Which is more work: giving yourself fully to the task at hand or holding back?

It’s a open question. It’s also a loaded question.

My suspicion is that holding back takes more effort than working hard.

Holding back requires constant reflection. “How much is just enough?” “Am I putting in more than I’m being paid for?” “Is anyone watching?” “What time is it now?”

Giving your all requires no extra effort and involves no mind games. You simply go for it.

You’re free and focused to a degree unavailable to the person holding back.

Think about your own approach to work and working hard. Which days go by the quickest? On which days do you experience the greatest sense of achievement?

Why begrudge going the proverbial “extra mile” with someone when I imagine we’d have already gone the extra mile and come back by the time we sweated through whether we were being taken advantage of or exceeded the requirements of our job description or won’t be appropriately appreciated.

You can hold back if you choose. It may be appropriate. It may be fair. It may be justified. But it will certainly be a lot more work.

Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

That we have jobs is not to be taken for granted in this economy. Many of our friends, neighbors and family members do not.

There is one sense where gratitude is an appropriate response to good fortune. Whether you direct your gratitude to the personal God of your faith tradition or somewhere else, we understand deep within that thanks are fitting… even necessary.

In another sense we have come to experience that giving thanks is good for us. Gratitude helps us keep much that is difficult about our jobs or annoying about our co-workers in perspective. We find that feelings of overwhelm, discouragement and resentment are tempered when revisited from the point of view of the gift recipient.

To live in a time where many people do not have work can heighten our sense of personal gratitude.

We say, “Thank you,” not out of moral obligation, but out of careful stewardship of the human spirit… our own spirit… which cannot operate without refreshment.

Functioning as a gift recipient is an entirely different frame of reference than functioning as an overlooked employee, a taken for granted team member, or a faceless cog in the machinery.

Gratitude is good for the soul and invigorating to the spirit.

For what might you give thanks as you begin this week?!

Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

Traveling in a strange place can feel either like an exciting adventure or a nerve-wracking nightmare.

So much newness can arouse our curiosity, excite our senses and expose us to fresh perspectives. On the other hand, so much newness can disorient us, make us feel lost, and scare us into extreme cautiousness.

Some of us love to travel to new places. Some of us prefer the routine of the familiar.

At work we experience a similar tension between the need to explore the new and the need to respect the reliable.

The great thing about Monday morning is that it comes around only once a week, but it keeps coming around.

We don’t have to operate at either extreme of always exploring what is new and different or remaining fixed securely in the confines of what we know works.

What if, once a week, we gave ourselves permission (or challenged ourselves, as the case may be) to seek out fresh perspectives and explore new ideas, methods and relationships?!

The adventure (or nightmare) would only come around once a week, but it would keep coming around.

Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

Some mornings can turn on whether one’s bagel was toasted or not.

Attitude is a funny thing.

We too often dismiss the issue with a mature, rational adult voice that tells us that we’re being silly. Regardless of whether or not our bagel was toasted, we should be able to pull it together and give 110% of ourselves to our work.

Sounds good in principle.

In practice, though, most of us know that to get up, so to speak, on the wrong side of the bed is not a frame of mind one can simply wish away.

I‘d suggest it is more practical to be impractical.

If toasting our bagel will aid in the process of helping us choose an attitude that will serve us more effectively, then pause and toast the bagel! My gosh, who cares that it seems silly or takes some extra time.

The time invested in navigating an attitude adjustment is nothing compared to the time wasted by dragging bitterly through one’s morning.

We can wish we were more mature, more focused, more committed, more whatever all we want. Worse, though, is to refuse to face the facts about who we actually are.

If we are moody, foul-tempered people in the mornings, then best to face it and do what it takes to work one’s way through the experience. The sooner we get it out of our system the sooner we can get on with the business of the day. The more simple and safe the means of working through a bad mood, the more likely we won’t act out on a co-worker or a loved one.

So let’s hear it for the impracticality of toasted bagels!

Let’s hear it for an extra five minutes at the toaster oven waiting quietly for the slight difference that will make all the difference.

Let’s take on this Monday morning with our attitude working for us instead of against us.

This is a get flowers Monday.

Purchase the most colorful bouquet you can find on your way into work today.

As a gift to your assistant. As a complement to your lobby. As a perk for yourself.

Start this week off with some beauty. Choose brightness. Choose vibrancy.

Let the flowers symbolize the creativity and engagement you choose to bring to your work this week.

Especially if you aren’t in the mood yourself, let the flowers do the work for you.

Everyone will thank you.

Let’s make this is Flowers Monday!

Many of us Americans are off of work today.

The 4th of July falling on Sunday results in most workplaces granting a holiday on Monday.

It seems fitting to acknowledge that our conversations about work, careers, and the choices that meaningful and rewarding experiences of each entail, are only possible in a free society.

