Yesterday I talked about career goals for 2009, focusing on fixing up my resume and having it ready as part of my overall career strategy.

Today I’ll share some of my other career goals.  Understand that I’m actually self-employed… this either means I’m (a) not looking for a job, or (b) always looking for the next gig

In fact, as someone who is self-employed I would say both… I’m always looking for my next gig, and you should be too.  I don’t care if you are happily employed at a big fat Fortune 100 company and you are getting ready to get the gold watch, or if you work at a small startup and are wondering how long you can ride the funding wave - we ALL need to be ready for the next thing.  Just like me, and everyone else who is self-employed.

Aside from the resume goals from yesterday’s post, here are five things I’m going to work on for next year - do any of these apply to you?

1. Diversify my income streams. When I got canned I hated that 100% of my income went away.  I resolved to have multiple income streams, and that has carried over to my business.  I have identified 10 income (revenue) streams for my business for 2009, projected them out to 2010, and started to seriously think about what resources I put into each of them (considering the growth potential and distraction factor (if one only generates $100 it is too distracting and not worth my effort)).  If you have ONE income stream the risks of financial problems probably increase for you if you were to get canned.  What are potential income streams for you in 2009?
2. Solidify my brand. I had the hardest time telling people what JibberJobber was when we first got started.  If you have heard many 30 second pitches you realize this is a problem most people have.  Ill-prepared pitches paint people into a corner or make them look like a jack-of-all-trades (master of none).  I will have a more solid brand, and all the messaging that goes around it, so when people ask me what I do (or what JibberJobber does, or what my books are about, etc.) I’ll be able to communicate that effectively.  Is your brand solidified?
3. Strengthen my messaging channels. Being a speciliast, or expert, or service provider, or thought leader isn’t really any good if no one knows who you are or what you bring to the table.  I’ve realized that in order to sell more stuff I need to reach more people, and I have plenty of tools to do this.  In 2009 my messaging channels will get stronger so that my brand can be communicated.  What are your messaging channels?  (here’s a free idea: write an article for your association/industry magazine or newsletter)
4. Create the mentoring relationships I’ve needed. I’ve surrounded myself by amazing people, and have had the opportunity to chat with them on a personal level.  Underneath every huge success story is a normal human being, someone who would be happy to help.  I’ve neglected the opportunities I’ve had to get the leadership, management and industry mentoring I’ve needed, simply because I haven’t asked.  In 2009 I’ll ask, and I’ll create a powerful web of mentors.  Who is mentoring you?
5. Help more people. I believe I’ll get help as I help more people.  But even if I don’t get any tangible or financial help, I’ll have a peace of mind that comes from serving others.  Sometimes we need to give just to give, and serve just because it’s the right thing to do.  If you think you have nothing to give, or nowhere to serve, I guarantee I can find someone worse off than you.  From extending a warm handshake, hug or smile to giving cash to giving of your time, you have something to give, and I will work on giving more in 2009.  What can you do to help more people?

These are five of my goals for 2009… they are for my business.  What are your goals, as CEO of Me, Inc?

This is the sixth in a series of eight posts, each linked to one of eight categories in the Career Resumes blog. These posts sum up the best pieces of advice, tips, direction, insights, and answers discovered and shared on the blog by Allen Voivod, Chief Blogger for Career-Resumes.com from October 2006 to September 2008.

Work-life balance is a tricky thing to opine upon. In the abstract, it’s kind of meaningless. It’s not like you can say:

“1.5 hours of work is the equivalent of 2.2 hours of conscious life (removing sleep from the equation), and I’m at work for 9.5 hours a day on average, and my commute is about 1.25 hours per day each way, and it takes me about 0.45 hours to de-brief my spouse on the work day when I get home, and I’m usually awake for 17.5 hours a day, so that means I must stay awake an extra 0.94 hours each day in order to get my work and life in balance.”

Phew. Not that simple.

But you can make the concept of having an appropriate work/life balance a lot easier to get your hands around by asking yourself three simple questions:

1. What’s important to me in my life? A certain level of physical fitness is more important to some people than others, for example. A need for quality child care, or flexible works hours, may be crucial for working parents. We walk around with ideas about what’s important to us in our heads, but until we stop to put them down on paper, and get clear on our life priorities, assessing the current state of your work-life balance is difficult.

2. Does my current position meet my needs? It might – you may not have explored enough to know for sure. (Seriously. When’s the last time you really read through your company’s Employee Handbook? Like, never?) To go along with examples cited above, does your company (or its health plan) offer a gym membership benefit? Can you telecommute, get on-site child care, work 4/40 or 9/80 schedules, or start and end your days earlier?

