I’m really enjoying writing this series of posts further explaining the ideas in my latest career success coach book, Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less.  I hope you’re enjoying reading them.  I’m pleased to say that Success Tweets is now in its second printing.  You can pick up a copy at your local book store, or online at Amazon.com.  Better yet, you can download the eBook for free at http://www.successtweets.com.

Today’s career advice comes from Tweet 99…

Get the job done with what you have.  Don’t worry about what you don’t have, or would like to have.

I studied journalism as an undergraduate.  Journalism is a great major.  It teaches you to write.  It keeps you up on current events.  And most of all, it provides you with the discipline of making deadlines.  Bob Farson was my advisor at Penn State.  He never accepted a late assignment.  He never gave an incomplete in a course.  Every journalism student in my day at Penn State heard his mantra over and over again… 

“There is no late in journalism.  You can’t put out a blank paper.  A good reporter will never have everything he wants for a story.  You’ve got to learn to go with what you’ve got and do the best job you can with it.”

Bob Farson’s career advice – “go with what you’ve got” — really stuck with me.  I finished my four years at Penn State, got an MA at The University of Colorado and a PhD at Harvard, and never missed a deadline.  I never asked for an extension, and I never took and incomplete in a course.

I never worked as a journalist, but my journalism education taught me the importance of getting the job done with what I have – and that, in turn, helped me create the life and career success I so badly wanted.

When it comes to deadlines, I find that people make two types of mistakes.  1) They miss them because they are always looking for that one additional piece of information that will bring everything together perfectly.  2) They get so focused on making them that they don’t dig deep enough to find all in information they need to do an outstanding job.

Both are problems.  When I say go with what you’ve got, I mean you need to find the right balance of gathering all the information you need and still making the deadline.  Avoid problem number 1 by realizing that you’ll never know everything you want to know about a given subject.  I’ve been a career success coach for 20 years, and I still learn new stuff about career success every day.  Avoid problem number 2 by getting overly focused on the deadline.  If you do, you run the risk of not doing as good a job as you can on any given project.

Go with what you’ve got only after you do an exhaustive information search and make sure that you have all the information you can possibly find and still make the deadline.

In a post earlier this week, I mentioned a great little book QBQ: The Question Behind the Question by my friend John Miller.  If you find yourself needing information or materials to get a job done right, don’t ask, “Why won’t people give me what I need to do my job?”  Instead ask yourself, “How can I get what I need to get this job done right and on time?”  The answer that question will put you in charge.  You’ll be better able to go with what you’ve got to get the job done well.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people meet deadlines.  They follow the career advice in Tweet 99 in Success Tweets.  “Get the job done with what you have.  Don’t worry about what you don’t have, or would like to have.”  Take personal responsibility for doing the work with what you have – or getting what you need to do to do the work well.  If you don’t have what you need, do whatever it takes to get it.  Take personal responsibility for making sure you have what you need to do your job well.  Taking personal responsibility for getting the job done – with what you have, not what you want will set you apart from the pack and put you on the road to the life and career success you want and deserve.

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 99.  What’s yours?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading.  I really appreciate it.

Bud

I’m really enjoying writing this series of posts further explaining the ideas in my latest career success coach book, Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less.  I hope you’re enjoying reading them.  I’m pleased to say that Success Tweets is now in its second printing.  You can pick up a copy at your local book store, or online at Amazon.com.  Better yet, you can download the eBook for free at http://www.successtweets.com.

Today’s career advice comes from Tweet 95…

Get into a high performance mindset.  Don’t question yourself.  Trust your skills and abilities.

If you want to create the life and career success you want and deserve you have to trust yourself.  Trusting yourself is one of the key components of self confidence.  Self confident people cultivate a high performance mindset, one in which they believe they will succeed at whatever they attempt.

If you read this blog, you know that I am a big fan of The Optimist Creed. 

Point 4 of the creed says,

“Promise yourself to look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.”

Point 7 says,

“Promise yourself to forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.”

