Think You Don’t Need to Put Role Front and Center at Work? Think Again.
Ok, the blog is going to be wicked short today. It’s late, and I’ve been busy taking on roles that don’t belong to me.
All around us, we can find examples of people forgetting what their role is at work. Our global politics is full of examples of what happens when a leader forgets the true purpose of their position – they forget what, exactly, they were hired by their citizens to do. Not good.
But you don’t have to be playing a real-life game of Risk to start blurring the lines between what you’re supposed to be doing with your time at work and what you think is needed during your time at work.
You know what I mean here. Usually, when we start to move out of our job and into someone else’s, we’re doing it with good intentions. We don’t mean to take over the creative design process, we’re just helping the team find their way forward. We don’t mean to micro-manage someone, we just want to be sure that they succeed.
None of that is good. It’s not good for you – you have a job you’re not doing while you’re doing someone else’s job. And it’s not good for them either – because you rob them of the chance to rise to a challenge and grow.
I know someone who is very good at helping without hurting. He delegates. He let’s people flounder. He quietly works on the side to find solutions so that when they finally come to him for help, he can offer the correct insight without actually doing the job for them. Yeah, he puts a lot of thought and effort into what he does, but the people he delegates to become better and better.
Here’s the kicker. This guy? Has no direct reports.
You heard me. He’s delegating sideways and growing his peers. That’s not quite his role but that’s the role he wants.
So today at work, think about the role you have, the role you want and what role you should drop.
What we pay attention to not only matters, it measures.
If you have never googled commencement addresses, you are missing out. If you are only going to listen to one, then let me recommend This is Water by the late David Foster Wallace.
If you haven’t heard it, just click the link there and give it a listen. I’ll wait.
In his speech, Mr. Wallace talks about the discipline of consciously choosing where to focus our attention.
“This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.” David Foster Wallace
He states that in real life, we all worship something… either a spiritual set of beliefs or something else, like beauty, power, or intellect – all of which, he adds, we are free to do. But, he adds:
“The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people…“
The act of paying attention signals to our brains what is most important. Mr. Wallace has some advice about what we might want to pay attention to and he also clues us in on how hard it is to follow his advice.
Our brains evolved to help us focus on the most crucial stuff: cookies, romance, and an awesome apartment. Our brains are also exquisitely tuned to revising and re-evaluating the world around us. This evaluation process happens every time we pay attention. Each time we bring our attention to an experience, our brains revise the reward we associate with the experience.
What does this mean?
It means that when we choose what to pay attention to, we not only consciously shape our experience – we also trigger our brains to revise how rewarding that experience is.
Dr. Judson Brewer – who I’ve mentioned before – has a great video that lays out the process for updating our brain’s value measurement. You can click the link and check it out.
Things get really interesting because the opposite is also true. When we do not pay attention to what we are experiencing – our brains don’t update our valuation of that experience.
Why does this matter?
Look, most of the time, we are on autopilot. We watch TV while we cook dinner. We whip through emails and tune out our co-workers. We are lost in thought while we wait for our food and while we eat it. We rush through our work without tuning into our emotions.
Every time we engage with something without paying attention to it, we fail to update our brain’s valuation system. So, we wind up believing that eating two candy bars for lunch is just as good as it was when we were twelve. We don’t notice how utterly miserable it is to be rushing through our workday. So we just. keep. doing it.
When we pay attention to something, we’re telling our brains that it matters… and that it needs to be re-measured.
According to Dr. Brewer, it takes as few as ten re-measurements to change the value our brain places on something.
According to Mr. Wallace – that is the way to freedom.
And that? Is just good to know.
People who are overworked and overwhelmed at work often need help finding anything that they can enjoy and hang on to while they work on resolving the source of their pain. In my six-week program, we tackle all of that – the overwork, the overwhelm, and the suffering. Six weeks, you’re better or your money back. Want to find out more? Click here.
Our culture does a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious job at setting up milestones for us… until it doesn’t.
Got milestones?
Sure you do.
If you’re two, you probably want to walk without holding someone’s hand.
If you’re twenty-two, you probably want an independent living situation.
If you’re forty-two, you probably want to educate your kids without going bankrupt.
And, if you’re sixty-two, you probably want to retire.
