How? – pick any idea from the list and do it today. Feel happier. If you feel bold, pick more than one!
1. Take care of yourself – savour your shower, shave (if appropriate), moisturise, deoderize, wear that perfume or cologne (don’t overdo it unless you want space on the Tube). Take care of yourself – because you’re worth it.
2. Dress the part – spruce yourself up and choose an outfit that makes you look and feel great. When you look your best, you’ll feel your best.
3. Choose your head for the day – which head will you choose? The happy one, the grumpy one, the angry one, the peaceful one? Your choice will determine your day.
4. Smile – smile and the whole world smiles back – grimace and you’ll end up stepping in dog poo.
5. Take 10 minutes to do nothing – go on, it feels great – just space out and enjoy yourself.
6. Do one thing from your sh!t list – you know those little things that are driving you nuts – do just one of them. Feel the weight come off.
7. Commit a random act of kindness – whether someone needs help or not
8. Give yourself a break – at some point today you’ll probably start giving yourself a hard time. Stop and apologize.
9. Slow down – try being the tortoise for a change. Try walking half a pace slower, stopping to smell the flowers, looking more closely at the world around you.
10. Turn off email and your mobile for an hour – the world might collapse into a fiery ball… or nothing will happen. Let them wait.
11. Organise some “spontaneous planned fun” – treat yourself or somebody you know to dinner, a massage, a walk in the park, some quality time.
12. Call someone you haven’t spoken to for a while – preferably someone you like
13. Buy treats for your office / team / colleagues – you have to live with them every day so bribe them to be nice with cake.
14. Stick your favourite up-tempo tune on the stereo at high volume – dance around the living room like a nutter (note to emos – feel free to sway instead)
15. Spend a little time outside – sit in the park at lunchtime, have a picnic, take a walk
16. Stretch yourself – try something new, take on that scary dream you’ve been meaning to start, face up to a fear
17. Make time for someone special – let them know how much you care
18. Take a TV sabbatical – it will forgive you and still be there for you tomorrow (this one goes for video games and the internet too)
19. Daydream – if you’re so inclined, let your mind wander for a while and enjoy it.
20. Set a new goal – it’s exciting to start something new – use 43 things to tell the world about it.
21. Plan a vacation – what kind of break are you craving and where would you like to go? Make it happen.
22. Exercise – we have endorphins for a reason, so appreciate them
I’ve been meaning to write about procrastination for ages, but I never seem to get round to it…..
Procrastination is nothing to be ashamed of – almost everyone gets a bout from time to time. I realized it was time for me to get off Facebook and share some powerful ideas to help you kick time-wasting for good.
Beating procrastination can buy you more time, increase your sense of accomplishment and take away the frustration of feeling stuck.
Learning how to kick start work projects, do what really matters and sieze the day can have a huge impact on your happiness and success.
What is procrastination?
Psychologists define procrastination as something “counter-productive, needless and delaying” – and that is no fun at all.
We all have some great techniques for procrastinating – some of my personal favourites include:
“I’ll start doing that this afternoon / tomorrow / next week / next month…”
“I’ll just clean the house / bathe the dog / take out the recycling / check Facebook / cut my toenails first….”
“Every time I’m about to start, the phone rings / my boss comes by / I get an urgent email….”
What makes us come up with these fiendish avoidance tactics?
Check your Head
According to the Mind Gym, procrastination is typically driven by our deeper beliefs about the world. If we can identify the underlying assumptions and motivatiors, we can start to understand and beat our procrastination.
They suggest some common beliefs that lead to time-wasting:
Perfectionism – do you strive for absolute perfection in everything you do? Perfection is such a high bar to reach, this creates a huge amount of pressure to perform. Trying to write the perfect CV, create the ideal Powerpoint, have the perfect call with that customer is such a daunting task. It is easy to understand why starting such a task feels scary and is easy to put off.
