Stanford has a BeWell program here that tries to build healthy physical and emotional behaviors among staff. A huge focus for their efforts is around mindfulness to reduce stress and increase clarity. In fact, I just attended a stress workshop this week around being more present. The facilitator defined stress whenever our minds are out of our body – when we’re doing one thing and thinking about the next task at hand.

The Chronicle of Higher Education had an excellent long article today called, You’re Distracted. This Professor Can Help. I was pretty blown away in the first place by his approach. Many instructors have banned laptops in the classroom as a way to combat the distracted nature students bring into the lecture hall. Instead of removing the temptation, Professor David Levy actually teaches students how to build focus through meditation at the beginning of each class.

I’m not a meditator myself (but I’d like to be). This goes beyond the actual practice of meditation and brings up the idea of a ritual to get yourself focused on the work ahead of you. How to you start your morning? If you are good and don’t let e-mail run your day from the get go, what is that gets you “in the mood” for big thinking around work projects?

I schedule out time for projects, which maybe works for me about half the time (I work in a place with many interruptions). Others might put on headphones to block out the world. I know some colleagues that remove themselves from their cube and work in a conference room to plow through work that needs to be interrupted. If you don’t have a work ritual for big work, it’s probably worth thinking of good strategies that might work for you.

I don’t think everyone should be amazing, since we all come to work each day with different perspectives about what that 40 or more hours means to each of us. That said, a recent post in Inc. on the 10 Things Really Amazing Employees Do got me thinking about the subject.  I like their list and there are 4 standouts for me that I try to exhibit:

• Enthusiastically Learn All Aspects of Business
• Demonstrate High Standards, With Low Maintenance
• Grow Themselves, and Others
• Stimulate Happiness

Learn it All. When you show up to work, putting in the time is a given, and striving to learn more about the current context and future direction of your industry is very important. For my job in particular, this means staying attuned to what’s happening at Stanford across the board from the student experience, major sports, university priorities and understanding my primary audience, faculty and their world. I regularly read university publications, look for Stanford in the news beyond, pore through every set of Faculty Senate notes and stay current with the makeup of the student and faculty bodies. Beyond Stanford, checking in with colleagues at other Ivy Plus institutions and keeping tabs on the latest in content and online learning is incredibly important. Knowing this background helps inform my work and honestly, it keeps me energized and full of purpose.

High Standards, Low Maintenance. I have incredibly high standards and find myself having to dial it back and pick and choose my battles. In managing staff, it’s very important to hope for the best and motivate others to maintain a similarly high level of excellence so you don’t have to micromanage their efforts. Despite the high standards, the low maintenance part is key. How many times have you been a part of a project where you aren’t the most senior person related to the decision – you do a huge amount of work and it can be derailed when it’s brought to decision makers? For those with certain expectations, especially leaders and decision makers, it’s paramount to articulate must haves from the get go so that others can be on the same page, or build in check-ins before others have gone down the wrong path.

Grow! It’s an expectation in management-level positions to grow others around you, but I’ve found it’s one of my favorite things about work. This doesn’t even have to be a formal mentor relationship, but taking the time to get advice from senior-level staff or peers can be invaluable. Asking for feedback in tough situations can only help your job to better, and let’s face it, people love to be asked for these kinds of things. Don’t devalue the impact of little things, like providing feedback to peers, or just being a listening ear when a colleague needs to vent or work through a difficult situation. Regular readers know from my blog that I am a voracious consumer of all things learning. The more professional and personal development you can do from productivity to technical skills to exercise/nutrition will all make you a better and happier person.

Exude Happiness. We work more than we sleep, more than we spend time with our loved ones…more than anything. In some ways, that means that work is life. I don’t say this in a negative way at all, but when you do the math around your day and factor in your commute, it’s a lot of time. You are valuable and you should enjoy what you do and why you’re doing it. If not, find something else. We all have some level of agency in choosing our careers, so find something you love and show up with a smile and ready to connect with colleagues and tackle projects. This isn’t only important for really amazing employees, but for everyone.

The Chronicle of Higher Education posted a great opinion piece last month, Radical Academic Advice: Think Before Hitting “Reply All.” When it’s not the best method, this happens to be one of my office pet peeves. I mean, didn’t we all learn from #replyallcalypse last year?

Some tips I would offer up, especially in this age where we deal with hundreds of e-mails a day:

• Are you actually trying to make a decision using reply all over e-mail? If so, do you think this is the most effective method?
• If you don’t want people to reply all, explicitly mention that s/he should only reply to you.
• If you simply want to notify someone, BCC instead.
• Do you want feedback from everyone on the e-mail? Sometimes I’m copied on e-mails asking if anyone sees errors and it’s unclear if you should reply if it’s approved. It can be more effective to send to 8 people and add something like, “If you have any changes, please send them to so-and-so by March 8 at noon, or otherwise, I’ll consider this copy final.”

