David Herz for the Work You Love

The director of my area assigned someone to monitor me. She went to ask everyone I interact with what I do. She tells me to report everything I do every day, even controlling where I sit, and it makes me wonder if I will be fired. What should I do?

It certainly sounds like you are being set up to be fired, but you could spin this another way.

What's another reason someone might be put in to observe your work?

I say you take on that they are observing your work because you are an exemplary employee, efficient, producing amazing results, and they want to study what works here in order to reproduce it. Of course this works best if you do actually bring a strong work ethic, a commitment to excellence, and ownership of the job and your company to your work (If you don't, it's time to start).

Then declare yourself this observer's partner, offer to create the manual for what you do, get (more) curious about how your work affects the health of the company and the value you add, and look with her at what can be done to take that up a notch, to make things work more smoothly with your colleagues, to improve channels of communications and optimize channels of production.

Talk to this person about goal setting for your job and making sure you are focusing on what is most important. Set goals, communicate them well, and exceed them.

In other words, be friggin' amazing. Add value to every interaction

But if the seating bothers you, this is a place you can take a stand. On the other hand, if it's just another slight to your dignity, then personalize and make the new spot beautiful and thank her for the new work space.

Now, if you get fired anyway, you've left a door open behind you that you can always walk back in to for a recommendation, or that you may be invited back into if they really see that you are the best for your job.

And if you don't, take on this way of being for the rest of your working career.

And, if this all sounds way too far fetched, then ask yourself if you were really that into your job anyway, and weren't just setting yourself up to be fired anyway. It doesn't matter that others might occur to be less into their job and even less value to the organization. (This is not for you to judge.) They might smile differently at the boss, actually have better results, or just not be as annoying as you are.

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.’
“No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

What should I do and avoid to do to improve myself by 1% every single day?

1. Sleep enough
2. Eat Well
3. Exercise
4. Touch one person’s life
5. Practice whatever it is you want to get better at. Get a coach to make sure you are doing the kind of practice that will lead to the quickest results. See Jim Kwik, Tim Ferriss, Eric Barker (there are many others) to help you get the results you want fastest.
6. Practice Gratitude

Make sure the emotional, mental, physical and spiritual are all addressed each day. For some this is walk in the park, literally. For others it’s some kind of meditation, mindfulness practice, or keeping a journal. For some it’s writing down ten ideas a day (I highly recommend this). Pick your flavor and stick with it.

And get a coach. I have limited slots available at the moment. Let's talk. Use coupon code LIMITED50. This will only be available for the first five takers or until my schedule is fully booked again.

Is it best to not make friends when you work in a competitive environment?

Everyone is competing for new positions and to work their way up in life. I feel that making strong friends with coworkers is not a great idea because you are all competing for new promotions. This is especially true in my industry of finance.

No. Your co-workers are not your enemies. And it’s always good to have a friend. Ati you spend most of your waking hours at work. Why should you feel you are at battle? You are living inside a zero-sum philosophy that makes life a lot less fun.

Instead, be the guy that is always ready to give a hand, to help people be better. The paradox is that when you make it your point to be a great friend, to make sure as many people as possible succeed, you are going to be the one with the easiest access to “success,” however you define it, and certainly the easiest one to rally around when the time for a promotion comes.

I'm currently working on a big project. I can sense no leadership in the project and the team is not pulling together. For almost 6 months, we have done overtime everyday. Even my body can tell it's stressful. I've been to a doctor, and even been on medication for a couple of months.

No, you should not quit. You should bring leadership to the job, and pull your team together. And if you do that well, you won’t all be working at cross-purposes, and you’ll actually do less overtime.

In fact, what you’ll do is actually create a plan and a timeline for the project, and tell your bosses what to expect when, and when you will be going home every day.

Either things will shape up, or they won’t, but it’ll look a lot different than quitting would, and it’ll be a lot more fun.

Start demanding the life you want, and it just might show up.