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Do you ever feel exhausted by all the things you have to do? Being busy “doing” burns us out, it scatters our brains, and ultimately it keeps us from being productive because we are simply too exhausted to focus.

An alternative to “doing” is to practice “not doing.” Practicing not doing is about stopping the busy-ness – putting it down, taking a break, getting focused and choosing a new path.

Let’s examine the art of not doing one piece at a time.

What does it mean to stop? Imagine you are in the middle of a busy day – you have your to-do list, your meetings, your calendar, your email – so many things to do, so many pressures, and you know you’re never going to get it all done. Imagine if, just for the moment, you closed up shop, and walked away. What does it look like for you? Maybe it’s simply walking into another room and sitting quietly for a moment.

The first step is to break the connection and stop doing, even if just for a moment, so you can get some perspective.

The second step is to get focused. Getting focused means remembering the single-most important thing you should be doing. What’s essential? Asking yourself what your priority is will help you quiet the demands on your time, both internal and external, and focus on the one thing that matters most to you.

So now you’ve stopped the busy-ness, you’ve gotten focused again – now you can move forward to the third step – moving forward. Moving forward means clearing the desk and getting out a fresh sheet of paper, with a fresh mindset to match, and redefining how you use your time.

With this strategy you’ll find that a lot of things that were taking your time share, and mind share, before will fall away – because now you are focused on the number one most important thing.

When you practice not doing, you can breathe again. You can focus on your most important goals and you can finally stop the busy-ness. You’ll feel re-energized, you’ll feel excited again and you’ll be more effective than ever. All it takes is three steps: Stop the doing, get focused and move forward. 

For more ways to improve your personal leadership and gain more control over your time and productivity, see Joelle’s book: The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership.

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Have you ever sent an email and not gotten the response you wanted? Maybe you got a negative response – something you intend to have happened. Or maybe you got no response at all. Sometimes when we communicate via email, the intent we have doesn’t match the impact we make.

There are a few simple things that you can use to make your email communication more effective – it’s all about keeping things concise.

One problem with email is that sometimes they are simply too long. If your messages go on line after line, paragraph after paragraph, almost as if someone’s reading a novel, for many people that’s too long. Your email may be perfectly crafted, have a very urgent message and be perfect for you, but if the person at the other end doesn’t read it, it does you no good at all.

Instead, try these email formatting hacks:

• Communicate in bullet points.
• Use bold.
• Make your email succinct – 5 to 10 lines is perfect.

So what if you did those things, but you ran into the problem mentioned above: you sent a succinct, simple email, and for some reason you’ve created bad feelings and the sender responded negatively. This might be because your email’s actually too short – you didn’t say enough. So even though you feel you’ve made an effective use of time with a very brief email, the other person received it as a “barking order” or they weren’t really clear on what you meant. Perhaps you got a response that was incomplete, or you didn’t get a response to your email at all.

Here is a simple formula I learned from my good friend and productivity expert, Meggin McIntosh, the Ph.D. of Productivity, that you can use anytime you write an email to help you be effective in your communication. It’s called:

• Know
• Do
• Feel

In a few simple lines, communicate to the person that the other end what you want them to know, what you want them to do and what you want them to feel. If you communicate in every email, what you want them to know, do and feel in roughly 5-10 lines with clear formatting, you will get the answers you are looking for, and will solve the problem of ineffective email communication.

For more communication tips and personal leadership strategies, see Joelle’s books: The Inner Edge and The New Advantage: How Women In Business Can Create Win-Wins For Their Companies And Themselves.

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We know language is very powerful – but what about the language we use with ourselves? You can harness the power of language to change your thinking and change your life.

With one simple change in your thinking, you can start to use the power of language to get what you want: focus on affirmative thinking.

Affirmative thinking is constantly reinforcing what you want.

Compare that to negative messaging, which is confirming what you don’t want.

Consciously or unconsciously, we too often lean toward the negative. “I should not have a second piece of cake.” “I’m trying to give up gossiping.” But that simply has us constantly emphasizing and thinking about the very thing we’re trying to get away from!

In affirmative thinking, we instead think about what we want, over and over, to create a new track: “I want to stay fit and healthy.” “I’m remembering to focus on the good in people.”

Go easy on yourself as you get started; it takes time to adjust our thinking. Just pay attention to the words going through your mind, and if you catch yourself in negative thinking, practice changing those thoughts to the affirmative.

For example, let’s say you hear yourself saying, “I’m trying to cut back on caffeine.” As soon as you recognize the negative message, turn it around and say it again in the affirmative. An alternative might be, “I’ll choose herbal tea instead.” Always look for the affirmative message. On a daily basis, if you pay an attention to the messages you’re sending to yourself, you may find a number of  negative messages, focusing on the problem, worrying about the challenges, looking at what’s not going well, scaring yourself about what you can’t do and don’t do well. The negative messages scroll through our head so unconsciously, but they are constantly reinforcing negative messages.

Train yourself to listen to your thoughts. Think of those negative thoughts, that little grumbling running around your head, as trying to sabotage the success you want for yourself. When you see them, sweep them all away and remember to replace them what you want.

