Recently I read the perfect article from a ‘Bad Advice’ series on Forbes’s blog, Work in Progress: Career Talk for Women. The article is Bad Career Advice: Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff by Christine Scivicque. In the article she makes the great point that the small stuff is very important.

It’s a point that has suffered some neglect for several reasons. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff became a wildly popular rule of thumb, admonition for those trying to survive. Scivicque mentions the book of that name as part of the reason for the public shift toward relaxed attitudes toward details. Whatever the reason, it is a good idea to relax, but to do so to the neglect of details is counterproductive.

Small stuff matters. It’s not to say that you should bleed, stop, and pick a new life goal. But the little things make up the bigger projects you may undertake. If you skimp on the little things, the underpinnings, then your project won’t be as strong as it could be. And, likely, it won’t be strong enough to weather minor disturbances.

• You can be meticulous without being obsessive.

Focus on details without losing sight of the big picture. Understand that the only way you can succeed is to do your best along the way, and continue to keep moving forward. That is working smarter when you do it the best the first time out. I do sweat the small stuff. Sweating small stuff at key, basic, pivotal points, can have you relaxing later.

Some things would make me want to completely stop, just give up because I begin to think it couldn’t be the best of whatever to come to life on screen or paper. Of course, stopping is utterly counterintuitive, because as a result, nothing gets done.

I will grant you that getting things right, sweating the small stuff, is a little obsessive. But it doesn’t have to last interminably. Like in writing: set it to paper, work in all the details, weed out the unnecessary parts, edit, revise, refine, edit, re-read, then release it. (I did mean to include ‘edit’ twice.) And when you release it, know that you’ve done your best for it and move on to the next thing.

When you look at it, this is more a matter of wanting to put your best out. And that’s the whole point of any job you undertake, isn’t it?

• Give yourself a challenge that pushes you through your stalling.

It’s early in the year and you want to do your part to shape your year. Start by addressing what you know needs work. This was my thing to address. And as it happens I found the perfect push over at But You’re a Girl. The post I’m speaking of announces the winner of the New Year’s Eve contest Adria Richards had. I was all excited to read about this guy who wrote 25 posts on New Year’s Eve. I was buzzing about the idea of cranking out that much content in a day when I don’t do it in a month.

Wouldn’t you know, I got down to the end of the article and the contest is extended through the end of this month! It was a cosmic sign. A confluence of signals all indicating what I already know is needed, and that is to keep moving forward. So of course I decided to take on the challenge for this blog.

It’s not about winning the contest, with my late start. But I think this is really an great first goal for this blog, to get to a specific number of posts by the month’s end. Since, it’s my most neglected blog and I really want to wake it up this year. It’s also a great idea to get this kind of momentum going at the beginning of the year, when there’s all this extra energy and excitement in the air.

• Don’t just fall into your goal, plan it and work it out.

You can simply do things on a whim. But that’s likely what you’ll get out of it: something whimsical or flimsy. Instead, think about what you want, think fast because the month is already begun. Figure out some steps and make it happen.

For this blog, it will be a matter of writing and not tossing the majority of what I write, which is what I usually do. I’ll keep my ideas and work through them, working fast to develop them and post them before I give up on them. I tell myself they’re not what I need and scrap them before I give them full room to blossom. But not this month.

My thought is, if I can push through this month with a pressured pace like this, then next month a sane pace will be doable, even easy. Sort of like a bootcamp for the rest of the year. As I said before, for me it’s not about winning the contest, but beating myself out of sliding by. I slide by posting when I say it’s not good enough and move off to the next thing. I slide by when I let myself off the hook because there’s other work to be done. Other work won’t let up, but that’s not really the problem. Letting myself off the hook is the problem. Following the rules of this contest is the boost I need to make it so.

If you’re a Trekkie, then you may already know that’s a Jean-Luc Picard command. I always liked the deliberateness of the command and all that it implied. You have a choice to make. Continue to stroll along ignoring the details, not sweating the small stuff. Or, you can attend to the details and play an active role in shifting the balance from ineffective to effectively working smarter.

Try something new to get your year off to a great start. Work smarter by attending to the details without getting bogged down in them so you get ahead and sustain your business.

Reference posts

• Bad Career Advice: Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
• We have a Winner for: Write 25 Blog Posts On New Year’s Eve Contest #25blognye

If you’re anything like me and my friends, you get a ton of ideas at once in a massive new year deluge. The time of year when you’re awash with inspiration, creativity, desire, hope. Really you want to go for everything, I know. And you can go for more than one, in fact as many as you’re physically and financially able to pursue. But, usually you can’t pursue all your ideas at once.

