Book Summary Preview :
Making Work Work

Making Work Work is a book about how to effectively handle dilemmas and hardships that an employee might experience in an ordinary work environment. The author pinpoints situations that can affect an employee’s daily performance and solutions to problems that might be encountered.

COMPETENCY 1: Embrace Your Life and Work Balance

Balance between life and work is necessary because it keeps you grounded. Furthermore, a healthy balance provides you with enough energy and motivation to keep you efficient in your job.

Grab and Go Strategy 1: Let Go and Grab Hold
In order for you to de-stress, you should do things that relax you. Remember, you are more productive if you allow yourself sufficient time to rest.

Grab and Go Strategy 2: Balance Your Life with Pep
There are three categories of your personal life that can give you energy:

1. Physical health. Being fit provides you strength, thus making you work better.
2. Escape. Extra-curricular activities (e.g. gardening, painting, dancing, and reading) refreshes and recharges your mind.
3. People. You should spend quality time with your family and friends because it is their love and support that will help you get through tough times at work.

Grab and Go Strategy 3: Break through Your Resistance
There are several reasons why you often resist balancing life and work. These include:

1. Making work a form of escape from all the negative aspects in your personal life (e.g. an unhappy marriage, loneliness, etc.). To solve this, you must try to get a grip by making your personal life an investment.
2. Considering work as your duty or simply being a workaholic. Workaholism drives you to guilt if you don’t work past your working hours. In order to avoid this, you must acknowledge that working longer doesn’t always end up producing better results.
3. Poor planning. Disorganization and procrastination can result to piles of work. Get things done! Plan your schedule and always refresh yourself by unwinding after work.

COMPETENCY 2: Develop an Entrepreneurial Mindset

We live in an era where surviving and thriving at work is exceptionally challenging. Nowadays, the harsh corporate scene involves big businesses eating small ones, budget-saving strategies that include lay-offs, and employment opportunities that come and go at a snap of a finger.

For several, putting up a business is an option. However, this is also difficult as competition in the marketplace is fierce. What you must learn instead is that it is important for you to develop an entrepreneurial mindset and be able to apply it in your work. You must treat your career as your own business. Control it because you own it!

Grab and Go Strategy 4: Embrace Your Choice
If you pay too much attention to what is wrong, you sometimes end up feeling like a victim. To avoid this trap, you should take ownership in what you do. Remember, the choice to remain at your current situation is solely your own.

Ask yourself why you are at your current job and what drives you to be there. Reasons could be motivations such as your friends, your salary, your benefits, your family or the experience that you seek to acquire. By knowing your motivation factors, you will have added a new perspective to your job which will lead to a more focused and productive output.

Grab and Go Strategy 5: Cultivate Your Value
Your value includes everything you give to your job: your strengths, talent, experience and expertise. Knowing your value keeps you grounded and helps you face difficult tasks, criticism and competition. Cultivating your value restores your confidence.

Grab and Go Strategy 6: Trust Your Truth
It is normal to not understand several things in the company. Do not hesitate to ask questions and inquire about things that you do not know. By doing so, you will be able to fully understand your work and tasks, making you more proficient and efficient.

You should also not be shy to voice out your opinions and ideas to your boss and co-workers. Be honest in what you can do and what you can deliver. If you are asked to do a job that you cannot accomplish, gracefully turn it down. . . . . . .