Yesterday I went to the Alameda County Fair for our annual outing.  My friends and I go mostly for the shows and rides, but it’s also intriguing to see the products being sold and the animals and prize winners.  This year we chose yesterday to go because of the performer – comedian Paul Rodriguez.

Our motley crew are all fans of his acting & stand-up routines, so we were excited to see him live.  Don’t get me wrong, we were not disappointed, but I noticed something about his hour long act last night that got me thinking about the lifespan of a person’s career, regardless of their profession.

If you’re as big a fan of stand-up comedy as I am, you’ll notice that many performers have carefully written & structured routines.  Optimized sequence of jokes & topics for the best laughs, call backs to earlier bits, and clear thought progression.  Most of what I’ve seen Paul Rodriguez do in the past isn’t any different.  But last night he rambled a bit and couldn’t follow a train of thought, often going back to things he’d mentioned already 15 minutes later after being done with a random tangent.  He had many off the cuff interactions with the crowd, which often distracted him from his topic.  While all hilarious, this is definitely the sign of someone who’s confident and comfortable with their profession; they feel that having to “wing it” is no problem because they will still get the job done.  Ultimately the crowd was laughing like crazy, so most people probably didn’t notice the disjointedness of it as much as I did.  Overall it’s safe for anyone to say that his job was accomplished.

But the hard work just wasn’t there.  To me that shows a slacking work ethic – to not give as great a performance at your job every time no matter what the circumstances.  This transcends performance art and really extends to all careers.  While it’s great to be advanced in your career and confident with your skills at what you do, putting your actions into cruise control can be dangerous.  If you’re not working hard and being the best you can be at your job every day, it’s going to start to show.  While one little mistake can be swept under the rug, a lot of little mistakes start making the rug bumpy and get noticed in a big, bad way.  A lesson should be learned that confidence doesn’t replace hard work.  Of course it’s great to be confident at your job because it will help your performance, but also recognize that it took a lot of hard work to get there and it will take a lot of hard work to stay there.  You cannot rely on that confidence to just “get through it” – the effort and hard work ethic still has to be there driving you to perform at your peak.

I understand the psycology of winging it, especially under the circumstances.  It is just a county fair and the show was free with the $10 price of admission, so he can’t be making much off of this gig.  He’s also go bigger projects he’s working on at the moment – upcoming movies, a USO trip to Bagdad, and a trip to South Africa to name a couple he mentioned.  So at a certain point, delegation of resources, time, and energy is necessary to get everything done.  But that’s really no excuse to let anything slack enough to be as noticably disorganized as last night’s show.  There’s a fine balancing point to multi-tasking, which is not letting anything slack and getting everything done effectively and presenting the best product (in this case, his show) you can & always putting the best foot forward.

It’s hard to get to the top.  But career minded people need to also remember that it’s equally as hard to stay there.  Just look at Britney Spears

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This week has been full of win, and it’s only Tuesday!

All the Cool Kids (and me)

My humble little blog TrishaLyn.com has been featured on Alltop.com under the Marketing category. Alltop is a digital magazine rack, per se. At each Alltop site, they display the latest five stories from 30+ sites on a single page, aggregating the information as a starting point. Alltop is a great way to expose yourself to blogs and websites relating to your interests that you may not have stumbled upon before. The interests range from women’s interests to sports, religion to geekery. In the marketing category my humble blog is mentioned amongst the likes of Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim, Michael Martine’s Remarkablogger, and Seth Godin’s blog. I’d say that lives up to the “all the cool kids (and me)” slogan!

Guest Co-Host of AffiliateThing on WebmasterRadio.fm

Regular host Shawn Collins of AffiliateTip.com and co-founder of Affiliate Summit invited me on to co-host the weekly Affiliate Thing podcast in lieu of regular co-host Lisa Picarille of Revenue Magazine who can’t make it tomorrow. I’m excited as I know this is a well-produced, professional podcast broadcast on WebmasterRadio.fm, so I can’t wait. I’ll be recording from the pleasure of my own home in the morning and can’t wait to chew the affiliate fat with Shawn. I will say that I’m glad I’m not the one who has to edit it! it’s all recorded over Skype, so it’ll be great quality I’m sure!

