Make This Your Year to Work Smart and Live Well

By Judith Shenouda | Senior Member

It’s a brand new year and, as always, it gets busy fast. There is so much to do and time slips away just keeping up the usual routine. But this year can be different. You can pause, stop, and reflect. You can give yourself the space to figure out where you are heading, shift gears if you like, and even change direction.

In fact, that’s what I did several years back when the Great Recession hit. Projects were completed and new ones were delayed. I had the gift of time to think about ways to get out of my home office and out of town more frequently. Too much alone time writing and editing publications and managing a business was getting old. I remembered the joy of teaching years prior and thought that I would like to introduce more discussion, more conversation, and more human interaction into my life—not as a full-time teacher but as a presenter of seminars, webinars, and other talks.

I wondered how I could transition from a schedule filled with writing and editing publications, managing projects, and keeping a business humming along to one that included speaking gigs. If I could remember how I transitioned from teaching and academic support positions to technical communication and business ownership, maybe I could apply the same strategy to this new transition. By pausing, stopping, and reflecting, I mapped out 12 steps that, I believed, could get me from where I was in my career to where I wanted to be, from current state to future state. This 12-step process became a book (Career Success in 12 Easy Steps: A Journal) that is now my reservoir for ideas when crafting talks and writing articles, such as this.

In 12 steps, in 12 months, in just one year, you too can make progress. This can be your year to work smart and live well.

January—Get organized.

Start the year by doing what you likely do very well—get organized. Get a journal with lots of white space. Buy one that inspires you with motivational phrases, creative graphics, or probing questions. If you like, make your own. Whatever the form or shape of this paper or electronic journal, this will be your space to make notes, doodle, and dream. When you’re thinking through an issue, this is your place to capture ideas, satisfactions, and dissatisfactions; to identify areas that need a shift in focus, a change of direction, or a different perspective. This journal will become your resource, your repository to collect and, in time, to recollect.

February—Build yourself up.

Look around you. What have you created that makes you feel especially good? Did you transform some disastrously written input into a readable, usable masterpiece? Is someone who was floundering at work, at home, at school, at the gym, or in your community now thriving as a result of your involvement? If you look and listen, you’re likely to discover many artifacts—proof positive—that show you make a difference. Use your journal to note what you have done or are currently doing that is evidence of your good works. This month, begin to list your successes—small and large—and build yourself up. And remember, you get to define success in your own terms.

March—Know what makes you unique.

Pay attention to the full range of your capabilities. Some of them might be the same as or similar to those of others. Yet no two people are exactly the same. Your strength may be in how you approach your work, how you organize it, or how you strategize. Perhaps your aptitude in grasping complex concepts allows you to communicate with experts at a high level. Maybe your knack playing—and often winning—at cards, poker, mahjong, or chess helps you create interesting training activities. When leaving a job many years ago for a new endeavor, the boss remarked, “Someone will take your place, but you cannot be replaced.” That is true for each of us. Now get your thoughts down in your journal. Note the ways in which you are unique.

April—Create a roadmap.

With the first quarter of the year behind you, how are you doing? Recollect. Look back at your journal to see the issues that you are addressing, the shifts you want to make, and the direction you want to take. Next, create a roadmap. Identify where you are now on the map and the potential destinations. Include some road signs on your map. Where is the bump in the road, the caution, or the stop sign? At what juncture might you want to slow down or change directions? Remember, you can follow one road and, for whatever reason, decide to change direction. You can discard one map and simply create another.

May—Be fit.

To travel from where you are to where you want to go, you need to be fit in body and mind, at play and work. In your journal, design your own fitness routine, and then remember to exercise and practice regularly. Some days you may do a bit less. Other days you may do a bit more. You may stumble and face setbacks, but get up and keep going. The idea is to make progress on your own wellness journey. You want to have the energy, strength, and wherewithal to move your work and life in the desired direction.

June—Draw from the fullness of you.

Open the compartments. Open the doors. Transfer ideas. Let one area of your life touch, inform, and enrich another area. When you are crafting examples to help your audience understand a complex concept in a theory guide, deciding on an appropriate organizational pattern for the marketing collateral you are writing, or considering the best media for distributing content, draw from the breadth and depth of your knowledge and experience. Apply what you have learned from previous projects and seemingly unrelated pursuits—at work, at home, or in the community—to new endeavors. Draw from the fullness of your knowledge and experience to do good work.

