Tag: work from home

When fries are on the no go list

I love eating and I love eating crap! The problem is my body, with complete agreement from my doctors, all disagree with my love of crap. This sucks big time! So for the last 2 weeks I have been eating relatively healthy, not that I don’t like healthy foods, fruit and vegetables, I actually do like them and some I even love. What I don’t love is not having the freedom to eat what I feel like. As a celiac, I should be used to this feeling. But adding more restrictions to my already restricted diet is not fun. Goodbye french fries and potato chips hello cottage cheese and tomatoes. Someone should write a country song about this, really. I can even hear the song  in my brain and  it’s a very sad breakup  song. But truthfully. While I will be limiting some of my favorite  fried food groups,I will not be giving them up completely, I will just be more conscious of what I am eating and some foods will be modified. Fries are really too good to give up completely.

Unfortunately for my walking partner, the vet told Sagey girl that she is a little chonky as well and needs to lose a few. So both of us will be adding more veggies to our diets and walking a couple more steps. Thankfully the weather where we live is good almost year round so someone is happy about the extra steps.I already exercise and walk 10000 steps a day thanks to my 70lb dog, who makes sure to provide me with my resistance training as well.

Listening to your body

We always say that we don’t have time to be sick but truthfully no one has time to be sick or really wants to be sick. That’s usually when the universe finds us and shows us how much it really cares about our time line. This week it’s my turn, I postponed going to the doctor  and gave myself many excuses of why it’s not a big deal. Of course I ended up with antibiotics and even more medical procedures that will take more of my  time this week. I should have known better and  listened to my body, for sure. I am after all a grown adult.  

But I guess even  I don’t listen to my own advice. My first inclination was to be upset with myself as  I just postponed the inevitable or probably made my condition worse . I actually did make it worse and my dr was  not very happy with me. So now  the question is what have I learned from this week? For starters I need to Listen to my body  and commit to taking better care of myself. Not only for me but for my family as well. I should also practice what I preach.

Finding time for taking time off

It is very easy to delay time off and  vacations, telling yourself you are very busy right now and postpone fun activities. God knows I have found many excuses before – I have deadlines at work, this is not the right time, it’s the end of the quarter or year and many more excuses. But when is the right time really? It seems like when we become adults with full time jobs there  is never really a right time to take  a vacation or sometimes even just a day or two off.

I know some people with unlimited PTO and  from what I hear these unlimited PTO people take the least time off. I have a limited amount of time off, it is not small at all but still limited and I get to transfer only a small amount of vacation days to the next calendar year.

Time off is important, we all need it. We need time to refresh, clear our heads and do things outside of our professional life for ourselves and our families. Weekend breaks are really not enough, at least not for me. 

Although my time off is limited to specific times during the year, times that are not flexible and do not always allow me to get the best rates for travel, I still choose to take my vacation days and have some fun. I even stopped taking my laptop with me as I learned to let go and trust my team to cover for me (this was a big issue for me as a recovering workaholic).

Something happened in the last couple of years that made clear what my priorities should be: family,  friends , health and time off for fun. Health I can’t really control but everything else I can.

I can not only make sure I take care of myself but take care of my work team as well.

And since no time off makes employees burn out, it is very important for us as not only to take care of ourselves but as leaders and managers to make sure our team gets time off as well.

I read somewhere that employees don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses. Not sure how true that is for everyone who quits, but having managers that truly care about their employees’ life balance , happiness and yes, their time off is, should be part of managing a great team.

My barketing team, yes, barketing!

I have a barketing team, yes a barketing team. I have a chief barketing officer and a vp of barketing. The barketing team has many opinions, they usually love to have their opinion heard during zoom meetings when I have to speak or when I am on the phone for any reason, As I mentioned before they are very opinionated.

Luckily they are cute, so on internal zoom meetings people love to see them. The problem is when it’s not internal  or I am on the phone. My home office is in the family room. This is where I was relegated to when everyone had to work from home, I love my home office. It is warm , has great acoustics and is close to the coffee machine. It is also where the barketing team sleeps, eats and loves to bark.

I have to say that they are a great barketing team, they listen to my ideas,don’t interrupt me when I talk and are great one sided sound boards and even better lunchtime walking partners.

However cute they are, they have demanding compensation requests- scratchies, snackies and walks. Not as demanding as hi tech cafeteria and gym benefits but quite demanding. As I am writing this  there are loud protests from the barking team, so I shall go answer them before the union rep arrives.

Keeping meetings on track

Today is what I call meeting  Thursday day,  our first monthly all staff meeting of the new year.  I hate meetings.It’s not that I don’t like meeting, I really dislike big all hand meetings. They usually drag on forever or what seems like forever. There is always someone who likes to hear their voice more than actually listen and collaborate and quite frankly they are usually boring after the first 5 minutes.  If we are home on zoom at least we can do something when we lose focus but what can you do when forced to sit in an actual meeting where we can’t hide. Maybe there is something positive for zoom meetings after all.

Thankfully the meeting was on zoom, however I had to present and lead part of it which meant I actually had to  pay attention.  So when we planned this meeting to avoid all the issues  I hate about meetings we decided on parameters- we limited the meeting time to a max of one hour. This forced us to focus on the most important issues and not to wander off. We also decided on the topics ahead of time and put everything in clear bullet points on a shared screen so everyone can see and for us not to lose focus and if we did then one of the meeting leaders would steer everything back on the right track. And the most important for the meeting leaders, we did it just before lunch and made sure to be hungry so we will finish in a timely manner  and we were conscious of other people’s lunch time. I know this might seem weird when planning meetings, but we found that this  helps us with keeping meetings on point. I am not advocating for anyone to go to meetings hungry, I love food, but this is a method that works for us and I am sure everyone has their own guidelines for keeping meetings effective, that is unless they love meetings or the sound of their own voice.

