Hey, guys. It's Chelsea from The Financial Diet. And this week's video is brought to you by Wealthsimple.

And coming to you live from this incredibly gloomy day-- it must look like midnight outside, but it's actually 11:00 AM-- I wanted to talk about something that we haven't touched on in a while but is so important. And that is how to carry yourself at work. Particularly, we wanted to talk about all of the things you shouldn't do at your first year on the job.

And of course, I'm talking mostly about sort of white-collar professional jobs that maybe for some of you require you for the first time to be part of an office ecosystem and to think more in terms of a long-term career. But these things can apply to many, many jobs. And we have a lot of them to cover, so let's get right into them with eight things you should never do in your first year on the job.

Number one is forget to write things down. It can be really easy after a meeting or conversation to feel like you will automatically remember what your next steps are because it feels so fresh in your mind when you're mid conversation. But not writing things down will cost you big time, because even in a fairly simple conversation, there can be five things that are important to remember.

And it's been demonstrated that actually taking the time to write things down on a piece of paper with your hand as opposed to just typing them can actually be super impactful on helping you remember. "In 2014, the Association of Psychological Science reported that students who physically took notes received a memory boost, particularly when compared to those who took notes via a laptop." And aside from being good when it comes to just remembering what you're supposed to do after a meeting, writing things down has a huge impact on helping you reach specific goals. "Neuropsychologists have identified the 'generation effect,' which basically says that individuals demonstrate better memory for material that they've generated themselves than for material that they've just read. It's a nice edge to have. And when you write down your goals, you get to access the generation effect twice, first when you generate the goal, creating a picture in your mind, and second when you write it down because you're essentially reprocessing or regenerating that image." My colleague Annie is the person most notorious on our team for being super effective at taking great notes and following through on them.

And she's always getting on me about needing to be better with doing it for my own personal goals, as well as remembering what my responsibilities are. And this video is just to say, Annie, you're extremely right. But if you still need another good reason to be really diligent about writing things down, remember that being the person who sends a really succinct, easy-to-follow recap after group meetings can make you one of the most key people in any team.

You make yourself indispensable, you set a really great example, and even if you're fairly new on the job, this is something that anyone can do. Annie happens to be our team recapper, and I cannot overstate how much that makes her crucial for our team. Number two is eat lunch at your desk.

So there are many reasons why you should avoid eating at your desk whenever possible and should especially never slip into it as a routine. First of all, staying physically inactive throughout your entire workday is super bad for your health and can lead you to unwittingly increase your calorie intake while burning basically nothing. And while it is true that we do tend to eat more in social settings, not having a clearly defined lunch period can lead to constant grazing and snacking. "According to The New York Times, 'In a study of 122 employees, people on average cached 476 calories worth of food in their desks.' And additionally, as of 2016, there are 5.1 million vending machines in the United States, a number that has grown 96% since 1995." But beyond the impact that constantly eating at your desk can have on your health, both in terms of how much activity you're getting and how much you're unwittingly eating, you're also missing out on valuable social time with your colleagues.

Of course, having time to just bond with colleagues and talk to them in more abstract ways about things you might be thinking about have great impacts on your mental health. But it also makes you a better employee all around. According to a Gallup poll, "women who strongly agree that they have a best friend at work are more than twice as likely to be engaged as the women who say otherwise." So if you can commit to at least a couple days a week where you get up from your desk and have a nice meal with your co-worker, even if it's just moving across the room and eating homemade lunches, you stand to benefit enormously.

Number three is ignoring your boss's goals. So one of the things we've mentioned most from The Financial Diet book-- which if you don't have your copy, you can grab one at the link in the description-- is an excerpt from our Career chapter from career expert Joanne Cleaver. And one of her key pieces of advice is strengthening your own career by understanding how your boss is judged.

In the book, Joanne says, "Your goal is to be known by the right people and to be known for the right things. So how do you do that? Not with your boss-- she has her hands full with getting you and your teammates to achieve the team's official goals.

Never forget that one of the most important ways you can build your reputation is to make your boss look good. This means understanding what incentives are built into her bonus and how can make her look good to her boss." Not only does focusing on helping her look good allow her to really view you as someone she wants to mentor, look out for, and really advocate for, it also shows a much deeper understanding of how professional careers really work. A huge element of being a competent professional is realizing that you are never alone in things.

