@SavvyAuntie (Melanie Notkin)

(Website)

Read: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Twice.

Seth Godin

(website)

#1 thing: start a blog and write every day.

@SuzeMuse (Susan Murphy)

(Website)

Stop talking about doing work. Start DOING.

@gapingvoid (Hugh MacLeod)

(Website)

“Practice”.

@StevenHodson (Steven Hodson)

(Blog)

“To listen and learn from those you might not always agree with”

@robdiana (Rob Diana)

(Blog)

Be prepared to acknowledge you don’t know something and get help. Also pay more attention to (devil is in the) details.

@mathewi (Mathew Ingram)

(Website)

The best way to do good work is to be passionate about it (but passion is difficult to manufacture.)

@Digidave (David Cohn)

(Website)

Odd enough I’m going to say: “take breaks.” Unless a project has a deadline – treat it like a marathon, not a sprint. Tortoise and the Hare!

@MarketingProfs (Ann Handley)

(Website)

Tap into what you love doing, and make sure that’s a part of your job (if not the whole of it). The best work comes from love for what you do.

@MenwithPens (James Chartrand)

(Website)

Start understanding your client’s feelings and putting them before your own.

@lizstrauss (Liz Strauss)

(Website)

Better work comes from listening … to whom the work reaches.

@lksugarman (Lydia Sugarman)

(Website)

Believe in what you are doing so you can completely commit to doing the best you possibly can. If you don’t believe, find a new occupation.

@soniasimone (Sonia Simone)

(Website)

My best answer would be this:  connect with one person.

@louisgray (Louis Gray)

(blog)

Prioritize a diversity in discovery and voices while focusing on that it is which makes you different and unique. Don’t follow the crowd.

@ColleenCoplick (Colleen Coplick)

(blog)

Give up on the excuses. Every single time someone thinks of some reason they can’t do something, they need to see or determine if they’re feeding themselves a reason or an excuse. If you’re not dead, have a broken bone or deathly ill, it’s an excuse.  Stop making excuses and start DOING things.

(website)

Feel amazing. That’s probably the one biggest thing people can do to improve their work.

(website)

Do more of it, more often. Spread 5 hrs of work across 5 days. Add 5 min/day/week.  Conversely; expose yourself to those doing great work outside your field.

(website)

To start doing better work now, double check ALL work before considering it done!

(website)

Take a breath then clearly figure out what you want to achieve (i.e., don’t come up with solution(s) first)

(website)

Don’t let negative emotions bog you down. Transmute them into powerful tools for productivity.

(website)

Stop multitasking.

(website)

Start with the “Why” and let the “How” follow organically.

(website)

Get a complete system in place to process and track anything from incoming through outgoing/done. My pick is GTD but pick your own.

(website)

Decide what you really want. Most people have no idea, which means they don’t get anywhere.

(website)

Meditate for at least 10-15 minutes each day. You’d be amazed the difference it makes in your overall functionality.

(website)

Identify your goals (be they short or long term) so that you may *focus* on them and how to get there.

(website)

Delegate.

@monicahamburg (Monica Hamburg)

(Blog)

Expand your mind. Sometimes we forget there’s a world outside what we do as work – which can enrich us. Read, Play and Learn.  Read about something outside of the parameters of your career.

@tamar (Tamar Weinberg)

(website)

Point #1:
Consider what you’re doing.  Do you love it?  If not, find something you love.  You’ll find your performance increase substantially when you actually do the things you’re passionate about.

Point #2:
Network with like-minded people around the work that you do.  As we’re human, we’re inherently social beings (both in-person and online).  Find the online communities and face-to-face meetups that are frequented by your peers and use these opportunities to learn, to strengthen your position, and to help your friends.

@PenelopeTrunk (Penelope Trunk)

(website)

To start doing better at work now be more honest with yourself. You do not need to get paid to do what you love — you love sex and you don’t get paid. Why do you need to get paid for stuff like that? Stop demanding so much from work and demand more from yourself. Be kind and generous at work – with time and energy — and your work will be better. Focus on the people you love and then you’ll get happiness in life and your work can be how you challenge yourself and how you support yourself but not how you find happiness.

@sbspalding (Steve Spalding)

(website)

Stop thinking about it so da..darn much.
If there is one eternal truth that has taken clever men and women through their lives for millennia, that truth is that it is nearly impossible to make predictions about complex outcomes with any degree of certainty. As human beings without psychic powers we are in the business of mitigating risk, not trying to see into the future, or at the very least we should be. The problem, however, is that too many of us are convinced that in order to do good work we need to be able to do perfect work. Said differently, we really, really want to mitigate the risk of our work down to 0%.
Which is insane and pointless unless of course you have those psychic powers I spoke of earlier.
What this insanity leads to among other things is paralysis by analysis, tunnel vision, impatience, over-reactions and all the other adrenaline fueled half-cocked behaviors that lead our work to fail in the first place.
Thus, in summary and list form (for easy reading), to do better work understand:
1. There is a chance that you will fail.
2. That no matter how clever or well planned your idea, something spectacularly bad will probably happen to it.
3. If you are in the business of doing business you have the tools to overcome that bad thing.
4. Even so, you still might fail.
5. Treated the right way, that failure can be a stepping stone to more interesting and significantly more successful future work.

(website)

Align who you are with what you do.
In his 2006 Stanford commencement, Steve Jobs said, “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
That very sentiment has never been truer or more powerful than now. We’re in a time of great upheaval, but like all such moments, along with all the anxiety and uncertainty, we’ve opened a window where the quest for reinvention is being not only forgiven, but fostered.
Do not waste this moment. Search deep down, own up to who you are and what makes you come alive, then build every waking moment around those activities and people.

@MY_BIG_FAT_LIFE

(Theresa Blackburn) (website)

Get organized.  I am much more productive when I have a schedule and things are organized.

(website)

Get enough sleep! I’ve tried implementing GTD, exercise, diet, prayer, meditation, and a lot of other things to improve my attitude and performance. In my experience, not getting enough sleep sabotages everything else, and if you do that ONE thing, it makes many other choices that support doing better work and performing better in general exponentially easier.

(website)

I just need to focus. I’ve yet to figure out a good formula.

(website)

Stop waiting for things to magically align and realize you have to make things happen.  Stop caring if the audience or family will like the result. Do yourself proud, first.

(website)

Learn to say ‘No’.

(website)

I do my best work when I’m loving what I’m doing. So, outsource the rest.

(website)

To do better work, learn how to focus on what’s important to your job and cut out the distractions. That sounds simplistic. Know what we do the least? The simple things.

(website)

Execute the strategy, “Always consider your audience.” From face-to-face conversations, instant messages and tweets to formal emails, blog posts and business proposals, make every attempt to put yourself in the recipient’s shoes before ever writing (or saying) a word.

You know what to say. But strategizing on how to say it dramatically improves the chances of your communication being received, successfully interpreted, and — most important — resonating with the recipient. Learning how to effectively talk the talk is the true key to proving that you can also walk the walk.