Imagine you lose all your data

Imagine you lose all your data.

Your inbox, gone.

Your sent file history, gone.

Your backups, deleted.  Yes, even your redundancy fails you.

What would you do?

It happened to me, today.  Gone.  Pfft.  Part systemic failure, part ignorance, part assumption (I believed it could not happen)

Here’s the thing — for ten years, I have struggled to clean out my Inbox.  I have dreamed of an impossible time when my inbox might be empty.

So now, when I should be FREAKING OUT (!!!) I find myself, strangely, calm.

Zen-like.  Deep breathing.  All my years of practicing calm in times of stress has kicked in, and once I realized that there was, truly, nothing I could do, I just — Breathed.

I achieved a lifelong goal, as the aftermath of a digital disaster.  And I’m OK. 

P.S.  If you sent me an email in the past week and I owe you something, please resend!  :~)

Are You a Maximizer? Part 1

We were waiting to pay for our groceries and realized we’d forgotten the pasta for that evening’s dinner party.  I raced back down the aisle and… um… did you know there are over 50 different options for linguini alone?  Which will our guests most prefer?  Egg-free, whole wheat, organic, tomato or spinach-infused, fresh or traditional, generic or brand name…??

By the time I returned to the checkout I was in a state of high anxiety from trying to make The Best Linguini Decision. “Don’t ever send me to the pasta aisle alone,” I begged my wife.  She just shook her head.

We’re like this with clothes, too. If I need new pants they must be The Best Deal, so I check ads for sales, visit every rack in at least three stores, try on numerous pairs, then (finally) choose.  Cheryl, on the other hand, will visit one store, try on maybe two pair, and buy one.  Done.

Maximizer versus Satisfier

When it comes to making decisions we all fall somewhere along the Maximizer-Satisfier scale. (to find where you land, take this assessment)

Maximizers need to be assured that every purchase or decision they make was the BEST possible. Yet how to know if any given option is the best?  Research.  Get more data.  Delay the decision.  Talk to friends.  Make the decision, but… then worry about whether it was the absolute best choice.

Satisfiers simply want to make a GOOD decision. Like Maximizers, they set out to meet specific criteria in their decisions and purchases.  The difference is that Satisfiers seek excellence, yet don’t obsess over achieving the Absolute Best.  Once they make a decision that is good enough, they never look back.

Let Go to Feel Happier

A continual focus on making the absolute best decisions can be a core talent but, like any strength, can become a weakness when overused. We live in a world of seemingly infinite choices anymore.  If you are unaware of your own drive to always make perfect decisions, you can end up generally unhappy because you’re constantly shy of a near-impossible standard.

Other ideas to help Maximizers reduce the anxiety of decision-making:

1. Choose when to choose. Decide to restrict your options when the decision is not crucial.  For example, make a rule to visit no more than two stores when shopping for clothing.
2. Learn to accept “good enough.” Settle for a choice that meets your core requirements rather than searching for the elusive “best.”  Then stop thinking about it.
3. Don’t worry about what you’re missing. Consciously limit how much you ponder the seemingly attractive features of options you reject.  Practice by focusing on the positive aspects of the choices you make.
4. Temper expectations. “Don’t expect too much, and you won’t be disappointed” is a cliché.  But that advice is sensible if you want to be more satisfied with life.

I hold high standards for my work, but have learned that striving constantly to create perfection is not only exhausting but it tends to feed my procrastination. To counter my own Maximizer tendencies, I’ve asked others for advice.  Now, when I am working on non-critical project I remind myself that “80% is good enough;” and when it comes to meeting deadlines, I consider the words of thought leader Seth Godin, “Done is better than perfect!”

Next: Maximizer and Satisfier in Leadership

Let Go of Your Stress this Holiday!

For two years I’ve been talking about diving in to video.  Many of you have asked for it. I finally made a public commitment (gulp!) in October to make and post a video on my website by year end.  Then, having accepted that my PC was inadequate for video work, I leaped into the Mac world.

What you’re about to see was filmed on my iPhone 3G, edited in iMovie on my brand new iMac computer, and tested on my iPad.

