Clearly, you would be interested in finding out ways to improve performance at work. You will be surprised by some of the things you can do to reap major benefits. Below are some straightforward ways to improve performance at work.
Manage your time: Plan your day first thing in the morning, or before you go to bed at night. Block off a time every day to work on important projects. That time is sacred. Therefore, you are not available for meetings, phone calls or to respond to emails. Work on your most important tasks first. At the end of the day, evaluate how you did. What did you do well? What didn’t you do so well, and how can you improve? For a week, keep a time journal to see how you spend your time. The 15 minutes you think you spend on Facebook, may actually be an hour. You need to know for sure where you are putting your time.
Mentoring in moments: People are busy these days, so you may not be able to find a mentor. Try mentoring in moments instead of a traditional mentoring relationship. This way you can get perspectives from a variety of people. Who are the people who you’d like to learn from? They may not be able to mentor you, but they may allow you to interview them for 20 minutes. What information would you like to find out? What questions do you want answers to? Clearly define what you are trying to achieve on the job, and in your career. Then find the people who will be able to help you to achieve those goals. As someone who has interviewed hundreds of people, you can gather a lot of targeted information in 20 minutes. Surprisingly, this is one of the simplest ways to improve performance at work because people want to help you.
Read books: When was the last time you read a book to pick up tips to perform more effectively at work. Find the top five books to read in your field. Those would be the books that everyone reads. Find the top five books that are off the beaten path that only the elite performers in your field read. You may have to poll elite performers to discover which books to read. Next find five fiction books where the main character does what you do for a living. This may sound like really stupid advice. But writers often write about what they know. The best writers do a lot of research before they write a single word. That’s great for you because you can benefit from their hard work. Take notes while you are reading, and whenever you find a technique that you can use on the job, apply it (I use Livescribe Echo Smartpen to take notes). One of the things I ask people participating in the Read the World Extreme Reading Challenge to do is to write down the five big ideas from the books they read, then to start combining the ideas to form a hybrid idea.
Take an online course: There are many good free courses online. Many colleges and universities upload their lectures online. And you can take Massive Open Online Courses that institutions such as Coursera and Saylor Academy offer. I have taken at least 15 free courses online, so I know what I am talking about. Take courses that will allow you to become more marketable and valuable.
Work on a special project: Have a conversation with your boss to find out if there are any special projects you can work on to develop new skills and accelerate your career. The project should be one that stretches you. If he or she says there isn’t a project, which is unlikely, create one for yourself. It’s your career. The onus is on you to manage it. Whatever project you work on that will improve performance at work, make sure the skills you acquire are portable. That you can take to another employer.
Though the list is not exhaustive, if you start by doing only two of the ways to improve performance at work, you will notice a difference in no time. What would you add to the list?
Participate in the Read the World Facebook Group! Please take the conversation to my Facebook page.
