Can You Consistently Come out with High Performance at Your Workplace?

As an employee, you may wish to be in the good books of your employer. Therefore, you may aim to consistently perform very well. But is it possible to consistently come out with high performance at your workplace? If you have such a doubt in your mind, you should know what experts advise. According to experts, the secret of coming out with high performance is to have fun while carrying out your official tasks. 

But how can you have fun while doing your official work? As every person is unique, the ways of having fun while doing official work will differ from one employee to another. This means that you have to learn the ways yourself. In fact, no institution or university including business schools of repute will teach you this secret. As Jim Rohn said, "Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune." 

One of the basic points that can make you happy at your work is when you complete your tasks on time. On the contrary, if you do not complete your work on time, it will make you unhappy. Of course, there may be different reasons that may have contributed to delays in the completion of the tasks. You may not like the tasks and therefore, you are finding some alibi or the other for procrastinating them. Or, there may be distractions that may be robbing your focus towards the tasks. There may be several factors that may cause a delay in the completion of the tasks. 

But how to eliminate such factors and complete your tasks on time?

Now that you have understood that it is the delays in the completion of your tasks that cause unhappiness to you, you may be wondering as to how to surmount this issue. The best way to eliminate this problem is to FIX DEADLINES. This means that you should fix a deadline for every task you take up. Remember that no one is imposing these deadlines. It is you that is imposing such deadlines and you are imposing them for yourself.

An expert has rightly named delays as "tyrannosaurs." Delays not only spoil your reputation but will cause anxiety as well. Therefore, you can not enjoy your work. This will ultimately derail your aim of coming out with high performance on a consistent basis. Of course, you should not compromise on the quality of your work just because you want to avoid delays. 

Since these deadlines are self-imposed, you will avoid distractions from over-powering you. 

Multi-tasking is a killer of high performance

A few years back, people used to laud multi-taskers. But science has proved beyond doubt that multi-tasking kills high performance because it is also a distractor. In fact, it has been proved that people need at least 20 to 30 minutes to get back the required focus after a phase of distraction, however short the duration of the distraction may be. Therefore, avoid multitasking at all costs.  

If you follow these steps, you can consistently come out with a high performance at your workplace.

When will Your Employer Consider You a Highly Valuable Employee?

As an expert puts it, "employers are always skeptical." This means they do not easily believe their employees. To put it differently, they view employees with suspicion. According to them, employees will not put forth their fullest efforts if they are not prodded, employees will while away their time if they are not supervised constantly, and they will commit blunders if they are not guided properly. Though this opinion of the expert has to be taken with a pinch of salt, the fact remains that it may be difficult for employees to earn the goodwill of their employers. This is perhaps one of the reasons some employees try to over-deliver, though whether they succeed in their efforts to impress their employers or not is a debatable point.

If you are an employee and if you, in the cockles of your heart, have a feeling that your employer views you with suspicion, you are likely to wonder as to how to enter the good books of the employer. Remember there are several employees who are like you and who want themselves to be considered valuable by their employers. Let us find out if this is possible and if so, how it can be accomplished. 

You may be a marketing executive in your company, you may be a supervisor who manages the shop floor, or you may be working in the accounts or audit department or in the HR section. Regardless of your position in your organization and regardless of your productivity levels, the management is likely to quickly forget all that you have delivered, however big your accomplishments may be. As an employee helming the marketing department, you may have brought in more business and increased sales to a significant extent. As the Head of the HR department, you might have played a key role in recruiting the right candidates for the company. Be informed that the company will not always remember these things. "People's memory is short" is the saying. Similarly, management's memory is short also. In this context, how can you make your management put you in the list of highly valuable employees?

"All the world's a stage. And all the men and women merely players," said Shakespeare. Your life and the role you play in your workplace is also similar to that of an actor. As an employee, you may encounter various types of situations at your workplace and this may include tricky ones as well. Let us assume that the company is facing such a tricky situation. Just imagine that you have authored a drama in which this situation occurs. How will you handle it? Or how will you give a twist to the story so the issue gets resolved and the situation becomes normal? In short, you are advised to put your creative muscle to work.

What is the inference of all these? You should try to become an idea machine or an idea-generating machine for your company. If you consistently provide great ideas for the company, your employer will certainly consider you a highly valuable employee. This is because it is ideas that can make or mar a business. It is ideas that can take a company to the next planks. It is ideas that can out-smart the competition. Therefore, if you become an idea-generating machine for your employer, you will not only be a valuable employee but will be able to climb the career rungs faster as well.