TIPS FOR A LESS-STRESS HOLIDAY

Click on the image to view the newsletter on YouTube, or just follow this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSwTTSiS8_I

P.S. I invite you to let go of your inner editor. Yes, I know that this video is “too long,” it has episodes of poor lighting, and some of the edits are choppy.  On the other hand, it is DONE, and for a first-ever video clip, I’m pretty happy with it.  Please, enjoy!

How Fast is Fast Enough?

Over the past few weeks I’ve found myself in numerous conversations in which people confessed to feeling stressed to or beyond their capacity. A lot of the stories have to do with trying to keep up with an impossibly fast world, being “on” 24 hours a day, and needing to know everything instantaneously, deliver results NOW, and in general keep up with everything, all the time.

Really?  REALLY?!

Have you heard the news:  Stress kills?  And here’s the other message you need to hear:  You create 100% of your own stress!

In the context of all these conversations about speed and stress, I received this simple reminder from Seth Godin’s blog:

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Day old news is fresh enough

The value of breaking news (news = whatever is new to you) is dramatically overrated, and the cost of keeping up with what someone else thinks is urgent is just too high.

If it’s important today, it will be important tomorrow. Far more productive to do the work instead of monitoring what’s next.

[Exceptions: Emergency room doctors, producers at CNN, day traders.]

~*~*~*~*~*~

Especially given that this comes from one of the most followed and prolific bloggers on the internet, I thought this was just a great reminder that success in today’s world is not always about being fastest.

Do we REALLY need to know everything, right now?  The Speed of Life need only stress you if you choose to let it…

Do We Know What We Want?

This blog post is courtesy my Marketing Coach, Robert Middleton — and he, in turn, takes part of it from  Lawrence J. Peter’s book, “The Peter Pyramid.”

“We are a strange people. We spend our lives doing things we detest, to make money for things we don’t need, to impress people we don’t like. We never want to be doing what we’re doing. When we eat, we read; when we watch TV, we eat; when we drive, we listen to music; when we listen to music, we work around the house. When we want to be with friends, we go to a noisy restaurant; when we want to party, we spend the evening trying to converse.”

This was written back in 1986 and since then, things have only gotten worse. When we’re on the phone, we’re checking our email; when we watch TV we surf the web; when we’re on the web, we watch Youtube. And when we do practically anything else we’re on our cell phones.

It’s no wonder people are so stressed and overwhelmed. Do we even know what it means to do one thing at a time with full attention? But if we don’t have attention, we are missing life. Attention is life.

Jim’s addendum

We really can’t blame technology for our inability/unwillingness to focus. Multi-tasking existed before computers.

The inability to manage stress is one of the top 4 biggest contributors to chronic illness (three of the top ten most-prescribed drugs are anti-depressants!).  Stress is self-made, and one of the common stories we make up to fuel our stress is that we MUST pay attention to multiple, simultaneous things and that we must get EVERYTHING done.

Giving just ONE thing our full attention is called Mindfulness.  When we are mindful, we slow down. We become more present to the one thing, the one task, or the one person in front of us.  Mindfulness slows down our brain & our body, and creates a space for us to calm down and breath easier.

But to experience mindfulness, we must first give ourselves permission to Stop.  Slow Down.  Focus on Just One Thing.

We say we can’t.  So I repeat Robert’s question: Do we really know what we want?

Stress: I can’t stop thinking about this!

A few weeks ago I learned about what the healthcare community refers to as The Big Four.  These are the four behavioral concerns that drive cause and thus Cost in the healthcare system, and which lie at the heart of Wellness.

The Top Four Drivers of Chronic Disease and Healthcare Cost in the US

1. Food choices and Portion size
2. Tobacco
3. Physical Inactivity
4. Stress

The statistics, from a study conducted by the Cleveland Clinic and supported by a meta-study of Global Medical Trends conducted by Towers Watson, show that:

• Poor employee health habits is the leading factor driving medical cost in the US (and it’s the lowest factor globally!)
• 75% of Chronic Disease in the US is driven or aggravated by combinations of these four factors
  and Chronic Disease accounts for:
• 81% of hospital stays
• 91% of prescription drugs, and
• 76% of Office Visits

Now, I’m not a nutritionist, tobacco activist, or personal trainer/physical therapist… but I AM steeped in the conversation of leadership and positive emotion, and suddenly I’m seeing a whole new world of opportunity.

