Nat

Yesterday was a great day at work. A team of us had been asked two weeks ago to meet with a potential customer on a project they were interested in doing. We had only a partial understanding of their goals and preferences, and we were somewhat limited by time.

The most satisfying kind of work for me is when a group of people is thrown together with an objective, and we have to use our best judgment and each of our strengths to get to a quick solution. The less time there is to deliberate, the greater the group focus on what seems like it could work. It keeps me from over-thinking, which I often do given the time.

Our group of six people pulled together some ideas and talked out the pros and cons for four days. By yesterday morning we all had agreed on what the presenters would say. The lead presenter and one other team member helped us pull together the message points, and they talked effortlessly through some recommendations.

I’m not certain yet how it will turn out, but seeing the first stage come together better than our expectations was a lot of fun. I always appreciate being reminded that having faith in our colleagues and the expectation of a positive outcome often ensures that we are moving in the right direction.

The entire rest of the evening was wonderful.

Ok, so it’s a favorite topic of mine, dealing with clutter. I took a big step today dealing with my email inbox. First there was a great article on reducing email inbox clutter in the July 2008 print edition of Macworld. That article further referred to this series of posts at the 43folders.com personal productivity website. This series addresses the psychological reasons for keeping too many emails (the writing is hysterical), and then it offers simple solutions.

Some are practical, including a great sample schedule for how to tackle email in a typical work day so that you aren’t becoming a slave to the new email message notification beep. But my favorite comment is when the author says, Wouldn’t it be great to suck a little less?

That could be a motto for me as I strive to be easier on myself. A lot of my friends are like me in wanting to become more superhuman by trying to do everything. Naturally, none of us can do everything. Those who thrive take stock of themselves, their energy, their time and priorities, and they put their effort where it will make the biggest impact.

So applying these simple guidelines today for scanning and deleting email, I cut the volume of stored messages in my inbox by 800 items. The article calls this getting the piano off your foot. Call it that, or call it sucking a little less. Either way it’s liberating.

I read an article today in which the author wrote that joy is an inherent component of our character, not just the potential to experience joy, but joy itself. We are born with it. It is a divine gift. He went on to say that when we feel less than joyful, we don’t need to work to find some external element to bring us joy (a new job, money, a vacation). We just need to look inside ourselves and remember the joy that is already there.

He went on to discuss working at a job in particular, repeating the idea that to find satisfaction in our work, we don’t need to “do what we like,” we can just learn to “like what we do.” It has the advantage of bringing us quicker relief.

There is nothing new in this, of course. Michael and I read and comment on writers and teachers who, over the course of centuries advised that our answers lie within our minds. We must work to master them. I was just struck today by the idea that our shift in attitude starts by acknowledging what is already there, what is already true.

I came to my office to clean up some of the piles on my desk. I never feel I have time for this on a workday, but today, without the commotion of meetings and emails, I can work at the pace I like best: slowly.

So there’s a trick to liking what I do: find a way to do it slowly. It’s very relaxing. Now if only I can remember that on Monday morning.

Any ideas?

Today was the first day back at work after vacation, and my boss was incredibly gracious and let me work the morning at home before going to the airport. I flew 16 hours yesterday to get from Spokane to Boston (via Phoenix and Las Vegas), and I’m flying back out on business now. So it was a great relief to have my boss give me this flexibility today.

One of the lessons I’m learning from Michael is to appreciate the small blessings that come our way. Today was a perfect example, and I’m heading out on business now feeling great.

My boss also just returned from a trip, and she extended exactly the courtesy she would have wanted her boss to extend her. I love that kind of thoughtfulness. I’m very fortunate to have the boss I do, because this is the way she always thinks. For a long time, I worried about the parts of the job that I found difficult or annoying, and naturally those types of circumstances then magnified in my mind and my experience.

Now I’m working hard to focus on the little things that go well. It turns out to be really easy if you just remind yourself to do it. I’m catching myself being grateful more frequently. Many parts of my life seem better, and I suspect it’s because I am just noticing how much there is to appreciate in my life.

First day back has been great. I’m expecting tomorrow to be the same.

My company is flying me to my favorite place in the world tomorrow, New Mexico. I’m so fortunate that my business travel takes me places I really like. I may even get to see one of my best friends while I’m there, an added bonus.

Granted, business travel is never quite as glamorous as it can look from the outside, but I really appreciate the break in routine that it allows. I do my best thinking in airplanes, because there’s really not much else to do. I love being untethered.

It’s nearly 80 degrees in Albuquerque this week, but cool at night, just the way I like it. I may even have a chance to hike one of the hills outside the city on Friday evening. Another bonus is that the days are so long now.

