be successful at work

I want to be efficient, reliable, consistent. I want to be proactive, and seen as competent by my peers.

I don’t know how to quantify this… Maybe I will say that I am aiming for a promotion within the year… and a Very Good on my review in June 2010.

This is a follow-up to a step just taken in a different project/goal. It does not apply to work success only, though I don’t have “be successful” on my list. Yet.
 

In addition to ‘having something achieved in an area, simply is the better argument’, I also just learned that to give first, also is the better argument. At least, it’s more convincing than entering the place with hands empty.

So, people take you more seriously.

I didn’t notice that for a very long time. However, the step from noticing it to grasp it was small.

(But to implement it, again, to become a default behaviour of mine might become a bigger effort.)

I achieved the four months of staying with them I aimed for, well, mostly – short by three days.

However, that’s it about that job.

Actually, as hinted before, I didn’t find any fun in or out of it. I remember a week – the Monday was nice. Tuesday I got bored.

What’s missing? Complexity. Space to be creative. – As the job ate me up, there was no spare time left, none. So I starved for being creative again. That very week, it must have overcome me.

So, the lesson learned is: Work needs to leave space for spare time for me, so there’s chance I can recreate my mind, e.g. by programming.

The last day on that job, waiting for my debriefing, I connected to my server, launched joe, figured out some Perl, and was in flow just the minute the thing ran first time.

Never happened to me by stuff the job offered to me. Was well to leave.

Until now I more often than not just accidentally got into a job. Some person or other who made me known to or aware of another person they knew about and who were looking for another employee – just like me.

That might look like it were easy to get a job for me; but it is not; but anyways, I think most jobs until now I got by reference or random crash (into people). In other words, I never gave lots of a damn to be nice to potential employers…

However, getting a job is mostly already everything I want – to learn whether they’d want me, to experience to get sucked in to their organization, to experience what places they’d send me to, where they move me to. But that’s it. Actually, I rarely have a goal within a company. At least none I feel I could do anything about. Which brings me into a defensive position: If they do X, I could get Y.

That shall change now. For example, I want to stay with them at least for 4 months to get rid of my most urgent debts. That demands me to be kind of successful at work. So, I’m going to do something about that, so people can recognize me as being successful, part of their team, helpful.

In the last year I think I’ve really gotten more successful and I’m receiving an award in this regard as well. So I guess this is my first “43 things” items that I can say – achieved :)

This is tricky. Maybe I have to rename this one. Some would say that I am successful. I would like to feel more confident in my role and to know that I am adding value.