How to Stay Motivated When You’d Rather Stay in Bed
Have you ever found yourself with a mile-long to do list, deadlines looming, friends and family looking for your attention and all you want to do is curl up and hide? Is this a rhetorical question? Of course you have! We all have! Especially now with a global pandemic, a presidential election, social unrest, unemployment, layoffs, pay cuts, bonus checks evaporating. It’s enough to make you set the snooze button to the year 2021. It’s a nice thought, but we have to keep moving forward. But, how? It’s not easy, even for me who bills herself as a productivity expert! I do, however, have a few tricks up my sleeve for staying motivated.
The first step to building your motivation tactics is figuring out what motivates you. Is it money, power, recognition, helping others, giving back? When you understand which motivators resonate with you it’ll be easier to drum up ways to keep yourself motivated. Think about it, when you’re managing staff, Management Principles 101 will tell you to figure out what motivates each member of your team and lean into those things. We have to do that same exercise for ourselves.
Here are the ways that I stay motivated, hopefully they can help you too:
Music – Is there any easier way to get pumped up than by listening to your favorite song? The sports world has the use of music as a motivator down to a science. This is probably simplest trick and easiest to execute. Make a playlist of songs that make you feel good and dispense as needed!
Visual Prompts – I’m a big believer of visual cues as inspiration and, dare I say, vision. You don’t need to have a vision board but at least have a mental picture of people you admire, places you’d like to visit and things you’d like to achieve/buy/do.
Mandatory Downtime – Give yourself an hour, a day even, to be a slug. I know lots of business people who never seem to take a minute off. I admire their ability to always be moving, closing deals and growing their businesses. One thing they all have in common is they take time for their workouts or walks or meditation. They may always be physically moving, but mentally they’re giving themselves time to disconnect.
Objective Reviews – Feedback from others is a powerful motivator. We are all our own worst critics, so take some time to check in with a mentor or a friend and get their point of view on YOU. There have been many times when I thought I’ve sucked at something or I was failing miserably and then someone will tell me how I’ve helped them solve a problem or kept them calm during a chaotic work situation. These are powerful reminders that people see us in a way more positive light than we see ourselves.
Optimism – And speaking of positivity, skewing towards optimism is a surefire way to stay motivated. There are dozens of articles on how negative thinking affects the brain and how chronic negativity will ultimately reduce our ability to see things in a positive light. If optimism and positivity don’t come naturally for you, you must practice and make it a habit. Do those daily affirmations or write down one positive thing about your day. It’s impossible to completely banish negativity but these simple acts can shift you toward more positive thinking.
What tricks can you add to the list? Let’s discuss!
What I Learned from My Bad Bosses
Leadership has been on my mind lately. With all that’s going on in the world the question keeps coming up. Where is the leadership? Who is guiding us through our crises? It’s caused me to reflect on my own leadership skills and on the managers and leaders I’ve encountered throughout my career. I had 18 managers during my corporate career and only six of them would fall into the bad category. And bad is a scale. For me it ranges from bosses who I’d hide from to bosses who were completely harmless but totally ineffective. The rest were great or neutral in terms of their management skills, their ability to lead a team and their interactions with their peers or direct reports.
I've learned from everyone who has managed me. The bad ones, however, left an indelible mark. Along with funny anecdotes I can tell or inside jokes I can share with my former colleagues, I took away tangible skills from those experiences. If it weren’t for these bad bosses, I wouldn’t have honed these essential skills:
Network Building: When you’re working for someone who won’t be your advocate or your coach, it’s important to make connections with other leaders inside or outside your organization. Bad bosses typically don’t leave so it’s up to you to make a move elsewhere. The best way to do that is through networking. I made a point of getting to know people outside of my department and built relationships with my manager’s peers. And I always got to know my boss’ boss. These are all no brainers. Letting others see your skills and get to know you for yourself will give you plenty of opportunity to eventually make a move. Having a network to leverage is important in any work situation, good or bad.
Feedback Seeking: A lot of my interactions with bad bosses were confidence killers. I remember one moment when a manager who’d known me for all of 30 days told me that I didn’t seemed stressed enough at work. To him, that was a bad thing! It meant I wasn’t working hard enough, which was not the case. I had another boss who "no-showed" every single one of our one-on-one meetings and never returned a message or an email from me. Confidence killed! Look for feedback from your bad boss and from others. Get a broad view of how you’re doing and take an introspective look at your own performance. When you’re working in a bad environment it’s easy to let the toxicity of that situation color your view of how you’re doing. Getting feedback and input can help give you a balanced view of how you’re doing and where you can make any necessary adjustments.
Career Management: One common thread I saw with all of my bad bosses is they were out to make their own career marks. They were ambitious and driven. They were all about them, which is an important lesson in work. There are some rare cases where a mentor or an advocate will help usher you along in your career. But most often, you’re on your own. Your boss, especially the bad one, is not going to help you get the next promotion/raise/big project. You have to be your own advocate, ask for what you want and make your own career moves. If you don’t know how to do it, there are so many resources available from blog posts to podcasts to career coaches that will offer practical advice for navigating the chess game that is your career.
Do you have bad boss stories to share? Let’s discuss!
Three Tips for Getting Unstuck
Most of us have found ourselves in the following situation: you’ve got tons to do, the pressure is on and you want to crawl into bed and hide. Whether it’s in your work life or personal life, it’s easy to get stuck and hard to get out of it.
When I see clients or see myself, for that matter, stuck with something I go immediately into discovery mode to figure out how to get moving. What’s interesting with this type of problem solving is you already know what the problem is but the why and how are often unclear. And we like to keep it that way, because staying stuck can be comfortable!
