Month: February 2019

If you’re unhappy at your day job, if your ‘rock your job’ mental sound track is starting to sound like poorly recorded hold music, you might want to try these perspective-switching ideas on for size. 

Secret #1

Who You Think You Work For – is wrong.

Our cultural vernacular gives us this wonderful phrase… ‘I work for  ‘Some Company.’   We’ve all said it.  I’ll probably say it tomorrow; it doesn’t make it true.   You are the CEO of your own little employment agency and your role as CEO of  Employment You is to find a customer who will pay you for sending yourself to work with them. 

Is that confusing?  Just think of this way.  You work for you.  You sell your services to a company.  They pay you, but in the end, you report to yourself.  You get to decide if you’re doing a good job, what job you do and what you charge.  Like any business, you have to sell the services customers want to pay for, and like any business, you get to decide how much you sell and at what price.

I work for me.

I get to decide how I’m going to show up at work, what kind of results I’m going to deliver and how much I’m willing to put into my daily grind.

My customer is free to buy from me or anyone else.  They only owe me for what I’ve already delivered.

When you view it that way, it’s a lot different right?  Instead of thinking you’re at the whim of a corporation that’s out of touch and is treating you badly, suddenly, that corporation is you.  When you work for you, the motivation to get in there and provide your customer with value becomes very strong.  If you don’t deliver, they won’t buy.   But also, there’s a sense of pride and control.  This is your business. You run it and you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.

Next week – Secret #2 : The Reason You’re Working is Not What You Think 

Here’s the thing.  If you want someone else to tell you each step in a process so that you’re sure you’ll succeed – you will always be limited to predictable results.  You will still be tied to what is commonly considered a practical, realistic outcome.

Get it?  No?

If I join a weight loss plan, and eat exactly what they tell me to eat, use their metrics for measuring my food, be it a calculation that only they understand or a package that they’ve determined is a meal, then I will be limited to the results that someone else’s plan or package can deliver. Going forward, I’ll be tied to that program to maintain my weight.

If I take a position at a company and if I use their job description as the sole metric for what I’m going to do on a daily basis, then I am forever tied to that position.  I will not be demonstrating that I’m ready for another position and forever more, if I want to understand if I’m successful, I’ll be tied to that static definition of success.

So What?

Well, for starters, I’ve hemmed myself in.  In an effort to avoid disappointment, I’ve constrained my possible outcomes.  Because I’m only going to follow one path, because I’m going to measure my food against an unchanging plan, because I’m going to measure my job performance against a static scale, the number of possible acheivements has just shrunk. 

Let’s look at the opposite.

If I create my own weight loss plan, it’s possible that I’ll find a formula that creates weight loss.  In fact, as long as I never stop taking action – planning what I’m going to eat and eating exactly that – measuring results and then adjusting – I will drop weight.   I will also build internal confidence in the weight loss process because it arose from inside myself.  I’m also more likely to lose faster than my friend on a plan, because I won’t be limited to someone else’s schedule or process.    I’m also more likely to lose slower for the same reason.  The number of possible outcomes has expanded in every way.  

The same for my job.  If I believe that it’s up to me to define what my responsibilities are, I’ve just blown open the doors on possible outcomes in my career as compared to a person who is measuring themselves against a someone else’s yardstick or job description.  

It’s easy to see in the weight loss example because pounds lost per week is immutable.  When we talk about job performance, the results we measure seem murky and, we don’t get to track our progress on a weekly basis easily in one number.   However, the process is the same.   I define a set of actions that I imagine will create the job results that I want.  I take those actions consistently, then I measure where I’m at.  I tweak my actions and repeat the process.  

For instance, I might decide that I’m good at and enjoy task completion. I want my job to include completing tasks quickly and often.  So I set up a course of action.  Every Monday, I’ll consider what results I need to achieve by the end of the week – say one report created, two reviews done, five hundred lines of code or one project promoted – whatever it is, then I break that down into tasks about a half hour in length each.   I double check the tasks against my calendar,  modulate the quantity so that it’s achievable and start checking off the boxes for each task.  At the end of the week I measure my output, my job satisfaction, etc.   Did I love the feeling of completing tasks?  Did I get the result I wanted from this?   If not, I evaluate why, adjust and try again.   In time, I should be plowing through tasks and creating results efficiently.   If I’m the kind of person that loves that type of work process, my job satisfaction should go up.  If I work in an industry that appreciates that type of work process, then I should see my performance scores or salary go up.   If my industry doesn’t value high task completion, then I may see my performance scores go down or my salary stagnate.  Then I can decide what action to take next.  Either way, the possible outcomes for me at work have expanded in every way.  I am now in control of the results I get at work, I have confidence in my ability to define my job and achieve the results I want, all of which should translate into less uncertainty about my ability to keep myself employed over the long run.

