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A popular tip I’ve been reading lately during my job hunt (and therefore my resume reconstruction) is that resumes are a like a brochure of oneself and one’s skills – they’re meant to be a sales pitch and a marketing tool, rather than just a plain list of all your skills and qualifications. Consider resumes to be a way to express why they should buy you and you’ll be a million times more successful in your endeavors.

Not only should resumes be a marketing tool, but I believe now that the best way to be successful is to run oneself entirely like a business. Here’s how.

Energy, Time, and Money Performances

In business, every year, quarter, or even day, a few sheets are produced that show how successfully a business has been run. They are the balance sheet, the income statement, and a few other papers detailing important accounting stats. I think people should produce similar audits regarding their performance in work, in play, and in other areas that are important to them, such as family time and networking. Check to see if your investments (of time, of energy, and, of course, of money) were worth your while. Find a way to calculate a return on investment and stick with it over time. You should see positive trends. If not, it’s time to make a change.

Treat yourself as an employee

In business, we have something called human capital or human resources, which refers to the people who are involved in production. Most businesses periodically do performance reviews of every employee to give and receive feedback on what can be done to ensure the company runs as a well-oiled machine. I suggest periodically doing a performance review of yourself, where you defend decisions, provide feedback, and check to see what could have been improved upon, and then make necessary changes to enhance productivity.

Think about it: Do you deserve to keep your “job?”

Invest in yourself

Small businesses in particular have to invest in themselves in order to continue operations – usually over a period of a few years, until business picks up enough to support the company as a whole. Similarly, people require investments to keep running. It is insanely difficult to improve oneself without expending time, energy, or money. So if your investments send you into the “red” temporarily, it’s okay, so long as you get a high return on investment as I mentioned above. A vacation to keep your sanity also counts as an investment.

Outsource

Most executives do very little work directly involved in production. That is because they have better things to do, like running the company. Similarly, if you are to be truly successful, you must outsource some of your own tedious tasks in order to focus on what gives you the most return.

Perfectionism

Not that any of this has to be perfect. As long as your system is working for you and advancing you to higher levels of performance, it is fine. You may never be where you want to be – indeed, few of us ever are – but you will be moving forward, which is the important part. I define success as moving out of survival and into comfort because that seems to be the single factor that ties together the people who I consider successful: comfort.

What do you think? Am I way off on my assumptions? After all, I’m not the most comfortable person ever.

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Now that we have a diagnosis of too many projects, it is time to discuss remedying the problem.

Write your project list

To begin with, we will need to come up with a list of all our projects, similar to the one that I made in the diagnosis post. To be fair, here it is again for reference:

1. Programming a website from scratch;
2. Starting my career as a professional belly dance performer and instructor;
3. Continuing my web design business;
4. Writing on this blog;
5. Writing on my professional “Hey this is me” blog;
6. Opening a belly dance online store;
7. Planning my wedding, which is less than a month away;
8. Writing a book about starting a business;
9. Hunting for a job in Albuquerque and…;
10. Looking for a place to live in Albuquerque before…;
11. Moving to Albuquerque in order to keep on…;
12. Getting my college education.

Review your list

Now, some of these do not make a lot of sense in the context of project management. For example, I will continue my college education no matter what – that is one project I will not drop until it is complete.

Additionally, some of these become mini-projects when they are broken down. Looking for a place to move involves trying to get my credit score higher and putting together a nice references list. Getting a college education involves making money, which means finding a job, and finding scholarships, which involves a lot of things, including writing essays and participating in extracurricular activities.

Expand your list

So let’s take a look at all your projects. Break them down into a long list like this one:

• Find and join an extracurricular club or volunteer for an organization (for college).
• Write an amazing scholarship application essay (for college).
• Rewrite resume (for a job, for a place to live).
• Apply to about a thousand jobs (for a job, for a place to live).
• Check out credit report and correct errors (for a place to live).
• Pay down credit cards to increase credit score (for a place to live).
• Check in with client about website to design (to pay down credit cards, for a place to live).

Perhaps the most overlooked and yet most important part of this list is tacked on right at the end, where you tell yourself why you are doing what you are doing. It is important to productivity to be reminded what is supposed to be getting done, exactly, and also important to prioritizing, which is, conveniently, our next step.

