Getting your priorities straight

Photo by John.Schultz via Flickr

The observant/chronically unoccupied among you may have realised that I didn't update the blog last week as per schedule. Being the clever clogs that I am however,  rather than pretending it didn't happen I am instead going to use it as the jumping off point for this week's topic: prioritising.

There comes a time in every job (or life) when you have too many things to do and not enough time to do them in (I realise that for many people this may be the rule rather than the exception but bear with me). Maybe you have a big one-off project on top of your normal work or you’re trying to apply for new jobs whilst continuing to work at your old one. Maybe you’ve been given a lot of different tasks by different people who all want them done yesterday. Or maybe (to take an example not completely at random) you’re trying to write a blog alongside working two jobs and visiting your sister at university. Whatever the situation, there comes a time when you have to make a decision about what to do and when to do it – the alternative is to sit and panic whilst not doing any of it, which I can tell you from personal experience doesn’t work!

Here then, are my three immutable rules for prioritising your obligations:

1.  Do the most important things first and the things you least want to do second. This might sound like a no-brainer but – as anybody who’s ever cleaned their house from top to bottom when they were supposed to be revising will tell you – often when you have a lot of things to do its easier to justify not doing the things you don’t want to. After all, the tasks you are doing are useful and worthwhile so it’s not like you’re wasting your time… Sadly if you’re going to get everything done you need to prioritise ruthlessly: do the important stuff and then do the stuff you hate (these may be the same things). Once all the difficult and boring stuff is accomplished move on to the rest, secure in the knowledge that there’s no horrible tasks lying in wait for you to do at the last minute.
2. Make a to do list you can edit. Again I’m not re-inventing the wheel here, but you cannot overestimate the importance of list-making when it comes to getting your priorities straight; write each task down on a post-it note and then arrange them in the order you think they should be done. When each one is completed you can rip it up and feel the true sense of accomplishment that comes with reaching a goal. The post-it note method is great because it allows you to re-shift your priorities as the situation changes.
3.  Know your limitations. Sometimes even a superbly prioritised list of tasks is just too long; if there aren’t enough hours in the day to do your work, then you need to be honest with people. Explain your priorities to them and work together on rescheduling the tasks that are less urgent. Often people simply want to know when something will be done without necessarily minding when exactly it is. The most important thing is to show that you have a plan and a schedule and that you’re not just being lazy and not bothering to write your blog post this week (ahem).

At the end of the day, it’s important to take a balanced attitude to your work – unless your job is vital to saving human lives it shouldn’t consume your every waking moment and prioritising effectively is the key to getting your work done within work hours, leaving you free to pursue your own desires the rest of the time.

Having problems with your priorities or got some more advice to share? Let me know in the comments.

How to have a healthy relationship with your job applications

You know those people that get carried away by relationships? They go on a few dates with somebody and suddenly they’re building castles in the sky – planning their wedding, doodling names on their notebook and mentally planning out their life for the next thirty or forty years. Next thing you know they’re sobbing on your shoulder because the other person got freaked out by the intensity and broke it off.

Photo by Mendhak via flickr

Well, it turns out that when it comes to jobs that’s exactly the kind of person I am: as soon as I know I’ve got an interview (arguably the first date of the job hunting process) I get carried away imagining my life if I got the job; I look at possible places to live, think about how I’d get to work and work out where I’d meet up with my friends. I even plan holidays I could take on the salary available. Just like the over-keen person in a relationship I go too far, too fast when there’s no guarantee that the outcome of the situation will be the one I want. As a result, I leave myself completely emotionally vulnerable for the (seemingly) inevitable rejection that ensues.

It’s an easy trap to fall into, particularly if your job hunt is just beginning or not going well: in the former situation every application seems like a dazzling pathway to a better future and you get carried away by the fantasy and in the latter each opportunity provides a glimmer of hope that this time the search might be over and you’ll finally get your life sorted. Either way, you get attached to the vision of the future rather than the job itself, meaning that when you’re unsuccessful you don’t just lose the job, you lose all the plans and dreams that go along with it.

While this may not seem like the worst thing in the world, I’ve learned the hard way that if you keep repeating this pattern with each application you get extremely disheartened about the job hunt and depressed about your future opportunities.

