Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Balance

How to … Rethink Work-Life Balance

By Leave a Comment

Work-Life Balance is Defining Success for Yourself A successful corporate life demands high-level performance for sustained periods. Success doesn’t come without a price. It’s a price that those who advance to the heights of the corporate world are prepared to pay, especially if they care much about what they do. They understand that some pursuits are demanding and require a 100% commitment. They get fulfillment from going to work, as others get from spending some time on sports and hobbies.

When it’s harder than ever to separate work and play, contentment comes not so much from ‘balance’ but from defining success for yourself and setting and living your priorities. Everyone has a value system, but not everyone purposefully prioritizes things that have to be at the forefront.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Yes, Money Can Buy Happiness
  2. The Costs of Perfectionism: A Case Study of A Two Michelin-Starred French Chef
  3. Great Jobs are Overwhelming, and Not Everybody Wants Them
  4. Self-Care Isn’t Self-Indulgence, but Self-Preservation
  5. The Simple Life, The Good Life // Book Summary of Greg McKeown’s ‘Essentialism’

Co-Workation Defeats Work-Life Balance

By Leave a Comment

Workation Defeats Work-Life Balance

There’s a new workplace “wellness” movement, and travel agencies are touting it big-time.

“Workation” or “work on holidays” (WoH) invites employees to lug their work laptops along to their holiday spots, find decent Wi-Fi, and peg away full-time for a few days.

At first glance, untethering from the physical office and conventional business hours seems like a liberating lifestyle perk. But co-workations are a further erosion of work-life balance, and they’re bad for business. Here’s why.

Co-Workations subvert the very purpose of a holiday: to check out, disconnect, and recharge the batteries. Co-Workations means getting work calls at four in the morning if you’re not in the same time zone as the rest of your team. Instead of feeling overworked, stressed, and deadline-obsessed at your cubicle, co-workations encourage you to feel overworked, stressed, and deadline-obsessed while lounging in a hammock surrounded by a bunch of people gaudily enjoying themselves by not working.

A practical way to encourage employees to set boundaries between their personal and professional lives is by simply not asking them to work while on vacation. Many people don’t have the self-discipline for the “psychological detachment” that’s indispensable to rest and refresh.

Idea for Impact: Inviting—empowering even—employees to check in on their work responsibilities is a slippery slope. There’s an expectation that they are more generous with their personal time and acquiesce to being badgered on days off. Besides, when senior managers don’t truly take a vacation, they set a cultural precedent for how others should use their time away from their desks.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Why You Can’t Relax on Your Next Vacation
  2. Do Your Team a Favor: Take a Vacation
  3. Great Jobs are Overwhelming, and Not Everybody Wants Them
  4. The Truth About Work-Life Balance
  5. How to Leave Work at Work

How to … Incorporate Exercise into Your Daily Life

By Leave a Comment

How to ... Incorporate Exercise into Your Daily Life An “exercise snack” is a short little bite of physical activity you can do anywhere, anytime. You don’t even need to change your clothes. Try 10 push-ups, stair climbing, or a brisk walk or jog around the block.

Exercise snacking increases the amount of activity in your day, and breaks up sedentary time, which is increasingly being linked to chronic health risks.

It may not seem like much, but several scientific studies show that interleaving brief fitness routines a few times into your day not only encourages your body to feel better, but also contributes to meaningful gains in fitness and overall health. It improves your mood, stimulates creativity, and enhances focus, making it an all-around win for your health and productivity. Best of all, exercise snacking removes the pressure of committing to a long, once-a-day sweaty session.

Exercise snacking increases the amount of activity in your day, and breaks up sedentary time, which is increasingly being linked to chronic health risks.

