Time and effort-saving ideas for busy people

However much you try to slow down and avoid activities that consume time and energy to no purpose, there will still be occasions when you are going to be busy and pressured. That’s a simple fact of modern organizational life. So how to deal with it?

Here are some ideas, taken from a wide range of sources (plus my own experience), that should help you to save time and trouble when things get hectic:

• Always think ahead about the most likely consequences, not just the ones that you want to happen. The idea here is simple: to try to avoid causing yourself more problems and stress through a moment’s thoughtless action. One of the commonest consequences of being under pressure is a failure to look ahead. It seems so important to get a quick result. But cutting corners, taking risks without proper consideration, and rushing into precipitate action can all cost you far more time in cleaning up the mess afterwards than you saved at the time.


• It’s always worth taking ample time to get a message across to others. It’s the same temptation: to rush through some phone call, message, or conversation because you can’t really spare the time and you have so much still waiting for you to do. Resist it! If people can see that you’re harassed, they’ll often try to be helpful by saying they understand when they don’t. Few situations are more maddening than discovering, too late, that someone you were relying on for a key element in a project misunderstood what you said that you wanted.


• Consider every request to attend a meeting with the greatest skepticism. Your default position should be to stay away. Avoid any meeting with no clear agenda, no obvious ending time, and no purpose that makes sense to anyone except the organizer. Don’t assume you can go and quietly do work at the back. It’s more discourteous than staying away and it rarely works.


• Practice at least a dozen firm but polite variations on “no” until you can say them in your sleep. Then use them whenever needed—which will be all the time. The best way to stop yourself becoming overloaded is to refuse to take an anything else. If the person giving you yet more work is your boss, ask for clear priorities, explaining that you need be sure what to drop to make way for the new piece of work. You’ll be surprised how often this will make a boss reconsider.


• Learn the two key ways of reading: skimming for relevance and filleting for data. When you skim a document, your sole purpose should be to decide whether it contains anything worth reading. Let your gaze run down the page looking for key words and phrases. If you find any, put a small “x” in the margin and move on. Then glance over the number of “x” markings. Less than 5-6 means don’t mess with it further unless one of those is essential. Filleting is going back to the “x” marks and collecting the data you need. The best way is to make your own notes in a small book. Then toss the original.


• Don’t accept what you’re told on trust, save from proven sources. When you’re rushed, the temptation will be to “save time” by accepting what you’ve been told. Always check. It’s well worth the time. You’ll look an idiot if the information isn’t true, and no one will accept the excuse that you were in a hurry.


• Become familiar with the notions of estimates and orders of magnitude. You can often spot an error or problem almost instantly, without any calculation, by realizing that it is impossible. That’s especially true with numbers. If you know the answer has to be less than 10, and if what is on the page is 14.7, it has to be wrong. No more analysis is needed than that. One of the most useful skills I ever taught myself was the ability to estimate the order of magnitude of the right answer. I rarely needed to know any more to save myself huge amounts of time on analysis.


• Know when to stop. The more you’re under pressure, the more you will be tempted to press on working well beyond the point where your attention and effectiveness begin to fail. Don’t do it. It seems as if it will help, but you’ll most likely either have to do all that work again or waste time clearing up the mess you made for yourself. And you’ll have denied yourself the rest needed even to do that properly.

Coping with turbulence

Imagine someone in a kayak, negotiating a river full of rapids. That’s you, facing all the turbulence and unexpected pressures of your work.

An inexperienced and foolish kayaker is totally occupied with trying to deal with every twist and surge of the current. His or her attention is fixed on what is happening right now. The ride is a nightmare of hidden rocks, violent eddies, and constant threats of being overturned and drowned. Time flashes by in a blur of near-panic. Any patches of calm water are used up in exhausted collapse, desperately trying to catch a breath before the next horror.

The more experienced kayaker faces the same perils. But that person has learned to look always a little way ahead, sensing the flow of the river and avoiding some at least of the hidden rocks and shallows. By doing so, he or she has more scope to find areas of slightly calmer water, where rest is possible and there’s a moment to look around and enjoy the view.

Although both kayakers may pass the same time in the rapids, as measured by the clock, the experienced one feels as if he or she has much more time. Time is always as much subjective as objective and when we’re in a turmoil of short-term fire-fighting, it passes with such speed that it causes stress by itself.

If I had to sum all of this up as simply as possible, I would say that the key to coping with stress and pressure is to do just about the opposite of what feels most called for: slow down as much as you can, look ahead as much as possible, drop everything non-essential, and do the rest as carefully and thoughtfully as possible so you only have to do any of it once. And always, always, try to avoid making yet more work for yourself by rushing, cutting corners, and making needless mistakes.

---

PLEASE NOTE: from August 1st, tomorrow, this blog will leave the Blogger platform and re-surface on Wordpress. I will leave all posts up to that point on Blogger, at the current URL.

New posts will be found from August 1st onwards at http://www.slowleadership.org/blog/

---

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Technorati tags: coping with pressure handling stress time management time-management turbulent times slowing down dealing with work pressures

Getting comfortable with control

The secret of staying in charge and relaxed is knowing what is controllable

We live in a world obsessed with control: monitoring, measuring, assessing, rating, every kind of controlling. Whenever something goes wrong, we look for who is to blame; who should have been in control and stopped the problem before it developed—but didn’t. This is wholly unrealistic. It also contributes in a strongly negative way to the anxiety and stress that has become so common.

Trying to control the uncontrollable is a recipe for exhaustion and frustration. To be held responsible for what you cannot control induces anxiety and fear of unjust reprisals if it all goes wrong. The route to a better understanding of control begins with recognizing that there are three distinct facts that apply to whatever you are seeking to control:

1. Some things cannot be controlled, whatever you do: the weather, other people’s thoughts, the results of most actions, external events.
2. Some things can always be controlled: what you choose to say or do (with very limited exceptions), how you respond to your emotions and moods, what you believe.
3. Many things that cannot be controlled directly, but can be influenced to a varying extent: public opinion, consumer behavior, other people’s actions, the effects of your actions.

The first group—the uncontrollable things—covers a great deal of what many of us are told that we must control. That’s why people get so stressed. You cannot, rationally, be held responsible for quarterly results, since they are not directly controllable by you . . . or anyone else. Part of the motivation for the scandals that erupt from time to time is people trying to to control the uncontrollable. If you can’t control results, maybe you can produce them by cheating or falsifying figures. All anyone can reasonably be held responsible for is making rational and sensible efforts to increase the likelihood of the desired results being obtained. Once that is done, the rest lies in the lap of chance.

Oddly, people treat the second group—things that are almost entirely controllable—as if they have little or no ability to control them at all.

They say they couldn’t help losing their temper (of course they could); they couldn’t stop themselves saying something hurtful (all it takes is not saying it); or they couldn’t seem to grasp what they needed to learn (which probably meant they failed to make the effort, or weren’t interested anyway).

None of this is true, yet we persist in excusing ourselves from responsibility in the one area where direct responsibility is possible: our own behavior. “I can’t help it!” people wail, when they certainly can. It may be tough or painful or unpleasant, but you are always responsible for 99% of your own actions. To pretend otherwise is to lie to yourself and to others.

Then there’s the category of what may be influenced, but not controlled. What are you responsible for there? Doing your best to influence things successfully, nothing more. You can influence customers to purchase, but you cannot make them do so by honest means. You can train, coach, support, and otherwise influence subordinates to do good work. You cannot force them to do so.

The limits of personal responsibility

It would greatly reduce stress, overwork, and macho management posturing if people recognized the limits of responsibility more clearly. It’s easy to toss slogans around and claim results are all that count and people must be judged by them. That doesn’t make it true . . . or even sensible.

Equally, to allow the notion that personal behavior is somehow outside people’s control is to open the door to an endless excuse for every kind of wrong-doing and laziness. Take the rubbish spread about motivation. No one needs to be “motivated” to take necessary action. You can do it, motivated or not. Nor can I motivate you or anyone else, since motivation is a feeling and other people’s feelings are firmly in the “uncontrollable” category.

The bad news is that a great deal of current management practice is deeply flawed because it assumes that people can—and must—control what cannot be controlled. You can measure, audit, analyze, rate, and chart it all you like, but you still can’t control outcomes, results, global trends, or market movements.

The good news is that no one needs to make their actions and behavior contingent on feeling inspired, motivated, happy, excited, or any other emotion. If you see a need for action and know what to do, you can simply do it. If speaking out seems right, then speak. If staying silent is correct and helpful, say nothing. It’s always your choice; always under your direct control.

Three steps to civilized attitudes on control

Work would be a far more pleasant and civilized place if we all followed three simple rules:

1. Everyone must accept responsibility for his or her own speech and actions. No excuses.


2. No one can be held accountable for results that are outside their control.


3. Excellence is shown by controlling what can be controlled and skillfully influencing those areas where influence is possible.

That’s it. Follow those three steps and leaders would have to drop the macho nonsense of yelling for results at any price, and concentrate instead on skillful ways to draw the best from whoever works for them. Assholes and jerks would be held totally responsible for their noxious behavior, and no one would be allowed to wriggle out of personal responsibility by claiming that they “couldn’t help themselves” or “hadn’t been motivated.” Stress would be greatly reduced and no one would fear being criticised for what obviously was not their fault.

Not quite Nirvana, but a good step along the way there.

---

PLEASE NOTE: from August 1st, this blog will leave the Blogger platform and re-surface on Wordpress. I will leave all posts up to that point on Blogger, at the current URL.

New posts will be found from August 1st onwards at http://www.slowleadership.org/blog/

---

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Technorati tags: staying in control personal responsibility what are you responsible for accountability management culture understanding responsibility

News and Views: July 28th 2007

The manager who makes every little problem a three-alarm fire can burn your business

“Pyros are bosses who compulsively light one fire after another in their organizations. These constant emergencies are highly destructive. They waste time and resources while diverting attention from the important issues facing the business. Employees become too busy to do their regular work, and while the pyromaniac boss focuses on the minutiae, the business may miss the chance to head off more dangerous long-term threats.” [Read more >>] [via]

Stop working longer hours! Start working wiser hours!

“Your ability to time manage can make or break your career! After all, if it doesn’t matter how fabulously talented you are, if you don’t have the time to show off your fabulous talent to others — or — if you’re so overwhelmed by your schedule, that your fab talent gets reduced to low-level, disorganized, shlock work!“ [Read more >>]

Observe your future self

“If you’re a ‘young blade,’ as my Grandma likes to say, you need to take a good look at the veterans of your industry. I suggest:

• Meet them.
• Observe them
• Hang out with them.
• Ask questions of them.

Then: create a picture of the type of person that someone who does what you do often becomes.” [Read more >>]

Forget the “hols” completely?

“Millions of stressed Brits cannot leave work behind when they go on holiday and spend their break sending emails from the beach, a shocking survey reveals. A whopping two-thirds of workers have had their hols interrupted by bosses and 80 per cent worry about their work while away, according to a poll. A staggering 20 million British employees think they have to take work with them on holiday, the survey suggests. It also revealed how today’s technology means many hard-pressed workers can never escape the boss wherever they are as a third always pack a laptop or Blackberry with their swimming trunks.” [Read more >>]

Why fear rules the workplace

“What is it about the workplace that makes millions of people around the world, regardless of national culture, afraid of their bosses? Fear can be dangerous; it can turn into a mindset in which things aren’t questioned and unthinking obedience to authority is normal. In fact, most of the advice we hear in the workplace with regards to bosses says one thing and one thing only: don’t complain about your boss, however bad.” [Read more >>]

Time for time off

“People in business need to take more of their vacation time. This is important for ongoing work-life balance as well as to allow workers to get recharged for the work ahead. The good news is that businesses tend to be generous in allocating vacation time, with 75 percent of senior executives and managers being entitled to four or more weeks a year. The bad news is that only 39 percent of those people take four or more weeks off, based on our global research.” [Read more >>]

U.S. organizations encourage bullying

“Organizational culture in many American workplaces actively triggers, encourages and even rewards bullying, according to new research, with employees in the U.S. bullied up to 50 percent more often than those in Scandinavia. New research to be published in the September issue of the Journal of Management Studies compared data for the U.S. and Scandinavia and found that what it terms "persistent workplace negativity" is between 20 percent to 50 percent higher for U.S. workers than for their Scandinavian counterparts.” [Read more >>]

Don’t wait until you’re dead to relax

“Tension feels natural to most people because they have been practicing it for most of their lives. It is a little bit like sitting in a good posture; it feels weird if we normally slouch (and yes, I am guilty of that one) because we are asking our body to do something it isn’t used to doing. Of course if we persevere it will start to feel natural and we will get the health benefits. It is exactly the same with relaxation and being relaxed will suddenly feel a lot better than tense all the time.Relaxation helps maintain health, reduce stress and promote good sleep and if that isn’t enough, it can help you look younger too!” [Read more >>]

Do you need to be a competitive jerk to succeed?

“Having an actual opponent sometimes requires a competitive edge. But in most pursuits competition simply isn’t important. Inventing an enemy keeps you from thinking rationally. You will overvalue potential threats and become blinded to opportunities.” [Read more >>]

Employees who are given the flexibility to juggle the needs of their families and careers respond by working harder and longer.

“Ms Bourke, a partner at organizational change consultancy Aequus Partners, will today release a survey of 3400 employees at Insurance Australia Group that she said reveals ‘employees who feel they have job flexibility are the same employees who have more trust in and more commitment to the organization. The old adage give someone an inch and they’ll take a mile isn’t borne out in the research,’ Ms Bourke said. ‘It’s more give them an inch and they’ll give back a mile to the organization.’” [Read more >>]

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Whole Foods, but not the whole truth?

Why truth matters more in business life than many currently believe.

Truthfulness is often an early casualty in the path of macho management. Such “soft” virtues as honesty and truthfulness are treated with disdain by hamburger managers, obsessed as they are with getting results and winning by any and all available means. This is a bad mistake, and one that is nearly always punished in due course.

Here’s an interesting piece from yesterday’s Huffington Post on the topic of trust. The starting point is the case of the CEO of Whole Foods and his anonymous blogging that hyped his own business (and even praised his hair style) and knocked the competition.

A few short extracts will give you the flavor:

What signal does Mackey’s behavior send to Whole Foods executives and employees? That deception is practiced by their CEO and therefore an acceptable practice? What signal does this send to Whole Foods suppliers? That representations may not be what they seem?

