Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to live this way? What if you ruled your schedule instead of the other way around? What if you were the most effective person on the team, not wasting any energy hating the colleague who never misses a deadline or the one who always leaves the boss’s office with all of his questions answered? All of this is totally possible if you take the time to develop a few new habits. In this chapter, I’ll cover how to make the most out of the 8-plus hours a day you spend at work—from effective time management and organization, to making every piece of communication count. Internalize these skills by reflecting on them outside the office when you have a moment to breathe, and by planning how you can implement sanity-saving processes in advance. I think you’ll find that the more proactive you are in managing your workday, the more you will actually achieve—without losing your hair or your bathroom breaks!

It’s impossible for one human being to do it all, and unless you want to spontaneously combust before the age of 30, you shouldn’t try to. If you’re thinking that you don’t have any say in how you spend your time at work, consider whether this is a subjective state of mind or an objective reality. Is your boss really watching you every second of every day? Probably not—he’s got his own work and schedule to manage. I don’t care if you’re inundated with assignments that could potentially keep you busy for the next decade, the only person who can truly control your schedule is you.

Here’s the thing: struggling to get through each day by running frantically from one task to the next won’t bring happiness or job satisfaction. You’ll be exhausted, stressed, and unmotivated, and you won’t have accomplished much in respect to your long-term career goals. For the first year of my career, I was so fried that you could see my hair crackling with electricity. I was so anxious for every senior person to like me that I accepted assignments indiscriminately—like a dog scarfing down table food. Boy, was I earning my $25K salary! I thought that all those days of nonstop agita would certainly earn me a promotion, so naturally I was surprised when I was passed over. At the time, I didn’t understand that in the process of doing 7 million unrelated and unimportant tasks, I had neglected my professional development and hadn’t acquired the core skills I needed to move to the next level.

As a general rule of thumb, you must manage your time strategically if you want your efforts to translate into personal fulfillment and career advancement. You can do this by organizing your schedule around your priorities. What makes a task a priority? Think back to the personal mission statement from Chapter 1 and the goals you set in Chapter 4. For the most part, your priorities should focus on results and relate back to your master plan. Here’s an example: My friend Lou’s personal mission has always been to live on a farm, but he went to school for hotel management. When Lou started his first job as a hotel front desk attendant, his goal was to develop the skills and knowledge base needed to manage his own country inn. In keeping with this goal, Lou made it a priority to interact with and learn from the Guest Services staff. Several years later, Lou is living on a farm, and the visitors to the country inn he runs pay the mortgage. By leveraging his hotel experience, Lou was able to achieve his long-term vision.

Focusing on tasks that contribute to your big picture sounds like a good idea, but how do you do it? Let’s look at the approach advocated by Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. To paraphrase Covey, there are four types of tasks:

By “urgent,” Covey means that the task is highly visible and insists on action. An important task is relevant to your personal mission and corresponding goals. If you’ve been spending your days running around like a chicken with its head cut off, you are probably spending 90 percent of your time in Categories 1 and 3, and you might have noticed totally irresponsible people who hang out permanently in Category 4. When you master effective time management, you stay out of Category 4 and decrease the time spent in Categories 1 and 3 to allow more time for Category 2. Do this on a regular basis by scheduling time each week to achieve Category 2 tasks that relate to your goals, leaving space for unanticipated Category 1 and Category 3 activities. Review your schedule every day and take the time to reassess it, if needed. Remember to be flexible, because, unfortunately, life doesn’t always work out the way you plan, and people often don’t behave consistently.

You’ll feel more on top of things if you keep a running “to do” list. Mentally separate all of your tasks into their respective categories, and then decide which ones you can eliminate, delay, or delegate. As you undertake a Category 1 or 3 task, think about how you can achieve the maximum impact with the least amount of effort. Remember to keep your department’s processes and your own work style in mind. For example, if your group has status meetings every Tuesday morning, you might want to schedule your personal preparation for late in the day on Monday so that you can be prepared to deliver the most up-to-date information. Alternatively, if you are a morning person and your energy is highest just after you wake up, maybe you can slot an hour before office hours on Tuesday to organize your material.

