One of the secrets to Turbo Charge your Career is being fit. I am not talking about joining a gym necessarily. I am talking about getting physically, emotionally, and spiritually fit.

Pump Me Up
To be physically fit, all you need to do is eat food that is good for you. You know what that means. If not, go to http://thetennisdad.com/blog and my son Ryan will help you. Also, it means getting enough sleep, and limiting your alcohol consumption. I recommend you quit alcohol completely, but moderation is fine as well. And stop smoking. Today. For exercise, walk around the block to get your heart rate up. Use it or lose it!!

Emote with me baby
The next key is emotional fitness. This is a complex subject that I address in my book, but basically it means clearing up all of your emotional baggage. Address your relationship problems. Apologize to those you have hurt, get over the men or women who have hurt you, and resolve to address all future mistakes immediately. There is a lot to this to process, but making amends and dealing with mistakes quickly is very important to emotional well-being.

I See Dead People
The part of all around health is spiritual fitness. For the atheists, you can stop reading here. I have no interest in helping or hurting your cause. For the believers and agnostics, I want you to find a higher power. Believe that you are not the top of the food chain. Believe that an unseen force greater than you is conducting the orchestra. There’s more, but you will have to get my book or do more research if you want to learn about it.

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The key to health is that you must do all three of these things, and they must be done in this order:
1- Physical
2- Emotional
3- Spiritual

I know I have piqued your curiosity, so leave me a comment or email me at mike.anderson@directyourcareer.com

Have a great day!!

Mike

For many years, I have been against annual or semi-annual performance appraisals, sometimes called reviews.  The idea that once a year you and your boss sit down face to face and talk about how you did the entire previous year just seems unnatural.   The business guru Dr. W. Edward Deming agrees with me.

Surprise!!

I have had no bad experiences with reviews.  I haven’t had a bad review or a surprise review.  I simply believe that there is little if any value in this annual display of power whereby you are talked to by your boss about what should be discussed every single day of your career.  I cannot imagine what would happen if your boss actually said “Bill, on October 13th at 3:45, you came back a few minutes late from your break.  On January 3rd, the spreadsheet you gave me hand an error in it.  So, I have to give you a low grade, and therefore no raise.”

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Could you imagine the surprise?  Why wouldn’t he have told you in October, and in January?  Well, that is my point.  If he is a good manager, he would be communicating your performance everyday.  You would know every day where you stand.  What good is this ceremony.    It is a complete waste of time.

Evaluated Daily

Good managers perform reviews every single day.  Anytime you make a mistake, or conversely anytime you do something well, you should know it right away.   You should not be surprised by anything that would be said in a review, therefore making the entire process moot, or dare I say – BORING!  I think that if you are being evaluated each day, you should and would know at any given time where you stood.  Don’t you think that getting that information would help your performance each day?  Of course it would.  If you were told what to do to succeed, you would most assuredly do that more often.  And, if you were told not to make mistakes, you would do whatever you could to be more accurate.  Simple?  Yes, it is.  Unfortunately, too many bad managers need this formality to communicate with their staff.

Divide and Conquer

I think that the review process divides a team between those that get good reviews and those that do not.  Those that get good reviews, or what we used to call the pets are set aside from those that do not.  They are on a different list and actually perform as if they are not part of the “in crowd”.  It creates high school style cliques that cannot inspire team work.    The cool kids will stick together as will the not so cool kids.  There is no upside to foster these cliques, especially among adults.  The divide does becomes even larger as time goes on.

For Real Dude?

I do believe that the annual performance appraisal is a complete waste of time.   In a highly functioning company, you will know where you stand every single day.  I think that companies should abandon them completely dude!

I would love to hear your thoughts!

Have a great day!

mike.anderson@directyourcareer.com

http://www.directyourcareer.com

As a career coach and senior executive, I can’t tell you how often I hear people say “I hate my job.  I just don’t know what to do with my life.  I really hate my job.  What do you think I should do?”

That is a very tough question that I can’t answer for you.  It is a completely personal choice based on a lot of factors.  I can also tell you that that question does not always come from high school seniors or college students either.  Many of my clients, men and women in the 40′s and 50′s still express the same concern. Their dilemma is very understandable since we really receive little or no actual guidance on this subject in our youth. High school guidance counselors are geared more to making sure you get into college if that is what you want to do.  Most people simply trip into their careers, or have their careers chosen for them by their parents.

What are you passionate about?

Choosing a job is not that hard. Anyone can do it. Just look around you and say “I want to be that when I grow up.” But, choosing a career that you will enjoy for a long time, if not the rest of your life is a true challenge.   It does take a little planning on your part though. The plan will also take on a different form depending upon your age and current financial needs.

The first advice I give anyone choosing a career or considering a career change is to write down the three great passions in their life.  I want them to actually sit down and consider what it is they love to do without consideration for whether it is a career or not.   Do you love music?  Do sports make your pulse race?  Do you enjoy caring for children?  Do you postpone other things to watch or play golf?  Do you love the theater, the beach, the outdoors, boating or cooking?  Are you the girl that all the other girls look to for advice on fashion?

What are your three passions?  What just made you smile thinking about it?

What is interesting about that question is that most people can write down one passion pretty quickly, but they have more difficulty coming up with number two and number three.  As you work on your list, you will start to realize that you have one really great passion that you could do every day forever if you could. That one thing that makes your pulse race just a little bit. That one thing that gets you excited and has gotten you excited at the very thought of doing it for most of your life whether you are 18 or 80.

Your passion can be a career

Once you decide what your passion is, the next thing you have to do is research that field.  Start thinking creatively about what jobs are available in that area.  Let’s use music as an example.  You love music.  You love the sound, the beat, the history of the artist, and looking for a deeper meaning in the lyrics.  You love being around bands and musicians, and you hang out with others that love music.  But what if you you can’t sing or play an instrument?  What if you have no real obvious talent in music?   Are you the person everyone wants to talk to about music?

If any of that is true, then what are some of the careers that are in the music industry other than performing? Are you a writer and could a start a blog about music? Are you good with your hands and could learn to make guitars or tune pianos? Are you a talented computer technician and could learn to mix music tracks or create samplings? There are dozens of jobs in the music industry that you might be able to use your second or third passion to combine into a career. You see where I am going now?  And plug in your passion every time I’ve written the word music.

Money, money, money

Now let’s discuss money for minute. If you start out looking for jobs that make a lot of money, you will end up becoming a slave to a job that you will absolutely hate some day. I know many doctors that are rich, and completely miserable.  I mean depressed.  Unless your true passion is making money, if you actually only work for the money, you will live for weekends and vacations, but hate Monday through Friday. That is not the way to live.

If you are starting out, don’t worry about the compensation. As you gain more experience, you will figure out how to make more money. The money will come to you – don’t chase it.  Expect nothing, but be grateful for everything you have, and you will get more.

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Starting over
If you are already experienced and thinking about changing careers, then you may have to downsize to make a career change.  You may have to take a pay cut.   Sorry, but if you really need to do this, that is your sacrifice.   Save a lot of money now so that your lifestyle will be less impacted.  Or, you can think about trying something part-time to learn the field and then branch out slowly on your own.  Either way it will be tough, but at the risk of being repetitive, do you want to be happy doing what you love, or trudging down a path of professional misery?  You have free will to do either one.

Whether you love health care, children, tennis or cars, all you have to do is say to yourself  “I love that.  I really love that.”  Once you do, you can start looking for the great jobs that support it and decide what your career will be.   So here is the bottom line, work at something you love and you will never work a day in your life.

Have a great day!!

http://www.directyourcareer.com/blog

email me at mike.anderson@directyourcareer.com