Stephen M.R. Covey’s important recent book The Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything, reminds us of the business case for being trustworthy and being seen as trustworthy. Character is first among equals in leadership requirements. Reputation takes years to build and seconds to destroy.

And Thomas Friedman’s excellent op-ed piece (“The Whole World Is Watching”) underscores a new fact of life these days: your behavior, words and deeds are part of a permanent record, enabled by the internet.

Hopefully, we are coming to an end of the tolerance given to unethical and unpleasant behavior by leaders, just as long as it “produces results.”

Of course businesses need results: their survival depends on them. But how those results are obtained isn’t irrelevant. Business is part of life and our society. It isn’t some separate sphere with its own rules and standards, independent of the demands of a free and civilized way of living.

People have always held their leaders accountable for their behavior—eventually. It may take a while. There’s often a period when leaders are given the benefit of the doubt; or when the novelty of an approach, or the presence of a fresh face, can obscure what is going on. Yet in the end, even the most ruthless and devious leader will make some error. At that point, all the envy and dislike that has been building up tends to come out and cause a violent delight in hastening their downfall.

Truth is too precious to ignore

Truth is the basis for all civilized societies. Without knowing, truthfully, what is happening, democracy is neither effective nor, ultimately, possible.
No one can be truly free if they are being kept in ignorance at the same time.

Truth is also essential to trust. Despite the faux-sophisticated sneers of macho managers and financial whiz-kids, all business depends utterly on trust. You have to believe that, in the vast majority of instances, people will honor contracts, deliver what they promised, and pay what has been agreed. Where there is no trust, every small thing has to be checked constantly; no one can be allowed to work without constant supervision; no message can be transmitted with being checked and re-checked every step of the way.

No truth = no trust = massive waste of resources

Can you imagine what all this would cost? How much every transaction would be slowed down by all the checking and auditing involved? How much time, energy, and money would go to waste on the conflicts, lawsuits, and bickering that would result? There is enough erosion of trust as it is to suggest just a tiny fraction of what would happen if trust broke down more significantly.

There used to be a time when society forced business leaders to practice greater honesty and trustworthiness. Sayings like “my word is my bond” summed up the prevailing notion that dishonesty and lying were not to be tolerated among those who controlled the business world.

Of course there were rogues too. There always have been. But they weren’t praised and excused in the way that they are today. Making money was more often seen as a slightly distasteful business: an activity that had to be conducted with one hand held over the nose. To be rich through business might well not win you respect in polite society. The only way to avoid the stigma of “trade” was to be known for your absolute probity—even if it cost you some of the potential profits.

This seems quaint today, when being rich can appear to absolve you from every character flaw and sin. In reality, that isn’t true. Lying, cheating, and betraying others to enrich yourself are still, I believe, intensely distasteful to most people. The public may be dazzled for a while by fame and glamor, but it always wears off.

For long-term success, the truth isn’t just something, it’s everything

From time to time, people ask me how they can choose the right path in life; how they can avoid stress and burnout; how they can be happy.

If I knew all those answers, I would be some kind of superman and I’m not. All I know are a few of the most important questions. And I know that telling and facing the truth is such an essential part of any answer to life’s problems that it’s hard to overestimate its importance.

If you don’t tell the truth, especially to yourself, you are living a lie and are so far off any sensible course that disaster seems inevitable. How can you find any answers to the problems of your life if you won’t be truthful about them, even to yourself? How can you get people to help you if you lie to them?

If you won’t face the truth, you’re a fool. You may be able to convince yourself of your deceptions and evasions. You may be able to convince other people too, at least for a time. But you can never, never, deceive reality. Try all you want, reality will proceed on the basis of a strict adherence to the facts. It will treat your fantasies with contempt and you with impersonal accuracy. All you will have done is compound any problems by closing your eyes and letting them come at you out of the dark.

Whether what the CEO of Whole Foods did was malicious or just foolish is almost beside the point. What really matters is that so many leaders believe that deceptive actions and suppression of the truth are acceptable. That’s the thing to worry about.

When our leaders become ethically blind, they ought to forfeit the right to lead. It’s up to all of us to enforce that law, before the universe enforces it for us.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Technorati tags: truthfulness honesty business ethics standards of leadership facing the truth

Stress-busters: Being more detached

A potent source of stress is taking everything too personally. It’s easy to see criticism as a personal attack, or a setback as some kind of malice aimed directly at you. Neither viewpoint is going to help solve the problem. Both will send your stress levels soaring. Here’s an alternative.

I’m writing this article with a sense of trepidation. On previous occasions when I’ve turned to this topic, it’s generated quite amazing levels of abuse from a few people. So I’m going to start with an explanation. It seems that some people equate detachment with emotional coldness, standoffishness, and a kind of superior disdain for normal human feelings. That isn’t what detachment means for me. I’m not suggesting people turn off their feelings (it’s impossible anyway) or adopt some sort of lofty disregard for others. To understand detachment properly, you have to understand attachment first.

The common phrase “I’m attached to it/him/her” may imply liking or love, but people don’t become attached to stress, worry, overwork, obsessive competition, or always being first because they love it. Attachment, in the sense I’m dealing with, means being “stuck on” something. You can’t let go of it, however much it’s hurting you. You’re clinging to it because of some kind of habitual or past emotional bond. Usually these aren’t positive emotions either.

Attachment is an obsession. People half kill themselves with overwork and stress because they believe they must, not because they enjoy it. So . . . to be detached means to be able to step back from events and see them in their proper perspective.

The simplest way to define greater detachment is to see it as the freedom not to be “sucked in” every time—whether that’s into feelings that hurt you, actions that make you feel worse, or responses that don’t help.

Why detachment is desirable

There’s something delightful about being able to stand and look at events and remain in control of your feelings and reactions. If you want to, you can jump in. If you choose not to this time, you can stand aside. It’s your choice. You aren’t at the mercy of an internal “reaction reflex” that is just waiting to be set off by the next setback, the next jerk who pisses you off, or the next unreasonable demand from some idiot on high.

You are just you: conscious of what you are choosing and free to act in whatever way seems best to you. You’re in control of yourself and armored against most of the petty irritations that build into a serious stress load.

How to become more detached

Here are some ideas that can help you to become a little more detached; to let your own wishes and thoughts take precedence over the shouts, opinions, and commands from the outside:

• Know what is most likely to suck you in. Take some time to consider the patterns in your life. What sets you going? What causes you to “lose it” and do things that you regret later? How can you recognize them before they draw you in? Make a list and memorize it. Then work at avoiding whatever’s on the list.


• Build a habit of pausing and giving yourself time to think. It may take a long time to make this stick, but it will pay huge dividends. Instead of jumping into action, or snapping out a response, say or do something neutral: “I’d like to think about that a moment,” or “Let me get back to you on that one.” Buy yourself time to get past your first response and start considering the options. Try to make more conscious choices whenever you can.


• Build a new self-image. Instead of being someone who’s quick to react or speak, start seeing yourself as the quiet person who rarely jumps in first, but who everyone listens to when he or she does say something. At first it will seem false and theatrical. But if you stick at it, it will mix with the rest of your personality and produce a new, calmer, more influential, and more popular you.


• When you feel your emotions on the boil and your hackles rising, ask yourself whether what you believe at that moment is really true. Force yourself to stop and question your beliefs and feelings fully. You’ll be surprised how often you discover that you’re all fired up by something you’re assuming, something you’ve been told (on what authority?), or something that isn’t even real.


• Watch others. See how simple it is for people to get sucked in—and how easily they’re manipulated as a result. Watch how a simple, trivial situation is turned into a drama, then a Hollywood disaster epic. Consider whether that’s how you want to live.


• Ask yourself whether what you’re doing right now is your own choice, or the result of being sucked in by something that you’ve got hooked on. Notice how each one feels. Compare stress and frustration levels. Decide whether you want to be swept along or make your own decisions.

The best antidote to getting snagged into negative situations and responses is always to be aware of what’s happening inside and why you’re doing whatever you’re doing.

Being more detached means giving yourself more space and time to be aware. It means freeing yourself from compulsions that don’t serve your best interests. It means being master or mistress of your own mind, controlling your emotions, and choosing your actions with care. And it means only accepting the amount of stress that you are willing to suffer, instead of what events or other people want to unload onto you.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Technorati tags: making better choices being detached avoiding hang-ups staying calm under stress staying calm under pressure handling stress coping with pressure

Listing the sins of macho management

Despite its popularity, macho management has many severe drawbacks.

If macho management is not a sensible way to operate, it must be possible to show why. Organizations won’t be convinced by saying it’s unpleasant, so long as they believe that it works in their interests. Here’s why it doesn’t.

Macho management has become the norm because organizations have convinced themselves that it works to drive up profits better than the alternatives. They’re also convinced that the down-sides are minor compared to the benefits.

I believe that they are mistaken; but the proponents of macho, financially-biased management are so many—and so convinced of the correctness of their position—that it needs to be the opponents of conventional management who must make their case to overturn what has become the norm. That’s what this article tries to do.

Here are what I see as the most obvious drawbacks of macho management. There are probably more, but I have tried to consider my list from the point of view of managers, not ethicists.

• Pushing too hard. If too little effort is demonstrably bad for results, too much is probably worse. It leads haste and over-extended organizations; to harassment of customers and suppliers, careless mistakes, snap judgments based on inadequate data; to over-eager grasping of ill-understood opportunities and the taking of poorly calculated risks; to the forced suppression of contrary views, to lowered creativity, and to the alienation and loss of talented employees.


• Arrogance and egotism. Macho kinds of behavior come easiest to egotists. Research has shown that egotistical leaders are more likely to take both high-risk, even rash decisions and decisions based purely on self-interest.


• Blinkered viewpoints. In the rush and fury of macho culture, a constant is the tendency to see the world in black and white. Decisions are straight up or down. People, ideas, opportunities are good or bad. This departs so far from reality as to be dangerous.


• All-or-nothing bets. Macho managers aren’t patient enough for slow, incremental wins. They want massive, public success and will often take risks on a similar scale. All-or-nothing easily turns out to be the latter.


• Riding roughshod over others. Lots of macho managers have very short fuses—many are even proud of the fact. Their response to anything short of total agreement is to throw a tantrum. Intimidation is a way of life. All this produces is resentment and a desire to get even.


• Domineering attitudes. Command-and-control is the hallmark of every macho culture. Those at the top have to be in charge of everything. Lower manages are subservient upwards and tyrannical to everyone else. This is a great breeding ground for lawsuits, labor disputes, excessive turnover, poor morale, sabotage, and low quality work.


• Love of a good fight. The macho manager only shines during conflict. If there isn’t any, he or she is very likely to generate some. Conflict also wastes money, lowers productivity, promotes discord, and destroys creativity. Go figure.


• Fear-based decisions. Macho cultures are saturated with fear at every level. Fear of those with more power, fear of being stabbed in the back, fear of losing out, fear of failure and disgrace. People compete all the time—not so much to win as to avoid losing. The results include lying, cheating, trying to harm competitors, concealing errors, manipulating figures, and putting personal survival above everything else.


• Rampant office politics. In macho cultures, politics are everywhere. Where you stand in the political pecking-order is almost all that counts. Employees, customers, business ethics, rules, laws, and just about anything else become tools in various political fights between opposing barons.


• Inability to cooperate or share. Macho managers only share with their toadies, and then as little as possible. No real cooperation is possible. You can’t assist a potential rival—and no one who isn’t a rival is worth notice. Besides, all those barons have to maintain their status and influence against real or assumed rivals. In a macho culture, there is usually more strife internally than with external competitors.


• Constant turf wars. Not only are macho cultures extremely territorial, everyone constantly tries to steal territory from everyone else. Like bull seals competing for beach space and females, macho managers spend most of their time posturing, roaring, bickering, and trying to grab bits of territory. How this helps the organization is beyond me.

Given so many and such obvious drawbacks, it seems odd that macho management has so many followers. I think the answers are both simple and depressing:

1. Once you have macho managers in place, everyone with a different outlook leaves or is forced out. The macho guys despise them. Macho management is the ultimate self-perpetuating system.


2. In macho cultures, money is viewed as almost the sole measurement of results. That's why you typically find macho people in charge and hordes of accountants keeping the score. It’s hard to imagine a more soul-destroying environment—or one more likely to ignore everything that does not come with a price or a score attached.


3. Changing a macho culture almost never happens peacefully from within. The status quo is strong precisely because it suits those in charge. It’s their status quo. It made them the people they are and guarantees their survival. That’s why they will try to squash anything that threatens it. And, being aggressive and action-oriented, macho managers are some of the world’s best enforcers.

All that anyone can do is to keep pointing out the drawbacks and handicaps of macho cultures. In the end, they tend to destroy themselves, but the process is lengthy and painful. Far better to heed reason long before then and do all that we can to stop the spread of such a debilitating organizational disease.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Technorati tags: macho management Hamburger Management management culture management failings audit culture boardroom blunders

How to find and recognize a civilized job

Guidelines for making sure that the place where you work is a place you will go on wanting to be.

Spotting the signs of undue pressure and macho management is useful, but, if you’re considering a job change or just starting out on a career, seeing when a job will be civilized is just as important. You need to know what to seek out, not just what to avoid once you’ve found it.

What are the signs of civilized work? If you want to choose an employer, a job, and a career wisely, these are the things to look for:

• Work with a manageable workload that allows enough time over for pursuing new ideas and making a personal contribution. Everyone needs the opportunity to put more of themselves into their work than just the labor of completing scheduled tasks. Overwork doesn’t just ruin work/life balance, in the sense of time available for non-work activities. It also stops work itself being satisfying. There’s never any time to step outside the strict confines of the daily grind to explore new ideas or approaches. The to-do list becomes a prison that blocks out everything else.


• Clear evidence that others will value and respect what you do. It’s hard to take a pride in your work if no one cares how you do what you do, just so long as you meet some specific targets. It’s far more satisfying to feel that you can win respect for a job well done than simply reach some goal by any available means. Hitting that target comes only occasionally (and you know it will be followed by a new, higher one). Knowing that you’re doing a fine job, and that people recognize you for that, can be a daily source of pleasure in your work.