Because, you see, Stress management is at the heart of this. What do you do when you’re stressed?  You eat too much and the “wrong” stuff.  You light up.  You sit on your couch and watch the telly.  And what do you do when you overindulge in junk food, skip your walk, or start smoking?  You get more stressed.  It’s a self-fueling spiral.

Maybe now we can restart the conversation.

Instead of stress management, mindfulness activities, and self-care being “nice to have” tools for the marginally wierd, maybe… just maybe… the enormous expense that we can now associate with the Inability to Manage Stress will start to bring the conversation of happiness and responsible leadership into a whole new light.

Specifically, happier employeess COST LESS MONEY. and better leaders create HAPPIER EMPLOYEES.  Funny, when we speak of positive culture improving productivity, everybody SAYS they “get it”… but nothing changes.  I wonder what will happen as the conversation about the impact of Stress collides with the conversation about out-of-control healthcare expense at 20% of GDP?

I can’t stop thinking about this.  I’m still not sure what to do with it… but it feels huge.

In the workplace: Focus on the Vital Few

If you’re like many people, you expect a lot – of self and others – on the job.  How much of the stress you experience comes from trying to juggle too many roles, goals, and projects simultaneously?

While you may have a dozen or more items on your project list, remember that the maximum most people can juggle well is five to seven priorities. (Yes, you can pretend to carry more, but the reality is that the more complexity you hold the less effective you become).

From your long list, identify the top three to four then focus all your energy on those vital few priorities.  When one is completed, pull another up to the top, but try to never hold more than four at a time. You will find that you get more done (and at a higher quality) by working on ONLY four priorities at a time than you did when you tried to juggle ten or twelve.

Why is this true?  It’s a lesson from basic physics: when you eliminate the friction – i.e. resistance, discontinuity, resource and schedule conflicts – between those multiple simultaneous priorities, the energy that used to go into unproductive juggling now goes into DOING.

An Exercise for the Workplace

Reach out to an associate (peer or direct report) who appears overwhelmed. Put yourself in the place of a coach, and ask:  “What would you be able to accomplish tomorrow if you only had to worry about ONE THING?”  Draw out an answer, then help them structure the next day around that single focus and protect them from distractions.

This may not be a drill you can do often; yet you will be amazed at the payback from your efforts.  For people who are feeling stuck and overwhelmed, even a single day of feeling productive can help them renew hope and reconnect to their work.

Remember: Leadership is not about a title. The most effective leaders are those who can cut through the clutter and crap to focus on what is most important.  Anyone can be a leader who can help others Simplify and focus so that more of what matters is what gets done!

Reduce Your Holiday Stress: Simplify!

We Create Our Own Stress

Do you ever find yourself thinking: “I have too much to do — I feel overwhelmed!?” How we are is a result of choices we make and the way we surround ourselves with stuff and challenges.  Sometimes our choices can leave us busy and full — yet unhappy.  That’s when we need to start dropping what does not serve us.

Happiness Principle #12 says:

SIMPLIFY.  Automate, delegate, or eliminate tasks or goals that complicate your life.  Being content with simpler pleasures increases your opportunity for awe.

Woven through many of the Principles of Happiness is a common thread I call “eliminate friction.” Friction – as you learned in fifth-grade science class — is resistance to motion.  Friction slows things down by removing energy.  A rocket flying through the vacuum of space will move freely, but if it strays near a planet it gets caught in gravitational pull or the resisting force of atmosphere.  The larger the rocket, the more friction it encounters.  Eventually, friction will cause it to burn away until all motion ceases.

While the example is physical, it describes what friction does to you and your happiness. Think about the things that complicate your life – tasks, goals, relationships, commitments, and expectations (and email!).  How many of those feel like appendages on the rocket, splaying out in all directions to catch the atmospheric resistance and slow you down?

To Simplify is not necessarily about giving up goals or possessions or busy schedules, but rather a reminder to keep what we have and what we do in perspective. Simplify is about striving to remove the clutter in our lives in order to concentrate our energies toward those things that really matter.

