The Stop Doing List
If you’re like me, you have a To Do list — whether the high-tech version on your smart phone or the low-tech kind written on a Post-It, or perhaps just maintained in your head. But do you have a Stop Doing list? Maybe you should. I got this idea from Jim Collin’s illuminating book, Good to Great — Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t. Part of what makes good companies great is not being overly diversified. The great companies he studied pursued a single “Hedgehog Concept” (being the best at one thing rather than being an also-ran at a...
Read MoreThe Four Bs of Balance
When my pals and I were in our twenties, I don’t remember worrying much about finding balance in our lives. We worked hard, played hard, stayed up late and damn the consequences. But now as a mid-career professionals, many of us with children, I find we are all talking about it, and I also hear it from my clients. We know that imbalance is inherently unstable and unsustainable, but it can be hard to envision a different way. So what is balance, and how can we achieve it? Stand on one foot and you’ll see that balance is not static. You wobble and waver. Even if you manage to stand...
Read MoreBedtime Chicken
Lately, my husband and I have been playing a game of chicken. It goes like this: Both of us say that we want to go to bed earlier, but then as evening progresses, we each keep on working and wait for the other to blink first. Finally when it is well past our target time, one of us turns off the computer and heads upstairs and the other follows. Result? If anything, our bedtime has actually gotten later over the past month, even though we have started getting up earlier (FIVE AM!) to go to the gym. So what gives? Part of the explanation is epitomized by Jerry Seinfeld”s Night Guy/Day...
Read MoreTake a Day Off From Tech
I hereby declare my first No-Tech Sunday a success! After hemming and hawing, resisting and justifying … I did it. Saturday night I sent my last email and made a Facebook post (about going offline, of course!), and turned off the laptop. So that I wouldn’t forget, I stuck a Post-It on the lid announcing “NO TECH SUNDAY :)” And that was it until Monday morning. Yes, I felt the urge to check, but I held firm.* On my quest to re-condition my responses (see previous post), I achieved the following positive reinforcement of my behavior: Nipped several escalating conflicts in the bud...
Read MoreWhat’s Behind the Compulsion to Check Email
Do you feel annoyed and burdened by email and yet feel a perverse desire to check it throughout the day, even when you don’t really need to? As if maybe something really interesting or important is waiting in the Inbox? (This hope is usually disappointed, of course.) In an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air Tuesday, New York Times technology reporter Matt Richtel explained why we persist in this behavior. It’s called intermittent reinforcement. Although most of the time our email is not exciting, every once in a while we find something rewarding – an email from a friend, a...
Read MoreMommy Needs a Time Out
I am test-driving Jane Nelsen’s “Positive Discipline.” As I read the book, I am trying the techniques, and I will share my experience with you. Here’s the scene: I have just busted my daughter for some infraction, and she is defensive and angry. I begin to explain the limit I am setting — let’s be honest, I am lecturing — and she is not listening (the hands covering her ears are a giveaway). “You need to listen to me,” I say, trying to contain my frustration and anger, but I might as well be an adult in a Charlie Brown cartoon:...
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