Holding to your course isn’t about standing still.
I’ve spent a lot of time on sailboats. One thing I learned is that if you want to get to your destination, you have to stay on your compass heading. Holding to your course on a sailboat means watching the changes in the wind, trimming the sails as needed, understanding that boat is always buffeted by currents, guided by the rudder, moved by the engine and the fluctuations of everything around her.
Hold steady is a nice command to hear your captain say. I’ll give all you sailors that. It calls up memories of relaxing, just a bit because nothing huge is changing right now. We know where we are, and we know where we’re going. Hold steady is not a call to correct course, to realize you’ve lost your way, and it’s not a call to sleep at the wheel. Hold steady could be fighting to keep moving, inch by inch, when you’re tacking into the wind – heading just a bit to the left, then weaving just a bit to the right in order to stay on course. It could be heeling way over, the boat tipped so far that everything in the cabin slides, as the ship slices forward, as you brace your feet to keep from tumbling across the cockpit. Staying the course when you’re close in by land means keeping vigilant, watching for hazards. One thing it doesn’t mean is inaction.
Sorry folks. I know it’s been a year of changes and blindsides. I know you’ve had to confront the fear of the unknown, sailing your ship out of sight of land, when all you have to guide to yourself is the memory of the destination you set out for. I know you’ve lost ground, you’ve suffered injuries and loss, found yourself in strange waters. Holding to our course is nothing short of using all our courage and stamina to keep pushing forward.
Last week, I didn’t put out a blog. It was a concious decision. I spent the weekend working on a presentation for my coaching business and I wasn’t willing to overwork. So, I missed delivering my blog. I’m making changes, adjusting for the current conditions. I’m turning off the engine of endurance, which I’ve been using to launch this business, and working with the current conditions.
Another thing I’m changing is the amount and quality of information around politics. During the early days of the pandemic, I wanted the most current information at my fingertips. Now, it’s clear that I’ve done all I can do to adjust to the new way of things and I can focus on holding steady, looking far out ahead and making sure I’m tracking towards my destination. No need to watch for lobster pots and shipping traffic. We’re no longer in the harbor. Now? We’re in the long game. I need less details and more quality. Longer articles and less hype.
If we’re going to keep heading where we want to go, we have to keep adjusting and keep believing that somewhere out over a perfect circle of a horizon, beyond which we can not see, is the port we set out for, the destination we imagine.
All we have to do is stay alert.
All we have to do is adjust to changes as they arise.
All we have to do is stay focused; all we have to do is hold steady.
When you do a great job on your project, you’re good- right?
October is one horrifying month. Yeah, there’s Halloween and we’re closing in on the end of the world as we know it – otherwise known as the US 2020 election – but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about our goals. The stuff we said we’d deliver on. All that stuff that looked so possible & promising in January? We’ve got, like, this month to get it squared away before all of the US workforce takes off on holiday, trying to use up all their postponed vacation time.
You know what I mean. You just can’t count on a full staff for the last two weeks in November and December, even in a good year. You know you can’t count anything in 2020.
So where does that leave you and your goals? A little freaked out, am I right?
Look, yes you need to deliver at work. You need to check out your objectives, figure out where you can squeeze a few more in, and maybe get ready to explain what really happened this year. (Good luck with that. ) For the most part, that should be easy. Get yourself a nice hot cup of coffee, shuffle into your home office, aka, the dining room, and with a calm and relaxed manner, go check the list.
But that’s not what happens for a lot of us. For a lot of us, checking out all the high flung ideas we had ten months ago looks more like restlessly shuffling back to the kitchen wondering if it’s too early to start in on the potato chips, then plunking down in front of the old laptop, flicking through emails, while a familiar unease settles in our gut and we work faster and faster until finally, the day is gone, our eyes can hardly focus and we can knock off for the day – without checking that list.
What the heck is that about?
If you’re like me, that’s about confusing your project with yourself.
I got a great lesson on this topic this week when I tried to vote my mail-in ballot. I sat down, made sure I had a clear table, with no coffee to spill, a perfect black pen and plenty of light. I read the instructions carefully. I voted cautiously, filling in each oval like I was playing a real-life version of mine sweeper. I got the correct paper into the correct envelope, didn’t detach the wrong thing, peeled of the correct thing, sealed it up. One last step. I needed to sign it. I took my pen and started on my given name.
And then my brain kicked in. My signature didn’t look like my signature, did it? I hesitated. Now what should I do? I put pen to paper and finished off my surname. NO! That looked nothing like my signature. I asked my husband. Should I cross it out? No! He insisted it was fine. I put the ballot in the second envelope, sealed it and fretted. We drove our ballots to the drop box, made a production of it, brought the dog. We put them in the slot and then – I was certain that my ballot would be rejected. I had failed to sign my name enough like I sign my name.
This is the most important election of my life. Except, of course, for 2018 , which was pretty gnarly. And 2016, which was super important. And then there was 2000, and the year I drove around with a banner for Michael Dukakis on my truck or the year I voted for Ross Perot. Those seemed important. But this is the most important election ever – and my vote wasn’t going to count.
My consternation grew until I was forced to sit down and coach myself. Here’s what I found – I’m pretty sure the state I live in will go the way it always does. I’m pretty sure our local and state elections are going to go the way they always do. My vote, in the grand scheme isn’t likely to change much.
But my vote matters to me. I want to vote; I always vote. Failing to vote and in such a daffy way as not being able to sign my name – seems to say something about me as a person. Like maybe I’m a fruitcake and not nearly as smart as I think I am. Failing at this simple task called into question a lot of things about myself.
I kept coaching myself – it didn’t take long to realize all my agitation was the result of me confusing my vote – with myself. My vote is a mark on a paper, indicating who I’d like to see in office. It’s not me. It’s not even a symbol of me. Let’s face it – a lot of my life, I haven’t even voted well. Voting is something I do, but if I fail to vote, I’m still a nice woman from Jersey who tries to be kind to people at the grocery store. I’m still me.