You have to trust yourself to put these two bits of common sense career advice into play.  Optimists trust themselves.  They trust themselves to do whatever is necessary to meet the goals they set for themselves.  They trust themselves to develop the skills they need to meet their goals.  They trust themselves to create the life and career success they want and deserve.

There is a lot of great career advice in The Optimist Creed.  I have prepared a .pdf of it that you can download, print and hang in your office – just like I have done.  If you would like a copy of The Optimist Creed, go to http://budbilanich.com/optimist.

Here’s a personal example about trusting yourself.  I have trained thousands of people in leadership skills, I’ve led hundreds of team building workshops, I’ve coached hundreds of people, helping them create the life and career success they want and deserve.  Recently, I decided that I wanted to reach a broader audience – not just the people who work for the Fortune 500 companies who have engaged my consulting and coaching services.

To do this, I needed to make my ideas more widely available via the internet.  Several years ago, I realized that I didn’t have a clue about how to prepare, present and market my ideas on the internet.  I trusted my knowledge and wisdom, but I didn’t know how to get it to a broader audience.  This might have stopped some folks dead in their tracks.  But I trust my ability to learn new skills.

First I learned how to blog, and then I committed to blogging five days a week.  I’ve kept that commitment for the past five years.  I blog every Monday through Friday with the exception of two weeks at the end of the year.  That’s 250 posts every year.  Then I learned about social media.  I spend about an hour a day on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook sharing my thoughts on life and career success.  Finally, I’m continuing to learn about internet marketing – affiliate programs, membership sites, etc.  When I started, I had no internet marketing skills.  Today, I am a bit of an expert.  I say this realizing that I need to keep learning and growing in this field.

I trusted myself.  I knew I had something of value to give, and I knew I could learn the skills necessary to reach large numbers of people.  By the end of this year, I will have launched several information products on the internet – all because I trusted my ability to learn and my motivation to do new things.

How about you?  Do you trust yourself?  Do you believe that what you have to offer is important and of high quality?  Do you believe that you can learn what you need to know to succeed?  I bet you do, or you wouldn’t be reading this blog post.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people believe in themselves.  They follow the career advice in Tweet 95 in Success Tweets.  “Develop a high performance mindset.  Don’t question yourself.  Trust your skills and abilities.”  Trusting your skills and abilities means knowing when you need to learn something new, and then doing whatever it takes to gain that knowledge.  Be a self confident optimist.  Trust yourself.  Know in your heart of hearts that you will succeed. 

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 95.  What’s yours?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  I appreciate and value every one of your comments.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

I’m really enjoying writing this series of posts further explaining the ideas in my latest career success coach book, Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less.  I hope you’re enjoying reading them.  I’m pleased to say that Success Tweets is now in its second printing.  You can pick up a copy at your local book store, or online at Amazon.com.  Better yet, you can download the eBook for free at http://www.successtweets.com.

Today’s career advice comes from Tweet 94…

Don’t take yourself too seriously.  Lighten up.  It will help you master yourself and become an outstanding performer.

I love the internet.  You can find anything and everything there.  I googled “lighten up”.  I got 1,740,000 hits in less than half a second – 0.42 seconds to be exact.  I clicked on a Wiki How called “How to Lighten Up” and found six common sense tips on how to lighten up.

1. Stop assuming you know everything.  Nobody knows everything – even in his or her field.  When you think you know everything, you become closed to new ideas.

2. Stop exaggerating.  Be truthful with yourself about your skills and abilities.  Just like you should avoid assuming you know everything, you need to avoid coming across to others as a know it all.  Knowing it all sets you up for unwanted stress.

3. Let go of things.  I love what the WikiHow has to say about this.  “Better to be humble and humorous about your journey through life than to be the drama queen of Seriousville.”  Learn from your mistakes and move on.  Don’t hold grudges.

4. Laugh.  Be willing to laugh at yourself.  It may just be me, but I laugh about myself or something I do almost every day.  I’m not an idiot, but I do make my share of human mistakes.  Instead of getting frustrated, I choose to laugh.  Laugh with others.  Share their humor.  But, never laugh at others. 

