In a study,  Angela Duckworth, psychology professor and author of Grit,  found that SAT or ACT scores can not reliably determine grit. What did work was a "Grit Scale" that included statements such as "I finish whatever I begin" and “setbacks don’t discourage me."

Measuring persistence

Duckworth argues that grit - perseverance and exclusive pursuit of a single passion - is severely underrated. Grit can be developed and is as important as IQ in predicting educational success. What differentiates high performers is mostly how they process feelings of frustration, disappointment or boredom. While others take these signals to cut their losses and move on, high performers have been conditioned to believe that struggle is not something to worry about. Instead, it is more important to delay the quitting point.

Grit can be developed

On the surface, people think effort is more important than talent. Employers say they value industriousness more than intelligence in an employee. But deep down, they hold opposite views. Studies show people prefer a "natural" over a "striver". This bias has practical implications.  “If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all,” Michelangelo observed. It suggests that grit is essential, but it is not attractive.

The natural bias

When successful people keep their practice hidden, it can be costly to society because it obscures the amount of failure that goes into success. We only see the final products.  When we experience messy frustration, we are too eager to believe we don’t have what it takes and give up.

Hidden practice is costly

Directional consistency, the ability to stick unswervingly to a single, superordinate goal over a period of years is perhaps not the best approach in an economy where career paths can twist or even disappear over a short period. However, we need some direction to get anywhere. Even if are forced to switch paths, that also requires grit.

Grit is needed to get somewhere

The downsides of dogged, single-minded persistence

career

Career

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

Is Grit Overrated?

<ul><li>You have the power to make life-improving changes.</li><li>Feel happier at work by pursuing the “Engagement Triangle.”</li><li>Self-care, healthy habits and mindfulness boost your well-being. </li><li>Start small to make headway on big changes, and celebrate little wins.</li><li>Fine-tune your habits to improve your life.</li><li>Choose settings and engage in activities that help you feel happy.</li><li>Keep learning.</li><li>Cultivate a diverse array of relationships.</li></ul>

Key Takeaways

You have the power to make life-improving changes.More than half of American workers feel stressed and frustrated by or stuck in their present jobs. This stands in stark contrast to the one-third of workers who feel engaged and are happy, energized and purposeful at work. If you identify more with the former than the latter group, know that, even if you don’t see a way out of your current situation, you can make practical changes to improve your work-life without changing jobs or career – specifically, changes to your perspective, skills, approach to life, mental acuity and health.

Feeling Happy At Your Job

Happiness and success are similar in that you can’t pursue either directly. Each seems to emerge as a consequence of the way you manage yourself and your activities.

Sometimes, changing how you choose to work gives you a boost. Even if your job doesn’t offer you much autonomy, you can change how you usually do things – even if it’s as small as approaching an assignment with a less pessimistic-than-normal attitude or listening more closely to your colleagues. Your brain reads this simple change as a chance to “be inventive” – a vital component of human happiness.

The How Of Working

<ul><li>A well-honed sense of purpose – Work is more enjoyable and engaging when you feel part of something meaningful. </li><li>Positive relationships with the people in your job-related sphere – When you feel strong, friendly ties to the people with whom you work, you feel happier and more engaged.</li><li>Your performance, or how you approach your work – When your work makes the most of your strengths and provides learning challenges, you experience greater job satisfaction.</li></ul>The Engagement Triangle can help you plan your good days and feel better on your bad days.

The Engagement Triangle: The Three Ps

A well-crafted “statement of personal values” can help you pursue the three Ps(Purpose, Positive relationships and Performance). Think of this statement as a guiding idea that shapes how you pursue your work and interact.   When crafting your mission statement, consider your values and standards, how you hope to help or serve others and the activities that give you the greatest sense of satisfaction.

Your Personal Values

Your well-being influences your happiness and success in the workplace. While people define well-being in different ways, many agree it encompasses four distinct realms: mind, body, heart and spirit. <ul><li>The body element includes eating, sleeping and exercise habits, and stress levels. </li><li>Spirit includes your sense of purpose, values and moral/spiritual beliefs. </li><li>The heart includes your relationships, resilience and sense of compassion, love and joy. </li><li>Mind includes mental and brain health, mindfulness and curiosity. </li></ul>You can improve any of these areas with simple changes.