For some of you, those cultural milestones – driver’s license, graduation, homeownership, parenthood – are opportunities for saying no – No thanks, I’ll walk. No thanks, I’ll go right to work. No thanks, I’m going to travel and blog about it. No thanks, I’m taking a pass on kids.
Accept them or reject them, these milestones can come to define us.That’s swell, that’s easy, that doesn’t take a lot of thought and most of them are pretty satisfying. I love my car, my home, my spouse, my son, and my 401K. I don’t want to give any of them up.
The problem is… after two years of thinking short-term – as in… “How do I not get dead from a pandemic?” short term...the long-range plan is looking a bit dusty.
To make matters worse, pre-built milestones run out.
All these years, we were looking forward – forward to eating with a spoon, forward to driving on the highway without an adult, forward to buying a beer, making a living, having it all.
If we haven’t been practicing creating our own milestones, our own futures, we can be left looking like a blank canvas when the prebuilt template falls away.
So how do you create your own milestones? You can start with the advice that Dan Sullivan and Catherine Nomura say in “The Laws of Lifetime Growth” – Always make your future bigger than your past.
The book is a free listen on audible if you’re a member there… so check it out – or click the link above and find it on Amazon.
Having a future that’s bigger than your past is about letting go of the rules that hold us back, those cultural conditions that say the goal of life is to be able to stop working, that tell us that women do some jobs and men do others. (And yes, that’s still a thing. Hello.)
The goal of life is to become as much of who you are and what you are as you possibly can.
See that tree up there at the top of the blog?
Do you think it was looking at other trees to show it how to become that grand, spreading, wonder of global carbon reduction? If you do, please write me.
That sparkling green marvel is an example of what that kind of tree can become when it has plenty of water, sun, space, time, and – yeah – some luck.
What kind of human can you become if you have plenty of water, sun, space, and time?
What kind of human can you become if you just start where you’re at and keep growing?
What is the biggest, broadest, most ALIVE version of you that is possible in the world?
Don’t breeze past that question. A good answer should take you at least a half-hour of journaling. You have a lunch break… why not jot some ideas down?After all, that’s the milestone you want out there.
That’s the milestone we all want you to reach.
You – being that big, alive version of yourself – makes the future bigger and brighter for everyone.
You. The fullest expression of you…is the path.
Andthat? Is just the best thing ever.
I have a six-week program that walks clients through ending over-working. Clients consistently see results by week four, at which point – we do the work of building out what a bright future looks like. Sound good? Sign up for a quick conversation, let’s see if I can help you branch out.
Someone near and dear to me was at my home – lets’ call her Sally – and I was telling her about another person I know – let’s call him Zach. Now Zach, like all of us, is unique. One of the unique things about him is that he doesn’t really think linearly. I’m in IT and most of the time, we have a boatload of straight-line, if-else thinkers – and that’s a good thing. But Zach is different. He gathers in data and observations, sort of like a vacuum cleaner… whatever comes his way, winds up in his brain. Then, when he’s trying to solve a problem, he thinks for a while, and then, when he least expects it – WHAM – he has a full-blown answer. Even Zach can’t tell you exactly how he got there. Well… he can, but it’s a really twisty long story.
So I was telling Sally, very matter-of-fact, that since Zach isn’t a linear thinker, we understand this about him and we appreciate and work with that characteristic. Who knows what I was rambling on about… some project or something. I was making a point that we had a great idea for how to solve something… and I happened to include Zach’s role in the idea.
Sally became super-animated.
“That’s me!” She said.
“What’s you?” I looked around.
“No, I’m just like Zach. I think that way too.” Sally gestured broadly. “That’s what I do. It’s so hard!”
Now I was confused. Zach kinda makes it look easy.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s so hard to be a person that thinks like that because NOBODY thinks like that,” she said.
I kinda disagreed, I mean, I’ve made the odd creative leap now and again, but I kept that to myself.
“In meetings, I always feel like I’m on the outside, I have to prepare and prepare to be able to put out my ideas when for me, they just POOF.” She subsided into her chair, looking wistful. “It’s so cool that your place lets Zach be himself.“
Well. That was news. Sally seems like a person that has it all together. She’s successful, intelligent, creative – an excellent communicator. I would have never thought that she felt isolated and struggled to fit in, but that’s just what she went on to describe.
The next day, I caught up with Zach. I told him about Sally.
“Man, that’s just how I feel,” he said. “I feel like I just don’t fit in, there’s something I can’t just do. Sometimes I think I should change jobs or just find a way to be someone else, be like someone else.”
