Career Development

It's too bad that most of us only evaluate our professional development when updating a resume during a job search. At those times, we invest tons of time thinking of clever descriptors, transferable skill sets and personal goals, but rarely do we do so on a day-to-day basis. Yet, it is the daily grind of work where we spend 80% of our waking life! On any given day, I spend more time assessing the efficacy of my deodorant than cultivating the qualities I need to succeed in my current position and beyond. Instead, I punch the virtual clock, scramble from one "emergency" to the next (NB: these are not true emergencies, but a complicated system of smoke and mirrors that makes it seem so) and lie awake at night formulating mental checklists for the next day. What a better employee I would be if I devoted some of the mad dash to practicing the habits and characteristics that would better serve my employer and my own career development!

Here are a few virtues that come to mind when I think of constructive redevelopment:

- Identify the root of problems: those unproductive patterns and trends that reoccur in the workplace. How many times have I smoothed over the results of a larger, more difficult challenge lying in wait? More importantly, how many times have I been an enabler to the problem itself?

- Build empathy skills. It is so easy to write someone off if they speak, think or react to a situation differently that I would. It's a rare thing to admit that my way of dealing with something is not the best way to deal with it.

- Seek complementary personalities. I spend a lot of time negotiating with troublesome personalities, a skill that I actually take some pride in. However, it's not all about dealing with difficult people. Do I actively seek out coworkers and colleagues that bring out the best in me?

These are just a few dimensions that I would love to brag about in a performance evaluation or interview. This week I'll be looking for ways to beef-up those personal qualities that better serve myself and others in the workplace. I have an inkling that all have some bearing on creating Sanity with a Side of Paycheck.

Don't Worry, Be Happy

Yesterday was all about success, but today let's think about happiness. In my obsession with making lists, I like to jot down a few words of current things that make me happy.
Daffodils       
                Travel daydreaming
                                                Yoga workshops
                                                                            Date nights
                                                                                               Glass of wine
It's the small things, right? Well, positivity psychologist (what a job title!) Sonja Lyubomirsky has a good list of her own: 12 Things Happy People Do Differently. Here's a quick run-through: Happy people express gratitude, cultivate optimism, avoid over-thinking and social comparison(*guilty), practice acts of kindness, nurture their relationships, develop strategies for coping, learn to forgive, increase flow experiences (that state where everything slows down and you are solely focused on a task), savor joys, commit to goals, practice spirituality and take care of oneself.

What I like about Sonja's list is that each suggestion is DOABLE, i.e. not something that requires a particular situation to arise before achieving happiness is possible.

What are the small things that make you happy?  

Success Through the Ages

If I had to make a list detailing the ingredients that make a successful career, it might look something like this:

- Feeling I've made difference at the end of the day;

- Gaining respect from my peers;

- Receiving recognition from my boss;

- Controlling my to-do lists and e-mail inbox;

- Living a life outside of work with time for family, friends and fun.

Recently, I read another such list written by Amelia Barr, a British-cum-American novelist who lived at the turn of the last century. It's interesting to compare/contrast our lists, written over 100 years apart. Amelia's list is grandiose and inspirational, while mine is practical and focused on the here and now.

Here is an abbreviated version of her Rules for Success, taken from a great book entitled "How They Succeeded":

1. Men and women succeed because they take pains to succeed. Industry and patience are almost genius; and successful people are more distinguished for resolution and perseverance than for unusual gifts.  
2. Success is the reward of those who "spurn delights and live laborious days." We learn to do things by doing them.
3. No opposition must be taken to heart. Our enemies often help us more than our friends.
4. A fatal mistake is to imagine that success is some stroke of luck. This world is run with far too tight a rein for luck to interfere.
5. We have been told, for centuries, to watch for opportunities, and to strike while the iron is hot. Very good; but I think better of Oliver Cromwell's amendment - "make the iron hot by striking it."
6. Everything good needs time. Don't do work in a hurry. Go into details; it pays in every way. Time means power for your work. Mediocrity is always in a rush; but whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing with consideration.
7. Be orderly. Slatternly work is never good work.
8. Never be above your profession.
9. Don't fail through defects of temper and over-sensitiveness at moments of trial. One of the great helps to success is to be cheerful; to go to work with a full sense of life; to be determined to put hindrances out of the way; to prevail over them and to get the mastery.

The last one really speaks to me, as someone with an "oversensitive" temper. A smile really does go a long way... then or now.

Journaling for Work

Do you keep a journal or daily work log? I know a few managers who are required to do so, but there is a heap of benefit that comes from setting a little time aside each day to the practice as an employee. 

Journaling encourages resiliency, something I posted about last month. A daily (or near daily) practice of self-reflection helps in a multitude of ways, including balancing your priorities with those of others, processing challenging situations after they occur, tracking patterns in your behavior, managing stress and maintaining a sense of control in a crazy work environment. 

Ultimate Youth Worker provides a great template for the first-time journaler:

1. Identify and describe the experience/issue/decision/incident
2. Identify your strengths as a practitioner
3. Identify your feelings and values, then the feelings and values of others involved
4. Identify external and internal factors, including structural and oppressive factors
5. Identify factors you have influence or control over and those you don't
6. Identify knowledge used, including factual, theoretical and practice
7. Develop an action plan: what do I need to do first, second, third and so on
8. Implement your action plan, then do it all over again. 

