Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Category: Loving Monday

  • Loving Monday: Greeting The Unexpected Intruder

    loving_mondayThe unexpected can sneak up on us like an intruder.

    Even something wonderful can be greeted with a frown simply because it was unexpected. It caught us off guard. We had one thing planned and now the situation has changed.

    How do you react when caught off guard? How do you greet the unexpected?

    When we come to work expecting to work along one set of plans and cannot, we have an adjustment to make. Some of us are better at adjusting than others.

    Today I want to draw our attention to one of our starting assumptions. Is the unexpected an intruder or a friend? Have we been met with a setback or an opportunity?

    Your gut answer to those two questions will help you get deeper insight about why you react to the unexpected the way you do.

    If something bad has happened, then the adjustment process is one of damage control, recovery, and getting back to what you had been doing previously.

    If something good has happened, then the adjustment process is one of triage, learning, and participating in the new creation that is emerging.

    In the one case, the ways of the past and being able to maintain control are the central dynamics.

    In the other case, the possibilities of the future and being able to discern what has value are the central dynamics.

    Reaction, control, preventing damage, and self-protection on the one hand; versus learning, discernment, participation, and new options on the other.

    When the unexpected happens today—and it will—what sort of greeting will you extend? Celebrating a welcome if unpredictable friend or complaining about an unwelcome and troublesome intruder?

    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.

  • Loving Monday: Recovering From a Busy Weekend

    loving_mondayNormally we associate the weekend with rest. This time “off” work is our opportunity to refresh, recharge, rejuvenate, and restore our energies and spirits.

    Some weekends, though, are so busy that—even if most of our activities were great things—rest was not one of them.

    Which brings us to the interesting situation of finding ourselves needing a break on Monday morning instead of ready to dive back into work.

    I suppose we could push on through as if it were any other Monday morning. Or we could broadcast the news of our exhausted state to everyone as a way of lowering their expectations.

    I’m guessing that neither ignoring the reality of our weariness nor expecting others to compensate for us will work very effectively for us.

    What if we chose tasks and chores that don’t take a lot of brain power or inter-personal energy as a means for both working with the reality of your tiredness and ramping back up to full engagement?

    Organize your desk, sort through old email, finish your expense report, catch up on paperwork, or take care of a couple of chores. This way you’re not wasting time trying to focus on efforts for which you haven’t yet recovered your ability to focus. (Ever read the same paragraph repeatedly without any comprehension? –Waste of time!)

    It’s a matter of being able to recognize and assess your frame of mind, energy levels, and responsibilities, and then choosing the activities that are most constructive in light of those assessed realities.

    It’s Monday. We can begin by second-guessing our busy weekends, or we can move forward in light of them.

    I’m exhausted. I think I’ll take care of some filing.

    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.

  • Loving Monday: Wind Down, Wind Up

    loving_mondaySummer comes to its official end with the commencement of the new school year.

    The season of swim lessons, out of town guests, and vacations (even if you didn’t take one) fades as a new cycle of plans, projects and intensity comes into focus.

    This cycle is a good thing. It doesn’t work to be intense all of the time. Energies need to be renewed, refreshed and restored. The relaxed space makes room for new ideas to germinate and hidden stale patterns to become visible.

    Alas, though, it is time to wind down from this season of rest and overlapping vacation schedules.

    Using the calendar to guide our own rhythms of planning, intensity and reflection can be of enormous help. Instead of re-creating the wheel every year, the calendar provides a pre-made structure around which to work. It provides an almost go-with-the-flow component the hard work of strategy, planning and focused effort.

    With school back in session, it is time to wind up. Gather the troops, set priorities, agree on deadlines and standards, and push forward with everything you all have in the way of passion and skill.

    It’s Monday. It’s the Fall season. It’s time to wind down from one season and wind up for the next.

    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.

  • Loving Monday: Which is More Work?

    loving_mondayWhich 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.

  • Loving Monday: Working Gratitude

    loving_mondayThat 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.

  • Loving Monday: Exploring New Territory

    loving_mondayTraveling 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.

  • Loving Monday: The Impracticality of a Toasted Bagel

    loving_mondaySome 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.

  • Loving Monday: Get Flowers TODAY

    loving_mondayThis 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!

  • Loving Monday: Loving Freedom

    loving_mondayMany 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!

  • Loving Monday: Rearranging the Furniture

    loving_mondayErgonomics 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