burnout

Editor’s Note:

During the months of July and August, your weekly Pause blog postings will feature the ‘Best of Pause’. These are readers’ favorite messages from the earlier years of the Pause e-zine. Featuring these Pause Gems will give me a bit of a breather, and also introduce our newer subscribers to some of those early gems.

Whether you are a long time subscriber, or new to our list, I sincerely hope you enjoy these messages. Come September, your messages will once again feature all new info and resources.

Reflection & Action:  Take a close look at your to do list and a serious glance at the piles in the corner. How much of a backlog do you see?

If you are anything like the rest of us, you are anywhere from four to six weeks behind in your work. According to research reported by David Beardley, the average business person faces a backlog of 200 to 300 hours of uncompleted work.  That doesn’t even begin to consider what’s waiting for us at home or in the community.

How’s that for redefining normal? It’s little wonder you might feel overwhelmed and overloaded on any given day.

Stop giving yourself grief because you’re not all caught up. It isn’t going to happen! In fact, getting to the end of your list or reaching the bottom of your pile is more likely to be an abnormal, extraordinary, other-worldly experience. Look in the mirror and remind yourself, “You will never be done again!”

Then check today’s to do list and actions against the backlog to be sure you really are acting on what matters most. Credit yourself for the valued tasks you do tackle and complete.

Learn to see a sizeable backlog as just another normal fact of life. Don’t look at it as an Everest summit that must be conquered every day … or else! (more…)

Reflection: Does your upcoming summer vacation carry a ‘same as last year’ flavor? This might be a time to change it up a bit. Start by asking yourself this question: “What do I need most?” See what shows up in your answer.

Might you need:

• Serious solo down time with next to no demands?
• The emotional lift of reconnecting with favored friends or family?
• Spiritual renewal through a serious dose of time outdoors?
• The excitement and adventure of seeing new places and meeting new faces?
• The mental challenge of learning something new?
• Catch-up time taking care of fix-its and tasks around home?
• Couple time with a hint of romance?
• Time to dejunk and and reorganize those out-of-control spaces in your life?

Could be one or some of these or something else entirely. Of course, if you’re not on your own, family vacations usually end up being a compromise of sorts. You may have a mix of extroverts and introverts – some longing for big time socials and others for ‘me’ time. You might be a ‘major road trip’ fan partnered with a ‘hang out in one place’ person. Family traditions might dictate a visit ‘home’ at the center of every vacation – no exceptions.

So, how to get around differing – and changing – needs or preferences? (more…)

Reflection:  How present are you to the everyday gifts of your everyday world? That’s what I asked myself after last week’s activities. And, on reflection, I noticed that every experience brought with it something to savor.

Tuesday’s commitment – facilitating a team retreat – took me on a trek to north-east Saskatchewan – a 3 hour drive each way. I realized as I traveled, what a treat it is to cruise through the spring greening of the crops in the country. The sun in the sky, an interview with Joni Mitchell on the radio, fresh coffee at hand…it was beyond pleasant. The gift of a road trip!

The planning committee for Wednesday’s engagement (an Art of Insight presentation for the Leadership Saskatoon Alumni) went all out to make their guests feel at home. Personal greetings at the door, rose bowls replete with flowers and paint brushes on the tables, tasty nibbles, and a very inclusive welcoming atmosphere! The gift of hospitality!

On Thursday, I joined a group of close friends and colleagues for conversation and dinner. We’ve been meeting a few times a year for a decade to support each other in our lives and businesses. We problem solve, strategize, laugh, cry, and generally lift each other’s spirits. They are GEMS, every one of them. The gift of being known and appreciated warts and all!

Friday, I facilitated another team retreat. The session design was highly interactive. I learned again that when people connect deeply to each other and commit to the focus at hand, more energy is created than consumed. The gift of engagement!

Action:  Here’s this week’s challenge. (more…)

Reflection: I’d had a busy couple of weeks with projects, commitments and deadlines on every front. When the calendar cleared last Wednesday, I decided to pause and step away for a mental wealth day. That’s the kind of day when you focus on making a few sizeable deposits in the sanity bank account.