I was shocked. We needed Zach to be Zach. We need his perspective, his creative leaps, his … Zachness. I told him so. I let Zach know that we need him … to be him.
OK so that was my story… two smart, productive people… secretly suspect that the very thing that sets them apart at work… is a liability.
Sound familiar?
OK, pair that with gender, racial and cultural issues and you can see how damaging this can be. I mean… if your gender is a liability… there’s nowhere to go with that.
For a super-interesting listen, check out the life-coach school podcast #411 – “How to Overcome What You’ve Been Taught” Four amazing Asian coaches talk about understanding how culture impacted them and what they did to get to a place where they could be themselves.
Here’s the deal – It’s not OK to just welcome in people who have learned how to tone themselves down, wear the right clothes, or say the right things. That’s madness.
Did you just do a fist pump?
Good for you.
If that’s how we behave, we’re going to wind up with the same answers we’d get talking to a mirror.
Here’s the more interesting question though…is it OK for YOU to be yourself?
Is it?
How comfortable are you in your own skin?
It’s not easy to go to work and be yourself. Our brains are literally programmed to prevent us from doing that stuff.
What choice do you really have? I mean really. Who else can you be?
When we fail to find the compassion to welcome others openly and celebrate their differences, we limit how far we can go as a team, as a company, and .. dare I say it… as a country.
Equally so, when we fail to find the courage to bring ourselves to work, just as we are, we limit how far we can go as individuals. We send a message to others that they, too, should follow our lead – sit more quietly in the corner – wear muted clothing – keep their voices down and their silly ideas to themselves. We send a message to ourselves that we are not enough.
That’s never true. You are always enough. You are different and your unique offering might be just the thing your team needs to find the best way forward – even if it takes you six weeks to put it in a PowerPoint.
So today, when you get to work… walk right in, sit right down- and dude, be yourself.
The world doesn’t just need more ideas… it needs different ideas. We need YOUR ideas.
Are you waiting on a ship that hasn’t come in yet?
Someday, you’ll have inbox zero. Someday, you’ll have a regular exercise routine. Someday, you’ll lose ten pounds and someday…you’ll live your best life… as your best self.
Here’s a secret. That day can be today.
All you have to do is agree that even though that day is today… your inbox might have 491 emails, 242 of them unread.
All you have to do is agree that what you did yesterday is no proof of who you are.
The dirty dishes in the sink this morning, the dog that ate your running shoes, the late-night nacho extravaganza yesterday, and the total lack of white space in your calendar today… doesn’t mean that you can’t be your best self and live your best life – today.
Did I lose you?
Hang in there.
This is a short read and you said that you wanted all those someday things.
Ok, do this with me… I want you to imagine yourself at eight-five. Unless you are eighty-five, then just be you.
You are eighty-five. You’ve already retired unless you’re the President, in which case, you’re excused.
You’re eighty-five. Your skin has lost its elasticity. Your joints are stiff and it takes a long time to get camera-ready.
Think of someone close to you – a spouse, a child, a friend. How old will they be? What will they look like?
What will you look like?
Where are you living? In your home? How are you managing in that home at this age? Who cares for the lawn? How do you get groceries?
Close your eyes and really see it. Then open them again. I’ll wait.
Let me ask you something.
What is that one thing, you know the one thing, you are always saying you would like to improve about yourself? I know there’s a long list, but start with the one you’ve been working on for your whole life and still haven’t nailed.
When you saw yourself at eighty-five, did that problem still exist?
Just think about that.
When do you believe you will change? Some murky year between now and eighty-five? Some murky year after eighty-five?
How important was this change to your eighty-five-year-old self?
OK … you’re free, come back to your current age. At this point in time, what are you telling yourself about how life will be when you:
Get to the perfect weight
Get your desk and inbox under control
Get your house running smoothly
Become a regular meditator
Kick sugar and flour to the curb
Build up serious muscle tone
Learn to be a full stack developer
Move to the next level at work
Buy that house, get that dog, have those kids, break that glass ceiling, be the change you want to see, become a force for good in the world and live life to the fullest?
What are you telling yourself about WHO you will be then?
Be that.
Be that person – now.
If you have great muscle tone and you’ve lost weight, then who are you? Healthy? Beautiful? So what? Why do you want that? So you can live long? So you can shoot a music video?
