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#Leadership : How To Make Yourself Work When You Don’t Want To…With the Holidays Approaching, the High Season for Procrastination is upon Us. It’s Even More Difficult to Get Work Done when you’re Stuck at the Office, Wishing you were Enjoying Time with Family & Friends.

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Procrastination affects everyone. It sneaks up on most people when they’re tired or bored, but for some, procrastination can be a full-fledged addiction. They avoid all day the work that is right in front of them, only to go home and toil late into the night, frantically trying to finish what they could have easily completed before dinner.

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“Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.” –Charles Dickens

With the holidays approaching, the high season for procrastination is upon us. It’s even more difficult to get work done when you’re stuck at the office, wishing you were enjoying time with family and friends.

Still, the procrastination cycle can become crippling at any time of the year, which is troubling, because recent studies show that procrastination magnifies stress, reduces performance, and leads to poor health.

 

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Psychologists at Case Western Reserve University conducted an interesting experiment where they offered college students a date range instead of a single due date for their papers. The researchers tracked the date that students turned in their papers and compared this to their stress levels and overall health. Students who waited until the last minute to turn in their papers had greater stress and more health issues than others did. They also received worse grades on their papers and in the class overall than students who turned their papers in earlier.

A study published earlier this year by Bishop’s University explored the link between chronic procrastination and stress-related health issues. The researchers found a strong link between procrastination and hypertension and heart disease, as procrastinators experienced greater amounts of stress and were more likely to delay healthy activities, such as proper diet and exercise.

Fighting procrastination teaches us to fully engage in our work, get more creative with it, and, ultimately, get more done.

Procrastination is fueled by excuses. We cannot expect to overcome procrastination and improve our health and productivity until we’re able to overcome the negative mental habits that lead us to procrastinate in the first place.

What follows are the most troubling excuses we use to help us procrastinate. They’re troubling because they’re the most difficult excuses to conquer. For each, I offer preventative strategies so you can overcome procrastination and get productive, even when you don’t feel like working.

“I don’t know where to begin.”

Paradoxically, we often find ourselves frozen like a deer in headlights when confronted with a difficult task. As well, much like deer, the best thing we can do is move in any direction, fast. When a task is particularly difficult, you need all the time you are given to complete it. There’s no sense in wasting valuable time by allowing yourself to be overwhelmed by the complexity of the task.

The key here is to not allow fear of the whole to stop you from engaging in the parts. When something looks too difficult, simply break it down. What can you accomplish in 60 minutes that will help you slay the beast? Then, what can you do in 60 more minutes?

Breaking your task into shorter periods (where effort is guaranteed) allows you to move out of the “deer in headlights” frame of mind. Before you know it, you’ve accomplished something, and the task goes from way too hard to absolutely doable. When it comes to challenging tasks, inactivity is the enemy.

“There are too many distractions.”

For most of us, getting started on a large project is a challenge. We stumble over all sorts of smaller, irrelevant tasks that distract us from the real assignment. We answer emails, make calls, check the news online…anything to avoid the elephant in the room.

Being busy is not the same as being productive. When you find yourself avoiding a particularly sizeable task, slow down and visualize what will happen if you continue to put off the task. Distractions numb you by shifting your attention away from these consequences (a.k.a., away from reality). Reminding yourself of what will happen if you continue procrastinating is a great way to make distractions less enchanting so that you can focus on your work.

“It’s too easy.”

Tasks that are too easy can be surprisingly dangerous, because when you put them off, it’s easy to underestimate how much time they’ll take to complete. Once you finally sit down to work on them, you discover you have not given yourself enough time to complete the task (or at least to complete it well).

If a task is too easy, draw connections to the bigger picture, because these connections turn mundane tasks into a fundamental (and do it now) part of your job. For example, you might hate data entry, but when you think about the role the data plays in the strategic objectives of your department, the task becomes worthwhile. When the smaller, seemingly insignificant things don’t get done or get done poorly, it has a ripple effect that’s felt for miles.