Self-Care And You

Mindfulness, the new name for a thousands of years old practice called meditation, counteracts the negative and boosts the positive at work. Mindlessness can lead to missed opportunities, inflexibility, bias and feelings of helplessness. Mindfulness increases your abilities, creativity and happiness. Pair mindfulness with a meditation practice to improve your brain functions and lower your stress and blood pressure levels. Techniques for mindfulness include breathing exercises, taking a meditative walk, participating in a guided meditation or enjoying a fully present coffee or snack break.

Mindfulness And Your Well-Being

When it comes to making big changes in your life or career, starting small can help:“Develop a vision” – Consider your ideal life and career and what big goals might help get you there.“Identify micro-goals” – Break each big goal into specific, actionable small goals.  For example, you might set a micro-goal of walking for 20 minutes a couple of times per week.“Commit to small progress” – Plan out tiny actions that support each micro-goal, such as buying new walking shoes.“Record your progress” – Keep track of your progress. Evidence of your successes keeps you moving forward.

Start Small to Make Headway on Big Changes, and Celebrate Little Wins

Forming a new habit is a three-step process:Cue – This is the prompt for the new behaviour you want to turn into a habit. It might be an alarm on your phone or a physical reminder, such as leaving your walking shoes near your front door.Routine – This is the action you take in response to the cue – the new habit itself.Reward – This generates a sense of pleasure about your new habit. Pausing to reflect on how doing the new habit makes you feel can create this sensation.

Form A New Habit

Replace bad habits with better ones by identifying what motivates your unhealthy behavior. Find better habits that fulfill those needs in healthier ways. For example, your daily trip to the office cafeteria for a cookie might be less about sugar cravings than a desire to socialize. Identify the cue for the bad habit, and create a new routine connected with that cue.

Get Rid Of Your Bad Habits By Replacing Them With Good Ones

Make sure your hobby engages you; it should not be something passive, such as binge-watching Netflix.Along with leisure activities, studies show that spending time in nature is one of the best ways to boost your happiness and health. You can get natural benefits in a variety of ways: Go to a park; put a plant on your desk; get a pet; go for a walk, or seek out a sunny spot to work. Adding color to your workspace, keeping your desk tidy and choosing a comfortable chair, likewise, support your well-being and productivity.

Your Hobbies And Activities

Another happiness-building activity is showing kindness to others. When you help someone, you feel a greater connection to your community. Learning to focus your attention on tasks that demand your highest level of skill and attention also gives you a deep sense of satisfaction.

Show Kindness To Strangers

Nurturing a growth mind-set – the belief you can develop knowledge and abilities over your lifetime – helps you handle the unexpected and regard setbacks as learning opportunities rather than failures. It helps you develop grit – the ability to keep going in the face of difficulties – by teaching you the value of practising to improve. Learning bolsters your sense of purpose and autonomy and keeps you from becoming bored.

Having A Growth Mindset

The rise in loneliness poses a problem for people’s health and well-being. Loneliness increases your risk of depression, heart disease and diabetes, among other mental and physical ailments. Relational ties help decrease anxiety and boost confidence and self-esteem. Be aware: You can’t expect to build these healthy connections with others virtually. Replacing conversations with emails and texts can leave you feeling more lonely.

Cultivate Relationships

Any busy workers, even those in lively offices, may drift into loneliness without noticing that it’s happening.

Working with others in an office each day is not a surefire way to avoid isolation. You must be proactive about cultivating relationships. To counteract loneliness, come to meetings early to socialize with colleagues, look for opportunities to greet and thank co-workers, and, when you feel a connection with someone, suggest activities, such as taking a walk together, that would allow you to form a closer friendship. When appropriate, consider forming mentoring relationships within your organization. Whether you are the mentor or mentee, you gain opportunities to teach and learn.

Networking To Stay Happy

While networking sometimes makes people feel uneasy, remember that its benefits go both ways: You and your networking partners share connection, information and support. Someone you meet might help you find a new job or opportunity, and you might do the same for them. Forming diverse networks broadens your perspectives. These contacts can challenge old assumptions and increase your potential for innovative solutions.