Even though on the surface they sound like the same message, one of them reinforces what you are trying to do. Always choose an affirmative message. If you’re talking to your boss, say “I want a raise,” instead of, “I haven’t had a raise in three years.”

Or, if you’re talking with someone you work with, say, “I want you to write this report,” instead of, “you haven’t even written that report.”

Always ask yourself: What is the affirmative message? Yes, you may have problems, maybe a challenge you may not be sure of going to do well, but what do you want? “I want to do well.”

Now you have the makings of an affirmative message. Can you hear how quickly you can shift from negative, self-defeating, downward spiral to positive message? “I’m going to do well.” Say that over and over in your head and you have an affirmation that eventually becomes reality.

For more ways to create a win-win for yourself, and your company, see Joelle’s most recent book: The New Advantage.

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I remember one time I read a book called Simplify your Life, I almost laughed out loud – who knew “simplifying” could be so complex! Nevertheless, over time I developed my own (hopefully simpler) ways to simplify your life. I’ll share one of them today: look for repeatable patterns.

Let’s talk about what that means. Repeatable patterns are things you can do over and over again: decisions you can make, places to keep things, what you wear, what you choose, for example. The more repeatable patterns you create, the more you reduce your stress, the less you have to decide – the simpler your life becomes.

There’s actually science behind this. It turns out that self-control is a finite resource. What that means is that your brain can only make so many decisions in a day, and when you overdo it, you can start to tire out and lose the self-control that’s so important for maintaining the details of your life. So the more you use up, the less you have later.

You can preserve brain power by making fewer decisions and making those decisions easier.

Let’s start in your office. In your office if you have 25 different colors of pens, and your brain is constantly searching even just to find a pen. Let’s find a repeatable pattern – choose your favorite pen. Have one pen. Now whenever you need a new pen, whenever a pen is missing, maybe you have a stash in your desk drawer – take one out.

What about in your meetings? Maybe in every meeting there is a discussion that has to take place, multiple emails going around to decide on the agenda and presentation slides. What if you created a repeatable pattern instead? We always use the same agenda template, we always use the same slide template and the same people speak in order.

Ultimately, you can reduce the time and energy it takes to make any decision and simplify the days in your life simply by looking for repeatable patterns – and replicating those patterns instead of having to make the same decisions again and again. There are opportunities to simplify your life everywhere. Simply look for ways where you can make once decision, one time instead of several. Practice the strategy when the opportunities present themselves and simplifying your life may just become a repeatable pattern in itself.

See Joelle’s book The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership for 10 more strategies to become the leader of your own life and reach better levels of effectiveness.

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Many of us try to keep ourselves organized by creating an action plan or a to-do list. At the beginning of the day, you write down everything that you have to do, and then you spend your day ticking items off the list. But when you get to the end of the day, too often there are a lot of things left, and that can leave you feeling like the work is never done.

Sound familiar?

Perhaps the problem isn’t so much that there’s so much that needs to get done, but the fact that you’re putting everything on one long to-do list. You can actually organize your thinking and organize your time just by changing your to-do list.

Having a detailed daily action plan can help you stay focused: It’s called the catalyst. In science, a catalyst is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without being consumed in the process. For you, your catalyst is an action that dramatically increases the rate at which you achieve your vision – without it consuming you.

The CATA-list action plan is divided into 4 categories:

• Catalysts
• Achievements
• Tasks and
• Avoidances

The catalyst: To find your catalyst, ask yourself one thing you can do that will have the greatest impact on you vision. The guiding principle for your catalyst is that you know this one item would do the most to get you to your goal. For example, let’s say you are trying to lose 50 pounds. A catalyst might be to go running, or give up sugar. Choose that one thing that’s most important for you to do.

Achievements: These are the actions you classify as highly important. They might not have the transformational effect of your one catalyst, but they are the achievements that matter on a day to day basis. It’s your daily actions, priorities, projects and deadlines.

Tasks: This category is for the actions you like to take, but can’t justify as truly critical, at least not in terms of your priorities and goals. Tasks are typically big time consumers. These are the long meetings that need to be scheduled, like networking events. Maybe they are things you like to do, but maybe only after the more valuable things are done.

Avoidances: These are the actions that have actually very little return. Surfing through our emails and unuseful conversations are avoidances that actually take up the time we need for more important priorities in our lives.

By creating a catalyst, you have organized now your to-do list in an efficient way, in an organized order of value for your time and your true priorities.  

To learn more about how to master the skills of efficiency and save yourself time with strategies like The Catalyst, read Joelle’s book, The Inner Edge.

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When it comes to getting your next promotion, would you step back and wait for it to be served on a silver platter, or are you the person to take ownership yourself and ask for it?

You can be in control of getting exactly what you want, you can redefine success so that it captures all of the benefits that are important to you, including a promotion, or maybe more money, more respect, more control.

Success means different things to different people. Before you move forward towards advancement, be clear on how you want to attain your aspirations. While you are thinking about your success and promotion, don’t forget to think about what else matters to you. Don’t get tunnel vision with your advancement – keep your priorities in mind for other areas in your life as well, whether it’s family priorities, personal health and wellbeing priorities and beyond. We are always happier when we have balance in our lives.

