Clarity Capital research indicates 1 in 3 Americans have layoff anxiety. The fear that our job is going to disappear. Nearly 50% of us have less than 3 months of money on hand to get buy. And confidence in finding a job quickly is on the decline. With the current...
Culture is group behavior. When people join families, friend groups, book clubs, communities, and companies, a set of norms are established. These set the foundation of the culture. At the core, culture is the result of people and how they behave. When it comes to our...
Our lives are full of systems and routines. Often these are beneficial and necessary in our lives. Systems at work include invoicing, time logs, and other administrative tasks. Systems at home include food preparation, laundry, cleaning and so much more. Finding ways...
I am always fascinated by organization. How we each approach “order”. The interesting thing is that we all have a different definition of order vs. clutter. I’ve written about this in past posts, including these two: Clutter & Organization are Different and...
Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest. But for many of us, it’s a day of dread. The to-do list feels like it’s growing, not shrinking. The Sunday Scaries show up. The day becomes a catch-all for everything we didn’t finish last week. What if, instead of defaulting...
Kendra Adachi was recently on an episode of The Next Big Idea Daily. She provided an overview of her book The Plan: Manage Your Time Like a Lazy Genius. The book is about leading what she calls and integrated life. She comes at planning through the lens of a life that...
The concept of work-life balance has been a conversation since I began my career. Doing a little searching, I found a research report that gave some history on the origins. Back in the late 1800s the work hours of women and children were limited and in 1938 the Fair...
We have heard about the benefits of networking. They say having a strong network can serve you well if you need support in your career. Prompting points of view like this one: “Networking is one letter away from not working” – Kerry Hannon When I first heard this...
There are many different approaches to planning our week. None of these are “right”. The key is to find the method that is “right” for you. I have an idea of using the questions – what, why, when, and how – to help prioritize. Start with What What is already on your...
Zen isn’t a one-size-fits-all routine. It’s an inner spaciousness. A quiet clarity that looks different for each of us. Some find it in silence. Others in deep focus. Still others in doing less and doing it with intention. In Zen at Work, Les Kaye offers a...
When working on a client project, the topic of scope creep comes up. This is when a discussion or sub-assignment emerges that wasn’t planned. The scope of the project has crept into something different. Often this creep takes up more time. Reducing the revenue from...
Yesterday, we explored how to use CliftonStrengths to shape the way you naturally approach tasks. What energizes you. What drains you. And what might keep you stuck. But awareness isn’t enough. You still have the list. The pressure. And the uncertainty of where to...
We’ve all been there. Staring at a massive to-do list, not knowing where to start. Everything feels urgent. Nothing feels doable. We close the folder. Or the notebook. Or just quietly panic. That’s to-do list paralysis. And it has less to do with laziness than we give...
Often when we set goals, the goal is not really the goal. Each goal is building to something larger. The ultimate goal. Sometimes we are aware of that goal. Sometimes we aren’t. Finding the Real Goal To understand the goal that our goals are laddering up to, we need...
My website has a program called WP-Optimize. Yesterday, I got an email that said, “updates have been made”. Specifically, “WP-Optimize – Clean, Compress, Cache”. As soon as a saw the message, I chuckled and thought about how this applies to life. I love finding...
Most of my life, I’ve used the term “forcing mechanism”. The situation might be when there was a presentation looming. The deadline forced me to figure out challenge that had been working in the background. I’ve been thinking about forcing mechanisms lately. There are...
I came across a post focused on planning for retirement. While the content related to focusing on your financial future was great, I also believe the concept can apply to all the areas of our wellbeing. The five areas of planning laid out in the article are strategic...
At the end of January, I had the opportunity to be a special awards judge for an Engineering Society of Detroit event where student teams of three designed sustainable cities. I was so impressed by the knowledge and ideas these young students presented. One thing all...
Several years ago, Gretchen Rubin selected the word infrastructure as her word of the year. Before that, the concept never really crossed my mind. Infrastructure is the basic physical and organizational systems needed to operate businesses, cities, nations, and even...
We have made it to our last dimension of wellbeing – environmental. This does mean nature and outdoors. However, it also means the spaces in which we spend our time. Our rooms, desk at work, or even that corner of a coffee shop we choose every time. Having spaces we...
Job descriptions, resumes, and conversations at work are full of words focused on change in a fast paced environment. We hear things like we need people with “agility and flexibility” who can “deal with ambiguity”. These words can mean different things to different...