Lawyer Jeremy Goldstein Discusses Finding Fulfillment in Your Career

Jeremy Goldstein is a top corporate law authority in New York. Currently, he’s a managing partner at JLG and Associates with a focus on corporate law. The areas of corporate law that are represented by his firm center around executive compensation and corporate guidance disputes. Before establishing JLG and Associates, he studied law at New York University and received a doctoral degree upon graduation. He has also earned a B.A. at Cornell University and an M.A. from the University of Chicago.

Over the past decade, he has represented some high-profile acquisitions for corporations like Duke/Progress Energy and Goldman Sachs/Kinder Morgan. Jeremy Goldstein currently operates as the chairman on the Mergers and Acquisitions sub-committee for the Business Law Section of the American Bar Association. Over the years, he has taken on numerous leadership roles and has provided opinion pieces on matters of corporate governance and executive compensation.

Why Confidence in Your Career is Important for Success

According to Mr. Goldstein, “Many people view their career as a core component of their identity, which isn’t necessarily a negative thing. However, one byproduct of this is that not having confidence in your career can significantly worsen your motivation to be productive.” For those who might not have the top qualifications or experience for the job at hand, they may find themselves unable to send in a job application or provide their resume. This lack of confidence can automatically manifest itself in poor job prospects if you’re unwilling to send in an application because your resume isn’t perfect.

“It’s important to understand that confidence isn’t a character trait that a person is born with,” says Goldstein. You can learn to be confident, which will pay dividends in your career and provide you with more job opportunities than you might have thought possible. Along with bolstering your productivity and performance, having confidence within your workplace can make you more ambitious, which could open up an entirely new career path for you.

There are many reasons why confidence leads to success and is integral towards enhancing your career. If you aren’t confident in your workplace or your skills, your shyness could increase, which may bring about inaction. Keep in mind that inaction can be very damaging to your career. If you let inaction be the basis of your career decisions, it’s very likely that you will experience missed opportunities, which could be anything from not getting a promotion to being fired from a job that you believed was secure.

No matter where you work and the type of job you do every day, it’s important to take initiative whenever you see the opportunity to do so. Having confidence in your skills can help you avoid issues of inaction. The only way to reach your full potential is by believing in yourself. Before you work on improving your confidence, keep in mind that confidence isn’t the same as arrogance. You don’t want to always believe that you have the answer to everything and that you would be the best employee in any situation. Instead, having self confidence means that you believe in your goals, your skills, and your ability to progress in your career and eventually succeed. Goldstein lists the different reasons as to why confidence fosters success:

• Makes it easier to ask questions — Having confidence should make it easier for you to ask questions when necessary, which will better prepare you for your job and the tasks at hand. When you’re in a meeting with other employees, their silence shouldn’t compel you to be silent as well. If you have a question that needs an answer, asking this question may give you the information you require to enhance your job performance.
• Helps you believe in success — Being confident makes it more likely that you will believe in your ability to succeed. This belief can drive your decisions and allow you to effectively avoid indecision in the workplace.
• Allows you to overcome fear — Not having confidence can quickly cause you to be fearful, which would likely bring about inaction. Whether you fear what others in the workplace think of you or fear that you will fail at an important task that you’ve been handed, being fearful only serves to increase the number of mistakes that you make. On the other hand, building confidence should help you overcome your fears and bolster your success.
• Makes it easier to say no — When you don’t have confidence in your ability or who you are as an employee, it can be very difficult to say no when something unreasonable is asked of you. While you certainly can’t say no too often as an employee, it’s important that you have the confidence to say no in situations where it’s appropriate to do so. Whether you are asked to do far too much work in a short period of time or are requested to work overtime without pay, having the ability to say no can be essential towards allowing you to avoid overworking.
• Makes it easier to say yes — Employees who don’t have confidence in their abilities oftentimes say no to opportunities that are given to them for fear that they will fail. However, these opportunities were almost assuredly given to you for good reason, which is why it’s important that a lack of confidence doesn’t cause you to damage your career. You can be confident that you’re worthy of a promotion when one is offered to you.
• Helps you start new things — Growing in your career can only happen when you take the initiative and start new things. A lack of confidence can so easily keep you stuck in a routine that you deem to be comfortable and safe. If you want to be successful, you may need to alter this routine and try new things and ventures that you can’t always be certain about.
• Sets the bar high — When a person is confident in their abilities, they will set the bar high for themselves by creating strong goals. Without confidence, you may find yourself setting easy goals, which leads to middling results.
• Pushes you to increase your limits — When you have confidence, it will be easier for you to test your limits and to determine what these limits are. Stretching these limits further than you believed possible may allow you to increase them.
• Helps you gain self-confidence — It’s important that you believe in yourself and have self-confidence, which can only occur if you have confidence in your abilities and skills. It’s better to think that you can complete a task instead of automatically believing that you can’t, which is a self-defeating prophecy.
• Helps you stand up for yourself and your abilities — Confidence can make it easier for you to stand up for yourself and your abilities within the workplace. If you don’t stand up for yourself or lack the confidence to do so, your boss or fellow employees might not treat you fairly, which only serves to make it more difficult to build confidence in the future.

