Work – Page 21 – mardihumphreys.com

Spread the Love

Sure, Valentine’s Day is a Hallmark holiday, and you can choose to spend it drinking your favorite adult beverage and watching The Notebook. AGAIN. But, consider using the occasion to spread love outside of your circle. We’re programmed to give back to our communities around the holiday season, but people are in need all year round (especially 11 months into the pandemic). We can still spoil those closest to us, but what can we do to spread some love to the rest of the world?

Friends

If you’re purchasing a gift online, consider using Amazon Smile. They donate 0.5% of eligible sales to the charitable organization you choose without adding that charge to your bill. Does your town have locally owned small businesses like: a coffee roaster, chocolatier, florist, locally-themed speciality gift shop, bakery, and/or book store? You can fill gift baskets with goodies purchased from some of these shops and drop them off on your friends’ porches. If you’re pressed for time, you could send them valentine cards with gift cards from locally owned restaurants enclosed, or memberships to a local art museum, science museum, zoo, or historical park. If you have the option to do this online and save a tree in the process, bonus love!

Neighbors

Since giving your time is still complicated right now due to COVID-19 restrictions, it’s difficult to spread the love in your own hometown by serving meals to guests at a homeless shelter, helping students with homework at a public library, or playing checkers with residents at a nursing home. Instead, you can give money to a local charity that feeds people, one that provides online homework help, or one that cares for senior adults. You could order a few dozen donuts from a local donut shop and use a food delivery service to take them to your local fire station. You could donate money to a local natural disaster relief fund. You don’t have to spend money to give back. You can smile and say thank you to the mail carrier, the driver who delivers your food order, the grocery employee who puts your pick up order in your trunk, the barista who hands you your latte at the drive-thru. Unless your mask is transparent, they won’t see your mouth smile, but they will see it in your eyes.

Strangers

Remember exchanging valentines in elementary school? You brought in tiny cards, candy, pencils, etc. to give everyone in your class. Kids in the hospital can’t exchange valentines. Check with your local Children’s Hospital. Candy, pencils, and trinkets are probably prohibited, but would they accept unopened boxes of Valentine’s Day exchange cards? They may have volunteers willing to observe COVID-19 protocol and distribute them. Looking for other ways to give to strangers? Send a care package to a military service member. Donate blood. Register to become an organ donor. Drop off unopened bags of pet food at your local animal shelter. Create a fundraiser on Facebook.

How do you plan to be generous this Valentine’s Day? Please share in the comments.

Resume Refresh

Multiple companies in my networking groups are hiring and there are a plethora of position postings on my social media platforms. Sufferin’ Succotash! This seems to be a hint to update our resumes.

Then and Now

When our grandparents first entered the workforce, they looked through newspaper help-wanted ads, typed up a resume and cover letter, mailed it to the hiring company, and waited by their rotary phones to be called in for an interview. Technology has exponentially streamlined the job hunt. Networking is a major factor, but that is another post for another day.

Individualize

Best practice is to get your resume into the email of an ally who will personally forward it with a recommendation to the hiring manger. If you must use a job search website, (Indeed, Monster, etc.) be prepared to sift through scads of subcategories using keywords to drill down through their specializations and/or certifications. Edit your resume to match the job descriptions of the returned results. It takes a lot of attention, but tailoring your resume to fit each position you apply for is essential.

Short is Sweet

Your resume is an advertisement enticing recruiters to call you for interviews, so leave them wanting more. It shouldn’t be longer than two pages and one is preferable. If you need to cut something, make it the reference section; save those for the interview. Only list your job history for the past 10 years unless the experience you gained is crucial to the job for which you’re applying. If the applicant tracking system (ATS) doesn’t force you to list beginning and ending dates of past employment, omit them. As for hard copies, if you aren’t Elle Woods, stick to black font on white paper. Proofread your resume multiple times before hitting send. Have a friend proofread it. Read it out loud. Print it off and read it. Let it sit for an hour, then go back and read it again.

