Grace Marshall's Blog, page 3

Are you disqualifying yourself?

I was asked to take part in a panel last Summer with Sage UK. The topic was “Women with ambition – From Bossy to Boss”. As I scanned through the questions, words like “gender pay gap” and “quotas” jumped out – and I recognised a familiar feeling.

What am I doing here? Who do I think I am?

This is not my area of expertise.

I don’t have a big story of overcoming oppression. I never got fired for being a woman or being pregnant (although I do remember a highly inappropriate comment from a young, inexperienced finance director!) I’m not a CEO of a big company. I’m not familiar with the research or the government policies in this area.

I’m not qualified to speak on this subject, I thought.

And you know what? I could have easily said no to this one.

Because it was the school holidays and I generally don’t work in the school holidays. Or because it’s not my topic – productivity is my thing – my area of expertise.

But I said yes.

Instead of saying “I can’t because…” I said “I can if…”

I can do it, if the company asking me was willing to cover the expense of a family train ticket (which was actually cheaper than a standard adult return) so that I could bring my kids, a friend and her kids and make it a day trip for all of us to London.

I can do it, if instead of having to be the expert, I simply speak my truth and share my experiences.

As it turns out, I had plenty to say.

A lifetime’s experience, plus brilliant examples from friends and colleagues – and yes, I snuck in a few words on productivity!

In fact, that sums up a lot of what we ended up talking about – imposter syndrome, saying yes to ourselves, taking the risk, being willing to show up, learning from knockbacks.

When we think “I can’t because” we find reasons to say no to ourselves. We see our constraints as evidence that disqualifies us.

When we start thinking “I can if” we embrace constraints as our criteria.

“I can take that promotion if… [I have flexibility and boundaries in place to make sure I can meet my family commitments].”

“I can expand my business if…[I make my services more scalable]”

“I can take that sabbatical if… [I build up my team and stop getting in their way]”

“I can make time for ___ if….”

What constraints are you facing at the moment? Where do you find yourself saying “I can’t because…”? What if you said instead “I can if…”

Let me know where that takes you!

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You haven’t missed the boat

I love a bit of new year planning.

That feeling of a brand new year ahead of me, the chance to review the journey so far. Celebrate my ta-da’s from the year that’s been, marvel at what’s changed (and what hasn’t!) and set my intentions for the year ahead.

But here’s the thing – if you haven’t had a chance to do that yet, you haven’t missed the boat.

New Year’s Day. Ditch the Resolutions Day. Blue Monday

These are just arbitrary days. Yes, they can be helpful to generate momentum – and yes, a deadline can be a powerful thing. But when you feel like you’re constantly treading water trying to keep up with all the dates, it’s worth asking

Who’s setting the dates?

Take Blue Monday for example – supposedly the most depressing day of the year. Turns out it was part of a travel company’s PR campaign to get more people booking holidays in January!

In a world where work never ends, it’s up to us to define our own finish lines.

It’s also up to us to define our own starting lines.

The first of January seems like a nice neat starting line.

But it doesn’t have to be the only one.

As 2018 rolled towards 2019 I had a hunch of what I wanted to release, create and change in the year ahead. But I needed time and headspace to flesh it out. For some people that week between Christmas and New Year is the perfect time to review and plan, but for me, that was a week of pyjamas, board games and random meal times!

It’s taken me the best part of two weeks to do that thinking – and that’s after going back to work on 8th January.

Even now, it’s tempting to rush it – to play catch up. Instead, I’m reminding myself to take my time and say – to myself as much as to you – all in good time.

So if you’re feeling rushed into another cycle of crazy – you haven’t missed the boat, just because you see others racing around in their boats.

It’s your boat remember? You choose when and how you get started.

Let me know how you get on in the comments below…!

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Why it’s terrifying to rest

Ever catch yourself thinking I’m not sure I want to do this anymore?

When everything feels uphill, or humdrum. When the work has lost its colour, or you’ve lost your mojo. And you find yourself thinking what the heck am I doing here?

When it happens in small doses we call it a blip. When it hits hard and doesn’t shift we call it burnout.

I’ve known people get floored by this.

But what if the answer isn’t to avoid it, but to embrace it regularly?

You see, when things get hard, our instinct is to hold on tighter – make it work, make the ideas come, push through the fog.

But what if the reverse is actually what we need?

Let go. Drop it. Walk away.

I’ve been listening to one of Rob Bell’s podcast episodes this week on What Happens Every Six Months – thanks to Ben who replied to one of my emails and suggested it (thanks Ben!)

