Please join Gallman Consulting in wishing Donna Byrd (Director of Placement) a happy day today on her Gallman Consulting Anniversary! With enthusiasm and hard work like yours, success is certain to be achieved! Congratulations on this wonderful achievement.
Thank you Donna for your dedication to Gallman Consulting!
Enjoy your day!
 |
Take Control of Your Day–Before it Takes Control of You!
|
How to Beat Procrastination? Procrastination comes in many disguises. We might resolve to tackle a task, but find endless reasons to defer it. We might prioritize things we can readily tick off our to-do list—answering emails, say—while leaving the big, complex stuff untouched for another day. We can look and feel busy, while artfully avoiding the tasks that really matter. And when we look at those rolling, long-untouched items at the bottom of our to-do list, we can’t help but feel a little disappointed in ourselves.
The problem is our brains are programmed to procrastinate. In general, we all tend to struggle with tasks that promise future upside in return for efforts we take now. That’s because it’s easier for our brains to process concrete rather than abstract things, and the immediate hassle is very tangible compared with those unknowable, uncertain future benefits. So the short-term effort easily dominates the long-term upside in our minds—an example of something that behavioral scientists call present bias.
How can you become less myopic about your elusive tasks? It’s all about rebalancing the cost-benefit analysis: make the benefits of action feel bigger, and the costs of action feel smaller. The reward for doing a pestering task needs to feel larger than the immediate pain of tackling it.
To make the benefits of action feel bigger and more real:
Visualize how great it will be to get it done. Researchers have discovered that people are more likely to save for their future retirement if they’re shown digitally aged photographs of themselves. Why? Because it makes their future self feel more real—making the future benefits of saving also feel more weighty. When we apply a lo-fi version of this technique to any task we’ve been avoiding, by taking a moment to paint ourselves a vivid mental picture of the benefits of getting it done, it can sometimes be just enough to get us unstuck. So if there’s a call you’re avoiding or an email you’re putting off, give your brain a helping hand by imagining the virtuous sense of satisfaction you’ll have once it’s done—and perhaps also the look of relief on someone’s face as they get from you what they needed.
Pre-commit, publicly. Telling people that we’re going to get something done can powerfully amplify the appeal of actually taking action, because our brain’s reward system is so highly responsive to our social standing. Research has found that it matters greatly to us whether we’re respected by others—even by strangers. Most of us don’t want to look foolish or lazy to other people. So by daring to say “I’ll send you the report by the end of the day” we add social benefits to following through on our promise—which can be just enough to nudge us to bite the bullet.
Confront the downside of inaction. Research has found that we’re strangely averse to properly evaluating the status quo. While we might weigh the pros and cons of doing something new, we far less often consider the pros and cons of not doing that thing. Known as omission bias, this often leads us to ignore some obvious benefits of getting stuff done. Suppose you’re repeatedly putting off the preparation you need to do for an upcoming meeting. You’re tempted by more exciting tasks, so you tell yourself you can do it tomorrow (or the day after). But force yourself to think about the downside of putting it off, and you realize that tomorrow will be too late to get hold of the input you really need from colleagues. If you get moving now, you have half a chance of reaching them in time—so finally, your gears creak into action.
To make the costs of action feel smaller:
Identify the first step. Sometimes we’re just daunted by the task we’re avoiding. We might have “learn French” on our to-do list, but who can slot that into the average afternoon? The trick here is to break down big, amorphous tasks into baby steps that don’t feel as effortful. Even better: identify the very smallest first step, something that’s so easy that even your present-biased brain can see that the benefits outweigh the costs of effort. So instead of “learn French” you might decide to “email Nicole to ask advice on learning French.” Achieve that small goal, and you’ll feel more motivated to take the next small step than if you’d continued to beat yourself up about your lack of language skills.
Tie the first step to a treat. We can make the cost of effort feel even smaller if we link that small step to something we’re actually looking forward to doing. In other words, tie the task that we’re avoiding to something that we’re not avoiding. For example, you might allow yourself to read lowbrow magazines or books when you’re at the gym, because the guilty pleasure helps dilute your brain’s perception of the short-term “cost” of exercising. Likewise, you might muster the self-discipline to complete a slippery task if you promise yourself you’ll do it in a nice café with a favorite drink in hand.
