photo credit: Jodiepedia

It can be awfully tempting to use your weekend to catch up on what didn’t get done this week, or what perenially never gets done. I know: I do it all the time.

But downtime gives us perspective, lets us recover physically and mentally, and allows us to perform better. So here’s a thought: as you go about your Friday, look for simple ways to tie up loose ends a bit tighter than usual so that you can use your weekend to recharge. Maybe it’s as simple as tidying your desk before you leave. I promise you, you’ll come back fresher on Monday for it.

Have a great Friday, and a very relaxing weekend.

photo credit: tyger_lyllie

Most employee handbooks probably don’t forbid being too serious on the job… but maybe they should. Then again, they also probably don’t explicitly forbid humor, unless it’s of the “inappropriate” variety. But a laugh among colleagues can relieve tension, deepen relationships, and make dull days seem brighter.

In short, it can make the workplace fun. And what’s more motivating than a job you actually like doing?

There’s definitely a way of taking it too far. I’m not recommending anything that risks crossing the line into harassment, although I have worked in some environments where there was almost a sense that unless you were risking HR wrath, you weren’t pushing the envelope hard enough. But that isn’t most workplaces, and that isn’t necessary for a healthy release of tension.

And it needn’t be distracting. Spending 15 minutes of every 30 minute meeting cutting up is probably a bit excessive unless you write comedy for TV. But a light comment now and then, a shared laugh with colleagues, or a running gag the whole office is in on can be the kind of thing you wake up in the morning with a smile thinking about, eager to go to work.

Is there much humor in your office? Share a laugh in the comments.

photo credit: Iván Santiesteban

You know that adrenaline rush and the pure focus that comes with the last few hours in the office before a vacation, when suddenly you know exactly what the most important next steps are and you don’t waste time on the piddly stuff? You know how you always wonder, why can’t I be like this when I’m not rushing out the door?

Well, at least I do. And I bet some of you do too. Now a study suggests that it may be exactly because we’re getting away that we do a better job at planning, organizing, and communicating. Or, as the WSJ.com article about the study says:

Working together to make sure each consultant got some time off forced teams to communicate better, share more personal information and forge closer relationships. They also had to do a better job at planning ahead and streamlining work, which in some cases resulted in improved client service, based on interviews with clients.

It’s not totally shocking, is it? There’s a good deal of common sense in the idea (and it’s definitely an area we’ve talked about before) but somehow still many of us don’t allow ourselves the time off we’d need to ensure that we actually experience this benefit.

It’s Thursday morning. What can you do between now and Friday afternoon to ensure that you can relax and enjoy your weekend? Ready? Set? Go.

photo credit: *Zara

I’ve been thinking about happiness at work lately. Having started my own company just about six months ago, and being happily busy and productive, the relationship has been obvious to me between doing something you love and being happy at work. Duh, right?

But it’s more than that: there’s a feeling of empowerment in having chosen my occupation rather than letting it choose me, and being busy with work that I feel good about. I mean, that’s not earth-shatteringly novel either, I realize, but the difference is huge: I went from being a passionate advocate for doing the right thing in multiple environments where that made me a pain in the CEO’s butt to now being a passionate advocate for doing the right thing as CEO of my own company.

Realistically, not everyone is going to start their own company, or will even want to, but we all still need to find happiness. So how do you reconcile happiness with long days doing work you sometimes may not love?

Coincidentally, in some of the blogs I read regularly for inspiration, I ran across a theme this week pertaining to work and happiness.

Gill Corkindale in HarvardBusiness.org had a piece on When Work Doesn’t Make You Happy that addresses that very question, and finds that choice, to the extent that we have it, is key:

“It all comes down to choice, and this is where I believe happiness lies. In choosing — as far as you are able — what you want to do and how you will do it. While not all of us can choose our work and colleagues, we can all choose how we approach things — with an open, optimistic, and positive outlook or with a frustrated, irritated one.”

In a somewhat similar (but perhaps more direct) vein, Jason Seiden, in a piece called Screw Your Career Path. Live Your Story, advocates embracing the surprises in life and finding your true self in the way you live out your choices:

“It’s time, as individuals, to remember that we are each protagonists in our own stories—not fictional ones, either, but real, live, actual, here-I-am-in-the-flesh-stories. [...] Only protagonists can know surprises, friendship, obstacles, twists, victories, villains, daring, love, temptation, loss, luck, setbacks, choices, laughter, tears… only protagonists can know success.”

And finally, from the managerial perspective, SmartBlog on Workforce covered the happiness-productivity connection in a piece called 3 ways to maximize your workers’ happiness — and performance:

“The secret to maximizing performance is to create an environment in which your employees are happy. A happy employee is highly engaged, flourishing and has achieved an acceptable work-life balance.

We know that high employee engagement leads to high performance. Recent studies by the Corporate Leadership Council, Towers Perrin and Development Dimensions International, show that a highly engaged workforce results in a 20% improvement in employee productivity, a 50% reduction in unplanned attrition and a 23% increase in customer satisfaction.”

It’s as if there’s been something in the air to make us all think along the same lines.

