Wwhen facing the daily financial challenges of this recession, we have two choices: Either cut spending, or find ways to earn more (or both). This article focuses on ways you can help your career and in turn put you in a position to first retain your position in time of shrinking employment and then to grow your position and your income.

If you want to get ahead in your career and in your life, you need to start small and look at the immediate things you can do to help out your situation. If you’re sitting out there at your desk, tiredly wondering if there’s something better that you can be doing with your life, start with these tips that you can start executing immediately that will lead you down a path towards a better career.

Update your resume.

It’s always a good idea to have your resume updated – and improved. Make sure it has plenty of action words and documents specific results that you’ve produced. In fact, your personal work documentation is a great way to look for ideas to spiff up your resume. It’s important to have a few people look at it who don’t know you that well. Ask them what your resume shows. If it doesn’t reflect what you want, revise it. Here "Design" is critical. You can be a Rhodes Scholar from Oxford, but if someone can’t find it on your resume, it is as though it doesn’t exist. Use Bold, Underline, White Space "           " and CAPITALS to your advantage.

Read something on topics you plan to be facing in the future in your career.
Don’t waste your time reading People magazine or Sports Illustrated; Wasted Time is never given back. So instead of dreaming to be like others in the magazines, act on it. See out resources that are related to your job and focus on those. If you spend a lot of free time online, then at least spend part of it researching your professional area, or areas that can help advance your carreer.

Work on your public speaking skills.

Jerry Seinfeld once observed that "more people are scared of giving a eulogy that being the one in the casket." Whenever I am at a conference, I take two sets of notes: One on the topic being discussed and the other on the speakers “Speaking skills”. If a speaker makes you comfortable, enables you to empathize with him or her, makes you laugh while you are learning, is thoroughly engaging and most importantly has infectious enthusiasm, these are all traits you want to learn from the speaker so you can improve your speaking yourself.

Have you ever notice that someone who speaks well is automatically elevated in other people’s minds? Work on your speaking and this could be you. There are great classes on public speaking and Toastmasters clubs in almost every town and city where people get together regularly to work on speaking in a warm non-threatening environment. Also, in the privacy of your own home, spend 5-10 minutes reading aloud, get used to hearing your own voice. Work on projecting your voice, speaking with clarity and then keep building your skills. If you are fearful, start by asking questions at conferences or meetings. But prepare the question. Give some background in the question to the issue. A well thought out question will get plenty of nods of, "He knows what he’s talking about."

Spiff up your work area.
A messy area doesn’t usally reflect someone who is overly organized. You wouldn’t go to a formal event looking messy. So try to spend 5-10 minutes a day keeping your place looking organized. Not only will this create a better impression of you in the eyes of others, you may also come across important materials that you thought were missing or lost. It’s also good to start (or enhance) a document filing system when you do this, so you can quickly find materials.

Brainstorm with others.
Keep in touch with what’s going on in the organization. Pick up the phone and give someone else a call to see what you can learn, or take a stroll through different parts of the workplace to find out what others are up to. Don’t make a nuisance of yourself, but be aware of what is going on, how it can affect you, and how you might be able to leverage that to get ahead.

Improve your language skills.
If English is not your native language, spend some of your spare time working on the finer points. I knew someone once who just moved to the US and to practice speaking English, he called the 800 customer service numbers of electronics companies and kept practicing. Today, audiobooks and podcasts are incredible ways to pick up on the nuances of a language given that you already know the basics.

Foreign language skills are often highly prized in the workplace – and this skill is a great way for you to stand out. There are now many great ways of learning through CD and online programs.

Suggest a solution to a persistent workplace problem.

This is especially true for smaller things, not necessarily big enterprise-wide issues. Be Solution Oriented, Not Problem Oriented. Are people always complaining about the printers? Spec out an additional printer and ship a proposal for a new printer by your boss. Workplace tensions between two people? Figure out how to most discreetly move them far apart from each other, write it up, and ship it off. The key is to make the solution as complete as possible, so that the boss can tell you saw a problem, looked into how to solve it, and came up with a solution on your own.

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The Bottom Line

If you want change to happen, you have to make change happen, and you can start by taking control of as much as you can. Try each of these steps – and watch how "miraculously" things start to change. There is no time like the present. Start today.