Defining Success

Measure Your Own Success

How do you define success? Is it the size of your paycheck or having the corner office? Is it the feeling you get when you know you did a great job on a project (praise from the boss doesn’t hurt) or the one you get when you know you helped someone? Perhaps you feel successful after putting in a day at work and coming home at a reasonable hour to spend time with your family. Since each of us measures success differently, you are the only one who can decide what it means to you. Your satisfaction with your career is strongly linked to whether you feel you have met your own, and not anyone else’s, definition of it.

Email bogging you down

  1. Only check email at specific times during the day, and try to limit it to only 4-5 times a day. If you don’t have nearly this much self control, use a tool like Inbox Pause to keep emails from showing up in your inbox until you’re ready for them.
  2. If email’s really getting you down, try Time Management Ninja’s system for only checking it twice a day.
  3. Need to answer emails in a hurry? Add the perfunctory “Sent from my iPhone” signature at the bottom of the page—even if you’re emailing from your computer. While you shouldn’t do this all the time, it’s a quick way to bang out some one-sentence replies without people thinking you’re being rude.

If You’re Overwhelmed by Work

1. Make sure your to do list is up to date, and do a quick gut check to make sure that you’ve been spending your time on what’s most important.

2. Knock out a few emails. If you don’t already, try using a “quick answer” tag that you add to any email that will take you 60 seconds or less but isn’t urgent. When you have five minutes, clear out as many of these as possible.

3. Check your upcoming meetings for the week, and send any emails necessary to confirm them.

4. Unsubscribe from any newsletters that aren’t helping you achieve your goals using unroll.me.

5. Identify one thing that you can delegate, and to whom you can delegate it. Send this person an email, and get it off your plate.