from Stepcase Lifehack by Seth Simonds

Are you exhausted, annoyed, and ready to throw in the towel on something that once made you leap out of bed with joy every morning? I know that feeling well. It’s one I suffered from often in the past and still encounter occasionally. It typically signals an impending burnout.

Not the type of burnout you get from dropping your 93 Honda Civic into 3rd gear at 6,000 rpm’s. The type of burnout that makes you avoid work, question the value of your existence, and eat large quantities of Oreo cookies while watching bad television.

How can you avoid burnout and stay in a productive rhythm? Here are 11 ways you can start safeguarding your life against burnout:

1. Schedule regular social activities

Remember when you used to spend time with people you were neither working with nor sleeping with? You watched movies, ate meals, played games, and went on trips. You were active and you had fun!

You can regain some of that emotional fulfillment by contacting some of your old pals and scheduling regular activities. It doesn’t need to be anything crazy. Sure, rafting in Alaska would be fun but a monthly brunch with people you don’t see every day will do just fine. The point of this exercise is to expand your social horizon and crush the feeling that you’re stuck doing the same thing every day.

2. Follow a fitness plan

Why we give up exercise in order to sit in a chair and work for an extra hour at a lower level of intensity is beyond me. I used to do it myself. I dealt with stress by eating and worked instead of working out. The result? Not only did I burn out but I got really chubby, too!

If you want to avoid burnout, resurrect that New Year’s Resolution and figure out what it takes to get you exercising on a regular basis. Apart from all the physical benefits of exercise, you’ll enjoy the mental satisfaction of knowing that you’re taking good care of yourself again.

3. Pursue a hobby

Pick a hobby that has little or nothing to do with what you spend most of your week doing and pursue it with passion! A hobby that uses an entirely different skill set can provide your heart and mind with a satisfying break from the weekly grind and set you on a good path for increased productivity.

You probably won’t even need to worry about picking a new hobby out. The one you abandoned when you sold your soul to the work week is waiting for you to return. Shine up those golf clubs, get out the fishing gear, or buy a new pair of boxing gloves and get moving!

4. Volunteer

Nothing brightens the soul or warms the senses like giving to another for no reason other than to give. If you’re feeling run down by life, I implore you to seek out somebody less fortunate than yourself and work to help them.

Reach out to your local soup kitchen or professional organization and ask for referrals to local places that need your help. They’ll be glad to get you started and you’ll soon forget about badly you thought you had it!

5. Write a manifesto

Have you forgotten what you want out of life? It’s easy to lose track of time and even easier to forget about what makes us glad to be alive. What can you do to bring back that focus? Take a day or perhaps an entire weekend and write a manifesto, a declaration of purpose, for yourself.

The process will give you focus as you put your intentions into writing. You’ll also discover that stepping back and looking at your life as a whole has a way of putting the stresses of the moment into perspective.

6. Ask for help

This is a tough one, especially if you’re a resourceful I’ll-do-it-on-my-own type of person like me. But it’s worth the time it takes to ask for help making sense of something that’s been dragging you down. It’s worth the embarrassment of admitting that you can’t do something on your own to really get help.

Whether your struggle is with a particular part of a project or with something general, like time management, asking for help will get you to a solution faster than you could ever hope to alone. If you want to avoid burnout, you’ll need to swallow your pride on occasion and reach out for help.

7. Make others laugh

Humor keeps us sane even through the most stressful of circumstances. Laughter is fun and a great way to reduce stress. Even better, finding ways to make others laugh doesn’t just reduce stress for all involved. It allows you to begin viewing yourself as a source of fun and laughter in your social or work group.

You’ll find it hard to be glum and entertain unhappy thoughts when the people around you are excited and happy to be near you. There’s no need to be a genius comedian. Start out by learning a few good jokes and add as you go!

8. Make an escape list

An “escape list” is a list of everything you’d need to do in order to escape a situation that’s driving you nuts. In a work context, your escape list might include things like turning in a final presentation or asking for a raise. It might also include smaller things like submitting your resume to a new opportunity or drafting a letter of resignation!

You might never follow up on the items in your escape list but the process of writing one will help clarify in your mind that you are not truly stuck. You have options. Perhaps not the best or most fun options, but you are certainly not stuck.

