Bad Habits

chain bad habitsMy husband recently had business in Virginia for a couple days and I decided to go along with him. I was a bit nervous to take this trip because I had two big projects looming over my head. However, the chance to ride my bike up and down the mountains held great appeal. If I was going to take the time to ride, I had no choice but to be extremely productive all day Friday. I planned on spending the day making progress on my massive to-do list.

 

I exercised early in the morning, changed my clothes and went downstairs in the lobby of the hotel to find a place to work. I spied the perfect desk away from the activity of the lobby. I unpacked my bag and got organized. And there I sat, for the next 4 hours. Slowly, but surely, I worked my way through two big projects with incredible focus and speed check this. By the time I stopped for lunch, I marveled at what I had accomplished.

 

I took a 10-minute walk, found a place to eat and continued to work. Two more hours flew by and I couldn’t believe how much progress I had made.

 

When I got back home, I gave thought as to why I was able to accomplish so much. It truly was amazing. After doing some thinking, I surmised that my unbelievable productivity was due to habits.

 

Being in a new environment enabled me to break the habits that had become so routine at work.

 

Let me explain further. According to author Charles Duhigg, the habit loop is a three-part process— a cue, a behavior and a reward. The cue signals your brain to go into the automatic behavior. It triggers the whole process. The routine is the behavior that takes place and the reward is pleasure for your brain, helping it remember the loop. Habits make up 40% of our function during the day. They enable us to take part in these behaviors without much energy and while not being mentally aware. Therefore, many of my usual distractions during the day that drastically decrease my productivity are really just my habits— bad habits.

 

For example, when I’m working at my desk at home, I get up numerous times to go to the kitchen and get a drink or something to eat. I’m sure you can imagine my reward for this behavior. At home, I also interrupt what I’m doing numerous times to check my email. I get a great rush every time I hear the ding of another message. My reward is the endorphin rush. When I’m working at my desk at home, I interrupt what I’m doing numerous times to go on social media or to check on the dog.

 

However, I didn’t do any of those things in this new setting. I just worked. In this new environment, my usual routine, which unfolds without much thought, was interrupted and I changed my habits. Actually, I should say that I changed my bad habits.

 

If you’re struggling with being productive in the workplace, give some thought to some of your daily habits. When we work in the same place every day, we acquire routines. Some of them are positive, but I’m pretty sure that some are also negative and get in the way of you being productive. Of course, being honest with YOU is the first step to making some much-needed changes.

Communication Gap

[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][mk_blockquote style=”quote-style” text_size=”20″ align=”left” font_family=”none”]To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others. – Tony Robbins[/mk_blockquote][mk_padding_divider size=”20″][mk_dropcaps style=”fancy-style” size=”14″ padding=”10″]R[/mk_dropcaps][vc_column_text disable_pattern=”true” align=”left” margin_bottom=”0″]ecently, I was communicating with a peer over email. We were working on a project that involved massive planning. With each correspondence, I became a little more confused by her responses to my questions. What exactly did she mean by her response? Was she aggravated with something I had said? On my end, I was positive that I was making myself crystal clear. However, after reading and rereading her email it was obvious that her negative tone suggested otherwise. If I was interpreting the message correctly, there was definitely a communication gap between us.

Then my phone rang. It was a fellow colleague that worked with my peer. She wanted to share that my peer was very upset by my rude email. Shocked by this bit of news, I scrolled back through my emails and slowly read each one. I just didn’t get it.

I silently read them and attached the same tone, inflection and meaning that I had originally intended. I still didn’t get it. To me, it looked just fine.

And that was the problem- to me, it looked just fine.[/vc_column_text][mk_padding_divider size=”20″][vc_column_text disable_pattern=”true” align=”left” margin_bottom=”0″]I picked up the phone and called my peer directly. At first, she was so upset that she didn’t want to talk. I encouraged her to have a discussion with me. She vented her frustration as I just calmly listened. She went on to explain how she had interpreted my sent message. After patiently listening to her perceptions, I slowly explained my true intent in the email communication. By the end of the conversation, the misunderstanding had been cleared up and we were on the same page.

Did I intend to offend my email recipient? Of course I didn’t. From my perspective, the letter was straightforward and the tone was friendly. However, it certainly wasn’t received that way.

What I failed to take into account was that my email recipient was not me.

Her experiences, worldview and assumptions were far different from my own. Coupled with that was her inability to see my facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures or posture. These definitely would have helped her to better grasp my intended message.

The communication process is complicated. Two people come together with two sets of perceptions, expectations, experiences and world assumptions. To put it simply, two people come from very different places. In addition to this, our current technology for workplace communication makes it even more difficult to correctly evaluate the intended message. This results in ample opportunities for an epic message fail.[/vc_column_text][mk_padding_divider size=”20″][vc_column_text disable_pattern=”true” align=”left” margin_bottom=”0″]With all this said, my advice to you is to slow down. Often, in our haste to get tasks accomplished, we fail to pick up on the subtleties that make a huge difference. And when the message is very important, you might want to pick up the phone.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Communication Gap

[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][mk_blockquote style=”quote-style” text_size=”20″ align=”left” font_family=”none”]To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others. – Tony Robbins[/mk_blockquote][mk_padding_divider size=”20″][mk_dropcaps style=”fancy-style” size=”14″ padding=”10″]R[/mk_dropcaps][vc_column_text disable_pattern=”true” align=”left” margin_bottom=”0″]ecently, I was communicating with a peer over email. We were working on a project that involved massive planning. With each correspondence, I became a little more confused by her responses to my questions. What exactly did she mean by her response? Was she aggravated with something I had said? On my end, I was positive that I was making myself crystal clear. However, after reading and rereading her email it was obvious that her negative tone suggested otherwise. If I was interpreting the message correctly, there was definitely a communication gap between us.

