Peak Careers

Professional Development for Career Practitioners

less is best

3 Reasons to Practice Mindfulness at Work

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Sunrise over Honolulu

In our ever-busy world that we live in, it is important that we find ways to slow ourselves down as a way to better serve ourselves and clients. Our ability to manage the tsunami of information coming into us daily and hourly is inversely linked to the quality of services we provide. If we are constantly chasing emails, tweets, and other social media messages, we are not taking the time to slow down and “think”.  Yes, just “think” instead of reacting.

“Mindfulness is deliberately paying full attention to what is happening around you and within you – in your body, heart, and mind. Mindfulness is awareness without criticism or judgement.”                        

From Jan Chozen Bays, Author of  How To Train a Wild Elephant: And Other Adventures in Mindfulness

Here are three reasons why you should practice mindfulness as a career practitioner.

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Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. Cal Newport

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Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. By Cal Newport

I needed this book to confirm a bunch of thoughts I have been struggling with in my busy life. Cal does a persuasive job describing the benefits for removing the clutter of our daily lives that eat of time he calls “shallow work” like emails, social media, and more. This is what I call “feeling like a golden retriever with 4 tennis balls in the room.”

Cal talks about the many benefits of Deep Work that requires longer periods of uninterrupted time that is much more productive. Carl Jung built a retreat for himself that he would go to and think and write and think some more. He still was active in his social life but not the days he was at his retreat.

Cal’s definition of Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.

He gives many great examples of people who have mastered the ability to focus and to think deeper thoughts and produce great work from Woody Allen who wrote and directed 44 films that received 23 Academy Award nominations in 44 years! As well as some guy names Bill Gates who would take “Think Weeks” twice a year.

In 2012 a McKinsey study found that the average worker now spends more that 60 % of the workweek engaged in e-communication an Internet searching, with close to 30% of their time reading and answering email alone!

The Deep Work hypothesis: The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it si becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.

Cal postulates and has research to support it, that by practicing Deep Work and thinking, you can grow this ability, much like a muscle. The more you can get into Deep Work daily, the more benefits you will produce. AND Deep Work will allow you to be focused enough that you can stop working evenings and weekends. Folks, it is a compelling book to read.

Technology free retreat – What a great day!

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On February 19 of this year, I turned off all my technology and took a “Rebalancing Retreat.”

Thanks to the inspiration from my brother Mark who has taken retreats annually for years and to Richard Leider, a ‘purpose’ expert who suggests in his book, Repacking Your Bags, taking a ‘technology-free’ day and to use that day to  j u s t   t h i n k…

My retreat was at a local liberal arts college in a remote room in the chapel tower. My view included the beautiful campus on top of Mayflower Hill in central Maine, to the east towards the coastal mountain range, and to the north up the Kennebec River Valley towards Quebec. Inspirational and fortuitous says my brother the priest. Below are some of my thoughts from that day.

I find myself reaching for my phone to check emails (I must have 20-30 by now from last night) or to send a text to someone… and I realize…the text can wait, it really is not that important they receive this text at 8:45 a.m.  

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Less is Best

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Less is best in most cases. We live with a tsunami of information and all we often need is a beach and an umbrella. Malcolm Gladwell in Blink says, “We live in a world saturated with information….The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding.”20130704_112354

So how do we take this enormous amount of information and turn this into understanding? One way to do this is to embrace the “less is best” motto and it will leave you with the clues to understanding. Malcolm Gladwell speaks to this in his book and I talk about “trusting your instincts”. (See 3rd bullet point in this blog).

When working with college students on their resume, I say that every word on this needs to count. To have a purpose. You do not need to tell me that 207-555-5555 is a “cell phone” or JimPeacock @Peak-Careers.com is an “email”, I know what it is. Use bullet phrases, not sentences in your experience area because I am skimming this document, not reading it. Make this resume shorter, meaningful, and cleaner, so I can understand you.

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