Holiday Career Tips

Are you the kind of person who uses the year-end holidays as a time to relax, taking time off from work or postponing important tasks? Or do you go into overdrive, trying to squeeze in extra family time and personal commitments along with end-of-year business demands?

Either way, you may be missing out on a great opportunity to position yourself as a Rising Star.

You see, regardless how much work they have to get done, most people get distracted at this time of year.

They allow holiday festivities or shortened deadlines to get in the way of adding real value to their jobs and companies. If you can avoid this common problem, you can really stand out from the crowd.

Here's what you need to do:

1. Master Your Attention - Woody Allen once observed that half of success seems to be showing up. That may be the case, but in our opinion it's the less significant half. More important is showing up with your full attention focused on the right things.

It's particularly important at this time of year, when your attention is easily fragmented.

For example, you may schedule extra time with your family, yet spend much of that time thinking about the work piled up on your desk. Then when you're at work, you regret not having more quality time at home. What happens is, you not only become less productive wherever you are; but you become less satisfied as well.

It's not enough to simply follow a schedule when it comes to your activities, you must also focus your attention on the activity you have scheduled.

Mastering the ability to focus on one thing at a time is the key factor in increasing your value. When you're not the master of your attention, you can never be the master of your time.

2. Focus on Value - You don't need to log long hours to get ahead. In today's business environment it's not the number of hours you spend at work but your productivity that matters most.

If your results aren't good, do you think your boss will ask, "How many hours did you work last week?" Or will your boss ask, "How come your results weren't up to par?"

When you focus on value you'll not only earn more and get promoted faster, you'll get more time off. You'll be able to leave work earlier and have more time to spend with friends and family.

Not only that, but the quality of your time off will be better.

Imagine the sense of accomplishment you'll have, knowing that your most important work is done. You'll be able to enjoy everything else more, without the stress of unfinished tasks hanging over your head.

The way to do this, of course, is to prioritize. In order to get the important things done, you have to let some of the little things go. This is the essence of Pareto's principle - the 80-20 rule. Only 20% of your activities will account for 80% of the value of your work. Focus on this 20% and forget about the rest.

3. Set Deadlines - You've probably heard the saying "If you need something done, give it to a busy person." It would be better to say, "If you need something done rapidly, give it to a busy person."

Why?

Because of Parkinson's Law, which states that "work expands to fill the time available for its completion." For example, if you allow yourself a full day to complete a 2 hour project, you will probably take the full day to complete the work.

And while you would think that giving yourself plenty of time to accomplish a task would improve the quality of your work, that's most often not the case.

Instead it tends to reduce your productivity by making you less efficient. It eliminates your motivation to work quickly.

Jack Welch, one of the most celebrated CEOs of our time talks about the "imperative for speed" in business today. You can't afford to ignore his advice.

To maximize your productivity, set deadlines for your most important tasks. Just be sure that you allow enough time for quality work.