This can be the Secret Weapon Employees Can Use for Their Growth

You are already employed but you want to have quicker career growth. But in the present-day context, when there is cut-throat competition everywhere including in workplaces, this aspiration seems to be a difficult one. The question now is: Is it really impossible to accelerate your career growth? Experts in the career field emphatically say that it is certainly possible to achieve faster career growth. But it may not be a cakewalk. It needs some purposeful efforts. More particularly, you need to use a secret weapon for achieving your aim. You may be eager to know what this weapon is. Let us find out. But once you know and use this weapon appropriately, you are certain to become the most valuable employee of your company. Needless to say, the quick career growth you have been aspiring for will automatically be ready for your grab as well.

How KK could achieve this quick career growth?

KK was a teacher in a school that was run by a missionary. Compared to many other teachers of the school, she was younger, though her academic qualifications were as good as those of others, if not better. But when the school management decided to open a new branch, they appointed KK as its principal. You may wonder why. KK had less experience than many other teachers. She was younger than many of the teachers as well. But what made the management decide to appoint her as the principal of their new branch? The reason was KK, knowingly or unknowingly, was using the secret weapon  

Please do not come to the conclusion that teachers alone can use this weapon. Employees who are working in other fields can use this weapon also. Unfortunately, this secret weapon may not be visible to many including you because it is sandwiched between selfishness and ego. But if you do not identify this weapon to use it appropriately, you are likely to get frustrated. As an expert puts it, "frustration can be a ruthless career killer." Your focus will get blurred and hence, you will not make smart and wise decisions. Thanks to this focus-shrinker, you will find it more difficult to accomplish your aim having quick career growth.  

This again will corrupt the files of your brain. You will start thinking "I am not good enough to achieve quicker career growth." The only way to get over this is to first take the following step for getting rid of these corrupt files of your brain.

Instead of always thinking of your shortcomings, start focusing on your positives. This means when your mind wanders and starts thinking about your negative points, you should tune out your mind first. You should then turn the radar of your mind towards your positives. Of course, you may find this exercise difficult to do in the initial stages but if you consistently practice and bring back your mind and force it to think only of your positives, you will succeed in this step in due course of time. Remember that when you shoot for the moon, there may be many misses. But you should not fail to re-aim.

Once you remove the corrupt files from your brain, you will be ready to use the secret weapon that can help you achieve accelerated career growth. The time is now ripe to talk about this weapon.

When you are hired, you sign certain documents that state that you will be discharging the duties or tasks assigned to you and for this, the company will be paying you a certain salary. But if you think that you can achieve quicker career growth just by doing your tasks and completing them on time, you are very much wrong. In fact, authorities who manage almost all companies expect something more from you. But your ego may say, "I am doing the tasks assigned to me and the company is paying me for this. How can the company expect something beyond this?" If this is your attitude, you can never achieve quicker career growth. 

Now, what does this mean? You should be ready to do much more. This is the secret weapon, KK, the teacher in the school, used. Apart from teaching the students of her class, she assumed other responsibilities as well such as managing the office of the school, distributing books, organizing meetings, and so on. In short, she was shouldering more responsibilities, though she was appointed only for teaching. She could have emulated other teachers and focused just on her teaching duties. But she did not. She was ready to shoulder more responsibilities. That paid off handsomely. The management did not think even a minute for appointing her as the principal of the new branch they opened. 

Therefore, the secret weapon that can get you quicker career growth is: You should do much more than paid for. It may be in the form of becoming the go-to person for having innovative suggestions for the improvement of the company's business, it may be actual work in the form of assisting other teams in their projects, and so on. There are various ways of doing this. If you apply your mind, you will get innumerable ideas. Therefore, use this weapon and achieve quicker growth in your career.

How to Win Despite Facing Failure after Failure

"I am facing failure after failure and hence, there is no guarantee that I will win when I make my next attempt. Therefore, I will stop trying." No excuse can be lamer than this. But we hear this excuse quite often, be it an examination, a job interview, an attempt to discover something, reduce weight, or to cement a broken relationship.

Let us take two examples. Let us first take the example of a person who is looking for a career and who has attended tens of interviews but has not landed a job. Let us assume that it is you. You may be putting forth a lot of effort into preparing yourself for the interviews. You may possess extensive knowledge in your field. But the question is: Is your preparation effective? Is your efficiency while making your efforts adequate enough? If your preparation is not effective or purposeful or if you are not efficient while making your efforts, you may never land a job you are dreaming of. 

The second example is that of an entrepreneur who struggles to achieve the targets that he or she has set. Let us again assume that you are the entrepreneur. Though there can be several extraneous factors that may govern the outcome of your efforts, there are a few over which you may have control. 

Regardless of whether you are a job aspirant or a struggling entrepreneur, you can bid adieu to failures and usher in success. But you have to adopt a few simple tactics for this. Let us find out what they are.