When you’re an overworked and underpaid junior member of your company, it’s easy to fall prey to low morale. However, by developing strong time-management skills and focusing on tasks that will help you attain your long-term goals more quickly, you’ll be able to approach each new day with a sense of purpose.

By virtue of low rank in the organizational hierarchy, twenty-somethings are responsible for meeting the needs of the many individuals who qualify as supervisors. Work rolls downhill from all the people above you and lands in a giant heap on your plate. Many older—but not necessarily wiser—managers have no qualms about piling it on and watching an eager-to-please twenty-something scramble around like a rat in a maze. Well, even if you’re an efficient multitasker, you’re never going to be Superman. Don’t sabotage your goals by taking on more work than you can do just because someone asks you to. Staying true to the priorities we talked about in the last section means learning to say no sometimes.

No is a tricky word in business, because you always want to be perceived as a can-do employee. In general, you should try to preempt situations in which you will have to decline an assignment. A good first step is to formalize your daily responsibilities with your official boss. Find out who on your team is authorized to delegate work to you, and note the type of assignments you can expect from each person. Let’s say that Joe, who is outside this core group of delegators, gives you a stack of expense reports to process. How should you respond? It’s perfectly appropriate to politely reply that you would be glad to help, but that you would appreciate it if Joe would check with your manager first. Joe may or may not pursue the matter, but, either way, you have extricated yourself from an awkward situation and have placed the ball squarely in your boss’s court. In all likelihood, your boss will say no to Joe for you, especially if processing expense reports is outside your area of responsibility.

Now imagine that Jane, a member of your core group of delegators, leaves an urgent assignment on your chair that must be done by the end of the week. Jane has known about the task for a few days, but now it’s Friday morning and the deadline is looming. As my mother used to say, don’t let another person’s lack of planning become your emergency. If your own “to do” list dictates you do something else, speak up. Tell Jane that you wish you could do the task for her, but you are currently working on a project with Tom that requires your attention. Give her the option of resolving the issue with Tom or your boss, and emphasize how much you enjoy working with her. Ideally, Jane will leave the interaction with the perception that you sincerely do want to help her, but that you can’t help being caught between conflicting responsibilities.

What if your boss is the one with an urgent request that you don’t have the time to attend to? In a way, this is the least painful scenario, because all you really have to do is ask her to help you prioritize your various assignments. You can say something such as, “I’d be happy to take care of that, but today I’m researching statistics for Tom’s client presentation. Which do you think I should do first?” If your boss wants to snatch your time at Tom’s expense, that’s her prerogative. Again, though, you have made someone else accountable for deciding which of the competing tasks you should direct your energy toward. Note that in all of these cases, you have declined to take on a new task. However, the actual word no and the phrase I don’t have time are absent from the conversation. Always strive to present yourself as a hardworking and disciplined employee with the best interests of the department and company at heart.

One last point: subscribing to the servant mentality is not good time management, even if you’re not preoccupied with any urgent tasks. When you get into the habit of springing into action the moment a higher-up appears at your desk, people will come to expect that you are always available. Suddenly your delegators won’t think twice about asking you to do all kinds of Category 3 (urgent and nonimportant) tasks. Meanwhile, Category 2 (nonurgent and important) priorities, such as professional development and on-the-job training, will slip further and further down your “to do” list. Remember, in the big-picture scheme of things, Category 2 should be ahead of Category 3, so no matter how busy your department is, always make time in your schedule for Category 2 activities. Have trouble doing this? Take note of the time it takes you to complete Category 3 assignments. For example, if you think it will take you an hour to create a new database for your boss, tell him you’ll have it done by the end of the day. Also, instead of asking for new work the second you encounter a few free hours, spend some quality time researching your company’s products, participating in on-site training, or meeting with your mentor (Category 2 activities). It’s probably long overdue.

It might be difficult to turn your back on a Category 3 task that’s presented to you or to set aside company time for your own Category 2 needs. But think about it this way: You have to say no to something. It’s either the nonimportant or the important things. You decide.

