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Boring Work? Or Your Missed Opportunity?

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Doing the Impossible Wasn’t as Valuable as Doing One Thing

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I worked my way into publishing through the back door. First I freelanced for magazines. Then I worked for a developer who built projects for corporations. Then finally one of the publishers hired me. My first title as a really publishing company employee was Executive Editor. I was delighted and excited to be taking on this new huge responsibility.

This happened long before personal branding. Tom Peters had not yet coined the phrase or the idea of Brand You. But if that had been vogue while this was happening, my personal brand for that stage of my career was clear. I even had named my self definition as …

I wanted to be the one person known through the industry who consistently did the impossible.

I liked the charge of solving high-risk problems. I liked the adrenalin rush of winning in a high stakes game when everything seemed unlikely. That’s what challenged my intelligence and my creativity to higher level problem solving.

When I got to my new job, my desk was too empty. My job description and job role said I had to stay in the realm of possibility. The situation was so not me. Impossible situations weren’t happening, because I had more time than I needed for everything. And other people’s impossible situations were hands off to me.

It was boring.

When the situation gets boring, I do drastic things. I started thinking about what it is what we were doing. and a question struck me …

What if I used all of the time I had to do something of a drastically, emphatically, elegantly higher quality?

What if I changed my self-definition to

I want to be the one person known through the industry who consistently delivers the highest quality on schedule on budget.

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Doing the impossible consistently didn’t seem as noble or valuable as doing the best quality work in the industry. That simple change in perspective pushed me back into learning.

Suddenly my desk didn’t seem so boring or so empty.

I became a better publisher, manager, product maker and even a better person because I learned the value of a new way of thinking. Any work can offer an opportunity.

Next time you think what’s in front of you is boring, look for the opportunity you could be missing. It could be a doorway to a new way of thinking.

How might a new view of what you’re doing change what you’re learning to get you where you want to go faster?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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How Would Changing Your View Change What’s Happening in Your Life Now?

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Yesterday, I had a change of plans. A simple flight from NYC to Chicago turned into two cancellations and a few hours of waiting that weren’t on the program for how I’d had my day laid out.

I had no choice about the horrible weather that was changing airline schedules making no certainty of arrival. Saying “Rain, rain go away,” has never worked for me. All I could do was repaint my picture of how the day might go.

More than anything I try to change how I’m seeing the world …

  • Be a big fan of seeing unplanned interruptions as adventures. Adventure mode helps me gather good energy. My quest is usually to get to the end of the adventure with my good humor still going.
  • Like watching how other folks respond. Watching other folks I can see how they make their situations worse. That woman on the phone complaining about the weather and the delays isn’t having nearly as much fun as the one who is playing with her child in the airport. The conversation I had with the off-duty pilot would never have happened if I stayed inside a world of my own.
  • Get into discovering new opportunities. A walk through a bookstore gave me ideas for my blog. A dinner in the sports bar gave a celebration of an overtime game in the world cup with an excited, engaged crowd.
  • Watch for other possibilities and fuel them with a smile. In the shuffle of several boarding passes my baggage claim check left me and my bag wasn’t on the carousel when I arrived home. I gave a second’s thought to the contents of the bag; then went on to the possibility that my “adventure-inclined” luggage might have taken a route of it’s own. Sure enough it was safely waiting for me in another part of the airport.

Now I’m not saying that a wider world view or adventure mode will win anyone a ton of money or change the weather to a sunny day. But I’m saying that it will make what comes a lot easier to work through.

Living in the opportunities is always more fun than being stuck in a problem.

It’s all in how you view the world. When you have room to move, breathe, and smile, people respond.

How would changing your view change what’s happening in your life now?

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How Do You Exercise the Perspective You Need?

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The theme of SOBCon09 is the ROI of Relationships. To underscore the importance of relationships in business and to have a chance to make and celebrate a few while we’re doing that, I’ve opened up this series by successful and outstanding bloggers like you.