Certainty – “Before I take my dream trip to Australia / start this project on marketing to pharmaceutical companies / go to that yoga class, I need to know all about it”. The need for certainty can push us to spend years in the research phase and never pull the trigger. We fear that unless we’re an expert, we’ll be exposed as a fraud, look stupid and everything will go wrong. So we never start.
Fear of failure – starting is the first step on the downward spiral to failure, public humiliation and destitution. The demonic spectre of failure has stopped many great ideas and projects in their tracks. This is probably the single largest cause of procrastination.
I’m not good enough – when we don’t believe we can do something, we’ll find every reason and excuse in the world not to do it. The most debilitating thought in the world is “there is no way I can do this”.
Next time you find yourself cleaning out the cellar or re-tweetig that latest fascinating post, take a second. What are you putting off and why?
Changing Minds
To beat procrastination, start by changing your thinking. Once you’ve identified what is behind your procrastination, try this approach:
Step 1 – Redefine your belief
Start to take the pressure off yourself by rephrasing your beliefs in a less harsh way:
“I must get a perfect result” becomes “I’d like a perfect result”
“I must know everything about this” becomes “It would be good to know everything about this’
“I’m terrified of failing” becomes “It would be better not to fail”
“I can’t do this” becomes “I’m not sure if I am ready for this”
Immediately, these beliefs become less imposing and less of a barrier to getting starting.
Step 2 – Create a safety net
Now to further crumble your belief. Add in a get-out clause that makes the belief even less daunting. For example:
“I’d like a perfect result but if I don’t get one it doesn’t matter.”
“It would be good to know everything about this but I already know enough to start and I’ll keep learning as I go along.”
These statements take away the terrible future consequences we’ve already imagined for the task. It is fine if we try our best and we don’t quite reach perfect. If we do fail, we may learn more than if we succeed.
Step 3 – Go for it
With the newly minted belief in place, it is time to launch in and get started! When I’ve used this technique, it often feels like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I always find that just taking action is the best way to beat procrastination
“Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.” Johann von Goethe
Part 3 of the 15 Secrets to Career Success in the 21st Century.
Career Secret 7: Stay in Control (and avoid George)
Up in the Air won a host of Oscars for its potrayal of corporate life in the 21st Century. George Clooney plays a corporate highway man, jetting around the US with the mission of “downsizing” companies.
The “downsized” employees react with shock, horror and helplessness.
In the 21st Century world of work, there is no such thing as a job for life. Assuming that having a job gives you security is a dangerous thing to do. It can lead to complacency and shutting off great opportunities.
The truth is you always have many choices about how to make a living. You could take full-time employment in various sectors (corporate, government, non-profit, academia), contract, free-lance, be an entrepreneur, volunteer, sit on a board, and sell homemade handicrafts at fairs.
To avoid George Clooney arriving at your office and giving you that speech, it pays to make sure you stay in control of your career and keep making choices.
You can stay in control:
By regularly taking time to set and check in with your career vision and goals, you can have a plan that looks beyond your current work.
By keeping up your skills and developing new transferable ones – you will open more options for the future.
Through professional networking and building out your contacts - you can lay the foundations for the next steps of the career journey.
In the 21st Century nothing is certain, except that you always have a choice.
He had no vision, no plan, no map and no compass. He didn’t think ahead.
Without a career vision and a clear plan, our careers can end up going round and round in circles.
Setting a vision is about creating the long term direction for your 21st Century Career. A vision is like your guiding star in the sky – it tell us the general direction we need to head in over time. It also helps you make important short term choices.
Career visions should be big, juicy, motivating and challenging. They should stretch you and light a fire in you every time you think about them.
Some examples of career visions might be:
To become known as one of the world’s best project managers, work with top organisations to help them successfully complete projects and also lecture and write about the subject
To become a chief technology officer helping innovative companies to develop technology that can create a sustainable future for the planet
To lead a non-profit that campaigns for the equality of employment rights for everyone and changes the face of the modern workforce
To build a company that bakes the tastiest cupcakes in the world and delights its customers with the coolest branding in the marketplace
To have a successful and lucrative career in finance that allows my to be financially independent by 40
Creating a career vision requires thought and time. You’ll need to ask yourself some serious questions about what work means to you and what you want to get out of it.
