Master your time and get the important shit done

Effective time management

What does it mean to manage your time effectively?

A common misconception is that people who use their time effectively get more done in a day. While this may be true, it’s important to realize this is not the ultimate goal of mastering your time. Anyone can crunch their time to get more done in a day. The point of using time effectively is to actually do what matters most to you – not to feel good about a bunch of checks on a to-do list.

This doesn’t mean working harder or longer

Feeling busy and challenged doesn’t always equate to effective use of your time. You don’t even have to work harder to get more done – you just need to make the most of your time in a day. And because you’ll be using your time effectively, you definitely won’t be working longer hours just to get the same work done.

This is the pinnacle of mastering your time – you’ll be getting more of the important work done, and you won’t even feel like you’re working much harder than you were before. It’s the lazy person’s dream, honestly.

Working harder or longer are short-term fixes that will burn you out in the long run. Instead, we’re focused on transforming the way you approach your life and your projects to be focused on setting yourself up for success and paving the way to get done the most important things in your life.

Benefits of managing your time effectively

Reduced stress and anxiety

One of the most satisfying benefits I’ve encountered from gaining control over my time is a significant drop in my stress and anxiety.

When you have goals in mind that you want to reach, and a plan in place to reach them, it frees up so much of that mental and emotional weight that holds you back from doing what you want to do. When you know exactly what you want to do and how and when you will do it, you become free to give your focus to other matters that are more important to you.

Feeling happier

This one’s probably pretty obvious. When you regain control of your time, you’ll start realizing your goals that have been pushed back for so long. You’ll notice you’re not as stressed about the little day-to-day decisions that usually stress you out. Overall you’ll feel so much happier because these habits that boost your productivity end up trickling into various areas of your life and make you genuinely happier.

Obstacles you may face

I won’t lie – making the most of your time is not an easy skill to master. It takes months of dedication to build the habits that will help you specifically. But take it from me – when you finally reach the end the results are so worth it and you won’t ever want to go back to they way you did things before.

It’s going to be different for everyone, but I’ve listed below a few of the pain points I had when I was dedicated my time to this self-development.

Breaking out of the multitasking habit

Multitasking, contrary to what you may think, is the worst habit the efficient person can create for themselves. As humans we’ve done such a great job at convincing ourselves that doing more than one thing at once means we’re doing shit right.

Fact is, we can’t split our focus up between tasks and expect to produce quality results. Sure we can email clients while we answer calls from our bosses, but neither conversation will be getting the focus from you that they deserve. Instead, if you organize your time to be able to focus on emails at one time and calls at another, you’ll end up accomplishing more and producing more quality results because you gave your dedicated attention to the tasks at hand.

When you learn to start single-tasking effectively as opposed to trying to multitask, you will realize just how much you can actually get done in a day.

Indecisiveness

This was probably my biggest personal hurdle to overcome. I can’t speak for you but I’m a perfectionist through and through. If I had it my way I would sit for hours and plan the perfect solution to whatever problem I was tackling.

The thing is… Perfectionists like me might be masters at planning but we absolutely suck at following through – hell, we’re lucky if we even get to starting the project. I started to realize that I had dug myself into a rut by spending all my time on planning. I would use up all my energy trying to envision perfection (which, by the way, does not exist). By the time I was “done” planning, I didn’t have any energy left in me to actually act on my plans.

Another habit that frequently creates indecisiveness is “analysis paralysis” – something that I’ve personally struggled with and will write a more detailed blog post about in the near future.

Unclear priorities

Using your time effectively means using it in a manner that helps you accomplish your most important tasks. The first step, then, is to clearly define what in your life you are prioritizing right now and see if it aligns with what actions you are taking right now.

Time Management Strategies

While I’d love to take credit for all these awesome strategies – I have only the Internet to thank for them. I’ve tried a lot of different strategies myself so trust me when I say anything I list out below is what I personally find to be the cream of the crop. Don’t worry if they don’t necessarily suit your style – there’s so many more out there.