Freedom and security create the opportunity we have of hard-working, fun-loving teams of energetic, engaged and dedicated individuals designing workplace cultures that bring them alive during the day, provide for their families during the week and transform the world over time.

Even when the worst of work life in America is experienced, there are means for getting help dealing with a bad boss, a stale career,  exploitative practices, and/or criminal excesses.

And so we celebrate Independence Day with the conscious intention of both treasuring and seizing the opportunities our freedom has bought for us.

Loving Monday is loving freedom. It’s great to have a day off of work, and it will be great to get back to work.

Happy Birthday, America!

Ergonomics has its place. And that’s all I’m going to say.

Efficiency is important, and yet it is only one factor among many. Variety is another. Neither is the whole story.

Today I’m going to suggest that you rearrange the furniture.

I’m going to suggest that you break out of the stultifying sameness of your static set-up. Give your brain the fun and refreshing challenge of seeing things differently. Of not being able to count on the same-ol’ same-ol’. Of being forced to bring to the conscious level what has been in the background.

Doing things differently simply because the furniture is on the other side of the room from where it used to be, necessitates new perspectives, takes us to different vantage points and can bring to awareness assumptions about how and why we do certain things the way we do.

Minimally, you’ll give your brains a visual treat and an energizing exercise. More significantly, you are creating opportunities to stumble upon new and better ways of experiencing work even as you avoid literally stumbling upon your work.

Let’s start this week off by rearranging the furniture.

On your side,

- Karl Edwards

Returning to one’s daily routine after a momentous weekend can be anti-climactic… to put it lightly.

We celebrated a university graduation this weekend. A major milestone in the life of our eldest. A major milestone for my wife and I having an eldest who is celebrating such an achievement!

Some events are huge, momentous, once-in-a-lifetime and/or dramatic. Most of work is routine, daily, repetitive and/or cyclical.

The experience of the milestone is usually markedly different than the experience of the mundane.

Getting back to minutiae after experiencing the momentous can be incredibly difficult.

Even if we are returning to a relatively good job, it can feel like a big let down.

It’s quite normal to have the let-down or come-down experience of descending from the mountain top. The valley floor is simply not the mountain top.

The question, though, is are we bringing others down with us, or are we sabotaging our own re-entry into the routines of work by continually comparing the mundane to the milestone?

It’s simply not a fair comparison. The mundane will always lose.

Returning to the routines of work is not a bad thing because it is a disappointing thing. Routines are simply not as sexy or meaningful or intense as our milestone events.

Let’s cut ourselves some slack here. It is possible to acknowledge the authentic let-down of re-entry without succumbing to the false and extreme conclusion that a bad thing has happened to us having to get back to work.

A simple tool for making the adjustment back to work is to write a thank-you note to someone from the milestone event. A simple thank you note gives you an opportunity to articulate your gratitude and what you found meaningful from the event.

Once written, sealing, addressing and posting the letter is a physical way to close the door on a momentous experience. Now you are in a better position to shift your attention to work without making endless and defeating comparisons.

The mundane and routine can be a good thing again. As work should be… good, that is.

On your side,

- Karl Edwards

Fifteen minutes.

Give yourself the gift of fifteen minutes.

Before the demands of the day start pulling your strings like a puppet on caffeine, take fifteen minutes to get some perspective on the week.

What are the main events, milestones or meetings taking place this week? Who do you need to check in with on their work product or progress? What’s the one thing you choose to complete by the end of the day today?

Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes of quiet. Fifteen minutes alone. Fifteen minutes to take a step back and get a panorama view of the week’s landscape before you begin navigating the intricacies of the trail underfoot.

It’s a gift you cannot afford not to give yourself.

Fifteen minutes for perspective.

(Have you seen our Daily Focus Pads? A simple morning reflection tool to make sure you have one thing you know will get done by the end of the day. Click here.)

You want the week to begin well. You get up and prepare with good intentions. “I choose a positive, constructive attitude as I launch this fresh, new Monday morning.”

But reality is not kind this week. Joe called in “sick”… again. Sarah won’t help a co-worker meet an important deadline. An important client wants to renegotiate your fee. Management unexpectedly slashed your budget mid-year.

And what began as a positive, constructive approach to the week is rapidly devolving into an dark and ugly—however understandable—reaction to the disheartening choices of others.

Here’s the deal, though. Attitude is not the same as emotions. We may feel discouraged, frustrated, or angry. Understandable and appropriate in the given examples.

Attitude, though, is a choice. Attitude is a stance. Attitude is the stance I choose to take regardless of what I am feeling.

Like any difficult choice, we need to practice and practice and practice embodying the attitude we choose.

We don’t merely flip a switch in the midst of experiencing a serious setback (more…)