Goals – Page 12 – mardihumphreys.com

Be Like Betty

Betty White and I are birthday buddies. This January 17 is a more somber celebration as I both fondly and gratefully contemplate her example of a life well lived. To be (basically) a centenarian is an amazing accomplishment, but her longevity isn’t the most impressive thing about Betty White. When People magazine asked her about it recently, Betty attributed her long life to being a cock-eyed optimist. She said, “I got it from my mom, and that never changed. I always find the positive.” That mindset guided Betty to make wise choices regarding her T.E.A.M.; especially when it came to her work. Here are a few examples.

Betty Spent Her TIME Honing Her Craft

After co-hosting a daily variety show, Hollywood on Television, in 1952 she began hosting solo. For the next four years she improvised five and a half hours of live television six days a week by herself. At the same time, she produced and starred in another television show called Life with Elizabeth, for which she won her first Emmy. Over the following 70 years, Betty won seven more Emmys plus a Grammy, two Screen Actors Guild awards, and many other accolades. She wasn’t in the entertainment industry to win awards, but they are evidence of her job performance.

Betty Spent Her ENERGY Seeking New Projects

Her big break into celebrity came when she did a guest spot on the Mary Tyler Moore show. She did the job so well, she was made a permanent cast member. Betty’s role on Hot in Cleveland happened the same way. The Snickers commercial she did for the 2010 Super Bowl led to a guest hosting gig on Saturday Night Live. Betty knew what she could do, identified the need, and provided value where she could. Those soft skills are crucial to every industry.

Betty Spent Her ATTENTION on Leadership

The Golden Girls was groundbreaking television at the time the show began airing. It spotlighted the needs of an often overlooked segment of the American population. The premise of Betty’s final sitcom, Hot in Cleveland, challenged society’s standards and perceptions of women’s beauty.

Betty Spent Her MONEY on Under-resourced Organizations

She was as famous for being a life-long animal lover as she was for being an actress and her work funded her passion. Betty’s fame generated a fan club: Bet’s Pets. The membership dues all went to various animal rescue charities that Betty participated in.

In choosing to spend her T.E.A.M. in these ways, Betty created an enviable legacy. I’m grateful that she not only left us with an abundance of her work roles to enjoy, but also with life roles to model.

Betty White’s life story is much larger than I can tell within my usual 500 words. You don’t have to Google very hard to find articles describing why she is regarded as a pioneer, cultural icon, and national treasure. How has her passing prompted you to examine your purpose for work and life? Please share in the comments.

Fiscal Fitness

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels

I know you’re all in the holiday spirit and everything, but before the year gets away from you, stop for a minute and think about what you need to do with your finances before January 1. Taxes are the obvious consideration, but also think about your savings goals and protecting your credit rating.

Taxes

Slow Down: With the economy trying to recover from the effects of COVID-19, you may find yourself in a lower tax bracket next year. If you are able to defer receiving any year-end bonuses until January, they won’t be taxed this year. If you can afford it, you may also want to delay collecting payment from a few clients until January so that income won’t be taxed in 2021.

Speed Up: It’s not too late to take advantage of tax deductions for this year. Do you itemize your return? If so, do you have any expenses like medical payments, interest payments, or state taxes that you can pay now? Also, charitable deductions are still a great way to lower your taxable income if you follow the rules.

Saving

How did you do on your savings goals this year? Check the numbers on your long-term savings goals like a vacation, car, or house. Are you on track? Can you pay for holiday gifts without using credit cards? At this time of year you may be disappointed at the commercialization of the holidays and want to make them more meaningful by less money spending and more blessing counting. Use this mindset to embrace minimalism. The result is savings on decorations, food, and gifts. Consider giving presents that cost you something other than money. For example, invite a friend over for a mid-week holiday coffee date or a multi-player game of Fortnite. Your time is more valuable than your money. Did you get a holiday bonus? Think about depositing it in your IRA.