Professional life is an intricate web of shared interests, goals, and needs that are always interacting. And there can be a tendency to view your career as an extremely siloed path, but that's never how it actually is in real life. You're not just looking at your individual career path and how it will go.

You're also looking at yourself in terms of how you fit into the greater web and the impacts that you're having on the systems in which you're working. And ultimately, it is in your self-interest to view yourself as part of this greater web and look at your success in terms of how you can most impact that greater system. It makes you infinitely more valuable than if you're just looking out for yourself.

Understanding that working together and looking beyond your own immediate goals is good for you in the long term is the level up from just looking out for yourself. Number four is be lax about the dress code. It can be really hard to get used to the idea of "business attire," particularly if you work in a more conservative office.

But projecting a professional, stylish, and grown-up appearance is one of the most subtly effective ways to no longer be viewed as the "new kid." But dressing in a more sloppy or overly casual way can actually have a serious impact on how you work. "For many, this sloppy attitude can result in a downward spiral of unproductive workdays, messiness, and an overall poor approach toward work. A dress code is one of the most important steps to follow, to set yourself up for the basics of professionalism. If you're unwilling to present yourself as a professional, it could bleed into your work and others perceptions of you as an employee.

While a three-piece suit may not be necessary to get your job done effectively, being put together and ready to present the best version of yourself certainly is." And allowing your personal style to shine through-- within the confines of your overall company's dress code-- is a great way to feel most confident in yourself while also creating something of a mini personal brand amongst the office, which people can remember and associate you with. But "dressing for work," it should be noted, does not always translate to dressing in the most fancy way. For example, if you're someone who has a really hard time wearing heels and doesn't feel particularly comfortable in them, don't wear them.

Either pick really low heels or wedges or super stylish flats or loafers to allow you to convey that really put-together, sharp appearance without wearing something that you're not super comfortable in. You want to project that confidence and ease, and that doesn't always translate to the most fancy or dressed-up thing. Start by putting together an awesome mood board from places like Pinterest or Instagram with looks that you really identify with and which in some way really translate your personality.

And once you have your mood board set up, you can start strategically creating your wardrobe around that. Number five is stay at the office later than everyone else. So a lot of people think that it's a really good way to show initiative and dedication to a job to come in earlier and stay later than your co-workers.

And this is a really bad idea for two reasons. While, of course, you don't want to be the person who's coming in later and leaving earlier than everyone, pushing the boundaries of when employees are staying at the job sets a precedent that everyone else will subsequently feel somewhat obligated to follow, which will make you the annoying person at the office. But also, it sets a precedent for yourself.

And if you do start to leave at a more reasonable time, whether because you feel like you don't need to stay as late or you have other personal conflicts, suddenly, leaving at a normal time is going to be perceived as leaving early for you. It erodes that sense of boundary around your work-life balance and allows people to feel more and more comfortable encroaching on your personal time. Speaking anecdotally, at my first office job, everyone hated the guy who came in at 7:00 AM and left at 7:00 PM.

What the hell? And not only that, overworking yourself is a surefire way to find yourself stressed, anxious, and not doing your best work. "In a study from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence reported by the Harvard Business Review, one in five highly engaged employees reported a high level of burnout." And if you have a boss that actually expects you to come in super early and leave late, that might be a sign that they're promoting a super unhealthy work culture. "Good bosses don't expect you to put in face time just for the principle of it. They expect you to get great results in your work.

If that sometimes means that you need to stay late to get it done, they'll expect you to do that. But they won't expect you to do it just to 'show dedication.' In fact, they actively won't want you to do that, because that's a bad use of your time and contributes to a messed up culture that values the wrong things." Point being, your work should be about results, not about how long you spend at the office. On the flip side, number six is get into the habit of being late.

Now, this may feel like an obvious point. But as workplaces overall become more casual environments, it's easy for workers' attitudes to start becoming more and more lax. According to a 2017 CareerBuilder survey, "nearly 64% of employers and employees believe the concept of 'working 9:00 to 5:00' is an antiquated practice.