You’ll need to look into the future and visualise how you’d like your life to look in 10 or 20 years time – how will you use your time and talent.
As you develop answers, they’ll need to feel authentic and in tune with your values.
Most importantly, the vision has to be something that is exciting. It will need to get you out of bed on a cold Monday morning at 5am, get you through the late night with the boss breathing down your neck, get you through the month with no sales.
Secret 9: Write your career story every day
Write your career story
In the 21st Century, you write your career story every day. You are a walking resume.
Every action you take and every choice you make at work adds to your professional experience and skills. Future career success is determined by what you do every day.
This point is reinforced by Reid Hoffman, CEO of Linkedin:
“I actually think every individual is now an entrepreneur, whether they recognize it or not. . . . Average job length is two to four years. That makes you a small business. . . . You are the entrepreneur of your own small business. How do you get to your next gig? How do you do your career progression? All these things now fall on the individual shoulders.”
This new career paradigm requires more flexibility, the ability to change course quickly and take new opportunities as they arise.
To do this there are two key elements:
1) Develop transferable skills
Transferable skills are the skills that are needed to be successful in almost any work. They include turning up on time, communicating effectively, learning to influence others, writing persuasively, delegating, managing others, creating a vision for a project and many others.
Being able to demostrate these skills is the key to jumping into the next exciting role in a career journey.
Being able to execute these skills will allow you to be successful in that role.
You can deliberately plan to develop these skills and this will help you to write your work story.
2) Write your work story
Our work story is the combination of all our career experiences. We summarize these and create a narrative that tells the world who we are – often through a CV and in an interview.
Our work story tells the reader or listener about the trajectory of our career – it explains why all our experiences to date make us the right employee, consultant, freelancer for the job. The story demonstrates our key skills through a series of successful experiences using those skills.
Remembering that you are writing your career story every day can help to make good choices that expand our skill base, create another great example of success and develop the stream of our career narrative.
Secret 10: Collect People
“No man is an Island” John Donne
Who are you connected to?
If you’re planning to become a holy person, live in a cave and commune with god, you can skip this secret.
For those of us who measure success on this temporal plane, everything we do relies on other people for success. People hire us, work for us, work with us, buy from us, sell to us, inspire us, collaborate with us, recommend us, connect us.
More than 50% of all new jobs come through networking and informal connections rather than direct advertising.
Most 21st Century entrepreneurs use affiliate marketing and collaborations to build businesses that transcend their size as one man operations.
Getting a project done can become much easier if we can call on the right people to help think it through and make things happen.
Even more important is that our networks have networks too. If you have a network of 100 people, who each have networks of 100 people, you are connected to 10,000 people. That is a lot of people to help you succeed in your career journey.
Collecting the right people is a key to career success.
For this reason, we should become people collectors and develop a network of great people. So what makes a good network?
A good network needs a wide variety of different people who can fill different roles. In my case, I think about people who are supporters (they energize me), inspirers (they help me create new ideas), advocates (people who actively champion me), connectors (those who have great networks and are prepared to share), mentors (wise folks who have trodden my path and can guide me).
The key in filling out your network is to fill it with people you like and have a natural affinity and connection with. If you’ve ever tried to build a relationship with someone you don’t get on with, you’ll know that this seldom seems to work.
I think of a personal network a bit like an archery board. As the level of intimacy and frequency of connection with a person decreases, you tend to have more of those people in your network. You may only have 1 or 2 people in your absolute trusted inner circle who you speak with almost every day. Yet you may have a broad network of hundreds of great people who you are Linked In to, and maybe connect only every couple of years.
In the 21st Century we can use technology to keep track of our networks. We can use social networks (and Linked In is great). We have the tools to connect with and meet anyone across the globe – we can email, IM, Skype, video conference and telephone.
The only limit to building a 21st Century network is your imagination in what is possible. So get collecting and reap the benefits.