Then my phone rang. It was a fellow colleague that worked with my peer. She wanted to share that my peer was very upset by my rude email. Shocked by this bit of news, I scrolled back through my emails and slowly read each one. I just didn’t get it.

I silently read them and attached the same tone, inflection and meaning that I had originally intended. I still didn’t get it. To me, it looked just fine.

And that was the problem- to me, it looked just fine.[/vc_column_text][mk_padding_divider size=”20″][vc_column_text disable_pattern=”true” align=”left” margin_bottom=”0″]I picked up the phone and called my peer directly. At first, she was so upset that she didn’t want to talk. I encouraged her to have a discussion with me. She vented her frustration as I just calmly listened. She went on to explain how she had interpreted my sent message. After patiently listening to her perceptions, I slowly explained my true intent in the email communication. By the end of the conversation, the misunderstanding had been cleared up and we were on the same page.

Did I intend to offend my email recipient? Of course I didn’t. From my perspective, the letter was straightforward and the tone was friendly. However, it certainly wasn’t received that way.

What I failed to take into account was that my email recipient was not me.

Her experiences, worldview and assumptions were far different from my own. Coupled with that was her inability to see my facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures or posture. These definitely would have helped her to better grasp my intended message.

The communication process is complicated. Two people come together with two sets of perceptions, expectations, experiences and world assumptions. To put it simply, two people come from very different places. In addition to this, our current technology for workplace communication makes it even more difficult to correctly evaluate the intended message. This results in ample opportunities for an epic message fail.[/vc_column_text][mk_padding_divider size=”20″][vc_column_text disable_pattern=”true” align=”left” margin_bottom=”0″]With all this said, my advice to you is to slow down. Often, in our haste to get tasks accomplished, we fail to pick up on the subtleties that make a huge difference. And when the message is very important, you might want to pick up the phone.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Say Yes To Failure

image f on testA number of years ago, I was speaking to a group of 300 women at a conference. This was at the beginning of my speaking career and I was still feeling my way through the motions of presenting. I was confident at the beginning and my presentation started off with a bang. However, as I got further into my hour, I started to lose them. I could feel it happening so I tried every trick imaginable to keep them interested. However, they had an option of either attending my presentation or 4 others in the rooms down the hall. As my presentation began its descent, my audience began theirs.

 

One by one, they walked out, oblivious as to how it affected me. I might add that they didn’t even try to be polite or discreet about their exit. I hung in there, pushing myself to ignore my dwindling audience by focusing on one or two that seemed interested. With a quarter of my audience left, I had never been so glad to end a presentation. I look back on that afternoon as sheer torture— the stuff of nightmares.

 

That presentation was an epic FAILURE.

 

How about the time when I was rocking and rolling through a workshop and then took a quick break? I went to the restroom and came out before I realized that I had left my microphone on during the whole experience. In other words, the entire room experienced my “break” right along with me. And then there was the time in my college Anatomy class where I was responsible for learning the parts of my dissected animal for the major exam. I studied and studied but when it came time for the Final Exam, the Professor’s labeled animal parts looked absolutely nothing like mine. I was lost while I looked around at all the pre-med students that knew exactly what they were doing. I failed that class miserably.

 

That day was another epic failure in my life.

 

Do I even need to share about when I was fired from my job? Can you spell F-A-I-L?

 

I’m sure I could fill this page with many other experiences that stand out but I certainly don’t want to bore you. I have a point to make about failure and I’m slowly getting to it. I believe that we look at failure all wrong. Our failures are kept a secret: a shameful, covered up secret. The more we try to cover them up and pretend they don’t exist, the bigger and more powerful they become. If you give some thought to how you view your failures in life, you would agree with me.

 

I was recently having a conversation with a friend when she got very serious. She whispered a secret about a big fat failure in her life. As we got to the end of the story, I could tell that the failure was weighing her down in life.

 

I shared with her that instead of hiding our failures, we should be proud and flaunt them. We should be passionate about sharing how we failed and lived through the experience. We should realize that having the courage to try is everything. We should know that failing is a part of life and spurs us on to greater things.

 

I had the courage to __________________and I failed.

 

I know this is a tough concept to grasp since our society does not really condone failure. Take a look at social media and you’ll quickly see everyone putting their absolute best self forward— the one that they WANT you to see. But that’s not really the true story. You are a combination of your successes and your failures, and without your failures you won’t have your eventual success.

 

So be proud to share the tire marks where life ran you over and you still lived to tell the story. Stop giving so much power to your failures and internalize the fact that trying and failing takes courage, strength and true grit.