All About Working

Like an old pair of comfortable shoes, we tend to get very used to the technology that we use everyday. Some of us started out on Apple computers and would have it no other way. The other group, PC users, feel that they are in the comfort zone with their equipment and software.

However, there may come a time when you decide to move from one side to the other. This could happen due to a job situation or just an interest you have on your own.

If you are considering moving from a PC to an Apple, or vice versa, take a look at this article written by someone who did just that recently. He gives some excellent tips on how to go about making the change and he tells us it just isn’t as easy as it seems.

I’d just like to add one to the list – don’t make the change when you have work depending on you getting something out on a deadline. The time to experiment and learn new technology is when you have time to learn and that might be during a light activity time at work or after work. Devote one night a week to learning new skills.

Whether you are blogging, setting up a virtual store, or putting up a business website, you need to know what the trends are in searching for things.

Two great ways to do this are to utilize services like Wordtracker and Google Trends.

Wordtracker is a paid service, but they are currently giving a 7 day trial period to try it out. They say that:

People use different words when they search for your products online. Use these ‘keywords’ in your website copy and people will find your site when they search.

Google Trends is a free service. They list the 10 hot trends for the day. They also run Google Insights for Search which allows you to dig a little deeper.

I try to do a Tip every week, but I have missed a few here. The reason is that I tried to avoid dealing with a cold. When I did, it evolved into a sinus infection which eventually went down into the bronchial area infecting that, too. So instead of maybe missing a day or two of working, I ended up slowed down for about 4 -5. Then I missed a full 2 other days while the antibiotic kicked in.

So what’s the moral of the story here: believe your body at the first sign of a cold. Do what you need to do to get rid of it. Don’t do like I did and figure it would work it’s way out by itself! Maybe it won’t go as far as mine did, but why take a chance and why expose others?

What makes people get out of bed in the morning and feel excited to get to work? It’s the passion for what they do when they get to the job. Working for a living is a commitment day after day, month after month. And that commitment comes alive when you are excited about what you are doing.

How do you know if you have passion or not? You just know – it’s something that tells you inside of yourself that you enjoy what you are doing. All jobs have rough spots to them as well as difficult moments. But the passion for doing that job is what gets you through those times.

Passion for one’s work usually occurs when someone finds the right match for their interests, talents, behavioral style and even their personality style. There are a variety of ways to explore this. One of the tools I have had a lot of success with is the Extended DISC survey. It opened my eyes to a lot of aspects of myself that I was not using. Once I discovered this, I was able to make some changes and get that passion going.

If you are feeling overly stressed about the job, or dread going to work, this might be a good time to challenge yourself and seek out a new spot for yourself in the world. It rarely happens overnight, but why not start today to explore things that would bring out that passion in your life again.

Before closing out the old year and welcoming in the new, I wanted to post a tip to help get the year off to a great start.

Take a few minutes on the first day you work in the new year to do some long term planning. You can easily accomplish this by taking that brand new, maybe still clean! calendar, and writing in important dates, events, and notes to yourself. Anything that will have an effect on your work should be noted at that time.

For example, if you have a vacation already planned, mark that in.

Do you have an annual professional conference that you plan on attending? Even if it’s not booked yet, mark those dates now.

Did you book any 2009 meetings on your 2008 planner? Put them on the new calendar now.

Work related events and plans are best handled first. Determine if you want to have personal events such as birthdays and anniversaries listed on your work calendar. Depending on your situation, it might work well to have one calendar for business and personal events. However, that will depend upon the workplace atmosphere.

Good web surfing practices encourage users to have a different password for every site they visit. I also try to have a unique ID for each site. As a result, I have many IDs and passwords for the many sites I visit online. As the amount grew, I finally had to start a list of them.

What I do is keep sheets of paper next to my PC with the name of the website, my ID, and my password for that site. The paper is handwritten so it can be easily edited as needed.

I keep the paper in a plastic coated covering so it doesn’t fall prey to one of my frequent desk purges. This has saved me countless precious minutes searching for id’s and passwords. Besides, I’m at the point in my life where I have to write things down, otherwise, its MIA.