The same thing applies at work.
You are not your project. Your project isn’t even a symbol of you.
If you’re good at your project, it means you’re good at your project. It doesn’t mean you’ll be good at the next one. And conversely, if you ball it all up, you can still do well on the next one.
Again, you are not your job performance.
How do I know? Who are you if you don’t have your project? Are you someone else? No. You’re still you. With a different job, still you.
Why is it important to keep the idea of who we are separate from the work we do?
Because all that time I was fretting about my ugly signature, here’s what I wasn’t doing – I wasn’t calling the county clerk to see if there was anything to be done. I wasn’t fully focused on the rest of my life and I wasn’t enjoying myself or adding value. When we conflate what we do with who we are, we risk handicapping ourselves with fear. We make it all too much, and we over-react.
All of that drama takes away from actually doing the stuff we wanted to do. All of that, makes our worst thoughts more likely.
October 2020 is hard enough. Don’t make it harder by confusing who you are with what you do.
And that? Is just a better way to finish the year.
Thinking about the space your job takes up in your life is one way get more control.Click here to listen to the blog, plus some riffs. Or click the video above to see the VLOG. As always, you can read the blog below.
I talk about space a lot. It confuses my coach. I say – I want more space in my life. I want more space around this task. I’m looking to add space.
“Wait,” she asks. “Are we still talking about work?”
I learned to think about time in terms of containers by reading Julie Morganstern’s book, Time Management from the Inside Out. She’s a professional organizer who translated cleaning out closets into a theory of time management. Now, I think about work in the same way.
Julie asserts that the size of a closet is finite. You get so many cubic feet and that’s it. At some point, you can’t put any more in. I like to add an addendum to that – within the space allowed, you have a finite amount of items you can put into your closet while still allowing enough room around them to keep the closet usable. Usability is flexible. There’s a maximum amount of usability – one item per shelf – and a minimum amount of usability – I can only take out the last thing I shoved in there.
When you get the most amount of items in the closet and can still use them all easily, you’ve right-sized your space. When you hit that, you can maintain order in your space easily for years.
Right-sizing your work is the process of shoving work back into the time allowed, or fluffing it out so that it fills your time nicely. Right-sizing your work is how you build for long-term endurance. Like managing an amazing pantry it’s a balancing act of things you really need and stuff you want to add in – and it’s totally possible.
Why Right-Size?
Make sure you get to do the things that matter to you
Ensure that you deliver peak performance at work, at an advantage to yourself.
Because life is better when you’re not exhausted & missing out
Because life is better when you’re not beating yourself up for things you didn’t do
To maximize your experience of work and life.
Are we still talking about work? I have a broad definition of work, as you might guess. I love work and so, I don’t groan thinking about adding in more. For me, work is anything you do, on purpose, to accomplish a return on investment.
What is Right-Sizing Work?
We all overwork and underwork in our lives. Some people overwork at their day-job. Some people underwork. Some people have side hustles they overwork. Some underwork at their small business. We invest time in relationships for a return of connection. Are you overworking or underworking that? What about your personal tasks?
When you overwork right-sizing means keeping work small enough to avoid diminishing returns – which occur when you are exhausted and it takes longer to deliver the same result. It also means making work fit inside the time you are willing to exchange for it.
When you underwork right-sizing means keeping work large enough to deliver returns on your investment. If you spend a lot of time worrying about work you aren’t doing, that’s a sign you are underworking. In this case, you want to focus on consuming the time you are willing to invest.
Is all this starting to sound like planning? It’s more than that.
Plan your time like you’re putting items into a closet. The space is finite so you have to choose what can go in.
How to Right Size your Work
Create positive boundaries – set cut off times that allow for real benefits, recognize and celebrate all that you accomplish.
Set clear objectives for small blocks of time. Don’t plan to “work on a report”. Instead, plan to “create the first draft of my quarterly budget slide dec”.
Be willing to cancel, disappoint people and say no. When you overwork, you’re used to doing this to your friends. Be willing to do this with meetings and favors. When you underwork, you’re used to canceling on your work plans. Be willing to cancel on friends.
Have clear priorities. You’ll never get it all done. At least I hope not. So the only way to know which results to schedule is to have priorities. They also help you say no. A lot.
Plan daily and weekly at the very least. The weekly planning session is where you face the hard fact about the space you have in your week for the things you want to do. Don’t make this about perfect, make this about learning. Plan your week, then at the end, review your progress. Adjust the next week’s plan. The daily planning session is where you quickly move tasks or time when the world throws you a curve.
Be kind to yourself. Always, always – this is the most important thing. It’s not about getting a A in planning, it’s about building a life that’s right for you, in every way.
Think the future is too wide open to plan? Think again.
Everything I needed to know about suggestibility, I learned from the Breck Girl.
Ok before we get to the story… this entire blog is just a plea for you to get out an index card and write down five things you want to get done in the next five years. Then tape that on your computer monitor. Also, if you prefer to listen or watch, check out the links below. Ok, back to the Breck Girl.
The whole blog, with intro & outro, read to you….by me.
Want the white board and a trimmed down version? Here’s the Vlog.
During the 1970s and ’80s, Breck shampoo was a thing. They ran a campaign that featured pastel portraits of women with awesome hair.
My very-much-younger self took a liking to a Breck Girl ad. I tore the pastel portrait out of a magazine and tacked it inside of the door to my closet. Over the next five years, I’d see it every time I opened my closet. If you’ve met a teenage girl, you know I saw that ad – a lot. The Breck Girl had gleaming honey-blonde hair, no bangs, and loose curls.
I didn’t believe I could actually have hair like that – I just liked the picture.
Then one day I took it down. I looked at it. Really looked at it. Holy smokes. I’d turned into the Breck Girl. Yep, that there picture below is me. Best hair day ever.
