What's The Best Use Of You

Time to read: 1 min 2 seconds

Lately I've been thinking a lot about purpose, and what it means to spend your day living meaningfully and purposefully. This season of reflection is a good time to consider this question:

What is the best use of you?

You know you are at your best use when you feel "well-used" by the end of most days. When you feel like the way you spend your time uses your unique gifts and talents. When you feel a sense of satisfaction, even if you didn't complete everything or it was hard. When you look back over a week and are proud of the way you spend your time.

The best use of you applies to work and the ways you support your family and friends, raise your children, care for your parents, volunteer in your community, and interact with strangers.

The implication of your best use is that there are also things that are NOT your best use. Like, maybe someone else should crunch the numbers or do the design or direct the difficult conversation.

For example, details are not the best use of me. Communication and relationships are. So, I rely on others in my life (my assistant, and my husband) to manage details while I handle sticky situations and awkward conversations. My husband is relieved. And so am I. It's a win-win.

We need a world where each of us is performing to our best use each day. What's yours?

My Main Mantra. Now It Can Be Yours.

Time to read: Less than 30 seconds

Be More. Do Less.

If this one is mysterious to you, reach out. This is a personal favorite.

Working Too Much?

Time to read: 1 minute, 4 seconds

Hey Rebels,

Today is "help, I'm working too much but not as productive" day.

You face an uncertain future. The situation changes week-to-week, sometimes day-to-day under Covid-19. Some of the stress is global, and some is specific to your industry, workplace or family situation.

Uncertainty breeds stress, and stress breeds over-performing. (It also breeds under-performing, which is the subject for next week.)

Do these symptoms of over-performing feel familiar?

• Working constantly
• Not taking time for fun and joy
• Believing that if you work just a little more, you'll fix it, solve it, or find the answer
• Trying to look good to your superiors or colleagues
• Feeling exhausted
• Working a lot, but not feeling productive

"Hello, my name is Christina. I'm an over-performer." Let me rephrase that, thanks to 9 years of intensive personal and professional development I am a recovering over-performer so I have a few thoughts about what to do. In a nutshell, here's what I've learned:

• Recognize when you have crossed the line from productive and effective to over-performing. (Hint: You feel like your self-worth is wrapped up in your work. You start to feel resentful and exhausted. You are focused on looking good rather than being creative and serving.)


• Create structures to support breaks. Shut down your computer. Turn off your phone. Go out of town for the weekend and don't take your laptop. Chronic over-performers have to be forced to slow down and rest.


• Get clear about the difference between what's truly important in your work and the busy-work that makes you feel productive, but actually isn't. Do important work. Let the busy-work go.


• Unhook your sense of self-worth from your job. You are not single-handedly going to solve all the world's problems as much as you might like to. You are not a failure if you haven't yet stopped world hunger or systemic racism. Trust that you always know the next right step and that your future and career will unfold in the way it is supposed to.

Over-performing holds you back from doing the work you are meant to do as you get stuck in exhaustion and self-doubt. We need you. We need you to feel worthy and free so you can get about the important work of making the world the place you want it to be.

I hope that helps. Next week is for all you under-performers. Motivation, anyone?

How To Get Stuff Done, Fast

Time to read: less than one minute because you have s*$% to do!

Imperfection at its finest.

Hello rebels!

To say that the past couple of weeks have been slammed would be an understatement. See if any of this sounds familiar to you...

• My children are off for the summer. Bye-bye routine. Hello daily unpredictability and chaos.
• I have daily client calls and meetings and have to take some of them from my bedroom because of see #1.
• We're taking a trip next week so everything has gotten crammed into this week.
• My BFF and I are launching a project for y'all in August and spent yesterday shooting videos.
• A volunteer job requires hours of emails and organizing.
• There's always a dose of interpersonal drama that sucks time and energy when you work with other people.
• Then there's just regular life: showering, walking the dog, making food, cleaning.

Can you relate?

In weeks like this, the name of the game is "get s#*$ done."

So, how do you get your s*@# done with quality, efficiency and speed?

Keep this one simple moto in mind:

Completion over perfection.

In shooting the videos, Anne and I stumbled over our words sometimes. Did we shoot each video 10 times to get it perfect? NO! We declared our stumbling charming and human and moved to the next video.

I usually have this newsletter written by Tuesday afternoon. Here it is, Thursday morning, and I'm slamming it out before my children wake up. Am I beating myself up for not making my internal deadline or considering letting it go this once? NO. I woke up, chose a topic, and started writing.

Be thoughtful. Do good work. Meet your deadlines (or communicate well if you won't). Don't spend hours dotting every "i" and crossing every "t." Your 80% is good enough. Otherwise, perfection will make you insane. We're not fans of insanity here at the Corporate Rebel.

Get 'er done and move on.

I hope this helps.

Christina

P.S. Do you know someone who gets stuck in perfection and doesn't complete stuff efficiently, or at all? Share this article with them and they can sign up to join us here.