Broaden Your Perspective

Easy to implement strategies to revamp work practices in ways that benefit employees’ health

health

Health

productivity

Productivity

timemanagement

Time Management

Wellbeing at Work

Feeling stuck in a rut at work? According to executive coach Beverly Jones, even if you don’t love what you do, you can find meaning and happiness in your career

If you hate your job and want change, the starting point is with you! Get unstuck, move past boredom, and discover how to flourish at work. This book is for anyone stuck in a rut, burned out, or just plain tired. Has your career plateaued? Do you sometimes dread starting work? Are you bogged down by frustration, tedium, loneliness, or uncertainty? There’s hope. Find Your Happy at Work, the latest book by acclaimed executive coach Beverly Jones, gives you a road map to quickly create more joy and meaning in your work, even if you don’t love your job. Yes, aspects of your career are beyond your control. But Jones says you have more power than you realize. Throughout 50 fast-paced chapters, Find Your Happy at Work offers practical strategies to help you feel more enthusiastic and gratified on the job, whether from in the office or from home. These include: A simple model for creating career engagement that will improve your performance at work and help you develop deeper relationships with others. Techniques for addressing workplace challenges like difficult colleagues, boring tasks, daunting projects, and gloomy environments. Strategies for strengthening your network, building expertise, and laying other groundwork for a resilient career. This book will provide encouragement, inspiration, and useful advice for those who want to be happy in their work, and throughout their lives.

books

Books

If you hate your job and want change, the starting point is with you! Get unstuck, move past boredom, and discover how to flourish at work. This book is for anyone stuck in a rut, burned out, or just plain tired. Has your career plateaued? Do you sometimes dread starting work? Are you bogged down by frustration, tedium, loneliness, or uncertainty? There’s hope. Find Your Happy at Work, the latest book by acclaimed executive coach Beverly Jones, gives you a road map to quickly create more joy and meaning in your work, even if you don’t love your job. Yes, aspects of your career are beyond your control. But Jones says you have more power than you realize. Throughout 50 fast-paced chapters, Find Your Happy at Work offers practical strategies to help you feel more enthusiastic and gratified on the job, whether from in the office or from home. These include: <ul><li>A simple model for creating career engagement that will improve your performance at work and help you develop deeper relationships with others.</li><li>Techniques for addressing workplace challenges like difficult colleagues, boring tasks, daunting projects, and gloomy environments.</li><li>Strategies for strengthening your network, building expertise, and laying other groundwork for a resilient career.</li></ul> This book will provide encouragement, inspiration, and useful advice for those who want to be happy in their work, and throughout their lives.

Beverly E. Jones is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. Beverly E. Jones has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. Beverly E. Jones's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

Beverly E. Jones

Find Your Happy at Work

Have you ever tried to relax, only to find yourself overwhelmed with feeling stressed and having negative thoughts? Turns out a lot of us experience this—which is why some have coined it “stresslaxing.”Even though stresslaxation is a new term, it describes relaxation-induced anxiety, which has been studied for years. This is shown to happen to between 30% and 50% of people when they try to do relaxing things, causing symptoms of stress (such as rapid heartbeat or sweating).

Relaxation Causing Stress

Pretending that a problem doesn’t exist—also known as denial—is one of the least effective coping strategies for stress. In the case of stresslaxing, this might be denying you’re stressed to begin with.Short periods of denial can actually help us adapt to change. For example, denial can help a person cope with their emotions after experiencing the death of someone close. But when denial is used frequently to deal with daily stressors, it can leave people feeling perpetually stuck in a rut.

Reason For Stresslaxation: you’re Denying You’re Stressed

Acknowledge that the stress symptoms can be helpful. Your body is trying to alert you that a problem needs fixing, so it’s activating all its physiological resources to help you do this.Write down your deepest thoughts and feelings associated with your stress. This will help you understand the source of your stress so you can tackle it. Think outside the box. When we’re stressed, we might think only certain activities (such as meditation or exercise) can help us relax.

How To Fix Stresslaxation Denial

Most of us have something we’re passionate about—whether that’s our work or even a hobby. But the reason you’re motivated to do these things is important.Some people pursue their passion because they want to—whether it’s to improve themselves or learn a new skill. But others may only pursue their passion because they want recognition from other people. People with certain personality types may be more prone to obsessing over their passion. Others may simply follow a certain pursuit to get praise from their colleagues or even to prove their worth to friends or family.