I’m not sure that there’s a way to stop the madness of replying all. I am on a small listserv for a staff organization board of about 30 or so people. I noticed that in asking for RSVPs, everyone was constantly replying all. One e-mail was sent and I would suddenly have 15 pointless e-mails in my inbox. Instead of hitting delete, I first contacted the list administrator to see if that was the listserv setting. It turns out that wasn’t the problem, and I simply sent a polite e-mail to all asking folks to only reply to the sender. The behavior immediately stopped and hasn’t started up again, which was a huge success in my book. It was just a bad habit that people weren’t thinking about.

And I’ll leave you all with that note for all work matters in general. Working smart is about promoting best practices across the workplace, and a big part of that is providing feedback when a collective behavior isn’t working. Seize the day and take the time to make the workplace better for everyone!

We’re launching a new program here at the Alumni Association, so the work environment has been pretty hairy of late, hence, no posts in two months.

I finally took the time out to watch a less than 10 minute video about taking 10 mindful minutes. It’s amusing how it sometimes we can put off something that takes so little time. I think it’s been an open tab in my Chrome browser for about two weeks now, and I decided to carve out part of my lunch break for it today.

Andy Puddicombe: All it takes is 10 mindful minutes

I’ve been seeking a good meditation class recently, since I have been thinking a lot about the idea of being fully present in my daily life. His juggling analogies help visualize the kind of order that level of concentration can bring to the mind.

Smart phones have taken over our lives. I recognize it on a daily basis and when I came across Please Stow All Electronic Devices in The Chronicle of Higher Education, I knew this was going to be the subject of my next blog post.

It’s common to see couples on a date at a restaurant staring at their phones instead of each other…on vacation and at performances, the audience is more concerned with documenting their experience than actually experiencing it, and this behavior carries into the workplace. Especially if I’m in a meeting with five or more people, chances are that someone is on their laptop or phone, as opposed to paying attention to the meeting. It wastes everyone else’s time in that room.

What all of this means for humanity is that feeling focused and present is harder than ever these days. For the holiday season, give yourself the gift of increased presence in your life. Pay attention to what’s happening around you, as opposed to focusing on the next thing ahead.

Yoga helps me with continued practice, since instructors consistently bring you back to breathing and focused on what’s happening on the mat.

Currently, I’m reading Kelly McGonigal’s book, The Willpower Instinct. Although she concentrates on how to cultivate willpower in your life, she spends a chapter on dopamine and the promise of reward, which I found fascinating.

In this chapter, she chronicles how we spend more time on the promise of happiness instead of the direct experience of happiness. We’d rather play the lottery instead of getting a sure amount of money; we’ll eat fatty and sugary foods that make us feel bad later, we’re always on Facebook checking updates – even when we’re currently with a group of friends and we respond to buy-one-get-one sales even when we don’t really want what we’re buying. Instead of being present, we’re focused on that feeling of trying to attain something greater. This ultimately means we feel unsatisfied.

McGonigal offers several exercises to help us figure out what does actually make us happy, and in her book, states, ”according to the American Psychological Association, the most effective stress-relief strategies are exercising or playing sports, praying or attending a religious service, reading, listening to music, spending time with friends or family, getting a massage, going outside for a walk, meditating or doing yoga, and spending time with a creative hobby.”

I offer up her advice in helping us all get re-centered and focused on what matters to us most in life – ultimately, that’s what the holidays are really all about. When we are fully present with one other, everyone benefits from the attention.

What better time than elections to focus on what kind of agency we all have in our lives. More and more it seems like everyone feels inundated with work and overwhelmed by all of the details that go into living our daily lives. On some level, I think this is true. On another level, it’s a mix of first world problems and the inability to gain perspective about how much control we actually have over our own existence. We all make choices and those decisions lead into what makes our days what they are. I urge you all to recognize that you have power over your life and you can make changes…pretty easily, actually.

It starts with saying no to some things. Just take quick stock of some of the regular time sucks in your life that you aren’t getting rewards from and figure out a solution to getting your time back. I recently came across a short piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education on Saying Goodbye to What’s No Longer Working, even when it seems like a fun or regular thing.  As my job has moved over to alumni education responsibilities, I felt this anxiety about how some of my previous duties don’t really have coverage at this moment while we’re staffing up. When I decided to just stop attending those meetings, it was a relief. Although someone will need to make sure those areas get covered, ultimately, it’s not my responsibility, and letting go of that weight on my shoulders felt like a relief.

It’s not really fun to say no, but often it’s necessary. Your time is valuable and so are you!