What about you – have you been thinking about the link between happiness and meaningful work, or between happiness and productivity, or perhaps the three-way link between happiness and meaningful work and productivity? What conclusions have you come to, different from what we’ve quoted above?

photo credit: Dennis Wright

Peter Bregman has a really insightful piece called To Get More Done, Slow Down in HarvardBusiness.org:

This life is a marathon, not a sprint. Most of us don’t go to work for 20 minutes a day, run as fast as we can, and then rest until the next race. We go to work early in the morning, run as fast as we can for 8, 10, 12 hours a day, then come home and run hard again with personal obligations and sometimes more work, before getting some sleep and doing it all over again.

[...] Not an athlete in the world could sustain that schedule without rest. Most athletes have off-seasons.

So if we’re running a daily marathon, it might help to learn something from people who train for marathons.

[...] Here’s what I learned: if you want to run a marathon successfully without getting injured, spend four days a week doing short runs, one day a week running long and hard, and two days a week not running at all.[...]

And when we do take the time to rest, we discover all sorts of things that help us perform better when we’re working. Inevitably my best ideas come to me when I get away from my computer and go for a walk or run or simply engage in a casual conversation with a friend.

I quoted a lot because I love the way the common sense of it builds, one piece upon the last. It’s not a unique observation, nor particularly novel, and it ain’t rocket science. But it does bear repeating and reinforcing.

What I think is interesting about this idea of slowing down is that it’s not so much that you get more done, as the title of his piece suggests, it’s that you accomplish more. Subtle difference, that, but I think a powerful one: when you take your time getting your work done, you tend to do the most meaningful stuff naturally because you don’t have time for all the trivia.

At least that’s what I find. It’s easy to get caught up in a crazy-hectic, run-around frenzy trying to keep up with my email inbox, my phone calls and voicemails, my to do list, my face-to-face meetings, my IM client, and more often these days, the work-related stuff that comes in via my Twitter direct messages and Facebook messages. When I quiet those inputs and choose my focus, I tend to gravitate towards the weightiest task; the one that’s going to have the biggest reward. Whether that’s a proposal that’s due or a presentation I need to give, my instincts know what to do when the volume of the chaos is turned down and the pace slows down with it.

That means that you have a full day on Monday to get things done. Sure – carve out time to grill out, go to the lake, sing a song – but just imagine what you could do in four hours that morning with no one sending you emails. And none that you have to send.

Most people will probably leave the office tomorrow after lunch, too. If you stay until five, you’ll have five more hours to do (nearly) uninterrupted work. Combine that with Monday morning and you get an extra day. One entire day that your competition, your co-workers and your colleagues may ignore. What can you do to get ahead, be remarkable and mark off your list?

This is definitely in my plans. I have every intention of getting some relaxation in, but the extra few hours of organizing what has gotten a bit chaotic, of catching up on projects at a high level, of checking off just one or two extra tasks — all of that will ultimately reduce stress and anxiety and make my work life calmer, so it be as good for me as any R&R could ever be.

What about you? Are you regarding this long weekend as strictly an opportunity to relax, or will you be sneaking some work in? Lay it down for us in the comments.

photo credit: greg westfall.

According to the results of a July 2009 McKinsey Quarterly survey, many of us have more responsibilities (without a corresponding increase in title or pay) and a good deal more stress since the economic downturn began. In an article called Leaders in the crisis, Kevin Lane and Monica McGurk summarize the survey’s findings:

Most respondents are working more hours since the crisis began, and nearly 40 percent have more responsibilities without the benefit of a new title. But although stress levels have increased, most executives say they can cope.

There’s a lot more great content in the article, particularly dealing with motivating employees who are overwhelmed and overworked, and keeping the company staff aligned. Definitely be sure to read the whole thing, particularly if you manage people and want some tips on motivating them through these conditions.

But it leads us to wonder: what are you doing personally to cope with your stress? Even if your techniques aren’t completely healthy, we’re curious. And especially if you have healthy techniques we haven’t listed in the poll, be sure to share them in the comments.

photo credit: MeaganJean

The weekend is here at last! Time to take it easy, put your feet up, maybe do some yard work, and hang out with friends. Or is it?

For many busy professionals (perhaps you!), the weekends are often overtaken with catch-up tasks from the previous week, and in perhaps fewer cases, planning for the week ahead.

We all know we need a break, but the specter of possible layoffs, the increased workload from laid-off coworkers, and the crazy-fast-paced workplaces many of us are in means more and more to do, and a great deal of anxiety about how to get it done.

May we make a suggestion? It isn’t rocket science or anything, but sometimes we need the truth pointed out to us before we can recognize it. You will probably encounter distractions, you won’t get it all done, and you will probably close out the weekend feeling disappointed that you didn’t get to relax more. Instead, why not take the Weekend Idealist approach to Getting Relaxation Done:

1. Decide the two work-related things (no more than that!) that you could do in under an hour this weekend that would make you feel more caught up and allow you to feel less anxious.
2. Pick the best time to do them: if your focus is better in the mornings, get them over with right away.
3. Get them done! Don’t let them turn into an ordeal. Just power through them and knock them out.
   
4. Permit yourself the blissful freedom to do whatever you want with the rest of your weekend.

See? It’s so easy, you’ll wonder why you haven’t been doing it this way all along.

We hope you’ll be able to find balance this weekend. We’re all for productivity and achievement, but everyone needs to unwind now and then.

Got a process for balancing your productive time with your relaxing time on the weekends? Share it in the comments.

And have a great weekend!