If you really don’t want to work, it won’t matter if your internet is unplugged. You’ll find other ways to procrastinate.

So true.

via Dumb Little Man.

While you cannot eliminate deadlines altogether, you can be more conscious to only accept deadlines that are reasonable and realistic. If you have a potential client that wants to hire you but with an unrealistic deadline, don’t just accept the job so that you can get some work. You’ll probably regret it later. Instead, take the time to explain to them why it is not realistic and how it can hurt the quality of your work, and suggest a reasonable compromise that will allow you to get everything done without working around the clock.

Great advice for everyone – deadlines can be killer.

via DesignM.ag.

I am not about to make the arrogant proclamation that todays youth are more skilled and knowledgeable that the older population. I do think it is pertinent to look at today’s workplace for the answer as to why the youth are more productive than the elder generations. I see two things that the younger generations are doing in greater numbers than the elder generations:

1. There exists no fear of learning and embracing new tools and technology amongst today’s youth.
2. Today’s youth are better equipped with the skills they need to perform their jobs.

click to keep reading…

No Fear

When I say that today’s youth has no fear on adopting new tools and technology, I am really talking about hesitation. If the elder generations truly did fear such things, then new tools would never get made.* What I am saying though is that older generations are much slower to adopt new tools and tech, and it is for this reason that they fail to yield the benefit of these tools (and at time succeed in hedging risk in using them).

By the time the elder generation decides to give a new tool or tech a ‘go’ they are already far behind everyone else. Yes, they can learn and play catch up, but this is not the same as being an original user. When you meet someone who has been using Photoshop since day 1, or Windows, a Mac, installing Plumbing – their knowledge set will simply be to vast for any one person to learn in a reasonable period of time.

Original users (people doing it since day 1) have watched their tools and technology change and used those changes one at a time. If you started using a software program when it only had 20 features, then kept using it as they added 20 more each year you would easily know all the features and how best to use them. A person just picking up the software 5 years after you started using it, would have to know 100 features – all at once.

The bar to entry every time you hesitate keeps getting higher and higher.

More Skills

This is tricky because there are plenty of people out, older than me, that have a far greater skill set for the work that I do. However, there is no denying that if you place a random sample of 50+ year olds in a room and a random sample of 18–25 year olds in a room, the youth will out type the older people. The younger generations have grown up using a computer keyboard right away, they know QWERTY, they learned while they were learning to talk.

There is only a three year difference between my younger sister and I, yet there is a vast difference in our skill sets. For the most part we share no common interests, I am a geek, she, well she is not. However, she can text someone with her phone in her pocket (I have even seen her do this on the iPhone – I have no clue how), when I attempt the same task I end up calling someone. The difference is that 3 years: texting became popular when she was still in high school, while I was in college learning to be cool by using social networking. She is faster at texting, and I know social networking better.

Closing the Gap

When I first started in Property Management I made a ton of changes to the way our office runs. I infused technology everywhere possible, eliminated paper as much as I could. I tried to automate everything that I could afford to automate and in that first year of these sweeping changes I realized that I failed to ask one critical question before I changed something. I failed to ask: “Why do we do it this way?” If you don’t know why then you should never change something. Coming up on five years since I made those changes we still do some things the way that they were done before me (we changed some things back) because I did not understand why things were done the way they are when I tried to change them. This was a critical mistake I made, one that I have learned from.

My advice to all people – young and old – is to remember that just because something is not done the way you think it should be done, does not mean that it is being done wrong. We need to find out why it is being done a particular way.

We have a lot that to learn from each other, and a lot to teach each other. Don’t be afraid to do either.

*Yes they would.

When you’re done with something, put it away. Right away. Clutter arises when we take something out, use it for awhile and neglect to return it to its proper home. Remember the Unclutterer’s gospel, “A place for everything, and everything in its place.”

I cannot tell you how amazing this tip is. I was always in awe when I walked into peoples homes and they looked immaculate. Sure they could have just straightened up before they had me over, but I always wanted my home to look that way perpetually.

In our home we have started enacting the above rule, that simple tip took us from spending Saturday afternoons cleaning the condo, to an hour a week doing cleaning. Just putting things back when you are done with them leads to so much less clutter and filth in your home. I cannot  recommend this tip enough.

via Unclutterer.

So, for example, I don’t have a mobile phone turned on because I’m talking to you. I don’t want the outside world to impinge on the conversation we’re having. I don’t carry a BlackBerry. I do my e-mails regularly, but I do it when I have the time on a computer. I don’t want to be sitting here thinking that I’ve got an e-mail message coming here and I’d better look at that while I’m talking to you. Every moment counts, and that moment is lost if you’re not in that moment 100 percent.

via NYTimes.com.

Take some time today to really get acquainted with one specific tool that you use frequently. Poke around the menus and help files, search Google for “<application name> tricks” and see what comes up. I think you’ll be surprised by what you find.

Excellent advice.

via Brett Kelly Dot Org.

Why do you need to feel like something in order to do the work? They call it work because it’s difficult, not because it’s something you need to feel like.

Very short and excellent post.

via Seth’s Blog.

If you’re sorry to interrupt me with that spam, don’t send it.

I could not agree more with every word in this post.

via Seth’s Blog.

Don’t be so quick to excuse yourself. If 80% of success is just showing up, 90% is showing up early. It’s hard for the client to sympathize with your lateness when she, who had farther to travel, managed to make the meeting on time.

Some of the best advice for anyone who works in any kind of job.

via Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report.

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