Work-Life Sanity Blog

About 10 days ago I had day-surgery on my hand.   I was NPO after midnight and scheduled for a 3:00 pm surgery.  Doing without food or water was no big deal, but no morning coffee?  That was hard.

I’ve just returned from taking a few vacation days in New York.   A friend came up from DC and we spent a day together.  I stayed over with another friend and spent a day with her as well.  Very fun, and a perfect getaway for me. 

I’m back to a  very full plate, much to do in a very short time.  When I have a crunch like this, I need to work more quickly than I’m comfortable working.   If I’m not careful, I can get very stressed by it.  I think it’s the discomfort that stresses me, not the work itself or the volume.  So this time I’m going to try managing the discomfort a little better, and I’ll see if that makes a difference.

How will I do that?  Well, one thing I’ll try is this: when I start feeling stressed, I’ll ask myself, “Are you stressed by the discomfort of having to work more quickly than you want?”  If the answer is yes, I think knowing that will help me keep it in perspective: I can certainly handle my own discomfort — it’s all up to me.  

Meanwhile, I’m excited about all that’s going on, including a cluster of teleclasses coming up at the end of the month.

One of the key skills I teach many of my clients is to recognize when they need help and how to get it.   

Being a coach keeps me honest: I really do have to walk the talk.  That means I have to recognize when I need help and then to get it.

My business is extremely busy right now.  Not so busy with clients that I am full, mind you – so don’t hesitate to contact me yourself about coaching or to refer someone else!   But extremely busy with the “back office” side of things.

My back office plate filled up incrementally with the following, probably TMI, which you should feel free to skip (go to “At some point,” below): 

·     I was interviewed for an internet radio show that’s airing next week, the publicity for which required that I create a Face Book page and bring on some fans.  

·     This blog, which had snoozed through the holidays, needed to become more active again. 

·     My trademark, the Getting Unstuck® Coach, was challenged by a company seeking my permission to use the same trademark for their training business, which overlaps with my corporate training work.  Some back and forth with them, a threatening email from their attorney, calls with my trademark attorney, etc. Yuck.

·     I’ve finished my ‘09 bookkeeping, but the forms that go to my accountant need to be filled out, which inevitably requires going over my data one more time, making corrections, etc.

·     I’m down to the last 30 copies of my book, Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued: Restoring Work-Life Balance. So it’s either time for a run of another 300 of them, or time to migrate to a print-on-demand solution.  Investigating print-on-demand solutions means identifying the players, getting informed about each’s process and pricing, doing the compare and contrast, and making a decision.  Yuck.

·     Finish the profile of my business on Yelp.com and ask clients to write recommendations.  

·     Deal with my mouse, which intermittently stops highlighting. 

·     Write a formal proposal to lead a daylong work-life balance training for a tech company in FL.

·     Write an informal proposal for a keynote later this month.

·     Email the contacts I’ve been referred to at 2 magazines to inquire about writing a work-life column for them.

·     Send out an email to everyone I know to announce this blog and update people on my coaching niche: work life balance and productivity.

·     Schedule teleclasses for the end of February, and get the classes and registration info onto my website (now done) and into my February newsletter.

·     Write the Feb newsletter.  (You can subscribe here.)  

·     Update website: send requests to my web programmer and follow up.

·     Other stuff too.

At some point, I began to feel overwhelmed.  I worked longer hours, I tightened up my efficiency, I said no to non-work invitations.  I was barely making a dent in the list, and the overwhelm got bigger. 

And then I heard the bell ring and saw the light bulb turn on: I needed more help!  Duh. 

So I got help.   Lots of it.   Most of these items are still in process, and the list is ultimately my responsibility, but having other competent people working on some of the bigger jobs and getting back to me for input as needed is a HUGE RELIEF.   I am point person, not point-person-&-technician.  

If you’re at all like my clients or the people in my seminars, your initial response to “So I got help” may be something like, “Yeah, right, well maybe in YOUR life, but not in mine.”  Stay tuned for a subsequent post that addresses this. 

