Month: October 2021

I grew up not having a lot, but I didn’t really know it, since I had what I needed.  It’s funny that you don’t realize this until you get into adolescence. Then you notice that the norm is to conform to the cool kid style and standards.  Some teens rocked their unique originality; I did not.  I just wanted to blend.  And blending required stuff.  My clothes were a combination of hand-me-downs from a cousin and whatever was on sale at Sears.  I longed for a pair of GAP jeans, Reebok sneakers, and Columbia jacket.  All items I bought when I had my first job.      

And I kept buying stuff.  I filled my closet, my home, and my garage with more and more stuff.  Some of it is useful, while other items are there just because I liked it at the moment.  Back in 2016, I went through a MASSIVE decluttering effort.   I’m talking whole house top to bottom.  I had a list of every drawer, closet, and corner that needed to be tackled, and used a Kanban board to track the sub-tasks that come with a decluttering of that size like posting items on Buy Nothing, delivering items to the local shelter, and Goodwill drop offs.   

The psychological impact of letting go did not feel like cupcakes and unicorns.  It felt like a battle.  All those negative soundtracks running through my head with each item. 

“remember how long you saved for this?” 

“that was a gift, how could you get rid of it?” 

“no one else can wear that, why don’t you just wear it around the house?” 

“what if you gain weight and need your post-baby clothes again?” 

“the kids might want to play with that thing later, why don’t you hold onto it?” 

“you should keep that and sell it when you have time, it was expensive!” 

And the worst of all… 

“you might need this someday!” 

Thankfully, I had other soundtracks that I could use to overpower them.   

“I’m done having kids, so I don’t need this anymore” 

“Gifting this item will help someone” 

“If I need one someday, I have a good job and can buy one” 

“Keeping things I don’t use or don’t need is selfish, and I am a generous person” 

“Styles will change, so I buy clothes I love, and wear them until they no longer work for me” 

And of course Marie Kondo’s famous question…  

“does this spark joy?” Not really. 

Only after going through this effort did I realize we do the exact same thing with our schedules.  We offer up our schedules to our co-workers to book any time they want.  We say yes to every meeting, every dinner, every conference. We answer e-mails at all hours, even on vacations.  Why? Maybe we want to help others accomplish their goals.

OR perhaps, we’re afraid.

We fear not fitting in. We fear letting others down. We fear we’ll be perceived as lazy, uncommitted, or a poor performer. We fear our projects will fail. And then we’ll loose our jobs, and disappoint our families, and run out of money, and…   

Fear is heavy. It weighs us down, just like excess stuff.

Fellow high-achiever, it’s time to go to battle for less.  Less wasted time, less back to back meetings, less late nights, less missed meals, less fake urgency, less working vacations.

There’s a difference between working hard and working always. I hope in your journey towards a better work week, you can identify the tasks and practices that aren’t serving you and get rid of them, just like that sweater with the hole in the sleeve.

We each start our day with good intentions.  We want to get things done, help people, and make progress toward our big goals.  To do this, most of us depend on other people for information, collaboration, and approval.  We can either do this work synchronously or asynchronously.  Our number one tool for working synchronously is the meeting – which can be in-person, via video, or via phone.  Regardless of environment, synchronous work requires us to align our schedules and be present with each other at the same time. 

But what about asynchronous work?  This is everything that we pass back and forth between co-workers on our own time schedule and thanks to the laptop, we can do this from anywhere. This type of work ranges from shared document editing, presentation creation, to Teams or Slack message responses. This is also e-mail.    Yet with e-mail, we treat our inbox as a work management system instead of the asynchronous collaboration tool that it is.

Why do we open our inboxes in the morning and leave them there onscreen all day?

1) Our calendar is usually a part of the same program and we need to have that close at hand.

2) We want to be seen as responsive and answer incoming messages as they roll in.

3) And if we’re really being honest, we like that we can feel productive during boring meetings as we scroll, read, and reply instead of being fully engaged.

Each time we click over to our e-mail program, we get a little hit of dopamine when we see there’s something new to read. And for these reasons, we begin our work days with e-mail.

Sidebar – I’m not here to rail against this.  Given the total amount of hours in your day you are devoting to this specific tool, to tell you to go cold turkey and not to look at it at the start of your day is not going to give you the productivity boost you’re seeking.