On another level, Simplify is a suggestion to avoid over-commitment as a lifestyle. When we surround ourselves with all the best and the newest, or try too hard to keep everyone else happy, we actually narrow our options for experiencing our own happiness.  When we live a simple life, we increase our opportunity for awe.

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” –Confucius

Start Planning Now for a Less-Stress Year

As you race toward the start of the busy holiday season and year end activities, don’t let the convergence of work, family demands, holiday gatherings, cooking, cleaning, and shopping push you over the edge into the Dark Pit of Stress.  Start planning now to leave space to enjoy simple conversation and the best of what this time of year has to offer.

Here are some steps you might take to Simplify for a less-stress year-end:

• Schedule “Nothing” Time. Establish time in your calendar to do nothing.  Learn how to be at ease in solitude, silence, and stillness.  Realize you don’t need all that “noise” around you to feel content – plus a little downtime will give you space to recharge your batteries.

• Streamline Your Goals. We typically get 80% of the impact from 20% of our goals.  Line up your personal goals and identify the handful that will provide you the most return on your investment of time.  A simplified focus will increase your output and creativity while reducing your stress.

• Let Something Go. You may already feel some dread building up in you over your holiday chores.  Consider cutting a few things off your list this year through simplifying.  Last year I decided to simplify our outside decorations, and instead of spending hours stringing lights I opted for 10 minutes arranging three red and green spotlights to light the house.  Imagine my surprise when our neighbor across the street took a photo of our simply lit home after a snowfall, then used it in his holiday greeting!

• Spread It Out.  Cook, clean, prep, or celebrate over several days instead of all at once.  One of the things I most DISliked about the holidays was the way everything seemed to happen at once, raising stress levels at a time when we’re “supposed” to be having fun.  One of my least favorite “chores” was the annual house/tree decoration marathon: by the end of a very long day we’d all be crabby and tired.  Five years ago I experimented with starting earlier, bringing out from storage just one box of “stuff” at a time.  Now we do a little decorating every few days over weeks instead of hours, and it turns out to be a lot more fun!

• Ask for Help. Many of you live in the Story that if you take care of everything, people will admire you (or if you don’t get it perfect, people will assess you as inadequate).  But the truth is that most people will help you if you ask, and no one will think less of you.  And if you ask each person who’s coming to dinner to bring a dish, you may even discover a few new recipes to enjoy!

• Say No. The most powerful way to Simplify is to simply say No to something you really do not want to do.  Note: it may take courage to push back against someone who says, “You have to do that.”  I promise you, however, that you will survive skipping the occasional invitation, and the world will keep turning on its axis even if you don’t bake those holiday treats that your family has been making since 1952.

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone.  The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.” –Lin Yuta

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The 13 Principles of Happiness can help you plan for more year-end moments of calm and happiness.  Visit http://www.theexecutivehappinesscoach.com/happiness/philosophies.cfm, to download a colorful 1-page PDF Poster.  Post it on your workplace wall or your fridge at home, and use them as a reminder to Choose Happiness.

Five Tips to Manage Stress in Job Search

A shorter version of a post from earlier this week – 156 words of advise for managing job search stress:

1.     Practice gratitude. Every day, write down three good things that happen around you.  Focus on what you DO have to feel blessed even when stressed.

2.    Tally your Friendships.  List all your important relationships: family, friends, even casual acquaintances that touch your life.  Priceless!

3.    Take your own oxygen first. Move your body, eat well, and do things that feed joy to your soul.  When your tank is on full you have more capacity for your search.

4.    Eliminate frictions. Change or stop something that drains you.  Let go of old stories, relationships, or habits that no longer serve the New You.

5.    Choose your attitude. Stand tall, shoulders back, breathe into your deep belly, and wear a smile.  “Fake it till you feel it” is a powerful strategy to access more confidence and happiness.

Instructions: Repeat daily to strengthen your positive emotional “muscles!”

Tips to Reduce Your Stress During Job Search

While I ran an outplacement center earlier in my career, I know much about search tactics.  But these days my passion is to help folks in this situation by emphasizing the importance of self-care during the search.