Reason For Stresslaxation: Worrying About Others

When making a decision, some people can’t help but explore all possible options available to them—known as maximizing thoughts. This can even happen when trying to pick something relaxing to do. Even after picking something, you may instead think about the other options, wondering if something else would’ve helped you feel more relaxed. So instead of relaxing your mind, you’re stressing yourself even more.Unfortunately, maximizing leads to self-blame regret, no matter what option we choose. It’s also sometimes associated with lower well-being.

Reason For Stresslaxation: You Can’t Make up Your Mind

Limit the number of decisions you need to make on the day you want to do something relaxing. Or even plan when you’re going to do something relaxing (such as watching a movie or meditating) and how long you’re going to do it for. This may make it easier to relax when the time comes as you’ll know you aren’t putting other things off.Remember why you’re trying to relax. Your health is important, so remembering this may help you feel less stressed while trying to do a relaxing activity.

How To Make Up Your Mind

Relaxation-induced anxiety is shown to happen to between 30% and 50% of people when they try to do relaxing things. This is a practical guide to help deal with it.


Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

mentalhealth

Mental Health

entertainment

Entertainment

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

‘Stresslaxation’ is real. Science explains why it happens and how to get past it

Conventional career advice overwhelmingly teaches that office-politicking extroverts are best set up for success. As a result, if you’re offbeat, you’ve probably felt that the parts of your personality that seem out of sync are weaknesses you need to overcome.  What companies really need are passionate, original thinkers. Businesses need “disruptors” — Silicon Valley’s favourite word — and they need employees who are too odd to understand the ways things are “supposed to work.” Fellow misfits, do not fear: You do not have to change your fundamental being in order to thrive in your career.

Embrace Your Weird

<ul><li>Your unique point of view is a strength, not a weakness. </li><li>Your sensitivity is what allows you to read a room and, ostensibly, play to it. </li><li>Your emotional intensity/curmudgeonly nature/crippling social anxiety/outsider status means you’re not constantly trying to curry favour with an uninspiring boss or your phoning-it-in co-workers. </li></ul>Having the courage to celebrate your differences and communicate your ideas will help you succeed in nearly any vocation. So keep at it. Push yourself to share ideas or fixes to long-standing problems. Propose your big, wild dream project. Embrace your quirks.

Your Quirk Is Your Strength

The impulse to want to fake it, to be more poised, polished or more like what you perceive all those #bosses on Instagram to be, is powerful — especially if you’ve spent a lifetime feeling odd. But pretending to be something you’re not in a new job, faking skills or contorting yourself to gain recognition, is a short-sighted strategy with little return.Your best work will come when you can be open, accountable, curious and fully who you are — not by performing some outsize version of who you think you should be.

Don't Fake It

Focus on the value and strengths you bring in this moment, even with all of your perceived flaws. Identify what it is about work that makes you feel anxious. Learn to push through this anxiety instead of running away from it. A daily meditation practice may help with this; so could a simple 10-minute walk.Pinpoint the triggers that make you feel ashamed or insecure and begin the process of overcoming them. Journaling, therapy, and confiding in friends are all potential ways to cope.

Sharpen Your Hidden Strengths

<ul><li>Many of us have been told that confidence is a fixed state — once we have it, it doesn’t go away. But confidence is actually fleeting: One day you will be swaggering around a conference room fired up to give a presentation and the next you’ll be eating your feelings in the office kitchen paralyzed by a full panic. </li><li>Most people — misfits or not — experience this sort of indecision. We think confidence is a requirement to be successful. </li><li>But instead of focusing on confidence, set your mind to developing your competence — and becoming better at what you do. </li></ul>

Confidence Is Overrated

For many of us, the biggest obstacle in the way of our success is the noise we create in our own heads: psyching ourselves out, telling ourselves we can’t do it, distracting ourselves with problems that don’t necessarily exist outside our minds. For those of us who experience these thoughts, learning to control our overthinking — and anchor ourselves back in reality — is critical. Remember that what we perceive as failure is often an opportunity.

Stop Overthinking

So you hate networking, the small talk gives you hives and you find yourself in a state of panic over professional events. All of this may make you may feel like you’re alone at work. You aren’t. You just haven’t identified your people yet. The awkward moments you experience on a regular basis can be an opening for a conversation with someone who also struggles with feeling like they don’t fit the mould. Look for these moments of honest rapport, and seek out the people at work who behave in a way you admire and whose work you genuinely respect.

