Increased Professional Dedication

Yet another day in the life of NaBloPoMo, the 17th in fact, finds me discussing work and my level of dedication to that endeavor. One of the things I've learned about trying to post every day is that, unless there is a plan for the content and schedule of the posts, topics jump all over the place. My strategy of posting about something that's occurred or I've thought over the course of the preceding twenty-four hours has topics either clustering for a bit, or veering wildly all over the map. Another kernel of wisdom to carry forward.

I work for a living. That revelation is probably a huge shock, I know, but it has to be said. The occupation that keeps a roof over our heads, food on the table, and clothes on our backs (I ran out of cliched terms to put in this sentence) happens to be instrumentation and control engineering, mostly in the municipal wastewater arena. Arriving at this job after almost seven years working in the semiconductor industry, I started almost from the bottom and have had to do an awful lot of learning the craft on the fly. There have been many good days, when I feel , if only for a moment that I really 'get it'. These days are often immediately followed by a violent coming back to earth, when an inadvertent error or missed facet of a project comes back to haunt me. In between all of this are the days spent struggling to keep my head above water. Now this might sound familiar to many of you, and I could happily continue in this pattern and be a valuable and happy employee.

But I choose not to continue this cycle. During a bit of sleeplessness last night, I came to the conclusion that this wasn't what I wanted to do or the person I wanted to be. As this point in my career and my family life, I owe it to myself, my employer and my family to improve my work performance and achieve the success in business that I feel I've achieved in my personal life. This is not going to be a quick fix, and it will most certainly not be easy.

This line of thinking came about partially because of an impromptu meeting between my 'boss' and I late last week. He and I discussed my career path and where I saw myself going within the company and the group, and as I stated my desire to transition from the primarily engineering ranks into the world of project management, it dawned on me that changes need to be made for this to happen and be successful. While lying awake thinking last night, mulling over how to accomplish this task, I created a bit of a checklist of things to work on or do to make the process go more smoothly and to increase my professional success and standing, regardless of what lies in store.

• Lose some weight. This will be a difficult bullet to cross off this list, but it will serve many purposes. I will gain more self-confidence, look better in both personal and professional settings, improve my health, and be around longer for my family.
• Get more regular haircuts. My hair often is longer than it should be, as I loathe to spend the money to get it trimmed at an interval where it would still look good (for me, probably every three weeks). There's also the factor that it's become far more difficult to budget the time to take care of this annoying task.
• Shave more promptly. I'll be the first to admit that I don't budget my time in the mornings efficiently, and I often choose a few more minutes of sleep or time with the kids over shaving. As I currently sport a beard, the effect is not as striking as if I were without facial hair, but it is unprofessional nonetheless. I will improve my efforts to shave regularly and improve my professional appearance.
• Dress more professionally. As I am overweight, I don't look good in many types of clothes, and khakis are one of those types of clothes. These are my best option for the business casual attire required for my line of work, and yet I wear jeans to work every day. This needs to change and, combined with my proposed weight loss, would greatly improve my appearance in the workplace.
• Become more focused while at work. Like many in the workplace today, I find it difficult to resist the call of the Internet and the information and entertainment it offers. While it is a required tool in my job, I need to reduce the amount of time I find myself lured away from productive work and better focus on the task at hand. This should improve my productivity and whittle down the 'to-do list' that's been accumulating in my brain.
• Develop a delivery system for my portion of the projects, that allows for a consistently accurate and repeatable product more efficiently. The foundation of this idea, at this point, is a design manual, containing useful sheets, formulas, articles and information, arranged in such a way that it can be easily accessed and followed throughout the course of each project. I've been gathering this information since I started work, including jotting down notes on particularly tricky items, and keeping little pearls of wisdom gained only by previous failures. By collecting, cataloging and arranging all of these things, I hope to put together a road map to follow in the future that will help not only myself, but my entire department.

For many of you, these items will seem to be no-brainers, and it's absolutely true. For years, I've understood that I should be paying more attention to my personal appearance, as it can make or break a first impression. Since the company I work for has a very lax dress code, and the fact that I've let my appearance slide in the face of mounting familial responsibilities, the end result is something I'm not proud of when I look in the mirror. By simply paying closer attention to the small details, I can greatly improve the impression I project to my coworkers, peers and clients.

Putting the above details into print is the easy part. The difficult part is yet to come. Over the next week, my intent is to develop a plan or schedule on how to achieve each of these items, and create tangible goals and schedules to make the entire exercise more 'real.' I will share these as I make progress, and hopefully the use of this blog to record milestones will encourage me to keep true to the task. This doesn't mean that I won't be writing about games or my family any more, but it will mean that you'll see weekly updates on the tasks I've undertaken.

Well, now that I've completed the brain dump, it's time to get some rest. A long day lies ahead, along with some serious brainstorming before sleep. Of course, I may sneak in some iPhone gaming time in there somewhere, but not too much...:)