By the Numbers

Hiring managers want to see you’ve either made your employers money or saved it, so quantify your accomplishments when possible. For example, “My outreach efforts increased my company’s revenue by 3% last year,” or “I initiated the move to an online fax service saving my company about $2000 by not purchasing paper and ink.”

Hello SEO

Even if you have an ally in the company campaigning for your hire, you’ll likely still have to apply for the position on the company’s website. The ATS scans your resume looking for keywords from the job description. Match your skills to the role using the words they use. For example, if the job description says, “Fluent in Spanish,” make sure those exact words are on your resume.

Entry-Level Irony

Many jobs require experience, even for entry level positions. Experience you gained as a volunteer counts. Were you the president of your fraternity? Did you manage a household budget for five people? Have you moved your local animal shelter’s donor information records from spreadsheets to a CRM? You can also showcase your soft skills. List examples of problem-solving, communication, and/or teamwork.

LinkedIn Better

Yes, I just used LinkedIn as a verb. LinkedIn is an interactive resume and interview combined and on steroids. It’s one of the main resources recruiters use to vet candidates, so be sure to put your LinkedIn URL on your resume. Audit your LinkedIn profile. Invest in a good headshot. Follow companies you want to work for and look at the marketing or sales employees’ profiles. Model yours after theirs (e.g., add appropriate keywords from their headlines to yours) so their recruiters can find you. Start a conversation: congratulate them for an award they won, thank them for posting an insightful article, or mention a non-profit you both support.

Have you updated your resume lately? Please share your suggestions in the comments.

Entitled?

We may be at the tipping point for unusual job titles. Wizard of Lightbulb Moments, Problem Wrangler, and Creator of Happiness are a few I’ve seen lately. Full disclosure: my title is Change Agent. Working for a small business, I’m a Jack of All Trades, but that’s too long for a business card (my suggestion of Cat Herder was also rejected). Job titles are tricky. For example, when I was an Administrative Assistant, sometimes I was called Secretary. Oddly, no one ever asked me what cabinet post I held in the United States government. There are three categories of people to consider when choosing a job title: our organization, outsiders, and ourselves.

Organization

Titles can indicate the level of respect the organization assigns the job. For instance, employees at Disney Parks and Disney Stores are Cast Members. But, titles shouldn’t be inflated. For example, is a Janitor really a Sanitation Engineer? The company respects the employee, but finds the actual work of little value. When the work is respected, the title matters less.

Inflated job titles may boost an employee’s ego, but cost an organization credibility with clients. (Can you really make Senior Vice President at 23 years old?) Some companies use job titles to mark career paths (e.g., Associate to Manager to Director to VP), but internal level designations accompanied by clear goals and reporting structure (e.g., Level 1 is entry-level reporting to a department manager) may be better. Eliminating titles can force a company to get very specific about job descriptions and their commensurate compensation.

Some coworkers look at titles when choosing team members for collaboration. This can backfire if they choose to work with someone because she has Manager in her title instead of choosing someone with a lesser title, but who has a reputation for getting things done.

Outsiders

Generic titles (e.g., Sales Manager) don’t accurately reflect the holder’s combination of skills which should be changing at the pace of the technology they use. But, assigning titles to reflect an organization’s culture (e.g., Database Ninja) runs the risk of setting up communication barriers with potential clients. Scrum Master is a real job, but people outside the IT industry may not know what a Scrum Master does and feel too embarrassed to ask.

Our job titles influence future opportunities. They not only state what we do for the organization in a few words, they also reflect our position in the organization. For example, Media Associate is a more junior role than Media Manager. Stakeholders may feel more important working with a manager than with an associate.

Hiring managers also look for these distinctions. Progressive job titles (Associate, Manager, Director) in the same industry signal growth (learning and leadership). Titles may not matter at our current jobs, but if we look for another it will. We should consider including SEO keywords in our job titles so talent recruiters can find us.

