Careering: Verbing Careers

With people’s careers lasting longer than most companies’ lifespan.
Relying on a company for life seems more like an illusion than reality.

With most generation Y changing job more than 5 times in their twenties
and switching 5 careers (such as developer, project manager, accountant)

The word ‘career’ is as outdated as the newspaper’s ‘classifieds’

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That’s why I like the term Careering, it makes it a verb & an action.
It something that you do, rather than something that you have.

So smart careering is to work to acquire new skill in-order to reach your next dream job.

You can take some careering actions:

• Find a project to under take
• Find opportunities to present your projects
• Join & participate in a professional association (PMI, Toastmasters, AMA)
• Volunteering
• Become a hobbypreneur
• Reading & commenting on blogs or any non-facebook social network
• Start a blogs or a podcast
• Go to conferences & meet people.
• Switch jobs or roles in your department or company
• Take on different responsibilities
• Learn to delegate
• Take classes & get a certificate
• . . .

There so many ways to improving your skill & network that will broaden you & you careers

I’m not advocating to job hop, but to find & get opportunities … to create options for your future.

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What careering steps are you going to take?
  Please don’t just watching TV or gaming, I tried that & it just doesn’t really help.

Switching Time with Soft Side of IT

I have decided switch my focus & restart previous blog: Soft Side of IT.

As much as I love this topic, in general & google there are less interest in this topic than information technology. So I am going take a hiatus from this blog.

Also I have been working in IT all these years & I’m currently in a large implementation project. I want to document some lessons learned & usage of technologies.

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This is a careering move as well, as I see this blog somehow go down in google ranking every week, my old blog remain in the first page. I just want to make sure people will be able to see my post, when anyone google me.

I still know in my heart that teaching and leading are intertwined & the importance of improving teaching skills. That’s why I know eventually I will come back to this blog.

Thank you all for reading & support,
Ian

Re-Adjusting Habit to Make it Work

It’s been a week since I set those habits & honestly that’s not been happening. =(

From my experience, if something doesn’t work, it might not be the idea, but the implementation/approach or part of it doesn’t work. Rather than on giving up, I am going try, try, try again … in order to find a way that will work for me.

Software has versions 1.1, 1.7, 2.0, 3.0 & 11.2.6.43
 … why can’t approaches to tasks or habits

Here is my re-adjustment 1.1:
I know doing this at least 1 hour per day will work somehow, but I am going to re-adjust the habit.
Rather jumping between the blog & studying, I am going to take at least 1 hour per day to either work on blog related task or studying my PMP. (Project Management Professional)

I will also keep a task list to complete, like read through & determine task to applying for PMP.

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Let me know if this works or not.

Daily Habits → Moving Forward Bit by Bit

   Exercising 2 times a week for 90 minutes, to some people, this seems just impossible …

Just like new year resolution, I fail to keep on task. After setting goal in my last post, I can honestly say I do almost nothing to move forward any of this.

   What if you take a 5 minute bike ride everyday?
           That is not overwhelming anymore!

This gave an inspiring moment from listening to an old podcast while working out. It talked about setting daily habit & the exercising example on this post. (Unfortunately, I could’t find the anymore anymore)

A small daily habit just makes goals more do-able!

This is surprised me; Kids do homework everyday to learn better … while somewhere along the way … we have lost the concept of daily habits. This idea seem so simple, but so powerful.

Setting daily habit is much more different than monthly or even weekly habits. Even with weekly or bi-daily goals, I find myself reasoning excuses to do it the next day; While daily just forces you to do what needs to be done.

These two habits to my challenge to myself that I will do:
– I am going take 1/2 hour everyday to work on some part of the blog (such as making notes)
– At least 1/2 hour per day to working PMP or GMAT

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Can you imagine setting a small daily habit on something you always wanted to do or learn? Let test drive this idea.

Happy with New Year’s Goals

Happy 2010!

How’s everyone’s first week?
Do you have resolution or goals for 2010?

Both resolutions & goals seems similar, but I just found it’s better to defining goals.
After trying resolution for a few year getting no where; Last year was just health & a blog; both were accomplish.

This year I am going to attempt more than last year. After my last 2 post with a year in review & my next decade goals, I have developed goals for 2010.

By writing it down, I am committing to reach these goals:

• Certified as a PMP: Always been a goal

• Take the GMAT: For my MBA goal

• Go to SXSW: Ever since I heard Malcolm Gladwell’s talk at SXSW, I always wanted to go.

• Get a Mentor: I just need careering advices

• Developing 1 iPhone App: Learn more about the mobile applications

• Maintaining Health & Exercising 2-3 Times/Week: Just because …

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What are your 2010 goals?

 Make sure to:
   – Write down your goals
   – Keep it somewhere
     (it’s in my iGoogle)

When you write goals down, you will find out what you are really willing commit to.

My 2009 Look Back

After listening to the December episode of 20/30 vision & their recommendation, so I decided to do my own “a year in review”.

Honestly, this was a simple year with simple goal to focus on health, keeping up with the blog.

This is my look back on my accomplishment:
– Health (Nutrition & Exercising)
– Regularly Blog
– Lead in a team
– Taking over role/responsibilities
– Experiencing large project with management of constant changes
– Finally completing the PM continue education Certificate
– Taking my first real vacation in my years of working (for the sake of relaxing)  =)

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Lessons learned:
We have a choice in our decision
It’s not what you think, we have have unconscious choice during life such as: deciding to listen, pay attention, taking action …

Teaching/Mentoring well can make all the difference
I found using my teaching skill, I was able to help coworker on learning a new system in 1-2 days & keep on seeing productivity improving. Then I compare with people (me included) whom had to learn by themselves & the impact in productivity & confidence.