How Confidence Can Help You Be More Productive for Work

Jeremy Goldstein believes that a lack of confidence invariably causes someone to be more shy and tentative, which can lead to inaction. “If you want to be fully productive in the workplace, it’s important that you are confident in your abilities and in your job as a whole.” With confidence, you will be considerably less likely to quit a task when it becomes difficult and will likely be able to complete and accomplish more than you had previously thought to be possible. While confidence will certainly improve your productivity in the workplace, Goldstein believes there are some other ways to enhance your productivity as well.

Try Not to Multitask

One of the most damaging things for productivity is when you attempt to multitask. While multitasking might seem like a great way to complete numerous tasks in a short period of time, focusing on multiple tasks at the same time only means that you aren’t giving your full attention to any one task that has been given to you. By multitasking, you may find that your work is sloppy and not up to the standards that your employer has set. If you find it difficult to multitask but attempt to do so regardless of these issues, it’s likely that you won’t complete any of your tasks on time. The mind becomes worn out much quicker when switching between different activities at a rapid interval.

It’s also important that you don’t peruse social media or read the news when you’re trying to finish work. You never know when something else will grab your attention and take your focus away from your job for longer than the five minutes that you had intended to spend not working. Make sure that you only check your email at set intervals throughout the day and that you try to avoid responding to emails until after the work day has finished.

Create a Positive and Safe Work Environment

If you constantly feel stressed out when in your work environment, your productivity will invariably worsen. Heightened stress causes the frontal lobes of the brain to be neglected, which hurts your creativity and makes it difficult to be productive. When you’re working, it’s essential that you focus on the tasks in front of you and leave any other worries outside of that environment.

Make Sure That You’re Organized

Organization is key towards being productive in any workplace. By keeping your workplace organized, you won’t waste time searching for an important document or looking for a misplaced pen. If your workplace is clean, your mind will be able to stay focused on the work that you have to complete during the day. Being organized should also extend to the activities that you do throughout the day.

Focus on the Most Difficult Tasks First

Most people tend to procrastinate with the more difficult tasks that they need to complete, which is why it’s highly recommended that you complete these tasks first. If you opt to work on simple and easy tasks, you may find that your stress builds pertaining to the difficult tasks that you have yet to even start. It’s very difficult to mentally engage yourself on completing a difficult task if you haven’t started until the day is almost over. Completing a hard task early on in the work day should bolster your morale and make it more likely that you finish the easier tasks.

Take Numerous Breaks

It’s important that you avoid working for lengthy stretches of time without taking a break. While it can be easy to get into a good rhythm when completing work, attempting to work for significant chunks of time without taking a break will increase your fatigue levels and your stress levels, which could lead to you becoming exhausted before the work day is even done. When you take short breaks at regular intervals, your concentration and creativity should be enhanced. Make sure that you get enough sleep every night as well. A lack of sleep can leave you feeling fatigued immediately in the work day, which increases the amount of mistakes that you will make.

Set Deadlines

To keep stress levels low and productivity levels high, you should set your own deadlines for completing tasks, which could give you the focus you need on more open-ended projects that don’t have a strict deadline. When you know that you need to complete a task by a certain date or time, you will likely find that it’s easier to keep distractions at bay.

Keep Interruptions to a Minimum

Nothing is more harmful to productivity than being interrupted constantly throughout a work day. Whether a colleague is chatting with you regularly or you spend too much time browsing the internet, even short interruptions can worsen your productivity and damage your workflow. If you have an office, try keeping your door closed. You could also set office hours or try working from home on more difficult projects.

How to Implement Confidence and Productivity Tactics During COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about numerous challenges that have hurt productivity and may have worsened your confidence. The most common challenge is adjusting to working at home when you’ve never had to do so before. Even when you’re not in an office environment, there are many tactics that you can implement to increase your confidence and productivity while the COVID-19 pandemic is ongoing.

Make Sure that You Have a Flexible Schedule

A great way to increase your confidence and boost your productivity is by having a flexible schedule that allows you to complete different tasks at different times of the day. If you find yourself become exhausted or overly stressed during the work day, take a break before resuming work at a later time. If you attempt to stick too rigidly to a set schedule, your productivity could take a hit.

Consider Learning a New Skill

A great way to gain more confidence and strengthen your resume is by learning a new skill. The skill that you choose to focus on could be anything from learning a new language to learning how to code.

Prioritize Your Tasks

If you have a lengthy to-do list for the workday, make sure that your prioritize your tasks with the most important ones being put at the top of the list. It can be a mistake to finish all of the simpler tasks first if you run out of time to complete the larger and more important ones.

Focus on Your Mental and Emotional Health

The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely impacted the mental and emotional health of most people. Whether this impact has been small or large, it’s important that you focus on improving or maintaining your mental and emotional health. Your main goal should be to reduce your stress levels throughout the day, which means exercising regularly, drinking lots of water, and eating a healthy diet.

Being confident and productive in the workplace is no easy feat and takes time and practice if you want to avoid making common mistakes. Confidence is exceedingly important for anyone who wants to have a successful and growing career. Without confidence, you might not even take a promotion that you’ve actually earned. Being confident in the workplace comes with many notable benefits, the primary of which is that it will allow you to believe that success is possible and that your skills are sufficient for the tasks at hand.

As a lawyer in New York, Jeremy Goldstein has spent well over a decade practicing corporate law, advising CEO’s, and handling transformative business events. This experience has given him insight on how to effectively stay productive and manage his time no matter the given task.

Originally published at http://companycultures.org on December 1, 2020.