5. Delegate.  This may come as a surprise to you, but you’re not indispensible.  Someone else can probably do your job at least as good, and maybe better than you.  The old saying “if you want something done right, do it yourself,” just isn’t true.  Figure out what you’re holding on to just to satisfy your ego, and then let it go.

6. Stop being so rules focused.  We make lots of rules for ourselves.  Things like “I should do this,” or “I should do that.”  As one of my early mentors told me – “Don’t should on yourself.  You’ll be happier.”  I couldn’t agree more.

I love these tips, and agree with them.  I thkn they are great career advice.  I particularly like number 4 – laugh.  I think that the ability to laugh at yourself on one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself – and the people around you.  Being too serious, beating up yourself over mistakes causes lots of stress.  And it makes you an unpleasant person.  No one wants to be around someone who is constantly frustrated by the smallest mistakes.

I heard a story about a teacher the other day.  She asked some young children just learning to read if they could identify the animal in a picture she showed them.  One little boy said, “it’s a frickin’ lion.”  The teacher was upset about his choice of modifiers.  When she pointed that out to him he said, “It is a frickin’ lion.  It says so right here.”  The teacher was frustrated, but looked at the picture again and saw that the caption read, “African Lion.”  Now that’s cause to laugh – at yourself and the phonics method of learning to read.

I also like point number 6 – stop being so rules focused.  As I mentioned above, we sometimes create unreasonable expectations for ourselves and these expectations become rules – if only in our head.  These rules become “shoulds.”  “Don’t should on yourself ” is some of the best career advice I’ve ever received.  Stop thinking that you should do this, or should be so far along in your career, or shouldn’t have to do a job you think is below you.  The best way to stop letting unnecessary rules govern your life is to stop making up rules to govern you.  Don’t should on yourself.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people work hard at creating the life and career success they want and deserve.  But they don’t take themselves too seriously.  They follow the career advice in Tweet 94 in Success Tweets.  “Don’t take yourself too seriously.  Lighten up.  It will help you master yourself and become an outstanding performer.”  If you want to lighten up laugh a little more, don’t get too caught up in rules by making too many “shoulds” for yourself.  Or, as one of my early mentors always said, “Don’t should on yourself.”

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 94.  What’s yours?  Are you willing to laugh at yourself?  Do you learn from your mistakes and move on?  Please leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

I’m really enjoying writing this series of posts further explaining the ideas in my latest career success coach book, Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less.  I hope you’re enjoying reading them.  I’m pleased to say that Success Tweets is now in its second printing.  You can pick up a copy at your local book store, or online at Amazon.com.  Better yet, you can download the eBook for free at http://www.successtweets.com.

Today’s career advice comes from Tweet 93…

Becoming a high performer is easier if you’re physically fit.  Increasing your heart rate is a great way to improve your fitness level.

As a career success coach, I advise my clients to live a healthy lifestyle.  This means eating right and exercising.  You don’t have to become a tri-athlete; every little bit of exercise helps.  Exercise helps you increase your heart rate.  I like to ride my bike to increase my heart rate.

Dan Robey is a friend of mine.  He is the author of The Power of Positive Habits.  I am one of his subscribers.  A while back, I received a great e mail from Dan where he discussed how brisk walking is a positive habit – and a great way to increase your heart rate.  Dan is a generous guy and he always lets me repost his posts here. 

Check out what Dan robey has to say about the power of brisk walking…

Make “Brisk Walking” A Positive Habit

“Not running, not jogging, but walking is your most efficient exercise and the only one you can safely follow all the years of your life.” – Executive Health Organization

Walking as a daily exercise habit can truly be a life-changing positive habit and is one of the most powerful habits for reaching your goal of a healthy trim and fit body. Over the past 20 years, there have been dozens of studies that have proven the benefits of brisk walking.

Thousands upon thousands of people have improved their health and lost weight by the diligent habit of walking. If you think that walking does not provide the same benefits as other more vigorous exercises, think again.

