Archive for September, 2008
What’s keeping you from success?
September 29th, 2008. Published under To Your Success. No Comments.
What are your grand plans, your wildest dreams? Do you want to be manager, director, or CEO of your company, or do you fantasize about owning your own business? What is standing in your way?
In every situation, we face obstacles. Often we blame our bosses, coworkers and even our families for our limitations. We look outside of ourselves for mountains we can’t climb and rivers we can’t cross. No obstacle is too great if you have the right amount of preparation and planning to achieve your dreams. Take a clear look at the problem you face and size it up. With an accurate image of the rock in your road, you can go around it, remove it, or climb over it.
In 2007, 71-year-old Katsusuke Yanagisawa became the oldest person to scale Mount Everest. He credits the support of his friends as being important to his success. Sometimes, if you don’t have the confidence within yourself, look to those around you for the energy you need move forward.
The tools you need to achieve your dreams lie within you. It is up to you to learn to use them.
Dealing with a Moody Boss
September 26th, 2008. Published under To Your Success. No Comments.
What if you have a moody boss? Do you steel yourself before going to work every day and simply endure her slings and arrows until you are safely home again?
This is the boss who keeps changing the rules according to her mood. One day she loves it when you use loud colors in the design for a flyer, and the next day she insists that neutral pastels are the only true fit for the company image. To get along, you need to learn to read her body language. Stay away from her on her bad days and save important interactions for her good days.
If that solution is not possible, then wait for a good time to speak with her in private about your concerns. Keep your focus off her behavior and on the good of the company. In a non-threatening way, stress that you want to do the best work you can, and then point out that you sometimes are confused about the directions you receive. Ask for clarification on the latest communication that confused you. Be diplomatic in your choice of words. Don’t refer to her as “moody” or call her reversals “flip-flops.” Dwell only on your own difficulty with interpreting her messages. Stoop to conquer.
Dealing with an Incommunicative Boss
September 24th, 2008. Published under To Your Success. No Comments.
Let’s face it. Despite widespread awareness of the Peter Principle, there are lots of mediocre managers are out there. Not every employee who is raised to his level of incompetence has the wisdom or humility to recognize it and step down. Robert F. Gately estimates that the success rate in promoting and hiring is about 50%.
So what do you do if you have an incommunicative boss? This type avoids the needed managerial task of routinely assessing the feelings and opinions of his employees. He keeps to himself mostly, except when he posts memos and sends out e-mails.
The first thing you need to do is accept that you are not going to change his management style. If his people skills are poor, you cannot wish him into good ones. Instead, resolve that from time to time you will be the one to initiate an interaction. Use the mode of communication that seems to be most comfortable for him. If he usually e-mails employees, then use e-mail to respond to him. If he frequently posts memos on a board, then put a written proposal on his desk and ask him to let you know later if he has any comments or suggestions.
Make yourself valuable to him by offering the employee feedback he actually needs to do his own job better.
When Downward Mobility Is a Good Thing
September 22nd, 2008. Published under To Your Success. No Comments.
Two brothers began different but related careers. John worked in an office for an oil company and James, in an office for a trucking company. John was detail-oriented, responsible, and efficient. He worked hard and spoke little. James was a hard worker in much the same mold as John, but also a joker and a back slapper with his co-workers.
Over time both were promoted. One brother proved to be a natural in management, while the other soon discovered he was in over his head.
It’s probably not hard to guess which brother asked to return to his former position. As a supervisor, John could not bring himself to challenge slackers and to encourage achievers. Uncommunicative by nature, he simply stewed about things that needed to be discussed.
Too often, employers assume that someone who is good at a job will be good at supervising others who do that same job. Yet the Peter Principle, explained in Dr. Laurence J. Peter’s 1968 book of the same title, states that competent employees rewarded with promotions eventually get promoted into positions for which they are unsuited.
Whenever that happens, a company is lucky to have an employee like John-someone honest enough to step down rather than pretend he is something he is not.
Eating and Drinking Your Way to the Top
September 19th, 2008. Published under The Ultimate You. No Comments.
The old adage of “Garbage in, garbage out” also applies to the snacks and drinks you consume during an average workday. To get the best from your slaving body and brain, give them good fuels to run on.
Wholesome snacks include sunflower seeds, almonds, walnuts, raisins, small amounts of dark chocolate, and whole-grained snacks like Honey Nut Cheerios straight from the box. Nuts and grains supply protein and antioxidants. Raisins, chocolate, and honey supply the glucose that your brain burns at a rapid rate whenever it is sentenced to hard labor.
And what about your stomach when a case of job-related nerves is making it a little queasy? Ginger snaps, ginger ale, or anything else ginger-flavored is a soothing antidote.
What can you do when a gnawing hunger is driving you to distraction? An apple is a little powerhouse of satisfying carbs and fiber. So is a canned diet milkshake.
Finally, are caffeinated beverages beneficial? A double espresso is too much of a good thing, but a few cups of coffee or black tea judiciously spaced throughout the day do aid alertness. (Just be sure to switch to decaf after 3 p.m. if you have trouble falling asleep at night.)
An Action Plan Can Save the Day-or Most of It, Anyway
September 17th, 2008. Published under The Ultimate You. No Comments.
