Showing posts with label done. Show all posts
Showing posts with label done. Show all posts
By Nan Nan Liu-Maffetone | Strong Female Leaders | Reading Time: Five Minutes
Work can be stressful, especially for a knowledge worker like you. Among all of the things that you cannot control, including absurd deadlines, demanding team members, and gruelig workload, there is one thing that you can control, and it is becoming mentally tough. In today's article, you will gain an understanding of what it takes to be mentally tough at work.


Work can be stressful.
Especially for today's knowledge workers, who are continuously connected, often distracted, and constantly under pressure. Taking work home is the norm; yet still, you can barely keep up. There are many factors that are out of your control; however, there is one thing that you can control, and that is becoming mentally tough.
Lucky for you, mental toughness can be cultivated and built over time. It takes a while to fully grasp, so let's get started right away. Below are a few ways, including daily rituals and habits, on how to become mentally tough at work:
1. Concentrate on making improvements.
When projects go awry, emotions tend to boil. While most of your team members are feeling anxious, angry or confused, you have an opportunity to step up as a leader by helping everyone move forward. Instead of looking at everything that went wrong, how awful the consequences will be, or how upset you feel, focus on how to improve the situation. This may be difficult to do during high stakes situations, but if you have the mental toughness to focus on the positive, you can certainly push through the agony.
To prepare yourself to gracefully push through any ardous situation, each morning, make the choice to keep cool all day. Committing yourself to taking on a cool, collected and take-charge persona, first thing in the morning, sets the tone for the rest of the day. If it helps, stand in front of a mirror and look yourself in the eye. Then, say the words, "You are a leader. You will focus on making improvements. You are mentally tough." This ritual may sound strange, but it works, because saying those words crystalizes your commitment.
2. Find meaning during adversities.
The ability to find meaning during difficult times and emerge a stronger person says a lot about your character. In fact, great female leaders like Oprah Winfrey and Eleanor Roosevelt emerged during the most trying of experiences. Instead of giving up, they stood up to adversities by creating a narrative around the challenges, looking at the situation from an educational angle, and viewing obstacles as problems to solve.
Again, it is all about choice. Great leaders make the choice, the commitment, to interpret adverse experiences as opportunities. If you do the same, you will find that there is nothing you cannot conquer. So the next time you are faced with adversity, ask yourself, "how can I learn from this?"
3. Learn to be contextually intelligent.
Mental toughness is often known as the "survival of the fittest," which depends on your ability to adapt to difficult situations, by applying creativity to transcend adversity.
If you want to adapt well and do it quickly, you must learn to be contextually intelligent. Contextual intelligence is defined as "the ability to understand the limits of your knowledge and to adapt that knowledge to an environment different from the one in which it was developed." It requires exposing yourself to different environments and being open to new ideas.
An easy way to learn to be contetxtually intelligent is to ask questions, and with the intention to learn. Truly focus on the person's answer, and see things from his or her point of view. A little empathy and undersanding goes a long way. If you are open to new ideas, opinions and solutions, you not only develop contextual intelligence, you become a voice of reason.
4. Seek Feedback.
Feedback leads to concrete improvements. As you move further in your career and gain more influence, you will be exposed to more critiques. Why not start a habit of seeking for feedback early, so you can train yourself to accept criticism graciously.
Actively seeking feedback provides opportunities to learn and make improvements. So be proactive about it and truly listen to the underlying issues that frame the feedback. By the way, nonverbal cues such as body language and micro-expressions also count as feedback.
The more accepting you are to others' opinions, the tougher you become.
5. Shoot for small wins.
Mentally tough people understand the power of small wins. While they make ambitious goals, they achieve these goals by making marginal, systematic and incremental improvements. Shooting for small wins relieves the pressure of having to achieve overwhelming goals, and allows you to focus on specific and manageable advancements.
Each small improvement may feel insignificant; collectively, however, small improvements create powerful progress. Before you know it, you have already accomplished that big, overwhelming goal.
Parting Thoughts
To be mentally tough in the workplace, you need to both commit to and practice for it. When you feel frustrated, pressured and anxious, take a moment and revisit the points above. Focus on the positives and try to turn challenges into opportunities. Your ability to thrive from adversities can be your super power, with which you can use to strengthen yourself and everyone around you.

1) Build resilience with HBR's 10 Must Reads on Mental Toughness


2) Strengthen your thinking with Unbeatable Mind: Forge Resiliency and Mental Toughness to Succeed at an Elite Level


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By Nan Nan Liu-Maffetone | Strong Female Leaders | Reading Time: Five Minutes

Wouldn't it be nice if you can create more time at work? It feels difficult, but it can be done, if you are willing to put in the time to practice. Keep working at it. The benefits are rewarding.


Feeling swamped at work?
You will always feel like you have more work load than your capacity allows. So how can you accomplish so much work with so little time? Better time management helps. If you can "create" more time each day, you not only get more tasks done and get ahead in the project timeline, you also gain a sense of accomplishment and calm. In turn, your stress level will also calm down. Want to learn how? The following time saving tactics help.
1. Time block each day.
Time blocking boosts productivity by blocking off time slots so you can focus on one main activity. Doing so allows you to put all of your mental capacity on one thing, setting you up to succeed in that one thing. It also lets you avoid time hoggers such as meetings, phone calls, and emails. The most helpful time blocking method is the "engineer vs. manager:" where in the mornings, when you are the most productive, called "engineer" time, finish all the productivity-oriented tasks such as strategic planning, writing, or coding. In the afternoons, when you are less alert, finish all the managerial tasks such as responding to emails, holding meetings, and attending team events.

There’s nothing more frustrating than being interupted by phone calls and meetings, and not making enough progress. Time blocking each day protects your most valuable time first, so you are guaranteed to make progress.
2. Wait on it.
Immediately agreeing to every commitment and answering every request is your natural reaction. As a high-achieving professional, you want to feel valuable, help others, and do your best. However, you also risk being stretched too thin. To avoid this fast-track to burnout, when your attention is being requested, wait to respond if you can. For some requests, you can even wait a few days. Sure, priorities require immediate attention. Most likely, though, 80% of the requests that you receive are less urgent, vaguely stated, or even irrelevant to you.

If you need help determining the priority of each request, ask the following questions:
  • Will it contribute to advancing your career?
  • Will you gain a new skill from it?
  • Will doing it impede important work?
  • If you cannot justify why you should answer the request at all, just politely say no.
    3. Reschedule if you can.
    When priorities and deadlines compete, you can always re-prioritize and reschedule. Instead of forcing through mounts of tasks and meetings, lean out your day by re-scheduling less important tasks, meetings or projects out for several days.

    Giving yourself room to breath helps you focus better on the matter at hand. When you have the capacity to dedicate more energy to the most important matter at the moment, you are less likely to make mistakes.
    Parting Thoughts
    Creating time is no small feat. And it certainly requires practice. It helps to perform a review at the end of each work day, and week, to find areas for improvement. How you structure your day impacts success and productivity. So make it a habit, and keep working on it. The benefits will be rewarding.

    1) Dive deep into better time management with Strategies and Tips for Time Management


    2) Plan each day like a pro with the Blue Sky Day Designer Vertical Daily and Monthly Planner


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    [ Disclaimer: this article includes affiliate links.]