I was astounded.
Forget the hair, I thought. This is how you get stuff done. You have a very clear image, you look at it a whole lot. You have positive thoughts about it and the next thing you know, you’re asking for hot rollers at Christmas and letting your bangs grow out. The impossible becomes something you move toward, little by little, year after year.
Over the years, I learned some more things… keeping a vision in mind, even if it seems far out of reach, leads to taking action when the opportunity arises.
A decade or so later, I was carrying an entire year’s earning in credit card debt. I was very literally, the working poor. We often had to charge our income tax bill to our credit cards. I worked seventy hours a week for a decade and just got more in debt.
I started to seriously consider the idea of becoming debt-free. It was ludicrous. But it was a pretty darn clear vision. I thought about it often. That’s where opportunity comes in.
For instance, when I was in the library, wondering what I might want to read, the idea of books on getting out of debt sprung to mind. Why? Because I was thinking about being debt-free, on the regular. I read a lot of books on personal finance. A lot.
Another example is when I was bringing in my mail and an offer for a 0% interest balance transfer arrived, I thought – how can I use this to get rid of some debt? I signed up for, and paid off, and canceled, a ton of 0% credit cards.
See what I mean? Having a clear, concise idea about something you want makes you primed for taking opportunities when they arrive.
Writing down goals and paying attention to them, even without a full-blown plan, can have significant positive results in your life. Of course, it’s way more effective with both a plan and an accountability partner. ( See the abstract from Dr. Gail Matthews’ research here.) The point I’m making is that just because you’re not ready for the plan and the weekly action, don’t put off setting up goals.
Look, 2020 won’t last forever. The world is always in a state of change. But the things we want most are pretty darn stable. So look dream a bit. Think about something that you really would like to achieve even if it’s impossible or ridiculous. I mean something that really matters. Let yourself dream a bit.
-How old will you be five years from now?
-What would you like to have accomplished by then?
-Write down four or five things on an index card.
-Put the start and end dates: 10/1/2020 – 10/1/2025
-Tape that card to your computer monitor.
Imagine what it would be like to be in 2025, and have all that. Enjoy the dream.
And just know, some of that is really going to happen. Why? Not because it’s magic.
Because now, you’re going to notice opportunities to move towards those goals.
Just like you notice blue Hondas when you’re thinking about buying a blue Honda, now you’ll notice ways to actually make the impossible, possible.
Think you control the results on your project? Think again.
3 ways to get this content – Vlog, Audio or Blog.
The full blog, read for you. Enjoy.
A meeting made me cry.
In a good way.
Ok, so crying at work is never really a positive. It messes with your makeup and then you have to buy more Kleenex. Tearful co-workers can freak people out, but a little sniffle of gratitude never hurt anyone.
Here’s the setup. It’s a big project, unplanned, unbudgeted, needs to be done in three months and four departments must agree to make it happen. I called a meeting. I invited everyone I could think of. I sent the invite in the afternoon for the following morning at 8:30 am. I wasn’t sure anyone would come.
Everyone came. A dozen people changed their plans and got on zoom.
Right now, at this moment, I still feel grateful.
Why?Because we all know, I was not in control of that result. That result was created by a team of people dedicated to getting things done.
I could influence the result by selecting the right people, picking a time that most people had open, and wording the invitation correctly. I could contribute to the result by acting quickly to get the meeting on the calendar, by showing up myself, and by doing my best to distribute a meaningful agenda. What I couldn’t do was control how other people responded. That was on them.
So the fact that the meeting happened and the project kicked off and got underway rapidly was a broad result made of up of lots of personal contributions.
Realizing that all those people measured themselves against a yardstick of being responsive, engaged, collaborative, and open-minded got me thinking. I thought – I’m proud to be one of them. I work with great people. I’m so impressed. I’m so lucky.Those thoughts give rise to a powerful feeling of gratitude. And yeah, I get a bit choked up.
That story is an example of the difference between results we control and results we don’t control.
Self-coaching is all about evaluating your own thoughts, feelings, actions and results so that you can have a better experience at work and in your life.
As part of that process, you look at your results and tie them back to your actions.
You tie actions back to feelings and, ultimately, to thoughts.
It’s important that you start that process by analyzing the right set of results. Personal results. Our actions create personal results. Our personal results can influence and contribute to broader results, but those broader results can’t be tied back to our own stack of thoughts, feelings, and actions. Only our personal results do that.
Why? Because other people influence and contribute to broader results and guess what? We don’t control other people.
Let me lay it out for you visually:
Situation: Three month deadline on brand new project.
Thought: I need to quickly know which teams are impacted and those teams need to understand the project.
Feeling: Urgency
Actions driven by the feeling of urgency: review my understanding of impact, schedule meeting for the following morning, invite representatives from many areas to ensure no one is missed, provide a concise, clear agenda. Acknowledge the inconvenient timing and express appreciation to the invitees. Send invitations.
Result: Everyone shows up.
For the purposes of coaching yourself, that result line is incorrect. It’s what happened but it’s not the result for me that the actions created for me.
To better find my personal result, I’ll take another look at the thought.
I need to quickly know which teams are impacted and those teams need to understand the project.
The result I created for myself after doing all those actions was:I acted gave myself the best chance to find out who was impacted. I provided meaningful information to other teams as soon as I learned it, something that matters to me.
Everyone showing up was the result of a dozen personal results, driven by a dozen different thoughts, which caused a dozen people to show up on zoom. It had very little to do with me beyond the invitation. That result, of the meeting taking place and the project kicking off less than a day after I learned of it, belongs to the collective.
Why does focusing on personal results matter?
If it seems selfish or self-centered to spend your time focusing on your results rather than the broader result, remember this. We still have to work hard to influence and contribute to the broader results. Tying our personal growth and job satisfaction to actions and results outside our control is losing game. You’re not going to be any better tomorrow at controlling other people.