Remove the hidden blockage. Sometimes we find ourselves returning to a task repeatedly, still unwilling to take the first step. We hear a little voice in our head saying, “Yeah, good idea, but . . . no.” At this point, we need to ask that voice some questions, to figure out what’s really making it unappealing to take action. This doesn’t necessarily require psychotherapy. Patiently ask yourself a few “why” questions—“why does it feel tough to do this?” and “why’s that?”—and the blockage can surface quite quickly. Often, the issue is that a perfectly noble competing commitment is undermining your motivation. For example, suppose you were finding it hard to stick to an early morning goal-setting routine. A few “whys” might highlight that the challenge stems from your equally strong desire to eat breakfast with your family. Once you’ve made that conflict more explicit, it’s far more likely you’ll find a way to overcome it—perhaps by setting your daily goals the night before, or on your commute into work.
So the next time you find yourself mystified by your inability to get important tasks done, be kind to yourself. Recognize that your brain needs help if it’s going to be less short-sighted. Try taking at least one step to make the benefits of action loom larger, and one to make the costs of action feel smaller. Your languishing to-do list will thank you.
Caroline Webb is the author of How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life. She is also CEO of coaching firm Sevenshift, and a Senior Adviser to McKinsey & Company. Follow her on Twitter @caroline_webb_, Facebook, or Google +.
By Lloyd J. Thomas, Ph.D.
Comparing ourselves to others is a very powerful mental affliction.
When we are children, we compare ourselves to others as a way of discovering “who I am,” using others as references. However, as adults, when we compare ourselves to others, it is usually to evaluate ourselves as “worse than” or “better than” or “equal to” other people.
When we measure ourselves against others, it causes us psychological harm.
Many people spend considerable mental time trying to decide, through comparison with others, who they are, what is important or valuable about themselves, whether or not they are happy. That orientation and reactivity to others, all by itself, is undermining their happiness.
Making comparisons can never bring us to a peaceful state of mind, because there is never an end to the possibilities for comparison.
For example, you may be sitting across from another person at a social gathering. You evaluate him as “quite attractive.” He is articulate.
So your first comparative thought becomes, “I’m not as good-looking as he is and he is more intelligent than I am.” Your discomfort increases. You may even feel anxious and desire to leave. Then you may notice someone who is slovenly dressed and unkempt. Perhaps she is struggling to find the words to express herself. Thinking comparatively, you say to yourself, “Oh, good, I feel more comfortable because I am obviously better looking and more intelligent than that one.” Having reassured yourself that you are better than at least one in the group, your anxiety may diminish.
When we compare ourselves to others, there is always the tendency to evaluate ourselves on the more negative side of the comparison. This reinforces our own self-doubt, our own negative self-image, and perhaps our own self-criticism. When we conclude ourselves to be less significant than others, we behave in ways which invite others to treat us accordingly.
When we compare ourselves to others, the psychological game that is played is called, “Top-Dog, Under-Dog.” We define in our heads who is on top and who is beneath. When playing this game, competition is the underlying dynamic. We compete in our heads with others. When we are enmeshed in mentally competitive relationships, we tend to ignore ourselves, and only define who we are in reaction to others. Our uniqueness is ignored, self-knowledge diminished, and personal experience lost.
When we are in competition with others, there are no winners. In a competitive battle, the winners and losers both lose. The defeated lose their sense of power, lose their self-esteem. When the battle is a war, the defeated often lose their freedom, property, families, and often their own lives.
The victorious lose any love, respect, or good will the defeated may have had. Winners of a war are left with the hatred, fear, or envy of those who have been overcome. Last year’s victors in a championship game become the targets of other teams’ heightened efforts to avenge themselves, or seek more strenuously to defeat them. In the cycle of revenge, it is just a matter of time until the situation turns, and those who have been winners become losers.
When the battle is an inner one, over who is inherently better or worse, who is happier or more deserving, we set ourselves up to lose…lose peace of mind, contentment, or any kind of happiness.
The antidote to the poison of comparing lies in turning our attention within and realizing that we deserve to have our needs met.
We deserve to be happy and fulfilled. We identify our skills at creating a lifestyle based upon our own preferences, our own uniqueness and our own worthiness.
As we grow in confidence in our own ability to create happiness within, we are then able to take delight in the happiness of others, instead of feeling threatened by it through comparison. When we take full responsibility for our own happiness and fulfillment, rather than looking to others to provide it, we no longer need to compare.
Develop the thinking habits oriented to realistic assessment of personal traits, and cherishing those traits and you heal from the affliction of comparative thinking.
