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A popular tip I’ve been reading lately during my job hunt (and therefore my resume reconstruction) is that resumes are a like a brochure of oneself and one’s skills – they’re meant to be a sales pitch and a marketing tool, rather than just a plain list of all your skills and qualifications. Consider resumes to be a way to express why they should buy you and you’ll be a million times more successful in your endeavors.

Not only should resumes be a marketing tool, but I believe now that the best way to be successful is to run oneself entirely like a business. Here’s how.

Energy, Time, and Money Performances

In business, every year, quarter, or even day, a few sheets are produced that show how successfully a business has been run. They are the balance sheet, the income statement, and a few other papers detailing important accounting stats. I think people should produce similar audits regarding their performance in work, in play, and in other areas that are important to them, such as family time and networking. Check to see if your investments (of time, of energy, and, of course, of money) were worth your while. Find a way to calculate a return on investment and stick with it over time. You should see positive trends. If not, it’s time to make a change.

Treat yourself as an employee

In business, we have something called human capital or human resources, which refers to the people who are involved in production. Most businesses periodically do performance reviews of every employee to give and receive feedback on what can be done to ensure the company runs as a well-oiled machine. I suggest periodically doing a performance review of yourself, where you defend decisions, provide feedback, and check to see what could have been improved upon, and then make necessary changes to enhance productivity.

Think about it: Do you deserve to keep your “job?”

Invest in yourself

Small businesses in particular have to invest in themselves in order to continue operations – usually over a period of a few years, until business picks up enough to support the company as a whole. Similarly, people require investments to keep running. It is insanely difficult to improve oneself without expending time, energy, or money. So if your investments send you into the “red” temporarily, it’s okay, so long as you get a high return on investment as I mentioned above. A vacation to keep your sanity also counts as an investment.

Outsource

Most executives do very little work directly involved in production. That is because they have better things to do, like running the company. Similarly, if you are to be truly successful, you must outsource some of your own tedious tasks in order to focus on what gives you the most return.

Perfectionism

Not that any of this has to be perfect. As long as your system is working for you and advancing you to higher levels of performance, it is fine. You may never be where you want to be – indeed, few of us ever are – but you will be moving forward, which is the important part. I define success as moving out of survival and into comfort because that seems to be the single factor that ties together the people who I consider successful: comfort.

What do you think? Am I way off on my assumptions? After all, I’m not the most comfortable person ever.

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Now that we have a diagnosis of too many projects, it is time to discuss remedying the problem.

Write your project list

To begin with, we will need to come up with a list of all our projects, similar to the one that I made in the diagnosis post. To be fair, here it is again for reference:

1. Programming a website from scratch;
2. Starting my career as a professional belly dance performer and instructor;
3. Continuing my web design business;
4. Writing on this blog;
5. Writing on my professional “Hey this is me” blog;
6. Opening a belly dance online store;
7. Planning my wedding, which is less than a month away;
8. Writing a book about starting a business;
9. Hunting for a job in Albuquerque and…;
10. Looking for a place to live in Albuquerque before…;
11. Moving to Albuquerque in order to keep on…;
12. Getting my college education.

Review your list

Now, some of these do not make a lot of sense in the context of project management. For example, I will continue my college education no matter what – that is one project I will not drop until it is complete.

Additionally, some of these become mini-projects when they are broken down. Looking for a place to move involves trying to get my credit score higher and putting together a nice references list. Getting a college education involves making money, which means finding a job, and finding scholarships, which involves a lot of things, including writing essays and participating in extracurricular activities.

Expand your list

So let’s take a look at all your projects. Break them down into a long list like this one:

• Find and join an extracurricular club or volunteer for an organization (for college).
• Write an amazing scholarship application essay (for college).
• Rewrite resume (for a job, for a place to live).
• Apply to about a thousand jobs (for a job, for a place to live).
• Check out credit report and correct errors (for a place to live).
• Pay down credit cards to increase credit score (for a place to live).
• Check in with client about website to design (to pay down credit cards, for a place to live).

Perhaps the most overlooked and yet most important part of this list is tacked on right at the end, where you tell yourself why you are doing what you are doing. It is important to productivity to be reminded what is supposed to be getting done, exactly, and also important to prioritizing, which is, conveniently, our next step.

Prioritize

The first major step to correcting a lack of time is to prioritize projects.

Find your context

What we want to do is figure out how we are going to prioritize. For example, a lot of my projects require the root of all evil: that is, money. So, it would be wise in this case to prioritize according to how much something will cost and how much money it will make. Blogging is, for the most part, free, but it costs a large investment of time, which is another commodity. If you have unlimited money, perhaps time would be a better solution. Or, if you are like me, and you lack money and want to use your time for the best return, perhaps breaking down the list by both would be wise.