I spent ten minutes in the office, cleared a few urgent messages, put an away message on my phone, and settled in to enjoy the open space.

As the day unfolded, I puttered in the garden, visited on the street with several of the neighbors, lunched in the sun on the back deck, napped in the hammock, chatted by phone with several family members, and simply enjoyed the fish in the pond, the birds in the trees, and the tulips in the flowerbeds.

A greeting card from my sister arrived in the mail that morning and set the tone for the day.  The front cover featured a figure reclining in a hammock under the palm trees with these words: “Nowhere to go and all day to get there….” That became my mantra for the day!

I love that sentiment, it’s such a contrast to what we are more likely to experience in our everyday lives: “Everywhere to go and no time to get there!”

Action: Life doesn’t always lend itself to a mental wealth day. But, it may be possible to create a mental wealth moment or hour. And as you step into that openness of time, try breathing in the possibility that just for now, you have: ‘Nowhere to go and all day to get there!” (more…)

Reflection: Suppose you’re chatting with a friend and she tells you that, in addition to working full time as usual, these are the projects she has planned for the summer:  repaint the house, dig up a new vegetable garden, xeriscape the front yard, host a friend’s outdoor wedding, build a new deck on the cabin at the lake, take her parents on a weeklong roadtrip, manage her son’s softball team, and chaperone her daughter’s soccer team on a trip to Minneapolis.

Any thoughts? Any advice?

Suppose the list shifted from personal projects to an equally lengthy list of workplace assignments with the regular family and community responsibilities ‘on the side’.

Any thoughts? Any advice?

I can’t help but think of the old parenting adage: “Be careful how you load up your plate. Your eyes could be bigger than your stomach.” The same caution applies to our ambitions beyond the dinner table. Far too often, our aspirations outweigh our capacity. It’s little wonder that overload is so often the order of the day.

Action: What, then, is the preventive medicine to keep us from landing in a state of overload quite so often – especially with projects that are within our control or under our influence? (more…)

Reflection: Have you ever walked alongside someone whose stride was much longer or shorter than yours? Have you ever partnered on a project with someone whose pace was entirely mismatched to yours? They moved, spoke and concluded everything in a flash – or they ambled, pondered, and decided waaaay toooo sloooowly for your comfort?

If you have, chances are that you know first hand the frustration of trying to keep up or the irritation of needing to slow down.

Our set points vary one from another; and they may shift over time. Life experiences can temper our choices along the way. If we’re paying attention, through trial and error, we learn when we need to give a person or an issue more room, and when the time is ripe to urge to action.

In any given situation or relationship, the ‘right’ pace energizes, while the ‘wrong’ pace exhausts. And, of course, it’s all terribly subjective and situation specific.

When lives are on the line (think fire or medical emergency), a fast paced response is essential. But not everything we face falls in that urgent category – even though much is presented that way.

There’s a leadership style known as ‘Pacesetting’ that invigorates some and frustrates others. Pacesetters are notorious for setting very high performance standards and modeling them for others. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – except that pacesetters tend to be obsessively high on expectations and perilously low on empathy. Without empathy, this kind of leadership may not even register – much less respond to –  the stress that others experience along the way.

Action: So, how do you put these ideas about pace to work? (more…)

Reflection: I spent much of last weekend in the garden. Raked the leaves out of the beds and corners. Mulched them with the mower. Added them back to the soil. Trimmed last year’s dead foliage from around the new growth on the perennials. Picked up the branches the winter winds stripped from the trees. Hauled perennials, buried in their pots, from the beds where they’d spent the winter. Hosed the spring dust from the trees and decks.

Do I love doing this stuff? Not really! As much as I try to approach it in a mindful way with an appreciative mindset, in truth, it’s dusty, dirty, back bending (sometimes back breaking) work.

What I DO love, though, is the result. It’s rewarding to see things set back in order once more; and it’s energizing to know that I’ve set the scene for good things that lie ahead.

I love the fresh growth, the new shoots, and the blatant optimism of bulbs which, having weathered the winter, push through bravely the ground. Most of all, I love the promise of color and beauty that lie ahead. And, that’s why I do the work.