Anyway. It’s just one of those weeks when I get to be grateful for who I am and what has been given to me.

Another great piece in The New Yorker describes the effects on people with long commutes. The article characterizes people who travel 90 minutes or more each direction as “extreme commuters.” Under this definition, I am just under the limit, thanks to my company’s moving 20 minutes closer to my house last year.

In a nutshell, the article quotes research by several social scientists, which asserts that most long-distance commuters eventually suffer from social isolation for two basic reasons: first, the time they spend commuting is time they can’t spend socializing with their friends, and second, if where a person lives, works, and shops are too far from one another, it’s harder to establish a single community.

The article also points out that humans tend to have a hard time comparing the relative advantages and disadvantages of the material things we gain from a job and the more intangible costs the job inflicts. So we don’t know how to make a healthier emotional choice.

The article made me really sad and anxious, because I’ve been feeling after 10 years commuting more than 30,000 miles a year that I can’t bear to do it any more. Sometimes I think it’s less painful to be ignorant of the imperfections in one’s life, and today, I realized I didn’t want to ignore this frustration any more.

The author also stated that most people stick with a difficult commute not because they love the job, but because they either don’t see an option or don’t have the energy to pursue one. I want to find the energy to have options. Don’t we all?

What’s your secret for storing up that energy?

Flo mentioned David Sedaris yesterday, and I always laugh to the point of exhaustion at Sedaris, especially when he reads his own material. There is nothing like uncontrolled laughter to make you feel good about a day. I know this is obvious.

Still, it’s worth noting any day filled with laughter. Today I went to Ohio on a business trip and had a 2-hour planning meeting with 3 colleagues and 3 staff members of one of our customers. About 30 minutes in, a delightful woman who works for our customer began telling stories about herself. They were self-deprecating and hysterically funny.

We spent most of the next 90 minutes laughing, and we all agreed that it was a very pleasant way to spend a work day. This shouldn’t be rare, and I’m going to do whatever I can to make sure it isn’t. I can’t recommend it strongly enough.

We flew to Phoenix on Southwest Airlines yesterday, and it’s the first flight I’ve had in 3 months that didn’t involve a lengthy delay in the airport or on the ground. They run an outstanding business, and it’s largely because their customer service is so good.

For example, the plane was oversold, and as airlines do, they worked hard to convince passengers with seats to volunteer to take a later plane in exchange for a small travel voucher and a hotel. It is not a very generous offer for most people, and they had no takers. But the gate agents handled it very well. Mostly one young man joked his way through the many reasons anyone should be glad to take the deal. “Does anyone like to visit their family at Christmas?” he asked at one point, and that led to several good reasons to take travel vouchers. Ultimately a few people took the deal, but I don’t think the appeal was any more successful than airlines usually are in that circumstance.

What struck me most–and it always does on Southwest–is that the staff handles everything with as much humor as possible. And this attitude is very contagious, invariably carrying over to the passengers, who took it very well on a 6-hour flight with every seat full. Children laughed and played with their parents. Strangers swapped stories.

We should all learn from this how much better everything is when we make an effort to enjoy the mundane routines and activities we pursue.

I have two entire weeks in the office for the first time in two months. What a blessing and a relief it is to sit at my desk and pull together work that I promised customers.

I’ve always loved the feeling of completing tasks, but I always have so many things to do that I can go for weeks and not finish anything of consequence. At the moment my job allows me some freedom to prioritize, and my boss is very patient about reviewing my priorities with me.

This week I’ve been sending out emails, presentations, outlines, and other recommendations, and it’s true what your mother tells you, “Everyone loves it when you finish something you promised to do.” Simple to know, hard to pull off, at least for me.

So I’m proud I’ve been working on this and look forward to building on the habit. Just do something, almost anything. It fulfills that old law of physics, “Objects at rest tend to stay at rest. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion.” Whee.

This week I received several compliments at the office, including one from my boss’s boss. I’m fortunate that my boss is often complimentary, in fact, she goes out of her way to make me feel appreciated.

I should be beyond compliments by now, should be capable of judging my own efforts and achievement. Still, a sincere compliment is a gift. It makes you feel noticed and appreciated, and these states of mind help you perform with joy and purpose.

Naturally, if this is how compliments make you feel, think how easy it is to pay some yourself and to pass that feeling along to others whom you admire. My sister and I had a babysitter when we were young, Mary Allen. Mary loved to say, “You’re so smart.” That was her highest praise.

Try that tomorrow. Tell someone they’re smart. Watch them smile.