“the Chinese art or practice of creating harmonious surroundings that enhance the balance of yin and yang, as in arranging furniture or determining the sitting of a house.”

During a recent Barnes & Noble expedition, my husband purchased “The Declutter Workbook: 101 Feng Shui Steps to Transform Your Life,” by Mary Lambert.  This investment, I believe, aimed more at adjusting my lifestyle habits than his; my inclination is to spread papers, collect stacks of what-not and claim a need to retain “this and that.”

Even in my mid-life, I realize it is not too late—in fact it is more imperative than ever—to change these habits! In the throes of our own career and life transition, we are assimilating our writing work and sailing passion by relocating to a new geography where we’ll be situated within walking distance from our sailboat at a 90,000-acre lake in Texas.

This process includes trimming costs, scaling down our residence and alleviating our lifestyle luggage that virtually holds us captive to having to manage “things” versus living more freely with arms outstretched and minds open to new ideas and expansion.

Similarly, if you are a careerist, you may find that though your career is well underway and seemingly sailing along, you may be feeling a weight wrought by disorganization, clutter and the junk in your career trunk that has accumulated over years of career and relationship building. These distractions disrupt and slow down your work and career flow … and ultimately, your future goals.

In “The Declutter Workbook,” Lambert discusses “Creating a Shift,” and one of the ways to do this includes timed, half-hour and hour-long tasks to “make an inroad into that clutter mountain even when your downtime is limited.”

As a careerist, you may often find agendas filled from daylight to sundown with obligatory corporate tasks, family time, a few friendship collaborations and several-hours’ rest only to turn around and start on the treadmill again. It’s difficult to consider shifting paths when the speeding vehicle in which one is moving seems not to have brakes.

The answer, I believe is a gradual shift; as such, the timed approach to integrating new habits and decluttering your career space. For example:

Trim Back Toxic Relationships: Start with a 30- to 60-minute assessment this week, a proactive initiative to whittle away at the time you spend responding to drama-focused relationships. Enabling others to interject themselves into your already busy day with their drama is a self-imposed emotional weight that simply can be lifted by not being available for every email or phone call interjection.

Be less available. Unless you are married to that other person, I daresay, you are not obliged to be at their emotional beck and call. Retrain others that you are not the sink in which they can squeeze their emotional sponge. Over time, they will reroute or resolve their feelings.

Maintain a SINGLE To-Do List. Even if you use sticky notes, project management programs (such as Google Calendar, BaseCamp or MS Project), or other organizational tools, you still should have ONE master to-do list that combines every little item that you know you want to get accomplished at some point today, next week, next quarter … or even next year.

For me, this list is a simple MS Word document labeled To-Do List; I usually rename it from time to time to include the date; e.g., To-Do List, 11.30.10 to ensure I know it’s current. Atop the list are my top priorities, and they are ever changing. On a good night, as I wrap up my work-day, I create a “hit-list” for tomorrow’s priorities – usually no more than 3-5 items of “must-do” deadlines.

Creating this “master list” is a simple task any careerist can begin with a few keystrokes or even a plain pen and tablet.

Take a Hard Look at Memberships and Volunteer Roles: Assess and eliminate non-return-on-investment volunteer commitments. Are you a member, volunteer or board member of a professional or civic organization that has become a drain on your time or energy (or both)?

Stop and assess its value to you, your career and/or personal life. If it’s not providing value to you, then resign or reconfigure your role. Spend 30 minutes this week reviewing your volunteer functions; then, begin acting on your findings.

These three tips are just an initial launch-pad for career clutter clearing. Junk in your career trunk constantly accumulates and must be reevaluated regularly to ensure a clutter-resistant career lifestyle. Get started on feng shui-ing your career space today!

Do You Have Too Much Junk In Your Career Trunk? is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

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Broken bottles, broken plates, broken switches, broken gates,
Broken dishes, broken parts, Streets are filled with broken hearts.
Broken words never meant to be spoken, Everything is broken.

Seem like every time you stop and turn around, Something else just hit the ground
- Bob Dylan

Last week’s debate about the state of corporate recruiting got me thinking. It seems like an awful lot of things are broken. And, it seems like there are a ton of people who want to fix them.

Sometimes it seems like we’re moving from a culture of innovation to a culture of maintenance. Fixing broken stuff is just not the same as imagining new things. There’s a place for both but it’s a real mistake to confuse one with the other.

There are three types of people in any organization: 70% are Lackeys (brown nosers); 20% are Argumentatives (live to disagree with the boss); and 10% are Promotable (know how to give good advice and then go with the decision). This thinking applies to the various broken things in our organizations.

In recent years, the flow of technology and the aging of our society have conspired to create a kind of shell shock. We’ve seen so many new things that we can barely stomach another. At the same time, we’re aging as a culture and therefore less able, or at least less inclined, to adjust to new things.

The result is that people who are introducing new ideas have learned to talk about them as if they were obvious repairs for obviously broken stuff. We’re so tired of the new that when someone approaches us with the requisite evangelism, we flee. That’s how so many things that are way better than they used to be fall into the “broken” category.

When you’re investigating a job possibility, you have to be clear whether you want to be a fixer, a creator or a great worker. Then you have to figure out which one the boss wants. Remember that she’ll most likely see you as a lackey, an argumentative or a Promotable.

• If you want to be a creator, consider becoming an entrepreneur. Organizations naturally favor the status quo (there are some counter examples but not many). Being an entrepreneur means that you don’t have to spend as much time persuading people to get started. Think back about the types of people in an organization. If you want to create, you’re likely to be viewed as argumentative and routinely dismissed. Generally, people viewed as argumentative are the first to go during the layoffs.
• If you want to improve things, you have to learn how to make a suggestion and then take “No” for an answer. This is what bosses think of as a “Promotable” contributor. In 21st century companies, sticking to your guns after the decision is made makes you an Argumentative. The Promotable worker is like a good hitter in baseball. Each at bat is an opportunity to improve the average. Success once every five at bats is good performance for a major leaguer.
• Great workers run the risk of being viewed as Lackies. A positive attitude, the willingness to accept things as they are, the desire to deliver value and the aspiration to do one’s job well may just be seen as ‘brown nosing’. In a large number of companies, long-term survival depends on being a good worker in spite of what the more favored clique thinks of you.

Things are different as your career progresses. It’s traditional for a new manager to immediately reverse the decisions of her predecessor. In the ranks of management, “Everything is Broken” is often the point of departure.

Workplace Organization: Are You The Lackey, The Arguer or The Promotable? is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

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1. Workplace Branding: Four Ways To Use Culture To Recruit And Retain
2. Five Simple Truths – Nurturing Workplace Culture
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