A Delicious Life

It’s one thing to love your job. It’s another if you can’t seem to tear yourself away from it - obsessively checking e-mail outside of the office, calling in while on vacation, or even not wanting to take a vacation.

If this sounds familiar, you may be a workaholic. Pick the Brain has a good article about  work getting in the way of life that can help you determine if you are a workaholic, and tips for how you can start to overcome it.

It’s the last day of 2007, and everyone is getting ready to start fresh with a new year. What will you do differently?

First, acknowledge yourself for everything that you’ve accomplished over the past 365 days. If you have a list of goals that you wrote out at the beginning of the year, look over them and see how you did. Were you able to accomplish everything you wanted and more? Or did you fall short? If you did what you wanted, give yourself a nice pat on the back for all the good work you did over the year. If not, think about why you fell short. Maybe your goals were too ambitious, or maybe you didn’t focus on them on a regular basis. Whatever you decide, see how you can do better next year.

Then take the time to renew your list of goals, adding on fresh priorities and getting rid of old ideas that no longer suit you. The more specific you can get about what you want, the better your chances for achieving it. Then keep your list where you will be able to review it on a daily basis to keep your goals top of mind.

What are your goals for 2008?  How do you plan to achieve them?

Did you acknowledge yourself yesterday? If not, please go back and do that exercise first before you work on this one. If so, good job! Don’t forget to recognize yourself on regular basis.

What do you want to accomplish next year? Do you have specific goals in mind? Start making them a reality by writing down a list of everything you could possibly imagine happening - and even some things that you think are unimaginable. Pick out your top goals and write them in a list that you can post some place where you will see them on a daily basis. To reinforce this exercise, for each goal you can write out a list of reasons why it is important for you to accomplish it. This way, you will have greater reasons to go for them.

I gave a speech at my Toastmasters meeting this evening based on a quote that I received in e-mail today. The quote:

People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going

-Earl Nightingale, author The Strangest Secret, Lead the Field.

Imagine hitting the open road without a map to reveal where you’re going. It’s the same with trying to succeed without explicit goals established. But once you take the time to write down your goals and action steps to obtaining these goals, you’re more likely to find the professional and personal successes for which you strive.

After receiving it, I realized that I made some major mistakes when I set my goals this year. And I wanted to share some thoughts about how to set better goals so that people don’t make the same mistakes that I made:

1. Get clear on what you want

The more detail you can visualize for a specific outcome, the more likely it is that you can make it happen. That’s because you can actually “see” it in your mind.

When you can visualize yourself shaking the hand of your new boss as you get the job offer, crossing the finish line of the 5k run doing your best time ever, or approaching the podium to receive your first award for Best Table Topics, the goal is so clear to your mind. You can almost see your future before it happens. Visualizing each detail helps you create your own future.

Even if you don’t have all of the action steps that you need to take, the clearer your goals are, the easier it will be for you to achieve them.

2. Write them down and post them somewhere visible

Writing down your goals is a powerful act. Once you translate your thoughts into ideas that go on paper, you are much more likely to achieve whatever it is you set out to do. When you can see it on a regular basis, you are constantly reminded of what it is you want to achieve. That way, it never strays from your mind.

The good thing about at least writing down your goals is that you can sometimes still get them accomplished by just putting them out into the universe. You make them real by taking them out of your head and putting them on paper. Even though I had lost track of my goal list, I had accomplished about half of my goals. But just half – imagine what would have happened if I had posted my list somewhere that I could see every day. What might I have done?

3. Refine your goals

Sometimes you may not have all the details, or once you start working towards a goal, you’ll see that it’s not exactly what you wanted in the first place. That’s ok. It’s better to start acting and correct your direction as you are making progress than it is to wait until you have all of the details.

You could wait forever for the perfect plan to suddenly come to you, and then where would you be? You’d still be at square one, waiting for inspiration. Meanwhile, you would not have learned by experimenting with what wasn’t quite right. Better to fail forward fast than to wait until you perfect your vision.

4. Set time limits

It’s not about just wanting to accomplish a goal; it’s also important to define when you want to accomplish it. When do you want to be a published author? When are you planning on achieving your competent communicator designation in Toastmasters? By when do you want to make a million dollars? All of these time frames will help you determine what steps you need to take and by when you need to take them to achieve everything you want in life.

Attached to my tea bag this morning was this quote:

“To be great, feel great and act great.”

The Law of Attraction states that like attracts like - so, accordingly, if you feel and act great, you will become great. This is the theory.

But even if you don’t believe in the Law of Attraction, don’t you feel better when you’re focused on what’s working? Or, as I like to ask people, what’s new and good in your life?

If you take a look at whatever that is, your mood will naturally lift, and you will smile more often. As you walk down the street, your smile will attract other smiles - your positive energy inspires others and causes them to smile, too. And then, there you are, all silly-grinning, wondering why you’re so happy. And it was all because you started thinking about the new and good things in your life.

Recently, I received one of those “funny” e-mails - this one was about work and compared it to prison

Work vs. Prison: Just in case you ever get these two environments mixed up, this should make things little bit clearer.