It feels amazing to say yes. I love being able to help out co-workers and now that I’ve been here for awhile, many colleagues across the university still reach out to me as a resource or for advice on various things. Although this can be seen as a burden or time suck, I carve out time for it, because it feels like such a reward to me.

Check out The Huffington Posts’s piece on Be Loved: How to Get More Love in Your Life. The short synopsis is to do the following to get more love coming your way:

• Sleep!
• Stay inspired and creative
• Find calmness in yourself
• Let go and indulge in play

I think these suggestions ring pretty true. I’m hit or miss on the sleep part. I definitely stay inspired and creative. I feed my brain by reading so many books and always keep the arts in my life with dance performances and museums. Yoga helps with the calmness. Yesterday, my instructor and friend noted that it’s simple to find calmness in a dark room, wearing comfortable clothes on a mat, but we should stretch to bring that regularly into our day. And I could probably play more…who couldn’t?

I’ll leave you on that note and hope you take some time to empower yourself with agency in your life. If you’re not feeling fulfilled, make some changes!

As I’m fitting in a ton of work sandwiched between the end of  Reunion Homecoming at Stanford, hiring a new employee and getting ready to head out on vacation in less than 48 hours, I thought sleep was an appropriate topic for my next post. I’m actually living in an overworked household, with my partner on call for servers or fixing bugs late into the night.

Although we’re both smart people that understand 7-9 hours of sleep a night make you happier, more productive, focused and energized throughout the day, it can be a difficult behavior to reinforce.

I took a sleep webinar class through Stanford in the spring, and one of the activities we had to do was keep a log each day:

• how many hours of sleep
• how many times did you wake up at night?
• when did you take your our last caffeinated drink?
• how late are you exercising?
• what else are you doing in bed aside from sleeping (reading, phone, etc)?
• how well rested do you feel on a scale of 1-10?

Napping is also highly important; some days, you just need it. Reunion Homecoming was tough for me this year since I was coming off of a cold and pretty tired in general. On my busiest day, I had a break in the middle of the afternoon and laid down for about 17 minutes. I can’t tell you how rejuvenating it was to get some guiltless shuteye! Take one yourself and check out some more tips on The Science of a Perfect Nap from Lifehacker.

This blog is a long time coming, as I’ve been in the weeds at work. If you find yourself visiting this page to see if I’ve written something new, did you know you can subscribe to e-mail updates when there’s a new post? Just enter your e-mail address on the right hand side.

Last month, I saw this great piece in Forbes, reminding me that you can’t get anything done alone in the workplace. It’s all about finding the right people to help you stay motivated, happy and successful in your job.

This photo represents the instigator. That’s the person I strive to be, as it’s more aspirational and forward-thinking. For most people, I probably fall into the category as the taskmaster, since I manage so many projects around the Alumni Association.

I think it’s an interesting exercise to go through the list and  first consider how your co-workers might see you, especially looking at how that relates to who you think you represent in the office. Beyond that, go through the list and see if you have your bases covered for these office advocates.

• Instigator
• Cheerleader
• Doubter
• Taskmaster
• Connector
• Example

For myself, I think I’m missing a good connector in my work life. Anyone want to volunteer to help me out? Otherwise, I feel like I have a strong base of people that keep me energized and focused around here.

I have 2 more days in the office until I’m on vacation. 4 days off and 6 days of fun in total.

I’m glad before I left, this article on Vacation Sabotage got my attention with the line, “Before I go on vacation, even for a week, I prepare as though I’m headed to the coroner. I empty the in-box, clean the piles on the desk, put away all the laundry, dust.” Matt Richtel notes that we arm ourselves for vacation as if we’re preparing to die.

Of course, this is an exaggeration, but I’ve always found that the language co-workers use around vacation is a bit troubling. You hear about how stressed the week beforehand is as the person gets her affairs in order. The week of it, there’s talk about checking e-mail and the mounting load of work. Upon return, more than the memories of the trip, it’s all about the 100s of e-mails to pore through.

Why do we allow ourselves to get into this mental trap? I certainly argue that’s what it is. I like how this article identifies that we do it to ourselves. When you’re gone for 3 days, it’s not such a big deal, but adding a couple more seems to change that for some reason. I think the magical thing about vacation is when you return, processing e-mail is 10x faster than normal. Many requests have already been handled by colleagues and others are just pointless or past relevance.

So starting Saturday during my time off, I’ll take my own advice and truly get away. There will be no “cubicle in my pocket” and I won’t be thinking about my desk or my projects. Thinking from afar is never productive; it doesn’t get things done.

Even when not on vacation, I challenge you all to change your relationship with your device and not let your smartphones tempt you into working whenever you have a spare moment in line or standing around. Instead take a deep breath and remember what it was like to be bored. Remember those days, when we didn’t feel like we had to be doing something every second of the day?

