Bulalo Soup for the Xlibrian Soul

I'm about to leave my current employer. It was a fun 4 years but I've realized that it's time for me to move forward. But you see I'm a very process-oriented person. Now that its time for me to go, I wanted to assess these last four years. Just like all the other marketing campaigns I have handled, post-evaluation is key. What have I learned? What can I take away from this?

Here are some of the things I learned:

• Work hard. Don't think about working hard only for the company but see it as working hard for yourself. Think about it, if you acquire more skills, you will be in a better position to improve the company and improve yourself as well. It's a win-win situation.
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• Choose your battles. Speaking of winning, try not to sweat the small stuff. When you're really busy with lots to do, at some point it becomes imperative to choose which battles will be worth fighting. Sometimes you will have to be more tolerant and more patient. Not every situation will be to your advantage or to your liking. If you can tolerate it, let it go. It will strain you to no end worrying about a small thing when you have bigger battles ahead.
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• Plan for the worst, work for the best. Always have a fall-back plan or Plan B. My cubicle mate recently mentioned "Murphy's Law" to me. It was quite funny and pessimistic but I can't help seeing the practicality in it. Simply put, "if anything can go wrong, it will." So always make sure that you also plan for failure. This was a hard pill for me to take because I always believed that it was the more efficient way to do things right the first time all the time. But time and again I have been proven wrong. Give it your best shot the first time around, but make sure you keep your ego and frustrations at bay; and have enough time and resources to allocate for a second or even eighth try.
• Celebrate life's simple joys. Now just because you're busy, doesn't mean you can't take a break. More than ever it becomes imperative that you take time out. For instance, always have cake on your birthday. It will make you feel better. Sharing with team mates will make it even more significant. Life's simple joys - like having cake on your birthday can make life more palatable. Sometimes a little bit more bearable than normal.
• Don't wallow in failure. I have failed so many times in the time I have worked as a marketing professional. But each time I have weathered the scoldings (which was due to me of course) and I have tried even harder to do better, whether to course correct as soon as possible, to make up for my mistake or to exact enough damage control to minimize the loss. Believe me in all those circumstances, I have learned that success will make you soft. But failure will make you stronger.
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• Not everyone will like you but you will only ever need one person to believe in you. Better to have this one person stand up for you than a crowd of empty praises.
• Be grateful. I have had a handful of "one persons" to whom I will forever be grateful, for teaching me to be better at what I do or challenging me to be stronger, in their own way I think they have helped make the more improved version of me, if there is such a thing. When relationships fail and disagreements arise, remember what they did for you - be grateful. In that way, you will not begrudge them.
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• Don't wear your heart on your sleeve. Take criticism like praise. Take sarcasm in stride. Think about the saying, "Sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you." I know it's not easy. I have felt the sting of careless words and have felt insulted so many times that there were times I felt people were blaming me for everything that went wrong. But I assure you this is neither healthy nor productive. When possible, let it pass out your other ear and just keep doing the best you can.
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• Work with what you have. Don't let the lack of resources stop you from doing your job. In the end, you will still be accountable for completing what you were tasked to do and so the boss will still end up screaming at you and not at the person who has made it difficult for you to get the job done.
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• Don't get drowned in the weeds. In my case, it was just math. As I learned from a really smart CEO - in the end only a handful of metrics are really worth talking about. From every single analysis and every single report, there is a meaningful conclusion and/ or end-point that defines the task or provides insight on what needs to be done. Find this like you would mine for gold and then the analysis would have proved itself worth the effort.
• Think "Occam's Razor" - the simplest solution is the best solution. Life is already complicated as it is. Just so I can feel smart, I'd like to use this statement from its Wikipedia definition -- The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae ("law of parsimony" or "law of succinctness"): "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem", roughly translated as "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity".
• Everybody is better than you at something. Never undervalue people, most likely they know something that you don't. For a team to succeed, it is important to capitalize on each other's strengths and compensate weaknesses. No single person can attain success.

I have certainly not attained success. If I have improved and if I have made a difference then it is because I have had such a solid team (and by team I mean a support group not only within my department but all over the place) that stood by me and supported me and told me I was wrong. It has been a solid working experience for me that last four years. I felt like I was thrown in so many different directions - whether it was in line with marketing (online marketing, pay-per-click marketing, email marketing, lead generation) and at times as far as finance (cash flow analysis, ROI analysis), information development (process generation, I'm still no good at the actual development thing) and human resources (administratively anyway). I have not always succeeded in all of them but I have learned from all of them (not easy lessons by any means) and that has made my experience wonderful.