• A chance to work with people whom you respect and whose opinions you value. No amount of money will ever make up for working for a boss whom you think is an idiot and an asshole; or with people whom you neither like nor respect. Work is a social environment. Unless that environment suits you and gives you pleasure from being there, each day is going to be eight or more hours of misery. That’s why corporate culture matters so much. Trying to live and work in a toxic culture is like trying to exist in a cloud of poisonous gases.


• A reasonable degree of control over what you do and any decisions that affect your job. Anything else is slavery. You shouldn’t accept it for an hour, regardless of how much you’re being paid.


• Work that means something to you and matches your values. Doing meaningless work is soul-destroying drudgery. Doing work that you don’t value will leave you feeling empty and dissatisfied at the end of every day. The only way to feel good about what you do is to do something that makes you feel good in itself. If, for example, you try to shut your mind to a toxic culture and management style that makes you feel bad every time you think about it, how are you going to feel after a month, six months, a year? You’ll have to abandon your own values and conscience to survive. But whatever you do, somewhere deep inside you’ll know you’re behaving like a coward and spitting on things that you hold dear. That knowledge will eat away at you until it destroys all your peace of mind.


• A culture that values fairness, justice, and an ethical approach to business. Too many organizations today act as if the ends justify the means, and honesty and ethical values are indulgences that they can’t afford. You can sense it like a bad smell in the background. Ignore all the flashiness and forced good comradeship. If something in the air that you can’t quite pin down makes you feel sick, take good heed. Compromising with nastiness and dishonesty will rub off on you like a disfiguring skin disease. Besides, if the culture allows dishonesty, subterfuge, unethical practices, and unfair treatment in the cause of profit, that’s how it will treat you.


• A willingness from those in senior positions to listen. Few things are so frustrating as a management culture based on closed minds and open mouths. Nothing leads more quickly to failure, despotism, and the punishment of the innocent. Be warned!


• An organization that values honest feedback and takes notice when staff aren’t happy. Any organization that punishes people for rocking the boat, demonizes whistle-blowers, and rewards yes-men should be seen for what it is: a gang of mindless thugs. Get away as fast as you can run.


• A sensible attitude from the organization and the bosses to the position of work in each person’s life. It’s quite reasonable for the organization to expect loyalty, commitment, solid effort, and an appropriate input related to level and salary. It is wholly unreasonable to expect anyone to sell their life and soul to their employer in return for cash. Anyone who does that is far more shameless than any prostitute. Prostitutes only sell their bodies. An organization who demands that you sell your heart and soul as well is many times worse than any pimp.


• The willingness to continue to change as circumstances change. A rigid organization—especially one that works on the basis of “our way or the highway”—is both arrogant and stupid. Why would you even consider becoming part of that?

If I had to sum all this advice up in a single rule it would be this: look around carefully and sniff out the ratio of assholes to others. The more assholes, the less you should even consider working there. And if the assholes are rewarded for their noxious behavior, so long as they hit the targets, run as fast as you can.

Happiness and satisfaction at work is always a choice. You can (and should) choose what you believe will work for you and give you the kind of life you want to have. Never choose just what will offer the most cash and power in the shortest time, regardless of anything else. You’ll regret it in very short order.

The choice won’t always be an easy one; it may cost you effort, determination, and forgoing some amount of money and what it can buy to choose happiness. Nor will it always be black versus white. But the more often you can choose wisely from among the available alternatives, the more often, I believe, you will find work that enhances your life, instead of diminishing it.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Technorati tags: choose the right job job choice career choice civilized wrok finding a good place to work corporate culture avoiding assholes at work making work fun a good place to work

Debunking today’s mythology of leadership

Why future generations will smile at our foolishness.

Each generation sees the myths and beliefs of earlier generations as comic and childish. Today, we can’t see how the Ancient Greeks ever believed in such obviously human-like gods as Zeus or Apollo, with their feuds, love affairs, and petty jealousies. The beliefs of medieval alchemists seem amazingly silly. Victorian assumptions of the white man’s inherent superiority would be totally laughable, were it not for the sinister use made of them later—and the fact that some misguided people still hold to such nonsense even today.

What are today’s mythologies: the ones that our grandchildren’s grandchildren will smile over and dismiss as too laughable and primitive to be worth more than historical notice?

One that I would put into that category is our cult of the successful (or successfully self-promoting) business leader: the belief that those in charge of successful businesses are somehow endowed with rare wisdom and insight, far beyond the capabilities of ordinary people.

Isn’t it odd that, when things are going well, such people happily accept as much of the credit as possible; but when problems arise, they claim that it all happened without their knowledge?

How is it that organizations can spend millions on salary and share-options packages to attract and retain star executives; yet later accept their assurances that any scandals and ethical lapses were outside their control? Which position is correct: the leader as hero, single-handedly reversing the fortunes of some ailing business; or the leader as frail human being, doing his or her best in situations too complex for any one person to correct?

Let’s all agree that the hero leader is a myth, like tales of Sir Galahad or Robin Hood. Given the size of today’s large organizations, no single person can control more than a tiny fraction of their functioning, however long the hours that they work. It’s impossible for top executives even to know much of what is happening all the time, let alone control it.

Are CEOs mostly actors?

The majority of leaders spend more time in posturing, playing politics, and polishing their public images than in affecting the actual course of the business, which runs along quite smoothly without their input. Most of the time they are actors, speaking lines put into their mouths by speech-writers and PR people; putting their names to reports and documents that others have prepared for them; acting as the pubic face of whatever ruling clique is currently in charge of the running of the business.

Only occasionally are they called upon to make a real decision. That's how it seems, but even then, most of the decisions that bear their name are agreed quietly beforehand by those who are really in charge. That isn’t to say that the request made to a CEO—or even to the Board—doesn’t look like a decision. There are many techniques for presenting things in such a way that the decision you want is the only possible one for a committee, or an individual, to make. Indeed, no wise manager ever allows a matter to reach decision stage without being 100% certain that it will go the way he wants: the way he or she has slanted the presentation, adjusted the data, manipulated the figures, and chosen the “rival” options. The executives at the top can be relied upon to be so busy, so remote from any of the detail, and so eager to show their decisiveness that few, if any, ever question the information placed before them in any more than a superficial way.

Why the leadership cult?

Why do we have this cult of leadership? Why are scores of books published each year, thousands of training courses and seminars attended, and reams of newsprint devoted to this skill, this vague concept, this largely mythological entity known as leadership?

In part, I believe, because we all recognize, deep down, that we cannot control our organizations or our working lives. It’s this lack of real control that makes us so desperate to find something or someone that we just hope might improve our ability to influence events. We want to be in control; we think we ought to be in control—or we believe someone should be—and so we place that duty on someone and hope it might be true.

There’s also the human tendency to want a scapegoat when things go wrong. Whom can I blame? Whom, in the USA especially, can I sue? If someone is to be blamed, that person must have been in control—or ought to have been, if they were not. Look at how regularly CEOs are removed when things go wrong, even though they probably had little to do with it.

Our mythology of the hero-leader, working 70 hour weeks with his or her hands on all the levers of the organizational machine, is so much fanciful nonsense. Trying to achieve such a picture is killing people—quite literally. It’s all for nothing too.

So what should leaders do?

Truly successful leaders don't even try to control events. They recognize that the only way to direct a large group of people is through some ruling idea. That’s what they supply: a vision to believe in; a set of ideas to guide the thousands of individual decisions being made every day without any direct input from them.

“Without a vision, the people perish.” These biblical words sum it up. What we should be doing is seeking out leaders with imagination: people who can think and produce fresh visions for others to follow. Naturally, such people will need time and space to do their thinking. You can’t expect anyone to come up with strong strategic viewpoints if their days are filled with pointless meetings and administrative trivia. Nor if they’re exhausted by crippling work schedules and constant traveling.

Choosing leaders from those who get to the top by competitive guile and ruthlessness won’t work . That’s responsible for today’s cadre of self-promoting windbags in corporate boardrooms. Nor will the myth of leader as “man of action” serve our needs. Thought without action has long been the stock-in-trade of academic ivory towers, but action without thought—the hallmark of the current crop of macho managers—is far worse. Plenty of people can take action, but it requires someone (or some team) with real wisdom and insight to guide that action wisely.

Let’s drop the mythology, forget the Hollywood version of corporate leadership, and start allowing people of wisdom and understanding to fill top positions. Then give them the time to do what they are there for—think.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Technorati tags: leadership leadership mythology myths about leadership understanding leadership management myths who runs organizations civilized work macho management high-profile leaders

News and Views: July 21st 2007

Putting the ‘work’ into work/life balance

Here’s something that might amuse you, taken from a British magazine. Try this excerpt: “FROM THE HUMAN RESOURCES DEPARTMENT: Effective Immediately... SICK DAYS: We will no longer accept a doctor’s statement as proof of sickness. If you are able to go to the doctor, you are able to come to work. ... SURGERY: Operations are now banned. As long as you are an employee here, you need all your organs. You should not consider removing anything. We hired you intact. To have something removed constitutes a breach of employment. . . “ [Read more >>]

Anti-anxiety strategies

“Promising to do this and do that can take a toll on you. Practicing anti-anxiety techniques involve letting go of the need to say “yes” to every request someone asks of you. People often experience extreme stress because they allow their commitments to take over their life. You do not have to go through this type of misdirected motivation. One way to measure if you are over committed would be to cancel an appointment you have scheduled. How would you feel if that were to happen? Would you feel a sense of guilt? Over committed persons feel guilty if they tell someone “no” because they are tired.” [Read more >>]

Canadians among the worst at taking vacations

“A study by online travel company Orbitz has found a noticeable drop in the length of time North Americans are booking for vacations. [ . . . ] Many workers, now seeing themselves as “indispensable”—a quality often supported by management—feel guilty about booking more than a week at a time. Others are worried they’ll miss something. It appears there’s a growing trend where employees don’t see the value in vacations, and find taking them more hassle than they’re worth. Preparing to leave, finding others to cover for them and the fear of falling hopelessly behind make vacations, especially expensive ones, less and less attractive. [ . . . ] “ [Read more >>]

Finding the source of work/life balance

“I’m always skeptical when I hear a company preach balance because they can’t possibly know what “balance” means for every single employee. It’s an HR buzzword. I used to believe it was the job or company that dictated how much balance, if any, existed. If I could just find the right position or the right company, magically everything would come into focus and my family would be given the same priority as my work required. I was dead wrong. It’s not the company. It’s not the position. It’s me. It’s how I manage the job, not how the job manages me. . .” [Read more >>]

What’s all this about learning?

“Organizations have little, if any, intrinsic interest in providing learning for their employees. They can’t measure or evaluate learning against their bottom line commitments. Learning doesn’t necessarily make a worker any better at the task they are being paid to do—indeed, some would argue that the provision of learning actually inhibits productivity, providing as it does, choices which an individual may not currently be aware of. [ . . . ] So, why have organizations begun to present themselves as the vanguard advocates of learning and development? Simple. The new breed of corporate cannon-fodder just doesn’t buy the same old arguments that worked so well on us and our forefathers.” [Read more >>]

Are leaders really leading actors?

“. . . it may be quite important for leaders to perpetuate the myth of having significant control over performance. As employees, we expect it of our leaders. In our behavior, we defer to leaders. And that reinforces their tendency to act like what we expect of leaders. According to this line of thinking, it may require that a leader act out the role, concealing real feelings in the process. In short, it suggests that some part of leadership is theater that perpetuates the half-truth that leaders are indeed in control.” [Read more >>]

Making a drama out of a crisis

“Managers are supposed to be able to glide effortlessly through the crises each day throws their way. In reality most end up dropping something else equally important, going all uncommunicative, working late or tearing about in a stress-induced panic. More than half of managers say that the only way they can handle crises is by getting stressed and burning the candles at both ends.” [Read more >>]

Bullies blight U.S. workplaces

“Bullying continues to cast a shadow of American workplaces, with three out of 10 HR executives admitting that they have seen an employee quit because of the way they have been treated. A survey of 100 HR professionals by Chicago-based outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas also revealed that a third of executives have witnessed or experienced workplace bullying.” [Read more >>]

BlackBerrys and PDAs bad for work/life balance

“BlackBerrys and smart phones may have had a huge impact on executive and employee productivity but they also have a negative impact on work/life balance by making it more difficult to switch off from the office. A recent survey by RIM found an average BlackBerry user converts one hour of downtime to productive time each day and ups their overall team efficiency by 38 per cent. All of silicon.com’s 12-strong CIO Jury IT user panel agreed BlackBerrys and smart phones have improved their productivity but warned it can have a negative impact on work/life balance without judicious use of the off-switch.” [Read more >>]

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Making decisions . . . or telling stories?

Without sufficient time to think, people react by re-hashing the story of some past event.

Those who are too busy, too stressed, or too eager to jump into action are condemned to repeat the past with minor variations. Reaction replaces thought. That’s why so many needless mistakes are made and so many organizations today find themselves stuck in outdated patterns based on remembered glories.

What happens when you’re forced to make a decision almost in an instant? There’s obviously no time to weigh the options, consider fresh possibilities, or even analyze the circumstances in any depth. All that’s available are “gut feel” or memory. Both are based on “stories” you tell yourself about what to do.

These stories have become the automatic response of choice for tens of thousands of harried people every moment of every day: folk stories of management, tales of how others say that they coped, or the fading recollection of how they once coped themselves, sometime in the past.

It’s as if you were unexpectedly invited to tea at Buckingham Palace and based your behavior either on what your grandmother's friend used to say about good manners; your recollection of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party in “Alice in Wonderland” (last read when you were six); or a particularly tense meal with an elderly relative that took place six years ago in Wisconsin. All of them probably make great stories—certainly “Alice in Wonderland” does—yet none is really a substitute for thought, research, or seeking advice on the topic of taking tea with the Queen of England.

I know this is an exaggerated example, but it’s here to make an important point. No matter how recent your past experience, or how seemingly useful some informative story you once heard or read, they cannot provide more than a general approximation to what might be needed in this situation, right now.

Principles versus rules

When you’re under pressure, your mind wants a quick answer. The greater the pressure, the more appealing an instant solution appears. Besides, there’s no time to trawl through a long list of half-recalled events or past topics. Instead, you jump for the first, most vivid tale that seems to fit.

What stories are best at doing is conveying general principles in a vivid way. A good story has power to communicate an idea far more effectively than a dry, analytical exposition. Events stick in your mind when they’re noteworthy or unusual. What is commonplace is quickly forgotten. What stories are not includes many things: a detailed explanation, a set of instructions, an analytical exploration of options, a careful review of the available evidence. For our purposes, the two most important are these: stories are not instructions and they are not rules.