We all procrastinate in one way or another. Just because something is worth doing doesn’t mean it’s easy to get started. Even at work, we’re constantly tempted by activities that are more fun and take less effort, such as chatting with a coworker or text messaging a friend. However, when you’re trying to stick to a schedule of prioritized tasks, repeated procrastination can wreak havoc on your master plan. It may start with a simple decision to take a longer lunch instead of making headway on your first business plan, and, next thing you know, your goals are taking longer to achieve and your upward mobility has slowed to a crawl.

To fight this battle and win, you first must acknowledge that you are procrastinating. Did you actually schedule time to play Solitaire, or are you just putting off doing work? Confront the procrastination demon head-on and ask yourself why you’re avoiding the task. Could it be that the task isn’t worth the effort? Maybe the benefits of completing the task don’t outweigh the time and energy you’ll spend on it. If this is the case, reconsider whether it’s a priority. Should you decide that the task is important, however, now is the time to rally your sense of discipline and get moving. The following are reasons you might use to put off work. Arm yourself with the following motivational arguments I have provided, and begin the battle against procrastination:

Don’t forget to reward yourself for beating procrastination and finishing a task. Instead of moving on to the next assignment right away, block out time to do something you enjoy. Long hours of hard work will pass by much more easily when you can anticipate a fun activity at the end of the process. As I was writing this book, for example, I’d tell myself that each time I finished a section, I would spend a few hours watching a cable movie or playing a computer game. We all have our mindless vices. Remember Jack Nicholson in The Shining? All work and no play makes Jack a dull (not to mention psychotic) boy. So if you’ve earned it, go ahead and indulge!

Have you ever noticed that the most stressed-out folks at work are habitually disorganized? In their defense, it’s easy to lose track of an important document, project, or deadline when your PDA is beeping every second. However, there are only so many things in the corporate world that you can control, and the way you organize is one of them. When you’re organized, you’re more confident, efficient, and dependable. You’re also much less likely to be forced into early retirement by a heart attack or a nervous breakdown.

Before I launch into a discussion of ways to preserve your sanity by incorporating organization into your daily routine, let me admit something. I do tend to believe that organization is one of those pesky inherited traits. If you have it, it’s likely that you’ve had it all along, and you probably skipped ahead the second you saw this section’s header. If you don’t, these suggestions might not be as easy to implement as they sound. Take heart, though. If you can take one thing away from this section and use it to become more effective at work, reading it will have been worthwhile.

In Chapter 2, I talked about utilizing good organizational skills as you begin a new job, and I recommended starting at home base—your desk. To briefly recap, please do not buy into the misconception that an Armageddon of a cubicle makes you look super busy and hardworking. Remember that the corporate world judges performance by results, not effort, and your managers will doubt that you can achieve such results in the midst of total chaos. For those of us in a constant state of information overload, keeping a neat workspace requires vigilance. I suggest thinking of every new item arriving on your desk as an insect that is infiltrating your territory. Your job is to dispose of it as quickly as possible, either by chucking it in the nearest recycling bin or putting it in its proper place. The only material on your desk should pertain to the task you’re working on at that very minute. Everything else should be labeled and filed for easy access.

Treat your e-mail inbox the same way. Delete spam and other messages you don’t need as soon as they pop in, and if you know you have to respond, get in the habit of doing so immediately. When you receive a new task via e-mail, don’t let it linger. Add it to your master “to do” list. Should a message require follow-up at a later time, flag it, and place it in a subfolder that you review on a daily basis.

I’m frustrated with a few people I work with who don’t read their e-mail and always seem to be unavailable. I’ve tried everything from tagging messages with read receipts, to automatically resending messages that bounce back with one of those cheerful “Out of the Office” replies. I’m sure these e-mail neglecters have their reasons, but think about this: If I know they’re not staying on top of their mail, other people, including their managers, must know it too. Even if these people haven’t been seriously burned yet, their reputation is being compromised as we speak. Don’t get tripped up by this one. During the business week, unless you’re on vacation or physically unable to get to your laptop or PDA, make it your business to read and respond to e-mail several times a day.