The most control you’ll ever have is over your own thoughts, feelings and actions.
Results that are in your control, tie back to your own standards and are meaningful to you personally are the big engine of job satisfaction and engagement. Feeling like your work matters is huge. Feeling like your work matters to you, and knowing that you’re in alignment with your own standards the root of engagement.
So when you’re reviewing results, don’t forget to look at both sets. The broader results and your personal results.
And that? Is just a good thing to do.
Want to learn how to set your own bar, deliver your best results, and stop being overwhelmed by the chaos?
I’ve got a program for that: Reboot Your Day Job.
In six short weeks, you can get back control, make the big decisions you’ve been putting off and be more organized and productive than you ever thought possible.
Not all actions are created equal. Here’s how to use your less-than-helpful actions.Click here to listen to the blog – or at least check out my new intro. Enjoy!
Sometimes I’m brought to awareness to find myself in mid-air with no idea how I got there.
Not really, but it can feel pretty close to that. Don’t tell me this hasn’t happened to you. You’re sitting at your desk, you have a scorecard, or heat map, or report or presentation to deliver. Suddenly you look up, you’re a half-hour closer to the end of the day, but the screen in front of you shows pictures of a weather disaster that hit Antigo, Wisconsin in 1922. What the heck are you doing?
If you’ve been following along with this blog, you understand that thoughts drive feelings, which drive actions. This is really helpful to know when you have a nice clear thought to work with. Something like “I want to create a demographic report like I want a hole in the head,” is pretty easy to trace through that stack. Thought: negative. Feeling: resistance. Action: google etymology of ‘a hole in the head’. Result: useless information, no report.
Most of the time, we’re not all that clear on how we got to our current action. We just sort of wake up to our results and wonder where we went wrong.
If you don’t know what you were thinking, and you’re not all that clear on what feelings are actually being triggered inside you, never fear. You can start with the one thing you probably do know – what you were doing.
Actions that my clients report to me, and that I notice in myself, tend to fall into a few broad buckets.
Delaying/Avoiding
Purposeful/Focused
Inaction
Adjusting
Rejuvenating
When you have a moment of awareness and you catch yourself in mid-action, notice which bucket the action falls in. From there, you can work you’re way out of undesired actions using the techniques below. You can also pay more attention to desired actions and start to notice the types of feelings that create those valuable actions and results.
The main thing you need to know – any time you are approaching a planned activity that will require action and result in change, you will encounter a moment of mental resistance. This is normal. Our brains are designed to prefer conservation of energy and easy gratification. We want to be in the recliner, eating chips, binge watching. Why? Because back in the day, this was a smart strategy in a world where rest and food were limited. Our world has changed, we haven’t. So don’t let that mental resistance hold you back.
Now, on to the tactics you can use when you catch yourself in mid-action.
Avoidance actions: If you’re sitting at your desk with a mouthful of cookie that you haven’t swallowed and one in your hand, ready for demolition, you’re probably in delay/avoid mode. If you’re scrolling social media or wandering around the building looking for the perfect ballpoint before you start your project – you are busted. There’s nothing wrong with you. Basically, you’re avoiding something. The problem arises when we attribute our desire to avoid things to the project we have to do. Ever notice that once you get into it, most projects are not so bad? We tell ourselves we don’t want to do the thing, but in reality, what we’re avoiding is how we are feeling. This is really tricky to pick up on and why you hire a coach to help you. For now, if you catch yourself in this type of activity, you can work your way out of it by stopping and jotting down everything you’re thinking about your current project. Make yourself keep going for a whole page. Once you pass the halfway mark, just start jotting down all the positives about the project. Chances are, you’ll be ready to get to work with your current pen. No bowl of chips needed.
Purposeful actions: Here’s where we all wished we lived all the time. You have a task, you’re focused and you’re getting stuff done. No worries. If you catch yourself in this type of mode, make a quick note of how you feel and what you think about the project. Being aware that working makes you feel good and understanding the way you think about work when you’re not avoiding it, makes it easier to divert yourself from avoidance in the future.
Inaction: What we think and feel can also drive inaction. Inaction can be a benefit or a detriment to our work. Sometimes what we’re not doing is positive. We’re not goofing around, we’re not beating ourselves up, we’re not watching re-runs of The Office. Just like noticing how you feel and think when you’re doing purposeful work, noticing your current state of mind when you’re not handicapping yourself is good information. More often, we’re not doing our most important work. If you become aware of that nagging feeling that you’re working on the wrong thing, stop and notice what you’re not doing. Ask yourself why you aren’t doing your project. If you’re like me, your brain has lame answers for this. Often, I’m very busy answering an email about something that will happen next week, while I’m studiously not doing the thing that’s needed tomorrow. Just like avoidance actions, the fastest way back to my primary activity is to stop, spend three minutes writing down my thoughts about my primary activity, and then move to some more positive thoughts. If I can’t think of a single nice thing to think about the work I’m not doing, then I just list facts. Listing the facts often calms me down and gets me focused by cutting out the drama. Changing “I don’t have time, I’m not ready and I’m a failure, I’m going to blow this” to something less angst-ridden and more factual like ” The deadline was unexpected, I’m the only one here to do the work, something is better than nothing” is often all I need to get out of inaction.
Adjusting: Sometimes the action we’re taking is reframing. We are aware of our thoughts, and the feelings they create. We realize that this trajectory is leading us nowhere fast. So we interrupt our own behavior chain with a new thought. We use thoughts as actions. We notice our thought. “I hate PowerPoint”. We notice our feeling – frustration with all those little boxes and the endless formatting. We understand already that this won’t help. So we take the action of changing our thought to “Just do the darn thing and move on.” We feel grim determination and we format our title slide. That’s adjusting.
Rejuvenating actions: These are the really great actions that actually do relax us. These are not to be confused with the actions that drain us. This is walking the dog, not scrolling Facebook. This is playing a game with your kids, not watching them watch TV. Sometimes this looks a lot like work – this weekend, we built a shed and painted it. It was work, yes. It was also very satisfying.
So as you catch yourself engaging in an action – ask am I –
Avoiding? Working? Not taking action? Adjusting? Rejuvenating?
Is this action beneficial? If so, what can I notice about how I’m thinking and feeling?
If the action isn’t working for you, write down a half-page of your current thoughts. Then write the facts of your situation. Now, is there anything helpful you can think about this set of facts?
From there, you can move to another type of action.
It’s not enough to want to the job. Happy Labor Day! No need to work at reading this. Press play and the get he intro, the blog and the rants. Enjoy!
I had an epiphany a few years back. I was thinking about the difference between two people I knew who were both applying for the same job. Either one could have been hired. Both were excited by the prospect. Both were similar in skills. There was no clear decision point to decide the issue but in the end, the interviewers chose one.
I spent several hours musing on why the team hired the person they did.
In the end, it came down to this:
One of them wanted to have the job. One of them wanted to do the job.
And that? Made all the difference.
Here’s the deal. Regardless of how we feel on any given day, we need to sit down and the do the work. It’s a hella easier when we want to do it.
I’m bringing this up, because here on Labor Day weekend, it’s good to remind ourselves that we want to do the job.
It’s good to remember that we want to do a terrific job. Not because it will please the people around us, but because it pleases us. I have never had a client yet, no matter how miserable, who didn’t want to be great at their job.
Think about that.
I work with people who have burnt the heck out, and they STILL want to see themselves as highly competent. They want to be the go-to person at the office, they want to write clean, elegant code, they want to engineer flawless systems, create marketing campaigns that shine, bring secondary infection rates to zero, and a dozen other inspiring things.
Why? Because we want to feel confident, competent and relevant.
How do we get that? By sitting down and doing the work. There’s no escaping it.
Whatever our position is, there’s work to be done. That’s just a fact. How we think about that work drives the way we feel as we approach each task. That’s a huge game changer there.
You can tell yourself that you’re an amazing fireball at work but if you don’t believe it, that kind of thinking isn’t going to help. So it’s not enough to chant some happy horse stuff about how great you are. You gotta be real up in there.
You gotta ask yourself some hard questions, like “Would I pay me this much to do what I do?” If the answer is no, you better be doing some follow up work. For instance, ask yourself what you would have to deliver to actually earn that bank.
One thing I always want to know is – How can I do my job better?
I’m stunned at the number of people I know who don’t ask that question during their reviews. It’s sad, but some people think admitting they have room to grow is a sign of weakness.
Here’s what’s weak – not working when you’re supposed to be on the clock. Here’s what’s lame – working yourself to death on the wrong task. Here’s what’s a shame – putting your head on the pillow at night knowing you didn’t bring it that day.
We all have days when we do one or all three of these. I don’t care who you are. If you’re growing, you’re mucking something up. That’s where your opportunities are and you can’t find them if you won’t look for them.
There’s a bright side to all this though.
Showing up, crushing your day, and giving your work a smackdown feels mind-blowingly good. Why? Because then when you tell yourself you’re an awesome desk warrior with a mean code stack, you believe it. Great thoughts about your bad self feel amazeballs.
The crazy good part is that when you believe that stuff, and you think like that, you show up, step up, work hard and leave the work day high-fiving yourself.
Which is why, nobody ever tells me that they just want to be average.
You can sit down, get to work, deliver results, and step right into that cycle. If you don’t think you’re kickin’ it at work, then start with one of these:
– I’m going to be better today than I was yesterday. – I’m going to do the one thing that will create the most value today – or my favorite: Enough already. Today I’m going to sit down and crush it.
From there, you move right into feeling focused, valuable, determined and from there, you take action. What you do at work has meaning. It creates results. All it takes is one day, crushing it to get you back in the saddle. So as we celebrate all things work, think about the days you most enjoyed on the job. I bet you a free hour on your calendar that you were focused and working well.
OK…but working hard means I work too late. What about a home life?
Hell yeah. You should have that too. Straight up. You gotta break the back of the belief that doing a great job is painful.
How do you disconnect them? You look to your own brain. Ask it to solve for the best of everything.
The absolutely magic question for this labor day is – How can I be smackin’ the cover off the ball at work and have the life of my dreams?
When you set your big, beautiful, creative, imaginative, puzzle-solving brain looking for the answer to that, you win. But rest assured, the solution will include work: smart, focused excellent work.
Turns out, dreaming up a great future is a skill… one you can learn.
Click play to hear the audio version of this week’s blog, read to you, by me. And yep, there’s a great intro.
It’s the whole blog, read for you… with riffs, rants and a rockin’ intro.
Hey! You! What’s the next big milestone in your life? The way you answer that question can tell you a lot about where you are in developing the skill of dreaming.
I’m not talking about dreaming while you’re asleep. I’m talkin’ about the day-dreaming future building kinda musing.
Do you have big, vibrant ideas about where you’re headed? The kind that make you want to get up in the morning and get crackin’? I hope you do. Having a future vision and a clear conception of what that future would take to build and the motivation to take action can mean the difference between a life full of growth and meaning, and … well, everything else.
If that paragraph has you feeling left out, hang in there. From working with my clients, I see that they fall into several camps. See if one of these is you.
“I have no idea what future I want to build. How can I? All I want is to survive my job today.”
“I have a million ideas, but I don’t act on any of them.”
“I’m working toward finishing college. (Or buying a home, or finding my life partner) but all my friends are further ahead than I am. I’m not even sure the American Dream can be mine, never mind my personal dreams.”
Look, we’re told from the time we can formulate a full thought that we can be and do anything we want.