Chained to the past

Sadly, that’s exactly how folk-stories, experience-stories, or example-stories are most often used: as a firm set of instructions on what to do when you’re faced with a decision and are too busy, too stressed, too exhausted, too confused, or too damn eager to take time to think carefully. Shooting from the hip has become the automatic choice for all too many leaders, especially in the USA; which is probably why they so often shoot themselves in the foot.

The past may, sometimes, offer guidance on how to deal with the future, but it’s never a foolproof guide. Something in the current situation is always unique. Some elements have changed since the last time. Parts will never have occurred before. Each repetition of past actions will be a little more “off” and liable to error, even if that story that you’re telling yourself ever really provided as good a solution as you think it did. There’s no good substitute for effective thought. It’s what distinguishes the human race from other creatures on this earth. Many animals have highly-tuned instincts, the ability to learn from experience, and senses that are far superior to ours. Yet only humans, so far as we now, can think in the way that we do.

Why throw that away to please those who treat you only as a means of getting the greatest number of tasks done, at the lowest possible cost, in the shortest possible time? You can be sure that any mistakes made will be counted against you; and all excuses will be summarily dismissed.

Instinctual reactions and experience-based ideas are extremely useful—but not in the way most people use them: as a quick solution to deal with an overloaded schedule. What they do best is help point your thinking in useful directions.

Self appointed experts know all the answers. True experts just know all the best questions.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Technorati tags: decision-making snap decisions making better choices sound judgment rational management making good decisions using your mind

Why perfection isn’t a viable goal

Setting extreme targets is a major cause of job-related stress and burnout.

I wonder why so much is posted about how to achieve your goals and so little about choosing them wisely? Many people seem to think that seeking perfection is a good way to achieve outstanding results. In fact, it’s usually the best way to cause yourself frustration and failure—and a great deal of needless stress along the way.

People love “how to” advice, and like others to share their experience of finding how to do something important to them. That could explain why advice on achieving goals is far more prevalent than advice on how to choose them. But surely, if the goals themselves are incorrect, uncertain, ill-defined, or unsuitable, knowing how best to achieve them is pointless? That’s especially true if the goal is to achieve something close to perfection.

Conversations about perfection tend to bring out three opposing views, which I’ll call the “fundamentalist,” “literalist,” and “relativist” perspectives:

• The fundamentalist view is that aiming for the top is the best way to motivate yourself, and perfection is the only goal worth pursuing. If you don’t make it, that’s because you didn’t want it enough. It’s an expression of the archetypal American Dream, in which everyone can reach the heights, if only they apply themselves.


• The literalist view is simple; perfection is impossible in human affairs, so it’s not a viable goal. Deciding to aim for it is always going to cause disappointment and frustration. “Good enough” is a better choice.


• The relativist view questions the meaning of perfection and suggests what’s perfect for one person may not be so for another. From this standpoint, you can produce your own definition of perfection. Given that, aiming to achieve it becomes possible, even desirable. How far you want to go is the key to deciding direction and what constitutes achievement.

Perfectionism is a problem because it often wrecks lives—not just your own, but the other people whom you drag into your scheme, or who are affected by your choice. Being perfect may or may not be possible (it depends, as we have seen, on your viewpoint), but achieving it is just about always a task on the edge of reality. You can't set a more demanding objective, unless your definition is so "dumbed down" as to be meaningless.

A great deal of perfectionism is more or less unconscious, based only on the ill-considered assumptions of a competitive society. We’re urged to set our sights on being “the best” or “the winner,” without even considering what that means or what it will demand of us. Sadly, giving in to that thoughtless ideal has made a vast number of people feel that they are losers from the start. In fact, many of them don’t even try, since they know, deep down, that there’s no way they’ll be willing to follow the brutal regime needed to achieve the heights in their chosen field.

Still, many people have grown up with strong tendencies towards perfectionism, so we need to explore how to deal with this and avoid the worst excesses of the perfectionist mindset.

Countering perfectionism

The best way to deal with perfectionist tendencies is to decide in advance how far you want to go, then ask yourself when you want to get there and what you’re prepared to “pay” to do so. Further and sooner demands much more than slower and later. It’s like driving. If you want to cross the USA as quickly as possible, you’ll need a fast car and a big budget for gas. Pottering around your favorite neighborhood at 25 mph won’t strain your wallet so much, and won’t be so stressful either.

Another approach is to make sure that you select goals that truly represent your own values and desires. It’s too easy to choose goals thoughtlessly or pick up ready-made ones. There are plenty of people eager to tell you what your goals should be. But unless your goals are truly yours, and right for you and your circumstances, you won’t have the patience, determination, or interest to see them through to achievement, whatever that may take.

Review your goals regularly and weed out any that have slipped in and have an automatic perfectionist slant. How do you know if your current goals aren’t right for you?

• When you forget them, keep changing them, or feel you can’t summon the energy to keep pushing against the obstacles.


• When they cause you more stress and discomfort than you can handle comfortably.


• When they cause the people you care about more stress and unhappiness than they deserve.


• When achieving them is going to demand total devotion to that and nothing else—and you know that you want more than a single-track existence.


• When each achievement costs so much that it brings you as much pain as pleasure.

Do you really want to be the best?

Too many of our ideals about achievement in life are based on sport. That isn’t to decry sport or belittle what sports champions attain to. It’s simply that being “number 1 in the world” in any sport is a short-term endeavor reserved for the young. In most cases, those with the talent get there—if they have the determination and obsessive need to do so—and retire young enough to establish another career afterwards.

Being the world’s richest person, or even just the CEO of a major corporation, is going to take the whole of your working life: first to get there and then to stay there. By the time you retire—if you ever truly do —there will be no time left for anything much else.

Perfectionism is, I believe, more often an absence of decision, not a true choice. It’s following the conventional dream without considering whether it’s really yours. That’s why, when it doesn’t work out, a great many of its former adherents find that they have nowhere else to go.

Make every choice conscious

People who fail to make their own choices and simply accept the idea of perfection as a goal soon find that they are facing a lifetime of “failure.” Their former dream becomes a daily nightmare. Of course, that failure isn’t real: it’s just a result of assuming a standard for success that cannot be reached. But it hurts just as much.

I believe that much of the reason why so many feel alienated and devalued in today’s world comes from the thoughtless assumptions about success peddled by the media. Only a tiny number of people can be “the best.” Almost an infinite number can be “very good.”

It doesn’t seem to me to be sensible for most people to set perfection as a goal, and not just because no one can attain it in a literal sense. Getting right to the top is going to demand just about everything that you can put into it, and leave no space for anything else in your life.

If that’s what you truly want, then go to it. Take what you desire (if you can) and don’t whine about the price you’ll have to pay. But if you want a balanced life, with time for things other than pursuing a single goal, perfectionism is a very poor companion. It’s best to let it go right away and settle on some more realistic target.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Technorati tags: perfectionism dealing with perfectionist tendencies setting targets choosing career goals career choices work/life balance setting standards

Chickens, eggs, and happiness

Do you need to be successful first to be happy, or does happiness produce success?

It’s an important question, because making happiness conditional on success is the usual path; and it doesn’t seem to be working for many people. They endure considerable amounts of unhappiness, often for many years, in the belief that when success comes they will finally be happy. What if it isn’t true? That’s surely worth thinking about carefully.

When I started working, I bought into all the conventional ideas about what made for a happy and successful life. A good career, a good income, a good position, a good pension to round it all off. Get those first, and happiness will surely follow.

Well, I got most of them and I found that happiness somehow hadn’t seen the need to fulfill its part of the bargain. Oh, I was happy sometimes—maybe quite often. But it wasn’t due to any of those. Earning a high salary brought stress and ethical compromises I wasn’t happy about. A top position in the hierarchy brought yet more pressures, along with jealousy and politically-inspired dirty tricks. Inflation ate into my salary and pension fund and employers went back on their promises.

What really brought me happiness rarely had anything to do with conventional ideas of success. Mostly, it was due to things totally unconnected with my work. Of course, I was sometimes happy at work too. When I was busy doing something that I enjoyed and made me happy, I was often amazingly successful. When I tried to be successful, and accepted temporary unhappiness and boredom as its price, I rarely managed to reach my goals. If I accepted short-term unhappiness as the price of long-term success—and I very often did—what I got in return was the opposite: short-term success paid for with long-term unhappiness.

Hundreds of thousands—probably millions—of people spend their lives doing work they hate, and enduring pressures that ruin their health and cripple their relationships, with the sole purpose of being successful; which usually means gaining money, position, or fame, or all three. They tell themselves that once they’ve got what they want they’ll be happy. It rarely happens. What they gain has far less real value than all they have sacrificed to get it.

Weighing the evidence

Research has shown that, far from leading to happiness, success is more often dependent on being happy first. Happy people do better work, forge stronger relationships, are more likeable, learn more, take more productive risks, have better health, and live longer. How is this not success? How is a life doing things that you dislike and don’t make you feel happy—and that cause you stress, pain, and frustration—going to lead to enormous happiness sometime in the future; aside, that is, from the pure joy you would get by ceasing to do it at all?

Do you need wealth to be happy? If that is the case, most captains of industry should be delirious with joy all the time. I must say it doesn’t show. Mostly they’re rather grimly set on making yet more wealth for themselves. Perhaps even they don’t have enough money and success to produce the promised happiness? If so, that final state is so far beyond the reach of all ordinary people as to be worthless as an objective.

Some of you may object that lack of money produces misery. Sure enough. But since even extreme wealth seems to do little better in the happiness-producing line, the only logical conclusion must be that neither wealth, nor poverty, in themselves have much of a link with happiness. It’s more likely that what you do with however much, or little, wealth you possess is going to have a far greater impact on how you feel about your life and whether it brings you happiness.

Fame is the same. Are all famous people amazingly happy? I can’t see it, can you? We assume that they ought to be, but many are clearly not. If that’s the case, then fame has nothing much to do with happiness either. The same is true for status and position. All are neutral in terms of producing happiness. For some who possess them, they help. For others, they produce only misery. Isn’t it more likely that happy people stay happy if they become rich, successful, or famous, and use their wealth in happy ways; and miserable people do exactly the opposite, however successful they are?

So what is success?

We need a new definition of life success, I think; one that isn’t based solely on material possessions or hierarchical outcomes. Rather than equate success with wealth, power, or fame—or even achievements—and tell ourselves that happiness will follow, it would be more sensible to equate success in life with happiness, then look for whatever furthered that happiness.

We’ve been told that money equals happiness. It doesn’t. That work, hard work, is good for you and leads to success and happiness. No, that doesn’t follow either. How about saying that what makes you happy produces happiness, whether that’s work, pleasure, relationships, or just the love of a good cat?

When it comes down to it, being happy is what nearly everyone wants, so why not take it wherever it comes from? And if, as the researchers suggest, being happy is the best route to being successful as well, what alternative is likely to be any better?

So take note. Stress, overwork, long hours, constant striving, and ruthless political manoevering may well produce money, power, and fame, but they won’t deliver on the promise of happiness.

Besides, while you’re grimly clawing your way towards the top and suffering as a result, won’t it be truly maddening if some happy person sails past you, enjoying every moment of life, and sweeps ahead on a wave of sheer pleasure in what they are doing?

You pays your money, as the saying goes, and you takes your choice. Just make sure that the choice you make is really worth what you will need to pay for it. Conventional pictures of success are frightful price gougers, all of them.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Technorati tags: being successful finding happiness how to be happy what is success finding success being happy

Stress-busters: The one-day “retreat”

Religious people have long used retreats—time totally away from the world and its distractions—as a way to deepen their understanding and refresh their spirits. Those are goals that can benefit anyone. You don’t need to be religious to use the idea yourself to ward off stress.

The religious retreat is a specific period completely away from the world and worldly things: a time set aside for religious practice and that calm and quiet that many people feel that they need to get their view of life back into perspective. Many Jewish people, for example, keep the sabbath as one day each week free from work of any kind; a time for family-based rituals and a reminder of their cultural origins. Indeed, their ancestors so revered this time set aside from the world that they believed it to be both a commandment and a blessing from their god.

Such a good idea need not belong only to the realm of formal religious activities. Most of us would benefit from regular breaks away from all the pressures and distractions of our lives; taking time to refresh ourselves, enjoying peace and quiet, thinking and renewing our perspective on life, or just catching up with sleep, family, and friends. Best of all, it could be time devoted mostly to resting and letting our minds wander into paths far away from the daily stresses and pressures of work.

I think we would all do well to take such regular one-day “retreats” in this way; preferably every week, but at least as often as we are able to do so. You could, of course, combine it with religious practices of any kind, if you wish. But that isn’t the essence of the idea. The purpose that I have in mind is a specific period of rest and relaxation to help deal with stress and the many ways that it distorts our thinking and undermines our health and peace of mind.

Here’s how a purely secular and non-religious version might work.

• You set aside a clear period of 24 hours for your retreat. That time is sacrosanct. Nothing must disturb it short of a national or personal emergency.


• You remove all possible distractions. No telephone calls. No e-mail. No use of computers, not even to surf the Net. No TV, radio or newspapers.


• You must not do anything connected with your work. Nothing, however small or seemingly insignificant. And that includes golf with potential customers, “talking shop” with friends, reading anything work-related, or simply thinking about work problems. You can make physical effort (playing sport, walking, gardening, painting the house), or mental effort (spending time at some hobby, playing or listening to music, reading some challenging book, writing on non-work subjects, watching serious programming on TV), but none of it must be related in anyway to your job.


• There’s no need to be serious or “worthy” in what you do. Probably the best way to spend the time is playing, relaxing, and generally having fun. My only suggestion would be not to “veg out” and waste the whole time on the couch in front of some mindless TV program.


• If you have visitors or go out to visit friends, try very hard to make sure that they aren’t directly connected with your work or you’ll be tempted back into talking shop. If you do have some work contact with them, gently ask them to stay away from conversations about work topics while they’re with you. If they can’t, invite them on another occasion instead.


• At least 8 full hours must be set aside for sleep. No excuses.


• All meals must be leisurely and relaxed. If you enjoy cooking, cook. If you don’t, eat out.


• At least half the non-sleeping time ought perhaps to be devoted to being with family or friends. This isn’t a rule, just a suggestion. Some people enjoy social time. Others find greater refreshment in time alone. It’s your choice.