In a recent conversation with several people about blogging, I realized that I’ve been making things unnecessarly difficult for myself by requiring that my blog posts be about 500 words long.   Of course I’ve read other people’s posts that are shorter, but I never made the connection that mine could be shorter too.

I know I’m not the only person who makes things more difficult than they need to be, but I’m the one I know the best. 

For a long time I thought that work was supposed to be hard.   If it wasn’t hard, it didn’t count, I thought: it wasn’t worthy somehow.   Once I became aware of that thought pattern, I was able to see that it didn’t serve me, and I started the process of learning how to allow things to be easier, which is turning out to be a lifelong process. 

This is iteration number 99 of “it doesn’t have to be difficult.”  My posts at this blog can be be as long or as short as they need to be.

It seems to be Annual Review Season in the lives of several of my clients, so I’m thinking a lot about this subject.

I’m a huge believer in self-acknowledgement in general.  But at annual review season, even moreso. 

Even if you work for an organization that does annual reviews REALLY, REALLY well (and that’s maybe 1% of organizations), and even if you get a REALLY, REALLY great review this year — it’s just not enough acknowledgment.  Why? Because other people don’t know HALF of what you do. 

They’re not there with you on ordinary Tuesday mornings when you navigate a treacherous conversation with an extremely disgruntled client and you somehow manage to turn things around through your listening skills, your relational skills, your technical skills, your integrity, and your sheer endurance.  No one but you even KNOWS what a great save that was and what it required of you!  

But YOU do, and if you were writing your own annual review, you’d get something into it that acknowledged this contribution: the net result, and all that went into it.

No one knows that when you reviewed your notes “one last time” the night before your meeting last week, you came up with a strategy change that would make it a much better meeting.  You went with it, staying up til all hours to make all the other changes your change would require.  And what happened?  To all your staff, it appeared to be just another one of your usual good meetings.  No one knows the degree to which you go the distance. 

But you do.  And if you were writing your own review . . .

So here’s the drill.  Write your own review, for your eyes only.  Acknowledge not only your results, which is the only thing that most people  (including you?) see, but also your behaviors and your personal qualities that are part of the way you work.  

Here are some examples of behaviors that deserve to get acknowledged and rarely do:
You take the time to write a carefully worded email when called for.
You realized you were working inefficiently and took steps to clean it up.
You got timely advice from HR (and followed it) regarding a direct report with performance issues.

Here are examaples of personal qualities to be acknowledged:
You’re reliable, dependable, diligent, and hardworking.
You have high standards and you know when not to be a perfectionist.
You have a great sense of humor.

When you write your own review, be sure to ackowledge your results, behaviors, and personal qualities.  You might consider writing one for work and one for outside of work.   And you don’t have to wait for once a year.

I’ve had the privilege over the last few years of working with some fabulous women who were living the transition from management to leadership.  I say “living the transition” rather than “moving” because it’s much more of a process than a singular event.   It’s a paradigm shift that happens over time. 

Here are a few of its elements:

1. You laser-sharpen what you say and write.  In E.B. White’s words: “When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.”  More succinct communication is often the result of :
     a) better grasp of the bigger picture, fuller understanding of exactly what to communicate and why
   b) greater courage and power to speak the truth and stand behind it
   c) less time/tolerance for fuzziness.

2. You replace your old M/O of “I have to do it all myself” with the understanding that you have to have more help.  Doing it all yourself is not a model for leadership; it’s a model for burnout.  

3. You delegate day-to-day management in order to regularly take yourself to 80,000 feet to see the big picture.   This is particularly true if you are coming from an operations function.  You can’t re-think strategic mission at the same time as worrying about whether there will be enough chairs in the room for the Big Meeting (and wondering who’s on that?).

4. You start contributing at a higher, stronger, more strategic level because you stop wasting time feeling “less than,” second guessing yourself, and feeling like you have to justify your seat at the table.  You ARE at the table.  You start knowing you belong there. 

5. You ask for what you need, knowing that what supports you also supports others and the work you are all doing. 

6. You stop tolerating bad behavior; you redress it.

7.  You get more help. 

8. You start trusting our own questions.   You get them answered, either by finding them out or by convening the conversations that will create them.

