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

TGIF: Get the Most out of Your Friday by Preparing for Monday
 TGIF: Get the Most out of Your Friday by Preparing for Monday 575 340 MPatton
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Fridays in the office are basically dedicated to staring at the clock, making excuses to get coffee, and ducking your supervisor lest they give you a project that makes you stay past 5:30. But the clock watching coffee marathon on Friday can lead to an overloaded and chaotic Monday.

There is a solution to your conundrum: work. I know the concept of actually accomplishing something on a Friday is a little on the radical side but hear me out. Using your Friday to get ready for Monday, you’ll be more prepared and less swamped Monday morning. Clear these small tasks off your desk and they’ll add up for an easier week.

weekend-1756858__340Clear out your inbox and voicemail. Catch up on all your emails and voice mails. Use your clock watching time to follow-up with coworkers, clients, and customers. Don’t start a long email convo back and forth – just be short, sweet, and to the point so you don’t end up with extra stuff to add to the pile. Finishing up your communication for the week means no surprises on Monday morning and no weekend texts or phone calls.

Prep for meetings. One of the companies I used to work for loved Monday morning meetings. Sometimes the meetings were productive and sometimes we all took turns bumbling around and shuffling papers to hide that we were unprepared. If your Mondays and Tuesdays are booked with meetings, carve some time out of the day on Friday to get prepped; make info packets, tweak your power point, double-check your reports. Prepping on Friday means you’ll have a few extra minutes to stagger around on Monday morning and shake off that zombie feeling before you hit the conference room.

Don’t dive in to any big projects. If you have a presentation or a big project coming up, leave that for the middle of the week. Starting something big just before the weekend can throw you off when you come back to it two days later. Odds are, you’re not planning to take the work home with you over the weekend. If you have a big project, don’t just jump in with both feet at 10am on a Friday. Break the project down into small sections, do some outlining and a little bit of research so you have something to show if your supervisor wants an update.

Make a donut run. Seriously, make a donut run. You’ve cleared out your inbox, got your Monday prep ready and you’ve got a good handle on that next big project. Take your fifteen and go off site and bring back some glucose encouragement for the rest of the team.

Not every Friday is created equally and, of course, you’ll probably have days where you’re so busy you don’t notice the day fly by or days when the clock never moves forward. Keeping your Friday lightly busy and organized will help you at 8am on Monday.

work-life, balance, family, happiness, career
Finally Attainable? Research Shows How to Achieve a Work-Life Balance
 Finally Attainable? Research Shows How to Achieve a Work-Life Balance 960 640 Emilie
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The ever unattainable work-life balance: we all search for it, but finding it is a different story. The more that happens in our lives: becoming married, having children, receiving promotions, the more we worry we will be unable to balance all that is on our plate. But, believe it or not, research demonstrates no correlation between marital status, presence of children, or even age of children on typical perceived work-life balance. With this in mind, we can know that even with a busy family life, we can still attain harmony: we just have to know how.

Try mindfulness exercises. Studies have shown that increased mindfulness correlates with a better work-life balance. Mindfulness refers to the ancient Buddhist idea of being present in the moment: paying attention to the sounds, feelings, smells, and sights within the present moment. Whether washing the dishes or taking a shower, mindfulness focuses on the beauty and senses within each moment. Luckily, the internet contains many suggestions for methods to improve your mindfulness. We particularly like the articles and methods from Tiny Buddha and Della Terra Wellness.

Focus on your sleep. It also has been demonstrated that sleep quality mediates the relationship between mindfulness and work-life balance. We all know that sleep is important, and the last thing a busy person wants to be told is to spend more time sleeping. But here is yet another reason why it is so important, so remember to get your 7-8 hours a night! Additionally, pay attention to the quality of your sleep. Nowadays, there is a lot of technology at your fingertips to track how well you are actually sleeping. Take a look at your Fitbit’s sleep data, or try  apps from the Apple Store like SleepCycle or SleepBot.

Talk to Your Partner. Support from your partner is crucial in being able to maintain that work-life balance. Keep the communication open and frequent with your partner. Admit challenges you are having at work or at home. Being honest about the struggles you have in both aspects of your life, as well as any difficulties you have balancing the two, will allow you to more easily handle the challenges of your hectic life.

Turn to your Coworkers. Not only is partner support incredibly important, but so is coworker support. As the only people who truly know what you are going through at work, make sure you are choosing to befriend coworkers who are supportive and caring. As much as you can, try to work alongside coworkers that you can rely on when it comes to work crises, it will make your life less stressful if you don’t have to worry about every crisis that arises.

Be aware of your workplace environment. Whether or not we want to admit it, sometimes the workplace we are in will prevent us from achieving this balance. Research shows that employees have the best work-life balance when they are with a company that has a positive organizational structure. This includes the following factors: 1) allowing employees enough freedom so that they do not feel like they always have to check or receive approval for their actions, 2) motivating employees through reward instead of punishment, 3) consistently being open to many different opinions, and 4) embracing employees as part of the identity of the company.

Let go of control. It may sound counter-intuitive, but the more you try to control both your work and family life, the more it leads to conflict between the two. A recent study from the European Management Journal shows that seemingly positive traits, such as self-direction and achievement, are actually associated with a decrease in work-life balance. When we attempt to keep both our work life and family life perfect, we get stressed out when there are issues in either one. We then perform less well in both parts of our life, resulting in a damaging, cyclical pattern. Instead, we must remember that neither our work life or family life will be perfect. In fact, even if we devoted our time solely to one of these parts of our lives, problems would still arise. It is not until we stop trying to will our control over everything that we will achieve a more harmonious balance between the two.

Panisoara, Georgeta, and Mihaela Serban. "Marital Status and Work-life Balance." Procedia- Social and Behavioral Sciences 38 (2013): n. pag. Web.
Chernyak-Hai, Lily, and Aharon Tziner. "The “I Believe” and the “I Invest” of Work-Family Balance: The Indirect Influences of Personal Values and Work Engagement via Perceived Organizational Climate and Workplace Burnout." Revista De Psicología Del Trabajo Y De Las Organizaciones32.1 (2016): n. pag. Web.
Allen, Tammy D., and Kaitlin M. Kiburz. "Trait Mindfulness and Work–family Balance among Working Parents: The Mediating Effects of Vitality and Sleep Quality." Journal of Vocational Behavior 80.2 (2012): n. pag. Web.
Ferguson, Merideth, Dawn Carlson, Suzanne Zivnuska, and Dwayne Whitten. "Support at Work and Home: The Path to Satisfaction through Balance." Journal of Vocational Behavior 80.2 (2012): n. pag. Web.