Break it down

Now that we have chosen how to break everything down, it is time to actually do so. Every item on the project list should have a “cost” and a “return” next to it, if you have chosen a product that has such qualities – something like time, money, or energy.

My list looks something like this:

• Blogging – time intensive, little upfront return, medium return over time
• Writing on established sites – time intensive, some upfront return, little return over time
• Regular work – time varies, medium upfront and long-term returns
• Web design – time intensive, high upfront return, small long-term return

Your analysis may look completely different, but this is what I find works best for me.

Organize

The final step in prioritizing is to actually do so. Think about what you want to spend the most of in this situation. Do you want to dedicate a lot of time upfront for high long-term returns, or would you rather jump onto the bandwagon and plug away for somewhat similar returns over the course of a lifetime? Figure out which projects should make their ways higher up the list. But, do not do this all at once. Rather, think on a scale of 1 to 10 (the numbers are arbitrary) and assign a value to each project one at a time. This will help you to think in terms of the project, rather than relative to other projects. This is important for later.

Here’s my list:

• Blogging (8)
• Job (7)
• Writing on established website (2)
• Web design (7)

Analyze

As you can see from my list, blogging is my highest-ranked priority. This is because it provides reasonable returns over time, is almost free to do, and because it gives me  the most amount of joy. Although it takes a lot of effort, it will pay off in the long run.

What I ranked lowest was writing for an established website, such as Associated Content, because it does not provide a terribly high return, and I consider it somewhat soul-crushing.

In this case, ignoring all other possibilities for making money and successfully moving to Albuquerque, blogging looks like the best bet for my mental health. However, with such a short amount of time to earn a return on my time, perhaps a regular full-time job would be my best bet.

Putting it to work

So now that we have our projects prioritized, what do we do? It is time to select an item or a few items from our projects list which are most important to us and begin working on completing them. For example, moving to Albuquerque, continuing my college education, programming, and writing will be my handful of projects.

Additionally, it is important to select a chunk of time to dedicate to each project so that they will not become crossed and mixed together, which must be avoided at all costs.

For example, every few days, I review Craigslist postings for new jobs I could do in Albuquerque. Every day, I set aside about two hours for writing. I study at least twenty hours per week. I program with the rest of my free time, when I have the sanity for it.

After all this, I still usually have time to do other things, like planning my wedding or travel, and dancing. Because of all this, I consider my project management to be balanced and healthy.

What about you? Care to share your project list? Do you have to prioritize, or are you doing well enough managing everything at once?

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At one time, being successful meant relaxing on a beach in Cabo, tapping on a Blackberry to check Swiss bank accounts. These days, however, times have changed, and being successful tends to be equivalent to being busily working away at the top of a huge company. The more we have to do, it seems, the more successful we appear to be to others. I define success as being happy and at peace, however, so I decided to do a two-part series about how to tell if you have too many projects and how to remedy the situation.

How much is too much?

The first problem we need to tackle is defining how much is too much, in terms of project management. Some may prefer a number, but I prefer to express “too much” in relation to how much work and energy something takes and how much distress it causes.

As an example, I am currently juggling twelve major projects. I am:

1. Programming a website from scratch;
2. Starting my career as a professional belly dance performer and instructor;
3. Continuing my web design business;
4. Writing on this blog;
5. Writing on my professional “Hey this is me” blog;
6. Opening a belly dance online store;
7. Planning my wedding, which is less than a month away;
8. Writing a book about starting a business;
9. Hunting for a job in Albuquerque and…;
10. Looking for a place to live in Albuquerque before…;
11. Moving to Albuquerque in order to keep on…;
12. Getting my college education.

However, I can handle this many projects. It can be rough at times, but as long as I dedicate blocks of time to developing single projects and keep my to-do lists focused and organized, I am successful at doing everything.

Many people juggle this many projects – or even more – at once. It can be difficult to keep every ball up in the air at times, which is when problems begin to happen, things get neglected, and people feel forgotten and small. I define “too many” here as “causing detriment.”

So, if you feel a great pressure on your life from your many projects, it may be time to begin fixing the situation in order to have a more enjoyable experience. We only live once, so it is very important to have a good time the first time around.

Now that you have a diagnosis, it may be a good idea to read a remedy for having too many projects.

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With such a belief, I cannot help but wonder what my balance is between positivity and negativity. I find myself doing positive things for selfish reasons. I help others because I believe it will benefit myself. This is not intentional. Rather, it is the result of being an enlightened egoist. I cannot help but be somewhat selfish.

So I wonder, reader, do you worry about karma? What kind of energy are you sending out into the universe? Do you feel like you do a good job of keeping your actions positive, or do you think you could be a little more “good” in your intentions sometimes?

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Unfortunately, there are some people around who are toxic. Many of us end up befriending a toxic person at one time or another, even going so far as to marry them occasionally. They usually cannot tell that they are negatively affecting those around them. Rarely, people will call them on their behaviors and effect a positive change. Most of the time, however, they will continue living without a clue as to how badly they are acting.

