(Cover art courtesy of joshburnette.com)

#youknowyourareanadultwhen

Taken from Adulting 101 #Wisdom4life by Josh Burnette. Copyright © 2018 by Josh Burnette & Pete Hardesty. Published by Broadstreet Publishing, Savage, MN. Used by permission of www.BroadStreetPublishing.com.

Professionalism

• Get to know the secretaries, assistants, and administrators. They are the gatekeepers and incredibly important, valuable people.
• Shake hands firmly, every time.
• When in doubt, shave and dress up. You don’t regret overdressing as much as underdressing.
• Dress how you want to get treated.
• Act how you want to be treated.
• Dress right. You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.
• If you call someone and don’t leave a message, you’re communicating you don’t want a call back.
• Have a professional message on your voicemail.
• Never go into a meeting blind. Do some recon to find out what the meeting is about or what the person wants to meet about.
• Never use family members as references.
• Use a professional email account.
• Dress professionally at every stage while pursuing a job (dropping off an application/ interviews).
• Your career is a marathon, not a sprint.
• Have your voicemail set up.
• Hard work and a positive attitude will propel you in your career.
• Your first job is not your final job.
• In every job, always strive to do more than what you are paid for.

Email/ Voicemail

• At the end of every email, ask, Is there anyone else who should see this?
• Read over emails before sending them out.
• Get in the habit of adding the recipient last. The email can’t get sent mistakenly with no recipient.
• Back up your computer every month—get an external hard drive or iCloud subscription.
• Get an email address that will last beyond college. Make the transition now.
• Save or delete your emails. Don’t crowd your inbox. If it calls for action, keep it.
• Always look at attachments before sending.
• Beware of the Reply all button.
• Find out your employer’s expectation for email. When should you be checking it? Over the weekend?
• Have a specific time you check email (for example, one hour per day).
• Keep emails short.
• Try to communicate your message in the subject line

Time Management

• First things first.
• You must prioritize. Put the big rocks in first.
• If you’re not sure if a store is open, call before you go.
• Plan out your days and weeks. Ten minutes of planning saves an hour of time.
• If a commitment is more than a week old, call that morning to reconfirm.
• Be early, everywhere.
• If you want to remember something, put your keys with it.
• Take a book everywhere you go, just in case you get somewhere and you have time to kill.
• Ask yourself, Am I the right person to be doing this?
• Start big tasks with an easy step one (for example, even the word start is better).
• Construct a filing system that works for you. Keep important documents. (Use Evernote for digital filing.) Keep your tax returns for seven years.
• Treat yourself. Work hard for a half hour, then break for five minutes.
• If something’s not pressing and you’re unsure, wait.
• If something takes less than three minutes, do it immediately (especially emails).
• You need a place to write everything down, even easy stuff.
• Keep your planner next to you at all times, especially during quiet times, study times, and prayer.
• Get phone messages out of voicemail ASAP and into a to-do list.
• Call people back within twenty-four hours. If you can’t call back within forty-eight hours, put a message on your phone (and your email) that you’ll be unable to get messages for a while. Use the automatic email response feature.
• Be busy but not in a rush. Eliminate hurry from your life.
• There will always be more to do.

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For more on Josh visit joshburnette.com and to pick up your very own copy of his new book, click this direct link here!