Exercise the Perspective You Need by Karen Sampson

These days it seems like everyone is worried about their money, the economy, or any number of things. What’s wrong is always available for you to focus on and a little perspective may be all you need to stop turning your worries into monsters and start breaking them down into bits you can tackle.

What Perspective Really Means

In order to get real perspective wherever you seek it, the answer is always the same: take a step back. There’s no way to inspect the box you may have found yourself in if you are sitting in a corner inside it. Perspective means looking at your problem in a different way, but it doesn’t take 20 years to have hindsight. It’s funny, but we all need to be reminded of this from time to time. So much focus can lend itself to entrapment, even a few minutes away from whatever is troubling you can shed light on ways to deal with it.

Take a Deep Breath

It sounds cliché’ sure, but researchers have established that your breathing patterns affect your body chemistry. Ever notice how you are breathing when you are worked up about something or something is frustrating you? Chances are you’re breathing shallow ineffective breaths. This not only charges your body with tension but changes your state of mind. Your mind goes on alert and only sees answers in its immediate path. Slow down, take a breath and get away from the problem. While it may not be possible or practical to forget the problem for too long, even a tiny break will help you make the most of future time spent on the project.

Do You Really Need an Excuse to Exercise?

Sometimes perspective can mean talking to other people who have faced the same problem, but in other cases those alternatives simply aren’t available. Take a walk. This simple and relaxing alternative always lets your mind reset itself so that you can come at your problem from a different angle. Do you really need an excuse to exercise? Think of this one as a double duty alternative: you’re increasing your fitness while decreasing your stress load. Both important if problem solving is going to happen on the long term.

Setting Goals and Translating Them

Breaking your problem into a bunch of smaller chunks can be a great way to pick away at it. Is there a portion of your question that you can answer? Then let that tiny tidbit be your guide and break up the rest of what you don’t know. It may be that as a whole the problem seems insurmountable. Think of things in the past that you have already conquered that you felt this way about. Your psychology will play a huge role in how effectively you can deal with any given situation, and if you have a relaxed confident approach you’ll find anything is within your grasp.

The view will be blue as far as your mind’s eye can see.

How do you exercise the perspective you need?

Karen Sampson writes about the online degrees. She welcomes your feedback at Karen.Sampson1120 at gmail.com

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Time to Change Your View?

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I've been thinking . . .

about seeing and looking.

Some plants only grow in sunlight. They’re often the ones we see first. They offer vibrant yellows and reds that are meant to catch attention. Butterflies, bees, hummingbirds are drawn to their flowers. It’s not hard to see them.

Some plants only grow in the shade. They’re not less beautiful. They’re in a different light. We have to get closer, change our view, to see them. It not hard to miss them.

This morning I uploaded some photos I took on Monday. A nondescript picture under a tree caught my attention. I pulled it up for a closer look — I found something unexpected. It changed how I thought about that plant and how I valued the photo.

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Don’t look at the flower. Look at the leaf.

When we change our view, it changes what we see.

It works with more than flowers and leaves.

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Image: liz strauss

Change the World: Get Some Perspective

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Selective Memory

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As we get to be adults, we have conversations about growing up. Often those conversations center around our parents and what they did wrong. . . . I often recall a college friend saying, “When does it stop being our parents fault?”

I don’t know whether my childhood was happy, I only remember specific memories — even those seem to be a story told from my own point of view . . . as I found out about this one.

I told my older, older brother about my son’s attitude as teenager. I said, “I never had the nerve to talk to my mother that way.”

My older, older bother laughed. He said, “Ah, your selective memory! When your niece was your son’s age, I heard her talk back to her mother . . . how often I thought ‘Oh that’s familiar.’ It was a replay of my little sister talking to my mother. Why do you think I say my daughter is so like her aunt?”

Now I look back and think,”Yeah, I was a brat just like every other 17-year-old kid. It’s the nature of 17-year-olds. Young lions do it to their parents too. It’s part of growing up and leaving home.”

Part of becoming who we are is getting events into perspective. I’ve always been a little slow at catching on, but when I did that day, I saw my son and myself in a new way.

The rest of that year was lighter for one 17-year-old and his mother.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss