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Great Jobs are Overwhelming, and Not Everybody Wants Them

June 13, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

One of my friends, a senior executive at a Fortune 500 firm, recently said, “no, thank you” when asked if he’d like to be considered for the post of CEO of his company.

My friend is an ideal CEO candidate: he’s accomplished and well-liked, he’s about 10 years from retirement, he’s been a company “lifer,” and he’s worked hard grabbing the gold ring.

Great Jobs are Overwhelming, and Not Everybody Wants Them When I asked what caused this change of mind, he reflected, “At what cost, however?”

Well, his response wasn’t unexpected. A successful corporate career demands a high level of performance for sustained periods.

Ambitious professionals, especially top performers, have started to think differently about the tradeoffs of a demanding job. They’re asking questions such as “How much is enough?” and “If I get that job, what is it that I’m giving up?”

Most new CEOs are overwhelmed, disclosing that their jobs are more demanding, complex, and stressful than expected. Little wonder, then, that the average CEO’s tenure has gotten shorter over the years.

The brutal reality is that CEOs have less time than ever to prove their worth. The tolerance for mistakes and short-term underperformance has really gone down.

CEOs have to perform or perish. The CEO job is no longer a tenured role, and the ground has shifted over the decades. Several factors have made the jobs of business chiefs much more complicated than in the past. There’s immense pressure to produce consistently excellent results and keep everybody satisfied. It’s so stressful just working hard to keep the job. Then there’s the unremitting pressure of walking a tightrope; managing the conflicting interests between various stakeholders is exhausting.

Ceos Have Less Time Than Ever to Prove Their Worth CEOs’ performance must be more transparent than ever due to the never-ending demands imposed by global competition, geopolitical volatility, technological disruptions, ever-watchful regulators, increasingly engaged boards, and the specter of activist shareholders. A job with such challenges can quickly overwhelm, and CEOs end up working days, nights, and weekends in a futile attempt to pull free. They feel guilty about sacrificing precious family time for their work.

Above all, CEOs feel lonely at the top—being “where the buck stops,” they don’t have anyone to confide in. CEOs tend to isolate themselves due to the overwhelming responsibilities and the pressure to appear calm to employees.

Idea for Impact: Not everybody wishes to climb the top of the ladder. A high-pressure climate is not for everybody. Remember, burnout happens not when you work too much but when you invest emotionally in work and don’t get a commensurate return.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The Truth About Work-Life Balance
  2. A Quick Way to De-stress: The “Four Corners Breathing” Exercise
  3. Why You Can’t Relax on Your Next Vacation
  4. How to Combat Burnout at Work
  5. Is Your Harried Mind Causing You to Underachieve?

Filed Under: Career Development, Health and Well-being, Living the Good Life Tagged With: Assertiveness, Balance, Career Planning, Getting Ahead, Mindfulness, Stress, Time Management, Work-Life

If Meditation Isn’t Working For You, Try Intermittent Silence

May 27, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

If Meditation Isn't Working For You, Try Intermittent Silence Mindfulness meditation is tough. There’s no easy way around it. It can make you feel discouraged at best and miserable at worst when it doesn’t work.

If you’ve failed at trying different forms of meditation or don’t find them as calming as you hoped, try intermittent silence.

Intermittent silence is straightforward—it’s as simple as closing your eyes for 5 or 10 minutes, enveloping yourself in silence, and attending to the sounds of nature.

Intermittent silence quietens your mind. It shifts your attention from the incessant chatter in your head, disconnecting you from everything around and trying to reach a state of tranquility.

As disruptive thoughts emerge, let these thoughts pass by, acknowledging them but not engaging in them, just as you would glance at a butterfly fly around graciously. Make a deliberate effort to shift your attention away and focus on something else, e.g., a gentle breeze.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Learn to Cope When You’re Stressed
  2. A Quick Way to De-stress: The “Four Corners Breathing” Exercise
  3. How to Encourage Yourself During Tough Times
  4. The Best Breathing Exercise for Anxiety
  5. The Dutch Practice of Doing Nothing: Niksen

Filed Under: Health and Well-being, Living the Good Life Tagged With: Anxiety, Balance, Mindfulness, Stress, Worry

Why You Can’t Relax on Your Next Vacation

April 23, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Why You Can't Relax on Your Next Vacation Some managers can’t slow down even on vacation. They keep worrying about their work and won’t come back feeling rested and rejuvenated.