Don't worry about writing for an audience and certainly don't write for posterity. I think I would be horrified to go back and re-read the diaries of my youth, but that doesn't stop me from continuing the habit today. In her book, A Writer's Diary, Virginia Wolfe wrote that "[T]he habit of writing thus for my own eye only is good practice. It loosens the ligaments. Nevermind the misses and the stumbles. Going at such a pace as I do I must make the most direct and instant shots at my object, and thus have to lay hands on words, choose them and shoot them with no more pause than is needed to put my pen in the ink." 

Interested in a peak at some famous journals?  Flip through the pages here. Frida Kahlo's is my favorite.  Charlotte Bronte's is intense!

Be Flexible

Ever heard of behavioral flexibility? It describes a person's ability to respond and adjust his or her actions based on external stimulations. Ben C. Fletcher, who writes "Do Something Different" for Psychology Today boils it down like this:

People with LOW behavioral flexibility tend to:

- stick to routines

- go to the same places

- have strict schedules

- hang around the same people.

People with HIGH behavioral flexibility tend to:

- act differently in different situations

- try new things

- resist routine

- not rely on habits.

Mr. Fletcher uses behavioral flexibility to explain work-related stress: people who are inflexible tend to describe themselves as stressed, anxious and depressed while at work. He argues that it is not the job itself that causes these feelings, but rather a worker's inability to meet demands, leading him or her to blame the workplace instead of reacting in a resilient way.

I certainly fall into the inflexible category of routine, schedules and living within a well-defined comfort zone. Work stress is also a complaint near and dear to my heart, so this perspective is a challenging one for me. I want things to happen my way, on my timeline, according to my standards. When that doesn't happen (nearly always), I end up dissatisfied, disappointed or angry. Thankfully, Mr. Fletcher's theory isn't all gloom-and-doom. His suggestion? Ride the wave! By being flexible, "people become better equipped to deal with the world. As a result, they perceive it as a less difficult place."  Doesn't that sound nice?

The bottom line is to go with the flow. Look for ways to reconcile situations instead of fighting them with predictable tendencies. Try to see things from your boss's point of view or adapt to a coworker's work style, even if its just for one project. Who knows? Maybe their approach isn't as infuriating as you once thought. And just think of how laid back you'll appear to your coworkers!

To read more about behavioral flexibility and coping mechanisms, check out this article. To learn how to "Do Something Different", head over to Psychology Today.

Happiness vs. Meaning

Do you describe your work to others as "meaningful"? I don't mean the paper-pushing, clock-watching, cat-video-watching part of the day, but the actual work you produce and your goals for the future.

My guess is that very few people in the present-day working class would answer "yes" to that question, even if he or she happens to enjoy the job itself.  Thanks to the economy, competition, unequal pay for unequal work and the managerial pyramid, it's hard to find deeper meaning in the work day, especially when the basic struggle to find sanity with a side of paycheck is so great. (Remember TPS reports?) Anecdotally, we know that identifying personal passions and happiness is a huge part of achieving a successful career path, but I have yet to find an example in my life of passion paying the electric bill.

However, a new study soon to be released in The Journal of Positive Psychology challenges the assumption that happiness and meaning are one in the same or, for that matter, even directly related.  Its authors explain that happiness is "largely present-oriented" and highly associated with things being easy or taking the best away from a situation.  Meaning, on the other hand, goes much deeper, "integrating past, present and future" assessments of one's purpose and contributing or giving back to society.  Taking versus giving.

The research concludes that finding happiness at work does not automatically guarantee a sense of meaning.  In fact, the opposite may be true: withstanding a difficult situation may not bring you happiness, but it is very likely to leave you with a sense of meaning, resiliency and adaptability to the ever-changing world around us.  More on this later this week...

The Atlantic recently highlighted the life of Viktor Frankl, a Jewish concentration camp survivor and prominent psychiatrist, and his work on this subject.  Frankl wrote, "It is the very pursuit of happiness, that thwarts happiness."  

Bad Habits

I envy people who naturally and effortlessly make the most of every situation encountered. (I tend to fall into the other category: those with a predisposition to gripe and bellyache about everything.) Recently, I read a persuasive quote by writer Rita Schiano that shifted my mindset on the practicality of complaining: "Talking about our problems is our greatest addition. Break the habit. Talk about your joys." 

Noble intention, but easier said than done.

We all know that the workplace is the perfect environment to fall into negative, unproductive patterns like criticism, contempt, procrastination and apathy. The problem is that these bad habits follow us home at the end of the day, leading to eye rolling and interrupting at home.  Do them long enough and they become an essential part of your persona, no longer the harmless quirk they once were at the office.

Eleanor Roosevelt said, "It is easy to slip into self-absorption and it is equally fatal. When one becomes absorbed in himself, in his health, in his personal problems, or in the small details of daily living, he is, at the same time losing interest in other people; worse, he is losing his ties to life.  From that it is an easy step to losing interest in the world and in life itself.  That is the beginning of death."

How's that for an ominous warming?

It isn't hopeless, though. On any day, at any moment, we can choose another door: to talk about what's going right in our lives and invest energy in that instead. It doesn't have to be a new year's resolution or something we do when we turn 40 or on the first day of retirement. It certainly can't require any more effort than keeping up with all the things we are annoyed about. (Here, here and here.)

For more on bad habits that doom relationships, at work or at home, check out Dr. John Gottman's work, which is also well-documented in the book Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking by the very funny and insightful Malcolm Gladwell. You can read more of Eleanor Roosevelt's thoughts on happiness here.