Ourselves

Job titles provide social status. They can make us feel good about ourselves even when a fancy title (e.g. Senior Account Manager) is not attached to big money.

A title should both reflect what we do and how much responsibility we have. For example, a VP of Marketing will have more responsibility and experience than a Marketing Assistant but, inflating our job titles is dangerous. If we get hired to do something we say we can do, but really can’t, it not only damages our reputations, but also wastes both the hiring organization’s energy and our own.

How do you craft a job title that accurately and immediately represents what you do? Please share in the comments.

Still Dreaming

On Monday, January 17, 2000, all 50 states began recognizing the third Monday in January as a holiday. Most celebrate it exclusively as Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Media typically highlight one of King’s most famous speeches. We haven’t yet realized his dreams. We still have lots of work to do. My dreams revolve around the American workforce. Here are five of them.

Earnings

I dream of equal pay for equal work. The disparity we hear about most is probably the wage gap between women and men. The latest statistics I found are from 2019 when, on the average, women earned $.80 for every $1.00 earned by men. But, employees of color, employees with disabilities, and LGBTQ(IA+) employees experience even wider wage gaps. The U.S. Department of Labor has been trying to fix this since the 1960s and is still working on it; which leads me to my next dream.

Child Care

I dream of safe, dependable, economical, quality child care for every family. Since the 1950’s, the number of women entering the workforce (including mothers) began to rise steadily, peaking in 2000. The cost of living meant a significant number of families required more than one income to survive. Consequently, parents had to pay someone to watch the kids while they were at work. In 2019, around 10% of a family’s income went to pay for child care. There is plenty of research out there on this topic. Here is an insightful article about why child care is so expensive. Here is an article on why America resists universal child care.

Health Care

I dream of available, affordable, and accessible health care for all workers. I have no answers; only questions and research. Why is this so hard? Why does it cost so much? Other developed countries have figured it out, why can’t we?

Inclusion

I dream of every employee having the opportunity to not only voice their opinions, but also have them heard, acknowledged, and taken seriously. It’s time to make diversity in the workplace a given. American companies should employ genders, religions, ages, races, other-abilities, etc., at least as varied as our clients. Our companies’ workforces ought to reflect the people we serve. How can we produce relevant user experiences if we limit our knowledge to how someone like us uses our product? We need to take the next step and embrace inclusion. This goes beyond diversity. If our workplace is diverse, but only one or two group’s opinions matter, the marginalized groups will take their talents to our competition.

Work Week

I dream of workers being compensated for results instead of time. With so many of us homing from work, er, I mean, working from home; haven’t we proven the forty-hour-work week is as dead as the Wicked Witch of the East? The eight-hour workday was invented by Henry Ford in the early 1900’s to recruit talent who were used to working 12-hour days. With the availability of technology, project-based solutions, and team-based problem solving, the current model is no longer best practice. The organizations who develop compensation criteria for productivity based on results will likely attract the best workforce talent.

How would you revamp the current conditions for America’s workforce? Please share your suggestions in the comments.

Keep Your Eye on the Money

We’re celebrating our daughter’s 24th birthday. The occasion makes me ponder both her life’s journey so far and how adulting is going. Things sure have changed since I got my first significant job, and it made me wonder: You have your first full-time job and regular paychecks are rolling in. What’s the best use of that money?

Budget

Pick a plan and stick to it. Pay attention to money both coming in and going out. Make more than you spend and plan your savings. Most banks allow you to have multiple accounts and your employer likely can direct deposit your paycheck into these accounts for you. In addition to your debit account, set up an account as an emergency fund. Unexpected expenses like job loss can bankrupt you if you live paycheck to paycheck. Setting aside three to six months worth of living expenses is a good rule of thumb. Also, direct a percentage of your income into a long-term savings account for future big-ticket expenditures (e.g., car, house, MBA). Revisit your budget at least once a year. Are you saving enough for emergencies, a long vacation, professional development? Remember to set a little money aside to reward yourself for reaching your savings goals.