A person who had accomplished what you want to accomplish would be doing something different than you are doing now. They would dress different, they’d be serving soup to the poor this weekend, they’d be auditioning for the Voice.
Don’t wait until you’re eighty-five to do those things. Especially the Voice audition.
If you have inbox zero and blocks of space on your calendar at work – so what? What does that mean? Does that mean you’re organized? Does that mean you’re responsive? Does that mean you finally get to work on the important things and do that strategic thinking at work?
Why not skip the step where you wish you could do that… and just… do that? Act like a person that’s organized. Act like a person who gets five hundred emails a day and still is responsive. How would that even work?
Right. Some of this you can do right now… you can act organized… by planning and prioritizing and some stuff… like being responsive and strategic with five hundred emails a day just isn’t going to look like inbox zero – ever. It’s going to look like not answering those emails so fast and actually being on do not disturb while you do some work. And then it might look like pinging a few key people to make sure they have what they need from you. They’ll resend that email – believe me.
OK go back to being eighty-five and imagine you never did any of the things you wanted or believed you wanted to do. You’re overweight. You can’t get out of a chair. You spent your whole career being reactive, suffering at your desk, walked away from work early because you couldn’t take another day and your retirement fund is limited. Your mind is just as tumultuous as it is today… you never did learn to meditate. Your voice is shot and you never made a music video. Whatever it is that you are saying you’ll accomplish later – go to later and see the result of not doing it.
Wow! Right?
What did you learn?
When I did this exercise, I realized that not accomplishing that one thing wasn’t what brought me a deep sense of regret. It was all the things I didn’t do because I was waiting for me to be perfect before I started. At eighty-five, I was like – Amy, you idiot, why didn’t you just …. go for it anyway? Not even trying was my worst-case scenario… and now… I was living it.
Deep breath. Relax.
Straighten your spine.
What if the only moment you ever have to be your best self, living your best life… is now?
Everything’s OK – but you don’t really have plenty of time.
The time is now.
It is better to take voice lessons at fifty-eight, than never to have sung at all.
If you want to be a person who is relaxed, exercises, eats a lot of veggies and says no to cake, gets the most important work done during the business day, and watches plural site videos on the couch while eating popcorn …. while their spouse watches re-runs… then be that.
You’re not going to be perfect.
It’s not going to be easy.
You’re not going to be happy all the time.
And that’s OK –
None of that is actually happening for you now either. You already know how to do imperfect, difficult, and mildly annoyed.
You got this.
OK.. .one last trip to the future. Imagine you did that… ate big salads, went for terrific walks, only worked eight hours a day, and learned how to build a UI in angular while wearing your noise-canceling earphones as you cuddled up with your honey. Imagine you took singing lessons and did a walk-on at the local bar for your friend’s band and brought down the house singing Born to Be Wild at the top of your lungs.
You didn’t win The Voice but you sang, man, you sang.
Go a bit more into the future. You have been living that life, eating apples, walking in the sun, not overworking, learning new things, and belting them out at the corner bar on Fridays for years now, maybe decades. You just started one day… you read this crazy blog and you just…. started acting AS IF you were living your best life.
You didn’t make it a problem.
You didn’t need to be perfect.
You just…decided to act as if you already had your best life.
That’s what you are – but sometimes that’s hard to see in the snow blindness of a difficult time.
1 out of 25 people reading this will be struggling in their lives and suffering from thoughts of suicide. If you are one of them, please know that this is a serious matter – your safety is very important. You have a gift that only you can offer the world. There are good people who know how to help. Please call or text:
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: Call 1-800-273-TALK (8255) for 24-hour service Veterans Crisis Line: Call 1-800-273-8255 and press 1, or text 838255
That’s a whole lot of pain – and a whole lot of reasons for all us to get more comfortable talking about it. Why? Because being alert to the signs and being able to broach the topic and connect people with resources – saves lives. Period.
Here’s something else you may not know. For a paltry sum of $39.95, you can sign up for a ninety-minute, beautifully done online course to prepare you to step up, listen, and connect. LivingWorks.net is the organization and the course is called START
I get it. You don’t want to mess anything or anyone up. You don’t feel qualified and don’t have a goal of getting qualified to work with people on their problems. Hey, I’m a life coach and I work in IT. I’m not qualified to solve these things either.
