I’ve worked in both a cramped cubicle and a spacious corner office with a view. There’s no doubt that my view of the treetops (3rd floor) and blue skies while sunshine poured in made me happier and my work easier. Whoever dreamed that workers would choose to return to the office to go back into cubicles was delusional. Windows make a big difference, and WFH holdouts are reluctant to trade their cozy, well-lit home office for a corporate cave. An article featured  on theconversation.com cited a survey of 1,614 North American office workers. Over half said views of the outdoors were t ..read more

Fridays have always had a different flavor from the rest of the week. It’s the day you start thinking ahead to your weekend, finish up projects, and take time to get organized so you can start next week with confidence. “Casual Fridays” were a nod to this in-house focus. More relaxed attire reflected a more relaxed attitude. Fridays were not days for big staff meetings, client presentations, or other tasks that infringed on the vibe. When I worked full time and spent Fridays in the office, I looked forward to the ritual of cleaning up my physical desktop, filing projects and documents, wateri ..read more

Working from home has plenty of benefits, as millions of workers have discovered since the pandemic lockdowns. But WFH has blurred – make that erased – the line between “at work” and “at home.” Without a clean break, it’s much harder for you to relax and be present for your family during the evening. Remember commuting? Even if you hated your commute home from the office, it had one valuable benefit: it was a buffer to help you transition out of your “at work” mode. As always, the Germans have a word that describes this important transition: feierabend. (Pronounced fire-AAH-bund.) It’s define ..read more

Whether it’s a job offer or internal promotion, you always have the power to say “no thanks.” How you say it will make the difference in whether your relationship stays strong and your reputation remains undamaged. After all, it’s your reputation, experience, and skills that got you to the point of receiving an offer. Amanda Cardoso, writing for themuse.com, says that it takes skill to refuse an offer and still retain a relationship with a recruiter or a hiring manager. You may not feel that an offer is right for you right now, (or you might have received two offers), but, she says, you never ..read more

More than half of workers say that they’d like to become digital nomads. In a recent FlexJobs survey, 50% of people said they’d take a pay cut for the freedom to work from any location, and 75% would use a work-from-anywhere policy if provided by their employer.  And that freedom is valued more than pay. Half would be willing to take a pay cut (50%), increase their working hours (20%), and give up vacation days (15%). Of course, you might not feel the need for much vacation time if you’re working from the beach or a café along a beautiful river walk. Location and life balance ..read more

In this post and this post, I wrote about Katherine Morgan Schafler, who has authored a book that’s changing my life.  In The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power, she frees up perfectionists to lean into their perfectionism as long as it’s doing no harm (more on that in future posts.) Schafler has developed a quiz to help you learn where you fall on the perfectionism spectrum – not all perfectionists care about the same things or act the same way about every issue. Today’s post is about the perfectionist who can’t get started. On anything important. Because ..read more

In a previous post, I wrote about Katherine Morgan Schafler, who has written a book that’s changing my life.  In The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power, she frees up perfectionists to lean into their perfectionism as long as it’s doing no harm (more on that in future posts.) Schafler has developed a quiz to help you learn where you fall on the perfectionism spectrum – not all perfectionists care about the same things or act the same way about every issue. My first post described the Classic Perfectionist. But perhaps my favorite of Schafler’s categories is ..read more

(Cambridge Dictionary) Perfectionist; /pərˈfek·ʃə·nɪst/ noun. A person who wants very much to get every detail exactly right. (My version) A person who needs to get everything exactly right. Every time. All the time. For years, I’ve been asking the wrong question. I’ve been told that my perfectionism wasn’t healthy. It was a bit…obsessive. A bit…too much. A bit… annoying. So I have spent years reading about how to cure my perfectionism, how to minimize it. How to be less annoying. Can my perfectionism be fixed? That’s the wrong question, according to Katheri ..read more

There’s one interview I’ll never forget. I was hiring for a business services associate position. All the candidates we saw were polished, professional, and educated, and they were easy to talk to. The last interview of the day was with a woman in her 40s who looked great on paper and better in person. After the preliminaries, I asked what is usually a softball question: why are you looking for a new opportunity? She sat for a few seconds, looking stricken. Then she burst into tears. We offered some tissues and made soothing noises while she regained her composure. It took a few minutes. Fina ..read more

When you ask someone what makes a good leader, plenty of qualities come to mind. Confidence, authority, gravitas, fairness, and empathy are a few I’ve heard recently. But even more important than how a leader presents themselves is how they think. Writing for The Big Think.com, Donna Wiggs cites psychologist and science journalist Adam Grant, author of several books on how successful people think. Grant says that strategic thinking is the most important quality to look for in a leader. What he means by that is a combination of abstract thinking and concrete thinking – the ability to envi ..read more