And then? We’re told that what we want isn’t practical. We’re told that what we want isn’t the kind of thing we can do, because, hey, we’re not that guy. Or we just have a few things we need to get to first.
And then? Our American culture starts to hand us our list of milestones. Finish kindergarten, finish high school, college. Get a job. No, not that job. Get the one with the benefits, get a REAL job. Next, where’s your home? Your condo? What about a retirement fund? And by the way, where’s the 2.3 children and the spouse? Are you still working for peanuts? Get promoted.
For some of us, this is enough to send us into despair. We dream of hitting some or all of these and compare ourselves to our peers only to find ourselves failing. Discouraged and discontented, we struggle to just enjoy what we do have. That was me for a really long time.
By the time we manage to check off a bunch of those cultural milestones, we look up one day to realize that the children are out of the house and the only milestone left is the big 401K jackpot. A jackpot that we’re driving ourselves to fill up in advance.
Where’s our culture now? Happy to hand us a weak, second rate set of goals – a bigger house, fancier toys, upgrades on the stuff we already have. Eating tuna casserole? Try a tuna steak. Good stuff. Got a watch? How about one that can read your mind or at least your sleep patterns. Like to run? How about getting the latest cell phone and earbuds and serious shoes to make your run better?
No wonder my clients can’t think of a thing they want. Our culture has been doing it for them.
Here’s where it gets good. Turns out, you can use a dreaming process to start to lay out your own darn milestones. If you only do one thing today, do this first step – dream big.
To Dream – You Have To Go Big
This is always fun. Take off all the blinders. Put what-if aside. You ARE good enough and nothing has to make sense. Be impractical, be enthusiastic. Spend a whole commute or a whole exercise session or a whole hour on the porch thinking about all the fantastical things you might enjoy having, being, doing, or sharing. Dream up vacations. Dream up jobs. Dream lifestyles. Dream contributions. Dream salaries. Dream pets. Dream a body. Dream it all.
To Live a Dream – You Have to Pick One
This is the one that kills me. I always want to go after five or six at the same time. If this is you, get a coach. Picking one doesn’t mean you give up the others. Getting one done is the fastest way to get all of them. Every time I ignore this rule, things start to slide sideways. Pick one. Any one. Doesn’t matter. Achieving that dream will teach you how to get the next one done. Keeping them all going at once means that you’ll bail on one each time it gets tough. It’s a sure way to stagnate and prevaricate.
To Build a Dream – You Need Steps.
List out all the things that will stop you from getting to your goal. Then list out all the things you’ll have to do to overcome those obstacles. That’s your plan.
To Work on a Dream – You Need to Pre-Motivate
Pre-Motivate Dudette. You heard me. Waiting to feel motivated is the long-ass way around the dream building. Instead, list out what you are doing when you feel motivated. OK … and just before you do those things, what were you feeling? Uh-huh. And what did you think just before you felt that way? Turns out, we often feel motivated AFTER doing the thing we want to use motivation to get us started on. Why? Because once you’ve got your resume written, you start to think.. Hey, this is possible! And then? Well, since it’s possible, it’s pretty motivating. Pre-motivation is thinking the thoughts and having the feelings that precede taking action. Thoughts like “That’s it! I’m going to buckle down and do this!” and feelings like focus or commitment drive action. For some of my clients, it’s thoughts like “I don’t need to be perfect. I just want to see if I can do it” and feeling curiosity or excitement.
In all these years of coaching, I don’t think I’ve ever had a client say they felt motivated before they were already taking action. The feeling that I see most frequently preceding action? Curiosity. Second most common? Excitement.
Turns out curiosity motivated the cat. Waiting for motivation just drove it to the nursing the home.
And here we are back again. It’s time to dream. Imagine yourself already having achieved your goal. How would that future person act if they were doing what you’re doing?
This is tricky one. For instance, if I want to be a full-stack developer, I’ll have to learn to code and stay current on the never-ending, always accelerating changes in language and design. Today, it’s quite daunting to consider taking the classes, doing the reading, lobbying for a chance to work on something new. But … if I actually was a full-stack developer, what would I think about the learning curve? Probably, I’d think it had been challenging, but I’m proud of what I did. If I had to take that angular class again, it would be no problem. I could retake it standing on my head.
That’s the magic dreaming we need to do in the middle of pursuing a dream. Really try to live today as if you’re already there. Not fake it ’till you make it. But rather, with the willingness and ease of mind that you’ll have, with the perspective you’ll have in the future. Spend a little time with your future you, getting to know her. After all, you’re going to be her soon.
WHY BOTHER? This dreaming stuff is a lot of work!
Here’s why. When my clients dream about their future, they set new goals and break out of ruts. Their lives get more interesting. Their zest for life and their confidence go up.
When I focus on a single goal and take action, I feel better that very day. Simply getting a bit of accomplishment under your belt and taking some concrete steps is a great way to beat the blues… and seriously, don’t we all have them just a little bit right now?
You can have a big, beautiful life. You can decide what milestone you want to achieve and you can live a life of continuous growth. It’s work. Sure it is. So is getting to the mailbox after spending four weeks on the couch. Which work do you want to have?
When you have goals, dreams, curiosity, a sense of adventure, and something to get up for? Man, that’s gold. That’s a dream. That’s your life with meaning and purpose.
If your Work Life / Biological Life balance has been hit by a truck, read on.
I’ve got a deep-dark secret I’ve never shared on this blog. Basically, because I feel ridiculous to say it out loud… but hey, public embarrassment is what blogging is all about. Here goes. This blog is about the problem of not having time to eat lunch, and, er, other things.
Here it is, the whole blog, read to you…. with a brand new intro. Oh, yeah, and riffs.
I’m talking about the issue of mind-body disassociation. I initially noticed the problem when I was working with my very first private coach. I would talk to her every week and pretty-much try to impress us both with how difficult my work life had become. To show her the profoundly pressured existence I found myself in, I would get right to the most basic of bodily functions – using the restroom.