If you feel the added guilt of being away, it may be time for you to look inward and reflect upon your ability to delegate. Don’t bring fear of inadequacy with you on vacation.

Sure, most people responsible for delivering big things find it difficult to be away. Feeling out of control is always stressful. Here’s how to make time off as restful as possible:

  • Schedule 1-hour check-ins every day.
  • Manage your team’s expectations and make sure everyone knows what matters you want to be bothered about.
  • Build-in buffers at both ends. Don’t work right until you leave for the airport and don’t get back to work right off the plane. Schedule an extra day off before you depart and another when you return. Dive back in slowly.

Idea for Impact: Time off should be time off. Get the most out of your time off by unplugging completely.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Do Your Team a Favor: Take a Vacation
  2. The Truth About Work-Life Balance
  3. Yes, Money Can Buy Happiness
  4. Great Jobs are Overwhelming, and Not Everybody Wants Them
  5. How to Boost Your Willpower // Book Summary of Baumeister & Tierney’s ‘Willpower’

Filed Under: Health and Well-being, Living the Good Life, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Balance, Delegation, Mindfulness, Relationships, Simple Living, Stress, Work-Life, Workplace

The Best Breathing Exercise for Anxiety

March 17, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Deep Diaphragmatic Breathing: The Best Breathing Exercise for Anxiety

Diaphragmatic breathing (also called belly breathing and abdominal breathing) engages the diaphragm—that large, dome-shaped muscle at the base of the lungs, separating the chest cavity from the abdomen.

In Meditation for the Rest of Us (2009,) James Baltzell suggests observing sleeping babies and following their lead: draw air deep through your nose into their lungs, expanding the pulmonary cavity that houses your heart and lungs. The diaphragm moves down and fills your lungs with oxygen. New York-Presbyterian Hospital’s Dr. Chiti Parikh recommends starting out lying down so that the surface beneath can give you feedback on whether you’re breathing back into the back of your body:

Lie on your back, relax your muscles, and place one hand on the chest and the other on the belly. Take long, slow breaths in and out through your nose, and watch your hands as they move. Breathe in for four seconds, and then out for six. Over time, lengthen your exhales. Notice how, with shallow breaths, the chest moves, but with deep breathing, the belly moves too.

Don’t get aggravated as thoughts of worry or anxiety enter the mind. Don’t quell your unquiet mind. Gently acknowledge the thoughts and let your attention slip from them.

Idea for Impact: Learning to breathe deep, focus your attention, and relax is a skill that can help subdue stress and stay calm. Practice this exercise whenever you’re anxious and realize quick, shallow breathing. As with any skill, your ability to anchor your mind in the present moment will improve with practice.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Learn to Cope When You’re Stressed
  2. How to Encourage Yourself During Tough Times
  3. A Quick Way to De-stress: The “Four Corners Breathing” Exercise
  4. If Meditation Isn’t Working For You, Try Intermittent Silence
  5. Anger is the Hardest of the Negative Emotions to Subdue

Filed Under: Health and Well-being, Living the Good Life Tagged With: Anxiety, Balance, Emotions, Mindfulness, Stress, Worry

Just Start

February 3, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

How to Overcome Procrastination

Procrastination is a chronic habit. Many of us procrastinate to give ourselves fleeting comfort from our dread of starting a task.

One way to overcome inertia and overcome procrastination: whether it’s studying, exercising, writing, or whatever, just start. Cut out the distractions. Divide your workload down into manageable, bite-sized fragments. Just start.

When you find yourself procrastinating, tell yourself to “just start”—over and over if needed—until you convince yourself to work on the task. No more fumbling around.

'Overcoming Procrastination' by Patrick King (ISBN 171885112X) Often, just beginning the task can positively shift your motivation. The thing with procrastinating is that you think a task is harder than it is, so you avoid starting it. The task isn’t really that hard most of the time, but you just think it is.

Even minimal progress toward a goal lets you feel more optimistic about the objective and ourselves. Typically, once you commit to a task and build momentum, you’ll discover it’s not as “hard” as you’d anticipated. From there, your disposition snowballs, and one task leads to another, which leads to another. Indeed, objects in motion tend to stay in motion.