It’s rare that I listen to a podcast twice, but this had so much good stuff that I wanted to make notes on. I’d highly recommend you listen to it in full when you get the chance, but here’s what particularly grabbed me that I wanted to share with you.

It happens regularly

Every six months, Rob got to a point where he wanted to drop it all and walk away from his work.

“I would get so uninterested in what I do. Zero mojo. Zero energy. All of my ideas would just shrivel up… I don’t really feel like talking, I don’t have anything to say, maybe it’s all over?”

Instead of ignoring that feeling or trying to push it away, he decided to follow it to see where it would lead.

He let himself drift. To stop creating. Stop producing. And walk away from it all.

Anybody else find this terrifying?

I think this is why we find it so hard to rest, to switch off completely. We’re terrified that if we let go, we’ll lose it all – or lose ourselves.

What if it all falls apart? Or worse, doesn’t fall apart and it becomes blindingly obvious that I’m not needed at all?!

What if I lose it all because I took my eye off the ball? The opportunities, the credibility, the community, the momentum – everything I’ve worked so hard to build?

What if I don’t want to come back at all? What if I lose my edge, my mojo, my spark? What if I drift away forever?

Except we don’t.

We discover perspective

I love the way he described how he would look at his work and go “wait, that’s what I do? That is a strange way to work!”

Sometimes we can take ourselves and our work far too seriously. To be able to step back, to look at our work with marvel, wonder or just plain ‘what the heck?!’ gives us a chance to reset and see things from a new perspective.

We make peace with what we can’t control

“When you take your hand off the wheel, you are forced to come to terms with all the ways you’ve been trying to control things that aren’t allowing you to control them.”

I see this happen sometimes with a workshop delegate who is so stressed by someone else’s behaviour that it dominates their attention. To the point where they refuse to use the workshop to focus on their own workload, habits and decisions – things that would actually help and that they do have control over – because they’re holding so tightly onto the thing that somebody else has or hasn’t done.

He calls this grasping energy. A toxic, frustrating loop that builds up when we keep trying to control, manipulate or force things into place and it’s just not working.

And it’s not always because we explicitly want to control others. It can happen when we care too much, and grasp too tightly. The problem is we can’t care all the time. “The heart can only care so much, then it needs a break. It needs a release valve.”

We find our way back

After a while, there would come a day when he’d stumble on an idea and think, “oh that’s interesting!” which would remind him of something, and connect with something else. One idea leads to another.

“All of a sudden I’d find myself making things and getting back into the groove.”

We don’t drift forever. We find our way back, with more energy and more vitality.

Rest has a funny way of stripping off the ego, and reinvigorating the soul

When your work starts to lose its edge or its colour, maybe the answer is to walk away.

Trust that it’s ok to be lost for a while, and know that you won’t be lost forever.

Perhaps because wherever you walk to – there you are. What changes is the baggage you strip off along the way. The control, the ego, the proving. The obligations and expectations of what success should look like. The stuff that doesn’t belong to you. The stuff you’ve been clinging on too tightly to.

You find yourself again.

Your mojo. Your spark. Your edge. Your imagination. Your compassion.

And let’s face it, when we hold on too tightly for too long, we lose the things we’re desperately trying to hold onto anyway. We have less and less imagination. Less and less compassion. Less and less energy.

Sometimes you have to walk away to find out just which bits you’d really miss.

Sometimes you have to release control to realise how much power you really have.

What do you think? Is letting go terrifying or liberating? Let me know below…

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That thing that’s irritating you

“Sometimes the most uncomfortable learning is the most powerful” Brene Brown

When I think of learning experiences, I think of the big, the scary, the new and the risky. The times I need to step up or stretch outside my comfort zone. Times when I can see the learning coming and I can brace for impact.

What I don’t think of are the curve balls. The lessons that crash land in the middle of just another ordinary day. These are the ones that leave me reeling afterwards with “What the heck was that?!”

These are the ones I can easily miss as learning opportunities, because in these moments, I don’t feel like learning. I feel frustrated, annoyed, let down and taken advantage of. I feel like retaliating, or retreating. Fight or flight. Blame or shame.

“Who do they think they are?”

“What did I do to deserve that?”

But these can be big learning moments.

A chemist friend reminded me last week that a catalyst is essentially an irritant.

That thing that’s irritating you right now – what if that could be a catalyst for change?