• Try to get plenty of fresh air. Nowadays, most of us spend far too much of our time indoors. Walking or cycling is good.


• If work-related matters (or people) try to intrude, they really must be ignored. If you aren’t strict about this, your attempt at a retreat is doomed. Nothing must be allowed to spoil it. No exceptions. Allow just one in and all the rest will push through the crack you opened. It’s only 24 hours. Almost nothing is truly so urgent that it cannot wait that long.


• It’s best to hold retreats like this regularly, on set days. That way, everyone else gets used to your schedule and knows that it’s pointless trying to interrupt.

The benefits are, I think, obvious. Aside from the rest, refreshment, and re-establishment of perspective, just the self-discipline involved is likely to be extremely beneficial. So is the process of reminding yourself—regularly—that it’s your life and you should be able to set aside some part of it for yourself.

So consider this: if you can’t do this, how are you different from a slave who lives continually at the whim of someone else’s agenda?

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Technorati tags: dealing with stress taking relaxation gaining perspective rest refreshing your mind gaining perspective taking a break

A nation of fast food, with leaders to match

One of the less-noticed problems with today’s cult of speed is that it promotes superficial thinking and mental laziness.

If you feel you have no time available, the temptation to cut mental corners and jump to some well-known, supposedly tested solution can be overwhelming; even if you feel, deep down, that it’s not really the right solution to your problem. There’s no time allowed for anything else. But cheap, superficial thinking is like cheap, shoddy manufacture: it won’t stand up long to the normal wear and tear of life.

I’ve often written about Hamburger Management because the comparison with fast food is so close. People in a constant rush delight in fast food because it’s . . . well, fast. You can make your choice, get your order, and gulp it down in a few minutes. It’s easy, convenient, and—above all—quick. Fast food is also designed to deliver a swift burst of flavor, via high sodium, high sugar, and high fat. We all know it isn’t healthy, but, hell, it’s quick, cheap, takes no real thought to order, and it tastes kinda good at the time.

Hamburger management is exactly like that. It uses whatever approach is quickest, cheapest, takes least thought, and delivers an immediate burst of feel-good results. And, just as a diet of fast food takes time to produce obesity, diabetes, and a myriad other ills, the probelms only show up later.

The more organizations put pressure on managers to handle impossible workloads and provide instant, infallible answers, the more they force them into macho, quick-fix styles of operation. Speed becomes almost the only criterion for choosing how to manage. Leaders become obsessed with pre-packaged answers, with following “industry best practice,” with copying the latest fashion trend in business. All because they can no longer allow themselves the patience, the time, or the energy, to think for themselves. In time, they forget how to do. Many even teach those following them that independent thinking is an impractical idea.

“Management by in-flight magazine"

Many organizations run on what many have termed “management by in-flight magazine." That’s making choices based on the kind of 300-word lists of “The 10 all-time best management/marketing/leadership/business tips” you find in in-flight magazines. Why pick on those publications? Because many of these managers are almost constantly in transit and being on a plane provides one of the few times they ever have free for reading.

When you’re drowning in data and wordy, jargon-laden reports, brief tips are like a life-belt. They’re easy to grasp, quickly absorbed, and simple to digest. For the Hamburger Manager, anything that can’t be taken in and applied within a few minutes at most is dismissed as “impractical.”

There goes just about all theory, all discussion, all exploration, and all careful consideration: dismissed as “impractical” on no better basis than that he or she hasn’t the time to read it, let alone think about it. No wonder we live in times when superficial articles written by journalists (also on crippling deadlines), and simplistic books by self-appointed gurus, have far greater impact than careful works of scholarly analysis and critical appreciation.

Slow down . . . for your mind’s sake too

Slowing down isn’t only good for your physical health. It’s vital for your mental abilities and intellectual development too. The world cannot be expressed only in neat, 10-item lists and questions with multiple-choice answers, however convenient and time-saving that might be. It isn’t possible to swallow true understanding in bite-sized, batter-coated nuggets. Seeing the right way to proceed takes time and effort. If you aren’t willing, or able, to make that effort, you shouldn’t be in a leadership position.

To be successful in the long-term, you must think for yourself. You must be able to distinguish between superficially attractive, jargon-laden platitudes and genuine insights. You must be able to ignore snake-oil sellers in favor of genuine thinkers, even if the mental food those thinkers offer takes a great deal of careful chewing.

Investors quickly learn that if something appears too good to be true, that’s what it is. Sadly, many managers have still to learn this simple fact. Instead, rushed, harried, and confused, they rely on mass-produced cliches and patented nostrums to solve their problems. They’ve become physically hyper-active and mental coach potatoes at the same time. And at a time when organizations in developing countries are catching up fast, the organizations that promote such managerial styles in cause of quick profits are risking their futures to innovations discovered elsewhere.

The empire of Rome collapsed when the Romans relied on paying outsiders to do their fighting for them. I wonder what will happen if today’s major corporations go on relying on superficiality, while paying consultants (who aren’t much better) to do their thinking for them?

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Technorati tags: Hamburger Management superficial thinking management best practice management fashions why are leaders in a rush

News and Views: July 14th 2007

Study suggests managers may not know when employees are overwhelmed

“Stress in most workplaces is nothing new. But a new survey done by ComPsych, a Chicago-based employee assistance company, suggests many bosses don’t notice when anxiety is running high among workers. While 60 percent of employees reported high levels of stress and extreme fatigue in a spring survey done by ComPsych, only 45 percent of managers perceived workers as highly stressed.” Read more >>

Success: All work and no play?

“Do most of us have the notion of work-life balance wrong? Is it possible to get ahead in our careers without literally working around the clock? The answers are never clear cut. But I’m asking these impossible questions because of an item I recently read on the Wall Street Journal blog called The Juggle that deals with the issues of life and work. The blog cited New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s commencement speech to graduates of City University of New York’s College of Staten Island.” Read more >>

“Always on” connectivity and management

“Here are a few questions I think we need to explore.

1. As a manager how do you control both, personal and professional so one doesn’t take over the other?
2. How do we manage the “social/knowledge/collaboration tool junkies” James Governor talks about?
3. How do we measure productivity of the “social/knowledge/collaboration tool junkies”?
4. Do we need to change the definition of productivity?
5. How do you recruit a “social/knowledge/collaboration tool junkie”, what would the job description look like?
6. How do we explain to the Busy people that the Burst people are actually getting their work done?
7. If Bursty people can, or are perceived to, get their jobs done so quickly, should we expect more productivity out of them during 9 to 5?” Read more >>

What Gen Y Really Wants

“With 85 million baby boomers and 50 million Gen Xers, there is already a yawning generation gap among American workers--particularly in their ideas of work-life balance. For baby boomers, it’s the juggling act between job and family. For Gen X, it means moving in and out of the workforce to accommodate kids and outside interests. Now along come the 76 million members of Generation Y. For these new 20-something workers, the line between work and home doesn’t really exist. They just want to spend their time in meaningful and useful ways, no matter where they are.” Read more >>

Offering a good work-life balance—for example, by rewarding employees with an occasional lie-in—can cut staff turnover and boost profits

“. . . author, Mike Emmott, employee-relations adviser at the CIPD, said the five [businesses studied] had key things in common. The managers were all ‘people’ people; they were good at communication and fostered a caring ethos in their businesses. This meant they had low absenteeism, very high retention of expertise and experience, and workers who looked after each other. Emmott was particularly struck by how policies promoting work-life balance were ‘so intimately linked with business ideas about profitability. It’s about resolving business issues, not just about being lovey-dovey’.” Read more >>

Americans learning to disconnect more on vacation?

“Orbitz’ Take 5 to Travel survey seems to show a trend towards more balance between the workplace and the American worker’s desire to use a vacation to actually take time out to relax and rejuvenate.” Read more >>

Work-life contradiction . . . or balance?

“Freud’s seemingly contradictory observations, made nearly 80 years ago, sum up the dilemma around work-life balance and show why the problem has never changed, and is unlikely to.On one hand, Freud seemed to say work was life and vice versa. On the other, he cautioned that people get trapped in its importance, missing the intersection of work, family and society and leaving us with the same age-old questions. How much money do you need? How much time do you want to spend with your family? How much time for yourself? How much stuff is enough?” Read more >>

Workaholic groups aren’t working

“Health professionals, academics and psychologists agree. They claim the changing work-place, technology and globalization have produced a worldwide epidemic of ‘workaholism’. [. . . ] But as the Workaholics Anonymous member said, perhaps many of these people are in denial about the consequences of their ‘addiction’.” Read more >> [via ]

A long list of ways to dodge long hours

“It’s hard to leave the office at a reasonable time of day when your workplace culture centers on long hours. But the cost of not leaving work is high: a half-built life and career burnout. Of course, if you never work long hours, you will never appear committed enough to get to the top ranks. So your job is to work enough hours to look committed but not so many hours that you risk your personal life and your ability to succeed over the long haul.” Read more >>

Fear drives us to work

“Whenever your work is driven by fear, you’re not really happy. No matter what you try to mask it with. It doesn’t sound like he’s enjoying his successes, because he doesn’t have enough time. If he [an entrepreneur] doesn’t have enough time for dinner, I doubt he has a wife, family, let alone much human interaction outside of work.” Read more >>

Do you need to be a competitive jerk to succeed?

“I’ve found competition actually de-motivates me. I find I can run a race faster if I’m not trying to beat the other runners. Games where you face off against another opponent can be fun, but I’ve always preferred close matches to simply winning at all costs.” Read more >>

The two F-words you should love

“We all experience failure and the subsequent frustration. But how you handle those tormentors makes all the difference in your final outcomes. Oftentimes the peak of frustration comes right before a major breakthrough. That’s if you don’t quit.” Read more >>

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Why fear of failure is the most common blockage to success

A balanced outlook on life is more important than you think.

Consider this: every strength can become a weakness; every talent contains elements that sometimes make it into a handicap. Today, we’re urged constantly to be winners and to achieve high standards. If being a winner is everything, what does that make losing feel like? Attitudes like this can make people so terrified of failure that it blocks them from doing the very things that might help them become what they desire. Put simply, it ruins their lives. Here’s how it happens.

Trial and error are essential to solving life’s problems and building achievement. Yet many people fail to make any trials—to change, try new things, or just to open their minds to fresh options— because they’re so afraid of making an error. They can’t accept the idea of being seen to make a mistake—even if it’s essential to find the correct answer. They draw back from trying anything new in case it might prove they’ve been wrong in the past. Their fear of risk stymies all progress.

Yet each error is the critical feedback that these people will need to start a new trial that will proceed through new errors and new trials to converge on a better solution. Making an error isn’t simply a failure. Every error is a step on the path to a success. No errors usually means no successes either.

So why do they make the mistake of believing that the error is somehow harmful to them, when it’s actually helpful? How have they become so deeply invested in protecting their egos, and in trying to replay past achievements, that they give up opportunities for a better future?

Our superstitious bosses

The answers are depressingly banal:

• Highly successful people quickly tend to become superstitious. They’ve maybe never really experienced failure, so it holds a terrible fear for them. They’ll do almost anything to keep that fear at bay, from steadfastly ignoring needed change to the silly rituals some sports champions follow to “ensure” another win.


• For them, change seems to represent only the potential of failure, not the chance of greater success. They attribute their past achievements to specific actions taken then, not to a process of adaptation and improvement. It’s as if they focus so much on the moment of triumph that they forget the way they reached it. They try to freeze that blissful instant in place by repeating past actions again and again.


• They suffer the secret fear that any change might move the basis for winning into areas where they are not so strong. It’s as if a sports champion faced a change in the rules of the game. Alter those, and his or her long-practiced skills might no longer count for so much. And the very idea of developing new skills, given all the effort it took to develop the original ones, is terrifying.


• They become so used to focusing on a set path to success that they over-estimate its long-term value and dismiss the potential benefits of change. Whenever a positive value, like achievement, becomes too strong in someone’s life, it’s on the way to becoming a major handicap. It’s as if they try to freeze the current (successful) situation in place to avoid needing to make yet more effort to change with future circumstances.

The curse of unbalanced values

A sense of achievement is an extremely powerful value for most successful people. They’ve built their lives on it. They’ve always achieved at everything they do: school, sports, the arts, hobbies, work. Each fresh achievement adds to the power of the value in their lives.

Gradually, failure becomes unthinkable. They’ve never failed in anything they’ve done, so have no experience of rising above it. It becomes the supreme nightmare: a frightful horror they must avoid at any cost. And the simplest way is never to take a risk by trying any other approach. Stick rigidly to what you know you can do. Protect your butt. Work the longest hours. Double and triple check everything. Be the most conscientious and conservative person in the universe.

And if you have to do anything risky—and constant hard work, diligence, brutal working schedules, and harrying subordinates won’t ward it off—use every possible means to make sure you don’t fail. Lie, cheat, falsify numbers, hide anything negative. The collapse of ethical standards in certain major US corporations has much more to do with fear of failure among long-term high achievers than criminal intent. Many of those guys at Enron and Arthur Andersen and Adelphi were supreme high-fliers, basking in the flattery of the media. Failure became an impossible prospect.

Beware of unbalanced values in your life. Beware when any one value—however benign in itself—becomes too powerful. Over-achievers destroy their lives and the lives of those who work for them. People too attached to “goodness” and morality become self-righteous bigots. Those whose values for building close relationships become unbalanced slide into smothering their friends and family with constant expressions of affection and demands for love in return.

Balance counts for more than you think. Some tartness must season the sweetest dish. A little selfishness is valuable even in the most caring person. And a little failure is essential to preserve everyone’s perspective on success.

So, are you a positive person? Maybe you need to cherish your negative side too.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Technorati tags: fear of failure over-achievers winning superstitious leaders life balance personal objectives winning being a winner

The five least recognized thieves of productive time

How to win back large parts of your day.

When people write about time management, they usually focus on impersonal matters: prioritization, organization, various forms of distraction and loss of focus. All sound topics, and all safely open to being dealt with by training or some teachable techniques. But when I look back on my own career, I can see that these safe topics miss at least five of the most common—and most greedy—thieves of productive time. These are the five.