About the Author: Lloyd J. Thomas, Ph.D. is a Life Coach and a licensed psychologist. He has been in independent practice since 1981, specializing in personal and professional coaching and behavioral medicine. For the past 28 years he has written a weekly newspaper column, “Practical Psychology,” (now called “Practical Life Coaching”) which appears in several newspapers. He recently completed co-authoring book, “Total Life Coaching: 50+ Life Lessons, Skills and Techniques to Enhance Your Practice…and Your Life” (W.W. Norton — Jan. 2005) For two years he wrote a “Life Coaching” column for The Coloradoan newspaper. He is a graduate of Coach University and his professional skills include: relationship coaching, student-development, executive mentoring; personal/corporate transformational change; preventative healthcare education; management/leadership training; achievement/success coaching, and teaching adults how they learn and how to create their desired personal and organizational outcomes. Most recently, he has completed a program, “Coaching Life Lessons” for professional coaches and clients to become facile at creating their desired outcomes.
Find yourself getting sucked into your work? Here’s how to climb back out and stay grounded.
I catch tunnel vision like a virus, and it always has the same symptoms. I know it’s happening when I feel fatigued and disinterested. I begin to withdraw from important side projects and my social life, and despite the fact that I’m completely focused on one thing, I’m more susceptible to being blindsided by others that I should’ve seen coming.
Maybe it happens to you, too. Maybe, like me, you’re great at multitasking some of the time but find yourself swallowed whole by big projects and challenges other times—and then struggle to claw your way back out. I have to admit that I’ve actually made myself vulnerable to tunnel vision. I now run four companies, host a YouTube show, and serve as an administrator for a few entrepreneurs’ groups. Lots of things compete for my attention, and any one of them can lock me out of the others if I let them.
Here’s how I’ve learned to avoid giving in to all-consuming work at the expense of everything else.
There’s more than one effective way to organize your schedule and track your goals. While I use many of the same apps that most entrepreneurs do, like Todoist and Evernote, sometimes you have to go a little old fashioned. Goals easily get lost when you need to swipe through screens or shuffle through Chrome tabs just to remind yourself what they are. That’s why I keep my all of my most important goals on a giant whiteboard that dominates a wall in my office.
You may not have access to a whiteboard that’s big enough to take up a huge chunk of your workspace, but you can achieve the same effect with big piece of paper and a marker. Whatever you do, scrap the tiny sticky notes and pocket-size notepad—those won’t grab your attention the way you need them to. Just make a large hard copy and put it right where you can’t ever ignore it. I like to keep mine just past my monitor, so that every time I look up from my screen, my goals are glaring right at me.
There’s something to be said for the tactile feeling of crossing something out on a hard surface versus tapping a screen. There’s also something to be said for listing goals in imposing, foot-tall letters that you can’t help but see constantly.
When your immediate goals are impossible to overlook and you’re confronted with success or stagnation every time you look up, your goals are more likely to be compressed into a diamond in your mind that can’t be easily dislodged.
Getting fixated on a big project for too long can lead to burnout, which is why I’ve made sure that my goals include everything I want from life, not just the things I want in my career.
So remember to include experiences, pleasures, and things you find personally meaningful—not just achievements that will push your career forward or help your business grow. Reading certain books, visiting certain places, and sharing certain experiences with loved ones are all equally valid goals that can help you stay grounded and avoid tunnel vision when the pressure starts to build.
Keep in mind, too, that not all your goals have the power to make you happy. Some objectives are business necessities, others are personal necessities—sometimes they overlap, but not always. Make sure the goals that actually make you happy make it toward the top of your list, this way you can actually invest the same time and focus in them that you pour into your other major undertakings.
I’m a pretty competitive guy, and I know what stings the most for me: someone else knowing I’ve failed. That’s why I force myself to share my toughest goals with friends and colleagues. When a deadline passes and I know that they’re aware of it, I’m more determined not to let myself fail.
You may find different ways to keep yourself motivated and accountable, but if you like this approach your mentors should be your first stop. There’s no one better to judge you and hold you to your intentions than the people you’ve chosen to look up to, right?
Sometimes, though, I’ve found it works even better to share my goals with people who are more like “frenemies”—people I talk to and respect but still compete with in business. By playing into my competitive streak, I can remember to lift my head up from my own work now and then and refocus on the big picture.
Remember that whiteboard I mentioned that “consumes” my office? That’s because my office is tiny by deliberate design. I’m a chaotic worker, and I need to force myself into a situation where I simply can’t use my workspace if I don’t make the effort to file everything where it belongs.
This routine forces me to break out of whatever intense focus I might’ve sunk into over the course of a day—to look up, take stock of things, see how far I’ve come, and get everything back in order before diving in again. It’s a great, regular “reset” button for tunnel vision.