Sometimes, simply working through this mental routine will be enough to get unstuck, sometimes external resources are needed. In either case, these tips will help get you into the mode of forward momentum.
Seek to Understand: The key to getting unstuck is figuring out why you’re stuck in the first place. This is all about self-examination. Are you being lazy? Are you out of your depth? Are you afraid? The next dimension here is to ask yourself whether this is a recurring or one-time issue. The resolutions could be very different depending on that answer. For example, do you always have trouble building PowerPoint presentations, or are you struggling with a specific one? Understanding the why will propel you into figuring out how to get unstuck.
One caution, self-examination can expand quickly, so be sure to stay focused on the immediate problem. If you suddenly find yourself questioning your career choices or your feelings for your boss, take a breath and refocus on the matter at hand. Those larger questions are probably best dealt with through a conversation with a mentor, trusted advisor or therapist.
Plot Your Course: Now that you know why you’re stuck, the solutioning can move very rapidly. You’ve figured out you don’t have PowerPoint skills? Take a class, delegate, or hire a freelancer! You need content for your specific presentation? Go to a subject matter expert for input! Unlocking the underlying concern – the why – will drive you toward the appropriate and tangible solutions. The answers can be very simple and obvious but action without understanding is a recipe for getting stuck again down the road.
Be sure not to over-solution. Having too many fixes in front of you can be paralyzing. Find ones that are easily executable and aligned with your deadlines. The point is to move forward, not bombard yourself with so many options you wind up stuck for different reasons. If that does happen, keep running this routine with some refinement to your solutioning.
Celebrate Yourself: When we’re stuck getting through a problem or a task it’s easy to get down and be our own worst critics. It’s important to look back at past successes or past moments of forward progress to remind ourselves that we CAN get ourselves unstuck. We can do it! If you’ve gotten unstuck before, chances are you can and will do it again. The more we repeat the process the better we will be at it. The more we train ourselves to understand what’s holding us back there’s no telling how far we will go.
Do you have another approach for getting unstuck? Let’s discuss!
What I Learned from My Kid’s Zoom School
As a working parent it’s been difficult for me to be completely tuned in to my son’s school experience. Before COVID19, we outsourced homework and tutoring as much as financially possible and we relied on school as a babysitter of sorts. Obviously that all went out the window with Stay at Home orders and social distancing. Now I juggle the demands of consulting along with the demands of Zoom school, which has been both fun and frustrating.
What I’ve realized is that there’s a lot we working parents can learn a lot from our kids’ virtual school experience. While eavesdropping on middle school classes I found three principles consistently at play in the classroom that should always translate to the conference room.
Eliminate Distractions – my son’s Zoom classes followed these ground rules: no eating, no pets, no toys, no devices. How many meetings do we sit through where colleagues are half paying attention while they scroll on their phones or answer emails on their laptops? This type of multitasking was a no-no in the virtual classroom. Meetings would be much more effective, and faster, if we take away distraction.
Everyone’s Ideas Count – do you remember the kid who always had his or her hand raised in the classroom? Their son or daughter are doing the same thing! In the classes I overheard the teachers made a point of seeking input from the quieter kids. It was important that all voices be heard and that there was a diversity in perspectives and points of view. Next time you run a meeting, try engaging the introverts.
Emotional Intelligence is Essential – I was blown away with the empathy and patience displayed by my son’s teachers. No matter how many times the students asked the same question that had already been answered, the teachers kept their cool. It was a brilliant reminder of how we should treat our coworkers. The way we field questions lobbed at us in our meetings can influence the way our teams interoperate and succeed.
While all of these points are common sense, they are easy to forget when we’re working and operating in the unknown. Lucky for us we have the next generation to remind us of the basics.
What have you observed in the virtual classroom, let’s discuss!
Busy or Bored? Three Tips for Whichever Mode You’re In
In these unprecedented times businesses and employees are challenged with new ways of interoperating, revenue and cash flow instability, personal and world health concerns, job loss, furlough, the list goes on. When I speak to colleagues and friends, with whom I’m checking in more than ever, they seem to fall into two camps – busy or bored. Those in the busy camp are working more than ever, killing themselves to stay necessary/employed and are secretly envious of those in the bored camp. Those on the bored front are struggling to stay productive, desperately wanting to be engaged in something and are tired of hearing the busy people complain about how much work they have on their hands.
While these two groups are stuck at opposite ends of the spectrum they can leverage the same tools and tricks to cope and thrive in their current work environment.
Stay Organized – use whichever tool appeals most to you. I’m a fan of handwritten To Do Lists. I get a lot of satisfaction out of crossing things off. I categorize mine by Work, Personal, Family so I can cover the actual work I do to get paid, the things I want to do for myself and the things I need to do to keep our household running. There’s no shortage of task management apps out there if you’re not a paper person. I’m a fan of Asana and the notes app on my phone.
Prioritize – as someone who lives in the efficiency and productivity space, prioritization is the most basic of concepts but it’s also one that many people struggle with. If you’re among the bored you may want to do everything from finding a job to redoing your closet to attending online learning courses. Those are all great pursuits, but which one requires your immediate attention? The fastest and easiest way to prioritize is to tie your to do’s to your goals and needs and work from there.
Master Your Attitude – when things are not going as expected it’s natural to get negative. Staying in a negative headspace will inevitably take you off track whether your goal is to hold on to your job or pick up your next gig. Doses of positivity and optimism can go a long way to help keep you going through the chaos and the unknown. Even if you naturally skew more on the pessimistic side of things, fake it. Even the slightest lean into the positive can be a key to unlocking what’s next for you.
Questions on incorporating these tips into your day-to-day? Contact me!