Right. But here’s the thing: the goal this training is not for you to solve other people’s problems. The goal is to get you comfortable enough with a framework for helping, that you can connect someone in need with the people who are trained to help.
I took this training myself this week. It’s worth every penny.
People who are in pain, need to be able to reach out and grab a life ring, a kind word, a scrap of hope. People in pain need someone to dial the hotline number for them and tell them that they are not alone.
$39.95
My son puts on a bullet-proof vest every day and goes out to serve & protect.
I think I can put on my big-girl pants and ask someone – are you thinking about suicide?
Did you say Workload and Culture? Lady, we have got to talk.The whole blog, including additional comments, read for you.
Me: So, you’re overwhelmed. Tell me about that.
Client: I got up this morning at four am because we have a big project due. I worked until six am, let the dogs out, and I’ve been working right here at my computer until our session started.
Me: That’s, let’s see, four am to seven pm, that’s fifteen hours?
Client: (shrugs) I have more to do when we hang up.
Man, when that client spoke those words, my heart broke. I knew exactly how they felt. If you’re struggling with workload, like my client was, the idea of leaving on time probably leaves you with a lot of “yeah, buts…”
Yeah, Lady, but I can’t just stop. All this work will crash and burn.
Yeah, but, you don’t understand the expectations at ABC XYZ Corp.
Yeah, but, I’m in the middle of a major corporate project with huge visibility
I’m using my Saturday to write this blog and let you know… There is hope…
Tackling the inability to disengage is the first step in my Reboot Your Day Job program. Coaching gives you a safe place to work with someone who can help you “try on” new ways of approaching old challenges.
Although the corporate world can and should help us – by providing flexible schedules, transparent conversations about resourcing and prioritization, allowing people the freedom to determine how and when they work, supporting meeting reduction policies, and looking for ways to reduce the email / IM chatter load on knowledge workers…there’s still a lot you can do, right in your own chair, while you wait for that utopian moment.
So – why aren’t we throwing down our mice and logging off?
Workload and Culture.
At first glance, they seem like likely culprits. After all, most of us have some loose definitions of the two that look something like this:
WORKLOAD: The never-ending avalanche of requests, demands, emails, interruptions, projects, emergencies, reactivity, and problems ….. supplemented with training, upskilling, the need to understand new technology and our jobs, and our business partner’s job so we can add value and find big ideas…topped off with a dollop of ERG’s, clubs, and engagement activities so we can support our colleagues, share the joy of STEM, work toward social good, combined with expectations that we will soon be networking and innovating -possibly in a building, after packing a lunch and commuting.
CULTURE:What you see everyone around you doing, what you hear your colleagues saying, what you believe is expected behavior, and what you imagine is required of you to fit in and succeed in your company.
Those are some pretty strong headwinds
I mean, all that AND I have to wear pants? What happens to all that work and all those expectations when we unplug? Not what you think.
I’ve walked clients through this over and over. Here is what doesn’t happen:
They don’t get fired.
They don’t fail to deliver on the big project.
They don’t stagnate and they don’t lose credibility.
Not one. Not one single client.
Why? Here’s what you don’t see when you’re stuck in overwork.
(I’ve included links to prior blogs for a deeper dive… you’re welcome!)
Working yourself to exhaustion masks issues that should be exposed
Every manager, everywhere, has said “Find a way to get it done.” No manager, anywhere, meant “Work until you drop.” when they said it. Why? Because of all the negatives that overwork creates… see the list above.
So what does happenwhen you unplug? Well, I hate to say it… but you wind up dealing with some pretty uncomfortable things… which is why… unplugging isn’t easy.
The two reasons why clients fail to unplug.
The number one reason why people don’t succeed when they try to unplug is fear: fear of what will happen to their projects, fear of what other people will think of them. This fear prevents them from even trying to unplug. I could cry when I think of it. What a shame!
What people don’t seem to be afraid of is the lost opportunity costs of overwork, missing out on creative solutions, missing out on collaborative opportunities, restricting other people’s growth, and reinforcing a culture of endurance and overload. All of which are the direct result of overwork – for you and your company.
The second reason is discomfort – it feels WEIRD to leave on time. It feels WRONG to not be at work while the sun is out. It feels UNCOMFORTABLE to ignore those little pings and dings, emails and IM’s. If there’s one thing we know, it’s that we don’t like difficult emotions. Difficult emotions drive people back to overworking before they can see the benefits and find ways to overcome those feelings.