1. Failures are experiences. So, learn from them.

You have faced failure after failure but what have you learned from these failures? Had you learned from your failures, you might not have allowed repeated failures. In fact, failures are revelations, say experts. If you have not learned anything from your failures, it means you have not asked the right questions that can teach you the right lessons. The normal questions most of the folks like you ask are: "Of all the people, why is it I am only unlucky?" "Who is to blame for my failures?" "How can life be so unfair to me?" But these questions do not and can not help you learn. The only question that can help you is: "What is the right step I should take for improving my situation?" 

This question focuses on the solutions and not on the issues or failures you are facing. This shift in your focus will help you find the appropriate solutions that can take you along the winning path.

2. Introspect to find out the wasteful, energy-sapping things you involve yourself in.

At the end of every day, recollect all the tasks you did during the day. This will help you find out the wasteful and energy-sapping things you involved yourself in. If it is necessary, you can even maintain a journal for carrying out this exercise. The intention of this exercise is to eliminate destructive behaviors and replace them with purposeful ones. But this exercise should be carried out with level-headedness and objectivity. Otherwise, your emotions and bias will not only cloud the findings of your exercise but will induce you to make stupid decisions.

 

3.Re-consider your field

When things are not working out the way you want, it is better you revisit your fundamentals. You can even change your specialty. In fact, experts advise job aspirants to have more than one option. Similarly, entrepreneurs can think of diversifying their business. But you should guard against becoming a "messy-eater," who has all the items on her platter and does not know how and what to eat. You should guard also against becoming a "humanoid" that undertakes "mechanical pursuits." This means you should put your heart and soul into this exercise. In short, you should re-wild your brain to know the best options that suit you. Once you are ready with such options, you can easily set your compass in those directions for having smooth navigation. Of course, the exposure, the environment, and the resources available to you play a major role in the choices you make.

If you find it difficult to choose your options, you can use the following advice suggested by experts. 

Dispense with the age-old generic myths about experimenting. Do your research on various options including those others consider as funny, unconventional, and unorthodox. But remember that you should make your choices coldly. This means that you should not use the emotional prism but the prism of self-interest. You will ultimately find the options that suit you.

4. Acquire H.I.S.

Every field or industry needs people with high skills. Since companies are ready to pay hugely for these skills, they are known as H.I.S. or High-Income Skills. You have to make all possible efforts to acquire these skills. If you are one among those who are caught in the ocean of generalists, you will earn only mediocre income. On the contrary, if you are a specialist and if you possess high-income skills, you will be able to "make a splash" in your field.

If you are a struggling entrepreneur, you should make it a point to hire only those who have such skills because these employees will help you in your efforts to bring about a turn-around in your business. 

5. Remember that success will not happen just by accident.

If you think that some Jesus will descend from the Heavens and hand the platter of success to you, you are terribly wrong. You have to make purposeful efforts to come out of the fog of your struggles. Proper preparation and robust plans will help you trump your situation. Though you should try to have crystal-clear clarity over what you should do, there is no need that you should wait for a laundry list that consists of specific strategies or steps for making your plans. Of course, there is a viable way that will help you in simplifying this task. It is known as "reverse engineering." If you embrace this way, there is no need for you to re-invent the wheel. Just go through how those, who have already achieved success, have undertaken their journey. You can adopt the same steps but ensure to modify them to suit you and your situation.   

Once you start adopting these steps, you will stop mourning your past failures. On the other hand, you will find that you have created a firewall against failures.

Are You Not Happy in Your Job? No Worries. Here Is a Solution

A number of employees seem to feel that they are getting their salary for being unhappy. To put it in plain language, they are not happy with their job. They begin their day by 6 or 7 AM and get ready for the so-called 9 to 5 grind. But this 9 to 5 official day is certainly a false statement because the official day of many of these employees starts much before 9 AM and ends much later than 5 PM. This means there is every reason these employees hate their job. But what is the remedy to come out of this rut?

In this context, the findings of a study are worth considering. The study says that on average, a child laughs 300 times during a day. On the contrary, an adult laughs only five times daily. But these unhappy employees may not laugh at all. Some of them may have forgotten to laugh also.

But is quitting the job the solution? You may feel scared even to think of taking this step. But you may not know that it is blissful not to have any job. 

The case of these employees reminds us of an anecdote told by Anthony DeMello, who is considered a spiritual author and mystic.

There was a trader who was selling camels and he was walking across the Desert of Sahara along with his slaves. When there was night, the group decided to stay at a particular place. The slaves had just nineteen pegs but there were 20 camels with them. When they asked their master, he asked them to just act as if they were tying the 20th camel also and told that the camel would stay put.

The next morning, when it was time to move, the slaves untied the camels and all the animals except the 20th camel started moving. In fact, the 20th camel refused to move even an inch from its place. When the slaves asked the master, he reminded them that they had to act as if they were untying the camel. Only then, the animal would move. They carried out this instruction and the 20th camel also started walking.  