“I don’t like it.”

Procrastination isn’t always about a task being too easy or too hard. Sometimes, you just don’t want to do it. It can be very hard to get moving on a task in which you’re disinterested, much less despise.

Unfortunately, there’s no foolproof way to teach yourself to find something interesting, because certain things will never draw your attention. Rather than pushing these tasks to the back of your plate, make it a rule that you cannot touch any other project or task until you’ve finished the dreaded one. In this way, you are policing yourself by forcing yourself to “eat your vegetables before you can have dessert.”

When you do get started, you can always turn the task into a game. How can you achieve your task more efficiently? How can you change the steps of the process and still produce the same result? Bringing mindfulness to a dreaded task gives you a fresh perspective. The task itself might not be fun, but the game can be.

“I don’t think I can do it.”

You are assigned a new project by your supervisor. In fact, it’s one you’ve wished he or she would give you for a while. However, now that it’s in your lap, you simply cannot get started. You cannot get past thoughts of failure. What’s going to happen if I blow it? How am I going to do this? Could I be fired over this? It can reach a point where avoiding failure seems like the best possible option. After all, if you never engage in a project, you’ll never fail. Right?

Wrong. Procrastination itself is failure—failure to utilize your innate talents and abilities. When you procrastinate, you’re failing to believe in yourself.

Remember when you were learning to drive and you could only look straight ahead, because if you looked at something off the road, you’d unwittingly turn the wheel in that direction? Worrying about everything that might go wrong if you fail has the same effect. It pulls you toward failure.

You must shift your mind in a confident direction by focusing on all the positive things that are going to happen when you succeed. When you believe you can do something—and you visualize the positive things that will come from doing well—you equip yourself to succeed. This thought process gets your mind headed in the right direction. Worrying about everything that could go wrong only binds your hands. Break the chains and get started!

Bringing It All Together

Fighting procrastination teaches us to fully engage in our work, get more creative with it, and, ultimately, get more done.

How do you fight procrastination? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

Travis co-wrote the bestselling book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 and co-founded TalentSmart.

 

Forbes.com | June 1, 2016 |  Travis Bradberry  

 

#Strategy : The Secret to How People Work Well Under Pressure…So, How Do you Do It? Handling Pressure is a Learned Skill, & One That is Very Valuable. It’s Something that Separates the ‘Men from the Boys’, & Can Get you a Long Way If you Can Treat the Ability Like a Muscle, & Exercise It.

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You’re up against a lot at work — environmental factors are likely killing your productivity, your more socially savvy coworkers could be getting promotions over you, and you may even be tempted to cheat your way to the top. It’s a lot of pressure, and one of the ways that we can truly get a glimpse at our character is by our actions and attitudes in the face of that pressure.

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Most career paths come with their stresses, but others are particularly well-known for being high-pressure gigs — think Wall Street finance jobs, management positions, and pretty much anything involving customer service. The people who typically succeed at those positions, however, are the ones who can best handle stress and pressure. An ability to remain cool and confident under pressure is one trait that is shared among many of the world’s business and political leaders, as well as many of history’s most famous and influential names. 

The trick is, of course, developing the ability to handle pressure. So, how do you do it?

Essentially, handling pressure comes down to meshing the ability to assess one’s surroundings in a thought-out and logical manner with composed behavior.

For example, if you’re working in a kitchen and there’s a grease fire at one of the cooking stations, what do you do? Do you panic, and dump a bucket of water on the fire? Or can you think on your feet, walk briskly to the fire extinguisher, and use it to dispose of the problem?

Or put yourself in another position. If you’re in a customer service position and have a line of angry, screaming customers all looking to make you the target of their ire, do you run away, start crying, or take control of the situation?

 

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You can guess which type of person hiring managers are going to want to put out on the floor, and it’s not the guy who’s going to run away or start with the waterworks. But overall, the real key to handling stress and high-pressure situations is as simple as this: never stand still.