“I believe that one becomes stronger emotionally by taking life less personally. If your employer criticizes your report, don’t take it personally. Instead, find out what’s needed and fix it. If your girlfriend laughs at your tie, don’t take it personally. Find another tie or find another girlfriend.” -Marilyn vos Savant
The old adage says that “business is business – it’s nothing personal”. This is a healthy lesson for the world of work.
Whether you’re an employee, temp, contractor or entrepreneur, you’ll face criticism, rejection, anger, fear and disappointment in the world of work.
Your brilliant project that you worked all night on will be torn up by the partner.
Your best customer will suddenly quit with no explanation.
Your boss will unload on you for no reason.
Everyone in your new workplace will treat you like a pariah and make you get the tea.
How does anyone survive this?
The answer is to not take these things personally. A few thoughts that have helped me with this:
1) Most people spend their entire lives in a self-obsessed bubble, barely noticing people around them. If someone is ignoring your email, 90% of the time it is not because they hate you, but because they are too busy worrying about buying their new house, the fight they had with their husband, or which pair of shoes to wear today. Don’t take it personally
2) Knock-backs, failures and rejections are great. They mean you are trying. The more you fail, the more you are likely to succeed. The rejections don’t mean you are doomed to eternal failure. They mean you weren’t the right person at the right time, this time. Keep knocking on doors and the right one for you will open.
3) You always have a choice. If things are getting out of hand and consistently unbearable, you have a duty to yourself to find another way to make a living. There are always better choices.
Secret 5: Ask for help (and give it back)
“I’m just no good at asking others to help – I feel like I have to do it myself”.
If I had a pound for every time I’ve heard this phrase, I’d be writing this post on the beach in Waikiki, rather than on a train in Wakefield.
If you’re an expert in everything, skip this step. If you’re a normal human being then you’ll have strengths and things you’re not so good at.
Whatever you are hoping to get out of work – enjoyment, learning, growth, meaning – there will be times when you need to ask for help.
It’s amazing the lengths that people will go to in helping out. Since I started my business, I’ve had friends and acquaintances help me with my marketing strategy, my PR approach, my web presence. I’ve had a huge amount of feedback and help from people I really respect.
In my office based days, I got help on any number of things – how to use Excel, how to deal with a difficult team member, what to do when the boss melted down 24 hours before the end of a long project. Without this support, I’m not sure I’d have made it through and I certainly wouldn’t have learned much.
The bottom line is learning to ask for help can make you better at your job, help you learn and grow, help you enjoy your work more and build solid relationships that can transcend jobs and even go beyond work. Learn to ask for help.
In return, help others generously if you can. Do your best to genuinely and graciously give back when you are the expert. If you believe in karma, its good karma – if not it’s just the right thing to do.
And, no this lesson doesn’t clash with Secret Number 1 (You get out what you put in). You will only get help if you know exactly what to ask for and who to ask. You have to actively seek the right help at the right time.
Secret 6 Know why you are at work
If you haven’t seen the movie Office Space, it is one of the best films ever made about the world of work. In this scene, the hero Peter tells the management consultants about his typical day at work.
Peter is the ultimate demotivated employee – “The truth is I probably only do about 15 minutes of real actual work” Peter’s attitude is “It’s not that I’m lazy, it’s just that I don’t care”. He has no motivation to be at work.
The average human works for somewhere in the region of 75,000 hours during their career. There is no right answer for anyone to be at work, but without a good reason to be there it can become soul destroying.
Some of the most important reasons to be at work include:
Doing something meaningful – making a difference to the world around you
Learning something new – developing new skills that you can use profitably
Doing something you enjoy – work can provide energy and fun
Enjoying and being surrounded by great people – finding a great work culture
Making a good living – this is a good reason to work, but on its own sometimes this isn’t enough
Knowing why you are at work provides the motivation to get out of bed every day, and to get through the inevitable tough times. If you’ve been spacing out for an hour a day and living on Facebook in the office, it may be time to take a long hard look at yourself and figure out a better way to get through those 75,000 hours.