It may not seem like much, but several scientific studies show that interleaving brief fitness routines a few times into your day not only encourages your body to feel better, but also contributes to meaningful gains in fitness and overall health. It improves your mood, stimulates creativity, and enhances focus, making it an all-around win for your health and productivity. Best of all, exercise snacking removes the pressure of committing to a long, once-a-day sweaty session.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Personal Energy: How to Manage It and Get More Done // Summary of ‘The Power of Full Engagement’
  2. How to … Nap at Work without Sleeping
  3. How to Keep Your Brain Fresh and Creative
  4. Easy Ways to Boost Your Focus & Break That Awful Multitasking Habit
  5. The Simple Life, The Good Life // Book Summary of Greg McKeown’s ‘Essentialism’

Joy is the Happiness That Lasts

By Leave a Comment

Joy is the Happiness That Lasts (1 Peter 1:8--9) Early this year, we lost Thích Nhất Hạnh, the much-venerated Vietnamese monk who popularized mindfulness in the West. In one of his early teachings, The Miracle of Mindfulness (1975,) Nhất Hạnh gave simple instructions on how to reset your notions of happiness:

Our notions of happiness entrap us. We forget that they are just ideas. Our idea of happiness can prevent us from actually being happy. We fail to see the opportunity for joy that is right in front of us when we are caught in a belief that happiness should take a particular form.

There’re many things in your life that you aren’t happy about now, and you want to see them changed. Isn’t that always going to be so?

Don’t let the inclination to put off happiness until later draw you away from the positives in your life now.

Idea for Impact: Learn to find joy in tiny triumphs. Joy is the happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens. Joy is the happiness that can be steady. Joy is the happiness that lasts. And that’s what you really want.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Having What You Want
  2. Lilies and Leeches
  3. I’ll Be Happy When …
  4. The Simple Life, The Good Life // Book Summary of Greg McKeown’s ‘Essentialism’
  5. Yes, Money Can Buy Happiness

Quitting Something You Love But Isn’t Working

By Leave a Comment

Quitting Something You Love But Isn't Working Quitting something you no longer care about is more straightforward than something you’re spirited about but isn’t working.

To avoid quitting a passion too soon or too late, a basic rule of thumb is to give up when the outcomes aren’t improving, even after ample effort to turn things around.

That is to say, when things get difficult in school, business, relationships, or a project, increase your efforts and get help to improve it. If the results are still unacceptable after an adequate interval of much effort, maybe it’s time to throw in the towel on that course of action or rightsize your expectations, if not abandon the pursuit altogether.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Everything in Life Has an Opportunity Cost
  2. The Simple Life, The Good Life // Book Summary of Greg McKeown’s ‘Essentialism’
  3. Self-Care Isn’t Self-Indulgence, but Self-Preservation
  4. Books in Brief: “Hell Yeah or No” Mental Model
  5. Don’t Say “Yes” When You Really Want to Say “No”

Lilies and Leeches

By Leave a Comment

Lilies and Leeches: Surround Yourself with Those Who Elevate You You may have heard of the notion of lilies and leeches. The lilies are the people—and situations—that bring out the best in you. The leeches just grind you down.

Learn to say ‘no’ to relationships or situations that don’t work for you. Life’s too short to waste time on anything that can suck your happiness and energy. Avoid those emotional leeches, productivity leeches, and financial leeches.

Idea for Impact: A little-cited key to a rewarding life: choose to surround yourself with those who elevate you. With those who are caring, supportive, and nonjudgmental, and who make you feel loved, appreciated, and respected.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. I’ll Be Happy When …
  2. The Simple Life, The Good Life // Book Summary of Greg McKeown’s ‘Essentialism’
  3. Having What You Want
  4. The Secret to Happiness in Relationships is Lowering Your Expectations
  5. No Boss Likes a Surprise—Good or Bad

Don’t Over-Deliver

By Leave a Comment

Don't Over-Deliver: Decide To Be Better Many tasks in the workplace could be done with total adequacy and barely more.

Don’t get fixated on ensuring that every task is entirely done, every email edited and re-edited to get the grammar right, or every spreadsheet is flawless. This is a pointless pursuit.

Sure, you don’t want to be a careless hammerhead. But don’t waste time sweating the little stuff. There comes the point where any changes you make to whatever it is you’re working on no longer makes it better but just different. Identifying the inflection point of diminishing returns is one of the hardest skills to learn and one of the most necessary.

Don’t agonize over tiny improvements in your work and thwart yourself from achieving the actual goal of doing the work.