Instead of focusing completely on one role at a time therefore, make sure you have a number of applications on the go at any one time – put the same amount of effort in but don’t dwell on the possibilities inherent in each position. The more positions you apply for, the more possible futures there are, making it less likely you’ll get overly invested in any of them. In addition to this, when you come back from an interview get straight on with the next application – it can be tempting to give yourself a break but resist: taking a break often means you are subconsciously relying on getting the job whereas continuing the process prevents you becoming too emotionally involved with the future that success could provide.

Are you a needy job hunter? Do you get too attached to the possibilities each job provides? Let me know in the comments. For more job hunting information click here.

Feeling the fear and doing it anyway

Picture by Katiew via Flickr

Everybody has something they hate doing – some part of their job, however important or trivial, that they really, really don’t want to do ever if they can possibly avoid it. For me, it’s making phone calls but other people hate giving presentations, meeting one-on-one with their boss, creating resources, e-mailing people, dealing with IT or any of 101 things that other people think is no big deal but that you lie awake at night fretting about. The hardest thing to do –especially at three a.m. Monday morning - is to admit to yourself that they’re right: it really is no big deal.

There often isn’t really a reason that you’ve grown to regard the task in question with a combination of fear and loathing – sometimes you’ve just had a really bad experience, sometimes you’ve had no experience with it prior to your current position and sometimes you’re just behaving irrationally. The important thing is that you need to get over it because letting it get the better of you and adversely affect your job performance is not something you want to happen.

Of course, I’m not going to bring up a problem like this without providing some solutions, so here are my top three strategies for curing yourself of work phobias.

Throw yourself in at the deep end

Rather like jumping into cold water rather than easing in, or ripping of a band aid, for some people the best solution to not wanting to do something is to just do it: do it now and do it as often as possible. If you’ve been putting off making a lot of calls, schedule a day when that’s all you do; if you hate presentations volunteer to give all the presentations on behalf of your team for the next couple of months, and so on. The idea is that once you do something, you lose the fear of the unknown that was previously holding you back and repeated exposure will reduce the anxiety you feel about the activity. This worked for me when I had to call a list of about 100 people. I had been putting it off for as long as possible but then one day I had to just give in, sit down and start making calls. After three days of continuous phoning I still didn’t like doing it, but I was able to put it on my to-do list without dreading the experience.

Dip your toe in the shallow end

For those of you that are less crazy about throwing it all at the wall, an alternative is to start small: if you hate presentations try doing some for people you work closely with and who make you feel comfortable, then gradually work your way up to the really scary stuff. By making your first experience of whatever it is you don’t want to do as pleasant and non-stressful as possible, you decrease your apprehension of repeating it and thus gain confidence gradually. This might be less feasible if you’ve really left it all to the last minute however – sometimes option one is more of a necessity than a choice.

Going to swimming lessons (I’m stretching the metaphor to the breaking point here)

The third way to get over your aversion to doing something is to put a lot of preparation into it: if it’s a presentation make sure its planned and scripted and practice it as much as possible; if you’ve got a lot of calls to make write a script so you don’t forget what to say and again, practice on friends and co-workers. Preparation can reduce your disinclination to do a task because it increases your feeling of control over the situation. If you’re as prepared as you can possibly be, it takes a lot of the uncertainty out of the equation and can make you feel calmer about the situation. The more confidence you gain, the less preparation you’ll find it necessary to do, but the first few times it can be quite time consuming, so this is possibly not the best method if you’re extremely busy.

So there you have it: three ways to beat your personal work demon. What do you hate to do at work? Let me know below! For more work advice check out my posts on regaining control and procrastination.

The Truth about TEFL Part 3: Selling yourself via Skype

Picture by Jakob Montrasio via Flickr

TEFL job interviews are all about one thing: Skype. Occasionally employers may be in the UK during their recruiting period but for the most part your opportunity to impress them with your

There are a few things it’s important to remember however, if you want to become a Skype interview pro.

personality and suitability for the job will be a virtual one. Many people dread Skype interviews, unsure of how they should behave comparably to face-to-face interviews, but once you’ve gotten a few under your belt they’re an easy and effective way to connect with potential employers with little cost to either party.

1.       It’s still an interview so don’t get lazy. You still need to dress like you would for an interview and take care with your appearance – no top half only, no ‘smart casual’ wear. This is your only chance to make an impression and you don’t want to blow the deal before you even open your mouth.

2.       Do your preparation. When an interview is going to take place in your house, it often feels like the urgency is removed. Do not trust this feeling – you need to isolate a block of time before the interview to read up on the role and refresh yourself on what you wrote in your application. Remember that you won’t have the travel time and the pre-interview coffee shop time that you would with a traditional interview. It’s possible to have notes by your laptop for a Skype interview but you don’t want to be obviously fact checking every few minutes.