I didn’t have time for it.
I would find myself not drinking liquids for hours. My fingers would fly over the keyboard in a mad rush to finish one more thing, while my bladder tightened and my whole body was thrown into a tense and hurried race. God forbid someone came into my office to interrupt me. My head would jerk up, eyes wide and frantic. Suddenly aware I couldn’t wait one more moment, I’d start heading out the door as I talked to them, finally saying…
“I’ll be right back.”
This, I thought was a profound example of the extreme demands of my job and my need to keep producing every second. I also thought it was a bit wackadoodle and I didn’t want to confess it to anyone. Now, years later, I understand that I am not the only person to experience this. Just last year, I watched a woman who’d built a million-dollar business in a few years confess to the same thing. And she’s a doctor.
So let me ask you, are you disconnecting from your own biology? Do you –
Find yourself not willing to get up and get lunch, and when you do, you gobble it down at your desk?
Find yourself doing one more thing, one more thing long after you’ve realized you’re profoundly uncomfortable?
Start work early and find that it’s almost lunchtime and you haven’t had your first cup of tea?
Head into bed in the evening knowing you haven’t exercised or even been outside?
Work later than you want, feeling more and more pressured to work even later?
Miss dinner with your family, even as you rush to get finished?
Find yourself working late into the night, while lights go out, your family crawls into bed, and yet, when you finally walk into the bedroom, exhausted physically, your mind races on?
Dude. You are so not alone.
And Dude – understand this – you’re a carbon-based life form with some biological imperatives you will really enjoy following. And yeah, stick with me here. I know I just lost you on that biological imperative thing.
Long before I sat in the convention room in Texas and watched a woman with a two-comma business confess to my deep dark secret, I’d already resolved the issue for myself. It still felt great to realize that she’d been just as misguided as I had been.
Here’s how I broke free.
First, my coach and I really dug into some of the underlying beliefs I carried around.
This is something it’s much easier to do with a coach, so please, if you want help with this issue, definitely sign up for a free 25-minute session. You, basically, are the entire reason I’m a coach and I want to help.
As soon as she asked me what I would tell a teammate about this issue, the answer was way clearer than my annual objectives. I would say… “Go take care of yourself. Be late to the next meeting, leave this meeting early. Stop typing for Pete’s sake. “
Ask yourself, is there anyone in the world you care about that you would encourage to keep working when they were exhausted, hungry, ready to bust a gut or missing their children’s bedtime?
Please tell me the answer is no.
So step one is to find out why the heck you think it’s OK to do that to yourself. I’m not even going to make you turn this blog upside down to read the answer.
It’s not. You’re not different. You are a biological creature. If you dry up to a husk and pass out in your chair, you’re doing anyone any good. At some level you understand this because you’d shut your buddy’s laptop lid if he was doing this to himself.
Once I got through that thought process, I realized there was another problem. I’d decided it was OK to stop and use the restroom, to eat my lunch, to dance a jig at 6 pm if I wanted to… but I wasn’t doing it. Why?
I was so used to stuffing down signals, my body couldn’t reach me.
My body was literally phoning in and getting a busy signal.
Time to send in the construction crew to re-run the cable between my body and brain.
I literally had to train for this.
I made a plan and gave myself a mantra – Biology Rules.
Biology Rules – because it does. I’m not a brain on stick with some fingers and a thumb. I’m a human being. I’m a creature. I’m a mammal. If I don’t follow the biological rules that being a mammal encompasses, I’ll die.
I can’t swim underwater for hours and I can’t survive without physical exercise.
I can’t jump off a cliff and fly and I can’t go without water.
I can’t crawl across the ceiling and I can’t go without hitting the john.
PERIOD.
And neither can you.
We can’t do without sleep, without connection to other humans and we can’t think well for hours and hours. We just can’t.
To restring the connection between body and mind, I made a deep pledge to myself. Biology Rules. No excuses. The minute I noticed that I needed something BECAUSE of my biology – I just got up and did it.
Turns out, the world didn’t end when I would check into a meeting and say – I’ll be right back.
Nothing fell apart when I started eating my lunch outside.
My boss did not call me into his office because he’d noticed I’d been getting eight hours. I mean what was he going to say, I think you need to be on line until eleven pm? Of course not. He had no clue how late I was working; he was having his own problems disconnecting.
OK let’s get back to you.
You are a biological creature. You have some rules to follow. If you ignore them, your experience right now is miserable and you cut your life short.
To remedy this, admit that you’re human.
Agree you deserve the same basic advantages as any assembly line worker – the right to regular breaks and a right to stop working at the end of the day.
Plan on a mantra and a rule. – Biology Rules: My body’s needs that trumps all other demands. Or try this: Use it or Lose it: I’m not willing to bust a gut, shrivel and dry up or have a lack of sleep induced psychosis for my employer, who doesn’t even want any of that either.
Notice your body’s demands. Are you angry? Is it because you feel rushed? Do you feel rushed because your body needs something? What is it?
Then give your body what it wants.
I promise you, when you do this, you will see a productivity increase. I’ve seen this for myself and client after client. It’s the cruelest joke ever. We think we have to double down on work to get through everything. It’s not true. We have to double down on bringing our A-game. To bring our A-game, we have to honor our biological mandate.
Got a brain? Well, then you probably have a big loop.
I yelled at my coach yesterday. I told her than every time I look at the news, I get upset. I told her that when I’m upset, I don’t follow through on my plans. She smiled. Not a big “I hear ya, sister” grin, but a half-smile. She wasn’t buying it. I tried to beat her to the punch.
“Uh, uh. No way I’m gonna sit in front of the TV and feel all THOSE feelings.”
“Forget that,” I said forcefully and loudly. Yeah. I was yelling.
“Sure, but you’re jumping to the worst-case scenario,” she said. “And that’s what’s driving the feelings and that is what’s keeping you from the results you want.”
