Traits of Successful Professional
Everyone of us wants to be the best version of ourselves. Becoming a better professional is important to anyone who wants to improve at work and continue to reach their goal.
With each every step you take, reactions you show, the way you talk and handle people, you leave impression (either positive or negative) into your colleagues’ subconscious. We live in fast paced environment, and often forget to introspect about our professional development. Yet, its important to dwell into ourselves on regular interval to gauge ourselves.
So the questions here are
- What makes one a successful professional?
- What are their habits?
- What are tools and apps we can use in our aid to be a good professional?
We explore traits of a successful professional that would answer these questions. Note that, it doesn’t mean successful professional means they are epitome of everything, doing their job perfectly all the time. At the end of the day, we all are humans. To err is to human. It all about what attitude and action do we carry post our failure.
Every artist was first an amateur.
The Traits
Their action is done with consciousness
They think about all the aspect of any actions taken. Their decisions are never shallow. They know that most of the decisions don’t come with fulfillment of all criteria. Instead, they try to minimize the negative effect working objectively towards goal. The take here is,
Always have a logical reason behind actions you take, not just intuition. Don’t be impetuous.
They take responsibilities for their actions
Only God makes decisions that are always correct. To make mistakes is humane (but to make same mistake again and again is idiotic). It’s a simple truth that all human beings make mistakes and poor choices. One thing that distinguishes a successful professional is how they react to their failed actions.
The take here is when you make a mistake follow these basic rules
- Take responsibility of your mistake. (Say, “Sorry it was my mistake”)
- Look for solution. (Think, “How can I fix it?”)
- Make sure it never happens again. (take preventative measures).
They are critical in thinking and accept criticism
They are inquisitive and look to find the what and the why behind every proposition. They always look and expect for a logical explanation of what is being discussed.
Additionally, they Adopt different perspectives. They know that a trained engineer from India and United States might have different approaches to a problem. But they, take this in positive manner with a perspective that differences may give valuable insights.
Lastly, they are open to criticism. They take feedback not only from seniors, but also from juniors working under them. For they know, this is millennium of fast paced society. Understanding of a 25 year engineer is far better than 50 year old engineer used to have during 1960s.
They Respect time
They know that punctuality matters most in professional settings.
Even it matters more in personal life. It’s primary component for having a disciplined and organized life.
They Know priorities
Many times we forget the more important things because the lesser important things can also be a source of happiness / fulfillment. On other hand, a successful professional would have learned self control against instant gratification. They know long term goals, are patient and set apart what is important.
They believe in commitment
Set up schedule and not deadline. And commitment.
A continuous work with commitment produces far better results than working against a deadline. If you divide your work in slices for each day and follow schedule, you will end with quality results. Last minute run against against deadline will surely lead to stress and loss of quality in work. Instead,
commit to last!
“When the student is ready the teacher will appear.” — Mabel Collins
What are tools and apps we can use in our aid to be a good professional?
Why don’t we leverage ourselves with the help of smartphone in our pocket! Here are tools, techniques and apps, I have personally been using. I hope you might find this helpful as well.
todoist
Todoist is wonderful task management app available for almost all the platforms like browser extension, android and ios app, and as web app. Its cleaner without load of unnecessary features focusing on task management. And additionally, it has unique way to motivate you by rewarding points when you finish the task. The analytics chart also provides how you have been performing over a period of time.
Google Calendar
Use a calendar to schedule appointments, remiders and for daily habits. Setting up a schedule is far better than deadline, this where calendar apps come handy. I personally, use google calendar as it is available for all the platform providing easy access.
Google calendar lets you to set repeating reminders like going for a walk every day at 7 in evening.
Self evaluation plan
This is not an app.
But a good practice to self evaluate your self. Keep a diary online or offline where in you regularly, lets say once a month write down your performance goals, mistakes or blunders etc.
Review at the end of every month, how many of them have you repeated, how much of the goal has been achieved.
Learn from seniors
This is technique
Not everything has to be experienced. You may learn and hone your skills from the mistakes of your seniors. Discuss about what blunders did your mentor and lead made, how they reacted to it and what preventative measures they are taking now over a cup of coffee. This way, in addition to mistake learning you might get to learn about various broad aspects of your organization as well.
Final thoughts
Becoming a good and successful professional is a continuous process that we give and take from surrounding, colleagues and friends. It is how we observe these things, react. Attitude, at last overpowers and fuels everything. 😊
I hope this post gave you valuable insight. If you liked this post, share it with your friends, colleagues. Subscribe to Lifespark. Spread a word. Peace.
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A little bit about me
Hi, my name is Savan Patel. I live in Boston. I am Graduate student pursuing Masters in Computer Science at Northeastern University. I have started writing articles on this publication with aim to shape ourselves better and build a better life. Hope my articles are helpful to you. Always available for any talk under the sun.. and over a coffee meeting ಠ‿ಠ. Feel free to connect with me on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Alternatively, you can write to me at savanpatel3@gmail.com . Peace!
