Balance

How to … Incorporate Exercise into Your Daily Life

December 23, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

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.

Joy is the Happiness That Lasts

December 22, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

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.

How to … Quit Something You Love But Isn’t Working

December 21, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

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.

Lilies and Leeches

November 14, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi 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.

Don’t Over-Deliver

November 3, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

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.

3 Ways to … Stay Calm Under Immense Pressure

October 20, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

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.

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.
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.
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.

Hooked on Feeling Needed?

September 23, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

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.

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

September 15, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

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.

To Rejuvenate Your Brain, Give it a Break

August 25, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Research suggests that once you hit a “plateau of productivity,” the number of hours you work without a break is inversely proportional to how much you’ll accomplish.

Even brief escapes such as a walk in nature or a run around the block can clear your head and rejuvenate the brain. Just leave the phone behind and seek novelty (e.g., noticing something new or taking different paths.) Engage your mind with the world instead of worrying about the work you’re supposedly taking a break from.

Downtime allows the brain to refresh the specific neural network you’ve been using, make new connections, and inspire you to fresh approaches to tasks.

Idea for Impact: Intermittent escapism can be valuable. It distracts the brain from useless worry, helps generate out-of-the-box ideas, and may even restore a sense of wonder.

Novelist Neil Gaiman said it better, “People talk about escapism as if it’s a bad thing… Once you’ve escaped and come back, the world is not the same as when you left it. You return to it with skills, weapons, and knowledge you didn’t have before. Then you are better equipped to deal with your current reality.”

The Great Resignation, The Great Awakening

July 25, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The Great Resignation hasn’t been just about burnout. It’s about a “Great Awakening,” notably for many folks in middle management.

Obliged to stay in their homes during COVID, they’ve reevaluated their lives while cherishing the extra time with their families and engaging in other interests. Discussions of work-life balance came into renewed focus.

As part of this great rethink, people are unwilling to sacrifice as much for a work-life balance. Some middle managers are increasingly disinclined to take the next step in their careers because “onward and upward” isn’t as appealing as it used to be, and the price to climb the corporate ladder is too high. These people are keener on setting career paths based on their own values and definitions of success.

Not that their ambitions have changed, though. But they aren’t driving for the same things they were driving for ten years ago. But they’re reconsidering how they can keep contributing to their organizations—on their own terms. They’re willing to come to terms with “career plateauing,” unhooking from the pressure to pursue an upward path someone else has set.

They may still derive a certain sense of identity from their jobs, but they’re seeking other ways to seek a more fulfilling life. They’re no longer pushing for the more prestigious title, the broader responsibility, the bigger raise, and a larger team. Instead, they’re taking energy that had been directed primarily on goals defined by the employer and focusing it elsewhere.

Idea for Impact: As part of this great rethink, reassess your options. Set clear boundaries on your willingness to sacrifice to strike a better work-life balance. Think strategically not only about the work you enjoy but also about the life you want to lead.

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