Face it. You will eventually quit your job. It may be this year. It may be next. It may be ten years from now. But it’s inevitable. It’s only a matter of time. The only real question is how to do it in a way that doesn’t burn your bridges.

It’s easy to look at successful people and envy their situation. What you often don’t see is the pain they went through to get there. I’ve made lots of mistakes. In fact, I’ve actually been fired from three jobs. Here’s what I learned.

The ability to sell an idea or project to your boss is critical to your success. In this three-part series I share six steps for doing it more effectively.

The ability to sell an idea or project to your boss is critical to your success. In this three-part series I share six steps for doing it more effectively.

The ability to sell an idea or project to your boss is critical to your success. In this three-part series I share six steps for doing it more effectively.

If you find yourself working for a micromanager, here are three actions you can take to get him or her off your back.

Are you feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of tasks and assignments you have? Here are six steps you can take now.

Most of us don’t spend enough time thinking. We are so busy doing that we have, I fear, almost forgotten how to think. Yet it is our thinking, more than any other single activity, that influences our outcomes.

The use of e-mail in corporate culture is pervasive. I rarely get letters any more. Even phone calls are uncommon. But I get scores of e-mail messages every day. Yet, I am continually surprised at how people often misuse this medium. Therefore, I would like to humbly offer up 18 suggestions for better e-mail communication and etiquette:

I thought it was about time to overhaul my standard voice mail greetings. I’ve been following the same procedure for several years. I generally update my office phone message daily. I liked providing the current date to let callers know that I was checking my messages regularly. But that has proven to be more trouble than it’s worth.

Many years ago, I had a boss that drove me crazy. He insisted on micro-managing me. He wanted to know every move I made. I had to furnish daily status reports with every call, every conversation, every project, etc. It really got to me. I tried to be patient, but I eventually quit. I just couldn’t succeed in that environment.

This is probably the most important question you could ever ask. The answer will determine how fast you advance in your career and, more importantly, how happy you are in your job. Many of us have had to figure it out the hard way—by trial and error.

In his book, Getting Things Done he writes: If you’re like me and most people, no matter how good your intentions may be, you’re going to have the world come at you faster than you can keep up…. We book ourselves in back to back meetings all day, go to after-hours events and generate ideas and commitments we need to deal with, and get embroiled in engagements and projects that have the potential to spin our creative intelligence into cosmic orbits…. If the item requires me to take action, I can:  Do it if it takes less than two minutes or add it to my Outlook task list to do later;Defer it by actually scheduling a time on my calendar to deal with it; orDelegate it to someone else for action and enter it into my Outlook task list using the “@WaitingFor” category.

The ability to sell an idea or project to your boss is critical to your success. If you can’t get your boss’s approval when you need it, you are not going to go very far in your career.