I have a friend, let’s call him Stan. Stan had been at the same employer for 12 years, in the marketing team. Whenever I met Stan, this is what I’d hear:
“Those b@st@rds don’t appreciate me, they work me so hard and I sweat blood for them. Every year, they give me a terrible performance review, no bonus and a rubbish payrise. They pass me over for promotion. It makes me sick, I just don’t care any more.”
Stan was notorious in his office for his legendary procrastination skills. He spent all day complaining to anyone who didn’t manage to avoid him.
His nickname was Levi, because he was always out the door at 5.01.
Stan had told me many times that he didn’t care and wasn’t prepared to work his fingers to the bone for no gratitude in return. He had given up.
When the financial crisis of 2008 hit, Stan’s employer let him go.
Stan was mystified, angry, indignant and talked about suing. Of course he didn’t.
No-one else at his office was surprised. They saw it coming a mile off.
Stan walked straight into Secret Number 1– you get out of work what you put in to work.
He was barely in the office and when he was he did nothing productive. He distracted other team members with his negative attitude. In return, Stan got poor performance reviews. In fact he’d been on three performance plans over his career.
He was passed over for promotion because he gave out the signals that he couldn’t care less.
However you make a living, your career will have ups and downs. There will be times when you are flat out and giving everything and calmer fallow periods. Learning to make this choice consciously and being aware that you will get back what you put is key to managing this flow.
Please, don’t be a Stan.
2. You have to take ownership of your career
Suited and booted
Picture me as a tender 21 year-old dressed in my three-piece pinstripe suit with natty pink shirt back in the mid-1990s.
I’m striding into my shiny corporate office for the first day of world domination.
I’d arrived – from now on my benevolent employers would shower me with money, support, training and appreciation.
All I had to do was show up and collect the daily kudos.
I deluded myself that it was in my firm’s interest to take care of me, promote me and sky-rocket my career for me. I barely put in any effort for the first year.
When it came to review time, I showed up expecting a pat on the head, a bone for being a good boy and a dazzling review.
My bubble popped. It seemed that I was somewhere below half-way down my peer group and my managers were questioning my attitude.
It slowly dawned on me that I and only I really cared at all about what happened in my career. It was my responsibility to set the direction, ask for the good projects, demand the training I needed, find the right mentor, look for ways to use my strengths and skills.
If I didn’t do it, these things simply wouldn’t happen.
You have to take ownership of your career – no-one is going to hand success and career satisfaction to you on a plate.
3. Everyone should learn how to make money independently
This lesson hit home to me the day I got my first cheque from a client after starting Less Ordinary Living.
Ten years of sucking at the corporate teat had brainwashed me into believing that the only way I could possibly make money was through steady employment.
Without a job I felt as vulnerable as a baby seal wandering through an Eskimo village. When I quit my job, I really did see myself “living in a van by the river” as Pam Slim of Escape from Cubicle Nation eloquently puts it.
It took a week or two to start finding clients and in that period, I was close to running back to the corporate edifice and begging forgiveness. The prodigal son, on a rapid return visit.
Yet when the work started to come and I took that first cheque to the bank, something amazing happened. I felt liberated.
I actually managed to make some cash, under my own steam, without anyone else’s benevolence.
This feeling is not to be underestimated. It symbolises that you have the ability to fend for yourself. I almost felt primal – like a prehistoric man bringing back the first woolly mammoth to the cave.
I’d recommend that everyone tries making some money independently. Figure out something you are good and passionate about and find a way to make a little bit of money from it.
Sell a service (doing someone’s garden, being a handy man, helping someone write their CV, wallpapering, painting, anything really) or something you’ve made (at a local fair, on ebay, through a website you made).
Once you’ve done this, you’ll realise that having a job is not the only way – even if you never choose to freelance or be an entrepreneur, you’ll know more about how to make ends meet in the worse case scenario.
You’ll take away some of the doomsday fear of redundancy and see that you have more choices than you might appreciate for making a living in the 21st Century.
Comments (12) 
Themocracy