Credit

You may be making more purchases with credit cards this holiday season. It’s best practice to check your credit score monthly, so If you haven’t in a while, now is the time. Some credit cards offer this as a service when you have an account with them. If you’re thinking about getting a mortgage or car loan in 2022, you want to make sure your score is at least 700. Also, be mindful to keep your credit use below 30% of your total available credit, otherwise it can negatively impact your credit score. If you have debt on multiple credit cards or outstanding loans, instead of depositing that bonus check (you know, the one I keep harping on) in your IRA, use it to make an extra payment. Paying off debt is almost always the first priority.

The eye of the hurricane between the holidays and the new year allows you a bit of time to think. Use it to brainstorm what you’d like to accomplish next year. Let your imagination run wild. The sky is the limit. Maybe you want to buy a yacht or start your own business. Then, think about what finances you need to support those goals. What baby steps can you take in 2022 to achieve them?

What is your financial New Year’s resolution? Please share in the comments.

Help Me Help You

You don’t get a raise because you need the extra money. You get a raise because you’ve made a positive impact on the bottom line and the company anticipates you’ll contribute in the future. If you executed duties above your job description, brought in revenue, and/or saved the company money, then you deserve a raise.

It’s Work

If you don’t have a “Brag File” yet, start one. Right. Now. Populate a new folder on your desktop with complimentary emails from both clients and coworkers, the link to your recommendations page on LinkedIn, awards, and any other evidence of the great job you did over the past 365 days. With this research, write a report quantifying your value to the company using explicit data to empower your case. For example, “I saved the company $19,800 in training expenses through my network connections and research.” Practice talking about how what you’re currently working on will benefit the company in the near future. Check out websites like salary.com to find out what others with your job title make. All these things pulled together enable you to enter the meeting knowing your worth.

It’s Scary

Your goal is to make you, your manager, and your company successful. You did your due diligence and have every reason to be optimistic, but it’s natural to feel nervous. Set a positive tone when you walk into the room. After greetings and small talk, use your curiosity to dive into your agenda. Ask your manager what their priority is right now. Follow up their answer with what you did this past year to help them get closer to their goal by pulling that report from your Brag File. Thank them for their insight. Tell them you’ll use it to further refine your process to assist them in achieving their priority. Of course, that means you will take on more responsibility and you anticipate that more compensation accompanies that effort. Say that with a poker face. Take the emotion out of the conversation. Report what you did to further the company’s success last year, demonstrate how you intend to keep doing it next year, and put a dollar amount on what the company should invest in your time, energy, and attention. It’s more scary to not get the raise you could’ve received if you’d simply asked for it.

It’s Worth It

Seventy percent of employees who ask for a raise get one. You may be told no even though you performed your job above and beyond its description. COVID-19 decimated our economy and your employer may not have the funds to give you a pay increase right now. Ask if the company is open to other forms of compensation (e.g., flexible schedule). If your requests are rejected, schedule a meeting for six months from now to revisit the possibility. Ask what KPIs your manager would like to see you hit in the interim. Keep your manager updated on your progress either through scheduled 1:1s or an end-of-week emailed report showing that your work is aligned with both your manager’s and the company’s goals.

If the compensation conversation intimidates you, reframe your fear as excitement. You’re anxious to share the good news of how you’ve improved both yourself and the company during the past year. If your enthusiasm is welcomed by your manager, then that’s a good sign you have a future with the company. If it isn’t, well, that tells you something too.

What do you do to build up your confidence to ask for a raise? Please share in the comments.

Sleep On It

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” is the hustler’s motto. There are at least a couple of movies and a couple of songs with that statement as the title. It implies that strong people don’t need sleep. In reality, getting adequate sleep not only makes us stronger, but also smarter, and not getting enough sleep can eventually kill you.

How Much is Enough?

A recent study by the CDC found that 41 million Americans in the workforce are sleep deprived. How many hours an adult needs varies by person; it can be anywhere between six and ten. When you don’t get enough, you accumulate a sleep debt that sooner or later your body will force you to pay. If you feel moody, are making more mistakes than usual, or falling asleep in meetings, then you aren’t getting enough. That lack of sleep can lead to poor decision-making, depression, and/or burnout. If you deny your brain the time it needs to recharge, then it will punish you with poor functioning, like trouble focusing on tasks, misunderstanding communication with your team, and difficulty controlling stress. These indicators can manifest in as few as three consecutive nights of sleeping six hours or less.