Featured Expert on EzineArticles.com

That’s right, yours truly is also now a featured expert author on article site EzineArticles.com. So far I’ve submitted my Top 10 Things That Improve Work Ethic article and plan on submitting many more. If you’d like to see any of my former blog posts as articles on Ezine, drop me a line and let me know!

So that’s it! I feel like all this work I’ve been doing is paying off, and let me tell you, it’s a terrific feeling! I’ll be sure to report back on how the recording of Affiliate Thing goes tomorrow!

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10. Have a ridiculously comfortable desk chair: The nicer your chair is, the longer you can stand to sit in it before your desk without having to get up because you’re antsy. And of course if you’re antsy and walking around the office with a general aimlessness, you’re not working.

9. Make a To-Do List: Lists are great because the simple act of making the list gives you something to do in those moments of lost energy when you don’t actually want to be working. By making a list you’ll find yourself doing something remotely work related, and you may simply motivate yourself by looking at the sheer length of a list of things you have to get accomplished! (The Tasks feature in Microsoft Outlook works great for this.)

8. Be Better Than Someone: You don’t have a lot of control over this, so pick your target wisely. Nothing makes people feel better about themselves than feeling like they’re better than someone else. Choose your target- it could be a parent, sibling, friend, or even a lackluster coworker. The smug sense of satisfaction you get from besting this person will be enough to keep you driven every day to never lose your edge.

7. Set up Google Reader or Technorati: You can tell yourself that you’re just taking time out of your busy day to keep up to date with the latest industry news, but what you’re really doing is reading a few industry blogs intertwined with Popsugar or Best Week Ever. If having your own personal interest blogs mixed in with the industry ones make it easier to remember to read blogs, do it. You may not be enriching your working knowledge as much as you’d like to think, but the industry stuff will stick and you’ll be able to bust out interesting relevant factoids in meetings and the latest celebrity gossip at the water cooler.

6. Piss off your Friends and Family: This is a surefire way to free up your time for more work at the office. If everyone you know outside of work is mad at you, that removes the temptation (or option?) to go out after work for drinks or spend your weekends poolside with the family. Who needs weekends anyway? Just lost opportunities for more work!

5. Supplies: Make sure you have the supplies you need to do your job. If you’re running out of staples, get some. If a certain program would increase your productivity 10%, ask for it and make your case. It’s much easier to do the job when you have everything necessary. Once you get into the niche where there’s not much else for you to ask for you’ll be able to apply all these tools to hone your skills and do a better job. You have to prove to the company that you’re worth investing in.

4. Money: Of course, that’s what we’re all in this game for, right? Get the jobs that get you the khakis that get you the chicks. I believe it’s probably a fact that your work ethic and dedication to the company goes up exponentially as your salary goes up. Don’t be afraid to ask for a raise every year if you’ve seriously been rockin’ at work. Be sure to do something that makes the bigwigs take note and want to give you more money and you’ll find it’s much easier to get out of bed in the morning!

3. Befriend your Coworkers: If you have a vested interest in the people around you, inherently that comes with a vested interest in how work goes for them. A job well done on your friendly coworkers’ part will often help make your job easier, and vice versa. As long as you have a mutual respect for what your coworkers are trying to accomplish and how that fits in with your goal, you will be more willing to go the extra mile on your end. Eventually your coworkers will reciprocate by making something easier for you and it will become a productive cycle.

2. OCD: OCD, or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, really helps in those tedious projects that just need doing. Spend hours late into the night working at something as boring as updating a database for formatting for the simple reason that everything HAS to be right. Not only with this give you a false motivation to get a project done, but your supervisors will gladly take advantage of this affliction of yours and praise the results!

1. Care: It’s as simple, really, as caring about doing a good job. Have some pride in what it is you produce or how it is you help the company overall to succeed. If you genuinely care about doing your job well, that’s really all you’ll need to motivate yourself and have a great work ethic.

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