Are you suffering burnout?
Overcome professional or personal burnout with these tips.
Are you suffering burnout?
The Hallmarks of Success
Do you have these traits of success?
- Not playing the ‘blame game’
- Being consistent
- Being an influencer
- Seeking advice
Mental Shifts to Get Out of a Rut
Practical changes to get out of a rut
Practical tips to mix things up for greater efficiency.
- Changing call-back times
- Moving out of under-performing target markets
- Why you should avoid checking your email first thing in the morning
- Creative commutes to work and their benefits
Smart Tips for Workplace Communication
7 Tips & Tools to Maximize Effective Workplace Communication
- Clear email expectations and standards
- Instant messaging (IM) versus email overload
- Standing meetings
- When to make a phone call instead of sending an email
- Creating a company Wiki
- Off-site lunch meetings
Find Your Voice & Crush It!
The Authentic You is the Best Person to Succeed
Are you holding back? Living in fear of other’s opinions? To unleash our potential to succeed as reverse mortgage professionals and inviduals we must find our own voice. What is your true authentic ‘best self’? Is your business built around the authentic nature of who your are?
The FOMO Trap!
Practical steps to stop FOMO madness
Do you have a case of FOMO? If you’re the parent of a teenager there’s a good chance they have FOMO. The Fear of Missing Out (or FOMO) is rampant in our society. How do we avoid the FOMO trap or help others escape its clutches? Welcome to Friday’s Food for Thought. This episode is brought to you by Open Mortgage, where better is possible. Please click on our sponsors ad below this video.
Fear is a powerful emotion, perhaps the strongest. The fear of missing out can lead to disconnection, poor choices, stress, and even heath problems. FOMO tears us between the extremes of optimism and pessimism leaving us in the purgatory of stress.
Is FOMO influencing your decisions when to buy or sell a stock? How about the habitual need to check your Facebook notifications? Did they like my post? Who replied to my comment? Have I received an email in the last five minutes? Oh my gosh! I had better check. If you’ve sat in a restaurant and seen a table of teenagers all on their phones, then you’ve seen FOMO. How can you gain back some control and not be controlled by FOMO? Here are some thoughts to consider.
1. Take back control. If your phone is beginning to feel like a shock collar its time to take action. Silence…
When Teamwork Doesn’t Work
Who’s on 1st? Avoiding email confusion when assigning tasks
Who’s on first? That was the famous punchline of the comedy duo Abbot & Costello which played on the frustrations and confusion of vague communication. When it comes to teamwork we can often find ourselves confused as to ‘who’s on first’.
You’ve all received this in your inbox, an email which ‘cc’s‘ several people in your organization asking for a particular task to be completed. It could be from a customer, your boss or a coworker. It probably reads something like this…‘hey, I need this done by Friday. Let me know when it’s done. Thanks, everyone’. Everyone? Who is everyone, and who will be ultimately responsible for making sure this assignment is completed?
The temptation in group communication is to absolve yourself of responsibility being convinced that someone else will do it…but will they? Much like a fly ball landing between the center and left field, shared responsibility can lead to shared failure. How can you avoid such confusion in the workplace?
1. Set a new standard. Reach an agreement that any email requesting that a task is completed include (1) a description of the job, (2) the specific person responsible for completing the task, and (3) a clear…
Pulling Weeds
Problem solving is like pulling weeds
Hey! We’ve all have something in common…problems. It should come as no surprise yet what some struggle with is the ability to face our problems leaving them unsolved.
Last weekend as I was pulling weeds out of the rock bed in our front yard a thought hit me. Could this have been prevented? Absolutely it could have been. While I actually enjoy the occasional 6-hour workout doing yard work, I didn’t enjoy pulling out my weeds, my problems. I could have prevented this back-breaking task by simply applying a weed repellent every three months; something I had failed to put on my calendar.
Unresolved problems are more than a distraction, they can negatively impact our health, mental focus, and personal relationships. So here are a few things to keep in mind as we face our own flavor of problems.
1. Be brave. Being honest with yourself requires courage. Have the courage to ask, ‘could this have been avoided in the first place’?
A Four Day Work Week?
Steps for a 4-Day Work Week or 1 Day of Sanity!
Would you like a four day workweek? While this may not be possible for many wouldn’t it be nice to have Friday’s as your day to catch up, strategize, and plan for the following week?
Planning has its benefits, yet the demands of our daily work life often usurp our best laid plans. Perhaps if we better structure not the work that we do, but how we do it we could free up one day in the interest of our continued sanity and productivity.
1. Start with the important stuff…first!
Begin your workday with the most important tasks. Truth be told we are creatures that run on cycles of energy and focus, what some refer to as ultradian rhythms. These are the 90-120 minutes brain cycles when our minds are most energized and efficient. If you’re ‘not in the mood’, it may be because you’re out of rhythm.
2. Break it up…into pieces
Do you have a big gnarly project or task? Reduce the fear factor by breaking it into pieces. You can assign these smaller tasks as time blocks to your calendar naming each event for…
Stop Fighting with Yourself
When giving up is winning
Perhaps you’ve attended the same classes I have. Self improvement, time management, fitness training, or business coaching. While it is exciting to embrace the idea that we can in fact improve, often times we are setting ourselves up for disappointment because we are in fact, fighting with ourselves. Welcome to Friday’s Food for Thought, brought to you by Open Mortgage, where better is possible.
The odyssey of self-discovery and improvement has many rewards. What often is ignored is when we should quit pushing the same rock uphill and instead reevaluate if we are forcing ourselves into someone else’s ideals or or own.
Time is more than a sequence of events or controlling how we interact with our daily obligations. Chaos, abnormally long hours, diminished health, strained relationships, and procrastination are all good indicators that the wheels have begun to fall off the wagon. One of the biggest traps we can fall into is the quest for efficiency versus being strategic. Let me give you an example.