Prioritize

The first major step to correcting a lack of time is to prioritize projects.

Find your context

What we want to do is figure out how we are going to prioritize. For example, a lot of my projects require the root of all evil: that is, money. So, it would be wise in this case to prioritize according to how much something will cost and how much money it will make. Blogging is, for the most part, free, but it costs a large investment of time, which is another commodity. If you have unlimited money, perhaps time would be a better solution. Or, if you are like me, and you lack money and want to use your time for the best return, perhaps breaking down the list by both would be wise.

Break it down

Now that we have chosen how to break everything down, it is time to actually do so. Every item on the project list should have a “cost” and a “return” next to it, if you have chosen a product that has such qualities – something like time, money, or energy.

My list looks something like this:

• Blogging – time intensive, little upfront return, medium return over time
• Writing on established sites – time intensive, some upfront return, little return over time
• Regular work – time varies, medium upfront and long-term returns
• Web design – time intensive, high upfront return, small long-term return

Your analysis may look completely different, but this is what I find works best for me.

Organize

The final step in prioritizing is to actually do so. Think about what you want to spend the most of in this situation. Do you want to dedicate a lot of time upfront for high long-term returns, or would you rather jump onto the bandwagon and plug away for somewhat similar returns over the course of a lifetime? Figure out which projects should make their ways higher up the list. But, do not do this all at once. Rather, think on a scale of 1 to 10 (the numbers are arbitrary) and assign a value to each project one at a time. This will help you to think in terms of the project, rather than relative to other projects. This is important for later.

Here’s my list:

• Blogging (8)
• Job (7)
• Writing on established website (2)
• Web design (7)

Analyze

As you can see from my list, blogging is my highest-ranked priority. This is because it provides reasonable returns over time, is almost free to do, and because it gives me  the most amount of joy. Although it takes a lot of effort, it will pay off in the long run.

What I ranked lowest was writing for an established website, such as Associated Content, because it does not provide a terribly high return, and I consider it somewhat soul-crushing.

In this case, ignoring all other possibilities for making money and successfully moving to Albuquerque, blogging looks like the best bet for my mental health. However, with such a short amount of time to earn a return on my time, perhaps a regular full-time job would be my best bet.

Putting it to work

So now that we have our projects prioritized, what do we do? It is time to select an item or a few items from our projects list which are most important to us and begin working on completing them. For example, moving to Albuquerque, continuing my college education, programming, and writing will be my handful of projects.

Additionally, it is important to select a chunk of time to dedicate to each project so that they will not become crossed and mixed together, which must be avoided at all costs.

For example, every few days, I review Craigslist postings for new jobs I could do in Albuquerque. Every day, I set aside about two hours for writing. I study at least twenty hours per week. I program with the rest of my free time, when I have the sanity for it.

After all this, I still usually have time to do other things, like planning my wedding or travel, and dancing. Because of all this, I consider my project management to be balanced and healthy.

What about you? Care to share your project list? Do you have to prioritize, or are you doing well enough managing everything at once?

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At one time, being successful meant relaxing on a beach in Cabo, tapping on a Blackberry to check Swiss bank accounts. These days, however, times have changed, and being successful tends to be equivalent to being busily working away at the top of a huge company. The more we have to do, it seems, the more successful we appear to be to others. I define success as being happy and at peace, however, so I decided to do a two-part series about how to tell if you have too many projects and how to remedy the situation.

How much is too much?

The first problem we need to tackle is defining how much is too much, in terms of project management. Some may prefer a number, but I prefer to express “too much” in relation to how much work and energy something takes and how much distress it causes.

As an example, I am currently juggling twelve major projects. I am:

1. Programming a website from scratch;
2. Starting my career as a professional belly dance performer and instructor;
3. Continuing my web design business;
4. Writing on this blog;
5. Writing on my professional “Hey this is me” blog;
6. Opening a belly dance online store;
7. Planning my wedding, which is less than a month away;
8. Writing a book about starting a business;
9. Hunting for a job in Albuquerque and…;
10. Looking for a place to live in Albuquerque before…;
11. Moving to Albuquerque in order to keep on…;
12. Getting my college education.

However, I can handle this many projects. It can be rough at times, but as long as I dedicate blocks of time to developing single projects and keep my to-do lists focused and organized, I am successful at doing everything.

Many people juggle this many projects – or even more – at once. It can be difficult to keep every ball up in the air at times, which is when problems begin to happen, things get neglected, and people feel forgotten and small. I define “too many” here as “causing detriment.”

So, if you feel a great pressure on your life from your many projects, it may be time to begin fixing the situation in order to have a more enjoyable experience. We only live once, so it is very important to have a good time the first time around.

Now that you have a diagnosis, it may be a good idea to read a remedy for having too many projects.

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1. Hit the Stumble button. It’s a great way to expand one’s horizons.
2. Browse Lifehacker.
3. Catch up on The Simple Dollar.
4. Do yoga or pilates.
5. Belly dance.
6. Brainstorm or create something new inspired by music from Pandora or GrooveShark.
7. Make duct tape wallets.
8. Learn something new through MIT’s Open Course Ware.
9. Browse Google for new productivity or organization applications.
10. Review my days, weeks, or months.
11. Catch up on my 101 Things in 1,001 Days list.
12. Daydream about where I want to be in the future.
13. Browse stock photos for inspiration.
14. Work on my scrapbook.
15. Look for a new book to read via reading lists or Amazon user reviews.
16. Search for other blogs in my niche and leave “good job” comments.

What do you do when you are bored, but do not want to actually do work?

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The PCEO is a collection of 5 printable worksheets for goal tracking, task tracking, daily planning, planned versus unplanned tracking, and individual task tracking. (More about each after the jump.)

Shea came up with this amazing set of working because he didn’t have the ability to focus on moving his company forward:

[It] comes from the idea that a good CEO should focus primarily on those things that move the company forward; since I can’t afford to hire my own CEO, being able to print one out seemed like the next best thing! :-)

It’s about that simple to use PCEO: print, fill out, conquer.

Concrete Goals Tracker

The Concrete Goals Tracker worksheet is about “identifying what tangible things you can do that move you toward your goals.”

It was created for freelancers (Seah is a freelancer) to help track progress of goals on a week-by-week basis and ingrain a goal oriented mindset. Many people have adapted the worksheet to work with their specific goals.

On the worksheet’s post on Seah’s website, he lists several variations including a web-based task tracker based on the PCEO system.

Task Progress Tracker

The Task Progress Tracker worksheet is glorified to-do list that helps to motivate you to work on specific projects in an unstructured way.

It tracks tasks in fifteen minute intervals (with a grand total of four hours per task). It gives you a way to see exactly what work you’ve done on a task. It’s pretty glorifying that way.

Personally, I use the Task Progress Tracker for my daily to-do list in addition to my projects. At the end of the day, it feels really good looking at the form and seeing all the check marks and bubbles. My challenge—Shea’s as well—is getting that first bubble marked. After that, it’s a breeze.

Emergent Task Timing

The Emergent Task Timer worksheet is diagnostic timesheet that you write down what you do and track the amount of time you spent on it. In contrast to the Task Progress Tracker, you don’t have to plan out your tasks before you get to work… You just get to work.

Set a timer for 15 minutes and then get to work. Once the timer goes off, write down what you were doing and fill in the appropriate time bubble. Do that every fifteen minutes. Once you change tasks (or begin a significant subtask), write it down.

The worksheet goes on for 8 hours (there’s a 12 hour one for all you workaholics out there) in 15 minute intervals. At the end of the work day, you know exactly where your time has gone.

Shea did an excellent job at explaining how to analyze your Emergent Task Timer worksheet on the original blog post.

Task Order Up!

The Task Order Up worksheet focuses on individual tasks by “maintaining context and continuity.”

In the business world, these can be an invaluable tool for both the employee and the manager. The employee knows exactly when a task is due (and, at a glance, see all due dates) and what the manager expects out of the employee. The manager knows exactly what an employee has done, how long it took to work on it, and if the employee is being over or under worked.

Shea uses an Ex-cell Noteminder Check Rail to hold his Task Order Up worksheets. It’s a really ingenious way of holding these and helps you to get an idea of your (or your employee’s) workload.

Other PCEO Worksheets

This concludes what I refer to when I speak of the Printable CEO. However, there are four other worksheets in the series.