Batching Tasks

Odds are if you do a plain “time management” search you’ll find something that talks about batching. And it’s for a pretty good reason – it works damn well!

All batching is is grouping similar tasks together. Take email for example: way too many people fall into the trap of checking email as they come in. While it feels good because it’s an immediate “check” on your to-do list, you don’t realize how much time you end up throwing away by reacting instead of planning how to use your time. Sometimes you spend hours in a day answering emails and you don’t even realize it!

In this scenario, you could easily batch your email sessions and save precious time. Instead of reading and responding to each email as they come in, set aside 15 minutes at the beginning and end of your day to dedicate solely to emails. It’s important you respect your time constraint – your can’t manage your time if you can’t respect it.

Pomodoro Timing

Let me tell you something. This is one of those things you don’t know you need until you do it. Adhering to pomodoro timers during my productive hours has been such a beneficial habit that I’ve built for myself.

If you haven’t heard of the pomodoro technique, it’s comparable to the concept of high intensity interval training (HITT). The specific times that you use are up to you, but one pomodoro session consists of two parts:

Working (long productive interval)
Non-working (short break interval)

After four pomodoro sessions, take a longer break. If it helps, take one minute MAXIMUM to reflect on the work you accomplished in your pomodoro session. You’ll probably be surprised.

There are honestly so many benefits to pomodoro sessions. By breaking up your working time and giving your brain a break, you end up being more productive because you avoid burnout.

PROTIP: These techniques for time management don’t have to be carried out solo. Try mixing and matching to see what works for you! I personally like to combine batching with my pomodoro timers – for larger tasks, I will dedicate one whole pomodoro session (2 hours) to it. If I have several small tasks, I’ll break up one pomodoro session into four smaller subsections and knock each one out during my productive windows. Remember – make it work for you.

Get the important shit out of the way

While this seems obvious, it is ridiculously easy to ignore the daunting tasks in favor of the ones that bring quick and easy check marks onto your to-do list. When you plan your day out, try to avoid this by only allowing yourself 3 tasks to accomplish. By limiting the number of things you want to get done, you force yourself to determine what matters the most and what will inch you closer to your long-term goals.

Not only will prioritizing the important tasks bring you closer to your goal, you’ll actually find yourself getting more tasks done in general. I’ve found that it’s much easier to keep the ball rolling than it is to get it rolling. In this case, because you’re knocking the difficult things out first, it will be much easier for you to keep working and dedicate your focus to more menial tasks.

Advice from a screw-up

Leave space in your schedule

I told you guys I’m a planning perfectionist. Well, here’s a great example of how trying to make the perfect plan, schedule, whatever can really bite you in the ass.

Before I started to actively watch how I was spending my time, I would actually spend hours trying to come up with the perfect schedule for the following day or week. I tried to make it so perfect in fact that I ended up scheduling out every minute of the day. Needless to say, this system fell apart very rapidly.

Truth is, shit happens. Maybe you get held up at work or in traffic on the way home, or some other thing completely out of your control happens. Something will happen that affects your schedule in some way. I quickly found that my method of scheduling out exact minutes of the day was pointless since I had no control over the popup demands in my life.

A good practice that I learned to address this problem is to leave blocks of time open in your day for “flex”. During this time, I’ll take a minute to reflect on the past few days and see how I can continue to improve every day.

Learn to love habits and routines

It wasn’t until recently that I really started to appreciate the power that habits have in our lives. There’s honestly so much to learn about them, it’s easier just to send you over to the book that I’ve been reading, The power of Habit. This book dives deep into habits and routines, and how they impact individuals, teams, and entire corporations.

When it comes to time management, a huge time waster in our lives (especially if you’re a perfectionist like I am) is (over)thinking and making decisions. You’d be surprised how much time we waste just thinking of how we’re going to go about our day.

Habits eliminate this time wasting by transforming decision-making into an automatic process. Think about it – when you’re getting dressed in the morning do you stop and think about which shoe you’re going to put on first? Probably not, because it’s a habit that’s been ingrained in you from years of repetition.

Learning to master your habits and streamline the routines you use for your projects is one of the biggest steps forward you can take in managing your time better.

Find stress management techniques that work for you

Managing your time is a difficult task, and stress is inevitable – especially if you’re working full time or in a demanding job. Finding ways that work for you in coping with this stress is so important – make sure you are always prioritizing your mental health.

If you don’t know where to start, try out these common techniques people use to manage their stress in a pinch. Remember to make it work for you.

Morning Pages

One of my biggest flaws (in my opinion) is my tendency to get lost in my thoughts on a regular basis. For whatever reason, I often find myself staring off into space just trying to sort my thoughts and ideas into something concrete to plan and take action on.

Morning pages were a great outlet for handling times such as these. I’ll save the details for the article I learned about it from (here), but the gist of morning pages is that you dedicate 10-15 minutes in the morning or evening (or both) to vomit all your thoughts onto paper. While it’ll likely be a jumbled mess the first few times you do it, you’ll find that getting all your thought out somewhere makes it much easier to sort through them and determine what really matters most.

Be Active

You’ve heard it a thousand times, and for good reason. Doing something active, even just taking 5 minutes to stretch, does wonders for your body and your mind. If you wanna be real slick, sneak some active time into your pomodoro sessions by using those five minute breaks to pump out a few pushups or do a yoga sequence.

Meditate

Similar with morning pages, taking some time out of your day to practice meditation can do wonders for sorting out the clutter and noise in your mind. Be aware – meditation takes time and dedication to really master and benefit from. The more you do it the easier it will become to slip into a relaxed state of mind.

What actually goes into being a manager?

Managers are responsible for significantly more than you may think. By understanding the scope of their responsibilities and how that scope widens as you move up the ladder, you will gain an appreciation for all that a manager does. Better still, you’ll be in a much better position to move up the ladder because you know what is expected of you and you can better plan to get there.

The leader/manager mentality

To instill a sense of pride in their managers, some companies have started to transition to this idea of transforming leaders within their company. While the responsibilities between leaders and managers may be very similar, it’s important to understand the distinction between the two.

The main difference I find between a manager and a leader is which they value more: people or numbers.

A manager’s focus is on the results – the numbers. Odds are you’ve either experienced or heard about this type. What matters most to a textbook manager is the results they receive, regardless of the possible impact. An effective manager will get the results expected of them, but how they get them can be questionable as far as long-term success.

Leaders, on the other hand, tend to be more focused on the process of getting those numbers rather than the numbers themselves. Leaders set their sights on the long-term success of their field and work to progress towards it. They acknowledge the obstacles at hand and recognize when it is appropriate to slow down and remove it than trying to skirt around it for short-term success. A leader’s success is also lasting because of the way they motivate and inspire their team to improve as opposed to strict discipline for the sake of quick numbers.

Both managers and leaders can attain results. The difference between the two lies in:

The method in which they get their results
How evergreen and lasting their success is

Now that you understand the difference, you can probably see why many companies try to merge the two: they want results and they want them fast, but they recognize that the best way to do that is to get the employees to want to strive for those goals.

Sidebar: to avoid confusion, we’ll refer to anyone running a store or a business as a manager. A leader can be a manager, but a manager isn’t always a leader.

They’ve (hopefully) been in your shoes

The best bosses are the ones who recognize the workload on your shoulders and work to help manage it while simultaneously moving the business towards its goals and targets

Managers are responsible for much more than you probably realize, and the truth is you won’t be able to fully understand and appreciate their workload until you experience it yourself.

Consider a basic retail store hierarchy of four levels: entry, supervisor, assistant manager, and manager. This is a super simplified version compared to how most businesses are run, however, it’s a good starting point to understanding the differences in the levels of a company.

Odds are unless your manager was an outside hire (which is another topic entirely), they’ve had to climb the same ladder that you are trying to climb now. The best managers are the ones who have experienced the workload of those around them because they are better equipped to recognize what needs to be done to move in the right direction towards their goals. They understand the stress and pain points of those around them and use those to guide their decisions, making sure not only that the results are achieved but that the process is seamless along the way.

And this is why outside hires come with their quirks and complications. For companies looking to hire a manager that will get the numbers and get them quick, outside hires may be attractive options because they come in with a fresh point of view that won’t be hindered by previous experience in the company. They’ll focus on the numbers and likely get quick results. On the other hand, for companies wanting to foster lasting, evergreen success, the ideal person for the position will be the leader who takes the time to slowly progress and maintain results.

Types of skills managers need

Soft Skills

Soft skills are generally made up of communication and interpersonal skills. These skills are unique in that they are applicable everywhere in life – work, friendships, even relationships benefit from having a solid soft-skillset under your belt. In the professional workplace, some examples of soft skills include:

Learning how to efficiently conduct interviews to discover the best talent for your business is a crucial skill for any current or aspiring manager

Conducting interviews
Having coaching and documented conversations
Critical thinking and problem solving
Phone communication skills
Conflict resolution
Teamwork, dependability, and empathy
Adaptability and willingness to learn
Effective communication

PRO TIP: When including these skills in your job application and resume, prepare for the interview by having a story ready to tell and demonstrate your expertise in the skill

While soft skills are extremely malleable, you’ll likely want to consider which ones you want to highlight to your potential employer depending on the industry and business you are going into. If you’re applying for a telemarketing sales job, they’re going to be much more interested in phone communication skills than they are with your ability to conduct interviews.

Because necessary soft skills can greatly vary depending on your industry, these types of skills can only be honed with practice and time.

Hard Skills

Unlike soft skills, hard skills are typically much more industry-specific. These types of skills are learned on the job and are usually much easier to master than soft skills because they are straightforward with their expectations. The list below provides an insight into some common hard skills that would be found in retail or food-service industry.

A common ‘hard skill’ in retail jobs is operating Point-of-Sale (POS) systems for tendering customer transactions

Operating a cash register
Creating a schedule
Making a specific drink
Multilingual skills, or college degree
Conducting inventory counts and placing orders

What managers are responsible for

Now for the bread and butter – what exactly are managers responsible for when running a store? Both soft and hard skills are essential to an efficient manager’s toolkit – what you’ll realize, however, is that soft skills become more and more relevant as you climb the corporate ladder. This is why it’s sometimes a super common misconception that a boss is doing nothing just because they’re not actively using a cash register or similar activity – because much of their time is dedicated to managing the overall operations of the store.

Keep in mind that this list is by no means exhaustive. To keep it simple, I’ve kept the retail store model with the example responsibilities below. While responsibilities between a retail manager and a computer scientist program manager will be nowhere remotely similar to each other, it is plain to see that the scope of power widens when you move up the ladder.

Managers are responsible for a wide scope of tasks that encompasses not just the customers and the daily operations but also the interests of the employees and the shareholders of the company

With this in mind, here are some examples of what a retail store manager would be responsible for, listed under broader scopes of responsibility:

Daily operations
- Making sure equipment is in good maintenance
- Verifying time punches, creating schedules, and conducting payroll
- Managing inventory levels
Reporting to officers
- Creating digestible reports to support business decisions
- Monthly, weekly, or even daily meetings and calls
Interacting with customers
- Handling customer complaints
- Responding to customer incidents, injury, theft, etc.
- Ensuring quality service is being provided by the team
Business Analysis
- Identifying which aspects of the business are excelling or falling behind
- Adjust plans based on results
- Convey information and progress to employees
Achieving targets
- Making decisions based on targets set by officers
- Creating and adjusting plans on a regular cadence
- Actively working to find and remove any obstacle to success
Directing and delegating employees
- Creating schedules that support business needs
- Working with supervisor team to direct employees towards goals
- Concisely communicating plans and expectations

How this helps you with promoting

By understanding the work that is involved in the position above you, you put yourself in a significantly better spot to move up.

It’s incredibly easy to fall into the trap of thinking “my manager does nothing but sit in the back on the computer all day”. While unfortunately this is sometimes true, many times instead I’ve seen people underestimate the work that is being put in behind the scenes.

Acknowledging that your supervisor or manager has a wider scope of responsibility than you is your first step in working up to that position. Plus, when you understand the work that is involved in the next level it gives you a better insight into what you can work on to be noticed and promoted sooner.

TLDR

Managers in the corporate world are identified by their ability to achieve results quickly and effectively
Leaders in the corporate world are similar to managers in their ability to achieve great results but much different due to their emphasis on the actual process and their comfort in progressing slowly towards goals to ensure evergreen success in the future
Unless your manager is an outside hire, they likely went through the same rigor you are to get to where they are now
Soft skills become increasingly important as you climb up the corporate ladder and widen the scope of your responsibilities from the daily minutiae of a job to farther-reaching activities
Hard skills are more industry- and business-specific skills (ex. Operating a cash register) that are important in understanding how a business operates, but require less of your attention and focus the more you climb your ladder
While the specific responsibilities may differ between industries, there are many that fall on the shoulders of the manager alone and create a need for a level of delegation of responsibilities
By recognizing the work required in the job above you, you move into a much better position to be considered for promotion

How to be a Better Employee

I don’t care how awesome you think you are. When you are entering any job or career, the only way to start your climb up the corporate ladder is to be a good employee. And the only way to be good is to be better than you were the day before.

Working on being a better employee now will help you even if you have no interest in climbing up a corporate ladder.

When I was finishing up my second year as an undergrad, I made a cute decision to switch my focus completely to my job and prioritize the ladder grind. I worked at Starbucks, and it was my first real job after high school. I’m not saying it was a good decision to jump ship and try to move up, but I did it.

Hopefully if you’re in a similar boat as I was, you can avoid a few of the mistakes I made. And there are a lot – so this blog may take a while.

5 Steps to Being a Better Employee Now

But I digress. Down below, I’ve listed the 5 crucial first steps that you should take at any new job regardless of industry, position, region, anything. No matter what your job is, if you are working in a corporate setting or store these habits will get you in the right mindset to be a better employee.

Use the routines and systems put in place

I’ll be the first one to admit that this one can put a sour taste in your mouth. Anyone who’s worked in the food service industry knows about this one.

Basically, routines are a list of steps for employees to follow and repeat to do their job correctly and efficiently. Look at this sample routine for handling the register below:

Greet the customer
Ring up the customer’s order
Grab any ready-to-go items and give to customer
Accept payment and thank customer

Now, this is an extremely rudimentary routine. While I made this to get the point of what a routine is across, normal corporate routines will be significantly more fleshed out and researched.

(You’d actually be surprised as to how much money businesses spend on researching efficient routines. That’s how crucial they are.)

I digress. The point to take away from this is that routines are a sequence of steps for performing a given activity. From making lattes to cooking food in the oven, even all the way up the ladder to creating schedules for a whole store. Everything has a routine.

Now, why should you even give a shit?

Honestly, that’s a fair question. Odds are you come up with at least 100 ways that you could just tweak the routine a little bit to make it faster.

But that’s not really the point of the routines.

The point of routines that many people don’t realize is simple: they’re trying to make it a habit.

Fucking wild, right? It gets better.

Now, there’s so much to talk about on habits and this point of routines making your life easier. I’ll talk more on those two another time, but right now just make sure you leave this section with one point drilled into your head:

The more you stick to the routines, without modifying them in any way, the faster it will adopt into a habit for you. Once it becomes a habit, you stop thinking about it. It becomes automatic.

Just think of the things you could do with the mental energy you save by making these small actions automatic. When you stop having to think about the latte you’re making, you can start thinking about ways to bring in more customers, ways to approach your boss about promotional opportunities…

You get the idea.

Foster Relationships with your Peers

This one can be tricky. If you’ve had any experience in any type of workplace, I’m sure you’ve been witness to some drama or pettiness that developed because of befriending or dating coworkers.

For the record my personal philosophy on dating coworkers is to avoid it like the plague.

That being said, that horse has already been beaten so I’m not really gonna mull over that one. Instead, focus on simply fostering amicable relationships with your peers. Find whatever way works for you as far as separating work and life, but always strive to make your work environment a positive one.

Not only will your environment be positive, you’ll also recognize a host of other benefits that come from keeping up rapport between coworkers.

When you make connections with people regardless of the environment, you’re essentially building yourself a network of people you can rely on. I don’t think I have to tell you that building up a network around you is always a good thing.

Down the road, these connections and networks have the potential to turn into recommendations should you ever decide to try to promote, or even look for a different job. References and recommendations from employers and employees could make or break your resume.

Sometimes being friendly even comes with more tangible gifts, like employee of the month/quarter, or a special recognition. While these are nice bonuses, it’s important to remember that they’re just that: bonuses. These little perks should not become your goal, because then you’d be driven for petty superficial things rather than genuinely being a good employee.

Don’t be Afraid to Ask Questions

For the love of everything. If there’s one thing you take away from this article, let it be this one.

Never. Be. Afraid. To. Ask. Questions.

Never. Just don’t. I can’t tell you how many times as a manager I’ve brought employees to the back solely to ensure them that they should feel comfortable coming to me when they have any questions or concerns.

If for some reason you realize that you are working with someone who is actively refusing or putting you down for asking questions, that is another matter entirely and is one that should be sorted out with your manager.

Normally, supervisors will be willing to help. If a business is run properly, they wouldn’t have been promoted otherwise.

By asking questions, you’re proving so many things about yourself to employees who are “above” you:

You’re aware of your weaknesses and work to fix them
You’re not scared of communication
You’ll respond well to feedback
You’re looking to grow
You’re motivated
You’re reliable and eager to prove yourself

That being said. Don’t ever ask a question just for the sake of asking a question.

No. When you ask questions, make sure it’s purposeful. Ask something that you genuinely are curious about or don’t understand. Only by consistently asking deeper and more insightful questions will you prove all of those things above to your boss.

Again, even if you’re not trying to promote, there’s nothing wrong with using work as an ice breaker when you’re getting to know your coworkers. Which, as we showed above, is a seriously important thing to do.

Consistently Ask for Feedback

This is another one of those things that seems simple when you first think about it, but genuinely give managers and directors a “oh shit, they’re serious” vibe.

This one’s very similar to asking questions, but with one major difference: you are asking another person to invest some of their time into you.

Way too many people develop this fear of feedback, and it’s for one of two reasons. One, they are simply afraid of acknowledging/accepting the fact that they’re not performing as well as they think they are. This one is really it’s own beast to conquer.

The other reason, and one that I’ve found just as common with the first, is that people feel like an inconvenience. They know they’re taking time away from you, and they feel guilty about it.

Don’t believe me? I was that guy.

My first few months at Starbucks, I was enslaved by the fear that I would annoy my supervisor or worse, my manager.

Sure, I wanted to improve and move up in the job. Even with the drive, I was so afraid of the possibility that they would like me less if I went up and asked for feedback. So, for months, I kept my head down and did my work to the best of my ability.

Then on one day, my supervisor stopped me while I was making a drink in the middle of a morning rush and took me aside to talk to me.

If you’ve every worked in food service during a peak time of the day, I know 100% that your stomach just dropped a little. Well, mine plummeted.

How can I help you boost your confidence on bar?

… Wait, what?

Yep. That’s all she said to me. And as crazy as it sounds, it’s this exact moment that drilled it into me that I wanted to promote in Starbucks. It was the nail in the coffin to something that had been building up for a while. All because of this one interaction with my super.

Bullshit, man. No way that little chat was enough to turn you into a badass employee.