Oh, you thought that grief and abject despair were the only difficult emotions?
Wake up and smell the coffee, my friends. We humans also don’t like – boredom, being fidgety, mild anxiety, discouragement, confusion, uncertainty, and about a million other emotions that don’t require a divorce or a death in the family. That includes that little bit of uncertainty you feel when you’ve been away from your email for an hour. Cal Newport discusses this in his book Digital Minimalism. I’ve blogged about it here: Learning to Carve.
So, what’s the answer?
The answer is… follow the five steps I gave you last week. Clients never believe that this can work. Heck, I didn’t believe it until I tried it. That’s why I recommend a two-week experiment. That’s enough time to overcome discomfort and see real benefits. That’s enough time to start taking the actions that leaving on time forces you to take – thinking big picture, finding creative solutions, turning to others for help and inspiration – and it’s enough time to expose the problems your overwork has been masking. Two weeks is also short enough that the whole world of work won’t collapse if I’m wrong (which I am not.)
And that? Is just the only way to find out for yourself.
If all of this is just a bridge too far for you, I get it. I really get it. I needed a coach to help me get my overwork under control. I’d like to help you too. Click here to sign up for a free 25-minute session... no hard sell, just empathy in spades and real tools you can use.
Feel like you’re in a spin cycle? Finding the next step is sometimes about finding the right do-over.
Big shout out to all of you Monday Warriors out there. Today I want to blog about how to know if you should keep on doing something. And I’m not talking about the pandemic, but, kinda, I am.
We often spend time in January thinking about what we want to change, what we want to fix or accomplish in the year ahead. That’s not the same as looking at the totality of your life and asking what should stay and what should go. Julie Morgenstern, in “Time Management from the Inside Out” proposed that we look at time the way we look at a closet… as a fixed volume that we need to decide how to fill.
Sometimes we have to clean out our closets, discarding what we don’t use, in order to fit in what we want to have handy. Time is like that, too.
I’ve found the best way to know if we want to keep doing something, is to stop. Just stop. Let go of it. Then look at how you filled that time. Do you like the changes? Are you better off? Do you long to add it back to your life again?
The pandemic did that for us. A lot of things stopped. Things like dining out, commuting, and throwing out used PPE.
What stopped for you? What were you doing in 2019 that you are no longer doing? What are you filling that time with? How is this new normal working for you?
One thing that stopped for me in 2020 was my volunteer work at our local hospital. My therapy dog has now passed and I don’t have an easy way back to that work. Looking back, I gained connection and meaning from those Sunday visits to patients. That’s something I want to add back. That’s a pretty good do-over goal.
What have you added to your life during the pandemic? Make a list. What do you want to keep and what should you toss back?
I added worry about politics. I’d like to toss that back.
I also added 8 hours solid sleep each night. That’s a keeper.
What about you?
What, if you stopped doing it today, would you never miss? Cookie Cats Bubble Pop comes to mind. Fretting over my annual review is another. Time to take a serious look at those things.
When you list out the things you were doing, that you would like to restart, think about the components that made those activities special. My current dog will never be allowed in a hospital, but I can recreate some of what made my volunteer gig special, by finding a new one that directly connects me to other people in an open, non-judgemental way. Something where I can speak to and see the person I’m helping, that’s what I miss. Something that broadens my perspective. I can have a do-over on that.
So before you give up on January, before you go all-in on 2022 – see if you can find a better do-over and a few old things to toss out so you can fit in a better do-over.
Ever wish you could program yourself? Today’s your lucky day.
What do over-eating, being a worry-wort, and answering emails all day have in common?
Here’s a hint – none of them are helping you do a better job at work.
Here’s another hint – habit loop.
This month, I bumped into Dr. Judson Brewer on the internet… basically on the Ezra Klein podcast. He’s got a book out called Unwinding Anxiety and he’s got a couple of mindfulness apps out. Because I love all things related to how our minds work, I checked out his book and his Eat Right Now app. I’m enjoying the book and the app is really well done, highly recommended. You can find all of this at DrJud.com
I’ve talked before in this blog about making sure you are giving your habits nice long tails…. or rewards. Check out the 30 Lessons tab, Lesson 12.
What Dr. Brewer brings to the game is a simple model that we can work with to map out habitual patterns quickly.