Misfits, Unite!

<ul><li>Focus on building genuine connections and relationships, not transactional relationships based on what other people can do for you.</li><li>Ask questions that have nothing to do with work.</li><li>Give heartfelt compliments. </li><li>Be a person your new colleague-friends can trust. </li><li>Actively support your co-workers, back up their ideas, offer help when you can and celebrate their successes. </li><li>Set boundaries and stick to them. You are not obliged to socialize with co-workers outside the office if you don’t want to, nor do you have to take on their personal problems to be a good colleague.</li></ul>

Networking Tips For The Misfits

For all the square pegs out there who are not able to fit the round holes of corporate culture.

It's possible to survive — and even thrive — as a misfit without forcing yourself into a round corporate hole. Here's how to embrace your weird and successfully navigate the workplace. 

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

A Misfit’s Guide to Navigating the Office - Guides

Sometimes, getting your team out of quicksand will require you to be more directive than empowering. Don't worry: we can still approach this in a way that drives buy-in and helps your teammates feel heard, and know they have autonomy. Sometimes, being directive is the most empowering thing you can do.

Managing A Team In A Directive Way

A manager has to ensure that the team has a clear roadmap with well-defined projects and deadlines.To check this, managers can start by asking themselves: When you think about how you want to lead your team at this moment, what are you optimizing for?

Identify What You’re Optimizing For

Describe your role in outcomes, rather than describing how you will do your work.Example: Ensure the team has internalized the project's timeline<ul><li>Ensure each team member has a clearly defined individual role in this project.</li><li>Communicate to stakeholders when there are surprises and changes to the plan within 24 hours.</li><li>Make sure the team knows who to reach out to when they have questions about progress.</li></ul>

Identify the Who, What, When, and How

<ul><li>Avoid the word "accountable". Use longer descriptors to describe what you actually mean</li><li>What's going to happen, or be different, as a result of me doing this thing?</li></ul>Example: "I facilitate standups on Mondays and Wednesdays."

Communicate the Who, What, When, and How to Your Team

<ul><li>Describing your role in terms of outcomes will allow you to make informed "how" decisions that always tie back to the primary goal.</li><li>Identify your teammates' roles and responsibilities.</li><li>Block out time for this work.</li><li>Find one person who will be good at giving you gut-checks as you develop the plan.</li><li>Let them know when and how you'll be sharing a project plan with them.</li></ul>

Define the Who and What for Your Team

If you need to communicate to particular individuals first: Prioritize communicating with different folks based on how much their reaction or input will affect your future messagingIdentify what's changing about how the team is doing their work and what's staying the sameRespond to pushback: Stay in coaching mode, help this person feel heard, and be clear about what parts of the plan can be amended versus which parts are firm

Nailing Down the When and How

Before getting defensive, arguing, or shutting your teammate down, try spending five minutes using open coaching questions to understand where they are coming from:What feels most important to you about this?What is your gut telling you? What one thing do you wish you could change about this?

Ask Open Coaching Questions

<ul><li>As leaders, it's our responsibility to choose the approach in each new scenario that will work best for the work, the team, and the organization.</li><li>It's important for every leader to learn how to adopt a directive approach when it's the most effective option while maintaining the trust and buy-in of their team</li></ul>

Empowerment Vs Direction

Last newsletter, I answered a manager’s question about helping their team break the cycle of going in circles, while still being as empowering as possible.



teamwork

Teamwork

You can be directive without being a jerk

<ul><li>One needs to normalize these moments of inner doubt</li><li>Point out particular leadership skills this person exhibits, the achievements they've nailed, values and intentions they carry, and the effects they've had on those around them.</li><li>In addition to giving them this specific, positive feedback, we have an opportunity to help these people look in the mirror at their true selves.</li><li>The simple act of helping them reflect on what they see is incredibly powerful.</li></ul>

The Key Points

If you have a teammate coming to you questioning their worth and effectiveness, or your spidey sense gives you a clue that their self-confidence is feeling challenged, you can equip yourself with a framework that will help this teammate recognize their successes and impact.