@ PRISON - You spend the majority of your time in a 10X10 cell
@ WORK - You spend the majority of your time in an 6X6 cubicle

@ PRISON - You get three meals a day fully paid for
@ WORK - You get a break for one meal and you have to pay for it

@ PRISON - You get time off for good behavior
@ WORK - You get more work for good behavior

Etc.

Sure, work isn’t fun every day, but comparing it to prison? At least you can leave when you want to. And as far as I’m aware, most jobs are “at will” situations - you and the company both have the right to terminate the relationship whenever you want and for whatever reason - and you don’t even have to give a reason.

Why should you work in a job that you hate? Most people spend eight hours a day at work. Assume seven or eight hours for sleeping and the rest of the time for meals, relaxation, time with friends and family. Half of your waking life is spent at work. Wouldn’t it be better to find work you love, or learn to love the work you have instead of wasting energy hating it?

About a month ago, I wrote a post about The Now Habit by Neil Fiore, a book that helps you overcome procrastination. I’ve been regularly using some of the techniques that he recommends, and I’ve found that I’m getting a lot more productive even if I don’t use them consistently.

My favorite tool is the Unschedule. It’s a simple chart that you use to block out how you spend your time.

When you fill out your Unschedule,  you are supposed to fill in all of the tasks that you always do first - eat, sleep, workout, etc. - to make sure that you take that time for yourself. Then you need to fill in time to have fun - time with friends, family or to nurture yourself.

Finally, after you have all your to-dos and guilt-free play in, you schedule in your work. That way, you don’t feel like you’re always working (even though you’re not really anyway - you’re procrastinating and putting off work while not doing anything fun or worthwhile).

I highly recommend trying this out if you find you are a chronic procrastinator. It has really helped me not only bring more peace to my life but also get things done on a regular basis.

Here are some recent headlines and posts that caught my eye:

Food

Link between low cholesterol and cancer? A recent study shows that there may be a link between lower bad cholesterol levels and cancer. But, of course, they need to do more research. My question is: if there’s a link, could it be just because the people who have cholesterol problems are unhealthy in general?
Diet Soda and Weight Gain: The Wall Street Journal (subscription only) reports that a new study shows that people who consume diet soda have many of the same obesity-related health risks as those who consume regular soda. There is some controversy (of course) in the study about whether it’s diet soda or other negative lifestyle activities that makes someone more prone to illness. But the article does point to a study that indicates diet soda can make people crave sugar.

Career

12 Ways to use Facebook Professionally: While I’ve been a member of Facebook since it started, I just recently started using and updating my profile more frequently. There are many more features than I need or want on it, and I don’t have a lot of time to dig around to figure out what I should and shouldn’t use. This post from Web Worker Daily goes into detail about how you can use your Facebook profile for more meaningful connections and minimize the wasted time on silly apps that suck you into the site.

Relationships

Engagement: A guy wants to propose to his girlfriend but can’t afford the ring. If he gives her a fake, with the intention of replacing it, should he tell her? More importantly, if you tell her the situation, would she really care if her engagement ring was fake if it’s given with the right intention?

Exercise

Workouts that help burn fat: Forbes reports that a recent study shows working out in segments with rest periods burns more fat than a continuous workout. I highly recommend this type of workout - I have been using it in my own personal training, and it has worked well.

Spirituality

Commute as meditation: Can your drive to work promote calm and ease? This Atlanta study indicates the possibility. I suppose it’s in your mindset.

I’ve spent a long time looking for that perfect job that would satisfy my longing for work that I love. I’ve worked at big, old companies and small startups. Multi-million dollar operations and bankrupt firms. Freelance, full-time, part-time, and temporary. I’ve been a hot dog vendor, frozen yogurt artist(?) (barrista?), waitress, journalist, editor, marketing writer, project manager, telemarketer, sales representative, teacher, coach and entrepreneur.

The search has been worth it, to be sure. For every misstep that I took, I learned an important lesson - about who I am as an employee, what I like to do, with whom I like to do it, and in what environment I prefer. And while it’s true that I can be whatever I want when I grow up — that is, it’s possible for me to do lots of different things — I excel only at those things that I truly enjoy.

Positive Sharing is a blog all about loving your work or finding work you can love. Chief happiness officer and author of the site, Alexander Kjerulf, has just written a book called Happy Hour is 9 to 5 (I love that title). I’ve browsed through the site and the book a little bit, and there are a lot of good, thoughtfully-written pieces. Check out the most popular articles section - I like the post on cool workspaces

(Found via Thought Press.)

Make better first impressions: Great article about how Toastmasters can change your life - from Lifehacker.

High-tech health counseling: Japanese people who want help with their diets can get their food analyzed by experts by sending a mobile photo of their plate to a remote nutritionist. The nutritionist then provides them with feedback on calories and how to balance their plate for optimal nutrition. (ed. - I offer phone counseling to people all over the country, but not with photographic analysis.)

Act Local: Live Earth has come and gone, but what are you doing about protecting the environment? Are there environmentally-conscious events happening in your hometown? If not, you could start your own. Get some ideas from Stop Global Warming or Treehugger. Personally, I want to start my own indoor composting worm bin (classes in NYC listed on the Lower East Side Ecology Center website).