9. You become willing to see yourself as a more powerful person. It just stops being a big deal.  You grow into it.

What have I left out?

Even working slowly gets things done.  Sometimes, I’m unable to work at the pace that meets my standards.  Like right now.  I’m developing the content for an upcoming interview by a radio show host.  The taping is in 2 days, for an early February broadcast. 

I’m working very, very, very slowly.  Did I mention the going was slow?  My inner perfectionist (IP) has a high bar for how quickly I should draft this content, and I am big time failing to meet that standard.  My IP wants me to quit working on it, do something else, and return to this work when I can work at a pace that meets her majesty’s quality control standards.

But I have tried a few iterations of that strategy and I’m running out of time.  I now risk not being ready for the interview, which would be a foolish waste of an excellent opportunity for increased professional visibility.

So, faced with a choice between working slowly or not working on it all, I’m choosing to work on it slowly.  I’m overriding my IP’s great discomfort with the terrible imperfection of the situation.  She’s saying, “Hey listen, at this pace, you could be working on it from now until the interview starts in 48 hours: that’s not just unacceptable, but ludicrous.

To which I’m responding, ”Look, I can’t DEPEND on being able to crank up my production speed between now and then.  So, better to work on it slowly and get it done than wait for efficiency to show up and risk not getting it done at all.”

Here’s a remarkable secret.  Moving forward one micron at a time still moves you forward.  It is far, far better to be in action than to be paralyzed.   Here it is in mathematical terms (I have license to do this because my daughter was an applied math major (magna cum laude, Columbia)): the distance between paralysis and motion is FAR GREATER than the distance between slow motion and fast motion.  

That said, there are also times when you just need a break.  You can sometimes return from a real break with your batteries re-charged or a mental course correction, and then you just plow forward with much greater effectiveness.   Only you can make the call, of course, whether to take a break or continue slogging through.    

I’m calling this one: better to move slowly than not at all.  I know from past experience that a slow start can pick up momentum and energy, and at some point you cross some threshhold and you’re in flow.  But even if that doesn’t happen, left-right-left-right slog slog slog does get things done.

I also know that sometimes only C+ work energy is available, and sometimes C+ results are better than an incomplete.   I might not graduate magna cum laude, but I still want my degree.  

One of the most powerful things I have been learning in the last 30 years is that the more I am able to tolerate (or risk) the C-pluses, the more rich and full and satisfying my life is.  How completely bizarre and unexpected!

In the Preoccupations  column in today’s New York Times, economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett writes that what women executives do to unwind is . . . NOTHING.  They lust for “chunks of empty space — no expectations, no agendas.” 

It’s not just women executives, I would add.  Any over-scheduled, busy professional would do well to use this strategy for re-charging her batteries.  I use the word “strategy” intentionally, because for most intensely busy people the prospect of doing nothing is complete anathema.  But when understood as a strategy for restoring one’s sanity, it’s more easily considered. 

In today’s post on her Profitable Consultant blog, internet marketing specialist Dianna Huff writes about her own experience regularly ”doing nothing” as a break from her work (as a marketing professional, entrepreneur, and advisor to profitable consultants).  She says the impact of taking such a break is that “I usually come back to the ‘real world’ refreshed, relaxed and focused.”

If you don’t regularly give yourself the gift of a real break like this, you’ll feel some guilt when you start.  But don’t let that keep you from starting.  Start small, with just a few minutes at a time.  It might feel boring at first, and you might be racked with guilt.  But tough it out; it’s worth it. 

“Doing nothing” not only re-charge your batteries, it can also put you into a state of receptivity to your own intuition and creativity.  Albert Einstein said something that applies here: ”The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.” 

The truth is, you are not ACTUALLY doing nothing when you are “doing nothing.”  You are simply stepping out of active ”doing” and “thinking” mode,  and that allows other parts of your brain and your being to kick in, in the background.

This week someone told me about a tradition she has created in her family.  They call it Pajama Thanksgiving. 