If you don’t ask … you don’t get
During november, my boss stated there will be no vacations for the first half of 2010 due to the big push for the project go-live (unless it was already approved); at least that was everyone’s interpretations. Although I really wanted a week for SXSW in March … so I asked … and I got approved. Sometimes our assumption/interpretation can be just wrong, that’s why we need to ask.

The difference commitments can make
Going to the gym regular can be tricky … and sometimes down right hard; Not Committing vs Committing to health makes a real difference.

Teaching gains respect, especially when you leading them in the future
After training the people I lead in my area, I found more respect & commitment to the task I requested to accomplish from people that are younger & older than me.

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My biggest surprise was the power of teaching & mentoring. I always enjoy it & I do it to help others to waste less time on things than I did. The surprise came when I saw benefits on the teacher side in the business world. I was also surprised at there is such a un-relatedness between teaching & training. (after going in so many training sessions)

This exercise was fun! This post is definitely one that I’m going to revisit.

I am definitely recommending people doing a year-in-review for themselves, it quite refreshing!

Wow! A Decade has Already Passed in the Millennium?

In 10 days, we will be entering a new decade; It felt like a blink since the new millennium began & here we are 10 years later. To be honest, personally I thought nothing much happened … then I took a look at how the world changed.

In the last decade, we have seen:

• the first black US President in the White house
• how the world unite to help the Tsunami in one end of the world
• the empower of public voice through multiple web innovation
• every other business model being changed through the web (Newspaper, advertising, book publishing, globalization of business)
• the improvement in standard of living in many countries through globalization
• power of 1 individual bringing Apple back to life & became the most respected company
• no more film for cameras
• the ability to reconnect with people I met 10, 20 years ago through facebook
• …

Wow! That’s pretty impressive for the world within a decade.

Now when I look back at my last 10 years, it was interesting but I was hoping for more 10 years ago back in my college days. While writing this, it really feels time is running much much faster then I am. (I know, I know, it’s not what you did, but it’s about what you going to do)

As we get older, we find out:

“It’s not about how much time you have, it’s how you do with it.”

To take my first to achieve more in the next decade, here I will declare my 10 year look-forward:
– Being in a leadership role in a business organization
– Travel to a few countries in Europe and asia, plus at least 1 place per year
– Experience a full-time MBA program
– Mentor at least 3 person & being mentored by 3 persons
– Own a house/apartment with my own family

– Making my memoirs worth reading

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So … What’s your life projection in the next decade?

P.S.: I still can’t believe I can access any info any second in the palm of my hand

Vision, Mission … Mantra

In a previous post about the power of vision & mission … After writing the post, I realize some people has a bad feelings toward such things as vision & mission. For anyone that could careless about mission/vision, here a simple alternative from Guy Kawasaki:

Create a Mantra

Guy recommends instead of writing vision & mission where no one remember it; a much better alternative would be 3-5 word mantra. A few keywords that describe your purpose.

Here are some example from Guy’s post:
  Nike: “Authentic athletic performance”
  Target: “Democratize design”
  Wendy’s: “Healthy Fast Food”

In my opinion, the process of creating vision & mission is still really beneficial to the writers, because you get clear what you should be focusing on. After that creating a mantra would be a good idea. When strategizing in the future, I would:

1. Create a mission & vision: For the executives/self to reflect on
2. Create the mantra: To share & inspire others & self

After reviewing my mission & vision, I realized already got mine, which is: 
Teach, Lead, Careering.

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This mantra suggestion came from this keynote from Guy Kawasaki about startup; it’s super funny & lots to learn from. For people who want to know more, you should check the podcast mentioned & Guy also details this in his book, Reality Check.

How to Recover from a Loss of Will?

From my last post, we showed impact when someone lost the will to learn.

Problem: Once will is lost, you have unconscienceously given up … you are then just waiting for failure to hit.
Question: How to can you avoid such failures?

Here is a 3 simple step answer:
1st Step: Identify/Admit you have given up & imagine the outcome
     Once you identify the problem, then we will be able to foresee coming train wreck

2nd Step: Then you decide between these 3 choices

Continue in Limbo: Decide to put No change
Completely Give Up: Give up and do something else
          OR pass it on to others
Climb Back Up: Determine what you need to do breath life back to your project/job

3rd Step: Take those action

If you stay in a losing situations, it will just eventually blow-up. So the 2nd step is the key point to make us take control of such losing situations. Once a decision is made, a momentum will grow towards motivation to take action.

I had experience this so many times, and this is the most effective way that I have found to recover motivation toward a project/job/business.

The Importance of the Will to Learn at Work

After reading Water Cooler Wisdom’s post on ability to learn a few days ago; My interpretation of what was the important skill wasn’t the ability to learn, but it is the willingness to learn.

We are all trained on the ability to learn for 12 years in grade school, plus the extra few year in university in learning a specialization; But what differentiate people in school & work is the willingness to learn.

At my full-time, I notice on days I’m willing to learn & improve, I would take the initiative solve issues & push to learn how things work. While on days like the day I had today, I was on semi-autopilot in front of the computer, such as doing spreadsheet work, doing some system/issue checking & e-mails … . The good thing, because if I’m able to recognize this is happening, I’m able to reverse this.

At my part-time teaching job a few weeks ago, I had a new student that did really bad at multiplying 6, 7 & 8. What I find was that she kind of given up on it when she gave no effort in answering question and just said “I hates math”.

Do you see yourself doing something similar? (I did)
This hit home today, I find myself doing something similar. I wasn’t putting as much more effort & I said to myself that I hated doing a particular task.

For kids or grown-up, the will to learn can really make a difference in work & self improvement.