Recently, I read a stellar book on finding daily focus in 18 minutes. I read a fair share of business books (mostly around working more productively), and you can always check out my Working Smart list in Goodreads to see my other recommendations. Following is not exactly a summary, but rather it represents my main takeaways.

Overall, Bregman provides the following work/life advice, which does help find focus with your time:

• Leverage your strengths.
• Embrace your weaknesses.
• Assert your differences.
• Pursue your passions.

Considering these different paths help you stand out in the workplace. If you aren’t doing these things, you’re probably not as happy or you’re doing something wrong.

Working with People

“When you shorten transition time, you create a boundary that helps you and others adjust to a new reality.” From going through a couple of reorganizations at the Alumni Association, I wholeheartedly agree. Often there is so much preparation for a transition that it ends up making the whole process seem longer and more painful. Jumping into cold water is always better than easing your way in.

“I’ve noticed something three times and I want to discuss it with you…Don’t wait too long to bring something up. People can only respect boundaries they know are there.” Coaching and feedback in the workplace is very important to creating strong, growing relationships. I think this is a nice approach without having to list out specific instances. It says that you’ve waited and allowed time for mistakes.

“Why won’t this work for you? That’s a good point. So how can you change it to make it work?” We all do things differently on the job. I’m completely process-oriented, and in alumni relations, there are a lot of fuzzier people people. We should feel comfortable doing things in our own way, and part of letting people work happy is to agree upon a similar outcome, evening if getting there means taking different paths.

Productivity

“You need to be motivated for only a few seconds. Know when you’re vulnerable and you’ll know when you need to turn it on.” This was my favorite takeaway from the book. You don’t have to be motivated 8 hours a day, but a minute of motivation can launch you into a task or project that ends up carrying you forward. We’ve got to recognize our slumps and figure out what gets us in the mode.

• Do it immediately.
• Schedule it.
• Let it go.
• Someday/maybe.

You’ve probably seen these different routes for tasks if you’ve ever look at David Allen’s Get Things Done model. My favorite one is to let it go. We really don’t do that often and especially during busy times, it’s necessary triage.

“The right kind of interruption can help you master your time and yourself. Keep yourself focused and steady by interrupting yourself hourly.” I like the idea of thinking about distraction as a way to counter distraction. I’m not sure that it works for me exactly, but Bregman suggests stopping every hour to see if you’re actually accomplishing what you need to accomplish or if you’re totally off track.

• Am I the right person?
• Is this the right time?
• Do I have enough information?
• If any of these is a no – then don’t do it.

“Create an environment that naturally compels you to do the things you want to do.”I do this with a ridiculous amount of photos and inspirational materials in my cube, but also having file folders in reach and a number of calendars at my fingertips helps put me in the right mindset.

Benchmarking and the Long Term

Bregman asserts that anyone can do anything as long as three conditions exist:

• You want to achieve it.
• You believe you can achieve it.
• You enjoy trying to achieve it.

The key part of this statement is that you enjoy trying. It’s all about the motivation, and if that is missing, it’s really difficult to move forward on your goals.

The author takes a wide view and suggests we all set a few business and personal goals that are very broad to frame the way we spend out time. Here are his that he focuses on in the book:

• Do great work with current clients
• Attract future clients
• Write and speak about my ideas
• Be present with family and friends
• Have fun and take care of myself

I’m drawn to their simplicity. Even having these posted somewhere to look at daily help trigger you to consider whether or not you’re spending any time on long-term goal achievement. This is the concrete part of the 18 minutes, where Bregman actually diagrams out how to spend those 18 minutes each day, allocating some time to examine how you’re faring in the long-term bucket. I love his personal goal about being present and especially in this technologically distracting time, it resonates with me. A small piece of advice that he took as well, was around vacations. If you know you have to be dialed into work while you’re supposed to be getting R&R, set aside a specific 15-30 minutes to be undisturbed and checking e-mail. This allows you to compartmentalize that work time so you can enjoy the rest of your day work and worry free.

In a more specific way, he has you ask questions to review the end of your work day. A colleague does a plus/delta review after meetings that’s a bit similar – being reflective about what happened and how that compared to your expectations.

• What is this day about?
• How did the day go? What success did I experience? What challenges did I endure?
• What did I learn today? About myself? About others? What do I plan to do – differently or the same – tomorrow?
• Whom did I interact with? Anyone I need to update? Thank? Ask a question of? Share feedback with?

Only have 10 minutes?

If you only have 10 minutes a day to organize yourself, check out this Lifehack post on Getting Your Head Together in 10 Minutes a Day.  My favorte item (and not just because of my good friend with the same name) is to think in “victor” language and not victim language. Taking on the day knowing you have control over your attitude and many of the outcomes makes a huge difference.