Make Yourself Invaluable to Your Company and Reap the Monetary Rewards

One key to success in business is to make yourself not just valuable but invaluable (see "Word to the Wise," below) to your boss and your company. To do that, you have to understand the fundamental needs of the business. Leadership consultant Brian Tracy offers a few good tips:

Make a list of your output responsibilities, the things you do that represent accomplishments, not merely activities. Examine the list and prioritize each one based on its value to your company.

Make a list of all your regular daily tasks. Take this list to your boss and ask him to rank each one in terms of how valuable he considers it to be.

Resolve to focus on the responsibilities and tasks that are most important to your boss and your company. Maximize the usefulness of every second of your time, and you'll get more done. It won't go unnoticed.

Word to the Wise: Valuable vs. Invaluable

Something that is "valuable" has significant worth. Something that is "invaluable" has incalculable worth and is therefore priceless -- at least, that's what the dictionary says.

However, we seldom use "invaluable" in exactly that sense. Most often, we use it to mean "so valuable that you cannot do without it."

Today's "Make Yourself Invaluable" brief, above, provides an example: "One key to success in business is to make yourself not just valuable but invaluable to your boss and your company."

Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2004

Is Seafood Safe During Pregnancy?

Fish To avoid Freshwater fish:

Yellow perch
White perch
Brook trout
Rainbow trout
Catfish
Carp
Whitefish

Fish To avoid Tropical fish:
barracuda
red snapper

Relatively safe fish are:

Pink salmon
Chum salmon
Sockeye salmon
Flounder
Sole


The fish regarded as most safe are:
Cod 鱈
Haddock 黑線鱈
Pollock 狹鱈

單身多面睇：見聞篇
井夫（香港性文化學會）
第 2007 期 (2003 年 2 月 9 日) ◎ 真情真性

為難的團契
有一個團契，成員都是單身的青年人，但隨著時日增長，差不多半數的團友都已結婚生子。團契多年來為避免使單身一族有「陪太子讀書」的感覺，刻意在聚會中避開婚姻生活的題目。後來，有已婚團友表示團契未能照顧他們的需要，所以職員會考慮將團契小組分成已婚組別與未婚組別，讓大家各適其適。結果，建議遭否決，原因是如果未婚男女同組，會易生尷尬；但男女分組，又嫌太單調。最後亦只好維持原判，正是左右做人難！

"未婚男女同組，會易生尷尬" is hypocrisy in my French teacher's eyes when I studied in Montreal, Canada. In my first class the first day of school, he criticized that he had never understood why we Chinese male students tended to sit together while the female students sit on the other side of the room when we're given the chance to freely choose our own seats in the classroom, and that when he had been our age, he and his fellow male classmates, in contrast, would have had competed to sit beside female classmates just to get close and to count them. In conclusion, he thought of Chinese youngsters hypocritical... He asked if we have any comment. Some of us tried to defend by saying that the more conservative thinking of Chinese drove us to sit separately... more natural per se....

On the back of my mind, I had since agreed with the French teacher that the self-labelled "conservative thinking" was simply a glamorous alibi for that kind of hypocritical behaviour.

And you know what, perhaps I may find a proof-text to backup my stand: Paul said in Roman Chapter twelve verse nine, "Let love be without hypocrisy."

TL told me that the selling off of our company is at hand. It makes me think that we may run our separate ways. It should be an exciting moment to finally come to this end -- the materialize, to cash out... whatever you want to call it. But somehow, I just don't feel the rush. The future is unknown. And I'd have to recuperate my creative and adventurous spirit to deal with my next move. I feel that I am a lot less entrepreneurial nowadays. I want to play safe although I must admit that I don't really know how to... And I fear that I don't have the kind of ability to... The very thought of settling down attracts me much though. I don't know what to think, really.