Career Advice

meeting, advice, tips, tricks, manager, employee
Make Meetings More Enjoyable
Make Meetings More Enjoyable 660 371 admin

Workplace meetings can tend to become a drag and become the bane of the employee’s existence. However, there are ways to make these meetings fun and something to look forward to. Here are some tips and tricks:

  • Reduce the number of meetings. If possible, try to use other means of communication, such as text message or email, to deliver information. This way, the meetings you do hold do not seem superfluous.
  • Follow a timeline and agenda. Having a layout of the meeting will help the team know what to expect and gives them a better sense of control, as they now know what will be discussed.
  • Provide food. Who doesn’t love free food?? Something as simple as coffee and doughnuts can help meetings become the highlight of the week.
  • End with something not related to work. The mood of the team can be tense after a meeting, so ending with a funny video or something light can help everyone get back to work off on the right foot.

Did these tips help make meetings for you and your team? Let us know in the comments below!

How to Plan for the Future
How to Plan for the Future 1024 640 admin

 

Nowadays, we are able to immediately satisfy our needs, whether it be same-day shipping or doing a quick online search to find the answer to whatever question we have. With this, we can forget the importance of planning for the future. In this Ted Talk, Ari Wallach gives us the proper tools to have the foresight to ensure that we can help make the world a better place in the next 10 to 15 years, and beyond.

Wallach suggests that we can better plan for the future by realizing our responsibility to help set up the future generations, rather than just focusing on ourselves. Next, there are many different “futures” that we can help become a reality if we put in the effort. Lastly, all of this is not possible if we think of the “future” as 5 years from now. Rather, we must think “30, 40, 50, 100 years ahead.”

This is an important shift in thinking, as many of us just try to find “sandbag solutions”: temporary fixes to our dilemmas. However, these do not fully fix our problems and leave the future no better than before.

With this in mind, we can take control of the future and not think about it as something that just washes over us. Rather, it is something we have full control of. We just need to widen the view of the world and our impact on others.

Watch Wallach’s Ted Talk below, and check out other talks at Ted.com.

The Best Career Advice You Ever Got
The Best Career Advice You Ever Got 275 183 MPatton

The best career advice I ever received, I got from my best friend. I was just starting out freelancing and I thought I must be crazy for leaving a steady-paying but difficult job. Am I supposed to convince people to pay me to just write stuff all day? Apparently, yes.

“Just pretend you’re good at it. Eventually, you will be.” She made it so simple.  I’m not confident in my coding skills, but I can say with confidence that I’m willing to learn and have the equipment to do so. My first job rolled in and soon, I was surprised at how fast pretending to be good at my job meant I eventually became good at it.

Pretending you’re good at your job doesn’t mean lie on your resume – far from it. For me, it meant embracing the things I could learn from as much as it meant selling the skills I had. For example, an interviewer asks you this question:

What experience do you have with collaborative software?

Right, Answer: I have experience with Slack, but I’m interested in learning other platforms.

Wrong Answer: I only know of Slack but I don’t use it much.

See the difference?

More than just a poster, it's great career advice.

Great advice for any situation.

But so what, right? Now you’re confident but you’re still not an expert on collaborative software. You don’t need to be. Take time and back up your confidence. Look up tutorials for other software programs and platforms. Familiarize yourself with the basic who, what, how, why and you’ll have confidence going forward. I’ve noticed the more I go on, the less I’m pretending. It was really helpful advice.

United EVENTures CEO and President, Will Leggett’s best career advice is simple and straightforward: Figure out what you love to do in life and then figure out a way to get paid to do it. You will never work a day in your life that way.

Our Director of Program Development, Brian Rendine shares his best career advice: Do something that you love and you will never work a day in your life. I had an Irish Christian Brother in high school teach me Spanish for three straight years, Br. Sheridan, and he not only passed that good advice to me, but also was a living example of how when you love what you do, it’s not work.

Our redditors have also shared heir answers with us:

  • Document your wins and tell your boss about it OFTEN, not just during your annual performance review.
  • My best advice was work your butt off for something you’re passionate to achieve. Having done this I’ve accelerated quite quickly in my chosen career which is surprising for my age. I’ve only realized this was good advice 3 years later when it paid off.
  • Listen, don’t just hear. It is amazing what you will learn when your mouth is closed and ears are attentive.

So tell us in the comments, what’s the best career advice you ever got?