Four Steps

Debt is a form of enslavement, the victim is deceived into breaking a simple rule:
Spend less than you earn.

Spending less than you earn is very similar to another simple rule many struggle with when overweight:
Eat less than you burn.

Health and wealth and happiness are very inter-related. Getting control of your health can help you to get control of other areas of your life. Taking control of my eating habits helped me break away from other bad behaviors and get my financial situation under control.

With any change in life, you start by learning, then setting goals, making a plan to achieve them, and acting on your plan. The last step is critical, never wait to act. So learn what you should learn, get a plan for your goal, and GO!

1 Learn
You have to learn a better way, you can't keep doing the same thing and expect a different outcome. Learn what to do. For example, don't buy a gym membership and never learn how to safely exercise because you may hurt yourself and be worse off than before. Similarly, you should research budget plans or debt elimination strategies and pick one that you firmly believe will work for you, one that people like you have been successful with. This is also a time to get motivated and inspired by others who have been successful at making the change you are making. Finally, write a list of what benefits you will have from making the change (or start with this list), but keep it handy.

2 Goal != Dream
Good goals should be a specific and small, they should be steps on your journey toward your dreams and desires, their should be a deadline or target date for your goal. A dream to be a millionaire is not a goal. Good example of a goal would be to lose 10 lbs by December 2010, or pay off all credit card balances before July 2011.

3 Plan
Very important third step is to plan, be aware of your life and the obstacles you already have to accomplishing your goal, account for those in your plan. Some unexpected obstacles will blindside you, you may get pregnant, you may have a huge unexpected expense, or experience a job loss. Things happen that are out of your control and can impede your progress, expect them to happen but realize they happen to EVERYONE, and realize obstacles happened to people who were still successful with their goals. Decide to be one of those people, the ones that didn't give up or give in to challenges. Use the knowledge you gained to make a detailed plan. Keep in mind that your plan should not be unreasonable, your plan should be actually physically possible for you to do 100% of the time. Your plan should make sense to you, you need to believe that following the plan will work, not just hope that it will.

4 Act
Make a commitment to accomplish your goal with your plan. Think no-matter-what-I-am-doing-this, then as you act, no-matter-what, do it, stay committed. Decide now that you will always decide to go on, then never change your mind about it. You have to be a stubborn, hard-nosed jerk about it, because excess fat and debt are stubborn hard-nosed jerks too. Use the inspiration and motivation from other successful people to support you and help you to avoid falling backwards into addictive behaviors that take you away from your goal. If you look, you can find inspirational stories from people who had challenges accomplishing the very same thing you are trying to accomplish. Keep at it until you see movement, until you see a change you really are proud of, until you reach that goal, then immediately start over with step one and do it again. Don't bask in your awesomeness for a second, because that's a great time for an old behavior to creep back into your life. You achieved something, it felt great, it was great, don't ruin it by undoing that hard work.

Keeping your resume fresh

Image: Image: Tom Curtis / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Your resume and portfolio is a marketing tool for you. Keep it fresh with your latest victories. It does not look good for a resume to only have three year old accomplishments (it's akin to a neglected castle). It is a shame when the best candidates for an opportunity are overlooked because of a stale resume and a lesser-skilled but better documented person will get the job instead. I have not been perfect at this, but I do keep a screenshot archive of web applications I was involved with. Each time a big project is completed or even when a big undertaking is conquered, I take that as a cue to update my resume with some important descriptive words about the project and what I did to help bring it home. I usually pick up a few new technologies with each project that also have helped fill out my documented developer skills.

Keeping it fresh is also a good idea because you never know when you will be asked to pack up and get out, US companies are loyal only to themselves and their shareholders and will layoff good employees at the first sign of trouble. Letting your resume go stale or failing to document your completed projects, new skills, and personal wins will impact your own professional success.

I also solicit feedback from managers and developers I work with and use the positive comments they make in my references section. I try to time my request for feedback such that I get a good positive note and the person can easily remember a specific positive thing to say about me. The manager or developer is usually are happy to do that for me, after all, I just helped them out.