• Network Catch-O-Matic: This worksheet lists the steps to get to know someone. The six stages: being seen, talked with, exchanged information, planned to talk to again, followed up with, and currently collaborating.
• Emergent Task Planner: This worksheet helps you to somewhat structure your day and allocate time for tasks and other nuances (such a the plumber).
• Resource Task Quantizer and Resource Scheduler: This worksheet is somewhat like the Emergent Task Planner in that it allows you to structure your time and allocate time for your task, except this works on a week-by-week basis.
• Day Grid Balancer: This worksheet: This worksheet helps to balance your work week. “It’s really just a glorified to-do list, designed around the idea of noting when you’re doing the kind of things that you’d like to be doing every day.”

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Take a Break

Every hour, half-hour, or otherwise, stand up and take a few deep breaths. Let your mind and body refresh – hit the reset button on your body. Think of it as a cleansing, relaxing period to allow more work to get done in the near future. This is your time.

If you get into trouble for this, try doing it in the bathroom, or walk a memo or something similar to another person’s office on the other side of the building. Be ready to explain that you need to refresh your mind or your work will suffer. Any good boss will understand, and any bad boss will be too afraid to lose another employee.

Leave it at Work

Leave work where work belongs. Do not take a work computer home to finish a project overnight. Just as it is not okay to take your children in for a visit, it is similarly wrong to make your family or personal space suffer because of an unproductive day. Home is where you recharge – not where you catch up.

Talk to Others

As coworkers, you share common bonds with many of the people around you. You both experience the same things day after day, although probably with a different perception. Learn who your coworkers are and be sure to keep yourself active throughout the day. Nobody else will be around to provide moral support should it be needed, so work friends are very necessary. Be careful not to do too much talking.

Little Reminders

Stick a post-it into your lunchbox, or your monitor, or your door, so every time you see it, you’re reminded to smile, or think of God, or remember why you’re working. Little reminders throughout the day can make the difference between misery and cheer.

How do you keep your life on-track and balanced at work? Do any of the tenets of your life suffer while you’re away from home?

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Any regular reader of the One-Year Tightrope and all who follow a lifestyle of planning know that reviewing is one of the most important activities involved in staying organized and productive. Reviews also have the ability to increase motivation both negatively (“I wish I would have…”) and positively (“I am so glad I…”). This is a how-to guide for performing an effective end-of-year review.

Step 1: Preparation

Prepare for your review by going to a quiet place, turning off your phone and television, breathing deeply, and focusing on the task at hand. Clear your mind of all other thoughts and stresses as if you are going to meditate (You are going to meditate on the year, after all). Make sure you are at peace before you continue so that you will get an objective, positive review, rather than one that is negatively affected by bad thoughts. Get out a piece of paper or open a new file on your computer. You will be doing some writing.

Step 2: What were your major achievements?

Begin the review by writing out major achievements and how you completed them. For example, if you got a promotion in March and had worked on getting it since January 1, write down that detail. Try to come up with as many major achievements as possible.

Step 3: What were your minor achievements?

I am certain that while listing major achievements, you recognized many minor achievements. List all of these underneath the major achievements to which they apply, or separately if they are not relevant. Perhaps you finished reading five books or can do a few more crunches than before.

Step 4: What did you learn?

Growth is an achievement all on its own, so write “Growth” as its own setting and below it, write everything you learned and accomplished applicable to your journey in life. Some examples may be understanding a complicated concept in your industry or figuring out your parenting style.

Step 5: How did you fail?

A review is not impartial without listing some negatives. Write down how you managed to fail and what you could or should have done better.

Step 6: How is this good?

Turn your negatives into positives by asking yourself what you can take away from your failures. Did you learn something? Do you now have motivation to do something better next time, after seeing the consequences of your poor performance?

Step 7: What will you do the same?

Was there anything you did this year that was absolutely brilliant? Perhaps you learned a new, positive activity or began a hobby that relaxes you and keeps you sane day in day out.

Step 8: What will you do differently?

Do not “undo” your failures, but rather try to think of how you can live your life better for the next year. Perhaps you will exercise more or try to go to bed by a certain time every night, dedicating your evenings to relaxation and re-energizing your mind. This is similar to your New Year’s resolutions, only now you have a guide to building ones that matter.

