If you worked during this holiday week...thanks for closing out the decade with us. As the Bad Pitch blog heads into its 5th year of existence, we’re jazzed about 2010. So we’ll be brief. Here are three ways to suck less in 2010.
Pledge to Make a Mistake: Promising yourself you'll f-up in 2010 comes with two benefits. Accepting you'll make a mistake allows you to focus on the actual work instead of achieving perfection and dreaming up horrible consequences stemming from the mistake. But more importantly, you'll learn something. It's not whether or not you'll make a mistake, it's how you handle the mistake that will ultimately set you apart -- for better or for worse.
Follow the Link Less Tweeted*: Work smarter next week, uh, year by finding some online resources no one knows about. Skip the popular sites that aren’t core to your job. If the popular sites publish good content, you’ll see it on Twitter. Then you have more time to find great content on lesser known sites…making you a more valuable source. And those pages of Delicious bookmarks pointing to those Top 10, 25 and 50 lists? Delete them. They’re dead weight. You saved them to reference later and you never will. If you must, pick one item from each list to create one "uber, hella, super list fantastico". Then you’ll only have one list to ignore in 2010.
Review Your 2009 Calendar: Before you toss out, archive or delete your 2009 calendar, spend some time walking through each month. Single out any dark days when you got THAT call or email from the client or your boss wondering WTF? If these missteps were connected to annual events, create calendar items for 2010 to make sure history doesn't repeat itself. If they were one time lapses of omniscience, create calendar items reminding you of what you learned. Celebrate the mistakes you’ve already learned from in 2009.
But you better hurry. You have like eight hours until the last work day of the decade ends. No pressure!
*With sincere apologies to Robert Frost and all things even remotely literary.
20x200: Untitled (Let's make better mistakes tomorrow) by Mike Monteiro uploaded by Jen Bekman
Excellent post. You gave some great tips.
ReplyDeleteReally like this...short, sweet, and to the point. We should expect mistakes as they will happen and our success will depend on how we react to them.
ReplyDeleteGreat advice! I'm a teacher and I always tell the kids on the very first day of school that the best way to NOT succeed is to never make a mistake. A bit convoluted, but important. They need to take risks and you can't learn anything worthwhile without takiing risks!
ReplyDeleteThis was an amazing post. Great read.
ReplyDeleteKeep it up.