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On this April 15th I am going to complete 12 years of Professional life. During this 12 years, I have worked at some of the great companies,  gained wonderful friends and lot of good and bad experiences. I thought it will be nice to share some of tips (or tricks) I have learnt during this period.  

1. Work Hard

Work Hard only if your job demands it. Otherwise stay away from that. Even if your job demands hard work, just do it only during initial phase and need basis. Please do not continue doing same crap again and again. Better example is when you join in a new firm, you need to prove yourself. So you need to work hard to gain confidence at work.

2. Work Smart

Once you got confidence at your work increase your smart work. There is no clear definition for smart work. Smart work does not mean office politics. Stay away from Office politics. You may achieve instantaneous benefit out of that route, but on a long run it is not going to help.

Find out an unconventional way of doing work. I mean to say a simpler way. Try to spend some of your personal time on this. Though you may waste some of your precious personal time on this initially, but your life will become much smoother once you find out a better way to do work. It may not be possible all the time to do only smart work. So you need to decide between %ge of hard and smart work.

3. Be Creative

Don’t be a sheep. You need to follow what your peers or superiors say about work, but only until you are completely confident of the work assigned to you. Then comes your creativity. Think different. Do not follow the way how the people usually do the  work. Learn some new techniques. You may have to spend some of your personal time here.

If you are creative, people recognize you pretty easily. But do not advertise about your creativity. Do not update anybody until you finish your job. But once you are done with your creative work, then tell the people. Do not rush in telling people. There will be always good people in your office. They will advertise things for you.

If nobody recognizes your creativity, don’t get depressed. You can still use it for your smart work part. Eventually somewhere in your life it will be useful. Better to focus on things that are related your job here.

4. Make friends

Don’t sit in a corner and feel isolated. That will lead to worst things in your work life. Make few friends. Again you don’t have to spend hours chatting at somebody’s desk. Take it slow. Understand people around you. Understand their interests and thought process. That will make your work life easier and happier. Again stay away from gossiping. Gossiping at work place is dangerous. Unless you completely trust the other person, be careful about your talk. Again don’t discuss about work things all the time. You need to have some fun talk.

5. Avoid comparison

You are an individual. Stop whining about a colleague who got promoted earlier than you. Bad Bad Bad. Try to find how he got promoted. If he was involved in office politics then you don’t have to worry. Because you know that is not really his achievement. If he got promoted because of his hard/smart work then you should congratulate him open heartedly. Every dog will have its own day. So take it easy and continue with your work.

6. Get Feedback

This is the best way to improve yourself. Try to find out how your peers or superiors feel about you. Say thanks if somebody appreciates you. Again don’t climb the tree or start a story telling session. Try to improve on the things where people felt negatively. Again you are the judge. You don’t have to listen to what people talk about you. Be confident and not over confident.

7. Money is not everything

Sometimes money is not everything. One of my friend mentioned that “Your work life is like a passbook. You keep on depositing. One day you will see that with an interest and bonus”. That means whatever you do will never go waste. You may not achieve the results instantly. But over a period of time, you will see the results.

8. No Charity

We said money is not always important. But it is important. Treat the work like a business. You are working and you are getting paid for it. Sometimes you may achieve profits after some losses. As far as you are on track, it is okay to bear the losses. But don’t take too much of a loss. You should gain something out of the work you are doing.

9. Feel good about the work

Do not start your day crying about the work. Everybody’s work will become monotonous after few months. So start liking the things you do at your work. Use point no.2, 3 and 4 to make your work life interesting.

10. Be confident

Be confident when you say something. Don’t say “may be”, “I think” etc. If you don’t know say that “I don’t know”, “I will find out”. If you know something is wrong say it. Don’t keep it to yourself. It is bit difficult initially but over a period of time it becomes easy. Learn how and when to say “Yes” and “No”.

11. Don’t mix things

Do not mix personal and professional things. Try to balance your professional and personal lives. When you start your career you may have to spend more time for professional work. But think about your family and friends. They are also important right. So try to spend quality time with them. Try to avoid mixing things. Also make sure that you don’t criticize somebody personally at work place. That is really bad. Remember Professional and Personal lives are different. Do not mix them.

12. Change

If majority of the above things are not providing you the work satisfaction, then you need a change. Get a new job. That is not your fault. You need to move on. But don’t take decisions based on isolated incidents at office. Ultimately your work satisfaction that matter the most. Once you start losing it, no point working there.

If I continue further, I can write 120 tips. But let me keep some secrets

Again a word of caution, these things worked for me. I am not sure whether they worked/may work for you in the same way or not.