So instead of spending all your precious morning minutes deep in the inbox, think of your first visit to the inbox as a process sprint.

It’s like making your bed. 

• Is this the best use of your time in the morning?  Probably not.
• Could you be doing something more productive?  Sure.
• Does the daily habit of an initial accomplishment give you fuel for the day?  Yes, it can! 

Doing an e-mail processing sprint in the morning can be the “clear the cobwebs” accomplishment you need first thing in the AM.  It can build momentum.  It can alert you to urgent matters that may need your attention ahead of what you had planned for the day.  But it shouldn’t be home base!

Imagine after making your bed, you just stayed in your room straightening things up, folding laundry, smoothing the sheets, dusting the dressers, grabbing empty hangers out of the closet.  Wait WHAT?  That sounds bananas.  No, you’ve got to get to work!  Once the bed is made, we move on.  Same goes for our inbox, once you’ve processed it, move on! 

I know it feels like we’re doing stuff as the window sits open while you keep reading, you delete, you reply, you reread what you read yesterday hoping for someone else to reply first.  Regardless of the amount of time you spend “doing e-mail”, it’s a false measure of productivity.  It’s a tool and not your job.  So finish the slide deck and hit send.  Schedule the meeting that’s been on your to-do list, create the draft and circulate for feedback.  Progress will happen, but only when you use your tools correctly.

Need some concreate tips for how to do this?  Start with these 4 actions taken from my course on E-mail Minimalism:

1. Touch it once – every e-mail your read, your mind actually solved for the next action, so why not take it?  Not enough time now?  Then schedule it.
2. Batch process – plan 3-4 times a day when you’re going to process your e-mail.  This isn’t scanning for sharks, it’s processing. Do it, delete it, delegate it, defer it, reply.  The goal is not zero, the goal is to uncover the urgent and important that gets stuck underneath the unimportant. If you’re taking action on the important, the unimportant will naturally sink to the bottom, where you can choose to tackle them on your next transcon flight.
3. Use your schedule to set your priorities – not your inbox.
4. Skip the complex folder system – it you need or want to keep something, put in in ONE folder.

While it feels like there’s plenty out of our control these days, how you engage with your work tools is one area you have complete control over. Let your inbox help you, remember that it’s an asynchronous tool, but don’t let it dominate your work day.

Not a day goes by that I don’t read a headline about how to retain your employees, the Great Resignation, and why everyone is quitting.  During the pandemic, our buttons and our limits were pushed.  I found myself with some bad days, and even declared personal quit days myself as I stomped/walked around the back yard in the tall wet grass after work. 

What’s a personal quit day? 

Well, you don’t actually resign, you just tell yourself, the cat, or a friend who will listen that today was rough and made you want to quit.   I’d rehire myself by morning, of course, with a fresh start and full coffee cup, I’d be determined to make the next day better.

Before the pandemic, I had very few of these quit days, where the day would end and I’d wish I didn’t have to go back.  I recall less than a handful in my professional career.  Then COVID hit, we all went home, worked longer and harder to save our businesses, and were pushed to our emotional extremes at home, and at work.  We’d experience good days, meh-days, and full on personal quit days.

With enough of these days, you begin to wonder if a move is the solution.  For some, it is, and way to go if you are one of those professionals who left and found a better place to earn your paycheck. 

But for others, it’s not a move you need, but a fresh lens. 

Perhaps you end up talking to a group of students, or a new acquaintance about what you do, and it lights your fire once again about why you love your job.  Or maybe it’s a genuine compliment from a  from your boss, your team sending you a coffee, or a colleague offering to review your power point deck when the stakes are high and time is short.  Whatever it is, it gives you the boost you need to keep going.

So as I look toward the last quarter of the year, I’m flipping the quit day script by starting 30 day gratitude challenge now instead of waiting for #grateful #blessed to be in style again.     Each day I’m committed to declaring 1 reason why I love my day job. 

Why do I call it a day job? 

We all have multiple roles in life: mom, dad, brother, sister, dog walker, cat feeder, caregiver, husband, wife, best friend, etc.  I’m focusing on the job we have where we spend 40+ hours trading our skills, knowledge, and results for a paycheck. 

You want in?  Join me over on Instagram @Abetter40withAmber and let me know why you love your day job.