Idea for Impact: Most acceptable outcomes correlate with “good enough,” not “perfection.” Being consistently excellent is essentially a matter of fierce discipline—doing the essential things well.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The #1 Hack to Build Healthy Habits in the New Year
  2. The Costs of Perfectionism: A Case Study of A Two Michelin-Starred French Chef
  3. Small Steps, Big Revolutions: The Kaizen Way // Summary of Robert Maurer’s ‘One Small Step Can Change Your Life’
  4. The Simple Life, The Good Life // Book Summary of Greg McKeown’s ‘Essentialism’
  5. Do You Have an Unhealthy Obsession with Excellence?

3 Ways to … Stay Calm Under Immense Pressure

By Leave a Comment

How to Stay Calm Under Immense Pressure Under intense pressure, our patterns of thought, judgment, and action can prove remarkably maladaptive. Here’s how to keep what’s already bad from worsening, stem the contingency, and take charge of dreadful circumstances.

  1. Be clear about what you need to do. Don’t over-optimize every variable. People who get stuff done under pressure precisely understand what they want. And they’re selective about when they push themselves to the max—only when the stakes are big enough and when the pressure is entirely justified.
  2. Do a threat assessment. Beware, pressure can narrow the cognitive map and blind you to become fixated on one line of thought. Keep an eye on all critical parameters and maintain awareness of the situation across the board.
  3. Put things into perspective. Reframe priorities and values. Stress is generally sourced in the feeling of not being in control, and tuning into the uncontrollable can intensify the pressure. Consider the situation objectively and ask what’s the worst that could happen. Have a plan ready, and focus on the task—not the outcome.

Idea for Impact: Mastery is a process. Practice simulated high-stress situations, just as pilots learn to handle panel instrument malfunctions on flight simulators.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Summary of Richard Carlson’s ‘Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff’
  2. This Trick Can Relieve Your Anxiety: “What’s the worst that can happen?”
  3. The More You Can Manage Your Emotions, the More Effective You’ll Be
  4. Expressive Writing Can Help You Heal
  5. This May Be the Most Potent Cure for Melancholy

Hooked on Feeling Needed?

By Leave a Comment

Hooked on Feeling Needed: Helicopter Parenting Fosters Failure If, like many people, you just can’t say ‘no,’ consider if you’re hooked on feeling needed.

Take a hard, long look at yourself and examine if you unwittingly encourage—even need—people to come to you for every little thing.

Do you find affirmation in feeling needed? Do you try to do too much for others? Faced with an unpleasant task, do you look to turn our attention elsewhere? Do others’ interruptions offer reasons to do what you needn’t do and excuses to avoid doing what you’re supposed to do?

Idea for Impact: The greatest gift you can give those who need you is carving out time for your own critical tasks so you can be available when they really need you.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Weak Kindness & The Doormat Phenomenon: Balance Kindness with Strength
  2. What Most People Get Wrong About Focus
  3. Don’t Say “Yes” When You Really Want to Say “No”
  4. Everything in Life Has an Opportunity Cost
  5. Don’t Over-Deliver

Self-Care Isn’t Self-Indulgence, but Self-Preservation

By Leave a Comment

Self-Care: Not about Self-Indulgence, but Self-Preservation The notion of self-care has received some well-deserved backlash lately. The wellness and beauty industry has expropriated it. Self-care has also turned into a way of justifying indulgence for those lucky enough to afford it. (A last-minute holiday in Tahiti? “That’s self-care!”)

But self-care is determining who you are and your limits are—sometimes at the expense of others’ needs. Self-care means noticing when you’re doing more than you’re used to handling and assessing what you can do to slow down. Self-care is figuring out what enriches and soothes your body and mind and attempting to integrate it into your day or your week.

Self-care isn’t frivolous, selfish, or indulgent. It’s self-preservation. It’s merely doing what helps you put your physical, mental, and emotional health back in check.

Idea for Impact: You deserve self-care. You need it. Be kind to yourself and take those deliberate steps to make yourself feel better. Self-care might seem selfish, but putting your needs first actually allows you to interact with others more healthily.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Great Jobs are Overwhelming, and Not Everybody Wants Them
  2. Personal Energy: How to Manage It and Get More Done // Summary of ‘The Power of Full Engagement’
  3. Make a Habit of Stepping Back from Work
  4. Quitting Something You Love But Isn’t Working
  5. The Simple Life, The Good Life // Book Summary of Greg McKeown’s ‘Essentialism’