3.       Think about your body language. Even over a video link the way you present yourself can say a lot about you to an interviewer so it’s as important to consider your body language in a Skype interview as it is for a face to face meeting. Make sure you centre yourself on the screen and sit a sensible distance from the camera – you don’t want to be overly close but you need to be in range of the microphone. Most importantly make sure you look directly at the camera rather than the picture of the interviewer or of yourself, to maintain good eye contact.

4.       Be aware of the pitfalls of the internet. A lot of places that hire TEFL teachers aren’t renowned for their strong internet connections or good wifi coverage so it is quite likely that there will be a problem with the connection at some point in the interview. Obviously if you have prepared your setup properly this won’t be your problem but there are a couple of things you can do to minimise the damage; firstly, make sure you speak slowly and clearly to ensure you remain audible even if the connection becomes faulty and secondly try and minimise the amount of moving you do – the less work the system has to do to maintain a clear picture the better.

5.       Act natural. Lastly, behave as you normally would in an interview. Try to resist the urge to reference or joke about the nature of the process – it might be novel to you but they do it everyday. Trying to keep yourself in a normal interview mindset will also hopefully stop you being too nervous about the different format and should help you to come across well to the interviewer.

Had a good or bad interview experience on Skype? Let me know below. If you missed the first two parts of my series on TEFL you can find them here.

Success means never having to say you're sorry

Picture by Live Life Happy via Flickr

It’s a common axiom that very successful people are driven and ruthless, trampling over people on

Now, I’m not advocating this approach to the workplace, but not embracing the asshole lifestyle doesn’t mean you can’t learn something from these people; in essence, what allows these people to disregard others and strive to become the best is confidence, focus and a refusal to apologise for their actions.

their way to the top without a thought for the cost of their actions to the people they leave behind. Moreover, we tend to think that it is because of this willingness not to count the human cost of their decisions that they become so very successful.

Don’t apologise is one of the most important pieces of advice I’ve ever received: I don’t mean you shouldn’t say sorry if you’re in the wrong but keep it short and simple – don’t try to explain or excuse your actions – this is where you come across as weak and unconfident. Simply acknowledge your fault, express remorse and leave it at that. If you don’t dwell on your mistakes, others won’t either. Late with a project or forgotten to reply to an e-mail? A short apology followed by the delivery of the desired items is far more effective than long-winded justifications.

To put this advice in context, imagine you’re applying for a job, you fit most of the criteria but you don’t have experience in one particular area – it’s still worth applying but you’re not sure how to deal with that particular part of the specification. In this situation it’s tempting to write a sentence  like this: “although I do not have experience with x, I do have an understanding of y because of my work with z.” This way you feel like you’ve shown awareness of the specification but justified your application in its absence. HOWEVER, what you’ve actually done is made sure that their attention is drawn to what you don’t have that they want, rather than what you do. If you don’t mention the area in which you are lacking, but focus on presenting your other skills strongly, you present a much more confident appearance and chances are they won’t even notice – especially if it’s not a particularly crucial part of the person specification.

You don’t have to be rude to be successful: you just have to be confident, focus on the positives and keep your apologies short and to the point.

Interested in improving your job applications or interview skills? Go to the Job Hunting page to find more articles and advice.

Get a hobby: what your interests say about you

There are many parts to a job application and they all have their challenges – how to fit your experience to the requirements, how to sell yourself effectively, how to highlight your skills and aptitudes. One of the areas that doesn’t often get a lot of attention from us as we sweat over jobs applications and endless CV revisions is the things that make us interesting people aside from our work experience and qualifications – unsurprisingly, in addition to wanting you to be fully qualified and possessed of a wide range of relevant experience, employers also want to make sure that they’re hiring interesting, engaging people with a wide range of interests and hobbies.

If you’re like me, you did quite well in the recreational section of your CV throughout school and university – joining sports teams and clubs to pad it out – but once you got into the world of work your interests… narrowed… somewhat. To be quite honest, most days I consider it a success if I manage a conversation with my parents and read part of a book when I come home from work, let alone taking up expensive and time consuming hobbies. Tempting though it is to sink into a routine of work, television and sleep with the occasional friendly outing, there will come a time when you realise it’s a bit of a stretch to talk about the football team you were on four years ago in a covering letter and will find yourself in need of something else to talk about.

