Joelle K. Jay

focus

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Get Off Crack

Are you an addict? Let’s find out. Check the statements below – which apply to you?

  • I answer my phone in the middle of a conversation.
  • I can be reached by phone, text or email 24/7.
  • I’ve been known to check my PDA in movies, at the dinner table, or in the middle of the night.
  • I attend meetings at two levels – one above the table where the action is, and one under the table with my PDA.
  • If I can’t find my PDA I start to shiver, sweat and shake.

There’s a reason so many of my clients call their BlackBerry their CrackBerry. It’s addictive. And unless you want it to take over life, you’ve got to take some control.

Because it’s not just about turning off the machine. It’s about turning off the distraction. Paul Melchiorre, the vice president of global strategy at Ariba, puts it bluntly.

Even if you were good at managing your time before PDAs came along, now you need to adjust to this CrackBerry world. You have to know when to turn it off – not turning the BlackBerry off but being able to turn off the work mindset.

Time management now isn’t about having slots of time for home and slots of time for work. It’s all in the mix. What most people have done is learn how to shift back and forth from what’s happening in the present to what’s happening on their PDA, much the way my husband is right now flipping the channels back and forth between ESPN and the news.

But if you want to be effective as a leader, you need to stop flipping back and forth. You need to focus.

I don’t care if you’re the CEO, Barack Obama’s own attorney or the highest paid entrepreneur ever to cash a check – your family wants you there at dinner. Your team wants you in the meeting with them now. You deserve to work an uninterrupted hour.

Try this trick every time your PDA rings. Imagine the person trying to reach you is actually physically present. Feel the sense of intrusion when they barge through the door mid-sentence in the middle of meeting, or tap on your shoulder incessantly as you’re trying to work.

Do you have the power to turn away from the spectre of efficiency and take back your life?

Did you enjoy this profile? You may be interested in the eCourse, Getting an Edge: 21 Ways World Class Leaders Share Their Secrets for Leading and Living Well. Each of 21 profiles just like this one comes in a separate email – once a day for 21 days. Click here for more information.

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Priorities – The Key to Balance

What does it look like for accomplished leaders to have “balance?” Does “balance” even exist?

When I coach executives on the personal side of leadership, I try to steer them away from this hypothetical question before it spins into a useless debate. The question isn’t whether or not work/life balance really exists. The question is, are you getting what you need to feel fulfilled and renewed so you’re thriving in every part of your life?

What helps you stay sane? What do you love to do? What’s your down time? Where’s your rest?

Lisa Weber was the president of individual business at MetLife – a job that requires high visibility and extensive travel. She has been named one of Fortune Magazines 50 Most Powerful women several times, she is a beloved mentor, and on top of it all, she’s also a mom. And yet, as busy as she is, she’s able to find a sense of balance by prioritizing the kinds of activities that sustain her every day.

I don’t compromise my morning run or going to my daughter’s school and reading them children’s books. To be able to sustain myself and work the long hours I do, I need to keep my priorities straight and keep everything in balance.

“Keeping her priorities straight” is key for Lisa, who has learned not to fall into the balance trap.

You can’t allow yourself to use balance as a measure for your life. You’ll always feel like a failure but when you think that way. It’s a mistake to ask, “Do I live a balanced life or not?” – as if it’s left to the whole world to judge.

The question isn’t, “Do you have balance or not?” The question is, “Do you feel balanced right now? What do you need to prioritize today in order to feel your best?

In other words, the point isn’t that you, too, should go running or read a children’s book. The secret isn’t in the activities, it’s in the prioritizing. Lisa explains:

No one can measure your priorities but you, so accept the priorities of your work and life. If prioritizing means you want to work a flexible works schedule so you can get home at 2:00 to take your kids off the bus, then you’ve set the agenda, you’ve prioritized what’s important to you, and you are going to feel a sense of balance. If prioritizing means you want to work a little harder to meet an important goal, then do that.

In the mornings, when I choose run, I prioritize running over sleep, or I prioritize my run over going to an early meeting. But other mornings, if something else feels more important than the run, I prioritize differently.

The only way to do that is if you are in control of what your priorities are. What are your priorities? How do they relate to each other? What decisions could you make today to help you feel more balanced? What decisions could you make tomorrow or in the coming week to help you align your activities with your values and goals? Says Lisa,

Balance is not a thing you achieve or a place you arrive. You constantly rethink and reprioritize your activities. If you’re feeling balanced, you’ve got it right. If you’re feeling out of balance, you need to go back and reprioritize your activities again!

Work and life are closer together than most people think. When you integrate them more fully, you lose the guilt and anxiety that comes from second-guessing your decisions. You make the decisions that make you feel at peace.

Did you enjoy this profile? You may be interested in the eCourse, Getting an Edge: 21 Ways World Class Leaders Share Their Secrets for Leading and Living Well. Each of 21 profiles just like this one comes in a separate email – once a day for 21 days. Click here to order.

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Moving from Chaos to Control

It’s 3:00 in the afternoon. You’re standing in the middle of your office. Hands on your hips, you deliberate about what to do now. Do you sit down and sling out a rash of emails? Do you return a few phone calls? Or do you close your door and somehow try to concentrate on the big project you really need to work on? Frozen, you are immobilized by the possibilities. You drift off for a minute, staring off into space. Then you catch yourself and snap back into action.

The rest of the day you spend busily working. You pull out a project, then the phone rings and sets you off in another direction. You keep on top of your emails and other people’s requests as best you can in an attempt to keep the deluge at bay. Head down, you fly through tasks and manage the crises, barely looking up to notice the time until finally, the day comes to an end.

Driving home, you’re spent. The day has been intense and full; you take satisfaction in enumerating all you’ve done. Then you realize even though you’ve been busy all day, you haven’t really done anything. You’ve been so buried, you’ve lost sight of your grander vision. You find yourself being haunted by vague, unanswerable questions. Could I be doing better than this? Is this what I wanted for my life? Am I making any difference? Somehow answering these questions never gets to the top of the list. Why is that? Your mind drifts off, hypnotized by the traffic and whirring about what you need to do tomorrow.

Have you ever had this experience? Ironically, even though you may be working all day, you never feel like you get anything done. You’re busy but not necessarily productive. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you wonder if you’re doing the right things. Not that you have a choice; you’re too swamped with what you have to do today to dwell for long on what you want to do or ought to do to be more effective. Still. You know there’s something wrong with this picture.

And you’re right. There is. What’s wrong is that when you bounce along from task to task, you’re not choosing where to put your attention. You’re living by chance and not by choice. You may be ignoring the most valuable parts of your life – the parts that are going to help you achieve your vision, possibly in the long term and definitely for today. Or, you may be doing many of the right things, but you’re not really sure. You haven’t stopped moving long enough to check. Plus, there are so many priorities, you find it hard to keep them all straight, much less stay on top of them all at once.

In order to get what you want, in order to be who you want to be, in order to live the kind of life you want to live and lead the way you want to lead, you need to be more strategic than that. You need to find focus.

Finding Focus is one of the ideas I share with leaders in the book, The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership. To learn more, go to www.TheInnerEdge.com. You’ll find an overview of the book, endorsements by such thought leaders as Marshall Goldsmith and Stephen Covey, and more.

By finding focus, you’re going to pull your thoughts out of the crowded rabble of your mind and give them the attention they deserve. Get ready to move from chaos to control.