Starting the cleaning process

Our garage has been a mess since the great downstairs flood of 2019. We had a pipe leak that destroyed the first floor of the house and raised our standard of living as we were relegated to only using our 2nd floor.  And as much as we enjoyed the “open concept” living of our first floor which included  open walls everywhere, we were very excited the fixing up was completed just before the pandemic started we had the stay at home orders.

The only thing that we have not gotten to organize was the garage, during the remodel we moved all our furniture and belongings to the garage. When we started to put the house back together we brought only the most important things back and  donated a lot of household items since  who really  needs 20 serving platters.

But for some reason  we never cleared the garage completely and instead of using the garage for the two cars like it was intended, the garage has become a one car garage with a side full of stuff we have not organized yet and have no memory of what is in the boxes anymore.

I promised my husband for the last three years  that as soon as the California heat dies down I will start Marie Konding the garage, unfortunately or fortunately I have been using the same excuse for the last three years as well as why I never got to clean it.

Truthfully, there is so much stuff there that it is overwhelming and I could never  figure out where to start, so today my son and I decided to tackle two boxes. He helped me primarily cause he was looking for the weights we haven’t seen in ages, but I did not care what the reason was I just jumped in and said let’s start.

We succeeded  kinda, we cleaned 3 boxes and filled the trash cans with trash and there is a little more room in our packed garage. I see this as an accomplishment! And as I decided that from now on I will celebrate any accomplishment, big, small or tiny, I will be celebrating this one and maybe I will be inspired to actually complete  this cleaning project (I would have added pictures, but that would be really embarrassing).

Self Care Resolution

I have been on vacation for the last week, my office closed for the break. Before I went on vacation I wrote a list of what I should do during my break.  I did tackle some things on my to do list-

  • Took a nap
  • Read two books
  • Had great dinners with my friends
  • Took long walks with my dog

These are all things that I needed to remember for my mental health. We all need to remember that every once in a while we need to take care of ourselves and make ourselves the priority.Self care is one of the most important gifts we can give our loved ones. Someone asked me what gift I gave my husband for what seemed to be our 100th anniversary, I replied – a mammogram.   Take time to care for yourself mentally and physically , as much as work is important, it is not everything. Challenge yourself to make this a priority in the coming year.

Work quiet

The last couple of weeks before the year ends are usually quiet at work, this year it’s even quieter as a lot of people decided to use the short school time between Thanksgiving and Winter break to take an extended vacatation time with their families.

I stayed at work, I just came back from a 12 day Japan vacation and could not justify taking more time off, tempting as it may. Work is quiet. Quiet for me is not good. Quiet is the enemy and not because I am hearing impaired. Quiet means finding ways to keep yourself busy or as my husband says, quiet me is not a good sign, quiet me becomes antsy . Quiet me looks for things to do.

Looking for things to do requires planning, so I start planning, I do not only plan ahead at work, I plan ahead in life. Some people call it New Year’s resolutions. I don’t call them resolutions, I call them a benchmarks. Every couple of months I check my benchmark to see where I succeded, where I failed and where I need to pivot. Sometimes we just forge ahead because this is what we were taught, but occasionally we do need to re evaluate and change the course.

Pivoting is not easy, changing the course is not easy, but I digress. Being mentally bored or not challenged is not easy either, at least not for me.

Decisions, decisions!

It’s the end of the year and we all have to start making decisions again, health plan for next year, 401k deductions, vacations and many more work decisions. However we can not forget our life outside work decisions as well.

Although the lines between our job and private life were a little blurry these last couple of years of work from home, it is time to put some barriers and allow for real work life balance. And that’s a decision I am willing to make. I wrote before on how I am trying to become a recovering workaholic, and I have to admit it is not an easy one. 

My last 6 months were trials and errors of me trying to disconnect and set some boundaries, some days I succeeded and some I did not, and that’s ok as teaching my brain is a work in progress. I discovered that long walks with my Sagey girl  while listening to podcasts has helped. In the beginning it was podcasts related to strategic thinking and business cycles and evolved to other topics that are the complete opposite of business.

So my decision to continue finding balance will continue in 2023 and possibly find a  hobby like macrame might be in order.

Job/ career cushioning – a new term for an old practice

I recently saw an article about Job Cushioning, it sounded interesting and I went to research further and discovered it’s a new term for an old concept. Lately they have been creating new terms for everything. I don’t know if they show up on my feed as I am interested in them more or just because what I follow has the latest trends.

The definition for Job Cushioning is looking for a new job while at your current job. Funny, in the old days we were always told that it is easier to find a new job when you still have a job as how else will you be able to explain the employment gap. Quitting or being fired not connected to company wide layoffs was considered bad on your resume and your prospect of finding a new job was not very good.

One of these articles mentioned that it is unethical to find a new job while still at a current place of employment, to this my response was Ha! As long as you don’t use current employment’s resources for finding a new job I believe it is perfectly ethical, especially if there are impending layoffs as most likely will happen according to all the analysts in the next couple of months.

Our main priority at the end of the day is to able to provide for ourselves and our families and to make sure we have back up plans for our future especially in an unstable market.