What do people love about the work you do? Have you ever asked them or are you coming up with that list on your own? Ask them. What do you like about what I do? This isn’t about you getting validation for what you do or feeling “awesome” about yourself (although it is an awesome side effect). It is about you hearing what people like (maybe asking what they don’t like) and realizing where your…
Over the summer I had an office flood followed by construction going on outside my window. The home office was no better with roadwork being done. I couldn’t stop the flood. I wasn’t about to tell me not to do work on their house or on a building I don’t own. But I did go buy some amazing noise-canceling headphones that blocked out the bulk of the noise and let me work. You can’t control…
I want to start my day with a tea each day. That one is easy to accomplish. I also want to go for a run or bike, these are harder to accomplish. Each week I try to do a bit more. To accomplish this, I’ve made sure that the routes don’t change, the paths get worn down, and the same equipment is worn. They aren’t there yet, but the patterns are forming, falling into their…
Do you have an ETA? Do you have an SLA? I’m not talking about company-wide time-to-respond options, I’m talking about your own internal options that govern your own operations and how you respond to people. Is it a knee-jerk response? Is it last minute? Is it immediate acknowledgment? How do you respond and how do you want to respond is what matters and it’s all up to you.
What is your line in stand? The hill you’ll die on. Your last straw. It doesn’t (and shouldn’t) be as dramatic as any of the above, but knowing your threshold, your limit, is what it will help you when things go wrong. When things are going bad, we enter into the “one more” syndrome – where incrementally “one more” thing will not hurt us until one day we wake up burnt out and overloaded. Know…