Here’s how:

1. Shift the focus

They often say that when someone lashes out, it’s usually more about them than about you. The advice is not to take it personally. But what if you took the learning personally?

You see when we focus on what they did wrong and why they were wrong, what we learn can only change them – and that’s if they’re open to feedback and change. If they’re not, we can feel even more frustrated, hurt and conflicted.

But when we focus inwards and get curious about “What does this tell me about me? Why was that experience so jarring – which of my values did that clash with? What do I really believe in? What’s the right thing for me to do?” the learning is clarifying, edifying and strengthening. It helps us to show up stronger, communicate clearer and make decisions with even more integrity than before.

2. Prepare, don’t avoid

It’s natural to want to avoid uncomfortable situations. But sometimes the cost of avoidance is too high, especially when it means you have to agree with something you don’t believe in, play smaller or fall in line so you don’t get singled out.

Instead when we take the learning forwards, we can use it to prepare ourselves, to be better equipped to deal with future situations. The sh*t we find ourselves in becomes compost – and instead of shrinking, we grow.

3. Take your time

Curve balls are time-consuming, and not just in the moment. They have a way of playing on our minds long after the deed is done. When it feels like so much time has already been wasted, the last thing we want to do is spend even more time on it. We itch for closure – but often our quickest reactions can be the ones that end up deepening the wound or prolonging the pain.

Learning from uncomfortable situations usually involves sitting in that discomfort for a little longer. Riding out the outrage until our considerate brain kicks back in and figures out something constructive to do.

When this happened to me recently, I found it helped to phone a friend – or two in fact – who I knew would support me from a place of understanding, and give me equal doses of empathy and truth-telling, who I could trust to give me a sanity check and tell me straight: ‘don’t do anything stupid’.

It takes time, but it’s so worth it. What came out of the process for me was something truly beautiful and useful – a tool I can use in my business that will add value to my clients, and you know what, I’m proud as punch with it

The Gift of Clarity

Offering a service or asking for help? Sometimes in our willingness to serve we can be too open about what we have to offer – or what we’re asking for. Could you give the gift of clarity to reduce decision fatigue for your clients or colleagues and improve your working relationship as a result?

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Rising

How does mental health affect productivity? How does productivity affect mental health?

Some of the more gung ho productivity advice seems to create a culture of perfection. Where productivity has become synonymous with a perfect picture of health – mental and otherwise. Where being productive means being ‘on it’ all the time. And anything less is a waste of time.

Arguably, that’s the kind of ‘productivity’ that got us into this mess – a culture of over-achieving, never enough, guilt-inducing busyness.

Real productivity is not about perfection. It’s about being human.

It’s about getting the work done when we’re not totally on it.

It’s about making sense of what we need to do, or not do.

It’s about understanding how we find our way back to ‘on it’ – because when we are there it does feel pretty good.

Productivity is a process of rising.

Sometimes rising is about flying high. Some days it’s literally about rising out of bed.

Rising amidst the chaos, the busyness, the overwhelm, the numbness or the panic, to find a way forward when the road is neither clear nor straight.

Rising above the mud-slinging and blame-shifting, and the temptation to shrink into self-protection mode.

Rising despite the limitations we put on ourselves – the ‘can’ts’, ‘have to’s and ‘should’s, the self doubt, the inner critic and the imposter syndrome.

Rising within the uncertainty and imperfection of the world we live and work in, with all the people who drive us crazy – including ourselves.

It’s the tactics that help us to reclaim a sense of clarity and control – over our workload, our to-do lists, our calendars and our inboxes – not so that all those things can be perfect, but so that we can see a way forward.

It’s the practices that remind us of the good that we have done, still do and can do – even when we feel completely rubbish.

It’s the perspective that lowers frustration and releases guilt, and gently steers us from what we can’t do to what we can do.

It’s the tools that lighten the load and help us to function on days when are totally spent.

And it’s the words that speak life into us when we are utterly defeated, that rekindle a spark of hope and an inkling of joy.

That’s the productivity and mental health conversation I want to have more of.  How about you?

This is something I wrote a while ago for my email subscribers on Time to Talk Day. Given that it’s Mental Health Awareness Week I want to share it more widely here. If you’d like to take the Really Productive conversation to your inbox, feel free to sign up at the top of the page. 

unsplash-logoMartin Jernberg

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The perspective of wellbeing

Often when we talk about wellbeing, we talk about the practice of wellbeing. How we look after our bodies and our minds, the importance of sleep and taking breaks. We talk about walking meetings, desk stretches, seeking support, setting boundaries and asking for help. We talk about how we recharge, manage our energy, and have a life outside of work. 