Not only do these five behaviors waste time on a grand scale, they’re all notable stress producers as well. You can’t deal with them by techniques, fancy software, or skill training. The behaviors I’m thinking of are too personal for that. The only way to deal with them is to bring them into the open and see them for what they are: brazen thieves of time, attention, and—most pernicious of all—peace of mind. Then determine to wage all-out war on them to break yourself of the hold they have on you.

Holding grudges

Like a corpse rising from its grave, putrid and stinking of decay, the habit of holding grudges digs around in what’s dead and gone and drags it out to corrupt the present. How many actions are taken in the workplace with the express intention of paying off old scores? How many projects are derailed, how much information withheld, how much time and money wasted, just so that one person can take pleasure in making sure another’s plans fail or career is harmed?

Scoring petty points

The second habit consumes significant amounts of time and effort to no purpose, and is almost as shameful as the first. Meetings are often riddled with items there for the express purpose of scoring points. The sole purpose of this tawdry activity—the cause of hours wasted on needless reporting, worthless presentations, and sham questions—is to score some insignificant victory against a rival. Do these activities produce anything beneficial? Nothing whatsoever. Do they waste time, increase stress, and send people away angry and humiliated? I think the answer is obvious.

Jealousy

Jealousy defiles too many choices and actions: jealousy of another’s achievements, career progress, popularity, or even looks. If holding grudges is like a science-fiction corpse climbing from its grave, jealousy reminds me of vampire stories; of some smooth and cloying creature that sucks the blood out of living people to sustain its own existence. I have seen fine creative ideas shelved, product improvements reversed, customers deliberately lost, and false accusations raised, with the sole purpose of feeding someone’s jealousy.

Anyone who steals from their employer is rightly labeled a thief. Someone who wastes resources through lack of ability is likely to be fired for incompetence. But the jealous ones—the ones who often destroy far more value and throw away resources on a larger scale to feed their obsession—all too often get away with it.

I began deliberately with the most obnoxious and serious habits. My last two are, in many ways, ridiculous and childish. Yet they still consume huge amounts of time that might otherwise be put to good use; and they probably cause at least as much stress and pain as any of the other three.

The habit of gossiping

That’s certainly true of gossiping. How many hours are wasted in idle, often malicious tittle-tattle? How many e-mails, instant messages, and phone calls are sent with no other purpose than to spread tales, or delight in cruel or salacious rumors? And don’t waste time pointing out to me that various media publications consist of nothing else. People make money out of peddling drugs, but that isn’t seen as a reason for encouraging the trade. Gossip is a total waste of time at best, and usually considerably worse: mean-minded, self-righteous, bigoted, and petty.

Countless people suffer stress and pain because others gossip about them, knowing full well the hurt they will cause. Time and resources are wasted, communication systems abused, and reputations undermined for the same reason. Saying that it’s common doesn’t excuse it.

Showing-off

The final item on my list is showing-off. How many presentations have you sat through that were put together for that purpose? How many pointless meetings are organized so that someone can indulge in a public display of their importance? How many useless reports have been generated in pursuit of personal aggrandizement, or fatuous requests made for unnecessary data? The pompous jerks who inflate themselves at every opportunity may be ridiculous—even comic—but they still waste massive amounts of time and cause extra work for everyone around them.

Any organization—or any leader, come to that—that truly wishes to cut costs and eliminate waste could do no better than start by declaring total war on these five habits, personally and organizationally. And any individual—yes, maybe even you—who wants to cut their stress levels and increase their peace of mind should look deeply into their mind and actions and tear out all traces of these miserable habits.

They are worthless, they are poisonous, and they are hateful. Treat them like the malignant diseases they are. Don’t tolerate them for another day in yourself, and do all that you can to discourage them in others.

It’s my guess that you will be amazed at the time—and cost reductions—that will follow; to say nothing of the massive improvement in the working atmosphere.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Technorati tags: breaking bad habits personal change self-improvement saving time cutting costs lowering stress building peace of mind

How to save yourself from being hooked again

If you ever say, too late, “It’s got me again,” this article is for you.

What do people and fish have in common? They’re both easily caught with baited hooks. In the human species, the bait doesn’t even need to be attractive or edible; just something that sparks an emotional reaction. One moment you’re sitting there, relaxed and content, and the next you’re being led by the nose by an advertising jingle, a newspaper headline, some emotional slogan, or a comforting habit. If you want to lower your stress—and stay in charge of your life and choices—it’s a good idea to understand what hooks you and how it happens.

What are hooks? A hook is anything that grabs us and trips us into a thought or an action without any conscious choice intervening. Every writer tries to start anything from an article to a major novel with a good hook: something to catch the reader’s attention and draw him or her into reading more. Headline writers seek for that elusive phrase that makes the most casual reader want to find out more. Advertisers pay big bucks for an idea that can grab people’s attention and make them listen. People who are hooked find themselves going along with the message regardless of pretty much anything else.

Throughout every day, we’re all surrounded by baited hooks trying to snatch our attention and direct it where someone else wants it to go. We think we get pretty smart about avoiding them. Then we wake up, our emotions roiling and our blood pressure on critical, and groan: “Oh no, it got me again!”

What happened? Something grabbed you and set you going down a path you’ve probably followed all too many times before, and which you swore to yourself that you would never go down again.

The process is rather simple, but that doesn’t make it any less aggravating. Somewhere in your mind is a trigger: a word, a feeling, a concern, a look, an idea. That trigger is connected to some deeply-held value that produces a habitual emotional reaction. Bait the hook with the trigger and the reaction kicks in instantly. You grab at it and get soundly hooked without any conscious choice on your part—at least until it’s too late. Your emotions propel you towards the hook and you are soon firmly fixed. You even do it willingly, since the value that was triggered is something important to you; something you want and feel is important.

Typical hooks

The only way to prevent this process is to recognize what hooks you most easily, and put yourself on your guard when a situation arises where those hooks are likely to be around. Everyone’s hooks are slightly different, but here are some common ones to set you going on your search for the hooks most likely to get you again and again.

• Ego. Many, many people are hooked by their own sense of self-importance. They can’t resist getting involved, even in things of no real concern to them or in situations they know are dangerous. It’s a form of showing off that usually ends in a mess.


• Desire. When you want something—money, power, status, love—anything that even hints that it might be linked to what you want will grab you in an instant. Greedy people are some of the most gullible and easily-manipulated folk around.


• Being a savior. Lots of people love the idea that they might take charge of a bad situation and clear it up right away. Show them someone in trouble and they can’t resist the temptation to step in and save the day. If it worked, it would be okay. Sadly, good intentions tend to be all they have to offer. When the rescue turns sour, you have two miserable people instead of just the one.


• Gossip. This is one of the commonest hooks. It’s linked to people’s love of drama and being “in the know.” They aren’t so much hooked by the information itself as by the image of themselves creating a great dramatic scene as they pass it on to others. They’ll burst through the door, shouting: “Hey! You’ll never guess what I heard.” People will be impressed—perhaps. Mostly gossip just causes misery and stress and marks out those who spread it as malicious jerks.


• Boredom. When you’re bored, almost anything can hook you if it seems more exciting than whatever you’re doing: scanning e-mails, reading jokes on the Web, sending someone a silly message. So many people today are bored that anything promising excitement can draw their attention like a magnet.


• Ambition. Wanting to get ahead isn’t a bad thing, but it does make you rather easy to hook. Whatever starts you feeling that it will move you towards your goal is going to catch your attention and hold it. For those who play office politics, there are even more hooks, mostly linked to hopes of increasing personal influence and power.

How to escape being hooked

How do you either avoid the hook or unhook yourself after you’ve been caught?

1. Sit down and work out your personal hooks. Ask your friends. Listen carefullly to whatever you hear, however humiliating. Most hooks are totally childish, yours included. You aren’t judging them, just knowing what to avoid.


2. Recognize the physical and mental signs of being hooked: telling yourself it’s “just this once;” over-reacting to minor problems or set-backs; jumping into something without any prior thought; spending time on things that you’ve already decided aren’t worth it.


3. As soon as you spot a hook, or realize it’s already in your mouth, stop. Don’t struggle, don’t complain, don’t get mad. Just stop. Then walk away. Put it right out of your mind, if you can. Let your emotions simmer down. Trying to fight it will only drive it in deeper. Letting go and moving on is the only way.


4. Stop behaving like a helpless victim. Take time to work out what you should do, then do it. Put yourself back in charge. You can’t stay hooked if you’re awake, alert, and fully in control of yourself.


5. Explore what you did to let yourself be hooked (or get into a hook-able situation). No one forces a hook into a fish’s mouth. They take it in themselves. You did too. Everyone who gets hooked did so voluntarily. The more you understand what caused you to do that, the more easily you’ll avoid it in the future.


6. Resolve to keep avoiding the hooks. Positive reinforcement works. The more power you take over your own life, the less events and other people will be able to hook you and turn you into a victim.

Stress and burnout can result from internal causes as much as external ones. It’s tempting always to blame greedy corporations and macho managers for the uncivilized and noxious state of our workplaces. They’re definitely guilty, but they aren’t the only ones to blame. All too often, people do it to themselves.

So what are your hooks? If you know, and are willing to share them, tell us. It might help others to avoid similar instant reactions and the problems that they cause.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Technorati tags: breaking bad habits avoiding stress personal change staying in control lessening stress personal choice

Stress-busting ideas: The one-minute check-in

Many people find that they have reached a serious state of stress before they even notice that anything is happening. On the basis that prevention is better than cure, here’s an idea to help you stay aware of what is going on and take action well before anything unpleasant happens.

Stress, overwhelm, anxiety, obsession: all of these creep up on you. They don’t arrive in an obvious way. One moment all is well, more or less. You probably know that you’re pushing yourself a little too hard, but it’s not something that you can’t cope with. Then you go one step too far. What was normal concern becomes anxiety; what was just a little extra effort becomes more than you can handle safely without doing yourself any harm.

It’s the same with extra working hours. You can handle them at first. Maybe it’s only only a temporary effort to deal with a crisis. Then, gradually but inexorably, working 9, 10, 12, 14 hours a day becomes normal for you. You don’t notice the effect until it’s way too late.

The one-minute check-in is a simple and practical way to get a handle on what’s happening. Here’s what you do:

1. At regular intervals throughout the day, you stop for 60 seconds to bring your attention back to yourself.


2. Each time, you ask what you are doing, how you feel, and —most important of all—what your patterns of work are. How long are you going without a break? How early did you start and what time is it now? How tired are you?


3. You don’t cheat yourself. You make it a genuine inquiry into what is happening. No quick, superficial, comforting responses are accepted. That’s why it takes 60 seconds: 30 seconds to give yourself the edited version, then 30 more to get at the truth.


4. Ask yourself where you are and what you’re doing. How long you’ve been doing it. How long until you can take a meaningful break or stop altogether. How you feel physically and mentally. What’s happening inside you—and where, if anywhere, it hurts.


5. Don’t prejudge. Don’t make assumptions. Check yourself out carefully and notice what is going on. The purpose of the one-minute check-in is to allow yourself to be aware of your own functioning on a regular basis.


6. Finally, act on what you find. If all is well, press on until your next one-minute check-in, say in an hour or two. If you need a break, take one. If you recognize that you’re long past being effective and only your stubbornness and anxiety are keeping you in place, pack up and go home right away.

Many of the stress-based problems people cause themselves are overlooked; dismissed as nothing to be concerned about. People take almost no vacation time and expect to be able to go on functioning at peak ability just the same. They skimp on sleep and imagine they are still fully alert. They drive themselves through a physically crippling schedule and imagine they’re tough enough to suffer no ill effects. Until pain or disaster strikes.

By checking in regularly, you can avoid all of this and stay on the right side of your personal limits. It will cost you perhaps 5 minutes a day to do it. It might save your health, your relationships, your career—and potentially your life.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Technorati tags: coping skills coping with stress avoiding burnout staying healthy at work

The 11 best ways to handle workplace stress you can’t avoid

Sometimes you can’t simply avoid stress or make it go away. How can you handle it when there’s no other alternative?

I often write on this web site about ways to avoid workplace stress or stop it happening in the first place. That’s obviously the best course of action, but this isn’t a world where you can always find the ideal situation, however hard you try. You need options to help you when stress cannot be avoided. Here are some suggestions.

What can you do when you can’t avoid a stressful situation or escape from one that has already grabbed you? Is the only course to try to tough it out?

I don’t think so. Here are some other approaches that you can try when prevention or avoidance aren’t available.

1. Never neglect the obvious. Nothing will elude your attention as consistently as whatever you take for granted. Before you give up, or try some exotic remedy, try considering whether there are some totally obvious aspects of the situation or your working habits that are producing some of the stress. Perfectionism is a common one. Another is neglecting your physical needs for periods of rest, What are the most obvious (and therefore most neglected) actions you could take to improve your situation? Close your eyes and take a break from the world. Get up every 45 minutes for a brisk walk, even if it’s only around the office. Stop going over and over the same thoughts and simply move on.


2. What ways of coping are hidden by convention or supposedly obvious “truths?” What aren’t you seeing because someone told you in the past that it won’t work, or wouldn’t be allowed? Are you maybe contributing to your own stress by following conventional working patterns, when the situation needs an unconventional style? What are you assuming won’t help, without even trying it?


3. Which of your unconscious habits might be part of the problem? Worrying is a mental habit that can pile on the pressure. So is feeling guilty for feeling stress at all. How you work may also be part of the difficulty. Perhaps you always work directly on your computer, when some time making hand-written notes might help to break up the monotony and give your eyes a rest. We all become so used to our habitual way of doing something that we can’t even conceive of handling it differently. Try. It may feel odd and uncomfortable at first, but it might produce ways that can lessen the pressure.


4. What distractions can you remove? Turn off the e-mail notifier. Close down IM. Decide not to answer phone calls for the next hour. Find somewhere to work away from your desk, where casual callers won’t find you. Distractions are terrible thieves of time and ruin your productivity. If you’re under pressure, especially time pressure, constant distractions will raise your blood pressure quicker than almost anything else.


5. Slow down. Yes, I know that seems like the last thing that will help, but if that’s what you think, you’re wrong. Pressure tends to make you speed up, try to cut corners, jump to quick conclusions and snap judgments, go faster and faster. All of these increase the rate of mistakes and the need for re-working. Then that makes you feel even more stressed, so you speed up some more. It’s a vicious cycle that continually adds to the pressure. So slow down. It may feel counterintuitive, but it’s often the best way to save time overall.


