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.

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.

Everyday I dread going into work. How do I politely quit my job?
It's no longer satisfying to me. I cannot support a product that does not work and deal with situations from end users that could have been avoided if only the development team put in more work. I don't want my team to be left hanging though as they are short on people as it is. Suggestions?

Here's the thing. You're saying this to us, not your boss. You don't know how much some bosses want to know what the hell is going on if someone would just tell them.

Let your boss know how it is for you and what you see. People pay consultants big fees to come into companies just to ask you and then tell your boss.

So I suggest you take on The Rich Employee mindset (it's a great book by the way, and all of a buck on kindle so folks don't have to think too much about buying it).

So I'd let your boss know, and offer to help him get it sorted out. Maybe he's looking for someone just like you to light a match under the proverbial butt of the development team. Tell him in no uncertain terms you are willing to be that person. If you just suggest it, he might start looking for someone else and not consider you for the job.

And if your boss isn't interested, why should you have any interest in staying.

You have a choice here, “Either get busy living, or get busy dying.” You seem to be doing the latter. I think the former is more fun.