Let me repeat: the research of Baumeister and others suggests that your mental energy on any given day is limited. (You can read all about it in the books Losing Control and Handbook of Self-Regulation).
Here is a plan for setting and keeping workday priorities. Begin your day by making a to-do list in two parts: high-priority and low-priority. Then choose a high-priority item you know you will enjoy and tackle it first. If there are none that are high-priority, then go ahead and let yourself begin work with an enjoyable low-priority task–but only one. The idea is to build up to more energy-draining tasks after you have accomplished something you truly liked doing. Start your day with cookies, not radishes.
Then take a crack at the top item on your high-priority list, whatever its level of difficulty. Keep dispensing with high-priority tasks until all of them are completed. Save the low-priority tasks for last, when it won’t matter so much if they don’t get your best attention.
If you stall during a difficult task, try promising yourself a small reward immediately upon completing it. Allow yourself a favorite snack, for example, or a minute or two just to doodle or daydream.
Too Pooped to Pop? Maybe You Need to Recognize Your Limits
September 15th, 2008. Published under The Ultimate You. No Comments.
Suppose a child sees chocolate chip cookies and radishes on a plate. A researcher gives the child permission to eat the cookies, then gives him a difficult puzzle to solve. How long does he stay on task before giving up? Suppose another child placed in the same situation is denied the cookies and allowed only the radishes. When given the same puzzle, how long does that child stay on task?
Psychology professors Roy Baumeister and Dianne Tice received a $1 million grant in 1997 to conduct this experiment and others like it over several years. Their goal was to learn about mental energy. Is it an inexhaustible resource in people?
It is not, the researchers concluded. In the experiment just described, the child who had to discipline himself to leave the cookies untouched usually had less energy to tackle the mental problem given him later. Other experiments produced similar results. It seems that, on any given day, each of us has a finite supply of willpower to expend before simply running out of it.
Ego depletion (Baumeister’s term for the phenomenon) should make us look twice at how we approach each new day on the job. Do we set priorities so that important tasks get our best shot?
Keeping Your Brain on the Ball
September 12th, 2008. Published under The Ultimate You. No Comments.
Researchers say the brain never stops replenishing its dead neurons. However, there’s a catch. This happens only to brains that are kept stimulated throughout life.
Do cross-training. If you are a wordsmith by trade, try solving sudoku puzzles. Conversely, if math is your thing, get busy with crossword puzzles.
Use your commute to stretch your mind. Pick a letter of the alphabet and glance around for objects whose names begin with that letter. Or pick an object you see along the way and imagine how all different kinds of people might see the same object. A tree, for example, means one thing to a child and quite another to a lumberjack.
Try new ways of memorizing grocery lists and telephone numbers. Remember the song that helped you learn the alphabet? Make up little songs to help you remember other things. Use acronyms as memory aids-such as BAMCH to remember to buy bananas, apples, milk, cheese, and hamburger at the store. Or use absurd mental images. With the same grocery list, imagine a tower made of a banana, an apple, a carton of milk, and a pound of cheese, topped by a Black Angus cow.
Who said brain exercises couldn’t be fun?
Dreaming on the Job? Good for You!
September 10th, 2008. Published under The Ultimate You. No Comments.
I submit that letting yourself daydream during actual working hours is not a waste of your employer’s time or money. It actually can improve your productivity, especially if a certain amount of creativity is required for your job.
Perhaps we all need to take a cue from the guys who run Google. Following a 70-20-10 formula, they ask their employees to spend 70 percent of their time on the company’s core business of developing its search and advertising capabilities. Twenty percent is for activities related to the core, and ten percent is for entertaining crazy, far-fetched ideas. It was while making use of his ten percent time that one particular employee came up with the idea for Google Talk, a system for instant voice messaging.
The daydreaming brain builds up new neural connections between unrelated areas of the cortex, researchers say. Those new connections later help one reach creative breakthroughs during periods of active problem-solving.
So go ahead. Do some mindless doodling on a pad. Stare at an open book without actually reading it. Gaze out the window. Your brain will thank you. So will your employers-unless they are unfamiliar with the latest in brain research. In that case, be discreet when daydreaming on the company clock.
The Up Side of Down Time
September 8th, 2008. Published under The Ultimate You. No Comments.
Recent research sheds new light on the importance of “down time” for better job performance. Specifically, down time is well spent on daydreaming-and, more specifically, on something I’ll call “lucid daydreaming.” Lucid daydreams are the ones we remember and use later.
Here’s an example. Arthur Fry, inventor of Post-It notes, got his inspiration for the handy item back in 1974 while daydreaming during a church choir rehearsal. He kept losing track of the pages in his hymnal that were bookmarked with little slips of paper that kept falling out. Wouldn’t it be great, he fantasized, if someone invented bookmarks that stuck to pages without damaging them when removed? The next day, Fry carried that thought with him to his job as an engineer at 3M.
Talented students often master the art of lucid daydreaming. During a chemistry lecture, Jan lets his mind wander to the person he plans to write about for a character sketch his composition instructor has assigned. People-watching instead of text-messaging as she crosses the campus for her next class, Maura starts wondering about the likely trajectory of human evolution if people keep overusing their thumbs. Then, voila, her idle thought inspires the topic for her next research paper.
Which parts of your day would allow for a little constructive daydreaming?