Idea for Impact: Don’t wait to start that daunting task. Remember, you don’t have to like it to do it. Take one small step now to get the ball rolling down the hill toward completion.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Five Ways … You Could Stop Procrastinating
  2. Focus on Achieving Your Highest Priorities
  3. Get Good At Things By Being Bad First
  4. Everything in Life Has an Opportunity Cost
  5. Ask This One Question Every Morning to Find Your Focus

Filed Under: Health and Well-being, Mental Models Tagged With: Discipline, Fear, Getting Things Done, Motivation, Perfectionism, Procrastination, Stress, Time Management

Stop Dieting, Start Savoring

January 24, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Stop Dieting, Start Savoring Research suggests that excluding entire food groups, banning your favorite foods, forcing yourself to count calories, and measuring success by a number on a scale may actually make you want to eat more. Restrictive dieting can slow your metabolism down, making it even harder to lose weight over the long term.

You’re more likely to be successful at keeping weight off if you lose weight gradually and steadily. Be more mindful of what you eat and how you eat.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying your favorite foods and indulging in your cravings for cookies, potato chips, or ice cream. All you have to do is cut back. Practice awareness by slowing down and thinking about what you’re eating and why you’re eating it.

Don’t gulp your food; you’ll overeat before you realize that you’re full. Instead, rest between bites. Take time to chew your food thoroughly. You really don’t need as much food as you think you do.

When you eat out, keep your food-mindfulness on the right track. Keep hunger under control beforehand. Don’t skip meals. Control portion size. Share your meal or take half of it home.

Idea for Impact: Eating should be a pleasurable activity. No food is inherently good or bad, and there’s no need to build an adversarial relationship with food.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Learning How to Eat Better // Book Summary of Bee Wilson’s ‘First Bite’
  2. Don’t Cheat. Just Eat.
  3. You’ll Overeat If You Get Bigger Servings
  4. The Reason Why Weight Watchers Works whereas ‘DIY Dieting’ Fails
  5. Six Powerful Reasons to Eat Slowly and Mindfully

Filed Under: Health and Well-being Tagged With: Discipline, Goals, Mindfulness, Persuasion, Stress

A Key to Changing Your Perfectionist Mindset

January 14, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

It’s okay to have some clutter and untidiness occasionally.

A Key to Changing Your Perfectionist Mindset Sometimes, look away when the kids scatter crumbs or toys are strewn all over the house. Instead of spending an afternoon swiffering, vacuuming, scrubbing, and polishing, just play with your kids.

Let yourself off for not getting all the chores done or keeping a flawlessly curated, Instagramable home. If you have guests coming over, stop agonizing and embrace a tidy-enough household. No need to live for your dinner guests—your home doesn’t always have to look the way you want.

Idea for Impact: Train yourself to care less. Yeah, really.

Perfectionism is a wicked way to live life. Look for ways to reach your goals without being perfect.

Setting unrealistic expectations only makes you vulnerable to emotional difficulties. That’s what perfectionism does. Perfection is holding yourself to a paradigm wherein anything less than “perfect” is, in one way or another, failure.

Think about how much more productive you could be if you stop carrying the weight of excessive expectations on your shoulders.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Thinking Straight in the Age of Overload // Book Summary of Daniel Levitin’s ‘The Organized Mind’
  2. Dear Hoarder, Learn to Let Go
  3. Change Your Perfectionist Mindset (And Be Happier!) This Holiday Season
  4. Everything in Life Has an Opportunity Cost
  5. Elevate Timing from Art to Science // Book Summary of Daniel Pink’s ‘When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing’

Filed Under: Living the Good Life, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Anxiety, Clutter, Perfectionism, Procrastination, Simple Living, Stress, Tardiness

Why is Task-Planning so Time-Consuming?

January 10, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Planning, which saves time, itself can take quite a bit of time. It’s an interesting quasi-paradox that I’m sure you’ve run into.

Why is Task-Planning so Time-Consuming? That planning is long-drawn-out is one of the main criticisms of even the supposedly solid task-management systems out there. Take David Allen’s Getting Things Done approach, for example. Achieving the system’s potential fully is simply overwhelming. Allen’s method focuses more on the capturing, reviewing, and planning of tasks than it does on the actual doing them.

The key to time management is awareness. Think realistically about your time by recognizing it is a limited resource. Always ask yourself, even when you’re planning your time out, “Is this time-effective?”

