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Tips and stories to add value to you and your organisation

How To Keep Your Job (2)

31 July 2011

One way to keep your job is to improve your performance, which is underpinned, not by cleverness, but by having the energy to continually work to a high standard. And this is underpinned by biscuits. Well, to be more precise, by taking a break and having tea and biscuits. Sleep is good too, but harder to squeeze in to a tea break at work. Power napping in your car is becoming evermore popular though, particularly if you’re on a long journey and are feeling drowsy. I’ve power napped and a quick 15mins has really increased my alertness.

Energy requires input and converting biscuits into energy is a good plan. As we all know in Einstein’s famous equation E = TC2 (where T is tea and C is custard creams) the amount of energy you get is proportional to the number of dunks you make in a really good cup of tea.

Interestingly, archaeologists have recently discovered that 10,000 years ago ancient Britons discovered fire on Monday, brewed nettle tea on Tuesday and then baked primitive custard creams on Wednesday. No wonder homo sapiens became the dominant species of its kind…

And when the energy from biscuits is exhausted my recommendation is that you go to sleep.

Reputable surveys show that we need 7 to 9 hours a night and I’ve noticed, when coaching busy exec types, that people often try to manage on less.

This is counter-productive.

Sleep allows our bodies to repair and our brains to sift and sort the day’s activities before filing memories away. If we don’t get enough sleep we run the risk of overload, followed by meltdown. So, there’s no long term honour in being a sleep deprived ‘hero’ or ‘heroine’.

In the new book How To Keep Your Job I offer plenty of tips to help people increase their energy and here I would suggest one of my favourites: Turn the middle of the week into Sleep Wednesday.

It’s not always easy to get to bed in good time when life works hard to keep us up, so the trick for more success is take back just a bit of control and every Wednesday make a point of going to bed 2 hours earlier than you would usually. That’s all…just 2 hours.

Over the course of a year that adds up to nearly 15 extra nights of sleep and will go a long way to clawing back your sleep deficit.

Imagine how much energy you’d have if you snoozed for a fortnight! And of course if you under-perform and lose your job, you’ll have between 6 and 12 months of lie-ins before getting your next job.

Help yourself to keep your job. Take a break and dunk a biscuit, have a Sleep Wednesday and buy the book. It’s based on real life successes and is there to get you ahead of the herd.

I’m off for a snooze now! Catch you later!

Tags: book, sleep

How To Keep Your Job

24 July 2011

Welcome to Book Four! I can hardly believe that I now have four books out there in the world, paddling their little canoes through the choppy waters of sales and marketing.

It took me a while to realise that writing books is the easy bit… what requires real energy is selling it. I do something every single day to sell books, whether it’s checking Amazon rankings, or setting up tweets, or jotting down blog ideas. It all feeds in to the process of chatting to people and pointing them at Amazon and like all good processes, it leads to good outcomes. It also leads to new friends and more support.

And what progress so far? Well… Job Hunting 3.0 has sold out at Amazon and new stock is due in on 27th July. It’s going to be reprinted in February as a mass market paperback. And then there’ll be a film, probably staring Brad Pitt as me I would think.

Oh hang on, one of those statements is false. Sorry Brad, you’ll have to find something else to do next year.

And I’ve been asked to go ‘from book to brand’ in a quest to focus a bit on getting a bigger reputation as a Modern Careers writer and expert coach. (I coined the term Modern Careers, as the words ‘careers expert’ bring back uncomfortable memories of my careers master at school, who was to careers advice what Darth Vader was to charitable works.)

Now, you might be wondering what this has to do with How To Keep Your Job. And the answer is simple:

1) Do something everyday to sell yourself in a positive light. Maybe smile at a colleague, share good news with your boss, or make the tea.

2) Think about your own personal brand. How would you describe yourself in three words? What would your colleagues say? Do the two views overlap or diverge?

We all have power and we can all assert ourselves, find our voice and make a positive difference to our future.

Two years ago I didn’t have a book deal and knew nothing about social media. Today I’m about to start planning book five and have built strong networks on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn. And I recently found out that Marshall Cavendish now account for your social media reach when deciding on whether to commission you. So, all my work is paying off and I love being a writer.

And here’s the thing: If you want to keep your job you can take your power and use it to really make a difference. I did. And so can you!

Good fortune!

PS… My first book, called My Boss Is A B@$T@*D, was featured in The Guardian on Saturday. Please click on the link now if you want to read the article on line.

Tags: book