It’s Important to Capture Ideas When you get Them

Even if you can’t pursue them all at once, you need to capture your ideas for future access and development. You should record as much detail as you can, too. There are two main reasons you should record your thoughts when you get them.

1. If for any reason you can’t immediately start in on your project, you need to keep the idea for later use, when time, funds, materials and skills permit.
2. Your ideas are freshest when the inspiration hits you. It’s the ideal time to capture the idea and hopefully the nuances that make the idea so appealing to you.

Later on, when the stars are aligned, funding and everything, you’ll want to evaluate it again to be sure it’s still a viable idea. Having good notes will make it easier for you to do review the plan before you get started.

Five Great Ways to Creatively Capture Ideas

Your ideas are great, innovative, and life-changing. Capturing them is important, and your means of capturing them can be equally as inspired. Taking action to remember ideas is better than trying to rely on memory alone. The following activities can help to hard-wire your ideas, making it easier to recall. I’ve used a few of these, and they do help to make them sticky.

1. Tell it to yourself. Use your recorder to tell yourself the story of what inspired your idea. Make it as detailed as time will allow. Use colors and scents that come to you when you ruminate on developing your idea. If you only have a short time, get all you can. You can return to it later to add details and other information.
2. Build a model. When you feel strongly about an idea build what you want it to look like. Use wire, paper, plastic, plaster, whatever you are comfortable with. You may come up with more insights when you’re working it out, that will show you obstacles as you think it through. You could use index cards
3. Draw a picture. If you can see it in your head, making a graphical representation is another way to make your notes. It could be a flowchart design to show parts and relationships in your process. It might be that you draw stick characters to populate your image. Use colors and words to annotate your image. It just needs to be something that will depict your idea in a way that keeps it alive for you.
4. Write it up on your whiteboard and take a picture. Ideas that are easy to list or draw on your whiteboard, to keep it for later, instead of vowing never to touch your whiteboard, photograph it. Then print it and put it where it needs to be–filed away or posted on your office wall.
5. Put it in your idea journal. If you don’t have one, get a book for your ideas. I suggest a 3-ring binder because that makes it easy to add to a particular subject.

BONUS: Don’t dismiss the Paper Scraps Method

I didn’t list the more traditional methods for taking notes. Not because they aren’t important, they really are. They’re the things that we do most of the time, often almost reflexively. These methods include writing your important notes on napkins, paper scraps, corners of junk mail, and collected for later. These are the tools we use when we have no time for anything more.

Think about this: J. K. Rowling, famed author of the Harry Potter series, wrote her first Harry Potter book, The Sorcerer’s Stone, on scraps of paper and napkins to sort through later. Look how far she got with that method!

A Caveat: If you do write on scraps of paper, napkins and such, let me suggest that you keep them in envelopes, files with pockets, boxes or other containers they can’t easily slip out of. After all, since it’s important enough to record it, you definitely don’t want to lose the papers.

How do you record your ideas so they stick with you? Or, do you believe that if you don’t remember it, it’s not a very good idea?

There’s more than one way to skin a cat.

How many times have you heard that? A gazillion, right? Well there’s a reason it’s so popular: It’s simply true most of the times. It’s an optimistic way of looking at everything in life.

If you can’t get it one way, there’s almost always another way to make a software program do what you need. If you’re not seeing what you need in a photo, there’s another way that you can set your camera to force the outcome. If it’s film, you may be able to catch it in the developing.

No, Not a Jack of All Trades

Some people think that because they are one thing, that’s all they have to be. Really, though, nothing is further from the truth. In daily life, it’s almost counterproductive to be only the one thing you say you are. Certainly, trying to live and work that way can be quite constraining.

I want to focus specifically on writers—you’re surprised, I know—but you can really apply it to any line of work you’re in. Let’s look at just a couple of related areas where learning their basics can improve your work life:

• Computer – Learn how to turn it on and off the right way, how to attach and remove keyboards, mouses, USB flash drives. More than this may require an IT Guru, but if your keyboard fries, trust me unless the company requires it, you don’t want to have to make a big deal and create a time-suck getting on the help list.
• Applications – If you can’t type, learn. If you can type, so much the better, since you’re writer and typing is what you’ll be doing. Learn how to open and close applications, save documents to desired locations, email a document in the body of a message or as an attachment
• Coding – If you’re uploading to the internet, directly into a company site, (this doesn’t often happen), it’s good to know about how to format your text with HTML codes. Usually documents are submitted and the website will code as needed. Knowing the basics can make it easier for you to work with code people. For example, you don’t format title text in HTML. This is usually done in CSS when you indicate the heading as ‘<h1, 2, or 3>’ as desired
• Platforms – Computers use PC or Mac operating systems [OS]. Knowing one will make it easy if you should ever need to migrate to the other. Your favorite software may behave a little differently on the platform different from yours. At least if you know this, you can be on guard for what might be different

What’s the Goal?