3. What’s it worth to you? If your job can’t meet the needs you say are important, you need to ask yourself the hard questions, all of which boil down to the “What’s it worth?” idea. It’s a gut check – “Do I really need it? Do I need it so much that I’m willing to start a job search to find a company that can meet the need?”

That’s what it boils down to – get clear on what matters, and everything about your work situation comes into focus.

So my father-in-law, apropos of nothing, suddenly announces that he doesn’t understand why women aren’t allowed to wear shorts in the workplace.

Huh?

I asked him a couple of time to explain how this constitutes a dress code oppression on professional women, and I still don’t quite get it. It’s not like men are allowed to wear shorts and women aren’t, right? And if it’s a comfort/skin breathability thing, women can wear dresses or skirts, so why do they need to wear shorts?

Unfortunately, my father-in-law thinks I’m mocking him when I say I don’t get it, but I truly don’t get where he’s coming from.

Shorts are universally considered casual clothing, and since then, I’ve been in a couple of corporate offices where shorts appeared on both genders – during Casual Friday.

Ladies, are you dying to wear shorts at work, beyond Casual Friday? If I’m out of my gourd, do let me know.

And while the jury may be out on shorts, it’s come in on pantyhose. According to a report on this morning’s Good Morning America, the insurance company ALFAC considers “work-life balance” more important than requiring its female employees to wear pantyhose.

Even though we write about work-life balance here on the blog from time to time, I must admit I hadn’t considered dress code as a part of the work-life balance calculation. But hose, as well as neckties, get covered by GMA, and they’ve also issued a challenge through Diane Sawyer. If you’re a man who wants to try wearing hose for a day, and email their producers, you could actually get your 15 minutes of fame with them.

P.S. The GMA report was an offshoot of a recent Wall Street Journal article on the same subject. (Subscription may or may not be required, depending on who you ask.)

On the heels of a recent blog post in regard to saying “No,” I thought I’d expand on one of the examples provided in a linked article from Real Simple magazine:

Saying No for the Sake of Your Time
Request: You are offered a promotion that you don’t want. Even though it means more money, it demands more hours and more of what your boss calls responsibility and you call tedium.

What You Should Say: “I’m flattered that you want me, but for personal reasons I’m not in a situation where I can take this on. Perhaps in a year from now things will be different. Can we talk again if my circumstances change?”

Why It Works: If you’re caught in this enviable dilemma, your boss will understand you have personal priorities that take precedence.

Why You Shouldn’t Feel Guilty: By saying no to more time at the office, you’re saying yes to other things you cherish, be they long walks alone at sunset or evening time with your children.

How to Avoid the Situation in the Future: “If a position opens up at your workplace, you could let it be known that you are not in the running,” author Patti Breitman suggests. Being forthright saves your manager the trouble of pursuing a candidate who isn’t interested.

So the question arises: Will your boss *really* understand you have personal priorities that take precedence? Or will he or she:

1. Not take that as a one-time thing, and refuse to consider you for other positions in the future?

2. See you as being less of a team player, and put a negative checkmark next to your name in their mental management book?

Heaven help me, I fear #1 or #2 (or both!) could be the case. So may I amend the suggestion a little bit?

1. Negotiate. Is there anything you could do to re-frame the offer in a way that maintains your work-life balance, even if it means pulling in a lower salary than that originally offered? (Which is probably still higher than what you’re getting now, anyway.) You can say that it’s not the salary that’s so important to you (which gladdens a boss’ heart) as much as it is the ability to do the job well and still provide excellent service to your company.

2. Offer to help. You’ve undoubtedly got a network of contacts. If you’re going to say no, would you at least also considering saying something like, “I know a few people who might be interested in a position like the one you’re offering. Would you mind if I made a few phone calls for you?”

Hopefully, this adds an extra measure of comfort to your situation.

Don’t gamble with your résumé. Get a free résumé critique from Career-Resumes.com® today. Peter Newfield, President of Career-Resumes.com® and the résumé expert for BlueSteps.com, The Ladders, and former expert for Spencer Stuart Talent Network, leads a crack team of résumé writers with over 100 years of combined experience. Invest in your executive career at Career-Resumes.com®.

My son suddenly decided he loves that old Three Dog Night song “One [Is the Loneliest Number]” and I’ve been paying a bit closer attention to the lyrics as a result.

This line hit me the other day: “No is the saddest experience you’ll ever know.” And I thought to myself, “Are you kidding? ‘No’ is possibly the happiest experience some people will ever know.”

I’m talking in terms of what you say “Yes” and “No” to, in life in general and specifically when it comes to your work-life balance.

Granted, the first few times of saying “No” can be as stressful as anything you ever do. The folks at the Mayo Clinic realize this, and they’ve come up with a primer for saying “No” that’s perfectly straightforward.