Those Moments Of Self-Doubt

Open questions can help your teammate realize, recognize, and internalize their own skills and impact. You can spend time asking them these questions in a 1:1. Here are a few:<ul><li>In the last year, where have you created more clarity or predictability for people?</li><li>In the last six months, how have you helped your teammates hone new skills or advance their careers?</li><li>In the last three months, what decisions did you facilitate or make? What blockers or missteps did you help the team or company avoid?</li><li>What will the future look like, thanks to the work you’ve done?</li></ul>

Ask Open Questions

If your teammate prefers to process and introspect privately, you can send them these questions to think through on their own. They can block out 20 minutes of focus for reflective time with an exercise like this. Invite them to share any new lightbulb moments with you the next time you meet.Please don’t worry about leading your teammate down a particular path of realization. Sure, you can hold up that metaphorical mirror for your teammate and tell them what you see. But the simple act of helping them reflect on what they see is incredibly powerful, too.

Reflective Time

This post originally appeared on Lead Dev.



Help your teammates navigate moments of self-doubt

Your time outside of your day job is your own.You have the time to learn how to bake bread, learn to cook, or just do whatever you want, and there is no excuse for not being productive.But People get exhausted after the initial spike and let go.<ul><li>Why has there not been a flood of new Great American Novels clogging Amazon's self-published section?</li><li>Why have most of the new podcasts and TikTok accounts popped up in March of 2020, when people were at their most bored-why have most of them gone silent?</li></ul>

The Premise

<ul><li>Working diligently and consistently towards our dreams, especially if they're relative longshots, is one of the hardest things we’ll ever do, if we do it at all.</li><li>The self-confidence needed to believe in ourselves enough to try, and the dedication needed to maintain the discipline to keep doing it over and over again, even when it’s hard.</li><li>Without the structure of the workplace and other people relying on you, there is no necessary timeline for any project. No sprints to the finish line, no target projections to hit.</li></ul>

Meeting Our Own Deadlines Is The Hardest

Just as we have met deadlines in our jobs, why can't we do so when we are on our own?Your self-work should be as crucial as any office deadline. Remember: <ul><li>You are your own boss.</li><li>The person who hired you for this job liked you then and trusts you now.</li><li>They saw something in you that not everyone else sees.</li><li>Thanks to the charity of this person-this person being you-you got your dream job.</li></ul>

You Work For A Boss As You Fear Disappointing Them

<ul><li>Your boss, which is you only, don't expect you to push yourself to the max every day, but they want to see you improve consistently</li><li>Your boss has the unique ability to know when you're not pulling your weight, and they're not afraid to call you out on it.</li></ul>

When You Are Your Own Boss

Your boss knows the core of our issue with self-imposed deadlines. Here is a small exercise.<ul><li>Pick a task that is slightly challenging but doable.</li><li>Set a deadline for tomorrow, or sometime this week, at 9 am.</li><li>You can't change the deadline once you set it.</li><li>If you've set your output at something you know is manageable, it shouldn't be a problem.</li><li>Don't disappoint yourself.</li></ul>

Govern Your Self-Imposed Deadline

<ul><li>Being a professional is about taking something abstract (dream) & turning it into something more concrete (action).</li><li>We all should take our dreams seriously - we all have the capacity to be professional, and bring that kind of focus and energy to our passion work.</li></ul>

A True Professional

Setting yourself a deadline like your boss does.

How To Set Deadlines That Feel Real

At the peak of the pandemic, businesses and leaders saw it as a huge inflection point, a great opportunity for individuals to redefine strategies, workplaces, teams, and social contracts. But what they are afraid of is that, after this great opportunity, people will crawl out of the rubble and go back to old ways of working that frankly, hadn’t been working for us for decades.This time is your opportunity to learn from your peers. This is your opportunity to open up your curiosity, and make sure that you, your team, and your organization never goes back to work, but only goes forward.

Never go "back" to work; go forward to work

There were two myths of collaboration prior to the pandemic. One myth was that all collaboration starts with a meeting. And the other was that the more people you get involved in collaboration, the slower the decision-making. But that is just not true.In fact, we can utilize simple, high-return practices of asynchronous collaboration.That’s the most powerful takeaway from hybrid work: Instead of sticking to our old ways of synchronous meeting and collaboration, we can use a valuable new set of underutilized tools.