It usually costs, at most, $15 to change your point of view: That’s more or less what a book costs. It may sound silly just to be reminded to read, but professionals prone to tunnel vision tend to banish all other activities and pastimes in order to devote their full focus to their work. And that can be a mistake.
I’ve forced myself to read at least one book each month, and by turning that into a regular habit—as opposed to an occasional thing I need to make an effort to do every now and then—and it’s influenced my work and goals and has helped keep me grounded.
The best way out of tunnel vision is to expand your perspective. But you need to build excuses into your daily routine to actually do that regularly, and simply reading about others’ experiences can help you. It takes practice, though. Fighting tunnel vision requires constant vigilance. All the more reason to start right now.
Adam Steele is a builder of things, including Internet marketing agency The Magistrate and outsourcing solution Loganix, among others. He is a member of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs.
There is huge pressure on you, the manager, to be a great boss, one who motivates and inspires people not only to stay in the company, but also to do their best every day. Employees place enormous value on their relationship with you. People place “a bad boss” as the No. 1 reason for leaving a job.
First, relax: know that great bosses are not born, they’re made. Most people end up in a management position because they did a good job in a subordinate role, not because they possessed some innate and undeniable leadership quality. If you practice your skills, and seek to follow these seven rules, you will be well on your way to being one of the best.
The book “How to Be a Great Boss” will help you acquire and use the seven hallmark qualities outlined below that all great bosses have.
Employees perform best when empowered and trusted to do well in their jobs. Think back to the times you felt most inspired to do your best. Chances are it was when you were trusted with real responsibility. To be set up for success, your people will need more than just a project handed to them. Make sure they can positively answer all the following questions. If not, you have more work to do.
Key questions for empowered success
|
Provide the kinds of opportunities that will really grow the talent on your team. Training is one thing — and often necessary — but growth is more than just learning how to do new tasks. Ask yourself how your employees can really grow their potential — should you challenge to provide creative solutions? Offer coaching? Encourage them to take the lead? Great bosses know how to develop talent, in addition to skill.
Workplace surveys show time and again that what employees crave is continuous feedback. As a manager, you know that it’s easy to put off giving constructive criticism, but feedback is really only effective in the moment. Always follow the rule: praise in public, critique in private.
Sometimes, the job of a great boss means more than just managing. Sometimes, it means letting someone go. Low-performance employees drag down the productivity of the company and undermine the morale of those around them. Hopefully, you can often turn a situation around before it comes to firing, but if, in the end, you have to let someone go, be empathetic, and treat the person firmly but kindly. Keep it brief but respectful, and know that however hard the choice is, you’re doing the right thing for your team and your company.
Great bosses make gratitude a habit. Often, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the work and forget the simple act of saying “thank you” for a nagging problem solved, a point well communicated, or a job well done. Don’t forget to make it public when appropriate (praise in public, critique in private) and make it specific. Thanks for a task done well is far more meaningful than a generic thanks for hard work. Make sure to brag about your team farther up the chain, too.
Work doesn’t have to be a grind. The best workplaces do everything they can to make coming to work a positive, uplifting experience. Make yourself available and really try to engage with your employees — the simple question “How can I make your job easier?” is a powerful way to start a great conversation. Let them know you’ve got their back when they need your help or advice.
Your job is to show your people the world. We each tend to view corporate decisions through the lens of how they will affect us and our jobs. As a manager, you likely have a larger view of the big picture. Some info will be confidential or sensitive, of course, but whenever appropriate be sure to bring that vision to your employees and help them to understand.
No one is born a naturally great manager; with dedication, you can make these skills an innate part of the way you interact with others. What habits have you already brought into your daily life? What skills do you find the hardest to practice?
Joel Garfinkle is the author of nine books, including “How To Be a Great Boss” and “Getting Ahead: Three Steps to Take Your Career to the Next Level.” He is recognized as one of the top 50 coaches in the U.S., having worked with many of the world’s leading companies, including Oracle, Google, Amazon, Deloitte, The Ritz-Carlton, Gap and Starbucks. As an executive coach, he recently worked with an SVP whose strategic responsibility increased dramatically and forced him to empower, delegate and increase the responsibility of his team. Sign up to his Fulfillment@Work newsletter (10,000+ subscribes) and you’ll receive the free e-book “41 Proven Strategies to Get Promoted Now!”
If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s e-mail list for our daily newsletter on being a better, smarter leader.
Karen (SHRM-CP, PHR, CSP) is the HR/Risk Manager at GPS Corporate!