 

Most of the employees think that if they quit their job, the decision will ruin their life. They cannot pay their bills and run their families. It is true they need money. Without money, they cannot live. But how to beat the monotony and eliminate the unhappiness from their lives? Here is a suggestion.

The suggestion is: HAVE A PASSION PROJECT.

If you have such a passion project and make it a point to pursue it daily either before heading to your workplace or after coming back, it will provide you the much-needed happiness. By taking every step related to this project, you will feel as if you have achieved something. Most importantly, it will save you from the burn-out you may be experiencing due to doing official tasks you hate the most. 

Experts have found out that such passion projects will improve your productivity at the workplace as well. 

Some of the examples of such passion projects are reading, skiing, hiking, painting, learning dancing, or music, or playing poker or bridge, In fact,  it can be anything. The best thing about such a passion project is that you will not feel any pressure in it. You need not prove yourself also. But it can do a world of good to you by destressing you and by helping you remain happy.  

The Most Important Step You Should Take to Succeed as an Employee

No organization can run without employees. As an expert puts it, "every organization needs employees. Similarly, the employees need the organization also. The simple fact is neither of them need be ashamed to admit this." Bur if you feel that you have not achieved success as an employee, it shows that you are not aware of the secret that can catapult you to the success-plank. Let us find out what it is. But its unfolding comes with a warning. You may not like it. But without it, you cannot achieve success as an employee.

Before the cat is let out of the bag, you should understand that there are a few uncomfortable facts. The first one is that you may have the habit of reading all the personal development and self-improvement books and articles for improving yourself as an employee. You may have taken up courses that have been designed by the so-called experts. You may have attended seminars and conferences of some of the big names in the personal development field. Though these books, seminars, and conferences can certainly do good, there is one particular thing you are missing out. That is what is impeding you from moving from your present spot to the level you wish to reach. 

What is this secret that no one has advised you till now? It is spelled as "MOMENTUM."

Momentum is the only ammunition that can help you surmount the challenges you encounter along your way. Momentum will alone help you maintain your motivation level even during challenging times. This means if you learn to generate momentum, it will be easy for you to achieve the goals you have set. 

If you think that by momentum, we mean that you should take big strides, you are wrong. It is enough if you take just one step forward. But you should take it daily and consistently. You may ask: "How long should I take these steps for reaching my goal?" It purely depends on your ability. In fact, there is no one-size-fits-all rule for this because every individual is different. 

But unfortunately, momentum is not a thing that comes by accident or that comes about naturally. You have to make deliberate efforts for creating it. Only then, you can move forward. Simply put, it first needs your intent and then, your efforts. Since you will be creating it, it is completely under your control. 

Unfortunately, a number of people wait for momentum to get created. They have to wait eternally because unless they make efforts intentionally, it will remain as an unborn child. But here is a caution. During the process of creating momentum which means taking a step on a consistent basis, you are likely to face bumps. You may get stuck as well. But these things should not deter you. You should keep taking the steps. If you find that there is a necessity to make modifications or changes to your course, you must not hesitate to make them also. 

The following are some of the momentum killers. If you succumb to them, you can never achieve success as an employee. 

Impediment #1. 

"I do not want to spend my hard-earned money on such things." This may be one of the impediments that can stop the creation of the momentum that can take you towards progress. You must understand the fact that if you are not ready to spend the required amounts to take up the studies that can help you in your progress, you will reach your destination very late. So, it should not be an excuse.

Of course, if you are a person without financial wherewithal, you are advised to make full use of the Internet. In fact, the Net contains millions of materials that can help acquire the knowledge or skills you require for fast-tracking your journey. Of course, you can visit libraries and read the right books that can improve your skills. But you should begin the process of creating the momentum IMMEDIATELY. If you sit idle and wait for things to happen, nothing is going to happen. 

Impediment #2. "I do not possess the required qualifications to show to my employer that I deserve a higher position." Of course, qualifications may show that you possess the knowledge or skills employers are looking for. But there are other ways to show your employers that you have the required skills. One of the best ways is to come out with killer-suggestions that can lift the business of your company to the stratosphere.

Coming out with such suggestions requires deliberate and purposeful efforts. There may be several resources available on the Net and in the library. You can read all of them. They may trigger your creativity. Even resources that are not related to your field will also help. You can use what is called the "cross-fertilization" technique for coming out with killer suggestions.

Therefore, not being able to spend money or not possessing the required qualifications are not real impediments. The impediment is YOU and YOU alone. You should be ready to dispense with the cobwebs in your mind so that you create the momentum that is required for taking you to the higher levels in your organization. Therefore, the simple mantra is: Keep taking just a step daily and consistently for creating this momentum.