Collaboration starts before the meeting

In the olden days, mental and physical well-being were dealt with as individuals, sometimes shamefully in the shadows.But at the peak of the pandemic, we saw more vulnerability. We saw more openness. And with that, we saw more bonding and team cohesiveness.

Resilience is a team sport

Add a five-minute agenda item to your team meeting - the “foresight five minutes.” Before a meeting, everybody has been designated to come to that five minutes with a distinct way of looking at the world.One individual or group is looking at the world relative to competitive threats. Another one is looking at the world relative to technological changes and customer changes and macroeconomic policies and then the question is asked, “What risks and opportunities do we need to potentially move into an analysis meeting?”

Foresight is crowdsourced 

Today, we have to negotiate very clear outcomes-based weekly sprints of our work.What are each of us and each of our teams going to do this week? And then you allow empowerment during that week to achieve as much as they can achieve. And then a standup at the end of the week determines, what did we do? Where did we struggle, and where are we going for the next week? There’s a negotiation among the team to make sure that everyone is aligned, and off we go.

Move from "Crisis agile" to agile as your primary operating system

education

Learning & Education

Insights that will allow you to compete in the future of work

With a virtual farewell party, you’ve got to have some activities planned, or you’ll end up with 20 faces blinking at each other expectantly from their Zoom boxes. <ul><li>One fail-safe activity is a quiz about the departing co-worker: questions about projects they worked on, the name of their dog, what instrument they play in their punk-rock band, etc.</li><li>It’s also a good idea to ask at least one person to give a toast (typically the departing colleague’s manager or another higher-up who knows them pretty well), and to give the person who’s leaving a chance to say a few words if they’d like. </li></ul>

The best activities for a remote farewell party

When a departing colleague has been at the organization for a while, it can be fun to invite former co-workers to the farewell, too.It turns the Zoom gathering into a mini-reunion, as well as a sort of retrospective This Is Your Life moment. Even if they can’t attend, they may be able to share stories or tributes about the departing colleague that can be included in a goodbye card or read aloud during a Zoom call.

Inviting alumni to company parties

<ul><li>A fond farewell lets the person who’s leaving the company know how much they’ve been appreciated, and affirms that the parting is on good terms.</li><li>The decision to leave a job can be kind of like a birthday—a moment when we take stock of our lives and do a lot of existential pondering. In both cases, a celebration can help people feel supported at a time when they may be a bit vulnerable.</li><li>A party gives people who still work at the company an opportunity to feel a sense of closure, too. Some people may feel quite sad when a co-worker they’re close to leaves; others may worry about their future.</li></ul>

Why it’s important to throw goodbye parties for co-workers

Managers can consider the work that goes into throwing goodbye parties (and doing other tasks that contribute to a convivial workplace culture) when determining promotions and raises.They can assign office parties to an employee-focused on internal talent as part of their formal job description. Or they can ask different people to take charge of farewell parties on a rotating basis, so the work doesn’t fall disproportionately on just one or two employees.

Recognizing the work that goes into a goodbye party

Virtual goodbye parties can be tricky to manage. But as more people switch jobs, knowing how to organize a proper sendoff for departing colleagues is an important skill.

remotework

Remote Work

How to throw a good farewell party for a remote colleague

Learn from the Japanese concept of Wabi Sabi which encourages to value simplicity and to find beauty in imperfections and impermanence. Wabi sabi teaches us how to simplify and prioritize the right things, while allowing time to make the necessary changes. It shows us how to access the magic of the everyday and the mundane and to understand that what we have is enough.

Find Beauty And Fulfillment In Life’s Perfect Imperfection

Wabi: subdued taste. Sen no Rikyū revolutionized tea ceremony favoring a version that celebrated natural beauty and simplicity. Rikyū’s style of tea ceremony was known as wabi tea, or “wabi-cha.” Wabi implied a mindset that appreciates simplicity, humility and frugality.Sabi: elegant simplicity and beauty that come from the passing of time. Pensive luster, in Tanizaki words, is preferred to shallow brilliance.Wabi sabi implies a worldview that appreciates simple beauty, imperfection and the transience of all things.