Loans

Do you have student loans? Typically, you have six months after graduating from college before you’re required to start payments, but interest accumulates during that grace period. Starting repayment right away saves six months worth of interest charges. Are the loans federal or private? For federal, can you consolidate them? For private, can you refinance them at a lower interest rate?

Credit

Build your credit history by paying your bills on time and don’t miss or skip monthly payments. Try not to carry a balance on your credit cards, but if you do, pay more than the minimum listed on the statement. Set up alerts for your bank to notify you if weird amounts (e.g., less than a dollar) are charged to your account, or if the charge originates far from your location (btw, alert your bank when you travel more than 200 miles from home). Check your credit score annually.

Insurance

You’re young and healthy, but what if your body gets busted up in a car accident? Here are some things to think about.

Retirement

Yes. It’s a long way off, but if you begin saving now, you don’t have to put aside very much and it has years to grow. Take advantage of your company’s 401(k) plan especially if they offer matching contributions (e.g., if you invest 3% of your annual salary in the company’s 401(k), they contribute another 3% to your account). Also, open an IRA. If you can arrange direct deposits for these measures, you won’t even miss the money you’re saving.

Give

Whether you support your local PBS station with a financial contribution, donate your gently used clothes to Goodwill, or volunteer your time at the Humane Society, set aside time or money (or both) to give back to your community. You now have the power and responsibility to make a difference. When you help others, you get more than you give.

How did you adjust to the money you made from your first full-time job? Please share in the comments section.

How Do You Spell Relief? E-m-p-a-t-h-y

The longer COVID drags on, the more fragile we feel. If everyone feels this way, it’s affecting the companies we serve. We need clients to buy our products and services, but desperation has a way of creeping into our subconscious and leaking out in our presentations. It’s neither attractive nor productive. We have to be willing to brainstorm our clients’ current problems and help them weigh the value of possible solutions – even if we are not the relief for their immediate pain point. Should we pay more attention to the role empathy can play in business? If so, how do we communicate it?

Care

It’s nice to do business with nice people. Given current events, even nice business people are stressed and stress can shorten anyone’s fuse. We have no idea what is going on with our clients outside of our relationships with them, and they may not be comfortable sharing. We should not take any atypical negative attitude personally. We should assume in showing up, our clients are coping as best they can. This is an opportunity for us to provide them with a respite. Remind them blue-sky thinking with us is a valuable idea-generation tool. Validate their efforts by telling them they’re doing a good job.

Pay Attention

When we meet with a client, we need to read the room (or the Zoom). Is she fidgety, grumpy, quiet? Does she look tired, worried, distracted? What about her body language? Is she slouching? Avoiding eye contact? The words she uses are also a clue. We should listen for emotionally charged words and the tone of voice she uses to say them. To find the emotions underneath the exterior, we can start the conversation with the obvious, “How are you doing? How is the family? How is business going?” We are looking for a point of connection. This is trickier than it sounds. For example, empathy is not the client laying out a scenario and me replying, “I know exactly how you feel because that happened to me too once.” While I may have experienced the same situation, my interpretation of it inevitably differs from my client’s. I discredit myself and discount my client if I say I know exactly how she feels. My goal is to understand her experience and feel her unique position with her in the moment. It’s more genuine to say, “Tell me more,” than “ I know how you feel because I…” We’re working to create a safe and judgement-free zone.

Listen

It’s extremely counterintuitive, but don’t problem solve at this point. It’s way too early in the process. Our clients want to feel heard and understood. They’re in pain and need relief. We have to demonstrate our desire to uncover why the pain exists in the first place. How would we feel if we were the ones experiencing this pain?

Not every meeting has to end with submitting a proposal. People can tell when we’re in relationship with them just to see how much we can gain from it. With a mindset of our success is tied to the success of our clients, we develop a sustainable business model based on mutual respect and trust and can build relationships that last for years.

How do you empathize with your clients without veering into problem solving? Please share your story in the comments section.

