What happened to my Career?

Posted on September 18, 2009 by Wes Johnson

Bad News – In today’s economy people are looking at their career choices and saying, “What happened to my career?  I was supposed to have this career until I retire.  Is it ever going to come back or do I need to change my career? What am I going to do now?”  Their future looks bleak in their own mind.  But what about reality?  Is their career really dead or is it just waiting for the economy to pick up? How are you going to find out this information?

Good News – There is a resource that can help you figure out if your career is heading the way of the dinosaur or if it will be making a come back.  This resource is called the Occupational Outlook Handbook. 

This handbook covers all the details of just about any occupation you might think of.  It even has a “Search OOH box” that will let you search for keywords in occupations.

Once you select a particular occupation, it provides all kinds of information about employment details, training, qualifications, projected growth, earnings, related occupations

Verify your Occupation Projections in your Industry – the job outlook shows projected employment from 2006 – 2016.  It will give you the employment delta as a number and a percentage.  If you discover that your chosen career is receding, it might be time to look at the Related Occupations information.

At this point, many people start to take a serious look at what their Transferable Skills are and where their career is headed.  Many times, they don’t know what they’re going to do next, but they do know the career they once had appears to have disappeared or trending that way in the future, at least until the economy picks up again.

Browse Occupations in other Industries – Remember, all of your experience you have acquired while working and going to school does count for something.  It’s called Transferable Skills.  These are skills learned elsewhere that can be transferred or applied to a future job.  I would encourage you to look at several different occupations available in each industry.

Researching Occupations:

 I hope these sites/tools provide you with some solid career choices as you consider which steps to take next in your career

Good luck in your career research.

Posted in Blog | Tagged | 2 Comments

An acronym for FOCUS

Posted on September 17, 2009 by Wes Johnson

Yesterday, I wrote a blog called “LASER Focus,” in the blog was an acronym for LASER which consisted of words that were very precise and focused.  After I was finished with that blog, I started thinking about that acronym and decided I should create one for the word FOCUS as well.  So here it is.

Focalize

In order to focus on anything first you need to know what you’re going to focus on.  In other words, you need a vision.  A definition of what you’re supposed to be doing.  Once you have that vision, you can   Then you can align your sight to the focal point or Vision. 

Objective

Why are you focusing on this thing?  What are you supposed to do with it?  This would be your mission.

Concentrate

The next step is to concentrate your efforts or increase the intensity of your efforts on the desired outcome or mission.  By concentrating the distractions will not influence you when it comes time to complete the mission.

Unambiguous

The mission should be clear and unambiguous.  There should be no doubt as to where or what to put your sights on.  A clear mission will direct you in the right direction.  It will prevent you from wasting your time going down the wrong path.

Strategy

Finally there’s the Strategy, the plan that will help guide your and streamline your efforts at accomplishing the mission.

FOCUS:

  • Focalize – to align your sight to a focal point (The Vision)
  • Objective – the goal of your actions (The Mission)
  • Concentrate – intensify your efforts to fulfill the mission
  • Unambiguous – no uncertainty or doubt as to the desired outcome (The Mission)
  • Strategy – The plan to accomplish the mission

    • The next time you FOCUS on a task, think of this acronym.  It might help to improve your accuracy in accomplishing your goals.

    Posted in Blog | Tagged | Leave a comment

    LASER Focus

    Posted on September 16, 2009 by Wes Johnson

    I teach a two part workshop called Personal Marketing Workshop on a regular basis.  During the first workshop we do several exercises to help the attendees figure out what their Career Vision should be.  During the second workshop we do more exercises to help the attendees figure out where they are in the Job Market and how they need to position themselves to compete with others in their field of expertise.  One of these exercises is the SWOT analysis.

    • Strengths – Preceived strengths you have over your competition
    • Weaknesses – Perceived weakneses that your competition doesn’t have
    • Opportunities – Potential market opportunities you could have if you address your weaknesses
    • Threats – Potential obstacles to your career

    The Strengths and Weaknesses are internal things we have identified that might help or hinder your attempts to market yourself to potential employers.

    The Opportunities and Threats are external Job market conditions.

    During these classes, I do my own personal SWOT analysis just to keep current.  I have discovered there are many opportunities available to me, if I eliminate one of my weaknesses.

    How am I going to develop and keep a LASER Focus on the weakness elimination?

     Develop LASER focus on Weakness Elimination:

    • Lighten my load – Just say NO to non mission critical tasks
    • Accountability Partner – keep checking on your progress
    • Schedule your time wisely (Schedule mission critical tasks in the morning)
    • Eliminate distraction opportunities (Schedule distractions/time-suckers for later in the day)
    • Repeat until done

     Keep on Repeating the LASER focus on your targeted Weaknesses they have been addressed.

    Posted in Blog | Tagged , | 1 Comment

    Farm Town or FarmVille

    Posted on September 15, 2009 by Wes Johnson

    Periodically, I have Facebook friends that tell me they received a gift or an invitation to play Farm Town or FarmVille.  They want to know if these games are any fun and whether they’re worth playing or not.   My answer is yes, they’re worth playing.

    If you’re wondering what Farm Town or FarmVille are, you can visit the “Farm Addicts” website. I think this site does a pretty good job of describing both of these Facebook applications.

    My experience

    I have been playing Farm Town longer than FarmVille, mostly because I got the invitation to Farm Town first.  I have my opinions on which one is better, but I’ll present you with some of my observations to help you with that choice.  I have written a few blogs on Farm Town.  If you’d like to read these, do a search for “Farm Town” in the upper right hand corner of this blog.

    Music:

    • Farm Town, my preference is to disable it. It’s not cheerful enough for me.
    • FarmVille, my preference is to enable it.  It’s a fun & happy little country feel tune.

    Networking opportunities:

    • Farm Town,  active networking real-time face to face conversations, you’re interacting and cooperating with others
    • FarmVille,  passive networking using signs, you’re mostly playing by yourself

    Clicks to accomplish farming tasks:

    Action Farm Town FarmVille
    Clicks to plow 10×10 fields 100 (multitool) 100 (hoe)
    with machinery 25 (Tractor) 25 (Quad-Plow)
    with hired help n/a 2-4* [click Map, click Market, click farmer, click hire to plow]
    Clicks to harvest 10×10 fields 100 (multitool) 200 (Scythe) [click crop field, click sell or store]
    with machinery 25 (Harvester) n/a
    with hired help n/a 2-4* [click Map, click Market, click farmer, click hire to harvest]
    Clicks to plant 10×10 fields 100 (multitool) 100
    with machinery 25 (Seeder) n/a
    with hired help n/a n/a

    * = only 2 clicks if the farmer is already on your farm.  For instance, if a farmer is already helping you to harvest, you can hire them to plow for you with 2 clicks.

    FarmVille machinery

    FarmVille does have machinery that makes farming easier.  The machinery increases your productivity 4x.  Which means, you don’t necessarily need to have other people working your farm.  The only catch is it takes time to get to the unlock level for the machinery, plus the expense of purchasing and operating the machinery.  You have to purchase fuel for the machinery.  I think there’s a lesson in there for everybody.

    • Tractor   available after level 12 + 30,000 coins
    • Harvester available after level 13 + 30,000 coins
    • Seeder    available after level 14 + 30,000 coins
    • Fuel Refill = 3 FarmVille bucks

    Other notes:

    • Farm Town, will not let you harvest if you have plowing or planting queued up
    • FarmVille, queues up all actions, so you can do this scenario
      • Queue up fields to harvest
      • Queue up fields to plow that have been harvested
      • Queue up fields to plant that have been plowed

    So there you have it in a nutshell.  Two farming games on Facebook.  Each have their own kind of fun.  One is kind of isolated fun without interacting with other farmers and the other encourages networking and cooperation.  My advice is to try them both out.  The worst thing that can happen is the person who invites you to be a neighbor will get some points towards their next farm expansion.

    Happy farming!

    Posted in Blog | Tagged | 1 Comment

    Macro Photo Studio 1.1

    Posted on September 14, 2009 by Wes Johnson

    Last month, in my blog “Making my own Macro photo studio”  I mentioned a few changes I would make to my studio and environment to improve the macro photography experience.

    Updated Macro photo studio

    Updated Macro photo studio

    Revision 1

    1.) I opened up the front bottom of the Macro photo studio.  This allowed me to place the object in the studio without the problems of maneuvering it over the front lip of the box.

    2.) I increased the lighting source from 40 watt to 75 watts for each bulb.  Each bulb outputs 830 lumens.

    3.) I added a third light source to the top.  I improvised with a mechanics drop light.  In the future, I’ll probably get another goose neck lamp, so I can control the light direction from above.

    NOTE:  in this version, I did not add velcro for the backdrop.  The backdrop I’m using which is poster board, seemed to work fine for these photos.

     

    My Zen Garden photos

    I took a few shots to see how well some of the modifications did.  I’m pretty happy with the results.  Of course my camera, Olympus C-3000 Zoom, did a pretty good job.

    ZenGarden002

    Zen Rock Garden (Angle shot)

    Zen Rock Garden

    Zen Rock Garden (Length shot)

     

    Changes for Revision 2

    A few more modifications I plan to make in future revisions of my Macro photo studio:

    1.) Remove the floor panel, so the studio can be rotated 90 degrees for taller objects.

    2.) Make side and top light diffuser walls into configurable light diffuser panels.  So, I can quickly change the light diffusing material as needed.

    3.) Apply white primer to interior to improve reflectivity of light source.

    Final thoughts:

     My 3x optical zoom camera didn’t do too bad with my Revision 1 Macro photo studio.  I’m sure with a 10x optical zoom the photos would have been even better.  I can’t wait until prices of digital cameras with 10x optical zoom fall into my desired level of less than $150.

    How do you like my Miniature Zen garden pictures?  Please post a comment.

    Posted in Blog | Tagged | 1 Comment