Yet more than half of employers, 53%, still expect employees to be on time every day, and four in 10 have fired someone for being late." Now, this doesn't put you, the new employee, in a very good situation. It's kind of a lose-lose situation in which you don't want to push that 9:00 to 5:00 boundary on the whole office culture. But you also don't want to be the person who's constantly showing up late.

The best solution here for you as a new employee is to err to the side of caution, coming in at or around 9:00 AM everyday until you find out if it's the case that your office is more comfortable with people coming in closer to the 10:00 AM mark. To be on the safe side, I would not start coming in on the later side until it's about a year mark into your working there. It can be hard to strike the right balance and not violate the either come in too early or too late rules, but it's always best to stick to that cautious side as long as you're new and wait to really fully understand the office culture before you make any decisions.

Number seven is trust people too easily. So the truth is while some colleagues may end up being your friends, not all of them are friend material. And some may not have your best interest at heart.

It's important to be very cautious when forming more personal friendships with the people you work with. But when you're working your first professional job, it can be super easy to overestimate how close it's appropriate to get with the people you work with or how friendly you really are. And there can be enormous benefits to engaging in after-hours socializing with your colleagues and even drawbacks for not participating in it.

But it's a fine line to walk. Simply put, being in daily proximity with people can make you seem way closer than you actually are. But just as I mentioned earlier that you are part of that work ecosystem, it's important to remember that in that ecosystem, you may not be aligned with other people's interests.

And beyond that, being overly friendly with co-workers can put you in serious hot water from an HR perspective. And this overly friendly, often alcohol-fueled socializing can be particularly bad for women in the office, especially when combined with their need to already overcome certain gender norms and expectations. "The New York Times recently published a poll revealing that 2/3 of Americans think that people should take extra caution among members of the opposite sex at work, and a third think that one-on-one meetings with them are always inappropriate. So it's not just Mike Pence who has a problem with such encounters.

Traditional patriarchal Christian views are clearly not to blame for the fact that 44% of American women actually find it inappropriate to have lunch alone with someone who is not their spouse." Point being, between the fact that you may not be on the same page with co-workers professionally and the fact that many of these interactions could border on inappropriate or be perceived as such, it's always best to approach professional relationships with polite caution and to only cross that friend line once you're absolutely sure that it's the right idea. And usually, that means taking a lot of time to figure that person out. Finally, number eight is to quit when it's not perfect.

Now, of course, there will always be caveats to why it's not a good idea to quit your first professional job in the first year. If it's an unhealthy or unsafe work environment or putting you in a really personally compromised position, of course, you shouldn't stay there for a full year. But that said, in the eyes of potential future employers, repeated short stints at different jobs is a real red flag. "Job hopping" is becoming increasingly popular amongst young workers, but it can also really hurt your chances of securing a new job. "According to a survey from global staffing firm Robert Half, 44% of CFOs reported that they are not at all likely to hire a candidate with a history of job hopping, due to the possibility of losing them in the future." Now, no job is going to be perfect.

But even if you are thinking of quitting, that decision and the timing of it should be weighed against your longer-term prospects. And while sometimes, the answer may be yes, you should quit, you want to avoid at all costs making a pattern of that on your resume. You don't want to become a red flag for future hiring managers.

But luckily, there are ways to offset this. "If you decide to leave your position before one year is up, it is advised to stay at your next job for at least two to three years. Leaving the second job early establishes a negative pattern. It sends the message that you aren't committed to the job or, worse, that you cause problems within the team." And even if your first job really doesn't seem ideal, at least make sure you give it every fair chance you can before you decide to quit early. "Before resigning abruptly, new hires should ask themselves if they're giving the job a fair chance.

New employees' behavior helps determine the amount of support they receive, according to a 2017 study of 273 new hires and 203 managers. Those who seem committed to the job and ask questions will therefore get more help from managers." There is a way to be strategic and balance your need to be in the right work moment with your need not to be seen as a job hopper. So make sure to give every decision the full thought that it deserves, even if it means perhaps staying at a job a few months longer than you'd like to.

In the end, the professional game you're playing is a long one. And making the right decisions early will help set you up for the career path you deserve. And similarly, your financial game is a long one, too.

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You can get started with literally $1.00, and it only takes a few minutes-- no excuses. As always, guys, thank you for watching. And don't forget to hit the Subscribe button and to come back every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday for new and awesome videos.

Bye. [DINGING]