Take a Break For Recovery

Progress can sometimes feel like endless staircases where you climb and climb, but can never see the end.

A personal mission statement allows you to look back and see how far you've climbed.

A personal mission statement reminds you where you're coming from and puts your life in perspective. When you feel frustrated, you can go back and read how much you've progressed over a specific time.

The New Year's resolution or 'action phase' is when you're highly motivated for change. Use it to set things in motion and automate as much as you can. 

• Put your bills on autopay
• Start using a savings app
• Cut out any subscriptions you don't really need.

If you don't have a plan when the New Year's glow has worn off in a few months, you will stop doing whatever you promised to do. 

To force yourself to stick to a budget:

• Write down everything you spend.
• Add it up at the end of every week.
• Submit a report to help keep you accountable.

Chronic psychosocial stress that’s common in people suffering from burnout can impair personal and social functioning as well as overwhelming your cognitive skills and neuroendocrine systems. 

Over time the effects of burnout can lead to memory, attention, and emotional problems.

The wrong move is to say “yes” if you don’t have the available resources to do another task.

If it’s not a ‘hell yes,’ then it’s a ‘no.’ That means if it’s a “maybe,” then it’s a “no.”

... about how you spend your time.  Others will come to value your time only if you value it first.

For example, be aware of the calendar invitations that you accept. If it’s from your boss or client, you probably have to go. But if it’s a group meeting that you could easily catch up on from one of your colleagues, decline.

 ... especially to projects and clients that suck the creativity out of you.

When your mental resources are limited, you need to make sure they’re going to the right tasks. Burnout decimates your motivation, making working on projects you’re uninterested in an agonizing process.

Find a completely unrelated creative outlet: look for a creative task with lower stakes to help ease you back into things and re-ignite your creativity and motivation.

What are the things in your own life that you enjoy but aren’t necessarily “productive”? 

Our lives are good in most parts and our discomfort is temporary. Relative to the time in our normal day, almost any habit we adopt is over quickly.

Your workout will be finished in an hour or two. Your report will be typed to completion by tomorrow morning.

We'll never regret doing good work, once it is done, despite our initial resistance to it.

Sometimes, the simple act of showing up and having the courage to do the work, even in an average manner, is a victory worth celebrating.

Popular people have worked at and mastered this.

• The first step is having an opening line. The simpler the better. For example, comment on the environment.
• The next step is introducing yourself. Include enough information that the other person can ask questions.
• The third step involves conversation exploration, where the pair or group goes from introductions to a topic. 
• Step four is topic expansion, building on the topic at hand by focusing on what the other person is saying.
• The final step is to end the conversation by expressing gratitude for the connection.

Popular people take charge of making dates and sending out invitations. These interactions allow them to continue to work on their social skills. Shy people wait to be asked out.

Intentionally design for the same interactions that would otherwise happen if people were in the office.

• Culture is what naturally happens when a group of people gets together for any period.
• A great culture happens with intentional design and influence. It's the reason you should make your company's mission, vision, values, operating principles, standards, and agreements visible. 
• Culture is experienced through emotions, including how your employees feel about the company, you, other leaders, and peers. That feeling is developed through human interaction at the water cooler, kitchen, or hallway conversations.

Your people need to feel your presence as a leader as they will have fewer opportunities to see you face to face when they work remotely.

• Regularly show up in a variety of forms that can include weekly video meetings, periodic company-wide emails, or presence in public channels.
• Err on the side of more communication rather than less.

Procrastination is a symptom, much like a fever or headache, and it usually boils down to one thing: fear.

What is your procrastination a symptom of? What are you afraid of?

To say ‘I don’t have time’ is like saying, ‘I don’t want to.' Perhaps the real issue is that you don’t really want to change.

What parts of your current situation do you like, and how are they affecting your desire to move forward?