To reiterate, the best thing you can do in high-stress, high-pressure situations is to keep moving. Simply stay on your feet, and engage with the crisis around you. Fear can be paralyzing — but as previously mentioned, it’s the ability to push through that paralysis, logically take stock of what’s going on, and grab a hold on the situation that makes a true leader.

We’ve written before about how, in many professional settings, emotion can actually be your biggest weakness. This rings true in the face of stress and pressure — if you let your emotions (fear, anger, etc.) take the wheel, you’re going to go careening off a cliff.

Though you will want to keep your emotions in check, focusing all of your energy on staying calm could backfire as well. According to Alison Wood Brooks of the Harvard Business School, who has done a good deal of researchinto the best way to handle stress and pressure in a variety of situations, staying upbeat, yet focused, is the ideal way to tackle hairy situations.

“People have a very strong intuition that trying to calm down is the best way to cope with their anxiety, but that can be very difficult and ineffective,” she said, according to a recent article from Inc. “When people feel anxious and try to calm down, they are thinking about all the things that could go badly. When they are excited, they are thinking about how things could go well.”

Clearly, handling pressure is one of those ‘simple, yet complicated’ abilities. To really boil it down, and work on your own abilities to handle stress, simply remembering to not freeze up, and to control your emotions in the face of screaming customers or grease fires is a great place to start. But it’s going to take balance — you don’t want to calm yourself down to the point that your mind is flooded with the worst possible outcomes.

Handling pressure is a learned skill, and one that is very valuable. It’s something that separates the ‘men from the boys’, and can get you a long way if you can treat the ability like a muscle, and exercise it. When the time comes to put it to use, you’ll be glad you did.

Follow Sam on Twitter @SliceOfGinger

 CheatSheet.com | February 28, 2016 | Sam Becker

http://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/the-secret-to-how-people-work-well-under-pressure.html/?a=viewall

 

 

#Leadership : Overcoming Burnout: 5 Ways To Get Back On Track At Work…What Is Burnout? Career Burnout is a Chronic Psychological Condition Characterized by Exhaustion, Cynicism & a Lack of Professional Efficacy

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Why People Experience Burnout ?  Excessive workloads, unrealistic time pressures and resulting exhaustion certainly contribute to burnout, but they alone are not responsible. Day-to-day social interactions and a lack of civility in the workplace are a primary cause.

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“I haven’t seen you smile in a week,” Anne vividly recalls her husband saying. She was in the depths of burnout. She worked as a medical professional in a relentlessly pressure-packed environment, with an unreasonably heavy workload, yet she didn’t think her job was the source of her unhappiness. She had come to blame herself, believing she was simply incompetent.

With the support of her husband and a counselor, Anne began to see that work and misery didn’t have to be synonymous. She realized there was a difference between being busy and burdened, and she regained control, partly by making an effort to pause throughout the day to relax or exercise. Eventually, she even recognized that she could truly be good at her job.

Anne is just one of an increasing number of people who have experienced workplace burnout. “It’s more common than the average worker recognizes,” says Chris Ebberwein, Ph.D., a behavioral faculty member at Wesley Family Medicine, University of Kansas School of Medicine in Wichita and member of the American Psychology Association.  “It can creep into your life and make you start to think unhappiness at work is normal.”

 

What Is Burnout?

Career burnout is a chronic psychological condition characterized by exhaustion, cynicism and a lack of professional efficacy, says Christina Maslach, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of the Maslach Burnout Inventory. “It’s not simply that people are tired…It’s not just that people have a bad attitude,” she says. “It’s that they’re working in a socially toxic workplace,” one that lacks support and transparency from supervisors and colleagues.

