Posts Tagged ‘work-life’

Home/Work: The Great Big Summer Giveaway

It's here, folks: The Lifehack Great Big Summer Giveaway! We've got some great sponsors, great prizes, and some great contests coming up over the next couple of weeks. "Home/Work" is the theme of the giveaway, and over the next two weeks we'll be asking you, Lifehack's readers, to tell us how you manage the tricky feat of keeping your home life and… Continue reading

6 Lessons on Making Smooth Transitions in Life

Last week I started working on my new job as a lecturer. The job is pretty flexible, but it takes quite a lot of time for preparation, especially because I'm relatively new to some subjects. Since I'm still adapting to the pace, my life was pretty disorganized. I couldn't do my morning ritual as it should, and I didn't even have enough time to write for my blog. It's… Continue reading

10 Questions to Ask Yourself to Regain Your Work-Life Balance

Last night my 11-year-old came into my office (9 p.m. to be exact, foreshadow, foreshadow), and said, "Mom, can you please get off the computer and be with me?" I should know better, right? After all, achieving work-life balance is one of the staples of the coaching diet. I turned off the computer and we sat on the couch reading White Fang aloud. I'm not sure which was worse… Continue reading

Ten Ways To Be Happy At Work

I took out the 'Top' from this 'Top Ten' because I think this sort of thing can be quite personal, and your happiness at work can be a result of very different things. However, this is still an excellent list of some simple ideas that should make your work-life more pleasant. Practice Professional Courage If you are like most people, you don't like conflict. And the reason why is simple. You've never… Continue reading

Make Your Own Time At Work

When you get back to work tomorrow, endeavour to take control of your time. Not just in that time-management, productivity, no-procrastination kind of way. Let's be selfish with our time. Consider blocking your own calendar for meetings with yourself. I know many people & teams that do this just to create some protected calendar time for processing email at the beginning and end of day. A good guideline… Continue reading

10 Tips For A Happier Workday

If work's getting you down, or you just can't handle Mondays, the 'hump day' or waiting for for the weekend to start on Friday, try Brad Isaac's 10 ways to a happy workday. 10. Be slow to react to other people’s “urgent” requests. When someone else asks you for help, to do a project or to meet some other urgent need, practice saying “what’s your deadline on this? or when… Continue reading

Putting Your Trust in . . . Trust

Trust is an essential component in almost all dealings between human beings, other than outright hostile ones like wars and terrorism. It is certainly vital for the proper running of any organization, as well as for almost all the components of trade and commerce. Lack of trust between trading partners undermines the proper functioning of business. Mistrust is a major cause of excessive (and unnecessary) workload on leaders, since the… Continue reading

Change Here

After the election last week in the United States, change is a hot topic, but it isn't political change that I have been thinking about recently. It's how organizations and their leaders cope—or, more often, fail to cope too well—with the need for changes in business practices to promote growth and foster creativity. It's a truism to point out that no one can avoid change. It's part of the reality in… Continue reading

Why We Should Put an End to “Hamburger Management”

Hamburger Management is a shoddy, debased version of real leadership that focuses on just three things: whatever demands least, can be used fastest, and costs least. It thrives wherever organizations seek to meet unrealistic targets with insufficient resources to maximize short-term profits. Indeed, Hamburger Management is short-term by nature, and will habitually sacrifice long-term advantage and value for the immediate gratification of bosses and investors. To force people to work long… Continue reading

Focusing on What Matters (and Ignoring What Does Not)

As I look back at this week's postings on Slow Leadership, I notice that most of them were concerned with helping people stop wasting their time and energy on fruitless endeavors. Take the first post, entitled: To Succeed, First Forget About Leadership Technique. In it, I argued that belief that success—in just about any business or leadership —comes from one simple source (applying the correct "leadership technique), is both… Continue reading

Antidotes to Hamburger Management

I've been thinking and writing quite a lot this week about Hamburger Management: the type of management approach that is based on always doing whatever is quickest, simplest and (above all) cheapest. Hamburger Managers provide the kind of leadership that is best described as: "Never mind the quality, look how fast it goes and how cheap it is." Sadly, this approach is being forced on a great many otherwise perfectly… Continue reading

Doubt, Conformity, and “Hamburger Management”

When you write an article on a topic, it's traditional to start with the problem, explain the causes next, then move into offering a solution. On the Slow Leadership site this week, I took things more or less in the opposite order, starting on Monday with part of the solution, giving my views on the reasons for the problem mid-week, and finally explaining the problem itself on Friday. This… Continue reading

Heresy and Progress

We live in world full of pressures to conform: to believe what others tell us is true, to toe the line, to accept the values of those in positions of power, and to follow conventional, approved paths. That's the way to get on in life and business, we are told. You need to fit in, play the game, and avoid rocking any boats. Fitting in and following generally accepted views on… Continue reading

Creating Hardworking Idiots

The German World War II general Erich von Manstein is said to have categorized his officers into four types. The first type, he said, is lazy and stupid. His advice was to leave them alone because they don't do any harm. The second type is hard-working and clever. He said that they make great officers because they ensure everything runs smoothly. The third group is composed of hardworking idiots. Von… Continue reading

The Onward March of Folly

Despite all of mankind's technological progress, some patterns seem rooted in human behavior. One of these is the tendency to grab for short-term gains and ignore the longer-term consequences, even when those are almost entirely predictable. This attitude has been illustrated this week by the announcement from the Ford Motor Company of still more lay-offs, plant closures, and buy-outs of workers' contracts. For years, Ford's cars have been becoming less popular… Continue reading

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