A study published by the New England Journal Of Medicine showed that postmenopausal women who walked regularly lowered their risk for heart disease just as much as women who did more vigorous exercise, such as playing sports or running.

This study suggests that walking is just as good for your heart as heavy exercise. I spoke with study author Dr. JoAnn E. Manson, Chief of Preventive Medicine at Brigham and Womens Hospital, Professor of Medicine, at Harvard Medical School.  She said, “The study provides compelling evidence that walking and vigorous exercise provide similar heart benefits, about a 30% to 40% reduction in the risk of cardiovascular disease with 30 minutes per day of either activity.”

I also asked her about the benefits of making brisk walking a positive habit, and she responded, “They could surely walk away from heart disease and several other chronic diseases. We have also found that brisk walking for at least 3 hours a week can lower the risk of stroke, type 2 diabetes, and breast cancer.”

No pain, no gain, is an outdated notion; exercise doesn’t need to be strenuous or uncomfortable. It can be easy and enjoyable. Even though the study consisted solely of women, it is likely that men would experience similar benefits from the positive habit of brisk walking.
 
Here are additional benefits you will receive from your habit of brisk walking:

Walking burns calories and helps you lose weight and burn excess body fat.

Walking can help to improve your posture.

Walking requires no special equipment or gyms.

Walking can help lower blood pressure and help prevent circulatory and heart disorders.

Brisk, aerobic walking will give you the benefits of other exercises, such as jogging and cycling, but without the risk of injuries.

Walking at night can help promote better sleep.

Dan makes some great points about the benefits of developing a positive habit of brisk walking.  Personally, I prefer to bicycle in the summer, and walk in the winter. 

A lot of the people who I coach say that they know they should exercise, but often can’t seem to “get around to it.”  I have come up with the answer this problem.  I have printed several thousand stickers that are round and say “TUIT” in big capital letters.  Whenever someone tells me that they know they should do something but can’t seem to get around to it, I give them one of these stickers.  It is a round TUIT.  I tell them that now they can never say that they can’t get a around to it anymore, because they have a round TUIT.  I have a round TUIT sticker on my computer.  I have another one on my bike.  They are constant reminders to me to keep up good work and exercise habits.

Would you like a round TUIT?  If so, please send me and email at Bud@BudBilanich.com with the words “Round TUIT” in the subject line.  Include your snail mail address, and I’ll put up to five round TUITs in the mail to you – free of charge.  Use them for yourself, or give them to your friends who are procrastinators — especially about exercise. 

Make sure that you get around to living a healthy lifestyle.  Elevate your heart rate.  Brisk walking is a great way to start.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people are outstanding performers.  Outstanding performers live a healthy lifestyle.  They follow the career advice in Tweet 93 in Success Tweets.  “Becoming a high performer is easier if you’re physically fit.  Increasing your heart rate is a great way to improve your fitness level.”   My friend Dan Robey, author of The Power of Positive Habits says that brisk walking is a great way to increase your heart rate and one of the most healthy habits you can adopt.  I agree, almost everybody can walk.  The more you walk, the healthier you’ll be.  Dan points out that “No pain, no gain, is an outdated notion; exercise doesn’t need to be strenuous or uncomfortable. It can be easy and enjoyable.”  Elevate your heart rate daily.  Llike the Nike ads say, Just Do It!  Or as this career success coach says, “Get around to it.”

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 93 and on developing positive habits that will keep you healthy and on top of your game.  What’s yours?  Please take a minute to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less is my new career success coach book.  I’m proud to say that it has just gone into its second printing.  I also want to thank all of the kind folks who have posted a review of Success Tweets on Amazon.com.  You’re the best.  I really appreciate you. 

You can pick up a copy of Success Tweets at your local bookstore or on line at amazon.com.  Better yet, you can download the eBook version for free at www.SuccessTweets.com.

Today’s career advice comes from Success Tweet 83…

Master your technical discipline.  Share what you know.  Become the go to person in your company.