Learn From The Meaning Of Each Word

Imperfection is to be celebrated. Home should be the place where you feel more at ease. Use natural and imperfect materials like wood and stone that remind us that life is perfectly imperfect. To bring more of yourself in your home decorate with objects that create emotions or memories in you. This coupled with the right kind of decluttering can help you build a home focused only on the truly important parts of your life.The wabi sabi home, then, allows for all of our imperfections, but encourages us to simplify our lives so that we’re closest to what we cherish most.

Soulful And Simple Home

“that a certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect. And personally, I find that encouraging”

﻿When we pay attention to nature, we begin to notice a whole world of quiet and simple magic. We also become more present. This is celebrated in Japanese poetry called Haiku and in the classification of seasons. Japan calendar has 24 smaller seasons to acknowledge small changes like “Mist starts to hover”. Noticing the small changes in the outside world make us more attuned to changes in our body and mind. We start to notice we need to rest, to lighten or to change scenery. Nature impermanence makes us aware of our own. Cherry blossoms reminds us that we must focus on what really matters now.

Tune Into Nature, Embrace Impermanence 

”Suffering is inevitable, pain is optional”We mist learn to embrace change and respond promptly to it. We cannot control what happens to us but we can control how we respond to it.The sooner we accept what is happening the better, as we can modify our behavior to the new reality.Life is fundamentally imperfect. And after we’ve accepted this basic truth, we should realize that much of what we have already is – in its own way – perfectly imperfect.

Embrace Acceptance 

"I have not failed. I've just found ten thousand ways that won't work." Thomas EdisonAs we embark on a learning journey, we must understand that the journey will never be complete. It will have set backs and advances but won’t end. You are not competing against others but growing compared to the person that you were yesterday. In this process failure can be the opportunity for expansion, we can reframe it and learn useful lessons that we might have otherwise missed.

Embrace Failure As The Path To Success

Tea Ceremony is a moment where we look after of one another offering care and consideration.It has 4 principles:<ol><li class="ql-align-justify">“Wa” - Harmony. What could you do to encourage harmony in your relationships?</li><li class="ql-align-justify">“Kei” - Respect. What do you respect of each individual that you could celebrate and acknowledge?</li><li class="ql-align-justify">”Sei” - Purity. Cultivate purity of heart and seek out the best in each other. Think of how you could manage your conflicts differently if you tried to see the best in others.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">“Jaku” - Tranquility. To connect with others you need space and calm. How can you create more time and space to grow your relationships?</li></ol>

Tea Ceremony Principles Can Help Improve Our Relationships

There is no perfect career path. Each successful person had to endure many difficulties and face many failures in their path to success. “Do” represents the journey one has to take to acquire knowledge and wisdom in a discipline. Sado, the way of tea; Judo the way of gentleness. It is the path towards something which contains the most vital lessons. The journey is more important than the end goal.The same is true for our careers. We should seek out and learn the most important lessons in our journeys through self reflection.

Enjoy Your Career Journey And Its Unplanned Turns

With age we acquire life lessons, wisdom and discernment . We treasure moments with loved ones and carve out time to do the things we enjoy most. Perfection can be found in the everyday magic of our imperfect lives.Take time to reflect and write down the things you love most like the eleventh-century poetess Sei Shōnagon which noted her favorite things, in lists like “Things to Quicken the Heart”.

Cherish Your Time On Earth

Wabi sabi encourages us to value the perfectly imperfect in every area of our life from career to relationships.

The definitive guide that teaches you how to use the Japanese concept of wabi sabi to reshape every area of your life and find happiness right where you are. Fed up with the exhausting challenges of our fast-paced, consumption-driven existence, millions of people around the world are turning to timeless cultural traditions to find true meaning. In this transformative handbook, Beth Kempton introduces you to wabi sabi (”wah-bi sah-bi”), a captivating concept from Japanese aesthetics that offers a whole new way of looking at the world. With roots in Zen and the Way of Tea, wabi sabi teaches you to see beauty in imperfection, appreciate simplicity, and accept the transient nature of all things. It inspires you to simplify everything and concentrate on what truly matters. Filled with simple yet profound wisdom, Wabi Sabi will help you slow down, reconnect with nature, and be gentler on yourself. From honoring the rhythm of the seasons to creating a welcoming home, from reframing failure to aging with grace, Wabi Sabi teaches you find more joy and inspiration throughout your perfectly imperfect life.

mindfulness

Mindfulness

Wabi Sabi

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