9. Embrace a morning ritual

Are you starting your day on the wrong foot by waking up late, rushing about, and skipping out the door at the last minute? Try slowing down your morning instead. Set your alarm a few minutes earlier than usual and spend the “extra” time sitting in a sunny spot in your living room with a cup of coffee and a good book.

As you slowly add more to your morning, you’ll develop a fierce attachment to “your” time. Why? Because you’ve chosen to start your day with a focus on taking care of yourself instead of busting out of bed like a bomb squad.

10. Stop making excuses

Is everything that’s dragging you down right now because of something your boss, partner, friend, or client did? Getting caught up in how much everybody else is screwing up will put you on the fast track to gray hair and a stupendous burnout.

The fix? Accept responsibility for your part of the problems that plague you. Then start digging your way out. Once you’ve given up on blaming others you’ll start seeing more of the good in your life and the sordid claws of desperate solitary thought will no longer draw you down.

11. Be accountable

Accountability is something we’re all familiar with but rarely put into useful practice. You can use accountability to drive your personal development and avoid burnout. The trick is find somebody you can trust to give the down and dirty on what you’re trying to do and how you’re moving forward.

For best results, have your accountability partner NOT be a relative or somebody you’re dating. They typically won’t have the capacity for objective review of your progress. People who love you will often make excuses for you and you want to avoid excuses at all costs.

“Accountability breeds response-ability.” ~Stephen R Covey

Avoiding burnout is a matter of constant vigilance and regular maintenance. What are you doing to avoid burnout? Do you have any tips to add? I’m glad for your thoughts!

by Susan Baroncini-Moe from Lifehack Link

Being authentic can be surprisingly difficult, especially in business. I often work with people who have no problem being genuine in real life, but who really struggle with authenticity in business. I hear from clients that, in business, they have to appear to be mega-successful — not just sort of successful, and not “hey, I’m growing a business here,” but really successful, in order to be taken seriously. There’s so much posturing and pretending, because people believe that you can’t become successful unless you appear to already be successful. But that’s just not true! In fact, it’s just the opposite.

We’re all works in progress.

I’ve seen “behind the scenes” of a lot of the people who many of us think of as mega-successful, and things aren’t always how they seem. A well-known wealth coach I know spends most of his time talking about the power of mindset, but I know that he struggles with exactly the same issues everyone else does: doubt, uncertainty, insecurity. We’re all works in progress. Every single one of us. We all have questions and insecurities and fears. It’s how you deal with those internal struggles that matters.

The truth has a way of seeping out anyway.

We think we’re so good at hiding our secrets from the rest of the world. But whether it’s a financial crisis, marital problems, personal demons, or something else, even if you think you’re keeping your skeletons hidden, you’re probably not. Truth has a way of sneaking out there and betraying our lies. Truth may show up in an uncertain look in your eye or in the way you keep your secrets, but know this: it’s almost impossible to keep things totally hidden.

It’s not all about appearances. It’s about truth.

Far too many folks out there seem to think that if you appear to be super-successful, you’ll achieve legitimacy. But it’s not about how you seem, it’s about how you are. If who you really are matches up with who you say you are, then you’ll appear credible, because you are credible. On the other hand, pretend you’re something that you’re not and you’ll come off as shady.

The real secret to gaining legitimacy is authenticity.

We’re all after legitimacy, in the end. So take the time to build your expertise and knowledge, offer your services at a discounted rate while you gain experience, and build in the right systems to support your products and services so you can offer unparalleled good service. You’ll build credibility by doing things right, and with credibility and legitimacy comes real success.

Susan Baroncini-Moe started her entrepreneurial adventures with a lemonade stand. Now, Susan is the CEO of Business in Blue Jeans, dedicated to helping you design a business you’ll love or transform your business into optimized profitability. Learn more at BusinessInBlueJeans.com.Other links: Blue Jeans Web Sites and Susan’s No Suits Allowed! E-zine.

If you work in a large organization and are ambitious for career progression then here are a number of things that you can do to assist your journey.