6. Don’t assume that you don’t already have the answer. Often the best way to produce a mental breakthrough—the kind that lets you jump right to a solution, without needing to spend half the time you thought it would require—is to take all the bits and pieces of ideas and thoughts you have already and play around with them. Shift them into new patterns. Try fitting pieces together that don’t seem to belong. You’ll be amazed at what will pop out. Best of all, since all the pieces are familiar to you, it may not take much time to craft the new combination into a workable solution.


7. Eat regularly, but lightly. Drink often, avoiding alcohol or caffeine. This is simply commonsense. You’ll need energy to cope with the stress, so that means sufficient food. But not too much at a time, or you’ll start to feel sleepy and sluggish, which is the last thing that you need. Caffeine in large doses will keep you awake but send your mind buzzing like a hamster on a wheel. Alcohol will numb your brain.


8. Move around as often as you can. Our brains and bodies are linked. If your body is stiff and cramped, your back aches from hunching over your work or sitting in a bad chair, your head aches from poor lighting or just the continual tension, and you feel lousy, you aren’t going to be able to produce your best work—and now, when the pressure is on, is when you need that most. Movement is good for you. Use it to help lessen your physical and mental tiredness.


9. Get a regular change of scene. It’s easy for some place to become so associated in your mind with the pressure that you start to feel stressed and anxious just by going there. A change of scene can refresh your mind and help you lighten up. Anxiety makes you grim, and grim isn’t going to help you.


10. Get as much sleep as you can. Anxious people often tell themselves that they won’t be able to sleep, so they stay up late working. But almost any sleep is going to help and it’s easy to over-estimate how long you’ve been lying awake in the dark. It may feel like hours, but it could be just a few minutes, while the rest of the time you were sleeping. It’s worth a try anyway. Depriving yourself of sleep is going to make the pressure worse. And, since one of the keys to getting to sleep is sticking to regular habits, make sure you go to bed at your usual time. Burning the midnight oil is best avoided if at all possible.


11. Know when you’ve had enough. Sometimes, the only sane thing to do is give up and get some rest. Do it. Don’t kid yourself that you can keep going when all the others have given in. Knowing your own limits is the best way to preserve your health and avoid making mistakes you’ll regret bitterly. Whatever anyone else says, when it’s time to quit, just do it.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Technorati tags: stress workplace stress anxiety avoiding burnout slowing down coping with pressure avoiding burnout

News and Views: July 7th 2007

Vacation time again . . . or maybe not

How much vacation you’re allowed depends on where you work. Right? Of course, but so does how much of that vacation you actually take. It seems that people in the USA are the champions at not taking all of their vacation entitlement. “While Europeans enjoy four to five weeks of mandatory annual leave, many Americans find it difficult to take the one or two weeks of paid vacation they receive annually,” writes Jennifer Muhmel. Why? The obsession with lowering costs and doing more with less, certainly. But how about this? According to this article: “. . . some workers said taking a vacation adds stress. An estimated 27 percent of managers and 16 percent of non-managers return to work more stressed than when they left, according to a survey.” [link]

Does insecurity cause stress? Or is it the other way around?

Ed Moyle suggests that, while we know that the costs of workplace stress are high and the negative health effects on employees and the organization are well documented, the effects of increased work pressure also include decreased security for the firm as a whole. He suggests that stress, by impacting priorities and causing more people to panic when things go wrong, increases the insecurity of the firm as a whole. See if you agree. [link]

Are you over-connected?

All the technology to keep people in touch 24/7 may be near to becoming more of a curse than a benefit. Students sit in classes answering e-mails and sending text messages. Meeting attendees use the time to catch up on messages or send yet more to other people. A recent survey of 10,000 users by software company InCredimail found 12 percent said they spend more time online than sleeping each day. David Levy, a University of Washington professor and researcher on information overload, now schedules a weekly 24-hour Sabbath from electronic devices. In his view, the problem is part of an ongoing “more-faster-better” syndrome afflicting people today. You can read more here. [link]

Is Munich the world’s most liveable city?

It is, according to the International Herald Tribune and Monocle magazine. “A winning combination of investment in infrastructure, high-quality housing, low crime, liberal politics, strong media and general feeling of Gemütlichkeit make it a city that should inspire others.” Why do I mention this (other than liking Munich quite a lot myself)? “Work-life balance seems to be the city’s mantra. Make no mistake, people in this city work hard. With some of the highest apartment rents in Europe and all the shiny BMWs on the streets, they have to,” says William Boston, who wrote this article. “After work, Munich’s masses enjoy the city’s chill factor. The options are many, whether it’s drinking beer in the English Garden or in the shade of the tall trees at Viktualienmarkt, sunbathing on the banks of the Isar river, attending the theater or concerts, or hanging out in the smart bars around Gärtnerplatz or entertaining at home.” Sounds good to me. [link] [via]

Maybe we should feel sorry for lawyers?

According to the BBC: “The work-life balance of the UK’s lawyers is to come under scrutiny as part of a Law Society review to see why record numbers appear to be leaving the profession.” It seems that, far from being all about big bonuses, expensive holidays and flowing champagne, a legal career is more likely to end in emotional or physical breakdown. that because lawyers are under such intense pressure to complete the requisite number of chargeable hours per day—sometimes 8 or 9— and still find time for all the routine work. If you want a grim picture of a job that is: “. . . all about ego, money and soulless, ruthless commercialism and exploitation,” look no further. [link]

Can bosses really get a life?

Andrew Cave, of the London Daily Telegraph, interviewed 66 CEOs about their life and relationships outside of work. The results might surprise you. Only a handful of the 66 CEOs have been divorced, with the overwhelming majority married for over 20 years. I wonder if that is a tribute to British calm and phlegmatism on the part of their wives? Most of these guys (and they’re all guys) seem to overrule or ignore their wives’ wishes on a regular basis. They may have lengthy marriages, but the picture the article paints of how they and their families operate suggests most as as much the CEO at home as they are at work. [link]

No further defense needed against the Dark Arts?

How do you see office politics? Like this, maybe: “It’s well recognized that to get to the top takes not only talent, but talent at certain “dark arts” — guile, ruthlessness and political acumen to name but three. “ Or like this: “Where office politics once meant turf wars, back-stabbing or pursuing personal advantage, now the majority of managers see it as about building alliances and consensus . . .” This article claims that British business leaders are rejecting old-fashioned notions of office politics in favor of creating partnerships, building relationships and developing constructive political skills. I don’t want to scoff at anything that promises a more civilized workplace, but I have to sat that I’m skeptical. [link]

How do you know if you’re a workaholic?

Take this questionnaire. Then, depending on the answer, let Workaholics Anonymous help you out. It seems that a recent survey by the Center for Work-Life Policy, a New York-based nonprofit group, found that 45% of executives were “extreme” workers, putting in more than 60 hours a week and meeting five other criteria such as being on call 24 hours a day and facing demands from several time zones and meeting ever more demanding deadlines. WA should have a brisk trade. [link] [via]

Tyrants in the workplace

Leading Blog paints a grim picture: “Power corrupts. Well . . . it can and too often does. The exercise of power — causing some to submit to the will of others — is necessary in any functioning state, organization or relationship. This power may shift, but it always exists. Power is not evil, but one should be cautious about the form it takes. Power controlled by the ego is something to be fearful of. [. . .] Power with out humility and compassion is ignoble at best, but more often than not, it quickly degrades to tyranny, exploitation and destruction.” Selfishness and greed are most likely the causes, but what is the cure? Nothing is suggested in this otherwise thoughtful article. [link]

Civilizing the (social) organization

Henry Mintzberg makes some highly civilized suggestions about how to improve organizational functioning: “Corporations are social institutions, which function best when committed human beings (not human “resources”) collaborate in relationships based on trust and respect. Destroy this and the whole institution of business collapses.” Chris Bailey agrees. [link]

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Learning the art of pure selfishness

Why time spent on office politics is time wasted . . . yet often essential for survival.

People are political and emotional creatures. We like to believe we use reason to work out what to do, but this is an illusion. A far more general tendency is to make a decision largely on the basis of politics or emotions, then use reason afterwards to justify what we have already decided. Here’s how it works and why it may increase your stress.

It’s half an hour before official closing time on a Friday, after a hectic week. A customer calls with a complicated, urgent request that will take at least three to four hours to handle. Do you put it off until Monday, even though the customer is desperate for a resolution? Or do you deal with it right away?

Someone who is angry, frustrated, or just feeling low will be most likely to shelve the whole problem until Monday, arguing it is the customer’s fault for waiting until the last minute, or claiming the work will be better when he or she is fresh on Monday. An employee who fears the customer, or the boss’s reaction if the customer complains, will likely deal with the problem right away, but rush through it as fast as possible, even if that means a skimped job. Someone who hopes to make a big new sale to that customer, or is keen to make a good impression on the boss, may stay late to get the job done, or even come in on the weekend to make sure the work is done properly.

In most cases, this kind of decision will be made on a political basis. What will be the political impact of staying late and helping the customer right away? Will it win you “brownie points” in the eyes of some powerful executives (so long as you make absolutely sure they know about it)? Will it be one in the eye for some rival, who has designs on a sale to that customer that you might get instead, if you make the customer happy with you? Can you make it into an obligation the customer will understand they need to repay some time?

Whenever people are faced with a decision without clear guidance, especially in a culture where getting it wrong is likely to lead to nasty personal consequences, they tend to think about what others will make of whatever they decide—powerful others mostly. Will they approve or criticize? Will you trespass on (or be in a position to take over) part of someone else’s turf? How much freedom do you have to make the decision without consultation? Will it be seen as a favor that can be called in later? How else can you use it to your personal, selfish advantage?

All this adds to whatever thinking is needed by the job itself. None of it is going to improve the decision, the way that the job is done, or the result either. It’s a source only of extra, unnecessary concern and worry. It adds to whatever stress comes from the work itself or the deadlines to be met. It even causes additional work. If you decided what to do rationally and simply did it, then moved on to the next task, life would be simpler and less likely to cause you anxiety. But rationality is no protection from office politics, which are neither rational nor concerned with the success of the business. Office politics are about power, pure and simple—and strictly personal power at that.

The basic causes of office politics.

Fear is one of the commonest workplace emotions today. The greater the level of fear in the culture—fear of losing your job, fear of losing your status, fear of being marked down as a troublemaker—the greater the need to worry about the outcome of whatever you do and seek some kind of reassurance or safety. Office politics seems to be able to help. By consulting someone who has influence, seeking protection, or avoiding anything that might upset a powerful person, you can gain a measure of safety and reassurance.

Turn this around, make yourself the person with power instead of the one who’s afraid, and you have another reason to waste time and effort in politicking (In strict efficiency terms, of course, it is clearly wasted). Patronage, the power of advancing friends and protecting them from harm, is the main benefit of becoming politically influential. People who aspire to political power are keen to find ways to use and extend their patronage, usually by offering protection and support to their friends when difficult decisions are to be faced. Conversely, making sure that people are clearly seen to have failed is an obvious way to destroy your rivals and lessen their power.

That’s why office politics play a significant role in many decisions. Each offers scope for extending patronage (adding more grateful people to your circle of dependents), lessening the influence of your competitors, and making you look good in the eyes of people with more power than you have at present.

In none of these cases does the politics assist in productivity, raise profits, add value to the customer, or provide anything else positive. What it does do is help people cope with negative situations due to uncivilized workplaces dominated by macho, power-crazed people. That’s why the most pervasive politics are found in macho corporate cultures, or those where fear has become a way of life.

So long as fear exists, there’s no practical way around this.

All of office politics depends on these three motives: to add to your power of patronage and lessen the standing of your rivals for power; to buy you protection from someone more powerful than you are; or to advance your merit in the eyes of people with greater power. None of these motives is to the benefit of the customer, the organization, or anyone beside yourself. Any loss from a political maneuver is always designed to fall to some real or imagined enemy.

How many talented people are held back, prevented from making a full contribution, or persuaded to leave (or even fired) because of purely political choices by someone? How many wrong decisions are made because they offer personal advantage to powerful people? How much time and money is wasted in activities with no rationale beyond providing an opportunity for playing politics?

All office politics is ultimately stressful and harmful. It is the art of pure selfishness made to look rational. Any organization where it thrives is less a group engaged in a collective enterprise and more a warring, competing, back-stabbing collection of individuals trying to advance themselves at the expense of all the rest. If that’s the culture, standing aside is no real option, since it virtually guarantees that you will be either marginalized, humiliated, or ejected.

That’s the reality of many organizations today, I guess. They complain about shortages of talent, yet frequently act in ways that ensure many of the best people will leave. They cut jobs and slash vital projects to save money, yet allow cultures to grow that waste huge amounts of time and money on political activities. Instead of making sure the best people get to the top, they tolerate systems that reward those who are most politically active and successful, regardless of any other ability.

I am well aware that this is very unlikely to change. Those in power always want to preserve the status quo, since it is their status quo and they are the ones who benefit from it most. Nevertheless, it’s sometimes worth reminding people of what is being tolerated in the name of expediency. A very large proportion of those who leave corporate jobs to set up their own businesses do so to escape the constant politicking. Insofar as that adds to the variety and creativity of the economy, and creates new endeavors, perhaps some benefit is ultimately there after all.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Technorati tags: office politics corporate culture macho management patronage at work power and influence

Stress-busters: How to worry less and live more

Today’s world creates anxiety like never before. It’s time to fight back.

I have to start this article with a confession. For most of my life, I have been a world champion worrier. I was able to worry about almost anything. And, if I didn’t have anything specific to worry about, I would worry that I must have missed what I ought to be fretting over. The workplace, of course, provides an endless menu of possible sources of worry, which is why it’s often so stressful. Anxiety produces stress and stress produces anxiety. They feed off each other, making a perpetual motion machine of worrying. If anything good can come out of all that anxiety, it might be this: my experience-based ideas on how and why to quit worrying so much.

Most worriers believe that they either must worry (they have genuine reasons to do so), or that they cannot stop themselves, even if they see it doesn’t make sense. Let’s begin with understanding the causes of worry and whether it might be of some use. Until you are convinced that worrying is of no benefit to you, you won’t give it up anyway.

• Worrying is a form of superstition. A great deal of worrying is driven by the unstated fear that, if you don’t worry about some issue, you’ll somehow be punished for your slipshod attitude; that some universal force will spot your dereliction of worrying duty and bring you back into line by making all the bad things happen. Of course, once you recognize that this kind of crazy, childish behavior lies behind much of the anxiety you’re plaguing yourself with, it’s tough to go on doing it without laughing.


• Worrying is totally useless as a way to solve whatever the problem is. As Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich once said (not Kurt Vonnegut as I was told originally): “ . . . worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.”


• Worrying takes a heap of energy. Despite being useless in any practical sense, worrying absorbs a great deal of mental and even physical energy. After a day spent worrying, you will be as tired as if you had tried to calculate the value of pi to 300 decimal places while running a marathon. And you will still have achieved nothing.


• Worrying is amazingly distracting. While you are worrying, your mind cannot settle on anything else. The worrying constantly gets in the way of whatever you try to do. People tell you things—sometimes important things. You don’t hear them or you forget them within seconds, because your mind is totally taken up with that wretched source of anxiety.

If you’re now convinced that worrying offers no benefits and considerable drawbacks, let’s consider some ways to give it up.

• Don’t accept that you are helpless. I won’t say it will be easy to give it up, but worrying is just a habit. Perhaps it would be better to call it an addiction. Like all addictions, it’s going to be tough to quit, but you can do it. There will likely be some “cold turkey” to get through, but just think about all that extra energy and enjoyment of life that you’ll have once you’re no longer a slave to continual anxieties.


• Practice letting go. Worrying is all about control. People worry because something is threatening to happen that they don’t like. If they can do something to stop it happening they will. There’s no cause to worry then, it’s over. But, in all too many cases, we aren’t able to stop whatever it is threatening us: we aren’t able to be in control. So we worry instead. It’s a form of quasi-control. By worrying about whatever it is, we imagine all the ways we would control it, if only we could. The more you are able to accept things the way they are, the less you will worry. No one ever worried about anything they simply accepted. And accepting whatever it is will probably be the best way to start responding to it positively as well, so you’ll get a double benefit.


• Most worries are totally imaginary. We can all imagine truly terrible outcomes. They rarely happen. One way to curb your worries is to sit down and deliberately imagine the very worst that your mind can come up with. Two things will likely result: you’ll realize how ridiculous the whole thing is; and everything else will seem pretty tame by comparison.


• Worries don’t exist. So you don’t need to waste time over them. It’s obvious. If a problem exists, it isn’t a worry, it’s a fact. You have to cope with it some way and that becomes an exercise in problem-solving, not worrying. Worries are always about what may happen, but hasn’t yet. Therefore, they don’t exist. When, and if, they do, they’ll be problems to be solved. Until then, they are nothing but rogue neurons in your brain.


• Try planning instead. Planning is considering what might reasonably happen and getting yourself ready. It’s practical and useful. Even if events don’t work out that way, you will probably have learned something useful in the process. Worrying is imagining what will almost certainly never happen, and then imagining how you would fail to deal with that imaginary outcome.


• Never feel guilty about not worrying. Not only is guilt a totally useless and entirely negative emotion, but you have nothing whatever to feel guilty about. To feel guilty about not worrying is like berating yourself for not thinking about ten yellow goldfishes balancing on the nose of an alligator. Both are simply thoughts, and ridiculous ones too. Why should you feel guilty about not thinking them?


• Don’t think too much about what other people have achieved. It will only make you feel dissatisfied and start you worrying again. At least 50% of the good things that happen to people is pure chance; the rest is a mixture of solid effort and unexpectedly good outcomes from what began as mistakes. Do what you do and be happy.


• If you start to take yourself seriously, take two aspirin and lie down in a darkened room until the fit passes. What do you know about yourself for certain? Most of your ideas don’t work, most of your hopes and plans fail, most of your triumphs were luck, and most of your choices were either made for you by others or happened by default. And you take a person like that seriously? All that stuff is just to impress other people, right? There was an old saying that went: “No one is a hero to his valet.” Hardly anyone has a valet nowadays, but you get my drift.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Technorati tags: how to stop worrying coping with anxiety dealing with stress handling stress lowering anxiety

Doing without home runs

Real change is usually built on a series of small steps made regularly

People’s wish for better personal development has produced a publishing bonanza. Go to your neighborhood bookstore. Look along the shelves of self-help and self-improvement books. What do most of them have in common? A tendency to focus on people who have made spectacular changes to their lives, often based on an instantaneous “conversion” to some point of view. It’s the personal development equivalent of being “born again.” Does it work? It certainly does for the writers. However, relying on a series of “big hits” is a poor strategy for making change itself.

Writers and journalists have to sell their work. Both groups know that something surprising or shocking sells better than a story that’s more mundane. They know that instant answers sell better than instructions to persevere, and simple prescriptions do better than complex ones. Self-help writers also prefer emphasizing the positive, so their version of the blockbuster scoop links instant, radical transformation with a climactic event like walking across hot coals or attending a seminar by some motivational guru. “This book changes lives” is standard back-cover copy—even if the only life changed was the author’s when the royalty check arrived.

I’m not denying that sudden, dramatic breakthroughs can happen. What I’m suggesting is they’re no more common than any other “once in a lifetime” event—which means very uncommon indeed. Certainly not something you should take as the norm, or something you should set your sights on when you decide to make some significant change in your own life.

Games of baseball—or cricket, since I’m English—are typically won by the slow and steady accumulation of singles, not the spectacular hits to the boundary for four or six, or home runs in baseball. It’s exciting to watch the batter produce a huge hit right out of the park, but depending on big hits alone is not a reliable strategy for winning games.

Slow and steady wins

Successful personal growth too is best achieved by a consistent, long-term series of baby steps. This approach isn’t spectacular—certainly not the stuff of best-selling self-improvement books—but it works. All the small gains gradually amount to something big, sometimes faster than you imagine. It’s like the laws of compound interest in investing. If you invest $1000 each year for 25 years and earn only 5% interest, you’ll have $53,499.81 at the end. And that’s certain. You could “invest” $1000 per year in a lottery, or some other speculative venture, and win a huge amount. More likely, at the end of the 25 years you’d have nothing— not even the $25,000 it cost you. Waiting and hoping for the big one is a poor investment strategy with money or development. A consistent series of actions to enhance your career, develop your skills, and broaden your mind, even if each one is quite small, is a far better choice. Each builds on the last. Each one sticks because it’s a pace of change you can cope with.

Don’t focus your personal development on home runs. It may work for some, but that’s mostly luck. Sure, someone wins the big lottery prize, but you have a much greater chance of being struck by lightning or run down by someone distracted by yammering on their cell phone. Besides, just as many lottery winners are broke again in a few years. There’s no guarantee that a sudden, dramatic personal breakthrough will stick. “Easy come, easy go” applies to more than money.

If you want to slow down and live life more deliberately—and you should, there’s little doubt of that, unless you’re chronically idle—start small, then keep it going. Stop one task you don’t need to do. Take one extra hour a week for thinking time. That should be possible for everyone. And when you’ve done it, do it again: another pointless task dropped, another useless meeting canceled, another hour added to thinking time.

Keep going like that and you truly will revolutionize your life. Today, July 4th, celebrates a climactic event in the United states, the Declaration of Independence. Was that it? Did the colonists simply announce their freedom and go back to living their lives? Of course not. The declaration was just the start of length battles and struggles to make it stick. What won the war was a series of victories, plus some defeats, mostly small and relatively insignificant in themselves. Only taken all together did they change the world.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Technorati tags: personal development implementing change self-help making changes stick

Always give yourself time

Sufficient time is the key to making personal changes that stick.

One of the worst aspects of modern working life is the constant pressure to hurry. Not only does it create needless stress and tension, it goes a long way to making people seem dumber and more resistant to change than they are. If you want to make some personal—or organizational —changes, and make them stick, slow down and give yourself some time and space in which to work.

In all the discussion on the subject of personal or organizational development, one subject that occurs far too rarely is time: the necessity of giving yourself and others sufficient time to allow change and development to take place properly. Time is an essential component in any change involving human beings. Despite all the rush in today’s world, and the constant demands for the gratification of desires now, almost any progress people make in their lives takes far, far longer than they usually allow for.

Time to learn

Your first requirement should be plenty of free time to learn, to think, to reflect, and to internalize fresh ideas. Everyone has the experience of thinking they know something, only to find they’ve forgotten it after a few days. Say you’re learning another language. In the class, what the teacher says is clear and obvious. You know you have it straight this time. But 24 hours later it’s gone. Your brain isn’t a bag that you can stuff with knowledge and ideas and expect them to stay there. Most people’s brains are more like boxes full of holes that allow a great portion of whatever is put in to escape rather quickly. New learning is “liquid” and easily runs out through the holes. Only by repeating the learning experience, typically many times. can you make whatever you’re trying to learn “sticky” enough to stay put.

Time to see patterns

You also need time to reflect and see the links between items or areas of knowledge. The human brain finds it hard to hang on to disconnected pieces of information. Unlike a computer disc, it doesn’t cope well with large amounts of more or less random data. What it does best is see connections, linking information together and remembering the patterns, not the individual bits and pieces of data. Remembering a principle is far easier than recalling facts or some specific set of procedures. Do you see such links instantly? Usually not. It takes time to register them fully and understand them well enough to recall them whenever you want.

Time to think

Thinking time is also vital: time to plan, to prioritize, and to choose how best to expend your attention and energy. Doing anything in a rush increases the risks of missing key elements, making needless mistakes, and wasting effort. I’m somewhat suspicious of today’s fashion for simply getting things done. Which things? For what purpose? Are they the right things anyway? All the to-do techniques and software programs may make it easier to “recall” tasks and list them in some kind of order, but they don’t seem to me to help much with recognizing how much garbage doesn’t need to be on the to-do list at all. Lists easily become clogged with items if you don’t allocate enough time to thinking carefully about what you are doing. It’s a good idea to periodically go through any to-do list to see how many items can simply be dumped, with little effect other than saving valuable time and effort.

Time to change

Of course, change itself also takes time. You aren’t going to be successful with every change or idea for development every time. Many people, faced with change, behave like the investor who buys a stock today and sells it immediately if it doesn’t double their money overnight. Experienced investors allow enough time to grow their money steadily. They don’t get into situations where they must act on a particular day, since that may force them to buy or sell when the market is unfavorable. They don’t become ecstatic at every up-tick in the indexes, or depressed by every down day. They take the long perspective. Warren Buffett is famous for saying the best way to treat the ups and downs of the market is never to think about them at all. His kind of steady, thoughtful, long-term investment strategy works just as well for implementing change as it has for building his enormous fortune. Focusing on small, consistent improvements builds a solid foundation for long-term alterations that go deep enough to last.

Time to be creative

Finally, you need time to be creative. I’m not talking about sitting around waiting for inspiration to strike. That’s a romantic idea that bears no relation to what genuinely creative people do. In all those “gaps” where they appear to be doing nothing at all, the world’s outstanding creative minds are hard at work reflecting, ruminating, “noodling” with odd ideas: tinkering with patterns and unexpected connections. What you see as the result is a mental iceberg: nearly all the activity that brought it about is hidden below the surface.

Most people don’t achieve anywhere near their creative potential because they never give themselves time to do so. They’re so conditioned to quick action that they give up on fresh thinking long before it has a chance to develop into anything. Don’t make the same mistake. Time spent day-dreaming or running over odd ideas in your head is the “soil” in which creative ideas grow.

Give yourself time. Give others time. It’s essential, if you truly want to improve your own prospects and advance a more civilized way of living and working.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Technorati tags: implementing change learning prioritizing change development creativity

Why getting away from work regularly is the best way to work better

Relax! Get away from work! You can do it.

Constant, unremitting hard work is a terrible way to solve problems, spark creative ideas, or maintain high morale. Many organizations demand these crazy work patterns only because their ideas on management are stuck at a point many decades in the past. It’s time to come up to date and recognize that rest and relaxation are as much essential management tools as motivation or planning.

Everyone has been in the situation where you just can’t recall something that you know perfectly well: a phone number, a name, a piece of information. You know that it’s on the tip of your tongue, but it simply won’t come to you. And the harder that you try to remember, the most frustrating it becomes. Do what you may, you cannot recall it. Then, hours later, when you’re thinking of something completely different, what you wanted pops into your mind as neatly as you like. It’s infuriating.

The same thing happens when you have a difficult problem to solve in the workplace. Trying, again and again, to find a solution is very often the worst possible way to go about it. Like that name or telephone number, the answer just won’t come, whatever you do.

It would be far better to let go and allow your mind to work on something totally unrelated for a while.

That’s what vacations and time spent relaxing and day-dreaming are for: to let your mind refresh itself on a regular basis and clear away the blockages caused by too much effort. The answer that you want is probably right there, only you can’t see it for looking. When you get away from the frustration and irritation—right away for long enough to allow your mental muscles to unclench—the chances are that you’ll notice the very solution that has been eluding you.

Creative people have always found that their best ideas occur to them at seemingly random moments: in bed, just before falling asleep; in the shower; walking in the park. Sitting and trying to force the mind to produce creative ideas seems to stop up the flow totally.

Antiquated management is everywhere

It’s hard to understand why so many organizations and their leaders cling to the crazy notion that you can somehow force the best out of people by working them as hard as possible for as long as possible. That might have worked (not too well, but perhaps well enough) in the days when all employees were required to do was either manual labor or repetitive clerical work. Neither require significant mental input. You can happily dig a hole and think about something completely unrelated at the same time. Writing figures into a ledger needs attention, but neither creativity nor any kind of problem-solving ability.

Nearly all of today’s work needs people who spend their time solving problems, coming up with fresh ideas, and using their minds far more than their muscles or their ability to cope with repetitive details. It should be blindingly obvious that long hours of hard labor are not going to deliver the goods. The fact that organizations and their managers miss this simple fact shows clearly how outdated much of conventional management has become—and how far it has strayed from what will work best in the current context.

Managers obsessed with control, extracting maximum hours, and demanding constant, unremitting effort are shooting themselves in both feet at once. What they get is an exhausted and demoralized workforce, whose brains are so numbed with continual toil that they are no longer able to produce creative ideas—or even recognize and recall the ideas they already have. It’s already known that those who pay peanuts get monkeys. If you bludgeon people around the head all the time, you get zombies.

Many organizations afflicted with advanced Hamburger Management get plenty of both—plus a good few zombie monkeys as well!

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Technorati tags: stress overwork burnout lack of creativity tiredness Hamburger Management macho management