Another Christmas Story

Once upon a time, December was the busiest month of the year.

Holiday parties – my husband’s work, my work, our daughter’s school
Gifts – making a list (and checking it twice), buying, wrapping, personally delivering or shipping
Christmas cards – buying, writing the end-of-year-family newsletter, addressing, buying postage, mailing
Cooking – planning the menus, making a grocery list (also checking it twice) purchasing the ingredients, cooking, serving
Decorating – pulling decorations out of storage, repairing the damaged, purchasing new
Miscellaneous traditions – driving around to see Christmas lights, baking and delivering cookies for first responders, attending Christmas Eve service

My fingers are tired from typing this. At the time it was fun. We love putting on ugly Christmas sweaters, gathering with friends and family and coworkers and celebrating the season, right? Or do we just love the idea of it? We downplay the stress of its reality. Our brains exhausted from holiday office party small talk. Our savings account spent on gifts for neighbors we barely know. Our cupboards bare from constantly replenishing the buffet at our extended family’s feast. Our vision of the perfect holiday is rarely realized since we can’t control the players, and this holiday season, there isn’t much of anything we can control.

During our first holiday season in Georgia, my husband was a worship leader, our daughter was in elementary school, and I was a teacher’s aide. By the morning of Christmas Eve, all three of us were exhausted from, well, see the list above. Working multiple Christmas Eve services, my husband was unavailable from early morning until late evening. Our daughter and I attended the first service. We grabbed tins of cookies the congregation baked for first responders on our way out. In the car, we ordered pizza before leaving the parking lot. By the time we dropped off the cookies at the firehouse located between the church and the restaurant, our pizza was waiting for us at the drive-thru. We got home and put on our jammies (it was only about 1:00PM, btw). I found White Christmas on TV. We ate pizza. We sang “Happy Birthday” to Jesus, blew out the candles on His cake, and ate slices for Him. We napped. When my husband got home, we repeated the process. We watched Christmas movies, stuffed our faces, and napped for the next 24 hours. Christmas Day ended with a drive through a local coffee shop for lattes and hot chocolate and meandering through neighboring subdivisions to look at their Christmas lights on the way back home. We did not answer the phone or check social media the entire time. It was the most relaxed the three of us had been since Thanksgiving. When the next year rolled around our daughter asked if we could do it again. I dubbed it “cocooning” and it became a tradition for the rest of our Georgia residency.

Several of our holiday activities aged out. I no longer send a year-end family newsletter. I refer everyone to social media. Email makes sending season’s greetings both quick and inexpensive. Because of COVID-19, more traditions are canceled this year and if I’m honest, I’m sorry, not sorry. We have plenty of options to cocoon. We can:

have food delivered either from our grocery to make our favorite treats, or from a local restaurant. If we order through a food delivery service, we keep a local driver employed
stream most any Christmas movie ever made
have decorations and jammies delivered from a local department store
stream holiday music playlists from our chosen service
send a cookie gift basket to our nearest firehouse through a local bakery
watch our church’s Christmas Eve service on their website
make our own lattes and hot chocolate and tour neighborhood Christmas light displays from our couch thanks to YouTube (For my Dayton, Ohio friends, you can see the old Rike’s holiday windows virtually)

This global crisis has given us a holiday gift: a reason to celebrate small. Do you usually:

travel 312 miles to stay with the in-laws? Can’t this year; COVID
spend hundreds of dollars on gifts? Can’t this year; COVID
attend your partner’s office holiday party? Can’t this year; COVID.

The pandemic has taken people we love, employment we need, and freedoms we cherish away from us. But, it has given us a reason to stop, be grateful for what we still have, and act on it. Let’s celebrate through our words and (maybe virtual) presence the people we’ve leaned on, both personally and professionally, to get through 2020. Isn’t that the essence of the holidays? Making sure people know how much we appreciate them?

How are you adjusting your holiday celebrations this year? Please share in the comments.

