Author: Jay Wren

Thank you everyone for your support in nominating JayWren.com to Forbes top career sites.  I learned this morning that I made the list.

Forbes writers Jacquelyn Smith and Susan Adams reviewed hundreds of websites and thousands of comments to reach their decision.  It is a real honor to be among their choices.
The excellent articles that Smith and Adams write should place Forbes among the top websites for your career.

Clap your hands.   Have you ever noticed how American football teams huddle before each play?  What is the last thing that the players do before breaking the huddle?  They slap their hands together in unison.  They clap.  They are practicing the rhythm of focus.  In the huddle, each player receives the assignment for the next play.  Clap, their mind is on their assignments.

Turn off your computer monitor.  If you are on an important phone call and you are not using your computer to record information for that call or to research information to answer a question, just turn off your computer monitor.

Make notes with pen and paper.  It is impossible for me to write down what you are saying and at the same time think about something else.  When I go to an important meeting, I use a pen-and-ink list to ask questions and take notes.  The other person in the meeting can see what I am writing and participate in my note taking.  After the meeting, when I record my handwritten notes on my computer, I review and memorize the important points of what I just learned and take action on the things I need to do.

Look, listen, and ask yourself a question?  How many times have we all heard a person’s name and not be able to recite it immediately afterward or looked at a clock and have no idea of the time of day?  When I meet someone, I can look at the person’s eyes and ask myself, “What color are the eyes?”  Then I say the name of the person in my mind and state the color of that person’s eyes.  “Sue has hazel eyes.”

Eat, but eat light.  If I am suffering from a drop in blood sugar or if I am in a food coma from a heavy meal, my mind travels to far-away places.   If I eat a few carrot sticks or an apple or a few bites of almost anything a half hour before a meeting, my mind comes back to the present moment for that meeting.

8 Ideas for Enjoying Work

Find the beat of your own drum and march to it.  It is so easy for me to get distracted and off course when I look at what other people are doing and imitate those people.  What I often find is that the direction that those people are going is completely off track from where I want to be.   If I can just trust the beat of my drum, I can stay on task, trust my instincts, and create work that is original and produces fantastic results.

Be happy today.  Happiness is an inside job.  When I feel sad, I acknowledge that I am sad.  I do not focus on the things that I believe are making me sad.  Often my feelings come along and I seem to find ideas to hang them on.  I admit that I am sad, I experience the feeling of sadness, and I let it pass on its way.  If I do not attach ideas to my feelings, most of the time my feelings only hang around for a minute or two, and I get a fresh, often invigorating sense of my world.

Focus on doing things accurately.  My baseball coaches said see the ball and hit the ball.  In football, the coaches said see the ball and catch the ball.  Watch the baseball all the way into your bat.  Watch the football all the way into your hands and arms.

Create new things instead of perfecting old things.  I have worked drafts of articles so many times that I have lost track of what I had in mind when I started writing the article.  I have found that the best way to work on any project and carry it forward to the finish is to write day a statement of what I want to do.  Then I create an outline of the things that I need to do to do the task.  Next I fill in the details of completing the task.  Whether I am washing my car or writing an article, the process of the same.

Keep projects simple.  The steps are pretty much the same for each project

Emphasize the things that are working and build on those things.  Sometimes it is easy for me to get off track, discouraged, and loose my sense of direction.  What seems to help me to focus on the things that I did when things were working and simply repeat those things.

Keep an open mind to new ideas to simplify and make your life easier.  I see new, simple, even free ways to do the same things that have been a struggle.   I created the table above in Microsoft Word.  For anyone who has ever tried to insert a table in a website, you will know that tables make some material easier to read can the table can be a challenge to create and support through editing.

Take criticism as suggestions not rules and certainly not as corrections.  I remember working with an applicant on her resume.  She told me that the things that I told her she had already covered with other recruiters and had even had her resume written professionally.  I said simply that I understood and that the only thing that mattered is that she manage her resume in the way that she feels will be most effective for getting her interview.