Why is it Important?

You need to be physically healthy to do your best work, and getting enough sleep is key to your physical health. Your body repairs its tissues, manufactures hormones to fight infections and viruses, and lowers your blood pressure while you sleep. Also during sleep, your brain constructs and reinforces neural pathways that help you remember things you’ve learned, which strengthens your ability to solve complex challenges at work.

Best Practices

Get on a schedule. Go to bed and wake up at the same times every day. Then, before bedtime:

Three hours: Finish eating, and drinking caffeine and/or alcohol
90 minutes: Finish vigorous exercise
60 minutes: Turn off the TV, cell phone, and laptop. Read a real book, listen to soothing music, or meditate instead
At bedtime: Eliminate light and noise and adjust the room temperature; cooler is more conducive to sleeping

Damage Control

After a sleepless night:

Try to begin your day with exercise, outside if possible. You could go for a run or ride your bike, but a brisk walk through nature while breathing in fresh morning air and listening to your favorite songs followed by gentle stretching will also put you in a good mindset to face the day.
Your body may try to rest at an inopportune time later in the day. If that happens, it’s more productive to take a 15-30 minute break to let your brain rest than to keep plowing through your to-do list.
Caffeine may get you through the morning, but the crash could have you zoning out during your afternoon Zooms. If you can’t grab a 15 minute nap, then take 10 minutes to either meditate or eat a healthy snack and chase it with a glass of water while watching an uplifting video; maybe this one. If you don’t have 10 minutes, then take one or two minutes to either stretch or take a few deep breaths.

Many of us have trouble sleeping since the advent of COVID-19. What are some things you do to get a good night’s sleep? Please share in the comments.

It’s About Time

When did the United States know it was time to bring workers from the fields to the factories? Who decided working eight hours a day for five days in a row was the best schedule for optimum productivity? The 40-hour workweek became a law in the United States in 1940. If we haven’t thought about how long it should be since then, may we please use COVID-19 as the trigger for redefining how long it is now?

Not News

How long both the workweek and the workday should be is not a new conversation. One of my favorite thinkers is organizational psychologist Adam Grant. He has lobbied for the death of the five-day workweek for at least a couple of years. There is plenty of evidence to support his position from respected sources like The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and The Huffington Post.

Mother Knows Best

The catch is, if employees spend less time on the job, isn’t it logical that the job should pay less? Mothers have struggled with this prevalent employer attitude for years. In Mika Brzezinski’s book, Know Your Value: Women, Money, and Getting What You’re Worth, Carol Smith, former publisher of Elle magazine told Mika, “I love hiring women (for) four days a week because they actually will produce at least five days’ worth of work for four days’ worth of pay.” As an employer that’s a benefit to her, but as a woman, it is a detriment. Her story in the book goes on to note that the moms of young children who work for her are willing to do anything to have a four-day workweek including accepting 60% of their salary.

Proof of Concept

Of course, employees do not want to make less money, but why should employers shorten the week without also shortening the paycheck? Here are two examples. This article talks about a four-day-workweek-no-pay-reduction experiment the company Buffer offered its employees. To shorten their workweek, they cut back on meetings and social events, sped up the pace of their day, and improved their focus (e.g., employees reported spending 35% less time surfing the web). The experiment was so successful, it’s still running. Buffer made $21 million in revenue in 2020. Also, American businesses should vet the plan Iceland commissioned from Alda (Association for Sustainable Democracy), an Icelandic non-profit, and Autonomy, a British think tank, to condense the workweek. These two organizations partnered to run two large-scale trials of a four-day workweek from 2015-2019. They published their results in June 2021. In addition to productivity remaining the same or improving in their test-subject companies, the study also concluded that employee welfare markedly increased (e.g., less burnout). Even if employers prioritize revenue over employee well-being, these studies prove a four-day workweek is profitable.

Life always holds an element of uncertainty. Did we really need a pandemic to remind us of what our priorities should be and how far we’ve strayed from them? Let’s rethink the current workweek model and consider what compensation for productivity could look like in 2022.

Would you rather be paid for your time or your productivity? Please share in the comments.

