Career Journal: Finding Humanity within a Single stroke of a Pen

While many people reflect on their lives by using a personal journal, not many use the same technique to find meaning in their careers. By writing in a journal, you unburden yourself of the heavy thoughts that damage your self-confidence and self-worth.

A career or work journal allows you to focus on the many positive moments that you would otherwise ignore, and it permits you to learn important lessons from negative events that you would rather forget.

Ultimately, a work journal helps you recognize that your mental strength is limitless and that even the smallest actions can represent huge accomplishments.

Memories and Emotions

Offices can become negative environments, where the expectations of the business supersede the personal needs of its employees.

It is a place where we can easily lose our humanity to feelings of discontent and under appreciation.

Use your work journal to escape your negative surroundings and rediscover your passion. Your own words will allow you to rejoice in your accomplishments whenever you feel disillusioned about your performance.

Your personal writing space is a place where you can reflect on who you have become, and find a way to become the person you want to be.

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New Partnerships: Finding the right person to lead your company

Businesses benefit from the potential diversity of knowledge, experience and resources that multiple owners bring to an enterprise.

However, in accessing these resources, companies need to develop an organizational structure that assigns areas of responsibility according to each partners or employees strengths, expertise and commitment to the company’s goals.

Each partner needs to know what their associates bring to the venture and collectively the team needs to decide how to best use those resources. This type of predefined structure makes a company flexible, focused and stable.

Leadership

Most ventures start with a limited amount of capital and manpower, which means owners need to take responsibility for aspects of the business they are not competent or interested in overseeing.

For some people, it becomes an all or nothing proposal. Consequently, they refuse to entrust somebody else with any responsibilities, because of their compulsion to retain control or because of pride.

The business becomes an extension of their personality and self-image. They refuse to accept advice in their personal life and by extension are unlikely to accept it on behalf of the business.

Partners need to be aware of these traits, and act accordingly. They need to accept this management scenario, find a tolerable compromise or walk away.

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The Importance of a Partnership Agreement

Depending on the nature of the venture, starting a viable business can be as straightforward as coming up with an idea, using some ingenuity, and deciding on a catchy domain name.

In the past, starting a business meant entrepreneurs needed access to large amounts of capital. Now, the internet is making access to production, distribution, advertising and marketing services inexpensive and accessible to anyone.

Without a barrier to entry, entrepreneurs need not fear the financial ruin that once accompanied the failure of a business.

However, people tend to forget the other potential risks involved in starting any business venture. These include ownership of patents or intellectual property, the division of ownership or procedures to dissolve the company.

Contracts minimize the inherent risk involved in a new enterprise by forcing partners to outline their expectations and give some forethought to possible complications.

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Guidelines: Email Etiquette

Whether you are sending an email to a friend, colleague, or customer, take an extra moment to ensure the email is confidential, professional, and relevant.

Keep these tips in mind when sending out an email.

Do not leave the subject line blank

For productivity enthusiasts, being able to quickly identify and reference a message or request is the key to prioritizing their action lists.

Therefore, subject lines are the easiest way to grab someone's attention, and allow them to either reply right away to the message or place it on an action list. Otherwise, your message may become unnoticed, unread, or worse deleted.

Moreover, in some professional settings, properly labeling an email demonstrates a good measure of due diligence. The type of subject line you use, or if you use them at all, can speak volumes about your attention to detail or the respect you give to other people's time.

Marking an email as urgent

There is an inherent risk when you label any message as urgent.

Today, most people are suffering from work overload and struggle to answer all the messages in their inbox without people making unnecessary demands on their time and attention. In marking your message urgent, you force someone to give special attention to your request and deviate from his or her action plan or schedule.

Be sure you need to mark some

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