Always remember: you have leverage and latitude to create the life you want. For example, some people want flexibility in their lives. Getting a promotion might mean getting a role with more flexibility – it doesn’t always have to be about the title itself. Maybe you want more opportunity, so getting promoted might mean more “bigger and better” opportunities. Maybe promotion for you means visibility, having a more visible role.

All of these are ways that different people define success for themselves. So, what does advancement mean to you?

Start by asking these three questions as your initial steps toward getting the promotion you truly desire – you can advance as high and as fast as you want, as you define it:

• What does advancement mean to you, how do you define success for yourself?
• What will determine the result?
• What are the first few benchmark goals that will lead to that outcome?

Expand your sites to a broader definition of advancement. This will open up new ideas about how you can get that promotion rather than waiting around for it to happen to you. Be clear about what you want, prepare for it, expect a positive outcome and persist.

Follow Joelle’s personal leadership strategies and resources to create your vision of success.

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In order to be your best – hitting your targets, meeting your goals, creating the vision you want for your life – you need to be able to stretch yourself just enough so that you are moving forward with enthusiasm and momentum. As always, though, balance is key: Too much stretch and you might stress yourself out, too little stretch and you might not be challenging yourself enough.

You can think about your limits in three different zones. Your comfort zone, your stretch zone and your panic zone.

Your comfort zone is where everything feels just right. When you’re in this zone, you can do well at your job and meet your targets reasonably so you can go home with plenty of time to spare, but you don’t necessarily feel challenged.

The stretch zone is the optimum measure of stretch. It’s where you do feel challenged, where you have to step up just a little bit, enough to get the enthusiasm going,  and you have energy and feel excitement about what’s to come.

The panic zone is where there too much to do, too little time to do it and you’re not able to get it all done. It’s where you start to panic because you know you’re never going to make your deadlines, and you’re not going to be able to finish what you need to do because you’re too stretched.

Can you define the perfect stretch zone for you? Where do you want things to ease up to keep you out of the panic zone, or where can you step things up to move out of the comfort zone and into the stretch?

Each of the three zones may be right for you at different times in your life. There are times that you need to stretch yourself. On the other hand, maybe you have been stretching yourself, challenging yourself and stepping up enough, and you need to back off a little bit and retreat to your comfort zone.

There even maybe times when the panic zone is actually what’s right for you. When you have a big opportunity, a short deadline and the opportunity to deliver, you might want to push yourself into the panic zone where the energy is high and you can get things done and done quickly.

Find the zone that’s right for you to accomplish more – you’re going to feel more excited about your work, and you’ll avoid burning out.

Ask yourself:

• Which zone are you in right now?
• Where do you want to be?
• What would it take to get there?
• What decisions do you need to make?
• What conversations do you need to have?

Keeping track of what zones you’re in this summer will help you avoid burnout while challenging yourself in new ways, which will ultimately help you to succeed as a leader.

For more advice for balancing your work and refining your personal leadership skills, see Joelle’s books The New Advantage and The Inner Edge.

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A client of mine and I recently had a long talk about how scary it can be when, for some reason, you’re losing favor at work – or, as she put it, “when the shine is off your star.”

We thought of several situations where we’d seen it happen.

• One executive was tasked with implementing a risky, high stakes project that put him in a treacherous no-win position. When things predictably became challenging, he felt like the fall guy.
• Another leader watched as his position was eliminated during an org change. He retained his employment but ended up hidden in a distant corner of the organization, feeling like he added no value at all.
• Two other leaders actually lost their jobs entirely, leaving them searching without a safety net for new roles and new companies – a painful and highly stressful endeavor.

If you’ve ever fallen into one of these situations, you know how you can easily feel dejected, even rejected, and downright depressed. You can lose faith, question your own value, and even give up.

Or, you can stage an Executive Comeback.

I was pleased to contribute to Joann Lublin’s Wall Street Journal column, “How to Mount an Executive Comeback,” on this topic. In her article, Lublin quotes the CEO of Avnet, William Amelio, who says: “It’s how you recover from a job loss that really builds your character.” It’s also how you recover from any career downturn that builds your character. I believe the opposite is also true: your character is going to help you create job gains and create a much more positive and exciting career upturn.

If you want to stage your own comeback, start by asking yourself some key questions:

• Why do you need a “comeback?”
• What happened, or what changed, that has you feeling “on the outs?”
• What’s your perspective on the situation? What other views are out there?
• What is the true story – the empowered version of how you’re leading your way out of what could be perceived as a negative situation and back to a place of leadership and positive impact?
• What actions can you take to move forward – onward and upward?
• How can you keep your spirits up and your motivation high during this transition?
• What is your ultimate outcome, and how would you describe it to others?

Answering questions like these can be the basis for a program of personal development: your Executive Comeback.

By looking honestly at your situation, and learning to tell your story, while at the same time building an action plan based on positive results, you are creating your Executive Comeback.

If you feel like “the shine is off your star,” or you want to move to a more powerful place in your organization as a leader, let’s set up a time to talk. You can reach me directly here.