You’re right, it didn’t. But it changed one thing about me: I realized how important feedback is.

When she asked how she could help me boost my confidence, I didn’t know how to answer at first. I was sure she was going to yell at me for being too slow. But that never came. Instead, she showed me with just one question that her main concern was my comfort.

If you’re a supervisor or manager, take note of this. A simply mentality switch like this one can turn an okay-employee to a fucking superstar, all because they have the confidence to solicit feedback and be better.

If you’re not one of those, still take note. If you deny yourself even the chance to ask someone for feedback, you could be missing out on a moment like this and finding a resource that helps you through the tough shit about the job.

Always be Working on Something

After building up all those other habits, this one will be a cake walk. If you think about it, you’ve been doing this all along by following the steps above. Those are habits that you were working on.

And now that those fundamental habits are out of the way, here’s where the fun stuff comes in.

No matter how slow business is, or how fast you think you are, always be working on something. Never be one of those guys looking around for something to do, or worse… leaning against the goddam counter.

Sorry. That one’s a sore spot. But I digress.

Make sure you are always working on something. If you genuinely can’t find or think of anything to work on, approach whoever’s in charge and ask if there’s anything you can do or help with.

As a manager and previous supervisor, I can’t even express how goo this makes you look. By asking them for something to do, you prove so many things:

You recognize there’s always something to do
You’re willing to go the extra mile
You don’t settle for “just enough”

And honestly a lot more. But bottom line, make sure that you are actively looking for something to do. Not only will this speak on your behalf for your boss, but it will keep you busy and clear of boredom, which is always a danger in the corporate world.

How the hell am I supposed to focus on all of that???

This is an easy one: don’t. That’s dumb.

Believe it or not, I put those in that order for a reason. In my experience, the best way to develop is by starting with the basics and giving each your full focus, one at a time.

My first reason for saying this is because all of the skills I listed out above build off of each other. By following the systems, you develop automatic habits that let you put your focus into building relationships with others rather than some menial task. By building rapport with others, you open yourself up to be more comfortable asking them questions. Once you’re comfortable doing that, you’ll come to realize that asking for feedback isn’t as much of an inconvenience to them that you thought. All the feedback you receive will give you something to be working on every single day.

My other reason for not taking on everything at once is simply because it is much more efficient to apply your focus on one thing specifically. This simple tactic dates all the way back to Benjamin Franklin, that’s how big it is.

Eventually you will progress in all these areas. Once that starts happening, you’ll be ready for the next stage in your career. Or, you’ll have a decent sense of job security because you know they won’t want to fire you.

Whew. Pretty crazy right? It seems so simple, and it really is, yet people still fall victim to either prioritizing the wrong things, or trying to work on too many things at once. Both are recipes for disaster.

What if I don’t want to promote?

This is such a big concern for some people that I wanted to address it again. Despite having mentioned it several times throughout the article.

Everything in this article is directed at turning you into a better employee. If you’re gunning for a promotion, I shouldn’t need to explain why that’s important. But if you’re not interested at all in any form of promotion, you’ll still get these benefits by following the same approach:

Recognition and support from your boss
Better relationships with your peers
Better chance at employee of the month, merit-based bonus if applicable, and so on
A strong foundation in workplace fundamentals that carry anywhere
A network of people you can use later for references, referrals, etc.

And honestly so much more, but you get it. Promotion or not, there’s no reason for you to not be a good employee.

Conclusion

Alright, here’s the TLDR for you skimmers out there:

There are 5 thing you can start doing on your first day to be a better employee:

Using the routines that are given by the company
Build your relationship with your peers and bosses
Always feel encouraged to ask questions
Ask for feedback whenever possible
Always be working on something

The most efficient way to go about adopting these behaviors is to focus on one at a time and progress your way down the list.

Even if you are not interested in a promotion at all, working on being a better employee comes with its own set of benefits just for you.

No matter who you are or what you do, finding a way to be a better employee will pay off.