I folded my arms over my chest.
She kept her poker face. It was game on, which meant she brought out the big guns. “You’re giving away all your power,” she said. “Which is fine. Is that what you want to do?”
Ok. So I’m not a medical professional or schooled in psychology. I’m an IT manager and a life coach. But one thing I know is this: I do not want to give up on anything I can control. I had to concede the match. By assuming that what I see on TV must generate the same feelings it always has before, I’m basically abdicating on myself. I -for sure – don’t want Wolf Blitzer and Bret Baier running my emotional show. Double true! So, I did me some research on ways thinking, the thing I rely on to get my work done and keep my life moving, can get itself sideways.
I’m a human and I have a brain. My brain does a lot of looping. Looping is one way of describing thoughts that come back over and over. Another way of saying it is – repetitive thinking. I’ve got a lot of it. Turns out, we all do.
Repetitive thinking isn’t good or bad. Like most things, it has two sides to it. After all, we’re pretty efficient creatures and if our brains have this behavior, I’d like to think it’s adaptive; it has its uses.
There are lots of types of repetitive thinking – rumination, worry, cognitive processing, emotional processing, solutioning, planning ahead, what-if thinking, level-setting expectations, worst-case analysis, reflection, self-criticism, post-mortems, goal setting, and day-dreaming. All of it involves us running scenarios or sentences over and over in our minds.
Not all of this is bad. In fact, when you look at the list, you can see why repetitive thinking might give a guy the edge. Planning ahead, risk mitigation, goal setting, thinking options through, picking up better health habits, recovering from depression, and getting through emotional trauma all come from this type of thinking.
You can also see how this type of thinking can cause us problems. Over-analysing, habitual worry, snowballing from small events to large future worse cases, self-judgment, negative self-talk and repeatedly triggering the body’s stress response system with our thinking are all linked to some pretty depressing outcomes. The list includes, you guessed it – depression, anxiety, and flat out poor physical health..
So how do we keep our positive patterns and reduce our negatives? Well, it turns out that positive outcomes from repetitive thinking are linked to our emotional state and the direction we guide our thinking in. Basically, the more you think about negative stuff, without giving it meaning and direction, the worse you feel. However, if you apply positive intent, have basic optimism about your ability to achieve your goal, and have a positive emotional state when you begin, repetitive thinking can predict a good outcome.
What?
Ok …. let’s get into the concrete examples here.
Say you work hard on a project, turn it in, and your boss changes something on every single gosh darn slide. You might engage in a bit of rumination, running the feedback he gave you through your thoughts several times. You might start to feel a bit down. Then you might think about the fact that you feel like crap. After about an hour of noticing your low energy and disappointment, you might beat yourself up a bit for letting your boss get to you like that. After a short break and a chat with a friend, where you have a candy bar and complain, returning to your desk, might bring you face to face with worry. What if you’re one step closer to getting fired? Or what if every project you do goes this way? How are you going to stand going through the whole year with this boss? By the time you get home, you’re not ready to listen to your spouse, not wanting to put in any more time on work and basically, good for nothing but ordering pizza and snapping through channels.
None of this sets you up for a great day at work tomorrow.
Let’s rewind. You work hard on a project but you know your boss has more experience. So you collaborate with your boss, ask his opinion and sure enough, he has something to add to every slide. You take it back to your desk and evaluate the suggestions, accepting some, and rejecting others. You have a call and discuss it. Of the rejections, you change your mind and keep a couple and throw out the rest. You turn the project in and engage in a bit of rumination. You wish you had thought of some of the changes yourself. You reflect on how you could have known to make them before your boss told you. For the ones you should have thought of, you make notes for next time. Of the ones you couldn’t have known, you tell yourself that’s why he’s the boss. By now, you’re exhausted and you feel it. You take a break, have a candy bar, and blow off some steam with your friend. Back at your desk, there’s a mountain of work still to do, but at least the presentation is off your plate and your job is safe for another day. By the time you get home, you’re tired but you’re glad to hear someone else’s troubles for a while. You let your spouse vent and then together, you decide to forget about fixing dinner. You get a pizza and put on some harmless feel-good show and watch together.
After a good night’s sleep, you’re ready to take on another day at work.
In both cases, the boss had input for every slide. In both cases, you work hard, are tired, and don’t make good choices about everything – indicating some stress and will-power fatigue. But in one case, the negative emotional tenor and the assumption that the boss’s input means something negative about yourself, cause the repetitive thinking to take on a depressing tone and gravitate towards less constructive ways of understanding. In the other, a more optimistic attitude – assuming the boss has good intentions, finding an explanation for why you didn’t know some things, and taking proactive measures for the future by trying to learn from the feedback, lead to a much better mental outcome.
The key here is to notice when you’re indulging in repetitive thinking. Notice the direction of the thinking. Notice your overall situation and emotional state.
After a long day at my stand-up desk, when I come out to cook dinner, I’m pretty low on mental resources. Turn on the news and let them rehash the same three issues over and over, and my brain might just pick up on the iterative loop of negative data. (Talk about repetitive!) Toss in a bit of repetitive thinking about how all this will play out over the next 80 days, and I’ve got myself a nice set up for a miserable night. Just maybe, I’ll yell at my coach about it.
Noticing that I’m tired when I leave my desk, mentally tired but physically sick of sitting still, I can predict that I’m going to do way better listening to a Ted talk than listening to the 24/7 cycle. Later, after a break, some exercise, some time with my dog and my husband, I’ll be a much better place to catch up on what happened in the world. Then I can use my brain to ruminate on how lucky I am, to reflect on what campaigns I might want to donate to and remind myself that I’m still on track, even if the talking heads are doing their best to convince me the rest of the world, is not.
If you want to work on noticing your thoughts and figuring out what and when to switch up the process, sign up for a free 25-minute session.