Digital organizers, software tools, and online content management systems can also enhance how you organize. Microsoft Outlook, for instance, allows you to set automatic task reminders to alert you to upcoming deadlines. Don’t want to drag your laptop to every meeting? You should still keep all of your notes in one location (such as a three-ring notebook or legal pad) rather than relying on a combination of loose sheets of paper and yellow Post-Its. The key to making a routine stick is to find a system that works for you—the simpler the better!

Several twenty-somethings have told me that they have difficulty coordinating projects with multiple tasks and individuals involved. Learning to do this well is a prerequisite for getting ahead in the corporate world. I have a few years of project management experience under my belt, and here’s my strategy:

As soon as I leave my boss’s office with a new mission, I consider the scope of the project and the general approach I want to take. I then create a rough outline that breaks the project down into smaller component parts.

Conducting an initial project meeting allows me to turn the assignment of tasks into a team activity. By brainstorming with my teammates about the best way to accomplish various phases of a project, I encourage them to approach the work with enthusiasm and commitment. Note that team meetings should not be called indiscriminately. As much as I love the people I work with, if I want to hang out and chitchat, we’ll go to happy hour. Remember that the real project work gets done outside the conference room and that, most of the time, you do not accomplish things simply by talking about them. In general, I don’t usurp an hour of my colleagues’ time unless the meeting will serve a combination of the following purposes:

After an initial project meeting, I use Microsoft Project to develop a horizontal bar chart that displays timelines, the interrelationships of the various tasks, and the people responsible for each project component. I check the chart once a day to monitor our progress and keep track of pending deadlines.

In order to organize a project successfully, you must make it easy for your team members to communicate with each other. My chart, which sits on a shared server, is a living document. Everyone on the team, including my supervisor, has access to view and modify the chart as we move forward on various tasks. The chart, along with ongoing status reviews, ensures that every team member understands not just his or her own responsibilities, but everyone else’s as well.

Whether you’re an experienced project manager leading a huge team or an entry-level assistant in charge of a single intern, look for ways to implement and showcase your own organizational strategies and tools. By inspiring trust, confidence, and cooperation, you’ll emerge as an effective leader poised for even greater things.

Many people assume that communication is common sense and that there’s nothing to learn about it. A manager, for example, wouldn’t dream of sending a new employee on a client visit without providing in-depth training on what the employee should talk about. However, that same manager will most likely ignore the specifics of how the rep should speak to the client. Sounds pretty dumb, huh? After all, if the employee doesn’t communicate effectively with the client in the first few minutes of interaction, he might have the door slammed in his face before he has a chance to recite his product’s compelling features. The business world is the same way. You could be the smartest, most qualified employee in the company, but no one will care what you have to offer if you’re unable to make yourself understood. So how do you ensure that your communication style is a competitive advantage rather than a liability? I’ll get to that soon. But first, let’s dissect a few types of communication found in the business world:

I’m sure you’ve had the pleasure of interacting with plenty of aggressive and passive communicators. Maybe some of them were lucky enough to advance to a high level. Usually, though, these extreme styles will handicap a career, because people don’t respond well to them. If you have your eye on a VP position and want to be seen as a powerful communicator and a key influencer, assertiveness—or the ability to stand up for your rights, opinions, ideas, and desires, while respecting those of others—is the way to go.

Let me confess that I am not naturally the most assertive person in the world—I definitely lean more toward the passive style. Though I hate to admit it, I think it has something to do with growing up as a female in our society. Women are encouraged to be passive from early childhood up until we’re thrust into the corporate world, when we’re promptly expected to grow a backbone. Fortunately, communicating assertively on an everyday basis is pretty easy provided you willingly express yourself clearly, confidently, and in a tone that sounds friendly rather than fake.