As the corporate saying goes, “hire for attitude, train for skills.”  What that means for the job searcher is that your attitude – HOW you show up for an interview – may be more important than your specific skill set.  Most employers will tell you, “I can teach someone our process, but I can’t replace their personality.”

Bottom line:  your attitude is your most precious resource.  Take care of it.

I was recently interviewed by a journalist writing an article on stress management during a job search.  I thought the full text of my responses might be helpful to any of my readers who have family members or friends who are enduring an extended search.

Surviving job search stress any time of year

1. As the weeks and months of unemployment add up, what is the best way to keep a positive attitude while job seeking?

One of the five most important factors for positivity is feeling connected. You need to get out of your house and meeting with people on a regular basis.  Attend job seeker groups, where you can trade ideas with others in your situation.  Use this time to reconnect with your professional colleagues at networking events.  Spend some of your ‘extra’ time volunteering or hanging out with family and friends.

Another is to spend time intentionally focused on what you DO have rather than what’s missing. If you spend all your time looking at the dark hole in your life that used to be filled with a job, you will eventually get sucked into it.  Instead, use your time to nurture other parts of who you are.  For example, spend more time in other roles you play, e.g. parent, friend, sibling, neighbor, church member.  Or devote time to your other talents, e.g. hobbies, singing in a choir, cooking for fun, or writing.

Finally, keep hope alive. Spend some portion of every single weekday on your search, even if sometimes it’s just ten minutes.  Each time you take another action, remind yourself that you are closer to your goal.

2. What are some of the warning signs of unemployment and stress? What suggestions do you have for combating job-search related stress?

Stress is the emotional state that results from constantly thinking about situations over which you have no control. The short term signs of stress look the same as the fear response we experience when faced with real danger: adrenalin flows, the heart races, muscles tighten in anticipation of fight or flight, and breathing quickens.

But when we remain in that state for long periods of time, the body starts to break down. We feel tired, irritable, strained and out of balance, and after a while our immune systems break down and we become more vulnerable to injury and illness.

To combat this stress, try simple shifts in your habits.

• Let it go.  Don’t make your job (search) your life. Yes, having a job is very important, AND you are not your job.  Schedule time off from our search, just as you would from a job.  When you return after a day or two of ‘vacation’ from search, you’ll find yourself more relaxed about it.
• Exercise. Physical exercise helps release the energy trapped in stressed muscles; and when the body relaxes, so does the mind, so you can show up in your search with more clarity and motivation.
• Share the load. Don’t walk around keeping your fear and frustration bottled up inside, or you’ll become like a balloon that’s about to pop.  Find friends who will listen to your fears (without trying to “fix” your problem – just listen) and notice how it’s like letting some air out of your balloon; your stress levels will temporarily drop.
• Finally, Set strong boundaries. Some people want to constantly be on your case about having a job, or whine about how the world is unfair.  Stop it.  You probably do enough guilt-tripping yourself.  Reduce the time you spend with “toxic” people so you can bring your full energy to what you need to do.

3. Is there any particular time of the year that is more stressful than others for job seekers? (e.g. the upcoming holiday season, for instance)

Honestly, I don’t know that there is a worse time of year for search, as much as there’s a relationship between length of search and stress.  The longer you’re looking, the higher the stress, no matter what time of year.

Frankly, for some people stress actually DROPS during the holidays, because they are surrounded by a pervasive sense of good cheer and have many events to distract them from the search stress. For others, however, having to show up at Aunt Tillie’s and say, “I’m still looking” can be the worst part of the year.

To cope with all the people who will say, “what’s your status?” you can prepare a positive story. Instead of saying, “There’s nothing out there, it’s no use,” share what progress you’ve made and how you feel hopeful that “I know the right job is still out there waiting for me,” or “I’m very excited about the classes I’m taking, because they are preparing me for a new career,”  or you can talk about all the contacts you’ve made in the past two months.  Keep your focus positive, and make it clear: “I don’t want pity – I want contacts!”

If you’re looking for more ideas, here’s a post I did on managing holiday stress. It’s not specifically for job searchers, but maybe there’s another idea or two that will help you get through the next couple of months.

Good luck in your process!

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