Make Your Best Better With Career Tips From Jason Womack

STUDIO CITY (CBS) — Want to work smarter and get ahead in 2012?

Jason Womack visited the KCAL 9 studios Wednesday to show viewers how to get a handle on their work to-do list and more.

Womack is also the author of "Your Best Just Got Better: Work Smarter, Think Bigger, Make More."

Womack's book is packed with strategies, tactics, tools, and processes to help readers consistently and incrementally improve their performance at work. It teaches the fundamentals of workflow and human performance and spells out how to get more done, on time, with fewer resources, and with less stress. But more than that, it provides brilliant insights into why we tend to do what we've always done—and how we can break out of the patterns that hold us back.

"The first step to changing the way you get things done is to accept that you're never going to get it all done," says Womack. "You'll always be updating your to-do list by crossing off completed tasks and adding new ones…and that's okay. When you improve the way you approach the things you need to get done, both on the job and off, you'll stop wishing things were different and start really making new things possible."

In this new year, Womack recommends two things people should do to get ahead:

- build your team: colleagues, mentors, outside-vendors - these are the people you'll turn to for ideas and advice in the coming year

- know - and work - when you're at your best

What can we learn from last year?

- homeostasis demands we "stay comfortable" - whatever you were comfortable doing last year got you "here." To get "there," you may have to do something different!

- once you do something, it's easier to do something - seems like a tongue-twister, I know, but I've found it to be true!

The first quarter has a few "long weekend" holiday Mondays, what can we do to jump back in and be productive after some time away?

- unsubscribe: look around at the stuff you know is dated or redundant

- change your "out-of-office" email message, "I'm back and catching up..."

For tips on how to get ahead, visit Womack online.