How to be Good at your J-O-B

Practice. Practice. Practice. I know you’ve spent hours looking for tips on the internet. Heck, you’ve found me and I’m not famous. The procrastinator in you is wearing its ugly head again. Newsflash, you don’t need to search for the best method/way/approach. No need to spend hours on the internet trying to find the best whatever in whatever scenario. Like most things in life, you just have do, do, do. We may be living in the information age, but this world is biased for action. So keep on doing, experimenting, failing, trying, falling flat. You don’t have the time? Well, making time is a skill so practice it.

Truth is, most of the things in life where you feel unfairness to other people are skills, so you can practice them. Making money? Practice. Being social? Practice. Finding a job? Practice. Not hating yourself today? Practice. And actually having the best happens only after you put in those hours of practice. So close this thing and just practice.

Be damn honest. This world does not need more liars. It’s already full of it. Putting on that face mask helps no one. Your superiors would appreciate it very much if they just know what’s happening. Nobody likes getting blind-sided (Yes, not even you). So be honest to them, let them know there’s a problem. Don’t worry, they know there always is. If there wasn’t, their business won’t exist in the first place. More importantly though, be damn honest with yourself. Be so damn honest with yourself that you can laugh at your own brain when you call its bullshit. Even your brain lies to you so train it to be honest (See point #1).

Up your social skills. Yes, you prefer conversing on screen with the ability to traverse the point in time before you conceived the thought you’re going to say (it’s called backspace people). But that’s not an excuse not to beef up your social skills. No matter how much layers you try to put your communications into, at the end of the day you would still need to talk to people. Heck, point in any direction and remove any wall, you’ll eventually hit a person. There’s really no use running away from it so try honing it. Doesn’t matter if you prefer to huddle up in your anti-social ball. If you want to play that career game, you’d have to learn to socialize. Practice on people you don’t know. Say ‘hi’ to your receptionist. Talk to that UBERpool driver. Keep getting rejected. Practice on a mirror. Heck, practice talking to yourself.

Strive to be underpaid. No, I don’t mean go to jobs that pay less. Do more work than your job description. Why? If you believe in the mystic stuff, the explanation simply is that the universe hates void, which it tries to fill any in any way possible. By constantly striving to be underpaid, you are creating a “compensation void” that will somehow, someway be filled. If you prefer the not so mystic explanation, it’s that promotions are reward as much as responsibility. The more you do, the more the company is forced to promote you.

Care. Just care. A lot of the best things in life simply stem from this one thing. “But this is only a temp job, I’ll care on my real job”, or “I never even like this job”. Does. Not. Matter.

You consciously put yourself in a position that places 1/3 of your life in something you don’t like. Might as well give a damn about it.

The least of it is making an effort of trying. We are creatures of habit, my dear. If you don’t care on stuff that you do not like (and you spend 8 hours on that thing every damn day), how do you expect yourself to care on the stuff that you do like? You won’t. You’ll find a reason to hate the job you like. Why? Because you did not practice caring. You actually practiced not caring…for 8 hours a day.

The best case scenario? Well, it shows in your work, in your being. That’s why you see people glowing. Their mere presence exudes an unexplainable aura. If your working on something you care about for 8 hrs a day, you’ll glow. You liking/not liking your job, you having/not having your dream job, you having/not having a purpose in life is not an excuse not to care.

If you remember only one thing in the last 3 minutes you’ve wasted on this piece of work, it’s this — care.

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