The idea of workplace burnout first gained traction in the 1970s, but awareness of the problem has peaked lately. “The workplace is just squeezing people harder and harder in a lot of ways, and burnout is that reaction to chronic, everyday stressors,” says Maslach. “People experiencing burnout talk about erosion—I love my job, I’m good at my job, but working in this environment is socially toxic.”

Job burnout affects professionals working across all occupations, but appears to be most prevalent among those in service jobs, particularly physicians, 46% of whom have reported experiencing it, according to the Medscape Physician Lifestyle Report 2015.

 

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Why People Experience Burnout

Excessive workloads, unrealistic time pressures and resulting exhaustion certainly contribute to burnout, but they alone are not responsible. Day-to-day social interactions and a lack of civility in the workplace are a primary cause.

“Something as little as someone rolling their eyes can wear away at you,” says Maslach. “It’s also sarcastic tone of voice, being nasty and rude. It’s what you say, how you say it and how you act.”

According to Maslach, There are 6 Areas Where Trouble can Lead to Burnout. These are:

1. Workload: Do you have too many tasks and not enough time to complete them, or too few resources? Is the flow of your assignments unsustainable?

2. Control: Does your job allow you a level of autonomy? Do you have control over what you’re doing and when?

3. Reward and positive feedback: When you do something valuable for your employer, are you recognized for your work? Do you feel appreciated?

4. Workplace community: Do you work in a supportive, transparent environment, or are you surrounded by destructive competition and gossip?

5. Fairness: Is everyone within your organization treated with respect, fair opportunity and equal access, or do you perceive favoritism and cheating?

6. Values: Do you find your work meaningful, or does it require you to compromise your personal values?

 

Overcoming Burnout

If you feel like you’re on the path to burnout, here are five ways to get back on track.

1. Seek input from within your organization.
In many cases, professional burnout is not exclusive to one individual within an organization. Identify other employees who may be experiencing the problem and collaborate with them to start to fix it. “People have to work together to figure out what’s creating a less than ideal working environment,” says Maslach. “Ask yourselves, ‘How do we turn this around?’ See if there are ways for the organization to work with everybody to find a solution.”

A successful example of this is CREW (Civility, Respect and Engagement in the Workplace), a burnout intervention program first implemented in Veterans Health Administration hospitals. Over a six-month period, participants met weekly to discuss respectful workplace relationships and participate in communication exercises. Outside of meetings, they were encouraged to practice positive social exchanges. The program yielded improved civility and decreased burnout more than one year later.

2. Establish new relationships.
If everyone in your office social circle has given up on escaping the burnout rut, it’s time to make a change. Surround yourself with coworkers who want to make positive strides in their work lives and draw support from one another. In “Conquering Burnout,” in Scientific American, Maslach and a coauthor write, “Receiving good vibes from others is an uplifting experience, but so, too, is expressing them to others.”

3. Find meaning in your work.
Identify the most fulfilling elements of your work and dedicate more time to them. If you can, talk to your supervisor about better aligning your responsibilities with your strengths and interests. “If you feel like the projects you’re taking on match what you like to do, burnout will diminish, because you’re enjoying yourself at work,” says Ebberwein.

4. Make a conscious effort to take breaks.
Whether for a few minutes or a few days, take time away to recharge. Set an alarm every 30 minutes as a reminder to get up and move around the office, suggests Maslach in “Conquering Burnout,” and make use of your vacation days. “Some companies love people who never take breaks,” says Ebberwein. “But that praise is moving them down a path to burnout.” If appropriate, talk to your employer about switching to a more flexible work schedule. Customizing your schedule to your needs can offset burnout by giving you a greater sense of control.

5. Change organizations or career paths.
Despite your best efforts, sometimes you can’t possibly overcome burnout where you work. In that case, beating burnout may require you to consider a new job or an entirely new field. “Some jobs are, by nature, difficult, tiring and stressful,” says Ebberwein. “If you can’t say you do it for a specific reason, explore other options.”

 

Forbes.com | June 23, 2015 | Vicky Valet