It’s Complicated

B2B holiday gift giving was tricky without the constraints of COVID-19. Now, it’s practically a minefield. Does your company have the budget to give corporate gifts nine months into a pandemic? If teams are mostly working from home, will your gift end up at an empty office? Will your clients accept a gift when they can’t possibly know how many unaware-coronavirus-carriers have touched it? When choosing gifts for clients this year, here are five things to consider.

Surprise And Please

Don’t buy people stuff they don’t want just to buy them something.They’re your clients, part of your job is finding out what they like. What have they joked about in meetings? What does their website say about them? Has your sales staff left clues in your CRM? What is on their LinkedIn profiles interests lists? Strive to give gifts that both surprise and please. For example, you could send a gift-wrapped case of quality toilet paper. They won’t be expecting it (surprise) and it gives you the opportunity to make them laugh (please). Hopefully 2020 will be the only holiday season where toilet paper is considered a gift.

Set Reasonable Expectations

Even if your business is growing during COVID-19, it’s counterproductive to flaunt that happy circumstance with an expensive corporate gift. If you give your clients an over-the-top gift this year, what will they expect next year? You are not trying to buy their loyalty. An extravagant gift leaves the impression you’re blissfully ignorant of the current economic climate. The easiest thing for you to do is to give all your clients the same gifts, but they don’t all pay you the same amount, right? (Helpful hint: if they paid you $1000 this year, a $90 gift is appropriate.) Your goal is twofold. One: demonstrate appreciation. Two: emphasize your relationships with these clients are important to you. The same goes for not spending enough money on client gifts. A coffee mug with your logo on it may daily remind them of you, but not in a good way. This is the year to scrutinize your list and decide which clients will receive a gift and which clients will receive a season’s greetings thank-you note.

Think Small

We’re all in this pandemic together. Buying gifts from local small businesses is a win-win-win. You acknowledge the importance of small businesses to the community in which you and your clients work. You remind your clients what a great community you both live and work in. You and your clients help sustain another business in your community. Most retail small businesses offer gift cards, home-town themed gifts, and some even offer contactless delivery.

Donate To Their Favorite Charity

Give in accordance with both your company’s and your clients’ company values. Your clients are people. They will remember who supported the community during these hard times. This gesture declares you appreciate the relationship your businesses have so much that you want to support the charitable organizations they care about; especially during the pandemic.

Wait For It

Your clients may be receiving lots of holiday gifts right now and yours could get lost in the pile. Think about waiting until January and giving a New Year’s present. This would set you apart, and, thanks to the pandemic, you have a great angle: “Good Riddance 2020!” or “Wishing You a New Year of Both Hope and Growth!”

What is your company gifting your clients this holiday season? Please share your ideas in the comments.

Can You Feel the Heat?

This COVID Christmas feels off just enough to make us lose our balance. For example, our daughter called me during her commute home the other night. She was stressed. She’d spent eight mask-wearing-social-distancing hours at her office and was rushing home in Chicago traffic to set up the work station in her apartment. She was scheduled to guest on a college’s webcast to promote her company to their student listeners. As I tried to extinguish the fire of her burnout over the phone from 316 miles away and five minutes before Jeopardy!, she accused me of speaking in lyrics from Hamilton, an American Musical. Can you blame me? It has several relatable scenes of characters striving for work-life balance; “Non-Stop” being the most obvious.

The focus of the song “Non-Stop” is Alexander Hamilton writing The Federalist Papers, but he’s got a lot going on in addition. He’s practicing law. He’s a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. He’s distracted by Angelica Schuyler’s move to London and impending marriage. His wife, Eliza, pressures him to accompany her and their children on a summer vacation to her dad’s place, and George Washington enlists him to lead the Treasury Department. Alexander was both working from home and homing from work. Sound familiar?