The Talk

It’s time for “the talk.” Not THAT talk; you need to talk to your family about retirement savings-both theirs and yours. Yes, the economy is suffering right now and it’s tempting to push pause on long-term savings, but the future keeps coming and everyone from Baby Boomers to Gen Z should continue to plan for it.

Don’t Count on It

Do not make the mistake of counting on the United States government to fully fund your golden years. Social Security is intended for use as an emergency resource, not your main source of income after you leave the workforce. Plus, by 2034, projections reveal that the Social Security Administration will be paying out more benefits than they are taking in through payroll taxes because there will be more retirees than employees. If Congress steps in then it probably won’t run out. But if you want to live the rest of your life comfortably, then you should fund your own retirement.

It’s Not About the Money

When talking to your family about future finances, you’re not really discussing money. Whether it’s your adult children who want you to carry them on your insurance or your parents who want you to be the executor of their wills, money is just a representative. What you’re really talking about is both expectations and emotions. Whether fear, resentment, kindness or generosity, feelings are attached to financial conversations. These discussions are not one-and-done. For example, when your parents began telling you about the birds and the bees, it wasn’t just one talk, was it? When our daughter was three years old she asked me where babies came from. I told her Cleveland. That satisfied her for two years. As she grew older, her questions grew more specific. It’s the same for the money talk. As everyone in your circle of care ages, the questions you ask them should become more specific. For example, when speaking with:

Gen Z – Do you have an emergency fund with at least $1000 saved? If not, they should think about automating their savings. Here is how to create a plan
Millennial – Are you aggressively paying off debt? Here are some pros and cons
Gen X – Are you taking advantage of catch-up retirement savings? Here is how they work
Baby Boomer – Have you thought about where you want your assets to go after you’re gone? Here is what they need to know if they live in the great state of Ohio

Awkward

How you manage your money is a very personal choice. When it has the potential to impact, either positively or negatively, the people you care about, you must talk to them about it no matter how awkward it feels. Opening up a dialogue before a financial emergency happens allows you to remain calm when the crisis hits. It may even prevent the crisis. The result of uncomfortable money conversations with your loved ones is it becomes more comfortable the more you do it. The result is peace of mind, and you can’t put a price tag on that.

What stops you from talking to your people about their and your future finances? Please share in the comments.

The Tide is High

You kept your business solvent during the pandemic. Now vaccines are available and buildings are reopening. Both you and your workforce are deciding where to go from here. Pivots like switching the product you manufacture (e.g., making hand sanitizer instead of bourbon) or shifting your employees to working from home has not only burned everyone out, but also revealed work-life integration paradigm shifts. You need to both retain your current workforce and attract new employees, but how? This week, let’s focus on keeping the folks you have.

Pivot Again

You regularly adapt your business to market conditions. This shift in the balance of power is a condition more abrupt than most, but it offers you a gift. It forces you to look at your mission, vision, values, policies, and procedures and sift them through the filter of The Platinum Rule. For example, employees hear the siren call of flexibility and autonomy in their jobs. Are your company’s paid time off policies amenable to employees with caregiving duties to young children, aging parents, chronically ill partners, etc.? If not, then it behooves you to reevaluate those policies. If your employees are being washed away by the Talent Tsunami, then you need to take a long, hard look at your company’s culture, protocols, and development paths. If your workforce was happy before the pandemic, then they would not be so tempted to leave now. You will be wise to shift your mindset to focus more on taking care of your employees and repeatedly communicating that commitment. People want to work in an environment where they feel valued. If your company has a vision the workforce can believe in, you coach them to share it, and demonstrate how their jobs are integral to realizing it, then employees get invested in meeting the company’s goals and want to stick around.

Engagement Brings Retention

The inconvenient truth is it’s cheaper to keep an employee than to hire a new one. If you don’t know what your employees need to achieve work-life integration, or to feel appreciated, now is the time to ask and actively listen to their answers. Individual contributors who feel they belong and have purpose are less likely to burn out. How do you know if your employees are burned out? Ask them. Company-wide email surveys are easy to create, send, and compile results. You can ask questions like: How do you think the company handled pivoting during COVID-19? How many days a week do you want to WFH? If the company reimburses you for upskilling, will you agree to work for us for a year? The answers will give you data that will not only help you to assess the risk of employees leaving, but also reveal what you can do to keep the good ones.