Bringing awareness to this pattern is a game, er, habit changer
OK, so far, you’re probably not impressed. In a basic sense, we all know this model.
I see cake, I eat cake, I feel good in the short term. Next time I see cake, I’ll eat it again.
Here’s where I got hooked. Things like anxiety and worry can also be … habits.
What?
My kid is out late, I worry, I feel more in control. Next time my kid has the car keys and it’s after ten p.m., I’ll worry.
Boom.
For me, this idea was like having a shortcut to happy land.
You mean, we don’t have to find our inner child and talk to him for seven years to reduce our anxiety?
You got it.
If behaviors like rumination, anxiety, and worry can be tackled like other bad habits, we’re in new territory. So I bought the book, tried the app, loved the model.
Here’s how it goes: Big project (cue) answer emails (behavior) feel productive (reward).
That’s a habit loop that will make your life at work miserable pretty darn quick. But big projects are overwhelming and stressful and emails give us a hit of dopamine. So how can you break this cycle?
Once you’ve documented the habit loop, you can work with it. Yes, you have to write the model down. Why? Because writing things like this down objectifies them.
Now you can get curious about it – you do that by honing in on the results. You just answered seven emails and lost that hour you had set aside to work on your project. You felt productive, but were you really? Did the worry actually keep your kid safer? Did the half a pizza really make you feel better?
Part of making the connections immediate rather than intellectual is checking in with your body.
You just answered seven emails. You got the dopamine, but tell us how you really feel? Is there still a knot of anxiety in your gut?
Checking in with yourself at a physical level is key to breaking out of your habitual thoughts and really getting to the truth of your results.
You can then correct your model. Big Project (cue) answer emails (behavior) have even less time to work on it, feel sick to my stomach, have tense shoulders (result).
You can’t un-know something like that once you actually feel how losing that hour affects you physically.
You’ve taken the first step to re-writing the if-then statements that drive your life.
What do freedom and preparation have in common? Duh.
A Long Time Ago….
In a Career Far, Far, Away…
I learned about freedom.
Then, I learned about preparation.
Hey! How ya doin’? Are you all A-OK out there? I’m enjoying my long weekend. I listened to audiobooks and tuned in to the impeachment proceedings. That combination got me thinking about freedom. Freedom to act and even more, the need to be prepared.
As adults, with families and responsibilities, it often feels that like we don’t have freedom. We have responsibilities and obligations. The more of the trappings of the American dream we collect, the less free we believe we are. Education and opportunity turn into jobs, homes, families, and retirement funding – lots of stuff we don’t want to lose. In wanting to keep what we’ve earned, we lose perspective. Working starts to feel like a zero-sum proposition.
During my late twenties, I got to experience total freedom. My husband and I had just sold a business. At the time capital gains taxes were INSANE, so we didn’t get the big bankroll we expected. But, during the years of building our business, we’d practiced austerity at home. We needed only one minimum wage income to keep the lights on and things rolling, including our two cars and our utilities.
Given our frugal lifestyle, the proceeds from the sale of our business could support us for a long time. That meant I got the opportunity to work, basically anywhere, with the feeling that I could walk away, at any moment and find something comparable. No sweat.
Let me tell you, after the heroics of self-employment with a brick and mortar business and the mandate to show up and keep delivering, no matter how long it took or how hopeless things appeared, this feeling of nonchalance was incredible. At my job, an eight-hour day with a lunch break felt like child’s play and if I wanted to, I could walk away clean with no harm, no foul to my family.
In my happy, post-entrepreneurial state of sustainability, I felt bold, courageous. I got to be myself. I felt zero need to cowtow to anyone. I could speak my mind frankly. I didn’t have to worry about l office politics, people’s opinions, making ends meet, or really anything. I just had to show up, and do my job in the way that suited my personality.
It was exhilarating.
These were my typical thoughts at that time in life: “I’m working for me.” “We can live on one salary, so either of us can quit anytime.” “This is easy.” “I can’t believe people get paid for this.” “How can I do better?” “How can I do this faster?” “How cool would it be to figure that out?” “It’s time to go home already?” “I can’t believe I can walk away any time and be Just. Fine.” “I make less than anyone here, but I’m independently wealthy.” “I can do anything I want.” “I can leave any time.” “How can I help?” “How does that work?” “What else can I do to help the team?” “It’s time to go home already?” “This is great.” “I think I’d like to get another degree while I’m doing this. I have plenty of time.”