But what about the perspective of wellbeing?

The truth is, it’s our perspective of wellbeing that will dictate whether we practice it at all.

Do you see wellbeing as fuel or luxury? Is it the fuel that enables us to give our best, the luxury we treat ourselves with when everything else is done, or the bandage we put on when we can no longer ignore it? 

Is it a strength or weakness? Does it show more strength to ignore our needs or to meet our needs?

Who does it serve? Is wellbeing self-serving, or the thing that helps us to serve others?

I love that in my How to be a Productivity Ninja workshops I get to champion the perspective of being human, not superhero. This perspective comes from  

Recognising we have limits

Recognising we are imperfect

Recognising we have quirks & foibles

When we recognise these things, the surprising truth is that we can come from a place of strength. When we recognise our limits we can start to deliberately choose what we give our best to, rather than be caught short when we run out.

When we recognise we can’t do it all ourselves we discover the beauty and brilliance of working as part of a team.

When we are willing to make mistakes, we learn, we discover, we innovate. We expand the possibilities of success beyond what’s safe.

When we embrace our individual quirks and tendencies as human beings we stop hiding from ourselves. We show up more fully, bring more of ourselves to our work, our homes and our community. We live and work more wholeheartedly.

Human beings are absolutely brilliant, when we stop trying to be superhuman.

That’s my perspective. What’s yours?

Unorthodoxy – it’s not all about being extreme

It’s not always the most wacky or crazy thing. Sometimes it’s the simplest of ideas that are the most unorthodox.

What do you do when things don’t work out?

Last week I wrote a column for my local paper on ‘how to find your dream job’. The punch line was essentially: you don’t, you create it as you go.

Here’s an extract:

The job I do these days didn’t exist when I was choosing my degree and planning my career. But even if it did, I don’t know if I would have recognised myself in the job description.

The truth is my career has evolved as I’ve grown. Each piece of work I’ve done, whether in an employed job, self-employed or on a voluntary basis, has given me the opportunity to discover more about me, what I do well, and what does me good.

Looking for the ideal job suggests that the answers are already fixed, and it’s our job to find the one we fit into. Maybe we have it backwards. Perhaps nothing’s fixed, and we get to create our world of work as we go along. In how we approach each problem, each opportunity, each email, each meeting, each client interaction. Then we can find (or create) the job title to fit us, rather than the other way around.

Perhaps our ultimate job is to discover what we have to give, and all the many ways in which we can give it. And the career journey is a treasure hunt, where we discover treasure along the way, rather than race to get to the finish line.

But that wasn’t the end of the story – at least not for me.

As soon as I finished writing, I received news that a book proposal I had been getting rather excited about had been turned down.

I hadn’t gone looking for another book to write. This one found me. The conversations, the ideas, the relationship with the commissioning editor had been so brilliant that I had gone from ‘ooh this might be interesting’ to ‘I can’t wait to get started!’

So yes I was gutted. But in a weird ‘Dammit!’ way that felt more like a set back than a completely lost opportunity. In fact there was definitely something there I wasn’t ready to see as lost.

In my column I wrote that we learn about ourselves from what we do well. But we also learn massively from what we don’t achieve. The failures, the rejections, the disappointments. Perhaps it’s the times when things don’t work out that we most learn about ourselves.

Funny how a rejection can force you to clarify your own thinking and separate what really matters to you from the packaging that it happened to come in.

Here are three questions I’ve been pondering. If you’re dealing with disappointment too, I invite you to join me:

1. What do I really love about this?

What do I not want to let go of? This is the spark that’s woken something inside me, that doesn’t want to go back to sleep. This is the essence of what’s truly worth pursuing.

2. What were the nice-to-haves?

What was essentially just packaging? For me the book deal would have given me definition, structure, a team to work with, an external deadline and a certain sense of legitimacy, and yes the advance would have been nice too! But these were perks. They made the deal better, but they didn’t make the deal. They were replaceable, negotiable, re-imaginable.

3. What else could it be?

That’s what I’m working on at the moment. Could it be a different book? A coaching programme? A blog series? A podcast? Something else entirely? Who knows? Sometimes it’s only in the absence of certainty that we begin to explore possibility.

So yes, I’m disappointed. My impatient self is annoyed that I can’t just get on with it. My ego is a little wounded and my imposter syndrome voice is ringing a little louder, but it’s most definitely not game over. In fact, the game’s probably just gotten bigger.