Maybe you don’t practice law, but you do own a business
You aren’t a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, but maybe you are a board chair
Maybe you aren’t distracted by a friend moving across the ocean, but you are preoccupied by your child’s intent to move into his college’s student housing
Maybe you aren’t being pressured by your wife to accompany her and your children to the in-law’s place for a holiday, but, wait; maybe you are
Maybe you haven’t been approached to lead the Treasury Department, but you are concerned about leading your sales department through the rest of Q4

Add the holiday season to any one of the above scenarios and you’re on the road to burnout. So what can you do? Tap the brakes.

Ways to Combat Holiday Burnout

Take a day (or even just half a day) of vacation and get your hair done; particularly if you get a paid holiday off this month. The extra time spent on your appearance will make you feel better
Phone a friend. We’re all feeling a little mental right now. Find out how he is coping. Stay connected to people; especially the ones you care about and who care about you
Find your release. Take a walk outside. Listen to a true-crime podcast. Take a power nap. Snuggle your pet. Browse memes. Whatever it is, take fifteen minutes to decompress
Change your scenery. If you’re working from home, don’t conference call in the same room every time
Do something holiday themed. Wrap a Hanukkah gift. Bake Christmas cookies. Plan the Karamu menu. Switch to egg nog instead of coffee

I can’t believe I just suggested a drink other than coffee.

What are you doing to battle holiday burnout? Please share your tips and tricks in the comments section.

You Can Do Hard Things

Merriam-Webster defines resilience as a noun meaning “1: the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by cohesive stress and 2: an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.” Thanks to the pandemic, I can apply both of these definitions to my life. 1: My strained body needs to recover its shape after the deformation caused by COVID-19’s cohesive stress. 2. I strive to adjust to pandemic-induced change, but the constant pivoting makes me nauseous.

TMI

For this discussion, let’s stick with the second definition. We talked about a form of resilience in this earlier post. Other ways to think of resilience are Viktor Frankl’s theory of Tragic Optimism, Friedrich Nietzsche’s adage what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and even the Serenity Prayer. (I like Erma Bombeck’s version at the bottom of page 11.)

IRL

It’s physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting to think about our ingrained routines and adjust them for COVID-19. For example: Let’s say you’re a mom with a husband and two kids, one school age and one younger. You work in an office and your husband is a trucker. Every morning pre-pandemic, you:

Kissed your husband goodbye
Dropped your younger child at daycare
Dropped your older child at school
Hit your favorite coffee shop
Went to the office

Now, your husband is constantly on the road, your children are home, and your favorite coffee shop is closed. You’re working from home, but need faster internet to accommodate both your teleconferences and your older child’s online school. Overwhelmed? Resilience is taking baby steps toward solutions.

Buy some quality coffee and make yourself a pot
Call your internet provider and upgrade your speed
Tell your husband you’ll be thinking about him while he’s on his route today
Color with your youngest
Listen to your oldest’s struggle with an assignment
Email your manager. How is he doing? What is the one thing he’d like you to accomplish today?

Whew, you did it! You made it through the day! Take a deep breath and relax.

FTW

COVID-19 fatigue is real. You can get through any trial when you know it’s going to end; like a pregnant woman in labor. With no end in sight, you have to adjust your goals. In his book, Survival Psychology, John Leach describes transitioning from short term survival behavior to long term survival behavior. It seems very similar to the grieving process (e.g., shock, denial, anger, acceptance). One key is self-discipline, but be careful of thinking in absolutes like, “I’ve blown my diet by eating one cookie, so I may as well eat the whole bag.” One lapse does not ruin anything. Try again. Another key is your value system. Keep reminding yourself who you are and what you do. For example, say out loud to yourself:

I’m (your name)
I’m a (what you do) for my clients (or team)
The most important task for me to accomplish today is (your number one priority)
The next step to getting it done is (you get the idea).

Silly? Maybe, but it helps you to both focus and prioritize. Filter your priority list through the company’s current mission statement, which may have shifted because of COVID-19. (E.g., your company went from producing rum to hand sanitizer.) The company’s purpose should drive your daily tasks.

How is your company helping you be resilient? Please share in the comments section.