Don’t over-organize your list. Don’t spend too much time making it look nice. Don’t feel like you need to do everything on your list. Don’t put anything on your list when you’d be wiser to just do the task now and save the time it takes to put it on your list and think about it again later.

Idea for Impact: Refine your planning approach further. Remember, the benefits of any tool must exceed its costs.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. A Key to Changing Your Perfectionist Mindset
  2. Everything in Life Has an Opportunity Cost
  3. Get Everything Out of Your Head
  4. Everything Takes Longer Than Anticipated: Hofstadter’s Law [Mental Models]
  5. Thinking Straight in the Age of Overload // Book Summary of Daniel Levitin’s ‘The Organized Mind’

Filed Under: Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Anxiety, Perfectionism, Procrastination, Stress, Task Management, Thought Process

Real Ways to Make New Habits Stick

January 6, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Want to make a new habit stick? Try piggybacking or ‘stacking’ it to an existing one.

Real Ways to Make Habits Stick Choose something you have no problem motivating yourself to do—say, brushing your teeth—then combine it with some habit you want to acquire. The existing pattern serves as the prompt for the new habit.

Most people have robust morning and evening routines; try stacking new habits into those practices. For example, if you want to do some mindfulness meditation every day, do it after brushing your teeth in the morning. Your wake-up routine becomes the cue to build a new meditation habit.

Better yet, associate the habit you want to achieve with a ‘temptation’ (something you love doing,) like sipping your morning cuppa joe. Your habit stacking plan may look like this: “After I meditate for ten minutes, I will have my coffee.” This way, the habit will become more attractive to you, making it more likely to stick.

Idea for Impact: Good habits build automatically when you don’t have to consciously think about doing them. Look for patterns in your day and think about how to use existing habits to create new, positive ones. Stacking habits can encourage you to remember, repeat, and, therefore, maintain a series of behaviors. Set yourself up for success.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. What Are You So Afraid Of? // Summary of Susan Jeffers’s ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway’
  2. How to Turn Your Procrastination Time into Productive Time
  3. Small Steps, Big Revolutions: The Kaizen Way // Summary of Robert Maurer’s ‘One Small Step Can Change Your Life’
  4. The #1 Hack to Build Healthy Habits in the New Year
  5. Why You Should Celebrate Small Wins

Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Anxiety, Change Management, Discipline, Goals, Lifehacks, Motivation, Procrastination, Stress

How to Encourage Yourself During Tough Times

December 20, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

'Exceptional Personal Highlight Reel' by Daniel Cable (ISBN 1452184259) My biggest takeaway from Daniel M. Cable’s Exceptional: Build Your Personal Highlight Reel and Unlock Your Potential (2020) is maintaining an inventory of reminders of all of the things you’re grateful for: the achievements, accomplishments, things you’re proud of, and events you want to celebrate—even others’ notes of gratitude.

When you’re entranced by ongoing anxieties and unable to find refuge in presence, the negative self-talk becomes your default setting. Unable to focus on what is happening right now, you spiral downward and find yourself in ruts that hold you back from your potential. Reigniting a certain sense of pride within yourself can jolt you into a more optimistic cycle and create real personal change. It can enable you to maintain a stable center no matter what’s going on in your life right now.

Personal Highlight Reel - How to Encourage Yourself During Tough Times Research on the ‘Reflected Best-Self Exercise’ indicates that scanning the “highlight reel” of the best you’ve achieved in your life can help you, as it would a professional athlete, rediscover and reinforce how to repeat past successes. It can energize you to use your strengths even more and give more to others.

Idea for Impact: You make your most significant impact when focusing on what you do best. A personal highlight reel will remind you how others perceive you when you make your best impact and hope you build upon the unique strengths that make you exceptional.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Learn to Cope When You’re Stressed
  2. The Best Breathing Exercise for Anxiety
  3. Anger is the Hardest of the Negative Emotions to Subdue
  4. The Power of Negative Thinking
  5. This May Be the Most Potent Cure for Melancholy

Filed Under: Health and Well-being, Living the Good Life Tagged With: Anxiety, Balance, Emotions, Mindfulness, Stress, Suffering, Worry

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About: Nagesh Belludi [hire] is a St. Petersburg, Florida-based freethinker, investor, and leadership coach. He specializes in helping executives and companies ensure that the overall quality of their decision-making benefits isn’t compromised by a lack of a big-picture understanding.

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