Luke Pamer

About that mental load

There have been some great articles recently highlighting the mental load and emotional labour involved in managing life outside of work.

I have to say, for every man I’ve had in a workshop who has said: “I don’t have to think about anything at home – my wife tells me what to do” there’s a woman who says something along the lines of “I have to do all the thinking at home – I’m the one who remembers his sister’s birthday, buys her card and reminds him to sign it.” And yes I’m afraid it’s always a man, but not all men, or even most men.

My husband is one, I’m pleased to say, who does appreciate the mental load. He’s the one who’s scoped that we needed more milk yesterday morning and that our son needed to polish his shoes. He was the one who noticed when our son was skipping lunch, and tweeted Muller when our daughter’s yoghurt had gone ‘fizzy’. He’s also the one who nags me when my car appears to be growing moss (oops!) and the one all our friends come to when they have a techie problem they can’t solve.

Yes he is rather marvellous. But it’s been a learning journey to get to this point – for both of us.

Here’s what I’ve learned – and it applies to the mental load at work too.

1. Managing the mental load is learned out of necessity

If you’ve always had a boss who has delegated tasks to do rather than problems to solve, you won’t have needed to do the thinking involved in defining the work that needs to get done.

If you’ve always had a household manager (or a wife!) to scope, figure out and manage everything that needs to be done, then you won’t be aware of the complexity of decisions that need to be made. Why would you?

If you are that boss, or that wife, and if you want something to change, you need to delegate the responsibility, not just the task. And then you need to step aside and let them figure it out.

For me the big change happened when my husband took a sabbatical year to do his Masters degree and we did a role swap. He was at home more, and I was on the road more, running workshops full time. On the days when I was working away, or squirrelled away in a cafe writing my book, he would be in charge of the school run, the dinner, the kids, the house and the after school activities.

Before this time, he was always an involved dad and husband, but many of the thousand tiny decisions involved in everyday home life just wasn’t on his radar, because it was all in my head. There was no need for him to think about it.

2. Get out of the way

I can’t tell you how hard it was to stay out the way. On the days when I was physically away, I still wanted to know what was going on. And when I was at home, it’s amazing how tempting it was to interfere. Sounds ridiculous, but I remember how hard it felt to lock myself away upstairs and make the most of some precious writing time while my husband cooked my signature stir fry dish downstairs.

The biggest thing he needed was space to scope. Things that occurred to me instantly and naturally did so because I was used to it. I needed to give him space to notice these things, and figure out his own way of dealing with it.

Last week, a friend messaged me to ask if we could have one of her boys after school. What I should have done was told her that Grante was in charge on the home front, and suggest she ask him directly. What I actually did, was to forward her message to my husband, and act as a go-between, which ended up in crossed-wires, mixed messages, an extra boy and a shortage of pizza.

The pizza shortage was easily rectified in the end, although my son did lament that he missed out on the pudding he really wanted. And my husband held the fort marvellously with four kids! But without a doubt, I made things far more complicated by getting involved.

3. Sharing the load means sharing control

These days, he’s finished his degree but his work is seasonal, and so is mine. So our roles are not clear cut, and when anyone asks how things work at home, the answer is we’re making it up as we go along.

When you delegate, it won’t get done the way you would have done it. You don’t get to dictate how it’s done. When you share ownership, you have to share control.

My husband and I are opposites in many ways. We have very different ways of seeing and tackling things. Quite often we’re not even speaking the same language. It takes communication, practice and a whole lot of grace to navigate the mess, the mistakes, the misunderstanding and the balls that get dropped. It’s a messy, imperfect process and emotions do get frayed. I’ve found that being quick to say “my bad” when I’ve dropped he ball and “you’re amazing” when he picks it up, goes a long way.

Team work is hard work, but it’s so worth it. We definitely appreciate each other more, for who we are as well as what we do. We know we’re not alone. It’s a shared journey. Yes it’s been the source of many arguments but I’d like to think it’s brought us closer. And the kids get us both, our presence, our involvement, our imperfection and our learning, up close and personal.

Want more?

Getting clarity around that mental load is what we do in our Stress Less Achieve More workshop. You’ll learn how to design your second brain to take the weight of the load and help you manage everything you need to get done in work and in life – with a sense of playful productive momentum and relaxed control.

If that sounds wonderful to you – come and join us in Birmingham on 10th November (or book on that partner/team member who you need to take on more of the mental load!)

Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash