Time management and conflicting career advice

Fortune has a killer headline – Keep your job: A 10-point survival guide (http://money NULL.cnn NULL.com/2009/01/06/news/economy/10 NULL.tips NULL.fortune/index NULL.htm). Most of it is a good article and most of the ten points make sense. But the time management implications of conflicting career advice makes the advice a no-win situation for the Cubicle Warrior.

For example, a great piece of advice is “keep your network active.” I wrote about how to do this in the last Cube Rules News newsletter that you can sign up for from the right sidebar. Networks are how you get jobs, so this makes great sense.

Another is “update your skills.” You should “take a class, read a book, keep up with trade publications.” Job skills are important, no doubt.

From there, however, it gets dicey. The two conflicting ones are these:

For now, forget about work-life balance. A major preoccupation when the economy was humming along nicely, “having time for outside interests has to go right out the window now,” says Bright. “You need to concentrate on doing whatever it takes to make yourself indispensable.”

Like anyone in a corporation is indispensable or won’t get laid off if they work 20-hours a day. Never happens. Then this one comes along:

Remember, in the knowledge economy, you are the product. So take care of yourself. Get enough sleep, eat right, and take time to work out a few times a week.

See, you have to throw out the work-life balance for outside interests and just work.  But you also need the time to get enough sleep, eat right, and take time to work out a few times a week. Plus keep your network active. Plus update your skills — even take a class and all the time that takes to do so. But throw work-life balance right out the window.

I’ll sign up for that no-win scenario, no problem.

Here at Cube Rules, we don’t set you up in no-win scenarios. We don’t even believe in work-life balance.

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