It’s harder to be assertive when you move beyond small talk into the realms of persuasion and confrontation. In situations in which you must communicate your point to someone who doesn’t agree, assertiveness makes the difference as to whether you are perceived as a leader or as one of those “ineffective” or “difficult” people that populate the lower ranks of the corporate world. Hendrie Weisinger, author of Emotional Intelligence at Work, makes the following suggestions for incorporating assertive communication into your problem-solving technique:

Plan for important conversations ahead of time. Assertiveness does not mean opening your mouth each and every time you have an opinion. One of the most common complaints I hear about twenty-something employees is that they think they know everything and don’t hesitate to convince others of this at every opportunity. Have deference for the years of expertise in the room, and the fact that your organization is still in business for a reason. Before you speak, make sure you fully understand your own point of view, and think about the most appropriate way to communicate it. It never hurts to take an extra minute to decide whether something should be shared, and/or if it’s an appropriate time to interject your thoughts. When in doubt, err on the side of caution.

Watch people around you who are using assertiveness to their advantage. Toronto Star career columnist Mark Swartz recommends choosing a few role models in the office, and noting the behaviors they use to communicate effectively. Why does your coworker always seem to get the ear of your boss? How does your supervisor come out of every staff meeting with an increased budget for new projects? Try some of the successful techniques you see, keeping in mind that your communication style should match who you are personality-wise. If you stray too far from what comes naturally, you might be perceived as phony, and we don’t want that!

Now that I’ve talked about the role of assertiveness, let’s cover specific strategies for leveraging three communication vehicles—writing, speaking, and listening—to help you connect with people in ways that will enhance your career potential.

Word on the street is that if you’re not a communications professional, you don’t need to pay too much attention to your writing skills. This is not so. In fact, good writing is one of the most underrated skills in the corporate world. Maybe this attitude is a defense mechanism. After all, many businesspeople are bad writers, and how can you judge your employees on something you don’t even have a clue about? If you’re not the most polished writer in the world, you might very well get away with it. But you’re not reading this book so you can just slide by. Presumably, you want to impress the socks off your managers and come out looking better than everyone else. There’s no better way to do this than to showcase the rare talent of a superior command of the written language.

I could happily devote an entire book to the craft of writing. However, because that’s not what I’m here to do, I’ll limit my advice to two simple rules:

What if you need some help bringing your writing up to par? I suggest contacting local colleges or continuing education programs about a variety of business writing courses. Classes are typically inexpensive, and they can often be tailored to your specific needs. Don’t let an inflexible schedule discourage you: Many courses are now offered online.

The majority of written communication now takes place through e-mail, which can be rather complicated. You still want to follow the C&C and Quality Control rules of regular written communication, but you also have to balance a multitude of considerations that are unique to the medium of e-mail.

Allow me to share a true story. A student at a prestigious U.S. university was studying abroad, and e-mailed the dean of Undergraduate Affairs to determine the status of his Resident Advisor application. Because this particular student had been away all semester, the dean had forgotten to include his application in the pool. The student, having lost his opportunity to be a Resident Advisor, was quite upset. He shared his displeasure with the dean via e-mail. The dean became defensive. He intended to forward the student’s e-mail to a colleague in the office, adding the comment, “What a little snot. These spoiled brats think they’re entitled to everything. Why doesn’t he just transfer?” Unfortunately, the dean accidentally hit reply, and the student received his nasty retort instead. No matter how much the dean apologized, the damage could not be undone. The already irate student had a field day distributing the dean’s inappropriate and unprofessional response to everyone he knew, and, within a few months, the infamous e-mail exchange had made its way across the country. Ask yourself this question: How many e-mail offenses like this does it take to ruin a prominent university’s reputation?

E-mail can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Here are a few tips to make it work for you:

Before we move on, a word about text messaging and instant messaging (IM). These technologies are near and dear to our hearts, but you must proceed carefully when using them in a business setting. For one thing, don’t expect to communicate this way with your colleagues or clients unless they have already been established as acceptable means of interaction. When sending work-related texts or IMs, make sure your name shows up as something professional, and greet the recipient before jumping in with a request. Don’t shorten words so much that your point gets lost, watch the level of informality, and be conscious of wasting too much time shooting messages back and forth. And as with e-mail, keep a saved log of important conversations, and always pause for a moment before you hit send. You’d be surprised how many IT departments work their magic to monitor texts sent from company phones and IM conversations sent over company networks.

