My friend’s tears weren’t too unusual on this topic. “It’s awful,” she said, as I listened to her heart sink to the floor. “My manager is always hounding me about deadlines I’m missing because I have too much work to do. My coworker is a jerk, but I have no one to tell when we don’t have HR, besides my manager says it’s my fault. It’s so frustrating, I hate it there.” After a bit, I said, “Wow, that’s all so hard. Are you going to look for a new job?” She blinked at me. “Oh, no I couldn’t. I’ve …
Messy Rules. They’re Awesome.
On my way in to the library the other day, I wondered what their food rules are, and whether I needed to smuggle in my water bottle. So I went looking for a sign with rules. [At the local library, you can’t throw your stuff everywhere, get naked, or pop popcorn. This must be why children under 10 need to be supervised.] And there it was: “Do not: Consume food or drink that creates a nuisance.” Now this might seem like no big deal, sandwiched between typical “don’t smoke” and “don’t expose yourself” rules. But it caught me dead in …
Victory Over The Library Door
A few weeks ago, I had plans to have lunch with the kiddo at school. She’d been talking about it for days, so there’s a good chance she was excited about it. The original plan was to go to the library that’s near her school, do some work until noon, and then head over to the land of juice pouches and apple slices. I even remembered to bring tea for the morning so I’d have some thing to drink at the library. I strutted up to the library door, so proud of myself for being up early and having my …
What Traffic Means For Your Career
Let me tell you what I think about when I sit in traffic and how it really impacts your job. (It’s probably not what you think.) [Photo by Clément M. on Unsplash] Many years ago, I flirted with the idea of becoming a professional photographer. “It’s an uphill battle,” they’d say, “the photographer’s market is saturated with everybody and their cell phones.” I started finding clients. It wasn’t long after the first few “I want our hands held together like a heart like they do on Pinterest, okay?” that I knew portraits weren’t really something I wanted to pursue. At …
Letting Go
I’m sitting oceanside at the Oregon coast this morning, wondering about how if some global catastrophe (natural or otherwise) struck, and humankind was largely wiped out, how long it’d take the earth to come back into balance (my guess is, not very long in the grand scheme of things). You know, light vacation ponderings. But it also highlights to me how much of our work we create for ourselves. If we found ourselves knocked back to a time where survival was the primary goal, how many things would we stop giving energy to every day? I’d imagine it’d be most …
3 Tips for Networking and Inclusivity at WorkHuman
WorkHuman is a conference that encourages and celebrates bringing the whole human in to the workplace. Or as seen on their website, “Globoforce pioneered the WorkHuman movement to galvanize leaders worldwide to harness the transformative power of people for the next generation of HR.” (It may be billed as an HR conference, but let me tell you, this conference has something for everybody.) As with any conference that’s been running for a while, groups of familiar faces begin to form. In it’s fourth year, WorkHuman is starting to see the formation of these communities. It’s an important part of the …
This Ain’t Your Grandpa’s Workplace
Do your processes help your work, or hurt it? The modern workplace follows ideas developed during the factory era. Clock the calls. Put up a punch clock for when we eat and pee. Time the intervals between calls. Track ticket times. Scheduled reviews. I’m sure there’s more, but thinking about this stuff tends to give me gas. Back in the day, optimizing the work this way made sense. When you could outperform your competition by loading the conveyor belt faster, then you made sure employees were moving their arm from one spot to another a particular way, optimized for speed, and …
You Get What You Look For
We crave opportunity, the out-of-the-blue offer that sends you skipping down the yellow brick road to la la land. But often while we’re waiting, we feel lost. Overwhelmed by the expectations of others, we bury our values in the sand while we stress out over what our co-workers think, what that guy in the car on the freeway thinks, or what the neighbor might think of the lawn. So we are cautious with co-workers, make sure not to pick our noses in the car, and mow the lawn every week, all the while grumbling about the demands of everyday life. …
No Good, No Bad
There’s an argument I keep having in my head. Lately, my daughter has been struggling with understanding the behavior of others at school. She’ll say this kid or that kid is “good” or “bad.” I immediately leap in with this: there are no “bad people,” only “bad decisions.” People should be held accountable for their “bad decisions,” but their “bad decisions” Do Not Make Them Bad People. I tell her this because I want her to know that mistakes are fine. Learn from them and try to do better next time. You might fuck up 15 times. Or 150 times. …
Fear Is a Great Teacher (If You Don’t Freak Out)
One Thought Can Make (or Break) Your Day You wake up feeling rested and refreshed (…okay, fine, feeling somewhat rested, and mostly refreshed), you’re ready to tackle the day, but then you remember something that kicks you in the feels. Maybe it’s a presentation you have to make that afternoon. Maybe you remember a fight you had with a loved one the day before. Maybe it’s some bad health news. That’s all it takes, your morning has just gone to shit. You grumble at the empty cereal box. You swear at your roommates when you see there’s no toilet paper. …