That said, it might help for you to read a few role-playing examples, to see how saying “No” works in action, and why you can get away with it, with the right phrasing. Head over to the Real Simple website to check that out for yourself. (They supposedly have video on it there as well, but for some reason it wouldn’t load after about 10 minutes of waiting.)

Now, if you really want to get advanced in saying no, you can do something described in this blog post about saying “No” as a default response to whatever situation presents itself. The writer, Derek Sivers, relates this great little nugget of a story in there:

In June of 2003, Steve Jobs gave a small private presentation about the iTunes Music Store to some independent record label people … My favorite line of the day was when people kept raising their hand saying, “Does it do (x)?”, “Do you plan to add (y)?”. Finally Jobs said, “Wait wait - put your hands down. Listen: I know you have a thousand ideas for all the cool features iTunes *could* have. So do we. But we don’t want a thousand features. That would be ugly. Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It’s about saying NO to all but the most crucial features.“

As with iTunes, so with your life and work. Say “Yes” to what’s most important.

Of course, you’ll have to decide what’s most important in your life. But that’s another conversation entirely.

Don’t gamble with your résumé. Get a free résumé critique from Career-Resumes.com® today. Peter Newfield, President of Career-Resumes.com® and the résumé expert for BlueSteps.com, The Ladders, and former expert for Spencer Stuart Talent Network, leads a crack team of résumé writers with over 100 years of combined experience. Invest in your executive career at Career-Resumes.com®.

One of the interesting things about achieving the dream of a satisfactory “work/life balance” is that no one ever says they have too much life and not enough work. Why is that?

Well, maybe there’s no such thing as too much life, I suppose.

But one way to bring the work thing back into balance, which we haven’t touched on here in the blog yet, is efficiency. Not the “work smarter, not harder” kind of efficiency, but the “Getting Things Done” kind of efficiency.

Yes, for those of you who actually refer to “Getting Things Done” as “GTD,” I’m talking about David Allen, the personal productivity guru. Now, in full disclosure, I’ve heard many great things about how useful he’s been to friends of mine, but one thing that I, personally, haven’t gotten done, is get through his book.

But what I did recently do is read this profile of Allen in Wired magazine, and – my goodness – what a colorful life he’s lived. It’s almost no wonder he’s on a relentless pursuit for a quiet mind.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t entirely happy with the Wired piece. Which is to be expected when it comes to media coverage, but I digress. The reason I’m bringing this up here on the blog is because, when it comes to improving your work/life balance when you feel like the work side’s out of whack, the answer may not be just going off by yourself for a couple hours every night, and every other weekend.

That balance issue is often tied to on-the-job stress, and anything you can do to lower your stress level has to be a good thing. So that’s my advice – that, and check out the article about David, which is just a plain old fascinating read regardless of the implications it might have for your existence.

It may sound kind of geeky, but I have to be honest – I love Wikipedia. My wife’s been teasing me about it recently, in fact, and deservedly so. I mention it about a couple of times a day, and find myself looking up stuff there quite often.

So when it came time to write a blog post about work-life balance this week, I had the sudden flash of, “Hey! I wonder what Wikipedia has to say about work-life balance!”

Turns out, quite a lot. Apparently, it’s been a concept in use for about 30 years, which really blew my mind. Have we as a culture been struggling with this for three decades, really? Yes, we have:

The expression work-life balance was first used in 1986 in the US (although had been used in the UK from the late 1970s by organizations such as New Ways to Work and the Working Mother’s Association) to help explain the unhealthy life choices that many people were making; they were choosing to neglect other important area of their lives such as family, friends, and hobbies in favor of work-related chores and goals. Over the past twenty-five years there has been a substantial increase in work which is felt to be due, in part, by information technology and by an intense, competitive work environment.

And the United State history section is particularly fascinating – a real conversation starter, which I plan to bring up with my father-in-law (who’s both a union member and a Republican – I thought you couldn’t be both, but apparently I was wrong).

People out there writing resumes and looking for resume help have undoubtedly felt the effects of changes in work-life balance – even if they state that their workload isn’t the motivating factor behind their desire for a career change.

Are you feeling the pressure, too?

Don’t gamble with your résumé. Get a free résumé critique from Career-Resumes.com® today. Peter Newfield, President of Career-Resumes.com® and the résumé expert for BlueSteps.com, The Ladders, and former expert for Spencer Stuart Talent Network, leads a crack team of résumé writers with over 100 years of combined experience. Invest in your executive career at Career-Resumes.com®.

And by sleep, I’m talking figuratively, though some folks do wake up with the blinding realization of what to do with their careers…

No, what I’m talking about is how many of us (yes, I’ve been guilty of this a lot of the years) just accept what’s offered to us in our work and our lives, rather than actively living by a set of values and choosing to accept or decline based on those values - or to go out and get something for yourself when the choices you’re offered don’t work for you.