That experience taught me a lot about what fearlessness and a sense of expansive resources do to mindset. After years of seventy hour weeks, razor-thin margins, the fate of my family, and the jobs of a dozen employees riding on our ability to keep things running, the contrast was extreme.
Looking back, of course, things weren’t quite that amazing. I wasn’t yet thirty and I still felt like I had forever to create a retirement fund. Eventually, our savings would go away if we weren’t careful and a major medical catastrophe could have wiped everything out and set us on a very different course.
Doesn’t matter. What mattered was the mindset. That mindset was the greatest gift of all time. I experienced what it felt like to believe that I was totally, financially, free and independent, and at the same time, perfectly capable of working twice as hard at any moment. I experienced a total lack of a scarcity in my mindset and it was phenominal.
It also provided a comparison to help me understand when fear and scarcity are setting in.
Years later, when I needed to make a difficult decision at work, the impact of that difference was made clear to me.
I was asked to make a judgment call. There were lots of people with different opinions about what I should do. I felt a lot of internal pressure to make sure that I made the decision without any personal bias. I needed to know that my decision was best for my employer, not for me, not for my family.
Let’s be clear, my company supported me in this work in every way. But because I had experienced what it felt like to act and make decisions out of total freedom, I knew that my mind was far from that place. I understood that I needed to be willing not only to walk away from my job but to also believe we would be ok if I did. In order to be sure that my choice was unbiased I needed to be free of the fear of losing my job, fear of not finding another one, and fear of not being capable.
That clarity made the work much, much harder. At that time, I did believe I needed my job. I believed that I would never find another as perfect. I believed that nobody would hire me at that same pay and I that couldn’t survive independently from my job.
Talk about a problem. Before I could make my decision at work, I had to clean up my whole life. I wasn’t willing to make a decision until I was sure I could be unbiased and the clock was ticking.
Watching the folks in the Senate over the weekend, I wondered how many of them were in that same boat.
I remember the weekend before I made my decision. I dragged out all our finances. I took out all our bills. I laid everything out. I had to be willing to walk away from my job if my decision wasn’t in alignment with others. Not because my company was pressuring me. Remember, I had lots of support. I needed to be dead certain that my decision was made freely. I needed to be sure of my own clarity of mind, for me.
I worked numbers for hours, in pencil at our dining room table. By the time I was done, I was sure that if my husband kept his job and I could get a minimum wage job, we would survive. After all the self-inflicted pressure I’d been feeling, I almost welcomed the chance to go back to an hourly wage.
I spent the next day laying out my pros and cons. Late Sunday, I sent in my decision, feeling the strength that comes from knowing you’re making a choice for all the right reasons.
That taught me a lot. That experience was far more difficult than it needed to be because I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t have my personal house in order. That weekend started a new phase in my life. I banished debt, one 0% credit card at a time. I prioritized savings and I expanded my network by volunteering and learning new skills. I made getting back to that independent state of mind a top priority.
Today, my thoughts are these: “I have everything I need to do what I need to.” “I’m ready for a new chapter.” “I’m 100% able to walk away at any time.” “My personal inventory is up to date.” “I know where I stand.” “What if this can be easy?” “How can I get better?” “How can I live on even less?” “Who can I help?” “I wonder what that’s about?” “I’m ready for whatever comes my way.” “It’s the end of the day already?” “What do I want to learn to do next?” “What does my team need?” “Where’s the popcorn?” “This is a tough puzzle.” “This is great.” “It’s the end of the day already?” “I’m on vacation until 8 am” “I love my job.”
Here’s the deal.
When I was struggling with my own feelings of fear and inadequacy, I had a net worth ten times what it was when I was in my twenties and feeling like the Queen of Everything. Less people were depending on me because our child was out on his own. I was in much better shape. But that wasn’t how I felt, and it wasn’t what I believed.
To this day, I still have never felt as free as I did that year after we sold our business. Too bad, but I have hope that I will. What I am sure of is I will never again have to put everything on hold to clean my personal house before I make a judgment call. I’m prepared. I have already accepted that my job will go away. One way or another, all of our jobs go away. We move on, even if we stay with the same employer.
So ask yourself, what work do you have to do on your personal inventory to be sure that you are 100% free to face anything work throws at you?