Do you need degrees in everything? Certainly not. The idea is to be able to do your job fully. Say you’re a writer. It will help you immeasurably to be able to put on your editor’s hat and revise your drafts. It saves time and frustration for you and your client/employer, when you don’t have to return to the same document countless times before it’s done.

Doing all that you can with a work in the basics of writing, allows more times for other things. Some of the things that can occur are creative and content changes. When the entire or large portions of the focus of the piece must be changed, you’ll be glad that you don’t have to focus on the mechanics of getting the writing done.

I am such a strong believer in that, until I include it in my resume. You’d be surprised how many times employers pointed out that it was an important piece of what they were looking for. They often made mention of how often candidates didn’t offer that piece.

As a writer, you can’t need grammar guidance, basic resource guidance, basic editing input. At least, not if you want to be taken seriously. In any job you pursue, there are core skills you’ll need to execute your tasks efficiently. Learn what they are and master them. If you can do that before you ask for the job then so much the better. If not, and you’re willing to learn on the job, present that as part of your attractiveness to the employer.

For freelancers, short term jobs may not offer this leeway. In that case, pick a different job. Because, you don’t want to waste anybody’s time/money. And that’s your only recourse because lying (fudging) is not an option.

A Little Extra Helps Everyone

Again, it can help in many professions to be able to perform more than your hired skill-set. We’re talking about writers because that is what I know. A close relation to this job is secretary and administrative assistant. I know these professions can also benefit from the extras discussed here.

Above, I listed four areas and why they can help you. Writers have broad particulars for how they write. For poetry, I rarely start a poem on computer. My preference is to write it longhand first. If I only wrote poetry, I still would need to type. Well, unless I only wrote it for me and never submitted or posted to a website or anything. And if, I was sure that my handwriting was good enough for me to return to it years later and still be able to read what I’d written and not have to guess.

I heard of a writer who insisted that typing was horrible and counter productive for creativity. She actually insisted on writing an entire novel draft longhand. The first person she sent it to, sent it back with a letter. She said that there were expletives in it. I never saw the letter so I can’t say for certain. But I know I wasn’t surprised. And apparently, she couldn’t be talked out of this by her friends and peers.

What is a little extra?

If you’re a writer, look at your skills almost as a jumping-off point. Just a little more will have you sailing along.

• Learn how to type. Repeated for emphasis, but I don’t really want to call it extra. If you’re serious about writing, more importantly if you want others to take you and your writing seriously you need to know how to type, seriously.
• Learn how to save files to locations other than the desktop. If you’re on a computer that doesn’t allow you to save, know how to get your work.
  • Save it to a flash drive. Know what a flash drive is. Also known as: Travel drive, USB drive, jump drive, and a few other names I can’t put
  • Know how to paste it into the body of an email if you can’t save it to send to yourself
  • If you can save documents only temporarily until your done, remember to delete the file and empty the trash. (If you don’t know what that means in computer-speak, you have a little work to do.)
• Learn how to maneuver in the admin area. If you want to say yes to these types of assignments, get familiar with the applications beforehand, starting with the most popular. Two of the more popular content management systems [CMS] are Joomla! and WordPress. Depending on your work, you may even need some knowledge of cPanel.
• Joomla is very powerful and a little complicated to use. WordPress started out as a blogging platform and is quickly evolving to a formidable content management system. Learn either one that you need. Or, to be really versatile, learn them both.
• Get internet-savvy if your not already. Develop your core resources links and keep them at hand. Get a Gmail account and set up a Google document with all the links you need. There are a few ways to get this done, but a Gmail email account is a very powerful tool to have in your arsenal. You will grow into all that it can do for you.
• Keep your personal email account personal. On my last job, I needed a Gmail account so I set up another one for work purposes. There’s no reason to mix your work email with your personal stuff and it shouldn’t be done.

These are just a few tips that will improve your job experience. They should increase your productivity, measurably, in time saved and money earned.

Who is Everyone?

Everyone involved is you: increasing your income and free time. Your boss: increasing his content in a timely manner. Your family: increasing the time you can spend with them, the things you can provide, and the better disposition as a result of being satisfied with your job. And, unless this is your first job ever, you know that’s a big  bonus.

Happy projections include an increased client base as word of your professionalism and skill gets around.

You’ve heard these things before, yes? Perhaps you’ve heard of other things too. Share your experiences if you’ve implemented these ideas in your work life. If you get some ideas here, I’d love to hear how they work out for you.