1.  Do your job well. I know that this is stating the obvious but it is the starting point.   For promotion it is a necessary but not a sufficient requirement that you perform your current duties diligently.  Many people think that this is all they need to do and that the rewards, recognition and promotion will follow.  Corporate life is not ‘fair’ in this sense.  Many people do great work and are passed over.  You need to excel in your current role and do much more to climb the ladder.

2. Get noticed. One of the best ways to be promoted is if a senior manager in another department wants you.  But this can only happen if they are aware of you.  So you have to find ways to get in front of other people, particularly senior people, in a way that displays your good qualities and makes you memorable.

3. Volunteer. If someone is needed to present a proposal on behalf of your department, volunteer.  If members are needed for a cross-departmental task force, volunteer.  If the social committee want someone to help organize the staff barbecue, volunteer.  Take on additional responsibilities both inside and outside your department.  This shows that you are willing to get involved and it gets you noticed.

4.  Discuss your ambitions with your manager. Make sure that your boss and your boss’s boss know that you are keen to be promoted.  You can do this in a quiet professional way.  Do not threaten or demand.  Have a discussion where you ask the question, ‘What do I have to do to get promoted?’    Develop a plan.  Senior managers understand ambition and there is nothing wrong with being ambitious so make sure that they understand your goals.

5.  Work well with people. Many people who are technically proficient and excellent at task management do not get promoted because they lack people skills.  Be aware of how you are perceived.  Ask for feedback.  It is not a question of popularity; it is more about communication, trust and dependability.   Try not to make enemies.  Find ways to work effectively with other people and you are more likely to be seen as ‘management material’.

6.  Contribute ideas. Make positive, constructive suggestions for how things could be done better.  Most managers (though not all) welcome this and it will signal that you are someone who can think about bigger issues.  It shows that you welcome rather than fear change.

7.  If you cannot move up, move across. Look for ways to broaden your experience.  It you cannot move up in your area then consider moving across into a different area of the business at the same level so that you can learn new skills and make new contacts.

8.  Have a plan. Set yourself goals for advancement and measure progress against them.   If you need to acquire certain skills or experiences then plan to do so.  If you are turned down for promotion, ask why.  If you cannot meet your plan in your current organization or if you can make no more progress or if you no longer enjoy the work then look elsewhere.  There are plenty of opportunities for ambitious people who work hard and are keen to learn.

By Dustin Wax, OriginalLink

That’s a funny word, isn’t it? “Scrum.” Scrum is a project management strategy for software development teams. The name comes from rugby (I guess) where it refers to the start of a new play. In the programming world, it’s a technique of coordinating a team’s work without a clear plan, working towards attainable short-term goals, and then repeating the process towards another set of goals – which I suppose is kind of like playing towards a goal in rugby. Except, you know – fewer broken bones. Hopefully.

I’m not part of a software development team. I’m not even a programmer. But when I came across an article on Scrum recently, it struck me that, while intended for big, collaborative projects, there were a lot of elements of Scrum that could be adapted pretty well to individual productivity. Although Scrum can be implemented at any stage of a project, it really excels as a way of dealing with projects that have stalled out for some reason – projects that have gotten stuck for lack of resources, lack of direction, even lack of teamwork – and that’s something that happens to all of us at one time or another. Maybe, just maybe, the principles that get teams of programmers back on track can apply to the projects every one of us has gotten stuck on.

Scrum 101

Although there are whole textbooks devoted to managing teams and their projects using Scrum, the basic principles are very simple:

• Do what you can with what you have. Projects stall because some resource – whether it’s material, knowledge, or manpower – is missing. Usually, though, there are plenty of things that can be done even without those resources – other parts of the system to build, creative workarounds, standards to devise, and so on. During the planning of each stage, and in daily “check-in” meetings along the way, these shortfalls are taken into account and work designed around them so that a lack of resources doesn’t have to create a lack of progress.
• Constant feedback. As I just mentioned, Scrum encourages daily contact between its team-members, so that a) nobody stalls and holds up the whole project, and b) the collective knowledge of the whole team can be brought to bear on new problems in creative ways. Meetings are short, as short as 15 minutes, and center around three questions:
  1. What have you accomplished so far?
  2. What will you accomplish today?
  3. What’s preventing you from making progress right now?