July—Be a go-to guy or gal.

Who are your go-to people at work? Often, they are not necessarily those with the title of supervisor, manager, or boss. They are individuals you can comfortably and easily approach with your dilemma, your confusion, or your concern. You trust that you will be heard, that you will benefit—in some way related to this person’s expertise, character, intelligence, or other talent—from the conversation. Name these go-to people in your journal. Jot down what you can learn from them and then apply when others seek you out for advice or wise counsel. Whether you know if or not, you are likely someone’s go-to guy or gal.

August—Make it manageable.

Technical communicators make anything and everything manageable—and do so better than anyone else. After all, demystifying and simplifying the complexities of products and processes is just another day at the office. Finding relationships among the parts of the whole, showing how the whole works, and transforming gobbledygook into logical steps is our forte. So, go ahead and use this ability to make your own world manageable. Just as I came up with 12 steps to career success in the book I authored and used those steps as a launching pad for each month’s action in this article, you, too, can come up with a plan for whatever you want to accomplish. Use your journal to get your preliminary ideas into words or pictures and, from time to time, revisit, refine, and polish.

September—Expect even your best plans to go awry.

This month, the third quarter of the year closes and, no doubt, you have noticed that some of your best plans have gone awry, which is to be expected. I’m surprised when others are disturbed at the many irritations that surface—the job is more complex than anticipated and is taking longer and costing more; the subject matter experts are not prepared with input at scheduled meetings; the reviewers are changing correct grammar to incorrect grammar. On and on it goes. Stop being surprised and annoyed. Instead, anticipate what can derail your plans. You might create a three-column table in your journal. In the left column, write down the potential roadblocks or obstacles to success. In the middle column, consider the workarounds or the contingencies. In the right column, add your notes or reflections—the obstacle never occurred, a different issue arose, the workaround was a success, or the workaround was a failure. The idea here is to get it down in your journal, keep your wits about you, learn, and move on.

October—Set limits.

You, like all of us, have limitations and boundaries. There are only so many hours in a day, days in a week, and weeks in a year. You can do a lot, but you cannot do it all. So set your own limits. Create your own boundaries. And when the limits and boundaries are trespassed—and they surely will be—don’t be surprised. Don’t be upset. Have a contingency plan that allows for interruptions, and add this plan to the table you started last month in your journal. This month, use your journal to plan an ideal 24-hour day. List what must be included: basic needs, recreation, home responsibilities, work responsibilities, and anything else. Have a line item for a daily treat—that little something extra that makes each day worthwhile. Add a range of time to each item on your list. Remember that you have 24 hours­—that’s it. This should be sufficient time to do what you must do as well as what you love to do.

November—Give.

As a technical communicator, you have so much to give—truly. The guides, manuals, procedures, online Help, plans, reports, training modules, website content, and much more that you research, write, edit, publish, and distribute are a gift to the end user and other audiences in need of this information. Making the world of products, processes, services, technology, and so many complexities manageable—what you likely do, day in and day out—is a gift that keeps giving. No doubt, you’ve heard team members reading your publications comment, “So this is how it works.” You may have watched an engineer follow each step of a procedure you skillfully crafted. And you can only imagine the relief of the product user who finds the solution to a problem in the content you wrote with precision and clarity. So continue to give. Do it with a smile. Do it with gratitude that your work and you make a difference.

December—Receive.

Look through your journal and recollect. What does your journal tell you? Did you work smart? Did you live well? Consider the ah-has and the insights you gain from reading your journal a gift to yourself. Wrap up the year by noting the highlights, the lessons learned, your successes, and your progress. You can be your own best teacher, guide, and coach. You can be your own best friend. Now, in the spirit of the holiday season, receive the wonder of you.

Judith Shenouda (Shenouda@easescommunication.com) is owner of Shenouda Associates Inc. (http://easescommunication.com), a business that helps its clients research, write, and edit the professional publications that launch products, streamline processes, and promote brands. Judith has achieved recognition as a Toastmasters International Advanced Leader Bronze and Advanced Communicator Bronze and is co-founder of Thinking Forward (http://thinkingforward.us), a troupe of professional speakers. Judith presents seminars and webinars on topics related both to her business and the book she authored and published, Career Success in 12 Easy Steps: A Journal.