I’m pretty sure – even if you’re not a gardener – that you’ve got plenty of grunt work in your world, too. Maybe it’s the demolition before a renovation. Could be something physical like a kitchen reno, or something cerebral like a remake on your business website. Maybe it’s the research legwork before launching a new product, designing a new program, or entering a new market.

Grunt work is rarely glamorous or engaging in itself, but it’s an investment that can take us someplace we really want to go.

Action: How do you pull yourself through the obligatory grunt and groan to the eventual great and grand?  These four strategies can help: (more…)

Reflection: There’s nothing like a good question to draw attention to what makes life worthwhile. And, for the record, that question is NOT: “So, are you busy?”

Far too many conversations in our stressed out, revved up world start just that way. We connect with a colleague at work, bump into an old friend at the grocery store, or meet a neighbor on the street. Before we even think about it, we’re automatically asking, “So, are you busy?”

It’s a question that usually generates a lengthy recounting of activities done and undone. Recounting the proverbial to do list seems to be a common way to establish our value and justify our existence on the planet.

Oddly enough, when you ask people to consider what really matters in life, the things that show up most often don’t relate much to the stuff on those to do lists that we fret so much and sweat so often.

What’s most meaningful and energizing relates more to relationships, to adventure, to a deep sense of connectedness and purpose – not to today’s to-do’s.

Action: If that is where more meaning lives, why not change the focus of our conversations? Why not start asking each other these questions instead: (more…)

Reflection: Comedienne, Phyllis Diller, once remarked, “My idea of exercise is a good brisk sit.” Funny as she was, Phyllis had it wrong. Sitting is not necessarily better for your health. Sure, if you’re on your feet a lot during the day, taking a load off serves to…well, take a load off. It brings a welcome relief to weary feet, knees and back.

But a whole lot of us are not standing. We’re sitting, sitting, sitting. At the computer, behind the wheel, in front of the TV, on bleachers watching others play sports, and around the table at community meetings.

According to recent research cited by the Mayo Clinic, sitting for long periods of time is directly associated with obesity and a set of conditions known as metabolic syndrome – something that leads to higher blood pressure, skewed blood sugar, and abnormal cholesterol levels.

Too much sitting is also associated with upper back and neck pain, and a higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer. Don’t like the sounds of that? Neither do I!

Why does getting a move on matter so much? Apparently the muscle activity used in standing and other kinds of movement helps trigger the breakdown of fats and sugars in the body. Every time you stand or move, you set those processes in motion; and those processes help keep you healthy.

Action: What’s better than sitting? Sitter-itus Interruptus! It looks like this. (more…)

Reflection: One of life’s great stressors is the drive to make things perfect. Sure, there are circumstances where perfection matters. Defusing a bomb and fixing an aneurysm come to mind.

Now, I don’t know about your world, but those tasks have never been part of my everyday life. As I heard someone observe recently, not everything we do is ‘rocket surgery’!

What I do see is a lot of time and effort invested in perfecting that last 10 or 20% whether it’s writing the perfect report or maintaining an immaculate home.

There is a time to improve our skills and advance our performance by applying a critical eye to the task at hand.  But it will be a joyless painful journey if we are perpetually bent on perfection – ever at the mercy of a critical mind.

Poking holes in progress is a hurtful inclination if we don’t stop to embrace and appreciate where we have come from and what we have accomplished – however imperfect it may be.

Early in my attempts to paint with watercolors, I made a lot of mud – mud being the painterly term for ‘greyed out colors lacking contrast and shape’.

What I’ve come to understand is that many who do not paint themselves consider even minor mud a masterpiece. We stand in in awe of what others attempt, simply because we can’t imagine ourselves having the courage or skill to give it a try.

Don’t be too quick to discard, reject, or condemn the results of your own efforts. There is often a place for less than perfect outcomes. In fact, a certain quirkiness may bring value of its own.

Japanese potters practice the art of Kintsugi – mending broken objects by filling the cracks with resin sprinkled with powdered gold.  They believe that objects with their own imperfections and history become more beautiful – not less.

Action: So, here’s a question to pause and ponder today. Where, in your life, might imperfect be more than enough?

(more…)