  These simple questions are meant to identify any “logjams” and break them up before they hold up the entire project.

• Work towards clearly-defined short-term goals. Scrum projects are, generally-speaking, point-releases of the software under development – that is, they are significant but relatively simple evolutionary improvements of the state of the project at the beginning of the project. For example, a set of new functions could be implemented, an interface designed, a database structure mapped out, and so on. “Write browser” is too big of a project, it’s realization too far off, to make for a meaningful Scrum project; “correct bug in line 1178” too small. Ideally, as each project is completed, the software under development should be in a usable state – Scrum was developed to deal with the contingencies of the software world, where projects often need to be rushed into market to combat a competing project, or just to bring in an income.
• Sprint. The basic working unit of Scrum is the Sprint – a focused dash towards the completion of the immediate project goals. At the beginning of the Sprint, the team determines exactly what resources are available to them, what they intend to achieve given those resources, and how long they’ll work on it. Then, they work on those objectives, and those objectives only. The Sprint is sacrosanct – its members work on the project they’ve put together and nothing else until the Sprint is completed. It might be a week, it might be 30 days, or anywhere in between – whatever time they’ve agreed on is dedicated solely to the Sprint. When it’s done, team members might rotate out of or into the team, or be assigned to other projects, but until then – they Sprint.

Scrumming Solo

Seems to me that, with a little modification, those are pretty good principles for anyone with some big projects on their plate – especially if you, like me, have a tendency to get side-railed. Of course, most of our projects aren’t collaborative, and they’re rarely as compartmentalized as computer programs, either. The idea of developing a project by evolutionary steps, with each step creating a potentially usable end-product, simply doesn’t apply to the kind of long-term projects most of us have as individuals – things like writing a book, learning a foreign language, or earning a promotion.

But the idea of Scrum is, I think, very applicable to our personal lives. The whole point is, through a process of constant self-awareness, to identify what’s holding us back, how we can work around it, and where the next few days or weeks should take us. Consider, then, “Scrum for One”:

• Do what you can with what you have. There are bound to be hang-ups in any project worth doing, and it’s all too easy to look at a project and despair because you don’t have whatever you need to finish it. Well, you may not have what you need to finish, but chances are you have what you need to start, to do at least some of the steps needed to get yourself somewhere close to the finish line. And you can take heart from this peculiarity of Scrum: often, when working under less than ideal circumstances without all the necessities to finish a project, Scrum teams find that either a new solution emerges that’s much more within their grasp or, just as often, that the missing element isn’t really needed in the first place. At the worst, you’ll give yourself the time you need to come up with the missing piece – and meanwhile you’ll be moving inexorably closer to your goal.
• Constant self-reflection. If you’re a fan of Allen, Covey, or Drucker, you’ve probably already accepted the importance of a weekly review. Scrum for One suggests that more frequent reflection might be helpful – nothing at the scale of a full weekly review, but a few moments of honesty each morning to define the work in front of you and any problems that might be standing in the way. Brainstorm a few minutes to see if you can solve the issue, and if not, put it in your to-do list for later action. A lot of time, just asking “What’s standing in my way?”is enough to trigger a solution – more often than not, the problem lies more in ourselves than in our situation.
• Work towards clearly-defined, short-term goals. Give yourself a time limit and set a reasonable goal – reasonable, but meaningful – to reach by the end of that period. Projects that stretch out in front of you for months or years are discouraging (which is why so few people write books) while projects that are too small often aren’t very satisfying to complete.
• Sprint. Sprinting the way Scrum teams do it won’t really work for individuals – you probably have a lot of different roles to play on a day-to-day basis, which means focusing on a single project to the exclusion of everything else is going to be difficult, if its even possible. What you can do, though, is block out a number of hours every day and use them to focus strictly on one project – no distractions, no knocking off early, no nothing until you reach your goal.

Obviously this isn’t anything like a complete productivity system, but it’s interesting nonetheless. Scrum is a very effective way of managing projects, and is used by software giants like Microsoft as well as tiny start-ups and everything in between. If nothing else, next time you’re stuck, ask yourself the simple question, “What’s standing in my way right now?” and see if that doesn’t lead to “OK, what am I going to do about it?”