Note: This is a guest post from Daniel M. Wood of Looking To Business
Being more efficient and more valuable to your company is the best way to put your career on the fast track. If you are always working hard, getting more done and bringing more value to your company than your peers, you will get noticed.
My wife is a great example of this. She is working as a writer, working on her first book. When we moved to Norway (we moved about 6 months ago for my job) she decided that she wanted to take a part time job.
She looked around and before long she was working as a salesman for a local gym chain. She worked 3 times a week. Every time she was at work she would work hard. She made about twice as many sales as the other salesmen because she was talking to 3 times as many people.
She also helped update their signs, their offers and presentations to make it easier for customers to understand the offer and buy a membership.
After three months she was promoted. Even though most of the staff had worked longer then she, she got the job and no one was surprised, she was doing the best work.
My wife and thousands of others practice time-proven techniques that make sure you move forward:
1. Ask yourself and your boss what the best use of your time is
If you don’t know exactly what your boss feels is the best use of your time and what the highest value activity is for you, ask! It is by doing that or those tasks that you can move forward quickly. Building the most value will get you noticed and to do that you have to find out what it is you are expected to do.
2. Ask your boss to help you clear away other tasks so that you can focus on the highest value task
Once you have found out what your most important task is you will probably notice that only a small portion of your time is spent on it. Talk to your boss about it and see if you can get rid of or delegate some of the tasks to other people so you can spend your time building as much value as possible to the company.
3. Plan your week so that you spend as much time as possible working on the most important task
Make a weekly plan trying to free up as much time as possible to your important task. List everything you do in a week and figure out how you can get the most possible out of your workday.
4. Organize each day
Once you have planned your weeks you can start organizing each day. What is most important? What needs to be done first? What second? Once you have that daily plan, get to it and start checking them off one by one.
5. Get in earlier, work harder, stay later
By working focused you will get a lot more done then your peers. But if you also make the great impression of being first to the office and the last to leave whilst all the while producing at a high rate, you will get noticed, appreciated and promoted.
6. Be proactive
Don’t let the circumstances control you. Instead, control the circumstances. If you want to be promoted you have to show that you can shoulder the responsibility. Ask for more responsibility and when you get it, do it well and do it fast!
Even if you aren’t given responsibility, you can do like my wife. She noticed that the signs weren’t working; the customers didn’t know instantly what they were offering. So she made new ones and presented them to her bosses, they liked them and before weeks end they were using her ads.
The fact that she proved she could take more responsibility is one of the reasons she was promoted over the others.
Conclusion
Your career is your choice. If you want to move forward quickly you have it within you. If you don’t do what it takes, you will not get promoted. Don’t be reactive and let others control your life. Take control of your future and do all that you can to be the best employee and the obvious choice to advancement.
If you liked this post and want to read more like it visit http://lookingtobusiness.com. Daniel M. Wood writes about Sales Techniques, Motivation and Success.
Photo by visualpanic
6 Time Management Tips That Will Get You Promoted
Another huge benefit of managing your time is that you can free up your time to do stuff you really enjoy.
Daniel, your wife wanted to keep working on her book, so she used time management as a tool to make sure she had enough free time to do what she really want to do (write)
I think time management for any other reason should make us ask the question: why? Why get a promotion just for the sake of a promotion? Will more money make us happier? Will more responsibility at work add stress? Will more hours take time away from stuff we really enjoy?
Thanks for sharing this post Don! And good thoughts Dan, I enjoyed this read. Rock on!
Hey Daniel,
Enjoyed the article and the great points you made.
You are right on that working longer than everyone else doesn’t mean you will get the next promotion. My first job was as a ticket taker at a local water park. Even though it was the very bottom of the chain when it came to jobs there, I worked hard, was loyal, and volunteered for the work no one else would take.
When the next season came up I applied for the supervisor position. My manager chose me over several people who had been there 3 to 4 times as long as I had.
The only point I don’t agree with 100% is to get in earlier and stay later. I think it’s definitely important to not be late and don’t leave early, but if you develop a pattern of working extra hours consistently it can have a number of negative effects.
1. It may look like you are more dedicated, but it may also show that you aren’t organized or diligent enough to get the work done in a reasonable time frame.
2. Spending more time at work means you are taking it away from other areas in your life. You may be taking away from important time where you could be seeing your family, or you may cause yourself to burn out prematurely.
Just be careful with that one. Overall, the points were dead on in my opinion.
What I understand from this is nothing comes to you easily,you need to make things happen…
I agree with Bryce. Overall, I really like most of the points in the article. Organizing you time and day is huge in being efficient. The idea of collaborating with your boss on what your most important tasks are and having him/her help you clear away some other responsibilities seems like a really great way to earn their respect and form a bond.
I don’t necessarily agree that spending longer hours at the office is a great idea. Too often by adding a little time at work, we take away a large proportion of time with our family and loved ones. This can have really amplified effects at home, with our own stress levels and how our family members feel towards us.
I really like the point about discussing with your boss about what is most important, this can help open the way to decluttering your work time and removing unnecessary tasks. Your boss can also lose sight of what effect other tasks can have on productivity so this opens doors for discussion.
What I struggle with is the arrive earlier, work later mentality. All too often bosses will soon come to expect this rather than appreciate it for what it is. This has the potential to cause resentment from both yourself and your colleagues in the long term as you may start to feel taken for granted. A healthy balance is required here.
Donald: Great post. I think this is great advice. We all really do need to have a strategy for how we will be successful with our careers or work. I really appreciated the tips and the advice to take control instead of letting the circumstances control you. Great advice. Thanks for passing it along.
Hi,
The article felt more like a tabloid. You had a caption that is bound to have some clicks. And after I read this, I felt it is not something ground breaking. Everybody on the earth knows these six stuff.
Sorry sir, I hate to be rude, but there is no take away from here.
Most of the advice you have given, is really impractical. Especially 1 and 2. You have made so many assumptions!!
5. Get in earlier, work harder, stay later. I feel this is anti management. I am really surprised by this!!!!
I would suggest you to please read the book – http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php
We have ignored these important facts for long. I’ve seen many people taking up reactive management but higher success is attributed to proactive management.
Kudos to the author; Daniel.
That was very informative. I will try it out starting tomorrow at work.
Hi Donald,
This is a great post.
I believe that if you know how to manage your time well you can do whatever you want and have as much free time. You have to be aware of your energy level everyday. If you manage your time well you will have more energy throughout the day and you will know where to allocate that energy.
A great book I recommend is “The Power of Full Engagement” by Tony Shwartz.
Thanks for the post.
Have a great weekend!
Nabil
Success is depend of Time. If we utilize our time effectively and efficiently we can gain success in life. Thanks for sharing this. This will help a lot of people like me.
Very nice post i like it very much and even i really love the format of the information. i creats interest to read the whole passage.