Task completion is a pretty simple example. You can apply the same thinking to leadership or technical prowess. Look at your skill set and find the things you’re great at, which are likely to be the things you love to do. Then ask yourself, how can I deliver results while maximizing use of these skills? Then plan those actions into your week and measure your results.

My friend who wanders into her boss’s office each week for a list of tasks is working in a way that our society tells us is less risky.  That’s not true.  She has reduced the risk of making a mistake, but she’s increased the risk of missed opportunity.  She has less of a chance of building confidence, creating an enjoyable work experience and less chance of exemplary achievement.  There’s an argument to be made that she’s traded her potential for stability.   However, that argument is shaky given that we don’t know how well her boss assigns work and how long the job she is currently doing will remain viable.   Should she lose that job, she will most likely only feel confident in seeking the same job elsewhere.  And in knowledge work… the jobs we were doing yesterday are often obsolete today.

So What is the Take-Away? 

When you define your process, you own the results.  And that my friends, is pretty powerful mojo.

Monday Blog Redux
If you noticed, I posted the same blog content with 2 different pictures.
That, my friends is a fail, and I’m leaving them up to honor my fail.
I was running late, and uploaded the same blog, rushing, trying to keep my commitment to putting up a blog every Monday… had I put up nothing, that would be a quit.

That said, move on to the real blog – 3 secrets about work.

Our time has a way of filling up. Our lives do too. One way to find out what you really want to be doing with your time is empty it out and see what you add back. The results might surprise you.

In 2016 I quit every extra activity in my life other than one volunteer gig and my day job. I parted ways with cherished friends as I left groups and stopped participating in sports. One after another, I stopped it all.

In the space that opened up, I found time… and curiosity. In the opening that I’d created, I found dreams.

After a couple of months with nothing extra going on, I found myself exploring. My friends and I agreed to hike across Scotland. I lost forty pounds. I hired a life coach. I totally transformed my life.

Ever wonder what might be different if you weren’t doing all of what you do?

It’s your move.

We all quit on ourselves. We say we’re going to do something and we don’t do it.

Then we sort of punish ourselves for it, you know, think negative thoughts about ourselves, beat ourselves up a bit and just kinda give ourselves a hard time.

It’s almost like we think that by beating ourselves up, we’ve made up for it. Or, by making ourselves unhappy, we have an excuse to just do it again.

This cycle is just that… a circle that leads us back to the same place.

This week, try a new approach. We know that quitting is the thing that is easiest and least risky. Our brains feel better in the moment when we don’t do something new, don’t get outside our comfort zone, do the easiest thing, the comfortable thing.

The next day however, the easy thing feels terrible and the risky, taking chances, harder thing feels mind blowing good. To get to that, you have to override your mid-brain and actually do the thing.

Three ways to outsmart a quit.

I’m sure you can find more but here are three that I came up with:

1. Plan on doing the quit. — You heard me, you plan on eating five jelly donuts at lunch. Then you sit there and make yourself do it. Now what does your mid brain say? If it’s like mine, it doesn’t want to do it. It quits on the quit. Whaaaa?
2. Postpone the quit – you can skip inbox zero … tomorrow. Just clear your emails before you leave today.
3. Pomodoro through it. – Look up pomodoro method, basically work like a wild person for 25 minutes, then take a 5 minute break. I do four pomodoros and then I give my self an unstructured hour. Then I hit it again. Good times.

Be Curious, Georgina.

Let’s face it, if you don’t bother with the self flagellation, you can stop giving yourself a pass on quitting and maybe, you can just be curious about it. What can you change next time? In the end, you have to give up quitting to win. Other people have figured out how, and you can too.