Professional Habits To Adopt

As an industry professional, you need to be motivated, results-oriented and ready for action when duty calls. If you aren't fully prepared mentally or physically, it will be difficult for you to work effectively and at maximum performance. That's why the most successful professionals adopt good work habits early on to steer their careers down the right path.

Whether you’re just starting out in the professional world or you’re already established and would like to improve yourself, the new habits you form now will serve as direct indicators for your success later on. We’ve taken a look at the habits bosses love and the habits bosses hate, now let's take a look at some important professional habits to adopt. We’ll also tell you how these professional habits can positively contribute to your work performance.
Create and follow daily task lists
There's no reason to show up at work unprepared and unfocused. Setting a regular game plan into motion offers a stronger sense of purpose and an efficient way to get things done. You can put good organization into action every morning if you chart out what needs to be done by day's end. Go through each of your tasks and clearly note who the work is for, who needs to know of your progress and what's expected from those with whom you are collaborating. Stick to your list and aim to meet your goals one at a time. If something needs to be adjusted, deal with it quickly and try to avoid compromising other tasks.

Professional habits often require a task-oriented approach. Such an approach in this case will create a consistent work flow and allow you to set (and meet) realistic deadlines. If your work is organized, your mind will follow suit, and your overall work quality and satisfaction will increase.

Once you've mastered the professional habit of daily planning, you can extend it to weekly planning, which will allow you to get a clear grasp of how the next five days will turn out -- if you plan on Monday. If you're in a deadline-oriented environment, a task list keeps you on top of things and helps you avoid the gloomy prospect of bringing work home with you.
Show up 10 minutes early
Punctuality is among the most important of professional habits to adopt. It is a must in the business world and it's an honest indicator of your organizational skills and overall reliability. Tardiness often reflects a host of other flaws that many employers would rather avoid. If you’re among the masses that arrive for work late, you’ll also be viewed as someone, whether it’s true or not, who is late returning to work from lunch and as the last person through the door for an important meeting.

Homework is one of our professional habits to adopt.

While the occasional slipup is understandable, punctuality should be high on your list of professional habits to adopt. Don't be 10 minutes late, but try being 10 minutes early instead. You can also apply the 10-minute rule to other deadlines on your daily schedule. For example, if you have a deadline at 4 p.m., get your project done by 3:50 p.m. Every time you're early, your managers will remember it -- and that’s a much better thing to be known for than being habitually late.

Being early doesn't mean you have to spend your extra time working. The point is to give your mind a chance to relax before you get down to business. Take a few minutes to read, listen to your iPod or make a quick phone call. When it's time to work, your mind will be focused and ready. After work, do some similar unwinding when you get home. Having time to relax is just one of the benefits of being punctual and it all starts with being 10 minutes early.
Read one industry article a week
The more you know, the higher you'll climb up that corporate ladder. Another great professional habit to adopt is to learn about your industry. Make time to research how your company influences the industry as a whole and find magazines that can keep you up-to-speed on the other movers and shakers out there. Deciding which magazines to read depends on which industry you work in; if you're unsure of where to start, try reading any industry publications that are sitting around the office. If you can't find any print copies, you can always hunt for articles online.

Industry articles don't have to be read at work. The great advantage of this professional habit, if your passionate about your job, is that once you've picked a few favorite magazines, you can subscribe and read them at your leisure. The more you read, the more awareness you will gain about the industry and your company's place in it. If you apply that awareness to your job, all of your contributions will be coming from a place of knowledge and strength, which always looks good.

If you're craving something more interactive than reading articles, keep a log of your reactions to the articles and your own thoughts on the industry. You might feel like a keener, but this is good practice for harvesting your knowledge and authoring articles of your own. If keeping what amounts to a professional diary isn’t for you, try blogging or posting on someone else’s blog.
Keep your desktop organized
A cluttered desk is a sign of a disorganized mind. Nothing says "I'm messy" more than a string of papers strewn across your desk and yesterday's snack living under your computer monitor. Don't be a collector. Just get in the good professional habit of being smart about what needs to be kept and where it should go. Make sure that everything, from project files to garbage, has a permanent home. Don’t let papers pile up; make specific file folders for current projects, while regularly discarding or archiving old documents that aren't needed.

Professionals often overlook their e-mail habits.

A clean desk means that your phone, computer and calendar are never more than a short reach away. With neatly organized folders, you'll save time when you're looking for last week's meeting notes or the project draft that you're supposed to edit this morning.

A clean "desktop" also extends to your computer's desktop. Streamline your desktop and only keep shortcuts to the programs you frequently access. Use file folders and directories to store important files and adopt a "no orphans" policy, so that no project files linger on your desktop.

Organize your e-mail daily
E-mail accounts often get flooded with an onslaught of messages on any given day. E-mail might be convenient, but when it arrives in bunches it's easy for messages to slip under the radar. Our final professional habit to adopt is the challenge of organizing your e-mail account.

It's tempting to reply to e-mails right away, but that may take away from your overall productivity. Instead, you can use automatic e-mail rules to deliver new mail into predetermined folders, based on senders, subjects or any other condition of your choosing. If you have multiple clients or projects, things are easy to keep track of. In addition to e-mail rules, you can rank your messages by importance when they arrive (e-mail triage) to determine when to reply. Some will get immediate replies, the rest can wait, but everything is accounted for by the end of the day.

Don't forget to organize your address book. Your contacts should always be current, so that you won't spend time digging through old messages to find someone. You can also organize your contacts into bulk e-mail groups, so that your messages can go to preset lists. This saves the time of entering individual recipients into your mail. Just remember your e-mail etiquette and your e-mail habits will be in peak form.

find your professional groove
Old habits can be hard to break, but that's no reason not to try and replace them with better ones. Your mentors and managers all had to start somewhere, and there's a good chance that they are incorporating at least a few of our professional habits in their routine. Try doing the same and see where it gets you. If nothing else, you'll feel more confident, better organized and more productive in no time.