“Bye” the Way

Unless employees signed a contract saying they’d do one, they are not obligated to give exit interviews. A smart employee will not grant one if they don’t have anything nice to say. An exit interview is more of a benefit to you than to them. It’s an exiting employee’s gift of feedback to you. If the resigning employee grants one, stick to questions that will help you retain other employees. For example: What could the company have done to make it easier for your team to communicate with each other?

What are you doing to encourage your employees to join you in making your business succeed? Please share in the comments.

Making Waves

The pandemic made us take a hard look at our priorities. What is now most important to you? In terms of your job, if you were able to pivot (e.g., a restaurant moving from fine-dining in person to at home delivery) or to transition to WFH (e.g., software developing), you’re grateful to have found a way to continue making a living. But now that we’ve moved into COVID-19’s phase of vaccines and variants, do you want to keep this up?

What Do You Want?

It’s time to decide what aspects of the working-under-quarantine conditions you want to maintain. Has the way you had to work made you want a different job, maybe even a different career path? If so, you have loads of company. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports 3.6 million Americans quit their jobs in May 2021. But before you start searching for a new situation, get clear on why you want to leave your current one. If you’re running away from this job instead of running to another one, your discontent is likely to follow you. Ask yourself:

Am I burned out?
Did the pandemic reveal a side of my company’s culture that I can’t support?
Were my manager’s expectations unreasonable?
Did I discover a remote position would be best for work-life integration?

During the work day, when you feel frustrated or stressed, write down what you’re working on or what’s happening. Is it a project, person, and/or PTO? The answers will help you define your non-starters when considering your next role.

Defining what you don’t want narrows your choices down to what you do want. Compensation (salary, PTO, insurance, retirement benefits), location, culture, and leadership development are all obvious details you need to consider. But also ask yourself:

What does your perfect job look like?
Where are you doing it?
When are you doing it?
Who are you doing it with?
Why are you doing it?
How are you doing it?

What values do the answers to these questions reveal (e.g., freedom, culture, growth)? Rank them in order of importance. For one work week, notice what you are doing when you lose track of time as well as what you are doing when time seems to drag. Write these down and analyze them. While looking for a new position, search for one that allows you to do more of the work you enjoy.

How Do You Get It?

Once you figure out what you want, make a list of companies whose mission, vision, and values match yours. LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and Business Journals regularly identify great companies to work for. Target people in these companies you can reach out to for informational interviews. Notify your network that you are looking for a new role. Ask them not only for introductions to hiring managers you want to meet, but also ask how you can help connect them to the decision makers they want to meet. It’s tempting to apply for every job that looks like fun, thinking that eventually one will take, but that’s actually a time waster. It’s more effective to invest your time building relationships with your network. Insiders know a position is available before it gets publicly posted. A good rule of thumb is to network with five people for every one job application you submit.

Are you thinking about a new position? What are you looking for in a company? Please share in the comments.

Travel Team

It’s vacation season and if you have a spouse, you want to travel together. But there are things you want to do that they don’t, such as spend five hours at one art museum, spend three hours at a coffee shop, or spend an hour reading a book at a botanical garden. Luckily, you have friends who think these pastimes sound heavenly. In addition to traveling with your partner, take a trip with a friend. These adventures are ripe with lessons you can take back to work.

Getting to Know You

Constant togetherness reveals hidden talents as well as idiosyncrasies. For example, you discover that your friend has an uncanny ability to quickly spot your Uber while they notice that you can easily navigate large airports. On the other hand, maybe you are irritated by your friend’s obsession with the weather forecast and they are annoyed by your insistence to walk everywhere. We learn to be more considerate of each other because our time together is finite. The same is true at work. Projects have lifecycles. Acknowledge an interpersonal conflict when it starts. Be quick to define both your and your teammate’s boundary. Additionally, recognize that taking the time to unravel and resolve miscommunication is time well spent.