Author and motivational guru Dale Carnegie once said that the person who can speak acceptably is usually considered to possess greater ability than he actually has. In my experience, this is true. If you look and act as though you know what you’re talking about, people will think that you do, regardless of the reality. You may not have a vast store of knowledge and years of experience to draw from, but you can get promoted just by creating the perception of being competent and informed.

I translate Carnegie’s “speaking acceptably” as “effective in-person communication,” because there is much more to speaking than the content that comes out of your mouth. Did you know that only 7 percent of meaning is conveyed with the words you say? People get the rest of your message based on how you say it. In-person communication includes nonverbal cues, vocal style, articulateness, and sincerity, and it plays a huge role in conveying the powerful corporate persona I talked about in the beginning chapters of this book. Let’s spend a moment addressing each of these components:

Voice mail is the perfect medium to work on your in-person communication technique. Your greeting serves as an introduction to the professional you. It is the starting point from which many people—inside and outside the company—will communicate with you. That said, you have to nail it. Record your greeting before or after work hours to avoid office background noise. Politely and confidently state your name, department, and company, and invite the caller to leave a message, which you will promptly return. I would avoid saying what day it is in your message. I guarantee you will get behind in recording a new greeting each day, and, next thing you know, it will be October and your voice mail will still say it’s June 5!

Public speaking is another good way to hone your in-person communication skills. Many of us fear getting up in front of a group, yet I’ve never known a person who was physically incapable of doing it after practicing a few times. Public speaking increases your confidence level, your poise, and your ability to flexibly convey information about your subject matter. It also pays huge dividends in terms of being taken seriously as a twenty-something in the corporate world. Look for opportunities to deliver formal or informal presentations whenever you can, and, as you prepare, consider using a few notes instead of a script. Extemporaneous remarks are more effective for connecting with your audience on a personal level and provide much better training for those critical one-on-one interactions.

Even if you’re a master of in-person communication, people won’t always welcome you in for a chat with open arms. As you well know, the corporate world is a hectic environment where no one has enough hours in the day to do what they need to do. The higher the executive’s title, the less time she has to speak with you. Here are a few hints for getting face time with those hard-to-pin-down folks:

Once you manage to get in front of the person, say what you have to say and get out of there. If necessary, prepare a list ahead of time of the things you want to cover so that you can whiz right through them. If the person learns that a meeting with you doesn’t mean she will be held up all day, she will be more likely to respond to your meeting request next time.

One last point about speaking: if you have the opportunity to enhance your knowledge of another language, or even to start learning one from scratch, I highly recommend pursuing it. As English decreases in prominence and the economy becomes even more global, knowing additional languages will prove invaluable. Most community colleges, embassies, and consulates offer evening and weekend classes, or you could learn from the comfort of your couch with a self-directed program such as Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur.

You may have taken one look at this subhead and said, “What am I, 5 years old? I thought I learned to listen in kindergarten!” If you think about it, though, this isn’t exactly the case. You learned to hear people when they talk, but you didn’t necessarily get into the habit of actively listening to them. In our corporate jobs, our relationships suffer, we miss out on a lot of information, and, ultimately, we make our jobs harder because we don’t pay attention to what people are saying.

For obvious reasons, it’s in your best interest to avoid unnecessary communication breakdowns caused by a failure to listen. Author Hendrie Weisinger recommends that you begin by making yourself aware of ways you might unconsciously filter out what others are saying. Filters are generated by thoughts, ideas, and feelings. They influence the type of and how much information we hear. There are four kinds of filters:

Once you’ve identified what types of filters you use and under what circumstances you use them, employ these suggestions for practicing “filter prevention,” and also for becoming an active and involved listener:

You can encourage others to listen to you by emphasizing key points, and by asking for a restatement of your message in the person’s own words. Make your position relevant to the listener, and, as a general rule, listen more than you talk. You will stand out as one of the few people your colleagues consider it a pleasure to talk to!