The Biggest Lie You've Been Told

Time to read: Less than one minute

Dear Rebels,

When you were young, did you dream of your future? Maybe a job that earned a good living. A family. Time to pursue your passions and interests. Travel. Then, once you got that job, you poured yourself into it with gusto (or not). You played volleyball after work. You took painting classes or sang in a choir. You slept in on weekends and had dinner regularly with friends.

Then maybe you committed to a partner. Perhaps you built a family. You got promoted or changed jobs or went back to school. Your parents got older. Maybe you bought a house. Life got more complex and even though it happened over years, it seems like overnight you became exhausted, overwhelmed, and focused on life as a checklist of transactions. You used to feel like you had it all together and now balls are dropping, friends are a distant memory, exercise was first to go, and the "few tips" you've tried to regain control lasted all of a minute before everything snapped back to the relentless new "normal."

Does some version of this sound familiar?

I grew up in the 1980s when young people were fed the biggest lie of all time.

The lie?

You can have it all.

It's total crap.

Also total crap is the feeling that there is something wrong with you if you can't manage it all.

A wise mentor once said to me, "You can have anything. You just can't have everything."

Cue one of my favorite themes: Choices.

You get to choose your priorities. When you're trying to stuff 15 pounds of life into a 5 pound bag, you get to choose what to let go, what is non-negotiable, what can wait, and what you'll prioritize.

Stop beating yourself up for not being able to manage it all. No one can. It's a lie.

With rebel love,

Christina

P.S. Know someone who needs to let go of the lie? Send them here to find relief.

How to Get Out of Exhaustion and Overwhelm

Time to read: Less than one minute and fifteen seconds

Hello Rebels,

It's 6:00 am. Your feet are barely on the floor, and you're already behind. You stayed up after your children's bedtime to empty your stuffed inbox and get ahead on that presentation you couldn't finish during your back-to-back day. Then there is summer scheduling, end of school activities, and picking up the slack while your colleagues take spring vacation. Remember exercise? Ha!

You're exhausted before you've started, and although some days are more packed than others, they all mush together in one long string of busy-ness.

Feel familiar?

You think that if you find the right productivity strategy, you'll be able to fix this. You get creative with your company's insistence that you "do more with less." You only check email once or twice a day. You focus on the three most important things you need to get done. These strategies work to some extent, and nothing seems to change.

I love productivity tips as much as the next busy person. And, organizing your desk differently or making prioritized lists is only going to get you so far.

What will actually get you out of exhaustion and overwhelm, is a change in you.

To help you experiment with this idea, I turned to a process I use in my own life. I have this amazing set of cards full of empowering choices and beliefs. I pull one every day to anchor how I will be with whatever is happening that day.

Today, I pulled three cards for you. (See the photo above.) Your three cards are:

Willingness: This is one of my favorites. You have to be willing to do things differently today. To slow down. To stop worrying. To get into action. Even when things suck, we're often not actually willing to change it.

I am creative: Where can you lean into your wild creativity to bring more joy, new solutions, or less stress to your work?

I choose trust: I pull a card everyday, and I seriously trust 4 out of 5 times. Seems like this one might be kind of important. Where do you not trust yourself? Or others? Where can you lean into more trust to bring ease to your work and relationships?

Pick one of these cards and use it to navigate your day. Then hit reply to this email and tell me what happens.

I always love to hear from you.

With rebel love,

Christina

P.S. Please share these cards with a friend or colleague who needs a little more trust, creativity or willingness. They can join our merry band of rebels here.

Are You Distracted?

Time to read: Part 1 of a 2-part series on email mastery. Less than one minute to read so you don't get distracted!

Today is newsletter day, meaning I set a goal to write 3 newsletters. Here is what I have accomplished thus far: walked the dog, marinated chicken, went to yoga, ate lunch, unloaded the dishwasher, folded laundry, scooped litter boxes, and checked email, like 6 or 7 times. When you work from home, the danger is distraction.

And, if you work in an office, the danger is distraction! Tea, anyone?!

Email is a special form of distraction. When you chat in the hall with your friends or I clean out the garage, we know we are not working. (I mean, yes, you can make a case that you are building relationships and still getting things done, and it's not writing a newsletter or attending to that big deadline you have at the end of the week.)

Email, on the other hand, has the illusion of working. If you spend an hour replying to requests and setting up meetings and cleaning out the old inbox, it feels like working. Sometimes, cleaning out your inbox is a worthy activity, but it is not moving you forward on the creative, thoughtful, innovative projects and ideas that will advance your career. "He did a great job crafting emails this year" or "She really kept her inbox in check" is not going to get you promoted.

So, what to do?

1. Close your email and focus on the innovative and creative projects that need your full attention, even if only for 25 minutes.
2. Check email once or twice a day at designated times. (I have never been successful at this one. You'll learn more next week in Part 2 of Email Mastery).
3. Only use email for quick responses. For longer, more nuanced situations, and certainly in conflict, pick up the phone.

Get off your email. You have creative things to do!

With rebel love,

Christina

P.S. Please forward this newsletter to your friends. They want to be happier at work, too. They can join here.