxing ten minutes at a time (read the paper, have a cup of coffee as you look out the window, whatever you can manage)
• Practice staying present as you practice relaxing
• Exercise every day, even for just ten minutes
• Schedule solitude ten minutes per day to start

I'd love to hear: Did you used to be a workaholic? What did you do to stop working compulsively?

photo by geopollock

Why You Should Know What You Want

After years of talking to people about their careers, it's become clear to me that there are a whole lot of people succeeding in good jobs who have no clue what they really want to be doing.

It's the price of being both highly competent and habitually taking the next opportunity just because it has arrived. This pattern works for a while, sometimes many years.

And then one day when we take a look at the bigger picture of our career and our life, we realize that we lost track of what we really care about and enjoy doing.

Or sometimes we simply grow out of our job or industry. We lose interest, and we haven't thought of what could come next that would be a better fit.

Knowing what we want requires a little introspection, an activity many of us resist. Here are the top reasons why:

• I'm too busy to reflect.
• Being introspective doesn't get anything done.
• This is too large a question to solve, so I'll just stay with the status quo - it's good enough.
• Nobody gets what they really want, so I'll just stay with the status quo - it's good enough.
• It's a terrible economy - I better stay put.

But here's the good news: you don't have to leave for a week-long silent retreat to address this question of what you want. You don't have to come up with "the" magic answer or take risks greater than you can responsibly handle.

You can understand what you want, enjoy and care about at work by tuning in briefly yet frequently to what you're doing and how it's affecting you. Are you engaged or bored? By what? Are you dreading tomorrow or looking forward to the challenge? Why do you think this is true? 

By checking in often and perhaps writing a few observations down, you stay connected to yourself. You don't lose yourself quite so completely to the busyness of your days and the demands of your job.

When you frequently consider your desires, likes and dislikes about your career, it results in you having meaningful and fruitful conversations with contacts and knowing when to raise your hand for certain projects. You lay the foundations that attract the people and opportunities that will help you get more of what you want.

Knowing what you want in your career is not something you answer four times in your life, but something you consider weekly, in small portions. This is because most of the time getting what you want is a result of many small decisions and actions rather than just a few sweeping, dramatic decisions.

Whenever I meet with clients who tell me they want to change jobs, first we take a close look at what they've got going for them at the current one. Many times there is still room to improve their experience substantially without having to make a dramatic job change.

Don't be afraid to ask yourself what you want. Even if you have a high salary and an impressive title and believe you couldn't possibly walk away from that, realize that no one's asking you to. Just hang in there and see what happens when you dare to connect your awareness of what you want with what you're actually doing.

I'd love to hear: What do you want to be doing?

photo by swisscan