She and her husband and their two young children get up on Thanksgiving Day when they feel like getting up, and they stay in their pajamas.  She gets a turkey into the oven when she does, and when it’s ready, they sit down and have a meal, the four of them together. 

 It’s the most relaxed and easy day in the entire year for them.

This is otherwise a very, very busy family. Both parents work full time, the kids go to school and extended day programs and do the kinds of activities that many kids do: music lessons, sports, theater, Sunday School, and so on. 

The parents crave time with their children with no agenda, no schedule to adhere to, no competing commitments.  The children crave time with their parents.  So there is no multi-tasking on Pajama Thanksgiving, no Blackberries in use, no company to get ready for, no time that everyone has to be “ready.”  

A Pajama Thanksgiving may not appeal to YOU in the least.  But for this family, this is just heavenly.   They love spending this day together.  The parents read to the kids.  The older daughter reads to her little brother.  They play games.  They make up games.  

When the little guy naps, the parents nap too, and the daughter watches a movie.   There might be a cookie-baking project.  There might be a crafts project.  There might not be.  As a family, they let the day unfold and they are each present to create and experience it with each other.  It is their authentic holiday. 

They have created their TG tradition from the inside out.  It’s not about the appearance of it;  it’s not about the form.   The form is simply the result of the deep inner need that’s getting satisfied:  the need for connected down time together with these particular people.  The need for a safe haven from the loud, incessant demands of daily life.  The need to not have to be “productive” in the task-list sense of things.

Many of us have created holiday traditions that are patterned after our workdays: there’s a schedule, there are people to see or people who come over, there is a timetable, there is pressure, there are people depending on us to deliver in certain ways, there are expectations to live up to.

The Pajama Family draws a strong boundary around this day and creates for themselves the holiday they truly need.

IN the opening chapter of The Art of Possibility, Roz Zander writes about a life lesson she learned on a white water rafting trip.

The rafting company put people through substantial training before going out on the water.  One key element of the training was “Toes to Nose.”  When you fall out of the raft into the thrashing water, they were taught, bring your toes to your nose and look for the boat.

Toes to nose keeps your feet from getting caught in the rocks below and brings you to the surface, where you can grab an oar or rope from the boat closest to you.  The trainer drummed this mantra into people’s heads til they rolled their eyes.  It had to be completely automatic, he said.

During the actual rafting trip, Roz was thrown into the roiling water.  The sudden shock of cold water, the absolute roar in her ears, the darkness of being submerged!  In the midst of massive sensory overload and the adrenaline rush of mortal crisis, she remembered and executed toes to nose.  Presto!  She was suddenly at the surface, visible to the instructor on the sweeper raft, who pulled her out of the water.

There is great value in having a survival mantra such as this for your everyday life. When crises and demands pile up and you are suddenly underwater . . . it can be a lifesaver to have an automatic instruction for yourself.   The instruction has to be simple enough that you remember it when you’re completely overloaded.

For a software engineer with a work crunch at work and approaching finals in her MBA program, the mantra she finds most useful is “‘Good enough’ is good enough.”  This simple slogan helps her manage her shrill inner perfectionist, who wants perfect results on all fronts, 24/7.  In real life, that’s neither an option nor a requirement.  For example, she doesn’t really need to ace her finals.

An executive director I know recently recognized how drained, miserable, and resentful she is of all the other people she takes such good care of: her staff, clients, board, and husband.   Her new survival instruction is, “Take care of yourself too!”

For an investment banker who takes work home every night but doesn’t do it, much to her own growing panic, the directive that makes a difference is, “Do what you have to do first.  Then do what you want.”

In a post-event interview, Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was asked, “How did you feel after you doubled the triple axel?”  She responded (and I paraphrase), ”I’m trained to go right on to the next move.  I don’t have the luxury of thinking about what I just did.  I just moved on.”

I personally am benefitting from ”Just move on.”  There is always time for analysis later, if that’s appropriate.

So . . . what’s your life-saving mantra, and in what situations does it serve you?  Consider drafting a candidate or two to test over the next 6 weeks: simple instructions which could offer you some safety when you get bounced out of the raft.  See if you can come up with your own “toes to nose” to deploy into the New Year.