Plan B (or C or…)

When traveling, sometimes Plan A won’t work. Issues like flight delays, a car rental company losing your reservation, and a broken air conditioner in your hotel room provide multiple opportunities to not only find out how good a business is at customer service, but also work with your friend to figure out how to overcome the obstacle. Which one of you will: Take the lead in patiently communicating the unacceptable situation to customer service? Motivate the other to remain calm? Influence the service you receive by confirming that everyone is working toward the same goal? After recovering from the setback, you can take the lessons you learned (e.g., active listening, empathizing, aligning expectations) back to work and apply them to your team’s next project. When unpredictable obstacles occur, you can confidently take the lead to solve them because you’ve experienced the emotional intelligence required to get through a frustrating process.

Teamwork

The first time you travel with a friend to a destination that’s new to both of you, logic dictates that you set the parameters of the trip and start negotiating. Who is booking the transportation? Who is booking the hotel? Who is booking reservations at the restaurants, museums, sites, etc. that you want to visit? You divide up the task list according to talent. They are good at determining how much time you need between connecting flights. You can detect if a hotel is as good as its marketing says it is. You must trust each other to complete these tasks. During the trip, you both are gracious when unforeseen challenges happen. You patiently support one another when mistakes in judgement cause setbacks. You encourage each other to stretch outside of your comfort zones. You remain flexible so both of you can reach the individual objectives you have for the getaway. See what I did there? These activities are examples of collaborative teamwork. The same skills and mindset you use traveling with your friend apply to the project you’re tackling with your coworkers.

Do you plan to travel with friends this summer? Where are you going? Please share in the comments.

Never and Always

The timing never seems right for investing in long-term financial goals. There is always an immediate expense: post-pandemic vacations, post-pandemic work clothes, post-pandemic baby supplies. It’s hard to think about the future when today’s competing priorities are so loud, but when you give money to financial instruments, properties, or shares with the expectation of making a profit, not only can you withdraw these profits if you lose your job (be aware of the penalties), you can also save faster for big expenses like a house or college. It pays to get started.

Strategize

Define your targets, timeline, and tolerance. Investing has two extremes: aggressive (high risk and high return) and conservative (stable and lower return). You don’t have to choose one or the other. You can stay in the middle and adjust your strategy as you age, change jobs, or your lifestyle evolves (e.g., you marry or have a child).
Use a fiduciary (an organization legally bound to act in your best interest). Talk to them about their strategy. For example, Do they automate investing using retirement date algorithms or do they create a portfolio according to your specific needs?
Decide. Will you actively invest: research, build your portfolio, purchase investment vehicles? If you choose this option, invest in more than one company. Spread your money over a few market sectors; diversifying reduces the risk of loss. Don’t fluctuate your investments with the rising and falling of the stock market or your emotions. Or will you passively invest: hire a wealth manager to do those things for you? If this is your choice, check their fees. Investing is a service, even for roboadvisors. Be aware of what you’re paying for. Know how your investments are taxed. Watch your statements monthly or quarterly. Ask questions about charges that don’t make sense to you.
401(k) Plan. If your employer offers one, participate; especially if they match the percentage you invest. If you don’t, you’re leaving free money on the table! Your contribution comes out of your check before you receive it, making it relatively painless to save that money for later and it has tax benefits.

Budget

Manage your money in this order:

Pay off high-interest debt, like credit cards
Save $1000 in an interest-bearing account for an emergency fund
Save another $1000 and invest it

That’s the sweet spot for beginning investors. It’s a relatively small sum to risk and $1000 is often the amount at which lower service fees and a decent return on your investment intersect. Here is an article that speaks plainly about different options for investing $1000.

Interest

The US stock market has historically provided a 6%-7% return on investment (that’s with inflation factored in). Initially that doesn’t seem like much, but your goal is to create wealth over time. When you let investments like CDs, treasury securities, or REITS compound for years, the interest they earn snowballs. This is especially useful if you start investing when you’re young because you have longer to ride out market fluctuations. On the other hand, when choosing a loan, look for one that offers simple interest. You usually find it on loans for large amounts like car, home, or student loans. Simple interest calculates payments based on the principal instead of both the principal and interest.

What holds you back from long-term financial investments? Please share in the comments.