I had a big technical learning the other day.  I figured out how to podcast.  I am turning these Success Tweets blog posts into podcasts.  However, unitl recently I never put in the time it takes to become a proficient podcaster.  I promised myself that I would learn to podcast when I began this series of posts.  I spent about four hours figuring out how to podcast a couple of days ago.  It wasn’t all that hard, the information I needed was on the web.  Now I know how to podcast – and since knowing is not enough, I’ve begun doing podcasts of these posts.  The url is simple: http://www.SuccessTweets.mypodcast.com.  The first one is up.  I hope you check out my podcasts and give me some feedback on them.

Podcasting is an important technical skill for me.  I had to learn it to reach my target audience with my common sense career advice.  What important technical skill do you need to learn to stay current in your area of expertise?  How can you learn it?  I suggest you set a deadline for learning this skill, and then do whatever it takes to learn the skill by the deadline.

I am a big fan of SUCCESS Magazine.  I read it cover to cover every month, always picking up some great success tips – many of which I pass along here.  If you’re not a subscriber, I suggest you go to www.SUCCESS.com and do so as soon as you finish reading this post.

A couple of years ago, an issue of SUCCESS had a great story on lifelong learning entitled, “Focusing on Improvement When You’ve Reached the Pinnacle.”  It told the story of an American Football coach at the top of his game who reached out to others to keep growing and developing his coaching skills.

The article was about Tom Coughlin, Head Coach of the then Super Bowl Champion New York Giants.  Before the next football season began, Mr. Coughlin called Joe Torre and John Wooden.  Mr. Torre managed the New York Yankees to three consecutive World Series Championships, and Mr. Wooden won seven consecutive NCAA basketball championships when he was the coach at UCLA.  He was a great man who passed away recently.

Mr. Coughlin wanted to learn what to do to motivate a team that had already reached the pinnacle of its sport.  Mr. Torre had some interesting things to say:

“Leading when everyone expects you to win requires that you convince every member of your team that last year doesn’t matter.  And that’s tough to do because all year long they’re seeing the words ‘defending champions’ placed before their names.  The only thing that winning last year means is that your opponents are looking forward to playing you.  None of them are intimidated by what you did a year ago, and none of them are going to roll over.  Your team will have to learn that quickly.”

In other words, you can’t rest on your laurels.  You need to keep on learning and improving.  Your past success does not guarantee future success.  Things happen quickly in today’s business world.  If you’re not learning, growing and developing your technical expertise, like Tom Coughlin, you’re going to fall behind.

Roy Williams, Head Basketball Coach at the University of North Carolina, and winner of a couple of NCAA championships says:

“It’s human nature that once you get to the top, or when it appears that you are better than your opponent, to take a breath and enjoy the moment.  What we are trying to teach (the willingness to keep learning and growing) runs counter to human nature…I remind each player that the way you deal with expectations is to focus only on today.”

The implication for lifelong learning is simple.  No matter how much you know, you can always learn more.  Earl Nightingale once said, “If you will spend an extra hour each day of study in your chosen field, you will be a national expert in that field in five years or less.”  This is great career advice.  Focus on today.  Spend an hour learning more about your technical discipline.  You’ll be surprised at the results.

Recently, I saw a great quote from Henry Ford that applies here.  “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty.  Anyone who keeps learning stays young.”  Another good reason to keep on learning.  Don’t become old before your time.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people master their technical discipline.  They follow the career advice in Tweet 83 in Success Tweets.  “Master your technical discipline.  Share what you know.  Become the go to person in your company.”   Become the go to person in your company and industry, like Tom Coughlin and Roy Williams, Keep learning — even after you’ve had great success.  Follow Earl Nightingale’s advice.  Spend at least one hour a day studying your chosen field.  This extra effort will pay off in the long run.  Besides that, as Henry Ford points out, you’ll stay young.

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 83.  What’s yours?  Please leave a comment sharing your experience with us.  As always, thanks for reading – and writing.

Bud