I took some time to go over the Work Values Checklist from Monster.com today, and found it to be a simple and powerful tool for getting your values up into your conscious thinking level - which is a great start, because the more you’re aware of those values, the better chance you have of making decisions in line with them. And that leads to a more satisfying work life (and life life).

The one thing that didn’t quite ring true for me was the “golden handcuffs” description of the Extrinsic Values. Sure, people use certain qualities of their work as excuses to stay in a position. But if those qualities are of importance, then you need to know that to be able to find the right job elsewhere, especially if your current position fails you on the Intrinsic and Lifestyle Values.

(Maybe I’m just being fussy, but I would’ve liked to see a greater acknowledgment of their importance.)

If you set aside 15 minutes or so to go through it, I think you’ll be pretty pleased with what it reveals. And if you’re not sure how this will help you in your executive job search, consider this quote from the end of the article:

Finally, write two or three sentences describing or summarizing how your values will translate into your ideal job. Knowing what’s important will help you prepare for your next interview or help you find increased satisfaction with the job you have.

It’ll also help with your resume preparation, I daresay.

Don’t gamble with your résumé. Get a free résumé critique from Career-Resumes.com® today. Peter Newfield, President of Career-Resumes.com® and the résumé expert for BlueSteps.com, The Ladders, and former expert for Spencer Stuart Talent Network, leads a crack team of résumé writers with over 100 years of combined experience. Invest in your executive career at Career-Resumes.com®.

I’ve worked with a couple of different mentors over the last year or two. One, as mentioned in a previous post, is a marketing expert. The other helps with the mind game, success habits, and goal achievement.

One of the things she worked with me on was planning and organization. And no, we’re talking about the kind of organization that involves getting a bunch of little baskets and dividing things into piles of “Do,” “Delegate,” “Delay,” and so forth.

I mean organization in terms of creating time blocks to handle regularly occurring management tasks and client service. This way, I could more efficiently plan for success, and get an idea of whether I was being utterly realistic about what I hoped to achieve in a given day/week/month.

My problem was that I’d been unrealistic, trying to fit way too much into too small a time block. Seeing this, and planning better, has led me to calmer days. I don’t tend to feel hopelessly behind anymore, and I don’t feel anxious about what needs to be done.

As a manager, executive, C-level-type person, this kind of time blocking is a highly useful skill to pick up, especially when faced with interview questions that deal with prioritization, management style, et cetera.

But it’s also good from a work-life balance perspective, too. When you start blocking out your time – not just your work time, but your home time, too – you can easily identify whether you’ve become a workaholic without having realized it. You can objectively see whether you’re getting enough time to enjoy your family. You can also see whether you’re getting enough time to take care of yourself, mentally and physically.

You can use Microsoft Outlook to start time blocking, or get more sophisticated with calendars from FranklinCovey, Day Runner, or Cotton Systems. Try time blocking for a month, and you’ll learn a lot about your work and life priorities – and how different they are from what you think they might be.

Don’t gamble with your résumé. Get a free résumé critique from Career-Resumes.com® today! Peter Newfield, President of Career-Resumes.com® and the résumé expert for BlueSteps.com, The Ladders, and former expert for Spencer Stuart Talent Network, leads a crack team of résumé writers with over 100 years of combined experience. Invest in your executive career at Career-Resumes.com®!

I just heard the hoary old saw again, and it’s perfect for repeating in this forum. You know the one, about how no one ever laid on their deathbed wishing they’d spent more time in the office.

Well, why not? If you’re doing work that’s truly rewarding, if your executive career has something to emotionally fulfill not only yourself, but your family, your community, your society…but then again, there are very few people on earth with jobs like that. And if you’re prepping your resume for a job search right now, getting a job like that isn’t likely to appear realistic.

I think it’d be really refreshing to hear of someone whose job was so satisfying that he or she could die wishing they’d done more, and the family around them wouldn’t resent that statement.

But in all honesty, the best sort of deathbed expression is the ability to say that you got the balance between work and play right.

We’ve gone over the balance question a few times on this blog, and knowing that the upcoming holiday will be filled with time dedicated to family and friends, I thought it worthwhile to bring it up again for your consideration. As you write that resume of yours, think about the balance you’ve struck between work and play in your current management position.

Are you considering updating your resume because it’s time to move onward and upward? Or are you just getting burned out in your current position because you’re not taking enough time to refresh, recharge, and stay motivated?

It may seem odd for the blog writer on a resume writing service website to suggest that, just maybe, you consider doing something other than writing your resume and changing executive positions. But here, writing the resume is just the action to achieve a goal. The real issue at hand is, why are you looking for a new job? What’s your goal, what are you really trying to achieve in your life that your current job just isn’t satisfying?

Sometimes the answers may mean work isn’t the problem. It’s life.