Step 9: Put it away

Contrary to popular belief, a list of goals does not necessarily work best when it is seen constantly. If anything, it can be a painful reminder of how far behind schedule you are. Take one goal at a time and work on it gradually, breaking it into small steps on a to-do list. As you finish, check it off and find a new goal. Keep it findable and review it often, but do not focus only on it, or you will become stressed.

What is your advice for completing an end-of-year review? Have you done one before? What are you proud of? What does yours look like? What are your goals for the new year?

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I want to fight this, though. I want to see the world with more self-control – to know somebody out there is able to control himself long enough to finish a sentence. This article is about increasing self-control.

For many, self-control is an art known only by those living Ancients – those old souls who have maintained their balance through the test of time. False. There is no exclusivity for self-control, nor will a mental disorder like ADHD prevent one from developing it. Perhaps the journey will be more difficult, but you will be all the better for it.

Begin by defining what self-control means to you. Prepare a test of whether or not you have accomplished your goal. Perhaps doing all homework in one sitting or before beginning play time is your mission, or perhaps even doing homework at all is sufficient. Whatever it is, know what your aim is.

Try this exercise: Turn off the television. Focus on a single point – it could be a spot on the wall you have been meaning to clean. Stare at this point and allow your mind to go blank. Do not think about cleaning. Do not look away. Do not close your eyes. Do not think about the spot. Merely look at the spot.

Do this until you cannot possibly stand it anymore. This exercise is called meditation and it is the secret Buddhist monks have been using for centuries. They learn to control their minds because they know that the mind is the most important part of the self, and being able to blank yourself at will is a sign of discipline.

Once you are capable of meditating at will, it is time to move along to something more: achieving your goal. Set yourself a deadline or prepare an "or else" qualification. For example, "I will finish my homework, or I will not watch television."

Now do it. Do what you have been avoiding.

If for some reason you are not perfect, this will not happen easily. There is another secret, though it is from psychologists: bribery. Condition yourself to do what needs doing by giving yourself either a reward or a punishment. If you finish your homework, let yourself do something fun. If you fail to do your homework, ground yourself from television from a week. The punishment itself will take some self-control to enact, so I have little faith anybody will pull it off on the first try. It will take practice, but it is doable.

There are rules for rewards, though. First, do nothing to contradict your goal that could lead into a bad habit. Do not reward yourself with food, because it leads to an addiction. Do not punish yourself by taking away the computer if you are a student and you have essays to write. Do not reward avoiding television by allowing yourself to watch television.

Have you established control over yourself? What were your tricks for developing this kind of relationship with yourself?

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Writing goals

Writing a to-do list is a simple task, and yet complicated. It begins with a goal. It doesn’t even have to be a SMART goal; just a goal. For example, have clean clothes by the end of tomorrow. Write a list of tomorrow’s goals, or future goals which you can and would like to begin working on tomorrow.

Snow flaking

From here, we snow flake the goals into a to-do list.

Goal: Have clean clothes.

First flake: Do laundry

Second flake:

• Organize whites and colors
• Carry laundry to machine
• Start washer
• Empty washer; start dryer; re-fill washer
• Rinse; repeat
• Fold clothes

And done. This sort of to-do list is simple to use, easy to read, and pleasurable to organize. Perfect.

Grouping and Flow

While the perfect to-do list starts with snow flaking, there are other requirements, too. For example, the list must flow well. If I am walking back and forth between rooms and traveling out for errands throughout the day, the list was not well-constructed. Alike tasks, whether geographically or mentally, must be grouped accordingly to get the most productive system going. Never jump between left and right brain and back again all day, or you will be far more exhausted than what is believable.

Interaction

Sometimes, tasks don’t fit well with others or need to be postponed. In this case, it is better to keep two separate lists – even on the same piece of paper – in order to separate the tasks. Jumping between the two can be difficult, though, so keeping a few tasks on both lists will help a lot. For example, if I need a cake cooked and laundry to be done, those are unrelated (although I wouldn’t separate the lists, I will in this example). In this case, I would have “Clean kitchen table” on both lists, because I both fold laundry and mix batter on it.

What are your tips for creating the perfect to-do list? What kind of lists do you keep around? Do calendar fans exist in rabid form? 

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