If you are concerned you may be a toxic friend, then this is the guide to read. I will talk about how to tell if you are toxic and also how to change.

Let’s begin with a definition. A toxic friend is one who drags down the people around them. They act negatively, and cause others to follow their behaviors. They are those who feel like psychic vampires: sucking the energy out of the room, they manage to bring down those around them.

Are you a toxic friend?

Do you…

• Judge others constantly, always assessing them as beneath you, including your friends?
• See the worst in others and fail to see any good whatsoever?
• Talk down yourself in the hopes others will give you positive attention?
• Manipulate others into doing actions they would not normally do, that will ultimately hurt them directly or indirectly?
• Hurt others by criticizing them, without providing a constructive reason for it?

If you answered yes to two or more of these, you may be a toxic friend.

How to change

If you have been ruled toxic by your own admittance, you have already complete the first step: awareness. You have now become aware of your own actions. Carry this step onward with you. Every time you do something, ask yourself something: Am I hurting somebody by doing this? If the answer is yes, I advise not doing it.

Another requirement to creating a change is to make a conscious effort to do something differently. That’s what change is: doing something differently. Commit yourself to becoming a better friend: one who will support others, be a positive influence, and live according to guiding principles that lead to a happy and kind life.

Always try to do for others what you want them to do for you. Never become greedy or manipulative. Periodically, review what you have done for others over the last week, month, or year. Ask yourself if you have given as much as you have taken. If you have, then you are on the right track. Become more selfless, although getting a benefit from altruistic actions is perfectly acceptable.

Once you have become aware and work on changing your actions, I guarantee you will see a positive change in your life. Others will begin to respect and enjoy being around you. They will know that you are looking out for their best interests. You will become a better person.

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1. I do not eat out as much.
2. I use coupons.
3. I look for free stuff.
4. I invest every penny I save.
5. I do not drive.
6. I try to only make money from home.
7. I have expanded my interests and possible careers to more than just writing.
8. I have worked on my employability skills faithfully.
9. I have lived at home, or with roommates, the entire time.
10. I have cut back on smoking (and am working on quitting).
11. I seek free forms of therapy, like hobbies and writing, rather than always staying on medications and seeing a therapist weekly.
12. I have tried to create passive income as much as possible.
13. I am more productive, but more stressed.
14. I have made more friends who would prefer to stay home.
15. I cook a lot more.
16. I do not buy name brands unless I have a coupon.
17. I have begun exercising more to work off the extra weight I have put on from the stress.
18. I have begun meditating.
19. I am happier.
20. I am healthier.
21. I am better financially.

I have learned many things about being frugal, both from necessity and from desire to master a new skill. We rarely do things outside of the home because things inside are just as enjoyable and are much cheaper to do. I find myself spending more time talking with family and less time getting into trouble.

I hope some of these are relateable. What have you done since the recession, either directly or indirectly?

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My favorite part?

• Take the amount you would have used for a down payment and put it into an index fund or other investment vehicle depending on your risk tolerance.
• If your mortgage payment would be greater than your rent, take the difference and invest that, too.

If you’re looking for a good summary of the rent vs. buy debate, or if you just want a pretty good personal finance read, check out the full article.

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How to keep employees motivated, however, can be somewhat of a challenge. Faced with such a task in the movie Office Space, managers could only think of stock options to satiate the need for an improvement in morale. While a viable option, not all businesses have stock to provide to employees.

Another common method is to up a benefits package or wages, or to pay a bonus to those employees who finish extra units. This has limited advantages, though, and commission-based pay is rarely a good way for a business to be structured. It may lead to the most sales at times, but few employees will be happy with their pay structure. Another problem with this is that not all businesses can afford to pay their employees extra money (either up-front or through benefits).

Because of all this, this article is about how to motivate employees without paying them.

What’s in it for me?

The first principle many marketers learn is to always answer one question with everything you do: “What’s in it for me?” The first thing you must do to keep employees productive is to satisfy this same question.

Answer me this: What do your employees get out of you shipping a few extra units, or selling another hundred dollars of merchandise? Will you actually be returning anything to them, or are you just in this for yourself?

The key to satisfying this is to be selfless, even if it is just for a moment.

Talk with them

After deciding what is in it for your employees, have a heart-to-heart. Share your concerns, your worries about what may happen if they perform poorly. Tell them you really need more productivity, because business is at stake. When you do this, you are no longer a pointy-haired boss, but rather have become a human being. Additionally, nobody wants to lose a job. If you think your business may be at risk of closing, tell your employees. They will appreciate the time they have to look for another job (should the need arise) and in turn will work harder to keep things afloat.

What are your ways for keeping employees motivated without money?

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