Although it may seem like the least important part of your application, your hobbies and interests can say a lot about you as a person and can reinforce that you possess certain desired traits without you having to repeat yourself. So just what do your hobbies say about you?

Team sports: if you play a team sport or can get yourself involved in one, it’s a great thing to put on your CV. It shows that you can work well with others, that you are able to manage your time effectively enough to fit in practice around the rest of your life and it presents you as a healthy, active person who is happy to get involved.

Individual sports: are you a runner or a climber? Maybe you cycle or swim? If so, you’re showing that you’re a dedicated and self-motivated individual who can set themself a goal and work to achieve it. It shows that you can work unsupervised and that you aren’t afraid of a challenge.

Playing a musical instrument: If you play an instrument or sing – especially if it’s with a choir or an orchestra – you show that you have the capacity to learn and continually improve, the dedication to practice regularly and the ability to work in harmony with others and follow direction and you demonstrate that you have an interest in culture.

Physical activities: these include things such as yoga, pilates and dance. Physical activities show that you have a good work-life balance, that you are interested in new experiences and that you are able to commit your time and energy to a long term project.

Arts and crafts: these things might be less common or obviously connectable to your CV but there’s no shame in not being a sporty person. Hobbies like painting, knitting, photography or scrapbooking show that you are capable of taking on projects and seeing them to completion, of developing your skillset and applying it to new challenges and indicate a practical, organised nature.

Hobbies to be wary of: cooking and travel are two things that a lot of people will claim as a hobby; this is fine but you have to be prepared to back it up. Everybody makes dinner, so for cooking (or baking) to be a hobby you have to show that you work to develop your abilities, that you try new things regularly and that you belong to communities or attend show/exhibitions related to your interest. Similarly if travel is an interest you need to talk about places you’ve visited recently, languages you’ve learnt and show that you read around your subject. Handled well these hobbies can demonstrate project management skills, self-motivation, an awareness of the wider world and a willingness to try new things and new places.

Hobbies to avoid: reading, watching TV, listening to music, playing computer games. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with these activities as pastimes, but they are unlikely to impress on a CV and will not set you apart from the crowd.

Not sure what is the right hobby for you? Take a look at my highly scientific diagram below to work out the best way to spend your free time.

Go North: leave London and live better

I'm not as southern as some people, coming as I do from good Yorkshire stock, but it is seldom these days that I have reason to venture past Oxford, let alone Birmingham. It was with some trepidation then last week that I boarded train to Leeds to visit a friend. Upon my arrival however I saw that all my fears were unjustified - Leeds is an amazing city with excellent transport links to surrounding towns set in picture postcard rurality.

Saltaire

I had been told that Leeds was a superior shopping destination and it more than lived up to its reputation: apart from John Lewis (which my friend assures me is arriving next year) it has all the major chains as well as some fun and quirky independents and boasts a truly superior waterstones as well as that increasingly chimeric creature: a well-stocked HMV. There is also some beautiful architecture, an excellent museum and a wide selection of bars and restaurants. All in all I had a delightful weekend (so delightful that it caused me to miss an update last week - sorry about that) and had my perceptions about Northern loving thoroughly challenged. Why though am I taking the time to tell you all about it?

Well, among the other manifest attractions of Leeds my friend happened to mention how much she paid for a two bedroom apartment with a balcony, covered parking and access to a tennis court. I could only stare dumbly at her as she rattled off the numerous benefits she got alongside her apartment, thinking that you wouldn't even get a room in a dodgy flat share for that in London. I had a similar shock when we walked past an estate agents and I saw how little it cost to buy an apartment in the city centre.

I suddenly realised how affordable grown up life could be if you moved out of London - renting would no longer be a pointless money sink but a reasonable expenditure and getting on the property ladder could be more than a hopeless dream. Additionally, in areas like Leeds you're not really sacrificing anything: it's about two hours by train or driving to reach London (it has taken me this long to travel across London some weekends) and there is more than enough to keep you busy and social. There's even an airport for quick Europe-based getaways.

The only downside is,of course, the comparative scarcity of jobs, making it a life choice that is not possible for everybody. However if you are in a profession - particularly one that pays well - you will be amazed at how much further your money can go outside of the M25. You can love the lifestyle you want and still be capable of paying off your student

loans and saving for the future.

So my advice this week? Go north - if you can. It will be well worth it. And now if you'll excuse me I'm off to do some location based job hunting....

Want more life advice? Check out my post on regaining control or adjusting after uni.